What Second Life is doing right that "Those other places" are not

[pizza7]

for me the attraction of sl is the incredible amount of user content, nothing else has that.

all games get stale after some amount of play.

[Paul Hexem]

Threads like this are great for seeing how many people haven't tried other games, especially sandbox and creative games.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Paul Hexem said:

Threads like this are great for seeing how many people haven't tried other games, especially sandbox and creative games.

Good point. If I wasn't reacting to the "negative" threads, I would have phrased the OP differently.  But then, it's a challenge to not make it seem like every other "what do you like about Second Life" thread.

[Sid Nagy]

16 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Threads like this are great for seeing how many people haven't tried other games, especially sandbox and creative games.

 
I like SL, spend already more time than is good for me there at times. A day is limited to 24 hours and in that time I have to live my RL too. No need or time to try other sandbox and creative games until I leave Second Life.

[Rowan Amore]

5 hours ago, Midnoot said:

charging the price of real life new car payments for sims.  🧐

Please tell me where on the earth I can get a new car for less.than $250 a month.

[Katherine Heartsong]

7 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Nah .. most of SL is on discord now. That works well on a phone and wont list "community.secondlife.com" on the company wifi dns servers logs outing the employee.

What is this "company wifi dns servers" you speak of? I can barely remember what an office looks like, thankfully.

/me > sitting comfortably, introverted and happy, in my home office since 2020

[CaerolleClaudel]

6 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

We also need to be doing more to bring ex users back.

OT, but what would that look like? Maybe that would be an interesting thread to start. I am guessing there would be almost as many different takes as people. 

[Paul Hexem]

30 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

 
I like SL, spend already more time than is good for me there at times. A day is limited to 24 hours and in that time I have to live my RL too. No need or time to try other sandbox and creative games until I leave Second Life.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's bad, or that it's somehow a failing. Unless you're @Solar Legion- then it is.

It's a great argument of the paradox of choice being a thing, how someone can be impressed by what SL offers and honestly enjoy it because they haven't let their expectations get out of control wanting all the things that all the other games and services offer.

Edited September 25 by Paul Hexem

[Midnoot]

4 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Threads like this are great for seeing how many people haven't tried other games, especially sandbox and creative games.

Trust me, Second lifers DON'T try other games lol. They pride themselves on being ignorant to the existence of anything outside of SL, and even things  INSIDE of SL.

 

Or when they do, it's always 2d stuff from 1985 that doesn't even compare to SL in modern times, like actual sandbox games do.

Edited September 25 by Midnoot

[CaerolleClaudel]

1 hour ago, Paul Hexem said:

Threads like this are great for seeing how many people haven't tried other games, especially sandbox and creative games.

What do you mean?

[Love Zhaoying]

30 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Nah .. most of SL is on discord now. That works well on a phone and wont list "community.secondlife.com" on the company wifi dns servers logs outing the employee.

What is this "company wifi dns servers" you speak of? I can barely remember what an office looks like, thankfully.

/me > sitting comfortably, introverted and happy, in my home office since 2020

Same, I use the Forums all day WFH.

[CaerolleClaudel]

3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Same, I use the Forums all day WFH.

So, really you are UFFH? (Using the Forum from Home?)

Btw for word nerds or maybe copy edit nerds, I hear the new Chicago Manual of Style says to capitalize prepositions of five or more letters in titles. Now you know!

[Love Zhaoying]

32 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's bad, or that it's somehow a failing. Unless you're @Solar Legion- then it is.

It's a great argument of the paradox of choice being a thing, how someone can be impressed by what SL offers and honestly enjoy it because they haven't let their expectations get out of control wanting all the things that all the other games and services offer.

I know you're playing the "Devil's Advocate" a LITTLE bit..

..if you have some input on whether "other games" DO have a similar mix to Second Life, let us know! 🙂

 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

9 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Same, I use the Forums all day WFH.

So, really you are UFFH? (Using the Forum from Home?)

Btw for word nerds or maybe copy edit nerds, I hear the new Chicago Manual of Style says to capitalize prepositions of five or more letters in titles. Now you know!

If I use the Forum from my work PC: theoretically, any non-work websites bypass the work VPN and "they don't track it". 

Otherwise, I mostly use it from my phone.

I don't use my personal Notebook unless it's after hours / the weekend, or I am being "bad".

[Sid Nagy]

33 minutes ago, Midnoot said:

Trust me, Second lifers DON'T try other games lol. They pride themselves on being ignorant to the existence of anything outside of SL, and even things  INSIDE of SL.

 

Or when they do, it's always 2d stuff from 1985 that doesn't even compare to SL in modern times, like actual sandbox games do.

So now I'm curious, what are those magical sandbox games, that are comparable with SL?
Meaning: Having an economy, free building possibilities, a huge marketplace, all the socializing abilities, avatar choices, avatar optimizations, the adult stuff that Second Life has to offer, different themes peacefully possible next to each other, and... are superior to SL of course with grafics and possibilities.

Most likely the outcome is:

 

Edited September 25 by Sid Nagy

[CaerolleClaudel]

17 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

If I use the Forum from my work PC: theoretically, any non-work websites bypass the work VPN and "they don't track it". 

Otherwise, I mostly use it from my phone.

I don't use my personal Notebook unless it's after hours / the weekend, or I am being "bad".

Sorry that was a joke. Like, Foruming all day instead of Working lol

 

[Katherine Heartsong]

23 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

If I use the Forum from my work PC: theoretically, any non-work websites bypass the work VPN and "they don't track it". 

Otherwise, I mostly use it from my phone.

I don't use my personal Notebook unless it's after hours / the weekend, or I am being "bad".

I have the work laptop over there, and three other machines in my office ... my day to day one (the one I post on), my digital art/music computer, and my PC gaming rig.

[Solar Legion]

Yeah ... Sorry to the two most recent that seem to have some very mistaken impressions ... I play and use other software/games. Guess what I don't do? I don't go around pretending that functions or features in other software need to be ported over to other things, no matter how similar they may be on the surface.

Oh yes, and funnily enough it would appear that others here do in fact use other software and play actual games.

If I want an experience like a particular piece of software or a particular game I go and use that software or play that particular game.

So perhaps try and stick to reality, hmm?

[Toothless Draegonne]

In-world building.

You can just download a viewer and use it. You can be "deaf and mute" and still enjoy it.

No Steam. No EGS. No Facebook goggles. No worries.

Now they just need to make those server prices more sane, and they might attract more people. Yes I said server prices, because regardless of what goes on in the simulator back-end to make a region go, Joe Normal is going to ask how much a server is so they don't have to deal with someone else's bull***** on their server, scream, and run.

[MissSweetViolet]

17 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Other platforms don't have that? SAD!

Unfortunately other games/platforms do have that [you may already of known that, but for anyone reading who thinks all the complaining is a pure SL thing], I've been a gamer/social media user for over a decade, and the sky is falling, here's everything their doing wrong talk is not even remotely unique to SL. To the point that some of these post from other threads complaining could swap SL for [insert any other platform/game here] and no one in that other game would know the difference. Every game platform I've been on has had these types of complaints to the point I just tune them out now, and all of those games/platforms are still running and playable today, save one, which shut down due to not wanting to switch to HTML from flash.

Now to return things to topic, because I'm greatly enjoying this thread that focuses on something positive for once [a big genuine thank you, Love!], another thing I think SL gets right is the ability to change up our environment on a whim, much like with avatars there is so much variety with the decor available and and love being able to make my own skies/EEPs to get the atmosphere just right!

[Paul Hexem]

40 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

What do you mean?

Like I said in another post, it's the paradox of choice. We see features in other games and platforms that are great and then expect that quality everywhere, forgetting that it looks so good there because they focused on it.

Maps bigger than SL's mainland that I can travel on without a single hiccup for hours makes me wish SL had it. SL's map is junk by comparison. The problem is the game with that giant map doesn't allow user creations. And additionally, people that have never tried anything like that, they don't have that (often unrealistic) expectation, so SL is more fun for them.  

16 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

So now I'm curious, what are those magical sandbox games, that are comparable with SL?
Meaning: Having an economy, free building possibilities, a huge marketplace, all the socializing abilities, avatar choices, avatar optimizations, the adult stuff that Second Life has to offer, different themes peacefully possible next to each other, and... are superior to SL of course with grafics and possibilities.

That's a strawman and you know it. The point being made isn't that there's one game that does everything better. That's impossible. Not even SL does the things it does very well.

The point being made is that other games do building better, but don't have adult options or avatar customization. They might do avatar customization better, but they're single player. Most do socialization way better, but don't have customization. And so on.

[Love Zhaoying]

29 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

So now I'm curious, what are those magical sandbox games, that are comparable with SL?
Meaning: Having an economy, free building possibilities, a huge marketplace, all the socializing abilities, avatar choices, avatar optimizations, the adult stuff that Second Life has to offer, different themes peacefully possible next to each other, and... are superior to SL of course with grafics and possibilities.

Most likely the outcome is:

Exactly, people who generally argue in this thread pick ONE thing, or the "quality" of something in Second Life, ignoring the fact that other games just don't have the same "mix".

[Love Zhaoying]

8 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

I have the work laptop over there, and three other machines in my office ... my day to day one (the one I post on), my digital art/music computer, and my PC gaming rig.

Yeah, if I DID want to use my personal notebook it is on the same "KVM" switch. Push button, switch PC, same monitor/keyboard/mouse.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

32 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

So now I'm curious, what are those magical sandbox games, that are comparable with SL?
Meaning: Having an economy, free building possibilities, a huge marketplace, all the socializing abilities, avatar choices, avatar optimizations, the adult stuff that Second Life has to offer, different themes peacefully possible next to each other, and... are superior to SL of course with grafics and possibilities.

That's a strawman and you know it. The point being made isn't that there's one game that does everything better. That's impossible. Not even SL does the things it does very well.

I now regret using "better" in the OP.  As it's not really the point, obviously.

None of the other games do all of what SL does. 

 

[Paul Hexem]

5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I now regret using "better" in the OP.  As it's not really the point, obviously.

None of the other games do all of what SL does. 

Yeah. "SL needs to be like [other game]" is never going to work. Similarly, "SL should never change, if you want improvements you should just leave" also doesn't work, unless you really do want to SL to die off with us. Which I think some of our current forum users actually do want.

However, "SL could do this part better, here's a great example of it in action" is absolutely a valid take.

Edited September 25 by Paul Hexem