mehllama

Maybe a compromise would be to start free users out with 35 groups and then after a year or so as active regular users and who've spent a certain threshold in-world, they get rewarded with additional group space. They are, after all, helping bring money into LL coffers and their regular active use also helps LL stay on the map as a viable virtual world experience. Just one thought. 😃

That touches on another quality of life aspect. Many users of SL re on fixed incomes - retired or disabled. There have been articles in the media about how SL helps those with disabilities not just keep their minds active but truly find meaningful connections and do things in a virtual world their RL bodies can't do anymore where otherwise they would be locked up in their homes. Sort of like that episode of Star Trek where Captain Pike is finally free to live virtually the way he had done before his accident. You can't understate that, I don't think.

Yeah. With SLCS and the airport I manage I'm in 10 groups alone, then the club I own two more, then two more as a Safe Waters Foundation officer, then land groups for rented parcels, my store - anything you're remotely seriously involved in requires multiple groups. For avis that are several years old, those connections can be quite broad. Granted, that's more of a social argument than a commercial one. But again it goes back to not making your users who do spend stuff necessarily unhappy. It's one thing to add features for premium accounts - great. But to strip down basic accounts may at some point start to make them feel kind of demo-ish.

But that's not a bug but a feature. It's normal commerce to incentivize consumers to hang out at your store or join your group with discounts. Plus people see the group's name in profiles and as I often do then check out the group and then the store on MP to see what they have. Much of the time I find new and awesome stores this way. Also, many groups have very active chats - like Teegle, Tonic, and Maitreya. Those groups are always aflutter with activity. And then you have Truth which offers its regular freebie to its group. This is normal, healthy commerce and name-branding.

I think they do care and I think they are basically good people in there. But I do think they are missing the mark. As for premium users, not everyone can be. But they can buy and sell in-world, which directly contributes to LL financially as well as those happy users go and tell others who might join and might be able to be premium users. So you always want to try not to "other" certain groups within the overall userbase.

There are myriad. Not very big but people tend to sort of go there when LL is down. OSGrid and Digiwordlz are probably the two largest, the latter actually having an economy while the former is more for testing. Their server software is free for anyone so you can start your own grid if you're technically inclined. But it is a lot like a small town vs the big city. Many of the things we enjoy in SL aren't a thing over there yet. The sim sizes can be 64 times as large as you find in SL (variable - or "var-" regions).

And I know this is somewhat apples to oranges since OpenSim is to SL what a small town to NYC, but I think it's fair to mention some of its grids offer 100 free groups - and they do this to ENCOURAGE membership and commerce. They do this for a reason - because they don't want to be small anymore. Maybe there is a negative side to that but as a user it makes me want to join more shop groups and shop more.

Exactly. There are so many indirect ways this is harmful to commerce - and not just current commerce but future and potential commerce through new creators. People will still probably join the huge creators' groups but will be discouraged from joining those of smaller creators who have the potential to become huge creators. Discouraging commerce also impacts the quality of life for all residents, premium and otherwise. It puts a bad taste in users' mouths and such things have a cumulative effect over time. Your business is your reputation - and we want LL to do well because when LL does well, we all win.

I don't see them getting there by discouraging commerce.

A great deal of LL's money comes from commerce within SL, which is typically undertaken by users both free and premium. Many opt to buy clothes and other such things rather than rent sims. Before my health issues kicked in, I had a Premium account plus owned a full sim and would spend close to the same amount or more a month on clothes alone. So it's a little more complicated than just "muh land rentals", and I don't think cutting into one revenue stream because another earns as much or slightly better makes any sense at all. Your net profit decreases that way - it doesn't increase.

And yet, they seem to think free users are like deadbeats or something. It's very irksome.

LL just needs to admit that computer geeks need to hire some MBAs to run the business end because cutting free groups down to 35 when for most free users those are store groups only kills commerce. Furthermore, if they'd lower the price of sims more, more people would rent them - and rented sims make you a lot more money than un-rented sims. I'm all for LL making money. The more they make, the longer we'll have SL. But this is NOT how you make money.

It's of the Lavender Storydel test. Is it a troll? Yeah. But are they presently entertaining? Yeah. Okay, they can stay. If it's Britbong, not so much.

Quite a lot, I'm sure. There's no question that is one of the perks of buying the Maitreya body and for many that may have been what pushed them over the edge.

Exactly. So most people are probably going to grab the free or cleaper animations for whatever mesh hand they have than pay 250ish per animation in 2018. With the exception of something truly unique and spectacular. I would definitely pay for ASL (American Sign Language) animations. There are a few out there but not many.

At the airport where I work I periodically fly up to look for random prims and aircraft stuck and abandoned. One day I flew up to about 2000m and found someone had built a house and had it completely furnished, had a SpotOn dance studio - the whole nine yards. It was about 1500 prims of things. It was actually pretty impressive. The avi was older than I was and their profile was pretty filled out so I sent them one friendly IM and after being duly ignored for a day I returned it all. They never IMed to complain so I guess they figured the gig was up and were ready to look for a better mark.

The exception that proves the rule.

Yes, I owned them and you still had to buy every possible pose at a ridiculous price to gain access to the new animations for them. Then along came Maitreya's, which offered all the poses for free, plus an animated randomizer to add even further realism. It was brilliant. Other creators also now offer full hand animation sets for free or near-free, as I stated above. Slink has failed to evolve.

You really do need to cater to this market; however, as you pointed out, it grows and evolves. Once upon a time Slink ruled the world. Latest large polls have shown Slink barely edging out Tonic for fourth place. Still, most major creators that we all know and love like Blueberry make their creations for Maitreya, Slink P/H, and Belleza F/I/V. Should trends continue though and remain that way for a time, it wouldn't surprise me to see Tonic supplant Slink as one of the big three - just depends on the market. Given the volatility of the market, creators like to hedge their bets. They want to make things that will sell well over the longest period of time. Other factors can also play a role, such as the ease of access to creators' kits from the mesh body makers. Maitreya is infamous for making clothes meshers try to guess what works and doesn't, while other body makers provide an easier pathway. Those things all factor in. For its kit, Slink is infamous for turning up its nose at smaller stores or upstarts. That never seemed to make much economic sense to me but much of SL is driven by feels, and I guess it's these body makers' SL just as much as it is anyone else's. If they want to RP hard to get, they have the freedom to do that. But anyway, clothing creators like to keep their options open and naturally prefer the things that are most adventurous to them. As Slink declined, more creators ran to Maitreya (and Slink was slow to respond and rework its model in the Bento age, still charging hundreds for each hand pose even as Maitreya offered several (and animated!) included with its body and other creators offered free hand poses on MP that were just as good as Slink's). If Maitreya declines against whatever happens to be the big next, clothiers will move on too. The market is in motion and everything is in flux, so there certainly is reason for Tonic users (and Fizz) to hope it goes their way. I certainly do, although I don't mind Maitreya as my second option.

Exactly. Yeah, it wasn't in relation to mesh bodies but in reply to another post about walking speeds in SL. That's a good point too about VR - I know that in mouselook it's insane trying to move around without something to limit the speed. I use Speed Control HUD, which I found on MP but it's not a cure-all. For one thing, you really have to disable it going up or down steps - it doesn't like steps. But it does make for pleasant walks through sims (unless none of your friends are using it, in which case they just disappear into the distance).

Or just the host that waltzes in 20 minutes late with "oh, I'm here!" to collect their tips after you've sent all of their notices for them and then badmouths your club to all their friends, which never seemed to make any sense to me. I mean, don't these people realize that their tips are directly connected to attendance? I actually had a manager working for me who had her friend as our DJ and her gf as our host for a set. The host walks in an hour late and says, "Oh, I was watching Netflix" and then she and my manager started in on me when I dared question her highness for showing up an hour late. But that ended up being kind of fun for me. As they were both ranting in my IMs, I lined up the groups they were in and highlighted them both on my radar and then rapid-fire ejected and banned them from the groups and the land and blocked them. It was one of the most rewarding bye Felicias I've honestly ever done.

Not always. There could be situations where you wish the blocked person not see your avatar at all. But I think the solution is to give the person doing the blocking the ability to make that choice, just as some social networks differentiate between muting and actually blocking. While there are people who don't have the IQ points to comprehend such a thing I'm sure (not you, I just mean generally), that can be said for every feature in SL. When people are being creepers and you are in a situation where you must remain on a parcel with them be it for work or residence (or a public dressing room when restart Tuesday boots you off of your home parcel for a spell), that choice can be a nice one to have.

Actually, if you look at the rate at which your surroundings pass you by, it's pretty evident you're traveling at a significantly greater speed than a real human would travel at a walk. You can try it without any AO.

I really have to say I agree with the OP and others about Tonic's realism (for the most part), although as others have pointed out, RL bodies vary widely too so the presence of Tonic isn't an answer but a completion of the circle, perhaps. The market will decide if it agrees with that, of course. Anyway, the issue runs much deeper, however. As far as I know and based on what I see starting with the default avatars and the "bones" that regulate how and where we can adjust our sliders, experts on anatomy and physiology were never consulted. While I think LL does a masterful job on the technical end of SL and enables all of us to have such great fun, I think designing a human avatar by winging it was the first mistake. It's really something (Especially given the billions of dollars that have flowed through SL already) worth a more serious revisit by LL (and I don't mean just adding more bones, although the face desperately needs them (and needs them placed under the guidance of an expert in the relevant bio field). And it's not just how our avis look; it's how they interact with the pixel world. Have you ever noticed how fast our avatars walk? Sort of reminds you of that nerd in school who would rush around the hallways with his head down and run into things. You don't get to take in and appreciate the things around you when you're moving so quickly. There are some useful tools on MP to correct this but this was something easily ameliorated from the start with some basic knowledge of humans. There is no such thing as perfect; indeed, perfect is very much subjective and everyone has their own unique ideal. However, I think there could be improvement of the underlying architecture of our avatars upon which our mesh bodies are built that would really take us all to the next level. Anyway those are my thoughts. Btw., I own Tonic fine, Maitreya, Slink Physique, and the freebie Ebody fine and curvy bodies, which are the closest to Tonic I've seen from other vendors so far.

Everything in RL is so politically-charged today and it's sad. Personally and what we see in our own families growing up is that imitation can occur out of two motivations: One hate but the other one love. I think most people are good and most people try new things to broaden their horizon and learn how to be more sympathetic, open people. And perhaps also, as we learn more about family DNA and just how much all of us are mutts, a little bit more about the roots we may not even know that we have. The arch of my family history extends through the Yakut people, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Berber, Jewish, Druze, Eastern and Mediterranean European, Gaelic, and other backgrounds. And that's just from the DNA along one tiny sliver of my mother's side of the family, counting none of the other branches connected to it or my father's side (which will only be known if my brothers or father test for it since I don't carry YDNA). When you cross that with known migration patterns throughout history, we're all everything and should learn to embrace it. SL provides an opportunity to expand beyond ourselves into others' experiences and learn to be a better, kinder person; it also may shed light into how our own family members and forefathers experienced the world around them. Of course, there are bad people who abuse it but that's true for anything - and it's sad. but we can't let them ruin the beauty of life.