Mandatory event Landmark "gifts" to merchant locations

[Qie Niangao]

There's an event opening today that's apparently an anniversary because there are balloons all over and every kiosk has a gift. Because textures were loading at frames-per-fortnight speed, I was just poking around selecting stuff, Contents tab open, looking for hints that a kiosk might be a rare exception to the "all girly stuff" norm… and started noticing a bunch of gifts with no gift-like contents inside, just scripts or landmarks. At first I figured "opening day, they accidentally set out no-copy gift contents" and then I realized: Nope, they're luring people to their stores with those landmarks to retrieve the gifts off-site of the celebrated event.

Now I don't much care about this as a customer: Event gifts are pretty uniformly disappointing, so meh.* But if I were an event organizer, this seems Very Bad. Don't I want everybody to stay put, wait for all those textures to load, and actually buy stuff at the event? Isn't that kinda the point? So wouldn't I be better off if merchants at my event offer no gifts at all, rather than gifts that pull people away just to be collected?

At this event there were a bunch of merchants with this kind of gift so is this just common practice now?

__________________________
*I gotta say, though, I followed one of these landmarks to see if it actually worked, and there was indeed a Casper-scripted gift vendor there that dispensed an extraordinarily lame object, which after all this effort did not win any endearment points for this merchant. I don't usually expect much of event gifts, but the more time and effort invested in their retrieval, the more delight I better get out of it.

[AmeliaJ08]

I'll have to take a look to see but yes, an "event gift" that isn't an event gift is a little ehh...

Reminds me of the "gift cards" that are often given out, SL20B was a great example. Very carefully created gift cards that you can't spend in event and even when you took many of them to the main store you would often find the catches made them nearly useless as far as most of the content you might actually want.

Not all by any means but it seemed like for many the catches were very carefully engineered and I guess it felt a little exploitative. Not entirely of course, no store is obligated to give away gifts but I guess I'd always prefer is a gift was truly a gift with no catches, if not then offer nothing at all.

FWIW store owners: a good alternative to a gift is a half price (or whatever) everything sale for the duration of whatever event you are using to lure people to your main store.

Always worth considering event popularity as well, many of them are genuinely difficult to get in to so people will obviously think twice about TPing out of such events.

 

Edited August 25, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Ayashe Ninetails]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

At this event there were a bunch of merchants with this kind of gift so is this just common practice now?

I personally haven't run across that (maybe one shop, can't remember), but I typically stick to themed fantasy or discount events (Abnormality, Engine Room, FLF Birthday, etc.). All of my zillion freebies lounging in my event gift folders waiting to be filed away are actual gifts picked up on site. Some of them quite nice, actually. It's not unusual for me to go shopping in those folders when I'm in need of something for a photo shoot or a decorating idea (I'm so bad with event unpacking).😂

[steeljane42]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Don't I want everybody to stay put, wait for all those textures to load, and actually buy stuff at the event? Isn't that kinda the point? So wouldn't I be better off if merchants at my event offer no gifts at all, rather than gifts that pull people away just to be collected?

Back when this event (It's Uber, isn't it?) did this first time the main reason was so it just doesn't stay camped by freebie hunters 24/7 for a week or longer. It actually was pre-planned with merchants, so every single one had a LM to their stores for the gifts. And there were group notices and what not to go grab gifts at the mainstores instead.

I haven't checked the current anniversary round yet, but if this one is a mix of LMs and gifts, then it kinda eliminates this purpose because people are going to check every single gift to see if it's a LM or an actual gift.

Edited August 25, 2023 by steeljane42

[Qie Niangao]

11 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

if this one is a mix of LMs and gifts, then it kinda eliminates this purpose because people are going to check every single gift to see if it's a LM or an actual gift.

Yep, a mixture, and yep, Uber. I still have some trouble wrapping my head around the idea that a centralized event somehow benefits from sending shoppers off to merchant sites to collect gifts. My intuition (very possibly wrong) would be that the event would be better off either not having gifts or not being centralized.

(Also, god forbid avatars TP out to merchant sites and then TP back, dragging all that region handoff lag with them. Yikes, that sounds like a bad idea!)

[Rowan Amore]

15 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Yep, a mixture, and yep, Uber. I still have some trouble wrapping my head around the idea that a centralized event somehow benefits from sending shoppers off to merchant sites to collect gifts. My intuition (very possibly wrong) would be that the event would be better off either not having gifts or not being centralized.

(Also, god forbid avatars TP out to merchant sites and then TP back, dragging all that region handoff lag with them. Yikes, that sounds like a bad idea!)

It used to be more of an issue when events took days to get into.  Not really the case anymore ASIDE from when they do gifts rounds like Uber this month.  I'd prefer they have a separate area (one of the cam sims?) where gifts are available.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Rowan Amore

[Orwar]

   I feel as if a fair few creators do their darndest to make their gifts as awful as they can, as if they only give one away because the event requires it. There are exceptions, of course, which is why we still bother picking gifts up and spending hours sorting through them to see if there's anything nice, but rather than generating goodwill and making brands look like competent creators it just makes me scream 'why teal?!'.

   The whole thing puts a lot more creators on my personal 'nah, not worth checking out because their stuff is junk'-list than 'I should check these guys out more often, they make good stuff'-list. 

[Psyche Starling]

22 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   I feel as if a fair few creators do their darndest to make their gifts as awful as they can, as if they only give one away because the event requires it. There are exceptions, of course, which is why we still bother picking gifts up and spending hours sorting through them to see if there's anything nice, but rather than generating goodwill and making brands look like competent creators it just makes me scream 'why teal?!'.

   The whole thing puts a lot more creators on my personal 'nah, not worth checking out because their stuff is junk'-list than 'I should check these guys out more often, they make good stuff'-list. 

I'll take all the teal things! Lol!

But I have also experienced what you describe. Like...you're a clothing store, this is your chance to show me what you can do with clothing, even if it's just a single color and maybe a weird color so I can at least get an idea of your abilities and whether I want to go check out more of your stuff. And in your gift box instead is...a sign saying Happy (whatever holiday). It's a big missed opportunity to generate goodwill and advertise!

But to agree with AmeliaJ08 as well, yeah, the wildest I saw was a gift card for 500L to a house store, you could only spend it on a house and not any decor, and the houses were thousands of L, and you also had to contact the creator personally before using it. It was so weird!

[Seicher Rae]

@Qie Niangao I'm stealing the "frames-per-fortnight" quip.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Seicher Rae

[Seicher Rae]

37 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   I feel as if a fair few creators do their darndest to make their gifts as awful as they can, as if they only give one away because the event requires it. There are exceptions, of course, which is why we still bother picking gifts up and spending hours sorting through them to see if there's anything nice, but rather than generating goodwill and making brands look like competent creators it just makes me scream 'why teal?!'.

   The whole thing puts a lot more creators on my personal 'nah, not worth checking out because their stuff is junk'-list than 'I should check these guys out more often, they make good stuff'-list. 

As to the OP, a LM as a gift would 99.9% of the time have me NOT visit the store. I *do* appreciate it when creators *have* a LM vendor to click on at their booths. (Some people make it difficult to even know who is the creator, like how hard is a brand sign, people?) If the stuff at the event is intriguing enough then I will TP over there, but to make it a "gift"? ffs, no

I agree about the preponderance of lame gifts at events. (I still hate calling these things events, see: Pet Peeves several days ago, . ) I stopped bothering with most of them ages ago, and am glad others have pointed out this was at Uber and makes things more crowded. I was thinking of shopping. I'll wait. And not pick up a gift box (unless anyone knows of a particularly good one there?)

I like teal...

If I were more organized I would have an actual list of "this creator has pished me off with a poor quality gift, an obvious ploy to drag me to the store etc and I shall ignore them forevermore!" but I forget, and so I forget, and I have to admit that a couple of places have gotten me a few times before I remember "oh. it is them. ick."

Like you, I feel like many of the creators are just trying their darndest to make awful gifts, have bad customer relations, etc. Like purposefully, "I don't want your money." Maybe it is like Indie bands? They are only "cool" if you don't know about them?

ETA: Ha! I realize I'm typing for Discord with the use of * * instead of Ctrl I for italics (or just using the italics function above...).

Edited August 25, 2023 by Seicher Rae

[Arwyn Quandry]

I was sort of excited to check out the Uber freebies but hearing this has definitely dampened my interest in going. I don't want to have to TP all over Philip's green grid just to be disappointed by the crappy freebies some creators put out. I'll wait for FabFree's list and grab the good ones, thanks! 

[Orwar]

50 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

If I were more organized I would have an actual list of "this creator has pished me off with a poor quality gift, an obvious ploy to drag me to the store etc and I shall ignore them forevermore!" but I forget, and so I forget, and I have to admit that a couple of places have gotten me a few times before I remember "oh. it is them. ick."

   I have the memory of an elephant, and the attention span of a goldfish, two eggs, half a decilitre of flour, two decilitres of milk and a pinch of salt.

[Psyche Starling]

55 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

As to the OP, a LM as a gift would 99.9% of the time have me NOT visit the store. I *do* appreciate it when creators *have* a LM vendor to click on at their booths. (Some people make it difficult to even know who is the creator, like how hard is a brand sign, people?) If the stuff at the event is intriguing enough then I will TP over there, but to make it a "gift"? ffs, no
 

The only time I want to follow an additional landmark to get the gift is if you at least have a picture of it so I know what I'm going there to get. I remember Petite Mort had an ad pic plus a link to one of their gifts at SL20B, and I liked the chair so I went. Breathe had a pair of shoes for the Uber event two years ago that--I forget where I saw the pic, maybe it was on Fabfree or something--I saw them and liked them and they're still staples in my wardrobe. So if you give me an idea of what I'm going to get, I'm not averse to going there. But not for a mystery gift lol.

[Rowan Amore]

The Warehouse also has gifts this round, FYI

[Silent Mistwalker]

5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

There's an event opening today that's apparently an anniversary because there are balloons all over and every kiosk has a gift. Because textures were loading at frames-per-fortnight speed, I was just poking around selecting stuff, Contents tab open, looking for hints that a kiosk might be a rare exception to the "all girly stuff" norm… and started noticing a bunch of gifts with no gift-like contents inside, just scripts or landmarks. At first I figured "opening day, they accidentally set out no-copy gift contents" and then I realized: Nope, they're luring people to their stores with those landmarks to retrieve the gifts off-site of the celebrated event.

Now I don't much care about this as a customer: Event gifts are pretty uniformly disappointing, so meh.* But if I were an event organizer, this seems Very Bad. Don't I want everybody to stay put, wait for all those textures to load, and actually buy stuff at the event? Isn't that kinda the point? So wouldn't I be better off if merchants at my event offer no gifts at all, rather than gifts that pull people away just to be collected?

At this event there were a bunch of merchants with this kind of gift so is this just common practice now?

__________________________
*I gotta say, though, I followed one of these landmarks to see if it actually worked, and there was indeed a Casper-scripted gift vendor there that dispensed an extraordinarily lame object, which after all this effort did not win any endearment points for this merchant. I don't usually expect much of event gifts, but the more time and effort invested in their retrieval, the more delight I better get out of it.

 

What is this mandatory event and how do I avoid being banned for not attending it since this is the first I've ever heard of a mandatory event in SL in 19 years?

Edited August 25, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker

[Bree Giffen]

I love getting event gifts aka free earrings. I've never seen a gift where you have to teleport away. 

Is it possible that the gift giver box is tied to a delivery system and the gift will be sent to you instead of actually being in the box? 

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

What is this mandatory event and how do I avoid being banned for not attending it since this is the first I've ever heard of a mandatory event in SL in 19 years?

That's because events only become mandatory once Silent Mistwalker has attended!

… or…

For search engine optimization, words in the thread title were arranged for maximum entropy

… or…

Caffeine deprivation. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

[Lyndka Cochrane]

There's some 'irony' that the event named like a famous taxi service is letting folks give out gifts with SL "taxis" inside (old host joke) 

 

[Qie Niangao]

8 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

I love getting event gifts aka free earrings. I've never seen a gift where you have to teleport away. 

Is it possible that the gift giver box is tied to a delivery system and the gift will be sent to you instead of actually being in the box? 

The one gift I teleported to was delivered via Casper, but it really was located at the landmark given by the gift box at the event. I'm kind of glad to hear that I'm not the only one not to know about this practice, which is not new for this particular event, as @steeljane42 detailed above.

True, "looking a gift horse in the mouth" isn't good karma and also true: I've gotten some very nice gifts at events, sometimes from creators with whom I wasn't yet familiar, sending me back to their store (much) later to buy this newly discovered stuff. So I wasn't being fair to those generous creators by diminishing the value of gifts in general.

But… I was provoked! 😜

[Silent Mistwalker]

49 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

That's because events only become mandatory once Silent Mistwalker has attended!

… or…

For search engine optimization, words in the thread title were arranged for maximum entropy

… or…

Caffeine deprivation. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

I'll take door #3. Now gimmie my new car!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Gremlin

[Scylla Rhiadra]

9 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

looking for hints that a kiosk might be a rare exception to the "all girly stuff" norm

I'm sorry, excuse me?

You have something against "girly stuff"??????

[Kylie Jaxxon]

Lol, when I came upon this today, I was really confused...had never seen it before.  Upon thinking about it, it possibly could be to allow more openings into the event for others.  If you are tp'ing out, you might not be able to get right back in.  Just a thought

 

[Qie Niangao]

19 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

That glare… I can see you've been to Fulton County Jail, too!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

33 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

That glare… I can see you've been to Fulton County Jail, too!

Yes, but I always try to look my best!

[ValuedAndSelective]

I used to be heavily involved in the gift/freebie scene for the purpose of helping newer players get acclimated and get their feet wet before investing. And I have OCD, which pushes me to collect everyting and put it all on display. There are reasons why my inventory is still over 300,000 elements >>

 

It's simply not true that "a git is a gift." Putting out items for 0L that end up making people feel exhausted from inventory sorting of items they won't use turns people off from events, especially new players. It can turn them off from Second Life, too.

 

An LM in a box is fine by me. So are gift cards with near-term expiration dates that can't fully purchase an item (though many new players won't use them because the  "You don't have enough credit, click here to give this store access to your wallet" thing scares a lot of them, and I strongly recommend including a giftcard top-up button or terminal with clear instructions). If someone is going to collect a gift, they're going to collect it. Items that turn people off from stores and gradually turn people off from events and hunts and sew seeds of distrust and distate in newer residents? That's what annoys me.