How to get 5 real choices when selecting a new Linden Home (Premium)

[xViXeNx71]

6 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I kept finding that the really desirable one could never be captured, even while empty -- the system kept giving me the dogs around it. Days went by, and nobody else seemed to get that gem, either. Is this because the Lindens have a reserve of "really nice" ones that they leave for the Premium Plus people to choose, i.e. all-sides protected, waterfronts, etc.?

I have wondered about this too. Especially because the best parcels often seem to get taken by the same people, even before Premium Plus.

But maybe I'm just being paranoid.

Edited April 16 by xViXeNx71

[Alwin Alcott]

37 minutes ago, xViXeNx71 said:

But maybe I'm just being paranoid.

calling it paranoid is perhaps a bit to much : )   ..but with so many "common" houses on a region, and just a few rarer locations, every time you click you have the same amount of chance to get a nice location ...or not.
When you , as example, have 10% chance on a nice location doesn't mean you get 9 less good against 1 good .. but it's évery click 1:10 .
So... could be 198 less desired and the 199 th bingo. 
And you'r not alone in that game.. all players have that.

note; the numbers are fictive, i have no idea what the actual ratio is.

[Matthieu Quander]

10 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

See my thread elsewhere here about Sakurasseria for additional thoughts. Also I'd be curious to know what you mean as a good house.

What qualifies as a good house is subjective, and will vary to some degree, depending whom is asked.  I like parcels that are adjacent to water but also have some geographical features that allow them to feel private.  

I do not believe that the better homes are being deliberately saved and that we are intentionally being force fed the less desirable parcels.  I think it is simply an issue with how the list of available homes is generated and indexed.  It was obviously not programmed to prioritize randomness or full inventory churning.  When there is high demand for a theme, this is not an issue, as all houses will get chosen eventually.  When demand is low, we are at the mercy of how the available homes list is sorted, and how quickly abandoned homes are put back into the list (it is amazingly fast at times).  

I'm sure there are some good reasons why the process works as it does.  I'm not looking for an easy button to get the exact home I want.  Premium Plus is there if I want that.  I simply want a real opportunity to evaluate the 5 homes I am allowed to claim per day instead of the 2-3 I'm getting now.  I'd also prefer to not get the same 5 every day.  

To me, there are two obvious solutions.  One would be to truly randomize the homes claims.  The other would be to at least force abandoned homes to the bottom of the list.  Either would be an improvement, though randomization would be the most fair.  

[Raspberry Crystal]

4 hours ago, xViXeNx71 said:

I have wondered about this too. Especially because the best parcels often seem to get taken by the same people, even before Premium Plus.

But maybe I'm just being paranoid.

I think it would take too much tme and effort for staff to manually patrol empty homes and assess whether they are the best plots or not.
The suggestions posted elsewhere seem more likely, that the website is optimised by only making a limited number of the available plots to choose from, and that recently abandoned plots, for whatever reason seem to get put back in the 'choosing pile'.
The usual reason that things like this don't get fixed is lack of time, and concern about breaking something and ending up with facility not working at all (or taking a long time to put right).
In that circumstance, the best time to go home shopping is when new themes are released, because some people usually abandon old homes and the piles get shuffled that way.

[Sparkle Bunny]

6 hours ago, xViXeNx71 said:

Especially because the best parcels often seem to get taken by the same people, even before Premium Plus.

That's because they were using alts to keep the ones they didn't want out of the available pool. When GoH was at its peak you'd get groups or couples with a few dozen accounts at their disposal snapping up the majority of any new release. Premium Plus has largely negated the need for that, as well as cutting down on the number of alts people need/can afford.

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, Matthieu Quander said:

What qualifies as a good house is subjective, and will vary to some degree, depending whom is asked.  I like parcels that are adjacent to water but also have some geographical features that allow them to feel private.  

I do not believe that the better homes are being deliberately saved and that we are intentionally being force fed the less desirable parcels.  I think it is simply an issue with how the list of available homes is generated and indexed.  It was obviously not programmed to prioritize randomness or full inventory churning.  When there is high demand for a theme, this is not an issue, as all houses will get chosen eventually.  When demand is low, we are at the mercy of how the available homes list is sorted, and how quickly abandoned homes are put back into the list (it is amazingly fast at times).  

I'm sure there are some good reasons why the process works as it does.  I'm not looking for an easy button to get the exact home I want.  Premium Plus is there if I want that.  I simply want a real opportunity to evaluate the 5 homes I am allowed to claim per day instead of the 2-3 I'm getting now.  I'd also prefer to not get the same 5 every day.  

To me, there are two obvious solutions.  One would be to truly randomize the homes claims.  The other would be to at least force abandoned homes to the bottom of the list.  Either would be an improvement, though randomization would be the most fair.  

I can't understand why it is so hard to have the system just not let you repeat what you alreay tried. You only get 5 tries. So that they aren't wasted, it shouldn't do repeats. OR if it *does* do repeats, it should generate another chance. Maybe that's easier to do?

If I take 3 alts and work one themed house area for 3 days, that's 45 chances, correct? So why the same list over and over, and dupes on each one? I see not just desirable houses, but actually empty houses that just never appear in the list. Instead, it's the same limited stock, as if it is not drawing from the entire stock of non-taken Linden homes. I don't see how it could possibly be doing that, given the number of repeats over time, and sometimes in a row.

If it were truly drawing from the entire stock of all vacant or abandoned Linden homes in a theme, there would be far fewer repeats. This is what I don't get.

 

[Kathlen Onyx]

52 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

If it were truly drawing from the entire stock of all vacant or abandoned Linden homes in a theme, there would be far fewer repeats. This is what I don't get.

 

I don't think we are. I had a linden home about a year ago and had my alt set their home there.  Every time my alt logs on they land there. It's been in maintenance for a year. Do not know why.

[xViXeNx71]

6 hours ago, Raspberry Crystal said:

I think it would take too much tme and effort for staff to manually patrol empty homes and assess whether they are the best plots or not.
The suggestions posted elsewhere seem more likely, that the website is optimised by only making a limited number of the available plots to choose from, and that recently abandoned plots, for whatever reason seem to get put back in the 'choosing pile'.

That makes sense. You're probably right.

[Prokofy Neva]

16 hours ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

That's because they were using alts to keep the ones they didn't want out of the available pool. When GoH was at its peak you'd get groups or couples with a few dozen accounts at their disposal snapping up the majority of any new release. Premium Plus has largely negated the need for that, as well as cutting down on the number of alts people need/can afford.

Oh, so you're saying ANOTHER strategy to play the Game of Homes is to use the alt NOT to hold the not-so-bad one so that you have at least *something* after 3 days, but to hold the dogs, so that they don't keep recurring. I'll try that next time!

[Prokofy Neva]

18 hours ago, Raspberry Crystal said:

I think it would take too much tme and effort for staff to manually patrol empty homes and assess whether they are the best plots or not.
The suggestions posted elsewhere seem more likely, that the website is optimised by only making a limited number of the available plots to choose from, and that recently abandoned plots, for whatever reason seem to get put back in the 'choosing pile'.
The usual reason that things like this don't get fixed is lack of time, and concern about breaking something and ending up with facility not working at all (or taking a long time to put right).
In that circumstance, the best time to go home shopping is when new themes are released, because some people usually abandon old homes and the piles get shuffled that way.

That may be the reason. They may also have the logic that abandoned lots were chosen, after all, so could in theory be chosen again, unlike those not chosen, so why not put them back in the pool? They are more likely to be taken.

[Matthieu Quander]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

That may be the reason. They may also have the logic that abandoned lots were chosen, after all, so could in theory be chosen again, unlike those not chosen, so why not put them back in the pool? They are more likely to be taken.

You are overthinking it.  It's more likely that the list of available parcels is sorted by an assigned static index number.  The order of the list changes when when homes are claimed.  When a home is put back in the pool, it ends up in the same place in the list due to its index number.  Homes with the largest index numbers may never reach the top unless only a subset of the entire list is being used, and that subset is rotated regularly.  I have no idea if that is happening, but if it is, it is not helping much due to the low demand.  

For example, If I claim a Log Home now, and that home has index number 01234, this would mean that all homes with a lower index number are owned, and the next available home will be the one with the next lowest index number (01235 if it isn't already owned).  If I release 01234, it ends up back at the top because it will again have the lowest number.  This is why it is possible, and even likely, to get assigned the same home multiple times in a single session of claims, depending on how quickly a home ends up back in the queue.

To fix the issue, they need to change the method they use for which home in the list gets assigned.  Instead of first in line, it needs to be a random selection.  Alternatively, they could index the list by abandoned date, and sort by oldest to most recent, but that method isn't as fair.  They could also require a period of time that a home cannot be added back into the queue, but that would impact themes with low inventory, and does not address the issue of ending up with the same homes the following day. 

Obviously the easiest thing they could do is leave it as is, but perhaps if enough residents complain, they will consider making a change.  They may feel that allowing specific claims via Premium Plus ticket adequately addresses the issue.     

[Prokofy Neva]

3 hours ago, Matthieu Quander said:

You are overthinking it.  It's more likely that the list of available parcels is sorted by an assigned static index number.  The order of the list changes when when homes are claimed.  When a home is put back in the pool, it ends up in the same place in the list due to its index number.  Homes with the largest index numbers may never reach the top unless only a subset of the entire list is being used, and that subset is rotated regularly.  I have no idea if that is happening, but if it is, it is not helping much due to the low demand.  

For example, If I claim a Log Home now, and that home has index number 01234, this would mean that all homes with a lower index number are owned, and the next available home will be the one with the next lowest index number (01235 if it isn't already owned).  If I release 01234, it ends up back at the top because it will again have the lowest number.  This is why it is possible, and even likely, to get assigned the same home multiple times in a single session of claims, depending on how quickly a home ends up back in the queue.

To fix the issue, they need to change the method they use for which home in the list gets assigned.  Instead of first in line, it needs to be a random selection.  Alternatively, they could index the list by abandoned date, and sort by oldest to most recent, but that method isn't as fair.  They could also require a period of time that a home cannot be added back into the queue, but that would impact themes with low inventory, and does not address the issue of ending up with the same homes the following day. 

Obviously the easiest thing they could do is leave it as is, but perhaps if enough residents complain, they will consider making a change.  They may feel that allowing specific claims via Premium Plus ticket adequately addresses the issue.     

I think the system is quite frankly designed to drive you to Premium Plus, if only for a month, because you get to keep the house you've picked with a PP account, even if you go back to regular premium a month later. I've done this once and may do it again.

[Persephone Emerald]

52 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I think the system is quite frankly designed to drive you to Premium Plus, if only for a month, because you get to keep the house you've picked with a PP account, even if you go back to regular premium a month later. I've done this once and may do it again.

The system or algorithm is far from ideal. I don't know enough about computer programing to describe a better one, but I believe it wouldn't be too difficult for a Linden programmer to create such.

This system has been a problem before we had Premium Plus, so it's not by design that it's so frustrating.

[Matthieu Quander]

50 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

The system or algorithm is far from ideal. I don't know enough about computer programing to describe a better one, but I believe it wouldn't be too difficult for a Linden programmer to create such.

This system has been a problem before we had Premium Plus, so it's not by design that it's so frustrating.

I have no idea how it actually works.  I'm just offering my best guess.  Multiple posters have posted suggestions for how it could be improved, but again, not knowing the specifics of all the requirements, they may not be tenable. 

My feedback hasn't generated very many upvotes yet, but it has only been a couple of days.  Regardless, I am not optimistic that any changes will be made, but it doesn't hurt to ask.  

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

9 hours ago, Matthieu Quander said:

You are overthinking it. 

It could also be a stack.

In computers we tend to think of either a stack or a queue.

Stack is - last in, first out. The newest item gets handed out.

Queue is: first in, first out. The oldest item gets handed out.

 

So in a stack, if a home goes back, it had to be taken by someone before a different home can show up.

The home system seems to work like a stack very often. Most of us wish it worked like a queue, or was random.

We can be fairly sure it's not random - but whether they're using s basic stack or something more complicated like a heap or a even a 'stack of items - the inside of which is random' or whatever... who knows.

But it definitely likes keeping recent hand backs in the handout list unless they get handed back a LOT in a short time.

 

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I think the system is quite frankly designed to drive you to Premium Plus, if only for a month

The system is older than Premium Plus but I kind of agree. It definitely is designed to be frustrating to an extreme and that makes going Premium Plus even if just for one billing cycle seem worthwhile.

My main and 2 alts have linden homes, and I got all 3 of them with premium plus. If I decided to move - I'd waste no more than 1 day on random before bumping up and just filing a ticket. At some point you have to look at the $20 difference and compare it to your time and mood.

 

 

[Matthieu Quander]

34 minutes ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

The system is older than Premium Plus but I kind of agree. It definitely is designed to be frustrating to an extreme and that makes going Premium Plus even if just for one billing cycle seem worthwhile.

My main and 2 alts have linden homes, and I got all 3 of them with premium plus. If I decided to move - I'd waste no more than 1 day on random before bumping up and just filing a ticket. At some point you have to look at the $20 difference and compare it to your time and mood.

 

 

If I wanted a specific home, I would do that.  I want to browse.  I just rolled a Log Home, dropped it, claimed a new one in less than 5 seconds, and got the same home.  Ridiculous.  

[Raspberry Crystal]

12 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

The system or algorithm is far from ideal. I don't know enough about computer programing to describe a better one, but I believe it wouldn't be too difficult for a Linden programmer to create such.

This system has been a problem before we had Premium Plus, so it's not by design that it's so frustrating.

I am definitely not a programmer, but this situation does remind me of encounters I have had with other games and software, where either a utility has been 'bought in', or was designed by someone who no longer works for the company.
In the cases I have met before the supposedly time-saving decision to buy in results in a facility that doesn't quite work as intended but which is not really robust enough to be altered, and would need a complete rewrite. In the case where people leave, it can be hard to interpret their work, maybe they don't write good notes etc etc.
I suspect if tweaking the program were an option they would have done it by now, and the complete redo must be the only option.
I have also been told, in the past, that dealing with very large databases is akin to sourcery, and things that would work with no problem on a small scale will throw up utterly bizarre and unpredictable errors.

[Prokofy Neva]

12 hours ago, Matthieu Quander said:

If I wanted a specific home, I would do that.  I want to browse.  I just rolled a Log Home, dropped it, claimed a new one in less than 5 seconds, and got the same home.  Ridiculous.  

I still like the thrill of the chase, which takes me back to my youth, in the early days of SL when you shopped for First Land.

Coming from The Sims Online, where you just select ANY parcel that is free and take it, when I first came to SL, I kept right-clicking on land that appeared empty and it never "sold". I was mystified for days. Much later, a Linden explained it didn't work that way.

Then I went on the hunt for "First Land," an old program the Lindens had back then whereby if you were under X number of days as a newbie, you were eligible to buy designated 512 parcels for only $512.

I had heard so many scare stories about it and how everything around you goes south and turns to hideous grief builds and obscenities, that I dithered and dithered for weeks on end. I could see for myself what happened to the sims with "first land" which turned into a giant postage-stamp sheet of horror. Naturally this program got gamed and exploited by land flippers and the Lindens ended it eventually and Linden Homes became the replacement ultimately.

But back then, given those conditions, finally, I reckoned that if I chose a steep, rocky waterfront I could sail from, but wasn't "attractive sandy beach land," I couldn't go wrong. I still have that land, in Refugio. 

I underestimated the ability of other people to create havoc. That you could make an alt and go and do the same thing and then link all your lots in a group never dawned on me and I waited way too long to learn that as well. (Not sure we had that robust "knowledge base") back then.

There I was, clinging to a rock and singing to myself "We live in a beautiful world (yeah we do, yeah we do)" , a hit song of that era, when this really aggressive oldbie, angered that some of "her" sim had been turned into first land parcels, grabbed them on alts and then put boards over them so you couldn't tell they were for sale.

Until I learned how you can see underneath the boards and indeed how you should always take off "volume" to see what the land really is all about. A newbie friend of mine came and got a boarded-up parcel.

We then found ourselves fired upon, orbited, surrounded by ban lines, subjected to particle attacks and spam etc. The very first thing I purchased in SL was a weapon called "Axe of the Leviathan." I also had the superstitious idea that this might aid me in combat with this person battling for the whole sim, who had the same last name.

It didn't.

Even so, I'm still there, and she isn't. Ah, Second Life! Ah, youth!

So yeah, I like to get a random surprise scouring the areas of Belli. Putting in a ticket feels like paying a phone bill or something, not as fun.

 

Edited April 18 by Prokofy Neva

[Always Incognito]

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So yeah, I like to get a random surprise scouring the areas of Belli. Putting in a ticket feels like paying a phone bill or something, not as fun.

 

I hear ya and I thought so too for a while. But the thing is that its quite exciting hunting for houses the PP+ way too. Its more like RL house hunting maybee and u can never be sure u get the house. Someone might have ticket it before you. I got my first ticket trad after weeks of searching ( i have mainland too so I cant have 2048 and Im a trad girl by heart so Im Good anyway). it was a really exciting Hunt and i gave up a few times as I didnt find anything i wanted. But eventually I did ❤️

[Rivlyn Rawley]

3 hours ago, Always Incognito said:

I hear ya and I thought so too for a while. But the thing is that its quite exciting hunting for houses the PP+ way too. Its more like RL house hunting maybee and u can never be sure u get the house. Someone might have ticket it before you. I got my first ticket trad after weeks of searching ( i have mainland too so I cant have 2048 and Im a trad girl by heart so Im Good anyway). it was a really exciting Hunt and i gave up a few times as I didnt find anything i wanted. But eventually I did ❤️

 

How did you go about your hunting?  Using the map or flying around? 

 

 

[Always Incognito]

11 hours ago, Rivlyn Rawley said:

 

How did you go about your hunting?  Using the map or flying around? 

 

 

Both. The map is time effective But when i fly around I see things that I miss on the map 🗺️ Its a really nice way to explore Bellisseria and at the same time, hopefully, find a dreamy home 😊

Edited April 19 by Always Incognito

[Prokofy Neva]

On 4/18/2024 at 11:41 AM, Always Incognito said:

I hear ya and I thought so too for a while. But the thing is that its quite exciting hunting for houses the PP+ way too. Its more like RL house hunting maybee and u can never be sure u get the house. Someone might have ticket it before you. I got my first ticket trad after weeks of searching ( i have mainland too so I cant have 2048 and Im a trad girl by heart so Im Good anyway). it was a really exciting Hunt and i gave up a few times as I didnt find anything i wanted. But eventually I did ❤️

Yes, that's true as well. There's a certain sim I've watched for ages and sometimes I fly around it with that HUD to find empty Belli homes, and never find anything. 

I never got into the Trads, they seemed cramped. But then the Chalets are cramped as well. Meanwhile, you could fit a roller rink in the Ranches.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 4/18/2024 at 2:10 AM, Raspberry Crystal said:

I am definitely not a programmer, but this situation does remind me of encounters I have had with other games and software, where either a utility has been 'bought in', or was designed by someone who no longer works for the company.
In the cases I have met before the supposedly time-saving decision to buy in results in a facility that doesn't quite work as intended but which is not really robust enough to be altered, and would need a complete rewrite. In the case where people leave, it can be hard to interpret their work, maybe they don't write good notes etc etc.
I suspect if tweaking the program were an option they would have done it by now, and the complete redo must be the only option.
I have also been told, in the past, that dealing with very large databases is akin to sourcery, and things that would work with no problem on a small scale will throw up utterly bizarre and unpredictable errors.

This "bought in" and "no longer works there" stuff is likely a factor in SL as there have been tons of turnovers in SL. There are very few Lindens that have been here since the dawn of time; some have died in RL at this point it's been so long.

I was just reading Vicki Boykis' nerd newsletter on this phenomenon of groupthink and people having beliefs that you "can't do" something because "we've never done it that way" and newcomers not being able to get the group to see the obvious problems. That can happen in any company, even a non-programming environment (although most offices are driven by the programmers).

Bellisseria is obviously a growth engine for LL, and while I'm aware people think it's a loss leader still, I don't see that they could be rolling out that many new homes if it really were (i.e. that the cost of Mole labour and materials is higher than the uptake of new premiums).

So it works, and while they are willing to change things in terms of templates or buildings or trees or whatever, I don't think they are willing to consider changing the aquisition process. If anything, as Andrew Linden used to say in the early days, the growth needs to be throttled. That might seem counterintuitive, but the CS can't keep up with too much of a surge. 

There's an interesting slide show at the anniversary which I hope they post on YouTube or somewhere inworld permanently because it gives you some insight into how they think as they put out Bellisseria. They're in god-mode, thinking in terms of laying things out on a grid in big squares and the quality assurance that goes with it. They think of templates this or templates that. They don't adopt the consumer perspective even though some of them might actually have Linden homes or decorate them and go inside of them for special occasions.

And there's no need for them to be sent out on the equivalent of Door Dashes like the engineers are forced to do at that company because, in the inimitable words of Kenny Linden, "There's always another guy to buy the island." Don't like the way it's done and you quit and give up and delete your home? Someone else will be along shortly.

Edited April 20 by Prokofy Neva

[Matthieu Quander]

I just rolled my 5 claims for the day.  Claims 1 and 2 were the same house.  Claims 3 and 4 were a different same house.  My last claim was a house I've received 3-4 times in the past week.  So 2 of the 5 were not recent.  This is a fairly typical experience. 

I'm seeing 12-15 houses a week that I haven't already claimed at least once since my search began.  Even if I accept that 1 repeat per day is acceptable, which I don't, I should be getting at twice that many "new to me" homes in a week of searching. 

I forgot to add that I do not intend to continuously whine about this, but I did want to make an attempt to capture the extent of the issue.  

Edited April 26 by Matthieu Quander
I'm forgetful.