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Rathgrith027

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Posts posted by Rathgrith027

    New Gacha Policy Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    1 minute ago, Vanity Fair said:

    What I am dying to find out is how those SL stores, which are either completely or largely gachas, will retool (e.g. Jian pets, Hideki home decor, Garbaggio dolls). Gachas make up a significant part of their business, and they have dozens and dozens of gachas in their stores for which they abruptly need to find alternative sales mechanisms.I am sure some of them will just decide to shut down completely, rather than bother to do all this work. This is going to have spin-off effects on the SL economy.
     

    I have been chatting with one gallery owner who sold much of his artwork and sculpture via gacha machines. He tells me he doesn’t see how he will be able to meet his tier with regular sales, and he is seriously pondering packing up and leaving Second Life, which makes me sad. 

    Honestly, I will admit that it's a shame that some will leave SL over this, but if I were them, I would have phased out of this area of work long ago. The writing has been on the wall for Gacha and Lootboxes for a while now - ask any gamer who is even remotely familiar with the business practices within both the triple A and Mobile fields - This has been a long time coming for many.

     

    Hell, Forza Horizon 4 was rumored to have a Gacha Feature, but it had Real Life Transactions for 'Wheelspins' removed from the game prior to release because of all this, opting for offering Wheelspins and Super Wheelspins in return for levelling up and completing in game objectives. Battlefront 2 removed lootboxes after four months of release. Other companies have tread the same ground that Linden Lab has with this decision.

    The only reason why Lootboxes haven't been banned in more places can easily boil down to the COVID-19 Pandemic, obviously, taking priority in leglislatures and governments as a whole worldwide for over a year and some change now. Give it 2 years, and I'm certain that other countries will follow in the footsteps of Belgium and the Netherlands.

    If you don't like this, write to your legislators. This is not something Linden Lab can say No to - this is a pre-emptive act to ensure that we as a userbase still have a legally viable platform to call home. We've been at the forefront of scandal after scandal, and I and Many others know damn well what Linden Lab's lax and even, over-reaching responses ergo, can do to SL, as it's happened before. I for one applaud Linden Lab for actually doing something before it becomes a legal problem.

    Whether or not you agree with me on whether Gacha in a legal capacity should be banned, is your prerogative, but as I have stated above comes from very clear observations of the legal and economic areas around Gacha and Lootboxes - Its' days are undoubtedly numbered. Whether you want to put your head in the sand and scream at the Lindens or accept it and roll with the punches, is your decision.

    Take it from someone who as an High Functioning Autist with general anxiety disorder who for years, used to fear changes - I have come to accept it myself.

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    New Gacha Policy Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    31 minutes ago, Semirans said:

    I think this little bit is very telling. in the Ryan Schultz Blog: Nodoka Hanamura has posted a Twitter thread FAQ about this:

    "Again, I cannot stress this enough. This isn’t something LL did to spite people. This is because it was either they banned gacha, or LL would be in hot water for hosting it…"

    I mentioned in another thread about LL moving to cloud hosting with Amazon would have some consequences.  I assumed the child avatars and the adult sims would get targeted. Apparently not. LL is not "hosting" it, Amazon is.

    They are still hosting the content in the eyes of the law. Amazon is providing the server resources, that does not make Amazon automatically accountable and Linden Lab not accountable. Both technically are. Linden Lab provides access to these servers to the public, and Amazon provides Linden Lab these servers to run their services.

    Amazon Hosting is home to various different services, ranging from adult content to grandma's cookie recipes. The worst we'd get in my personal opinion is the child avatar situation being escalated, but I haven't seen that be an issue as of late.

    New Gacha Policy Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    Just now, Prokofy Neva said:

    There isn't any actual data to point to, to say "this is likely to happen". There still isn't a law in the US, for example. I think a lot of people especially in civil-law countries in Europe don't realize how law works in the common-law US, where you need the ruling of a judge and the body of decisions built up over time to really speak of a true "regulatory climate".

    I couldn't blame any creator with skill for not making a gatcha machine, given all the difficulties they face in this controlled economy with high costs for business. They can't be blamed for not preparing, either, they have to do what makes sense today.

    Also think about how breedables are also likely to fall under this axe. I can't see how it won't. It's true that when I buy a pair of mutts, I see what I get, but I'm buying them possibly for the rare gem they may produce down the line, which I can re-sell.

    Will land on the auctions fall under this axe? No, because you can see what you are getting. So people with a yen for gambling and money to spend will crowd the LL auctions to buy land they can flip now. Good for LL's bottom line.

     

    1 minute ago, Prokofy Neva said:

    This is a US based company with no offices any more in Asia or Europe. A German law cannot be enforced on US soil.

    That doesn't stop these authorities from banning users from accessing Second Life and or punishing those who do engage in Gacha-related activities. Also, just because your company doesn't have a physical presence in a country doesn't mean that you can't be sued or charged for engaging in criminal activity in that territory and punished in some fashion (as mentioned prior) for violating them.

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    New Gacha Policy Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    8 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

    This change is needed because SL may already be breaking Belgian and German law (at least) by hosting gatcha machines, they'll probably be breaking British and Australian law both if they're still hosting them this time next year, and more and more jurisdictions are following suit.

    LL have to make this change if they want to avoid danger of prosecution in an increasing number of jurisdictions and they sooner they remove this risk, the better for everyone.

    This. Exactly this. I know people want to point the finger at LL (Hell, I've done my fair share over the years), but this is something that has to be done. Gacha and lootboxes are already illegal in several jurisdictions, including in the Netherlands. This was going to happen eventually, and sadly there's nothing that Linden Lab can do other than at least provide a early warning before enforcing and slapping early offenders on the wrist.

    • Like 1

    RIP Mr Altberg

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    I've posted about it elsewhere already, but this still hits hard for me. I never met the man, but his vision, his will to make SL a better place and who he was as a person, hearing he is gone brings me to tears - Truly we have lost one of not just the Lab's, but of Second Life's finest.

    The Man. The Myth. The Linden.

    Rest in peace, Ebbe.

    Buy Fee Change Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

      

    18 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

    You're missing the small part about currencies being the purview of governments. Linden Lab and Chuck-E-Cheese can make all the tradable tokens they like, just so long as the government allows them to.

     

    10 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

    Oooh, swing and a major miss on that.

    Perhaps you might try to go to any shop/retailer/anywhere that is not Second Life (or related to it in some way) and try to purchase goods using Linden Dollars. Let us know how well that goes.

    No, you don't get to convert it through Linden Lab first.

    ETA: Owing to prior experience with those who have tried to rationalize similar views of the Linden Dollar, I'm terminating this 'discourse' before it goes further than this. It is not worth the time.

     

    And people wonder why I don't humor this peanut gallery called a forum.

    One last thing:

    "Perhaps you might try to go to any shop/retailer/anywhere that is not Second Life (or related to it in some way) and try to purchase goods using Linden Dollars. Let us know how well that goes.

    No, you don't get to convert it through Linden Lab first."

    How about this, you go to Japan or any country outside of the US and try to buy something with US Dollars. You can't. You have to go through the Bureau de Change and exchange your USD for Yen, etc.

    Same *****, different currency.

    • Haha 3

    Buy Fee Change Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027
    Revised

    5 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

    Oh for .... While the Linden Dollar certainly is not a Cryptocurrency do not make the mistake of trying to pretend it is anything more than a Token that Linden Lab allows the users to both buy and sell. They're glorified Chuck-E-Cheese tokens that the store decided they'd buy back from you.

    Lemme guess, you still think the US dollar is backed by gold.

    No, it's backed by literally nothing but the authority that mints it - Linden Lab, the US Federal Reserve, Chuck-E-Cheese, etc. That's the literal definition of a fiat currency - it has no intrinsic value whatsoever - the only value it has comes from the authority that mints it guaranteeing that it actually is worth something, as well as those who buy and sell with it.

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    Buy Fee Change Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    1 minute ago, FairreLilette said:

    Lindens already are a cryptocurrency, however.

    The Linden Dollar is not a Cryptocurrency. It is a Fiat currency, much like the US Dollar.

    The Linden Dollar is guaranteed a US Dollar value (2,000 = 10~ USD) by Linden Lab, much like the US dollar's value is guaranteed by the US Federal Reserve - both of which are relative to their market value and can be regulated by withdrawing and adding SLD/USD from circulation, and can do so at will.

    Cryptocurrencies utilize a blockchain and aren't guaranteed by any entity and are valued based on market demand. Second Life does not utilize a blockchain in the LindeX in any fashion, nor can Lindens be mined in any capacity. Cryptocurrencies do not have a governing authority by their nature, meaning that the currency only has crypto withdrawn from circulation if it is either not spent or lost in one fashion or another. That and most if not all cryptocurrencies have a maximum possible amount of currency in existance by either computational or constructed limits, meaning that at one point there will be no more new cryptocurrency of a certain type (BTC, LTC, ETH).

    • Like 2

    Buy Fee Change Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    12 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

    I hate to say it but this is quite a ginormous increase...makes me think cryptocurrency mining may be coming.  

    I mean why take such a risk with this high price and lose some of your customers because of it.  That leads me to think there may be a new kind of customer coming and that kind of customer does not need EEP.  

    Many of us thought this new company might be interested in Tilia more than SL.  Now I'm beginning to think this new company wants cryptocurrency mining here.  

    If Crypto came to SL it'd ass***** (pardon the vulgarity, but that is what would happen) the economy to the point it'd collapse shortly after due to the fact that only those who had L$ before moving to crypto would be able to get anything.

    As much as I tend to both lambast (and defend as well) the Lindens, I don't think anyone in the Financial department at Linden Lab is that stupid, and I'm sure as ***** certain that Upper Management isn't either.

    • Haha 1

    Buy Fee Change Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    On 4/19/2021 at 4:42 PM, sweetlucielle said:

    Now that I've talked to some friends the 7.5% buy fee seems to affect renters the most. Peeps start thinking about abandoning their land or spend less on other things. It's basically a tax on rent fort me. I live in Second Norway and I think land sales might drop significantly ... we'll see 🙄

    It'll be a pain in my ass personally as I rent and own a few properties throughout SL, both personal and for MIRAI, though the best solution honestly is to just buy your L$ in bulk per month rather than per transaction. I used to pay week to week, but now I just pay for a month up front, buying it at 40USD (Which would come to about 43 after the fee change).

    I personally dislike the situation, and hope that Linden Lab realizes that raising fees like this isn't going to bode well for Second Life's future unless they can provide a damn good justification for it.

    Unless at SL18B I hear that we're either getting a viewer rewrite, that the rumored Vulkan update is coming sooner than when hell freezes over, or that ancillary services like group chat, mySL and others get more stable, I'll be putting Battery Street on blast. 

    • Like 1

    Buy Fee Change Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    On 4/19/2021 at 2:19 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

    This and a million other "bug fix" issues will do nothing for growth or retention, ever.

    As a core part of the platform is expected that group chat will work. No one decides not to give SL a try because the group chat may or may not work. Same for map tiles or region crossing. These things should not be broken and should not even be brought up in relation to fee increases. 

    Yes it does. It needs to be the new standard avatar. Otherwise anyone using it still a second class user and there is no point.

    We need a standard, well documented, extensible, publicly accessible (no secret dev kits), open source body platform owned by LL that supports the needs and use-cases of actual SL residents. No one should be making or using after market bodies and heads, they should be making mods for the standard body.

    The existing avatar & fashion ecosystem is a disaster and directly responsible for large social activities being fundamentally impossible,  it's unforgivable for a social platform to have de-rendering other avatars be the norm!!

     

    THANK YOU.

    I've been complaining about this for a hot minute, It's one of the points as to why I hate how LL is so "Laissez-faire" at times.

    • Like 1

    Buy Fee Change Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    15 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

    Or how about for SL18 those of us who were using my.secondlife.com "profile" feeds get our data back? There are quite a few of us who lost everything: photos, old messages (I was keeping some for sentimental reasons from people who died in real life), friends/follow list... EVERYTHING.

    I was told many, many months ago "We're working on it." Which of course meant "You're SOL". Some people had their stuff returned/found/whatever the correct word is.

    I haven't. My last post there is a charming expletive to the powers that be.

    I'm surprised anyone even uses MySL these days. I've tried to get into Social Media platforms like Avatarbook and the sort but they never really have any weight to them, and feel like wasted potential that could have been better if they were used to replace mySL with them.

    I just never liked mySL due to how barebones and lackluster it was. I'd love a redo of the whole in-world social media system in that vein, but we've got bigger priorities than replacing mySL. Fixing it and Group Chats? Yes, are of moderate priority, at least in my educated opinion, but higher priority is optimizing this burning wreck we call a viewer.

    • Haha 1

    Two Factor Authenication (2FA)

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    3 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

    Install yet another app just to be able to log in to SL? WTH?

     Authenticators are very light and don't need to be run in the background and are also available for PC as stated already. It's not that big of a deal. I have one on my linux system which uses about 100MB of RAM.

    That and "Another app"? What other app do you need for SL? All you need is a viewer, unless I'm missing something.

    • Like 2

    Connect the Continents

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    On 4/10/2021 at 10:08 PM, Qie Niangao said:

    We need a Neighborhood Watch to bring these delinquent orbs to justice

    (Where's a Keep Bellisseria Safe militia when you need it?)

    MIRAI Group has been passively reporting ARs during flights around Bellisseria, but we do plan on doing regular (once a month/every other week) FONOPS (Freedom of Navigation Operations) once we open up to the public. So far we've hit a few zero-timer or non-compliant orbs and either filed ARs or issued (friendly) warnings that non-compliance can lead to losing your linden home, but other than that it's been smooth sailing. Hopefully now that the World Map is up, we can start work on charting and doing regular checks to ensure safe travel through Bellisseria and major airways in Sansara, Bellisseria and Satori.

    What'd help us accomplish this if anything is a HUD, script or something we can install onto a FONOPS aircraft (like our ZSK LJ-45) that can detect all the orbs in a region that aren't LL orbs, so we can do a second check with aircraft in those parcels to check their timers and range.

    In the mean time, I can at least suggest for the new Chalet areas to follow the river that cuts through the area, as that is fully protected and leads you out to Satori and into the rest of Bellisseria.

    • Like 5

    Facial features "shaking" in some places on SL!

    in Avatar

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    To simplify / elaborate on what SkellDagger posted, Second Life (and other 3D games and applications) use what is called Floating point numbers to determine the position of objects in 3D space. A Floating point number for example, looks like this:

    000000.000000

    However, as the number goes up (or down into the negatives), the computer must sacrifice accuracy (decimals are more precise than whole numbers) for range, so it becomes more like this:
    123456789.123

    When the accuracy of floating point values become low, abberations in 3D space will occur, slowly progressing as you move away from the origin of 3D space (0, 0, 0 in a region's coordinates for example) until they are extremely present, such as with what Clairschen showed. This is because the vertices and points that make up the 3D models are unable to be precisely pinpointed in 3D space, so the computer uses more rough guesses since it doesn't have enough decimals to pinpoint where they should be more accurately.
     

    The only way that this could be remedied is if Second Life would be changed to use double-accuracy or 64-bit floating point values, which without getting into more complex things like 32-bit vs 64-bit and other things, is a way to increase the amount of numbers/decimals available for computers to use in floating point calculations.

    • Like 1

    Farewell... (soon)

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    On behalf of MIRAI Group and the Virtual Existance Society, Thank you so much for your contributions to Mater Agni (SL) and to Virtual Worlds at large.  It's a deep shame that you have to leave us, but as the old saying goes - to all things an end must come. We pray for clear skies ahead for your future, Oz.

    Protecting Second Life From Hate Groups Hiding & Organizing Here

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    On 1/11/2021 at 11:00 PM, RowanMinx said:

    What exactly do you expect them to do?  As with most things that are against the ToS, they will act appropriately when and if it is brought to their attention.  They have given us, the residents, the power in the form of abuse reports.  If you see something, say something.  

    However, there are much better platforms for those groups to disseminate their hate that would reach a wider audience than SL.

    Exactly.

    • Like 1

    Possible national satellite broadcast of Second Life?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Rathgrith027

    And people think I'm overly imaginative.

    I'm going to mirror what everyone has been telling you, and be even more blunt.

    This is the cringiest *****ing thing I've ever seen - so bad that I couldn't look through this thread at all without my head screaming why, and that's coming from someone whose personal life can tend to be quite cringeworthy by others' standards.

    Why in the hell would anyone invest in anything resembling this is beyond me when in either being used as a in-world media broadcast system or as a way to connect to SL from anywhere - both have little to no appeal, through the use of assets that you don't even own.

    Do yourself a favor, have some humility and give it a rest.

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