MMO Quit Moments

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I'm a bit spoiled perhaps. I completely forgot I'd even need media for the music to play. I never keep that on.

Same, I got lucky but it still didn't work.

[animats]

4 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Could they just be new bots?  I've noticed those don't always render correctly probably depending on which bot program they're using?

Not sure.  Here are some more.

WelcomeHub, 3 avis stuck in cloud mode for at least 10 minutes.

One had previously replied to messages from a mentor. The other two would not respond to chat. I saw another one stuck earlier today for six hours.

The mentors are noticing this, but don't have any answer.

I'm not sure if this is a new user creation problem, a bot problem, or a general problem. But seeing three new users stuck like this is not good.

These avatars are solid, listed as nearby, have readable profiles, and can be sent IMs without message errors. This isn't the old ghost image left behind after a disconnect problem. Those don't show in the nearby list, and you can walk through them.

[elleevelyn]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

The MoTown HUD seems to start with Motown Love genre, which is all the old good groups before hip hop hit in the late 70's.

So far every new account from 0 to 5 days I see visit in Motown stay for about 30 secs, since the place is deserted

 

 

maybe if the Motown starter stream was something more modern.  With artists that younger people do recognise, with tracks that are mellow which older people can get into

for example similar to this Youtube radio stream (many artists of who are on the Motown label)

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=WB7LS3p7Tb4&list=RDAMPLOLAK5uy_mSiyqGhQpe3E_zZEhU5f-KuRl998NT15o

[Jaylinbridges]

There were 12 newbie accounts and no mentors around at 9:30 pm SLT, at the Welcome Hub tonight.

I did my part by inviting one of them to a music club with 30 avatars and a great DJ.  The hostess helped him get on her dance HUD, and he's got a club tag now.  His first 2 hrs in SL.  He was dancing on the stage with the band.

Just throw them in the water and hope they can swim. 

 

[Qie Niangao]

Presumably neither Mentors nor Moles could tell what viewer the clouds are using, but the Lab should be able to. Undoubtedly some are indeed hapless newbies but I'm inclined to agree that many are using (or trying to use) old bot software.

The problem, already mentioned, is that simply seeing the avatar clouds will affect retention for newbies who are themselves rezzing just fine. So if the Lab can tell a brand new bot client is connecting, could they be routed to special Bot Lounge hubs so they won't scare the children? If that's possible, may as well use such Bot Lounges when they login while their usual haunts are offline, instead of stacking them up at InfoHubs with normal users.

The missing Mentor situation is particularly worrisome. If there are times no Mentors will be available, the onboarding experience can't be designed to depend on their support; having some around occasionally as genial helpers may have some value but it's a lesser role than I'd been led to expect

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

They aren't going to share unfinished code with TPVs. The fact that they did showcase it, with a bit of fanfare, pretty clearly means it is going to be released.

Right: project viewers are not for features that may go away, they're for features that may change. PBR for example is not going away, but it would be totally irresponsible to release that rendering code to TPVs now—TPV developers would go crazy trying to keep up with all the changes. The Inventory Preview functionality will likely be extended  after release (fingers crossed) but at least the released functions should be stable by then.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, animats said:

Not sure.  Here are some more.

WelcomeHub, 3 avis stuck in cloud mode for at least 10 minutes.

One had previously replied to messages from a mentor. The other two would not respond to chat. I saw another one stuck earlier today for six hours.

The mentors are noticing this, but don't have any answer.

I'm not sure if this is a new user creation problem, a bot problem, or a general problem. But seeing three new users stuck like this is not good.

These avatars are solid, listed as nearby, have readable profiles, and can be sent IMs without message errors. This isn't the old ghost image left behind after a disconnect problem. Those don't show in the nearby list, and you can walk through them.

Yeah, visited myself, and saw these -- or different ones, I'm not sure.

I did see a number of fully rezzed noobs buzzing about it, though -- even got to help one!

Whatever is causing the issue, it surely must be persisting after log-off, because no one is going to stand around unresponsive and unmoving for that long. These must surely be some form of ghost. Or, maybe, bots that aren't being properly monitored.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I TP'd over to Motown and struggled immediately to get the music HUD working. That's my fault - I had my Music on, but not my Media. Duh. Anyhoo, a fiddle and a fix and a TP out and back and it started up and - it's too dang small to even read it, let alone see the controls. After pushing my face against my monitor, though, I managed to find a button that gave me a playlist list:

So yeah, if you click that and get there, you can listen to #2, which, for me, played some BBY Kodie (WHO?!) and I managed to somehow get it to skip to the next track (lol) and got some Vince Staples (who I HAVE heard of and he's even on one of my Spotify playlists - funny enough, I had no idea he was on Motown either). However, I clicked over to the Kem Radio playlist, and got Chico DeBarge (lol forever). I have never in my life heard of Chico (have I?!), but I do remember El DeBarge, and the less said about that the better. That was a dark time in my music listening history, you shush! 😂

As for quit moments, yeah...had a few, sorry to say. I mean, fighting with the HUD to see if it was resizable was one. My poor eyeballs - trying to read the artist and title and could barely see the controls. And two, I took a jog over to the STYNGR store to see what's for sale and none of the previews/panels would work for me. Maybe a conflict with my HUD or something, dunno. They just kept refreshing to a white screen and clicking said it was in use by me, but nothing happened. So I TP'd out. The end.

So, finally made it over tonight with a friend.

My experience pretty much exactly replicates your own. The music HUD worked pretty well, but really needs to be resizable, as you say. I could barely read it on my large desktop screen: can you imagine on the soon-to-be-coming mobile viewer?

The music was ok, mostly. I didn't know most on the contemporary playlist, but that's not surprising, really. The most recent on the main list that I heard were India Arie and Boyz II Men. I DID enjoy the Women's History Month Playlist: there were some pretty bluesy works on that one.

I also couldn't get the STYNG thingies to work. I got a message saying it would start playing in a few seconds, and it never did. I similarly couldn't get the movie on the screen across from the square to work: it would load YouTube, and then . . . nuthin'. (As opposed to Warheimer in the cinema next store, which did play well.)

I've got mixed feelings about all of this. The builds are . . . ok. They were, overall, not up to the standard of some of the better urban builds in SL, but some of them were nice enough that I can imagine taking a pic there.

I think there's a lot of potential there, but I'm not sure it's being employed to its fullest. My friend commented, and I agreed, that it was generally nice enough, but rather "soulless." (How's that for an ironic comment about a Motown region???).

In addition to fixing the stuff like the glitching media comment, making the HUD more user-friendly (why not ask the visitor which playlist they want to hear from the start?), and maybe adding a bit more local colour and flavour to what is really a wee bit of a sterile build, what they really really need is . . . people. We ran into two other people while there, and only one of those was an bona fide noob. SL needs to organize events there, and find a way to make it an attractive place for everyone to go. Maybe enlist the help of some popular DJs (who would, of course, only used properly licensed material)?

Along those lines, one issue that occurred to me. My friend and I actually danced for a while in that central square. The dances were pretty good quality, BUT . . . there was no way for us to hear the same music.

I don't know that I saw any "quit" moments, other than maybe the unresponsive media, but right now it mostly reinforces the impression that SL is pretty empty, and with not much to do.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Orwar]

31 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I don't know that I saw any "quit" moments, other than maybe the unresponsive media, but right now it mostly reinforces the impression that SL is pretty empty, and with not much to do.

   I think that's a common sensation when going to most LL things. All those Belli community centres are pretty, and some of them even have some fun things you can do there, but I seldom see other people whenever I go to them - there's nothing really 'happening' there unless there's some event on. And whilst I haven't tried the aforementioned music HUD, nor have any inclination to do so, it seems like a rather meek and over-engineered 'activity' - people build playlists on YouTube and Spotify which can be easily played in the background even when moving around the grid, and it's as easy as hitting a play button and leaving it, whilst giving you the choice to skip, replay, pause, throw in new songs, etc, at will. It's much the same reason I don't listen to radios or even DJs (usually), especially as they tend to just regurgitate the same music over and over; I want variety, whilst having a very specific taste in music (luckily there's no shortage of Nordic, German/Austrian, British, and Eastern European Gothic & industrial metal bands that could easily make several 24-hour playlists even if you could only pick 1 song per band - I'm spoiled for variety, and if we'd scrape the bottom of the barrel I'm sure we could find half an hour worth of decent 'Murrican music with the same rules to sprinkle in!). 

   It feels akin to going over to a friend to listen to their new mix CD on their Walkman, it just isn't something I see people doing in 2023, we've just got so many convenient options to listen to music through. It's a bit of a shame though, in the early 2000's I loved to pick out my favourite music and burn out a new CD every now and then, and then you were stuck with that for a while (as long as I wanted to listen to the music on my stereo at least, and of course I did, the sound system to our PC wasn't about to blow out any windows!). 

   What makes a place feel 'alive' in SL anyway? Except for live music events, which can be really nice, I've seldom felt that listening to music in SL was a particularly social activity, and by how people complain about AFKers and alts/bots playing traffic in clubs, it seems it isn't just because of me being selective in what people I'll interact with. 

   What makes a place feel alive in SL, I think, isn't about the build - it needs to have people, and those people must be engaged with something, and that something shouldn't be 'listening to music' or 'shopping' (or taking pictures, I've had people try to chat me up at BDC and it just isn't the best time to try to chat with me, I'm busy when I take pictures!). So what other events are there? Well, looking at the event list .. It's mostly DJ sets and store advertisements, a fine dining experience, a writer's meeting, and, if you tick the Adult box, more adverts for venues hiring strippers and escorts, and more DJ sets (the 'events' really could use some work - at the very least, give us separate categories so that we don't have to skim through hundreds of adverts for DJs and stores to find stuff, because there is stuff; if you do a G-rated search you'll find all sorts of things like language classes, other classes, and even religious services - but also still, a whole lot of musical nonsense and store ads). 

   I tried doing a few search words, and a lot of things that I know are going on are not even listed - probably because 'who bothers with events anyway'. No hits for 'sailing' or 'sail' or 'drive', two hits for 'Greedy', three hits for 'mahjong', can't even find how many live music events are on because the keyword 'live' is of course being used both by DJs and adult entertainment - it's just a mess. But I know of sailing events, I know of driving events, I know of Greedy events, I've known about vernissages, that just weren't listed - and how a new person, or anyone who doesn't have the 'right' connections, would ever find out about these things, I have no idea. And how much in-world fun am I missing out on, because I don't have the right connections to get informed? Also no idea. 

   Same applies to the forums' events board, except it just has a whole lot less content than the in-world event listings (although the ratio of DJ sets appears a little lower, at least). 

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

So what other events are there?

The trouble with Events came up in another thread a couple weeks ago. It's a retention problem because only newbies with select interests will find an answer there for the burning question, "What's to do here?" Until that thread, I didn't appreciate that not every event is eager to be discovered by everybody wanting to discover such an event. I understand that now, but it's no help to the new arrival.

[Orwar]

3 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The trouble with Events came up in another thread a couple weeks ago.

   Oh - skimmed through it, and it made me have another look. We DO have categories, it turns out! Still, seems to be about as well ordered as the marketplace categories ..

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Orwar said:

10 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The trouble with Events came up in another thread a couple weeks ago.

   Oh - skimmed through it, and it made me have another look. We DO have categories, it turns out! Still, seems to be about as well ordered as the marketplace categories ..

May as well have a "TP me to a random Event" option!

Like one of those video call things the kids use these days.  I saw it on the TickTalk.

[Rowan Amore]

9 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The topic is about people's personal quit moments, not trying to justify why they may or may not be unreasonable. What are yours?

I was actually trying to help in mentioning they are trying to address the inventory issue which was your quit moment.  Sorry I bothered.

[Paul Hexem]

10 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The topic is about people's personal quit moments, not trying to justify why they may or may not be unreasonable. What are yours?

At first it was more specifically questioning why it takes LL decades to deal with the objective quit moments.

But this is the kind of thread Lindens don't dare show their face in until it comes time to lock it, so there's nothing wrong with adding to the list, really.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Paul Hexem

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I was actually trying to help in mentioning they are trying to address the inventory issue which was your quit moment.  Sorry I bothered.

HOW DARE YOU BE HLEPFUL!1!!11!! IMA REPROT YUO!1!!!

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Paul Hexem said:

At first it was more specifically questioning why it takes LL decades to deal with their quit moments.

But this is the kind of thread Lindens don't dare show their face in until it comes time to lock it, so there's nothing wrong with adding to the list, really.

I would HOPE this is the kind of thread the LL reads so they can learn from us. 🙂

I betcha that Lindens can secretly follow threads!

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

HOW DARE YOU BE HLEPFUL!1!!11!! IMA REPROT YUO!1!!!

 

The funny thing?  When I read that blog post, the first person I thought about was Arielle and that she'd be happy about it.  I guess I was wrong.  🤐

As far as SL.is concerned, I can't think of anything that would have made me quit.

6 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

There were 12 newbie accounts and no mentors around at 9:30 pm SLT, at the Welcome Hub tonight.

I did my part by inviting one of them to a music club with 30 avatars and a great DJ.  The hostess helped him get on her dance HUD, and he's got a club tag now.  His first 2 hrs in SL.  He was dancing on the stage with the band.

Just throw them in the water and hope they can swim. 

 

This pretty much describes my first few days in SL.  Random people helping me when I needed it.  One took me to a club which ended up being my go to.place for.probably the first 6 months.   Great group of people and the club had contests 24/7.so.a nice way to earn Ls before deciding to buy Ls.

[Orwar]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

I would HOPE this is the kind of thread the LL reads so they can learn from us. 🙂

I betcha that Lindens can secretly follow threads!

   I'm sure they do, and I'm sure most individual Lindens/Moles aren't 'supposed' to engage with us, even if we do (occasionally) have some decent ideas. Ideas are 'supposed' to be JIRA'd and processed by the proper channels, can't have someone with an official lastname endorsing an idea that then gets rejected or so far down on the priority list that it never actually gets anywhere - people might get the idea it'd mean LL isn't a hive-mind with a singular vision and focus!

   There's a lot of internal business politics in anything that has to do with PR. I had to clean up my social media when I worked as a carpenter because the organisation that hired me had what they called a 'Christian base of values' (can't find a good translation for the Swedish expression of 'värdegrund', it's basically a mission statement where they get to use a very broad brush to describe what attitude is expected of their staff). They didn't feel it would serve the organisation that one of their employees openly described themselves as an 'Antitheistic Satanist' on social media, even though I was outright and strictly forbidden by my contract to have any personal relations or social life with my co-workers or our clients (aside from those somewhat quirky 1984-ish details, it was a nice really company though!). 

   At least, that's my suspicion - it might also just be that they're sick and tired of us!

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The funny thing?  When I read that blog post, the first person I thought about was Arielle and that she'd be happy about it.  I guess I was wrong.  🤐

Honestly, this thread is a "complainers dream" (you know, like the whole "..from Venus" thing) for people who just want to "vent".  I can see there being people of that mindset who get bent out of shape if people offer helpful solutions.

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

As far as SL.is concerned, I can't think of anything that would have made me quit.

I left for a few years in the late 2000's - because I had abandoned my Private Region and most of my SL Family had drifted away. I was burned out.  This was essentially "quitting".  I think that I tried to do too much with too high an expectation of myself.

So for me, the "MMO Quit Moment" (although I merely flounced for a couple years) was getting burned out, abandoning my "investment" of the Private Region, and losing my SL Family.

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

6 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

There were 12 newbie accounts and no mentors around at 9:30 pm SLT, at the Welcome Hub tonight.

I did my part by inviting one of them to a music club with 30 avatars and a great DJ.  The hostess helped him get on her dance HUD, and he's got a club tag now.  His first 2 hrs in SL.  He was dancing on the stage with the band.

Just throw them in the water and hope they can swim. 

 

This pretty much describes my first few days in SL.  Random people helping me when I needed it.  One took me to a club which ended up being my go to.place for.probably the first 6 months.   Great group of people and the club had contests 24/7.so.a nice way to earn Ls before deciding to buy Ls.

I've been thinking - basically the people I spent the most time with all "grew up" around Luna.  This new WelcomeHub is basically a "super" replacement for something like Luna: things to do, other new people to bond with, etc.  

Happy thought:  We need oldbies / existing users to stand around the WelcomeHub  and offer new users their first Hug! Some may not want it, but for others it will open their eyes (and hopefully touch their hearts in some way).

 

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Orwar said:

At least, that's my suspicion - it might also just be that they're sick and tired of us!

Unfortunately for them - we are the "perfect users" because we are so engaged.

[Arielle Popstar]

34 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The funny thing?  When I read that blog post, the first person I thought about was Arielle and that she'd be happy about it.  I guess I was wrong.  🤐

Well thanks but the preview thing is old news as Coffee mentioned it here in the forums a few months ago and a few of us discussed it then. If memory serves correct, Catznip developed the code and managed to get the Lab to consider implementing it in their viewer. The preview works in the current release of Catznip but not in the main release of the SL viewer and is nowhere to be seen in the latest of release or beta of Firestorm or Cool viewer. 

It amounts to little more then SL throwing us a bone after a good 15 years of not doing diddly to make the inventory GUI more manageable. There are quite a few things they could do to bring it up to modern game standards. @Drayke Newall laid out a way for SL to easily incorporate a graphically based Inventory system in the viewers without much trouble. If the Lab was at all serious about minimizing quit moments, they would be working towards doing that on a regular basis rather then the occasional feature originally developed by one of the TPV devs.

[Paul Hexem]

1 minute ago, Arielle Popstar said:

If the Lab was at all serious about minimizing quit moments, they would be working towards doing that on a regular basis rather then the occasional feature originally developed by one of the TPV devs.

This circles back around to the point I was making, and what I said about the current Mentor program. Seems like LL is more interested in dumping the problem on unpaid volunteers than actually solving anything themselves- which explains why the problems exist for decades.

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well thanks but the preview thing is old news as Coffee mentioned it here in the forums a few months ago and a few of us discussed it then. If memory serves correct, Catznip developed the code and managed to get the Lab to consider implementing it in their viewer. The preview works in the current release of Catznip but not in the main release of the SL viewer and is nowhere to be seen in the latest of release or beta of Firestorm or Cool viewer. 

It amounts to little more then SL throwing us a bone after a good 15 years of not doing diddly to make the inventory GUI more manageable. There are quite a few things they could do to bring it up to modern game standards. @Drayke Newall laid out a way for SL to easily incorporate a graphically based Inventory system in the viewers without much trouble. If the Lab was at all serious about minimizing quit moments, they would be working towards doing that on a regular basis rather then the occasional feature originally developed by one of the TPV devs.

In the past 15 years, the official viewer has gone from V1 to V3 (if not 4 by now) and yet somehow LL has managed to NOT do anything to improve inventory management? Improvements aren't always visible to the naked eye.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker

[Rowan Amore]

The preview works by hovering over a texture but not the uploading or creation of the image for free unless I'm not seeing where to do that.  

Anyhoo, since you just want to argue the point, I'll pass.  I do hope inventory management gets easier for you regardless since it's a quitting point for you.  We'd hate to see you go.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The preview works by hovering over a texture but not the uploading or creation of the image for free unless I'm not seeing where to do that.  

Anyhoo, since you just want to argue the point, I'll pass.  I do hope inventory management gets easier for you regardless since it's a quitting point for you.  We'd hate to see you go.

Maybe Lumiya has better inventory management?

[Ayashe Ninetails]

My quit moments tend to be points where I hit a wall in something creative I'm trying to accomplish. I frequently hit them when making new avatars and running into technical issues like Evo X vs. SLUV (having to swap heads to wear certain skins/makeup/tattoos), wanting to wear an outfit fit to a male body on a female one or vice versa but I can't because reasons (that's not a problem in other games I play - clothing just adapts to the body you put it on), and on and on. I'm obviously still here, so nothing's really pushed me entirely out the door yet, though it's getting kind of close these days. The gaming industry has come a lonnnnnnng way, and I find that game devs are pretty onboard with avatar diversity and customization, so I'm no longer feeling a lack of options like I once did when games made me play as GenericDude/Girl#582.

Funny enough, the more bodies we get here, the more "stuck" I feel - oh what a pretty body, I'd upgrade if it didn't mean trashing my entire inventory and losing a ton of expensive mods that won't receive upgrades. Or on the other side - feeling like I need to upgrade to a new body just to make use of some brand new avatar mods I love - turning a 1500L purchase into a 5000+L purchase. Meh. I'm kind of over that now.

Can LL help with this? I dunno...probably not.