A Suggestion on Improving Mainland

[Coffee Pancake]

36 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

I don't think the existing mainland has high abandonment due to a lack of players, just a lack of necessary modernization work or attempt to meet the expectations of a new generation of SL users.

That's the point though.

Mainland is a free for all build what you like. On purpose. 

Trying to "fix" chaos by having LDPW rez some roads and a few better looking trees (to then abandon for another decade) is not going to fix that fundamental mainland design choice, anything more requires a covenant and that will only decrease occupancy and create work for LL.

Better borders and plots and roads is not nothing .. but it's not a panacea either.

The problem we have is too much of what's left is either functionally abandoned, or practically abandoned.

 

 

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

15 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Sorry but...

Yeah the well documented mating call of the Anti-Privacy Griefer, attempting to build a nest on land they are not paying for.

1,000,000 % wrong.

You've clearly never heard of renting land parcels and homes on private island sims? 

Edited June 14, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Coffee Pancake]

4 minutes ago, ZigZag007 said:

so why don't linden make a content pack for mainland 

We already have a content pack.

The Library.

Which has aged like milk, don't expect any other content pack to avoid suffering the same fate.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

As much as I have been enjoying sailing and GTFO recently, if I get punted home taking a shortcut, that's on me.

No one has any right. None at all.

A short while ago, I decided to fly my float equipped chopper from Ahab's Haunt, down thru the Bay of Admirals, along the Northern Nautillus Straight, past the end of the Atlantean Ship Canal, along the Southern Nautillus Straight, down the west coast of Satori, across to at that time empty Bellicosian marina extension and V shaped airfield, via the Stromberg anti-Satorian Invasion Route, where I paused briefly, then from the V--Field, south thru empty Belli marina to the southern Aanti-Satori Invasion route, across to the southern tip of Satori, and then north about a 1/3 of the way up the continent.

 

A fairly lengthy trip.

I encountered exactly TWO orbs spamming me with warnings, both were the ancient llSensor spherical killzone variety, accosting me OUTSIDE their owners land where you couldn';t harm me at all. No p8nt kicks, no sniping, nada, the entire trip was peaceful and uneventful..

 

A couple of days later I browsed this forum and lo and behold, one of those Fanatical Privacy HAters screaming that it's "impossible to fly more than a couple of regions without being sniped by evil orbs that need to be banned so he can enjoy his non right to use land he dioesn't pay for... blah blah blah"

 

As you can imagine, after  flying with no problems from Ahab's to south central Satori, the long way, I felt his overentitled rant post was LESS than 100 % truthful.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

@Zalificent Corvinus Clearly, you don't know how to use the minimap parcel boundary filter either, to avoid such ban lines and orbs.

However, I do. And have used the minimap's features several times. An example of one of my explorations below, in which I didn't encounter a single ban line or orb.

Edited June 15, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Extrude Ragu]

25 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

...you mean stuff like abolishing ban lines so we cant keep anti-privacy griefers out of our homes at all...

Personally I do not want to advocate for the removal of banlines at all. I believe the reason that people are against banlines is primarily because they look ugly, but to me the solution to that is for LL to improve the game to make them less ugly.

What I am against is security orbs, I think they provide an inconsistent experience and unnecessarily grief explorers.

30 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

You don't get to tell me who can use MY land and what they can use it for, with NO input from me unless, YOY pay my premium subscription and tier, in short, you want to control MY land, buy it from me for an inflated price sufficient to compensate me for having to tear my home down and relocate to a continent where Privacy Hating Belli Griefers cant drive, fly or sail to. Otherwise, STFU.

I think this attitude is perhaps misplaced, given that Mainland is experiencing something of a land abandonment issue, and as the issue progresses, there will come a point where LL will find it costs them more to host the land your sim is on than you make for LL. I would put forward it is probably in your best interest that the mainland starts to attract new residents.

[Aethelwine]

That region sounds like a nice place for a club .. which brings me to another problem with mainland and neighbours, the way resources are allocated per region with potential for one 512 parcel on the region to use all the script time, or become a popular club packed 24/7 with people. On an estate an estate manager has an interest in managing it on mainland in extreme circumstances you might have some success getting Governance to intervene but in reality best option is just to move out.

This sort of lack of control over what neighbours can do inevitably limits the value of land and impacts retention.

I have a fairly large parcel in Zindra, water access and Japanese manga club on one of the parcels regularly with 20 or more avatars hanging out. It is their parcel, they pay tier on it although less than I do, but they are using it and so I am limited with what I can do.

They are nice enough people and they have every right to make use of it and pleased for their ongoing success, but I think it does illustrate a much more real problem for landowners and the land market than passersby intruding.

[Rowan Amore]

Tact...a keen sense of what to do or say in order to maintain good relations with others or avoid offense.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

23 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

A genuine question - What makes the mainland represent more value to you then, than say a private residential sim?

Our "family" each contribute their premium subscription tier allowance, of 1024 square m each, that lowers the family land groups tier burden, we pay less per month than renting on an estate, plus we can own nonstandard parcel sizes, that good old 10% tier free group bonus.

 

We get to live in a nice 4400 sqm parcel, rather than in a 4096 with a lower prim allowance. The downside, no ocean view, no terraforming of more than +/-4m, and having to put in an orb to deter home invaders, don't outweigh the advantages for us.

One of my housemates, when informed by one of those privacy hating eploring griefers that "I'm gonna get you all banned from every airport and dock, and STFU Hub in SL for having an orb" actually burst out laughing as she doesn't own a SINGLE vehicle in SL, and the threat, even assuming the trash could carry it out would have absolutely no effect.

 

 

We CHOSE to live on a sim with NO roads, NO waterways, NO railways, NO airports, and NO STFU Hubs for at least a kilometre in every direction because it had NONE of those Vehicle Fanatic Induced Planning Blight items.

 

23 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

I think you have put yourself on the defensive on the assumption I want people to be able to trespass on your land - This is incorrect - I do not want people to be able to enter your land at all - And I want the game to be improved to make it friendlier to an explorer who is roaming so that they are less likely to encroach.

The moment you suggest banning working security orbs, you are advocating for people to have a right to respass.

Banlines only go up 50 m. They are essentially useless.

If banlines automatically excluded disallowed people from entering the parcel anywhere below the 5000m overflight limit, like a named access blacklist ban, we wouldn't NEED orbs.

Until banlines are fixed to they ban all the way to 5k... Orbs STAY.

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Sparkle Bunny]

16 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

A genuine question - What makes the mainland represent more value to you then, than say a private residential sim?

Because if they moved to an island, they wouldn't have all the fun of teleporting randoms home and screaming about how much they hate vehicle users. That's how they choose to enjoy SL and who are we to argue?

[Aethelwine]

I would say orbs or security systems are useful if not essential to allow club managers and renters the ability to eject unwanted guests on land they are managing or renting. They allow for much more dynamic access to group rights to eject and ban than creating and assigning roles for that purpose. With groups that have multiple functions or cover more than one area with land rights the roles available can quickly get used up.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Aethelwine

[Extrude Ragu]

1 minute ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Our "family" each contribute their premium subscription tier allowance, of 1024 square m each, that lowers the family land groups tier burden, we pay less per month than renting on an estate, plus we can own nonstandard parcel sizes, that good old 10% tier free group bonus.

I actually think this is a great use of the mainland.

3 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

The moment you suggest banning working security orbs, you are advocating for people to have a right to respass.

Banlines only go up 50 m. They are essentially useless.

I agree with you that the tools built into the game aren't as good as they ought to be.

I also don't want people wandering into my SL home, and despite having a premium home I've never quite felt like I have true privacy inside it because I'm not allowed to just prevent users entering my  home and forced to use an orb if I want to prevent encroachment. I think the fact that they had to force orbs on users is an indication of bad game design.

What I'm trying to advocate is for something that improves things not just for explorers but also for home owners like you and I. By more clearly defining what is public and private space, and making provisions for both.

I would like to improve the experience for homeowners like you and I by:

• Increasing the height to 100m, rather than 50 so that noise from aircraft etc is not disturbing residents
• Make sky above say >1000m also be space that can be protected by banlines, so that homeowners can have better privacy in skyboxes
• Making banlines more aesthetically pleasing so that when the neighbor puts up a banline it doesn't look ugly when you're sitting in your garden, and thus people will prefer banlines to orbs.

For explorers I'd like to improve the experience by:

• Making it obvious where public right of way ends and private land begins - It's really annoying to randomly get teleported home for an incursion you had no idea you were making
• Having the skyway between 100m to 1000m be clear so residents can fly across the mainland without crashing into peoples skyboxes

20 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

We CHOSE to live on a sim with NO roads, NO waterways, NO railways, NO airports, and NO STFU Hubs for at least a kilometre in every direction because it had NONE of those Vehicle Fanatic Induced Planning Blight items.

To be clear, I'm not personally a fan of vehicles, I think walking is much nicer. It is just very annoying to suddenly get kicked home out of nowhere without any warning or indication you're doing anything wrong whatsoever when out hiking.

[Aethelwine]

46 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Constantly telling "new mainland residents" that they have no right to decide who uses the land they pay for, or keep trespassers out, or enjoy some peace and quiet while sorting their inventories, or changing outfits or whatever, because a tiny, insignificant but unbelieveably loud minority known as "The SL Association of Overentitled Explorers aga9nst residential mainland parcel owners having any rights at all" fraudulently claim that the new residents land belongs to the Explorers who don't pay for it because "bunch of worthless strawman arguments and outright lies", is NOT going to encourage people to spend $99 a year for a subscription, and possible pay tier on top of that, when they can live on the estates, in a rented parcel with full boot and ban and orb usage, explorer free, without paying the subscription at all.

.....

How does telling 50 homeowners they should welcome griefers with open arms so that 2 griefers won't feel sad that they are banned from peoples homes, encourage more mainland parcel ownership.

 

It doesn't.

Earlier on you gave your experience taking a long journey, and observed after crossing no doubt hundreds of parcels you got 2 security orb warnings in all that time.

Your experience would appear to indicate that the majority of people don't use security systems to block traffic through their parcel? That those that do are actually the minority. 

.. which makes all the emotive language and hyperboles fall a bit flat when you are making the opposite claim to a majority opinion.

 

[Extrude Ragu]

16 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

All three ideas have been put forward in this thread by people you support,.

You your self supported the 3rd when you advocated banning security orbs so as to give anti-privacy griefers a "more consistent" response, and by claiming kicking trespassers out of my home is "griefing"

Or did you forget you said that? Let's refresh your memory.

 

The reason I think that you are having this reaction is because you are seeing things through the status quo where orbs are the only way to get privacy.

I'm not advocating for the removal of your privacy or your ability to prevent trespassers, actually I'm arguing for the opposite. But my whole argument is to change the status quo and give residents much better privacy tools so that they don't need orbs, whilst simultaneously making the experience much more predictable and pleasant for explorers who would otherwise accidentally encroach on your land. There's no reason why LL couldn't make your banlines work much better.

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about, as if you did, you'd know that old old old llSensor based orbs use a spherical scan, which when the radious is set large enough to enclose a square or rectangular parcel, extends WELL beyond the orb owners parcel boundries..

[Snip]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

[Snip]

Further, punting trespassers is NOT "griefing explorers", it's Home Defence. Explorers have exactly NO right to trespass on land I pay for against my will, none. They are the criminals here, not the home owners.

[Snip]

Clearly, sending someone home with an orb when they're not even on one's property is not only rude, but against the rules. Since it's difficult to report such obs and time-consuming for Governance to manage the rule-breakers, a technical enforcement would be more effective. Would it be possible to restrict orbs from having any effect - even sending messages - outside of their owner's parcel? If not, would it be possible to restrict their ability to send avatars home on Linden Land? I can see a use for sending avatars home on private estates, but wouldn't booting them out to a nearby parcel or road work just as well for landowners on mainland?

Also, most tresspassers on mainland are not trying to tresspass on private property. If I'm curious about how a house might be decorated, I can cam into private parcels just fine from outside of them. I don't want to see your avatar or what you might be doing. I can read your profile without seeing your avatar or entering your property. If I'm flying over mainland or driving on the roads, I might bump into the corner of your property though. In which case, I think bumping me back out to the road should be sufficient to keep me out.  No need to send me all the way back to my skybox. I can just return to where I was last anyway, which unfortunately would be right back at the corner of your parcel, rather than in the middle of a Linden road.

[Aethelwine]

I think Coffee Pancake suggested or has spoken in the past about changing the range at which you could set to show banlines. If there was a viewer side slide to the range they could be seen then when at home your could turn it down so that your neighbours banlines don't light up your home like the neon street advertising from a Tokyo cityscape, and when travelling you could turn the range up that you can see them so you have forewarning when travelling so you have time to avoid them.

If i recall correctly the way they work currently it is not possible to do that currently in the viewer, but if it could be changed on the server end to allow that it would help alot.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Although I now live on a private island, I used to "own" (cough!) land on mainland (Gaeta I, Satori and Gaeta V, at various different times) for eight consecutive years, even without a Premium Account, which I've never had, needed or wanted.

My landlord, whom I rented the parcel(s) from, granted me full permissions to the parcel(s) to do with as I pleased. With the appropriate group tag, I was made a "Sim Owner" too, even though I didn't technically own the sim(s)!

But not once did I ever feel the need to buy an orb object which kicks a person out of "my" land because I felt like I didn't want them there. Yes I could ban them, but there was a far easier solution that that, one which sometimes gave me amusement.

The Eject button. I learned that Naughty Avatars don't fly very well when you eject them. 😜

Edited June 15, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Extrude Ragu]

5 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

I think Coffee Pancake suggested or has spoken in the past about changing the range at which you could set to show banlines. If there was a viewer side slide to the range they could be seen then when at home your could turn it down so that your neighbours banlines don't light up your home like the neon street advertising from a Tokyo cityscape, and when travelling you could turn the range up that you can see them so you have forewarning when travelling so you have time to avoid them.

If i recall correctly the way they work currently it is not possible to do that currently in the viewer, but if it could be changed on the server end to allow that it would help alot.

I would go a step further and say that in a game that we designed, ideally the distance at which banlines become visible would be aware of factors such as

• Are you in your own garden?
• Are you walking on foot, or hurtling along at 120 knots in a Cessna?

The game is aware of what land we own, and how fast we're travelling, and how long we've been on an individual parcel. We could design something that is pleasant to use and 'just works'

Edited June 14, 2023 by Extrude Ragu

[animats]

8 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

How much time would it take, how much would LL pay people to change textures?

LL has announced that mainland terrain will get textures with materials. I'm trying to talk them into using that trick I've mentioned before where textures are divided into hexes and each hex randomly rotated, then blended with the adjacent hex. Then you can have high detail grass, rock, sand, etc. that doesn't look repeated, although it is.  (You turn this off for bricks, cobblestones, etc.) At present, you have to choose some texture scale which is a compromise between too low-rez and repeated too often. That's why terrain looks so blah.

Most of mainland terrain is just four standard textures - ocean bottom, sand, grass, rock. Changing them is just setting new textures in the region tab by someone with the privilege to do that. Estate owners can do that for their own regions.

[Aethelwine]

14 minutes ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Although I now live on a private island, I used to "own" (cough!) land on mainland (Gaeta I, Satori and Gaeta V, at various different times) for eight consecutive years, even without a Premium Account, which I've never had, needed or wanted.

....

The Eject button. I learned that Naughty Avatars don't fly very well when you eject them. 😜

I was renting a parcel for many years before it became apparent I did not have eject rights. Of course it was a griefer that made that apparent and it was subsequently corrected, but not all renters will be put in a role with security rights.

I used to run a motorbiking region (10 years ago now), we got griefed a few times for allowing furries to visit, homophobia etc.

I used an orb to allow group members to eject and ban from the region. I can't remember all the calculations involved in deciding to use that instead of handing out group officer roles with similar rights, but the orb worked well for that purpose. It allowed us to put temporary bans on newly made throw away accounts that were being used and it allowed us to maximise the time the region was open for visitors.

[Qie Niangao]

6 minutes ago, animats said:

LL has announced that mainland terrain will get textures with materials. I'm trying to talk them into using that trick I've mentioned before where textures are divided into hexes and each hex randomly rotated, then blended with the adjacent hex.

Inara Pey's notes from the June 10 Third Party Viewer Development meeting include:

Quote

• Work is underway to allow triplanar mapping for terrain repeats.

(This is shader magic I don't pretend to understand.)

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

 💭SarahKB7 KoskiLinden: "We are going to give all the mainland continents fully completed and protected coastlines, road bridges to neighbouring continents and free ice cream."💭

⛵🌉 😜🍦

Edited June 14, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Ardy Lay]

2 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

 💭SarahKB7 KoskiLinden: "We are going to give all the mainland continents fully completed and protected coastlines, road bridges to neighbouring continents and free ice cream."💭

⛵🌉 😜🍦

You forgot the pony.

[elleevelyn]

13 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

Following on from that thought .  changing the way banlines work so they work like a wall you bounce off or edit out of without breaking vehicle scripts would make travel easier, and investing in road and river parcels more appealing.

i heard/read a while ago that Somebody Linden was tasked with looking into this. Dunno what came of it tho

 

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 6/9/2023 at 9:44 AM, Quartz Mole said:

It would be good to hear ideas that don't involve micro-parcels -- I think that topic has been very thoroughly explored recently.

lol

Not sure if this has been mentioned but people seem to love roads.