A Suggestion on Improving Mainland

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

4 hours ago, Rufferta said:

Who is going to decide what looks good and what doesn't look good?

Hopefully someone at LL who is an accomplished 3d artist who has a good sense of aesthetics and understands that the bar is pretty high when it comes to the visuals in todays games. And that doesnt include "pretty good Mole work from 2009 ". I say let the professionals decide over residents who, let's face it, often don't have great taste. 

[Persephone Emerald]

5 hours ago, Rufferta said:

Who is going to decide what looks good and what doesn't look good? 

Here is a 'Mole Build' from 2009. I'd take it over many a modern mesh structure.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Bhima/145/83/43 (Poster from my Mole Museum)

Well-textured prims can look good if the builder is skilled. A combination of mesh and prims can look good too. What looks bad is prim or sculpted plants. Sculpts also load slowly and look bad when they're rezzing.

LL can't do much about resident builds on mainland, but the Moles could replace the old ground textures and sculpted plants. They could upgrade some of the roads too.

Would replacing the plants and roads be cost-effective for LL though? It's probably only worth the time and money if someone can show this will increase sales of mainland and if they could do these replacements en mass and automatically.

Can they, for instance, delete all the old eucalyptus trees in one fell swoop? Maybe they could, but what if residents have used some in their landscaping and they actually like them? Could they replace one ID # that represents the old eucalyptus trees with another that represents similar mesh ones? Could they do this region by region, to minimize the potential chaos as resident builds suddenly change or the new mesh trees are now floating just off the ground?

This doesn't seem like an easy project to me, but I hope there's some way it can be done.

[Fauve Aeon]

On 7/5/2023 at 8:56 AM, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Oh interesting. I like the Belli trees, if they could swap out the old ones on the mainland for those, big improvement right there. 

Belli trees (and builds) are in Premium areas for a reason so to my mind, they are part of the Premium content that is included as a benefit for the paid subscriptions. Sure, I don’t see why the Lab shouldn’t do some upgraded plant & tree texture content for Mainland along with the updates to ground textures - but I also think that Premium content should remain so. 

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

21 minutes ago, Fauve Aeon said:

Belli trees (and builds) are in Premium areas for a reason so to my mind, they are part of the Premium content that is included as a benefit for the paid subscriptions. 

Mainland plot owners are also Premium members. 

[Fauve Aeon]

3 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Mainland plot owners are also Premium members. 

Yes, I’m sorry, my mistake.  I should have instead said ‘part of the Linden Homes Premium areas’, because I’m assuming the Bellisseria landscaping is a good part of the incentive to own a Linden Home - but that’s just my guess. If LL is going to ‘upgrade the plants on Mainland’, I’m thinking this would mean replacing the textures on the existing system plants available in the build menu? I don’t know. I’ll be interested to learn more.

[belindacarson]

They'd have to redo some of the oldest Sims (and roads) as part of this.

[animats]

19 hours ago, belindacarson said:

They'd have to redo some of the oldest Sims (and roads) as part of this.

One of my back-burner ideas was a road repair machine for moles.

Pothole patching machine, real world version. SL needs something like this.

It would examine old prim road sections, and compute the small position, tilt, twist and slice adjustments to make them join perfectly.  At region boundaries, it would add support prims as needed to prevent fall-through. Have a mole with appropriate privileges drive it around the older parts of mainland. Western Sansara could use this.

For SLRR railroad tracks, something like this would help.

Rail geometry inspection vehicle, real world version. Checks for bumps, rails out of gauge, rail defects, etc.

This would be useful for SLRR inspection. Breaks in the guide rail, misaligned switches, rails out of spec, etc.would be detected and logged. Find all those places where your train gets stuck or derails.

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

I'm happy to report, that I've started a brand new build, and it's gonna be ALL prims, with a few sculpts for good measure.

😁

[Nukasa22]

On 7/7/2023 at 5:28 AM, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

the bar is pretty high when it comes to the visuals in todays games

The problem is that there are 2 perspectives from which you can look at this problem.

Perspective one is the perspective of a long term SL resident who will look at a build and never only see the visual appearance of the build alone but also the history of this build and the creativity and thoughts of the builder that went into it.

Perspective two is the perspective of a potentially new resident who will see the visual appearance of a build and mainly judge based on this. The judgement will be heavily impacted by other recent games the user has played.

While the work and effort and thoughts that went into any build can be appreciated, it must be allowed to voice the harsh reality that a lot of stuff in today's SL looks very bad compared to other games without triggering immediate defensive responses. I've looked at a lot of SL20B exhibitions. A lot of effort and thoughts went into them, but yet many just don't look great from a potentially new resident's perspective who compares with other modern games because the objects used to build them were not great. A problem can only be solved if the problem is named. This doesn't mean getting rid of all prim builds. It just means to acknowledge that this problem exists first of all.

With that said I don't see any great value in replacing any of the potentially historic Linden prim builds. The chance that a new user is confronted with them isn't very high. They're just not gonna see them anyway. What they will be seeing though are trees and roads and ground textures etc. They need to be replaced asap without being afraid of affecting someone's feelings (counting myself in) when they get their precious Linden road sign removed, or because their ground texture now looks slightly different (not talking about snow vs grass ofc) that they had grown fond of over the years. I've seen current linden road signs using 6 prims. Just replace everything.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Nukasa22

[animats]

5 hours ago, belindacarson said:

yeah personally I'd avoid using anything you scripted given when you created rlvxtrem.

?

Whatever that is, it's not something I did.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

13 hours ago, Nukasa22 said:

The problem is that there are 2 perspectives from which you can look at this problem.

Perspective one is the perspective of a long term SL resident who will look at a build and never only see the visual appearance of the build alone but also the history of this build and the creativity and thoughts of the builder that went into it.

Perspective two is the perspective of a potentially new resident who will see the visual appearance of a build and mainly judge based on this. The judgement will be heavily impacted by other recent games the user has played.

While the work and effort and thoughts that went into any build can be appreciated, it must be allowed to voice the harsh reality that a lot of stuff in today's SL looks very bad compared to other games without triggering immediate defensive responses. I've looked at a lot of SL20B exhibitions. A lot of effort and thoughts went into them, but yet many just don't look great from a potentially new resident's perspective who compares with other modern games because the objects used to build them were not great. A problem can only be solved if the problem is named. This doesn't mean getting rid of all prim builds. It just means to acknowledge that this problem exists first of all.

With that said I don't see any great value in replacing any of the potentially historic Linden prim builds. The chance that a new user is confronted with them isn't very high. They're just not gonna see them anyway. What they will be seeing though are trees and roads and ground textures etc. They need to be replaced asap without being afraid of affecting someone's feelings (counting myself in) when they get their precious Linden road sign removed, or because their ground texture now looks slightly different (not talking about snow vs grass ofc) that they had grown fond of over the years. I've seen current linden road signs using 6 prims. Just replace everything.

I suppose the ultimate fix to make SL look modern and up to date for all those gamers  that might join, is to remove the build function altogether, no more rendering those ugly prims.

Of course that destroys the whole concept of "your life, your imagination" But hey why cater to the old fuddy duddies when we can get an exciting influx of fresh blood, that won't stay anyway.

Give me prims, or give me death 😂

Edited July 9, 2023 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a word, fixed spelling

[Marianne Little]

Well, what you call old fuddy duddies is people with money. Upset them enough to leave SL or stop beeing Premium, that's money lost.

New blood can just as well be poor people looking to play this free game, or they heard about Slex and will only find a freebie appendage and start roaming the nude beaches.

To get in new people that will spend cash takes much more time and effort than keep old members here and pay tier.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

36 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

Well, what you call old fuddy duddies is people with money. Upset them enough to leave SL or stop beeing Premium, that's money lost.

New blood can just as well be poor people looking to play this free game, or they heard about Slex and will only find a freebie appendage and start roaming the nude beaches.

To get in new people that will spend cash takes much more time and effort than keep old members here and pay tier.

By fuddy duddy I wasn't meaning it as an insult, because I am one of them.

But, you take away a cornerstone of Second Life (the ability to rezz a prim) you might just find some of them saying eff it, i'm not spending another penny in here.

We have been here 20 years, anyone interested in joining has already come and gone.

And 20 something gamers won't join, because there is nothing here for them. Plus, they heard it was full of old people. 😂

 

Edited July 9, 2023 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a line

[Marianne Little]

I'm so fuddy duddy myself. 😆 

[Polenth Yue]

21 hours ago, Nukasa22 said:

Perspective two is the perspective of a potentially new resident who will see the visual appearance of a build and mainly judge based on this. The judgement will be heavily impacted by other recent games the user has played.

A question to consider is what that game will have been, given that this is someone who decides not to use search and instead goes walking for hours without a vehicle. I'd suggest that this new resident is more likely to be someone like me, who plays walking simulators and other weird indie games. These games can have modern graphics, but can also be pixel art, low poly, have models that don't animate, be scanned in props made from junk and anything else. This is not the photorealism-or-nothing world of AAA first person shooters. A few prim builds won't matter in the slightest to the walking simulator gamer.

There is an issue though for walking simulator newbie. The way to keep someone who loves walking simulators is to make sure that nothing stops them from walking/flying. This is not always the case.

They start at the welcome hub and enter the Linden Homes first. If they go east, all is well. They explore some home regions and they eventually hit the mainland join. It's a rez zone with a clear road leading to the main road network, so they can keep on walking. If they go west, it's a bunch of empty regions and no clear path. However, Schell has the land reserved for the rest of the road. It'd need a couple of connecting regions to make it a complete route, but the groundwork is there to stop this being the end for walking simulator newbie.

What appeals to AAA gamers isn't really relevant to mainland exploration or improvement, because they're not going to spend countless hours just walking. They go to the welcome hub, they figure out where they want to go, and they teleport out. For those gamers, you need to make sure they can figure out where they want to go (so search improvements would be more important).

In the end though, the biggest target audience for mainland improvements is oldbies who live on the mainland. Things like road improvements are the most useful. Oldbies already know that a mole build from ten years ago doesn't reflect modern mesh builds, so there's not really an argument there (and as stated, walking simulator newbie likely doesn't care, but has seen plenty of modern mesh builds before they'd reach an old one).

[Qie Niangao]

43 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

What appeals to AAA gamers isn't really relevant to mainland exploration or improvement, because they're not going to spend countless hours just walking. They go to the welcome hub, they figure out where they want to go, and they teleport out. For those gamers, you need to make sure they can figure out where they want to go (so search improvements would be more important).

I'm about as far removed as possible from a AAA gamer, so maybe it's not as hopeless as I think, but it seems pretty unlikely anything in SL will appeal to them, even a carefully curated region of perfectly lit, 100% PBR-textured mesh wonderment. That's not to say SL shouldn't support new graphics technology, I'm just saying "gamers" will need to appreciate more than hyperrealism if they're to spend much time in SL. The ones who can't, cannot be the target market.

In general, the drive to push SL's history under the carpet is to champion judging a book by its typeface—which is maybe inevitable if viewing the world from a type foundry. If new arrivals can't see the Chaucer for the Caslon, they can leave it on the shelf or leave, we don't need to burn the books.

[Ardy Lay]

I have been watching some game streams on twitch.tv

What I am seeing is that (some?) gamers expect the software to guide them to complete tasks to achieve goals and that it has to drag them along through a story no matter how easily they get lost.  If they log in to Second Life expecting this... nothing happens.

[starladustangel]

Getting rid of these hideous cypress trees would be a good start. Road by my land in Satori. I don't think these have historical value and there are some nice Mole trees in Bellisseria so they could upgrade the road trees with similar ones.

[Persephone Emerald]

3 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

A question to consider is what that game will have been, given that this is someone who decides not to use search and instead goes walking for hours without a vehicle. I'd suggest that this new resident is more likely to be someone like me, who plays walking simulators and other weird indie games. These games can have modern graphics, but can also be pixel art, low poly, have models that don't animate, be scanned in props made from junk and anything else. This is not the photorealism-or-nothing world of AAA first person shooters. A few prim builds won't matter in the slightest to the walking simulator gamer.

There is an issue though for walking simulator newbie. The way to keep someone who loves walking simulators is to make sure that nothing stops them from walking/flying. This is not always the case.

They start at the welcome hub and enter the Linden Homes first. If they go east, all is well. They explore some home regions and they eventually hit the mainland join. It's a rez zone with a clear road leading to the main road network, so they can keep on walking. If they go west, it's a bunch of empty regions and no clear path. However, Schell has the land reserved for the rest of the road. It'd need a couple of connecting regions to make it a complete route, but the groundwork is there to stop this being the end for walking simulator newbie.

What appeals to AAA gamers isn't really relevant to mainland exploration or improvement, because they're not going to spend countless hours just walking. They go to the welcome hub, they figure out where they want to go, and they teleport out. For those gamers, you need to make sure they can figure out where they want to go (so search improvements would be more important).

In the end though, the biggest target audience for mainland improvements is oldbies who live on the mainland. Things like road improvements are the most useful. Oldbies already know that a mole build from ten years ago doesn't reflect modern mesh builds, so there's not really an argument there (and as stated, walking simulator newbie likely doesn't care, but has seen plenty of modern mesh builds before they'd reach an old one).

I'm not a gamer, but I've never seen a walk-through for a walking game on YouTube. I've seem plenty of walk-throughs for games that look amazing though. I've also seen videos of people trying SL for the first time, and I base my view of what needs to be improved to increase new user retention largely on these.

Most of these people don't spend much time reading instructions. They teleport to random places to see what SL is "really" like. If they don't see other people, they seem to assume SL is empty. If people don't respond when they talk to them, they think they're bots or afk. If people criticize them for seeming rude or clueless about expected SL behavior, they think those people are not friendly. If they get ejected from a club, they think SL is unwelcoming. If they can't ride someone else's vehicle or horse, they think the mechanics of SL are broken.

When mesh or other prims don't rez right away, they think SL is ugly and the people who like it must be morons. They can't figure out why people are naked, with messed up faces and with body parts and clothing floating in the air around them. They do like things they can interact with, such as water slides and amusement park rides. I've never seen a newbie video where they went to an art gallery or marveled over the beautiful, naturalistic sims. I have seen them wander around mainland and be confused by it.

The new Welcome Hub regions address some of these problems by providing a curated view of what can be experienced in SL and providing friendly mentors who actually talk and answer their questions. When they next fly or teleport to Bellesseria, they'll see a world that makes sense to them as a neighborhood simulation. They'll intuitively understand that users live in and decorated these virtual homes, so these people must have a sense of private property and personal space. 

If they next wander into a store, the concept of a store will make sense to them. When they next wander onto mainland, roads will intuitively lead them to travel over them, rather than wandering into parcels that may have 0 second security orbs that teleport them someplace else. If they get a pop-up warning that they've entered private property and will be teleported away in 10 seconds, they'll understand that private property and personal space is a valued concept in SL, rather than thinking this "game" is broken and the people in it are weirdly unfriendly and self-absorbed.

[Rowan Amore]

If new users are hitting places from the destination guide, chances are they won't be seeing mainland.  I had no idea there was a place called mainland when I started.  Even now, most places I visit are on private estates and most of those are amazing.  

Do the flowers in Horizons look bad?  Sorta but it doesn't bother me enough to want them changed.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 7/8/2023 at 6:09 PM, Nukasa22 said:

While the work and effort and thoughts that went into any build can be appreciated, it must be allowed to voice the harsh reality that a lot of stuff in today's SL looks very bad compared to other games without triggering immediate defensive responses. I've looked at a lot of SL20B exhibitions. A lot of effort and thoughts went into them, but yet many just don't look great from a potentially new resident's perspective who compares with other modern games because the objects used to build them were not great.

Even the mole builds at SLB20, while competant, have a low detail, spacey quality to them, the fonts used look like something from a star trek build. I get. Sl and nerds. But if this is how LL thinks they're going to attract new users who have played games with quality graphics, they're mistaken.

LL got rid of their professional 3d artists years ago, they canned them and started to use moles who they could pay minimum wage. And this is the result. The only really good mole work in my opinion is that of professional, well known content creators who LL hired for specific projects in places like Belli.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

18 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

Oldbies already know that a mole build from ten years ago doesn't reflect modern mesh builds, so there's not really an argument there (and as stated, walking simulator newbie likely doesn't care, but has seen plenty of modern mesh builds before they'd reach an old one).

If you're trying to sell a product, make it look good. I'm an oldbie. I've had a plot on the mainland since i started. Fix the trees, fix the roads, get rid of whatever doesn't look good. People are paying for this and sl is a visual experience. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

17 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:

I have been watching some game streams on twitch.tv

What I am seeing is that (some?) gamers expect the software to guide them to complete tasks to achieve goals and that it has to drag them along through a story no matter how easily they get lost.  If they log in to Second Life expecting this... nothing happens.

thats it, they are playing a game, they aren’t living a “life” and have no desire to.

I suppose LL could hide gold coins all over second life to give gamers a chance to collect them and level up with cool rewards. 

[Ardy Lay]

One of the biggest detractors I see is the confusion and frustration caused when the cursor indicates it is over an interactive object, they try it, and are either ignored or told-off by that object.  I have been in Second Life for a long time, understand why this happens and am still very annoyed and frustrated by it.  I wonder if there is a viewer change that can improve this aspect of exploring Second Life?

[Polenth Yue]

7 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

If you're trying to sell a product, make it look good. I'm an oldbie. I've had a plot on the mainland since i started. Fix the trees, fix the roads, get rid of whatever doesn't look good. People are paying for this and sl is a visual experience. 

I've already said that road improvements would be good. That's not the same as removing an old build that has meaning and history. People who value such places are also paying customers.

The compromise is really easy though, because it already exists. Stumbling across them at random is not that likely. They're often in places that are fairly remote and there aren't that many of them compared to the size of the mainland. Some are also surrounded by resident builds, making them hard to see from a distance. It's a needle in a haystack. When you aren't looking for them, you could go for years and never see one. Problem solved.