Infrastructure Investment Update: Buy/Sell Fee Change and Land Pricing Effective Mar 6, 2023 DISCUSSION

[Crim Mip]

On 3/12/2023 at 1:46 PM, Alwin Alcott said:

i bet it will be changed back soon if they see a giant drop in paying customers

Which is unlikely to happen. They keep selling out new areas added to Bellisseria. A lot more than I thought are now paying for Premium Plus accounts. They indicated years ago they wanted to get out from under the thumbs of the major land barons and lowering the cost of ownership in sims and offering quality alternative places to live at lower cost than most rentals has been rather effective. The increase is tiny in actual money. The idiots going by percentages probably buy into the idea that if you go from 10 cents to 20 cents you've doubled your money and it matters. They still offer free basic accounts. In theory you could never pay a a cent and still enjoy the entire grid. The provided AV's at this point aren't even that bad and will be getting even better. I, for one am happy to see them pay attention to the bottom line as there really aren't any other virtual worlds that come close.

[Crim Mip]

On 3/12/2023 at 6:11 PM, Rowan Amore said:

So, why are so few people there, I wonder.

Because there the content available is so much less and there aren't enough people in any one place to make it seem that attractive. SL has enough issues with large swathes of abandoned land in the centers of the continents, but at least there are places where reasonable numbers congregate. Every alternative grid I've tried has seemed empty, and bland by comparison.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Hoping LL switches focus to more land "products" besides Bellisseria soon as a side-effect of all the changes. It's like if GE only sold washing machines, or McDonald's only sold one type of burger, or Barbie only came in "white with blonde hair".

Edited March 15, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Crim Mip]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Hoping LL switches focus to more land "products" besides Bellisseria soon as a side-effect of all the changes. It's like if GE only sold washing machines, or McDonald's only sold one type of burger, or Barbie only came in "white with blonde hair".

They kind of have. Get a Premium Plus account and you can buy a homestead sim without owning a full estate. That is a huge deal and a major savings if that's all you wanted. They have have to be careful not to completely upend the SL economy by changing stuff too fast.

[Rowan Amore]

54 minutes ago, Crim Mip said:

Because there the content available is so much less and there aren't enough people in any one place to make it seem that attractive. SL has enough issues with large swathes of abandoned land in the centers of the continents, but at least there are places where reasonable numbers congregate. Every alternative grid I've tried has seemed empty, and bland by comparison.

 

Which makes sense but in all the years since OS has been around (2007, I believe) it hasn't attracted nearly as many people as SL which is only a few years older.  Curiouser and curiouser.

[Chic Aeon]

7 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Which makes sense but in all the years since OS has been around (2007, I believe) it hasn't attracted nearly as many people as SL which is only a few years older.  Curiouser and curiouser.

Actually OS is much larger than SL but most of the grids are not public. Many are used by schools and organizations or are simply private.  Opensim and Hypergrid are not synonymous terms.   You can find statistics on the number of grids and some population figures at HypergridBusiness.com (hopefully that is still working).  There should be articles on that if you are willing to search. There used to be reports yearly if not monthly. 

The big differences are costs and independence.   OS is free to set up. Just takes some time. And for institutions that do not connect to the hypergrid it is a closed system which is what they need. LL has a program like that where THEY do the work.  I am not sure if those regions are added to what we think of as regular "sims"> .  

 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Chic Aeon
adding info

[Quistess Alpha]

4 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

I am not sure if those regions are added to what we think of as regular "sims"> .

I'm pretty sure I saw one on the map once (out in the boonies where all the single private regions are) . I obviously can't be certain if it was exactly that though.

[Istelathis]

7 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Actually OS is much larger than SL but most of the grids are not public.

In February according to hypergrid there were "110,458 standard-sized regions" that were on public grids.  It is kind of mind boggling to think of how many regions there are, many of which are explorable for those who want to wander around for hours at a time, one will likely be able to spend hours of their days for years exploring new regions.

When I do want to go exploring in OS, I can go for quite a while without seeing another person,  although it does happen from time to time.  A lot of the time, I just want to be left alone so I go to places that show no people logged in, so that is a factor in a lot of my exploration.  A nice thing to be said is that most people on the hypergrid want to have their areas explored, so no security orbs, no being shot back to my home grid with no notice.

I wish I could find concurrent users for OS, to get an idea of how many people are logged in at the time, but have as of yet to find anything.  With such a huge number of regions, even if only one person in a hundred of those regions were logged in,  that would be about a thousand people spread throughout the public grids.  I think it is safer to say there are probably a lot more concurrent users on at any moment than that though.  

To imagine all of the grids that are private, is pretty crazy.  There are bound to be thousands more regions on grids that are not listed with hypergrid. 

GridSurvey reports there to be 27,574 regions in SL which is also huge.  One of the things I really do love about second life is the road system, and the mainland that is just not very well replicated in OS.  That along with the traversable water ways, it is a lot easier to find pockets of people while exploring in SL due to there just being one main grid and a lot of land belonging to huge continents that you can drive through.

SL would have almost 2 people logged in per region, which is one of the reasons why I think it is so much easier to find people here.  I doubt the same can be said for OS, I would be surprised if there were 1 person logged in for every five regions but that would be all speculation on my part.

Edit for those reading my comment:
I think the tradeoff would be, you are likely to have a lot more people in SL visit your region if you want them to, you have a lot larger of a selection of objects to purchase for your region on SL, you have LL holding your character's inventory so anything you do purchase is in my opinion safer as any grid could close in a moment's notice which would result in you losing everything.  You also have a team devoted to keeping your region updated to the latest standards of SL, including innovative features being added to SL, and also security.    

I would much rather have a region in SL than OS.  I just don't have $200 a month to spend on one.  If I did have that kind of money, I would be perfectly happy owning a region here and think it was money well spent.  It is by far more expensive, but there are a lot of perks in SL that OS does not offer.

Further, exploring SL just feels more secure, in general it can be a more solid experience as a lot of grid hopping in OS can be glitchy at times.  Some grids are incredibly full of lag and it can get frustrating.  

Edited March 16, 2023 by Istelathis

[Chic Aeon]

13 hours ago, Istelathis said:

SL would have almost 2 people logged in per region, which is one of the reasons why I think it is so much easier to find people here.  I doubt the same can be said for OS, I would be surprised if there were 1 person logged in for every five regions but that would be all speculation on my part.

I suspect that is generally true.  Back in 2013 - 2015 after the SL TOS change OS was hopping. I was over there then along with a few folks I knew and lots of people who had "left" SL.  It was a fun time and people were friendly and definitely around. We could probably say something similar about SL during that time.   Both the corporeal world and the virtual world change - often influenced by each other. 

 

 I was just REALLY  surprised to know how many OS grids are out there.  Some of the commercial grids are pretty large.  Kitely is the most stable I believe and certainly one of the most best run and concerned with security.   It is a VERY different place. Works for some. Not for others.  

[Rowan Amore]

20 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Actually OS is much larger than SL but most of the grids are not public. Many are used by schools and organizations or are simply private.  Opensim and Hypergrid are not synonymous terms.   You can find statistics on the number of grids and some population figures at HypergridBusiness.com (hopefully that is still working).  There should be articles on that if you are willing to search. There used to be reports yearly if not monthly. 

The big differences are costs and independence.   OS is free to set up. Just takes some time. And for institutions that do not connect to the hypergrid it is a closed system which is what they need. LL has a program like that where THEY do the work.  I am not sure if those regions are added to what we think of as regular "sims"> .  

 

 

Reading an article...

OSgrid: 25,558 regions with 5,164 active users

Kitely: 870 active users

SL has over 27,000 regions with currently 43,000 residents logged in.

[Marianne Little]

I was looking at the Kitely marketplace, and it is really not much to buy. Since I love virtual land, I thought I should see what they offer for house and garden. It is almost nothing. I would have to make everything myself.

And that is cool and all, but I can't make other than simple stuff. I can not make the houses, furniture and garden items I can get in SL. It is another world.

If I could use a magic wand and take my SL inventory to OS, I would.

What do people who is not mesh and texturing experts do in OS? Build with prims, that's all? Or is it a black market for ripped off stuff?

[Istelathis]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

What do people who is not mesh and texturing experts do in OS? Build with prims, that's all? Or is it a black market for ripped off stuff?

Wander around and look for creators who are generous enough to provide the content they create for free, a lot of stuff is not up to par with SL.  For trees I usually generate them, finding outfits for Ruth is not too bad especially with BOM.  Trying to avoid piracy gets difficult, it is very common in OS and the problem is that you are never really sure that the stuff people are offering for free is pirated or not and hope they are being honest when they mark their items as being made by the owner of the region.

There are a lot of malls with older outfits, stuff like flexi hair, dresses, etc.  The Lani Mall has a ton of free stuff in it, including textures, roads, paths, and so on.  Then there are places like Arcadia that offer free stuff made by people for OS, it is all a matter of exploring the grids and stumbling into generous people who enjoy creating content and sharing it.  You can also download free mesh furniture from the web, and upload it to OS then add your own animations and scripts to it.  

Outworldz has a ton of free content that I have used, in fact I used lots of their stuff in my builds in the past including an entire slum city which I converted into a basic zombie shooter, by using a few scripts I found for different games that were provided for free in the Lani Mall and frankensteining the heck out of it to produce a pretty fun FPS that while buggy I still enjoyed for a time.  Nothing I would ever be proud of, but still fun.  They even had a little pixie avatar I would use.

But yeah, it is a real pain to decorate, Kitely was pretty expensive but I have purchased things from it in the past, I really enjoyed a sailboat I bought from them.  

One thing OS will do is push you toward finding a lot of solutions when it comes to decorating, and it will require a lot of exploring looking around for creators sharing their content.  Building up your region will probably have you at your computer for hours at a time, trying to figure out how to make your own things or building with prims trying your best to make it look nice.

I really wish I could bring my SL inventory to OS as well.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Istelathis

[Eirynne Sieyes]

I rented a Kitely sim perhaps two years ago. I had a choice of what style sim to get. It came with all sorts of things, and it came somewhat nicely landscaped. 

I made a few things and found all sorts of free (bad) content. They had planned meetings where a very few people congregated in a circle and chatted.

It lasted a month or two.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Eirynne Sieyes

[Chic Aeon]

8 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Reading an article...

OSgrid: 25,558 regions with 5,164 active users

Kitely: 870 active users

SL has over 27,000 regions with currently 43,000 residents logged in.

Import to note that the OSGRID is NOT Opensim but is a part of  Opensim -- only one tiny platform that some folks link up to.   There are literally tons of commercial (you pay them "rent" commercial grids in Opensim.  

I know it can be confusing.  

[RedHillDrained]

I understand that LL / SL is first and foremost a business, and that investment back in the business is necessary to avoid stagnation and remain at least relatively current. But in my opinion the new fees seem punitive, and serve as a disincentive to both residents and makers - especially when taken together with other recent changes. Change is the only constant of course, so we can roll with the changes or move our socializing, creativity, and business somewhere else. That's my choice. My plan at this point is to 1) stop spending money in SL immediately, and 2) to get out of SL before it's as lifeless as other old spaces like MySpace. So long friends and fellow artists.

[PheebyKatz]

1 hour ago, RedHillDrained said:

I understand that LL / SL is first and foremost a business, and that investment back in the business is necessary to avoid stagnation and remain at least relatively current. But in my opinion the new fees seem punitive, and serve as a disincentive to both residents and makers - especially when taken together with other recent changes. Change is the only constant of course, so we can roll with the changes or move our socializing, creativity, and business somewhere else. That's my choice. My plan at this point is to 1) stop spending money in SL immediately, and 2) to get out of SL before it's as lifeless as other old spaces like MySpace. So long friends and fellow artists.

Thanks for letting us know you're leaving SL forever, nobody else ever has the courtesy to do so.

Sucks land prices dropped again, too. And now people can get Homesteads without owning land already? This place just gets worse and worse, doesn't it?

People can't even pay their rent without having real jobs anymore. How dare they do this to everyone? Don't they realize that everyone in here is counting on Second Life to provide enough income for them to live?

This account is a little over 7 years old. In the past 2 months I've earned more than I did in the entire time previous. My SL not only pays for itself, it supports my Marketplace addiction, plus I can afford to tip people decently, so they can have nice things, too.

Believe it or not, just because people can make money in Second Life, doesn't mean it's some "economy" that anyone should be counting on to support them in RL. An ex of mine bought an expensive car with money she made as an escort. It was nice to ride around in, but at the end of the day, she still had a day job because that's the reality of being alive. Being successful in online entreprenuership to the point of not having to do anything else is kinda the exception rather than the rule. Content creation is artistry. Most artists starve if they do no other work.

Anyone who's doing this stuff full time and paying their bills with it, just know that you're exceptional. It's always going to be the harder path too, though, so expect things like fee increases and such to squeeze on you, and do the best you can just like anyone else.

I had a performing career that lasted nearly 20 years. I got to pick my own hours, worked when I felt like it, always made cash money, and I got better at it as I went, earning more as I went along. It mirrored my experience so far with money in SL, in that it took time to produce anything worthwhile, and then there'd be sudden complications that kept threatening the whole endeavour. In the end, my entire way of life was stamped out because of a virus. I had to retool my entire life because of it, because I'd depended on the infrastructure for so long that I assumed it'd never give out.

I'd advise anyone out to make something for themselves to rely more on themselves than whatever platform(s) they inhabit. If it gets to be too much or too little, well, you can always shift focus to whatever other platforms/venues you've cultivated. I see people ditching out sometimes, saying stuff like, "well, its been so fantastically great, but I'm leaving forever because this collaborative sandbox that encourages everyone to make their own stuff just doesn't have enough people buying my stuff instead of making their own", and I wonder if they even realize what they're saying.

Yeah, SL is what we make of it, but not everyone should be expecting to make a living out of it. It wasn't created to provide RL incomes for Residents. That's just a bonus, if you can manage to pull it off.

Edited March 17, 2023 by PheebyKatz

[Tech Robonaught]

On 3/9/2023 at 6:27 PM, MoiraKathleen said:

What does that have to do with anything being discussed in this thread?

If I have to explain it to you it isn't worth it.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Import to note that the OSGRID is NOT Opensim but is a part of  Opensim -- only one tiny platform that some folks link up to.   There are literally tons of commercial (you pay them "rent" commercial grids in Opensim.  

I know it can be confusing.  

When someone writes just "OS" here, how do we infer which they mean- OSGRID or OpenSim?

[Theresa Tennyson]

On 3/9/2023 at 7:00 PM, Tech Robonaught said:

So the 3+ million a month they make on Land WHICH THEY ARE DELIBERATELY REDUCING ON A PER USER BASIS doesn't cover the AWS servers, office and seemingly 2 employees one of which we cant talk to on the phone?

Seems right.

FIFY

[Sid Nagy]

On 3/15/2023 at 11:17 PM, Rowan Amore said:

Which makes sense but in all the years since OS has been around (2007, I believe) it hasn't attracted nearly as many people as SL which is only a few years older.  Curiouser and curiouser.

OS has no central stage, nor a central management, no central currency game tokens, no central protection against several things like illegal copying, bot spying and such. So not really interesting for creators to invest in their world.
Less content means less users.  It is as simple as that IMHO.

A lot of us grumble from time to time about LL, and yes a lot of things could have been handled better in the past and present, but all in all they have done a great job over the last 20 years with SL.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Sid Nagy
Englisn, as always.

[Phil Deakins]

15 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

What do people who is not mesh and texturing experts do in OS? Build with prims, that's all?

Prims were very good and very acceptable before mesh, and they can still be very good  and acceptable today

 

[Love Zhaoying]

27 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

but all in all they have done a great job over the last 20 years with SL.

It's nice to see you saying something positive!

[Sid Nagy]

27 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

It's nice to see you saying something positive!

Yeah, I really could show my positive side a bit more every now and then on the forums. 😁

Edited March 17, 2023 by Sid Nagy
deleted a lot of blah blah blah.

[Kylie Jaxxon]

Not aimed at Sid, just a general observation....Don't quite get the disenchantment that some have with LL or SL over the years     You always have the option to quit.

[Phil Deakins]

17 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

What do people who is not mesh and texturing experts do in OS? Build with prims, that's all? Or is it a black market for ripped off stuff?

Kitely gets mentioned quite a lot, so I just went there to have a look, and it's very disappointing. I had the idea of setting up a store there to give my old low prim furniture away, but I haven't yet managed to spot a home there, where someone might want such furniture lol.

It isn't a world like SL in that there are no land masses like the mainland here. It's just a bunch of privately owned 'worlds' that are not connected together so, to use it as a home, you'd need to have your own separate sim and enjoy it on your own or with friends. People won't pass by as they wander around. They'd need to click something somewhere to even get to your sim, and then wait up to several minutes for your sim to boot up if nobody is already there.

It's cheap, but it isn't a social world like SL. Because of that, building really good-looking mesh stuff doesn't really matter, except for the enjoyment of building, and building with prims is far more enjoyable than building with anything else

I've no idea what other OpenSim systems are like but Kitely isn't a world like SL.

Incidentally, just for building purposes, Kitely is cheap but nowhere near as cheap as setting up an OpenSim region or grid on your own computer, unconnected to any external system.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Phil Deakins