Why do so many new players not get the inventory system?

[Charlemagne Allen]

I've noticed that the number one frustration noobs have is the inability to customize their av. I try to explain it and even do screen shares and half of them do not get it at all. Guys will take meme avs, but women absolutely want a normal person av, and it's frustrating to not have an attractive stylish av. I know mesh bodies are weird, but it's interesting how the basic systems are also confusing. What's your experience with this?

[PlagueMaid]

I took to the inventory so easily! (Might be a little too proud about that, ha-ha.) It just reminded me of how I organize my hard drive. I love folders and sub-folders. It stimulates my mild obsession with order. I think because before getting into SL I played Sims 3 and 4. The mods needed to be added to folders, so I had prior experience with the "system." I think getting someone's prior experience with other "folder programs." Like even the file explorer on their laptop/desktop. Ask them to try and think of it like that? (At least that's how I saw it.)

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Ask them where they're coming from. If they happen to be coming to SL from other games, their confusion would likely stem from character customization being so different in almost all of them. SL's basic inventory management is one thing (anyone on Windows should be familiar with that and how it works), but you very rarely ever see that kind of system in connection to creating an avatar/character, or building a house, or whatever else.

Random examples - many inventories are visual, clothing and body parts are not stored there, some games have entire wardrobe systems (like Guild Wars 2) that make swapping clothes and armor effortless, there's no rezzing and unpacking required in almost any other system I've seen, HUDs don't work quite the same way at all, color pickers and basic style presets are frequently used, sliders behave much differently, clothing just fits no matter what shape you are, you can change your entire look from head to toe with a randomizer if you really don't feel like being bothered with it, etc.

[Extrude Ragu]

The SecondLife inventory system is suffering from a lack of useful metadata to filter on.

Before mesh, every clothing item had inventory metadata that indicated if it was clothing, what type of clothing it was, had icons etc.

Now if you want to find that mesh dress with a funny name you forgot. Good luck, because there's absolutely zero filters you can apply to your inventory search to find dresses or wearables in general. They're all just 'objects'.

If we had good metadata, TPV's or LL could use it to make a dedicated dress up UI seperate from general inventory that worked similar to character creators in other platforms/games. We could even extend it to show items from the MP to try on demos right from the dress up UI in world.

Of course, all this requires vision, leadership and big picture thinking, which is very hard for LL to do when it has different teams of staff managing different parts of the technology.

 

 

[AmeliaJ08]

Lots have people have little understanding of a hierarchical file system these days. Many devices people use every day completely obscure this from the user, many people don't actively browse their storage for things using Windows Explorer etc.

I know I know, of course many people do but the trend is very much towards interfaces that obscure this despite how normal it may seem to people like you and me.

SL is of course reliant on this type of inventory, there's so much stuff. Using SL for a few years will result in an inventory that looks like a hard drive you have been using since the 90s. I find it possible to navigate because I try to organize things and navigating this type of thing is just how I use basically every computer I have ever touched but - and I hate to be this person but I'm going to be - SL is the way it is because it isn't a game. It doesn't work like some people expect it to because it couldn't work the way they expect it to.

They could make improvements certainly (greater use of metadata and tools to sort items using this) but ultimately we need that big ugly hierarchical file system.

 

[Modulated]

Laziness comes to mind. lol

[Arielle Popstar]

39 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

 

They could make improvements certainly (greater use of metadata and tools to sort items using this) but ultimately we need that big ugly hierarchical file system.

 

No we don't, they could present it in different format that is easier to read like drop down menu's and pictorial like the Wardrobe app. We don't need or want no stinking Non modifiable naming structured hierarchical file system. This is the new millennium and Dos is long gone for every else but SL.

[Arielle Popstar]

29 minutes ago, Modulated said:

Laziness comes to mind. lol

The Laziness of the coder's who could easily make the inventory a more user friendly interface I guess you're meaning

[Theresa Tennyson]

18 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The Laziness of the coder's who could easily make the inventory a more user friendly interface I guess you're meaning

Then go ahead and do it.

https://github.com/secondlife/viewer

[Modulated]

25 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The Laziness of the coder's who could easily make the inventory a more user friendly interface I guess you're meaning

They could make it Fisher-Price(kids toy brand) level of easy and people would still be lazy and complain. Because: people.

Edited March 18 by Modulated

[Arielle Popstar]

6 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Then go ahead and do it.

https://github.com/secondlife/viewer

Why? Let those who are paid for it do it. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Why? Let those who are paid for it do it. 

You could do it yourself and get people to pay for your wonderful viewer.

Edited March 18 by Theresa Tennyson

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Modulated said:

They could make it Fisher-Price(kids toy brand) level of easy and people would still be lazy and complain. Because: people.

It is NOT easy, even for those who been around many years. It is especially difficult as there are an increasing amount of residents whose primary focus is purchasing content to wear. The mind boggles of the challenge for them to organize their inventories. when it starts to exceed 50K. Inventory and the wearing of it has always required a steep learning curve and has only become more so over the years.

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

You could do it yourself and get people to pay for your wonderful viewer.

The viewer is dumb and can only show what the server gives it. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

The viewer is dumb and can only show what the server gives it. 

Then make OpenSim a wonderland of easy inventory organization.

[Arielle Popstar]

Just now, Theresa Tennyson said:

Then make OpenSim a wonderland of easy inventory organization.

Working on it Theresa but you're grasping now trying to justify the clusterfud mess of SL inventories.

[Charlemagne Allen]

OpenSim still exists?

[Istelathis]

I think those who would have the most difficulty, would possibly be unfamiliar with file directories as well as the contents within those directories.  For a lot of us, it is just something we are familiar with, to them it would probably be an entirely new concept.  Then you run into the problem of having to remove various articles of your outfit, and put on new ones.  We live in a world where mostly everything on our devices are automated, SL leaves a lot of the chores to the user.  

It would be like trying to teach a person how to drive a Model T ford,  when all they know is how to call an Uber.  

LL will probably address this in the future, it seems they have already taken some of the steps with the UI when it comes to character creation now.

I would imagine just like with the character generation we now have, we will likewise see a web based interface to help people with mesh avatars as well as outfits.  

[Katherine Heartsong]

Also, LL taking away the ability to create sub-folders in your Inventory's Outfit directory which affected all 3rd party browsers as well doesn't help with organization either. For those of us who like sub-sub-sub folders to micro-manage our Outfits, that was (and remains) extremely annoying.

Edited March 18 by Katherine Heartsong

[Modulated]

45 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Also, LL taking away the ability to create sub-folders in your Inventory's Outfit directory which affected all 3rd party browsers as well doesn't help with organization either. For those of us who like sub-sub-sub folders to micro-manage our Outfits, that was (and remains) extremely annoying.

It was claimed that having user created subfolders there caused some kind of fetch issue, and the fact you could make folders there was always a 'bug' but not sure about that.

[AmeliaJ08]

5 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

No we don't, they could present it in different format that is easier to read like drop down menu's and pictorial like the Wardrobe app. We don't need or want no stinking Non modifiable naming structured hierarchical file system. This is the new millennium and Dos is long gone for every else but SL.

It still needs to be there, improvements could be made in how it is (optionally) displayed however.

Nothing to do with DOS either, that's quite a silly comparison.

Edited March 18 by AmeliaJ08

[Perrie Juran]

6 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Using SL for a few years will result in an inventory that looks like a hard drive you have been using since the 90s

I had a goal to keep my inventory under 20,000 items. Then it changed to 30,000. Then 40,000 followed by 50,000 followed now by "I give up."

The one saving factor is I have managed to keep my inventory well organized.

[Sid Nagy]

SL has 20 years of history on it's shoulders. Including many mistakes that can't be easily repaired.
People have to learn too much in a short time, if they want to do something sensible with SL. So a lot is learned only partly and sloppy.
That will not change any time soon IMHO.

[Persephone Emerald]

2 hours ago, Istelathis said:

[snip]

...We live in a world where mostly everything on our devices are automated, SL leaves a lot of the chores to the user.  

It would be like trying to teach a person how to drive a Model T ford,  when all they know is how to call an Uber.  

^ This ^

[Aethelwine]

I remember being confused at the start trying to find things I had bought. Clothes you might think would be in the clothes folder.... but no not there... in outifts? maybe but no... then look in received items, objects and then find it at bottom in another new folder.

System clothes have icons to indicate what layer they are on... but sculpty clothes, mesh clothes appear as boxes in the inventory just the same icon as well boxes, vehicles, buildings, guns and other stuff. Knowing and living through the SL history I know why it is like that but that is a lot to understand for someone new.