Ayashe Ninetails
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Everything posted by Ayashe Ninetails
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Exactly. That's the main draw of SL for me, even after all this time, and the fastest way to get me to use a platform. So many games are split by region, so it's harder to chat with someone halfway across the planet should one want to. SL makes that sooooo easy. That's one big reason why I'm not a fan of splitting up the grid and further separating content. That, plus it's so hard for me to stay PG ALL THE TIME. I'm a potty mouth, dammit. 😂
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I don't quite see that as a cult mentality (the pull just isn't that strong, IMO) and so very few actually care what gaming journalists and bloggers have to say. If they did, nobody would be playing half the stuff out on the market as a LOT of games and studios have negative press - Blizzard's one example. Very few.
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I'm not sure what this is referring to exactly, but that doesn't really describe my own experience with SL at all. I neeever worry about what anyone else is doing. I quite literally run around as undead or a frog or something all the time and the only isolation I ever experienced was men not hitting on me (which is actually a good thing). Not being human and not rocking the latest trendy fashions hasn't impacted my SL negatively in any way. Mainly, my point was just that using "you can talk to strangers" as a negative is an odd thing to hold against SL. Especially at the time that article was written. I've heard some very valid criticisms of the platform over the years, but that ain't one of em.
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Peeve: I'm never going to understand the marketing genius required to get 54,000 people to gather just to watch someone sleep. AND they stick around through the ads AND they throw subscriptions at them, in addition. I could be making so much money doing absolutely nothing, dangit.- 26,804 replies
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I can so see that. Old SL did very much have a similar feeling to opening a themed IRC chat and joining or lurking and watching the conversation. There are places around where you can still do this now, of course. Especially for those who prefer chatting via voice. I guess the most modern up-to-date version of IRC would be Discord, but finding servers there is a lot more challenging than in the IRC days when all the busy spots were known and made very public. I honestly thought the entire "talking to strangers on the Internet" panic got kicked to the curb LONG before that article was written. Late 90s, even - back when Match and Yahoo Personals started taking off. By the time WoW rolled around in 2004, I thought we were well over all that shock and surprise. Yes, there's long and short-distance dating and adult shenanigans on the Internet. Then here comes this writer in 2009. Where have you been, Sir? 😄
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No, I didn't forget. I just don't think it's true. If that were the case, the horror stories I'd read about a number of games back then would've driven player numbers down by a ton, and that really didn't happen. Games journalism has always been looked at with a rather distrustful side eye. Player reviews are different, and if there's someone out there telling people one-on-one or in a review somewhere on a major platform like Steam "here are all the reasons you shouldn't play this thing and why this company is terrible" and the reasons are valid, that could hurt a lot, yes. SL's just niche with an unfamiliar UI when compared to a lot of software/games. That's all.
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I've played MMOs far too long to hold SL users above the creep factor you'd encounter just on a quick run through Goldshire. Hell, I could name a few popular dating sites where it was all too easy to find yourself in danger reaaaaaaal quick. 😂 That article is a mess.
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Lol, this feels like such an odd thing to call out. Had that writer never heard of forums, AOL, IRC, ICQ, or hell, even Everquest or WoW? SL was hardly any different on that front. Geez, talking to people all over the planet was always a fascinating hobby (still is) and was responsible for the majority of my travel.
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Yeah, and with things in flux with updates and PBR, I figured now might be a great time to slow spending, take a break, and let things play out. I don't want to buy much PBR content if it's not going to take off, and I don't want to buy much non-PBR if it does, soooo... I decided to just stop buying and see how things progress.
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Lol. I used to get a lot of joy out of completely tearing down my home and redesigning everything from scratch in an entirely different theme, but then I borrowed a ton of stuff from a friend and felt at least a little compelled to keep the look I came up with for a long time (she had rezzed dozens of landscaping items for me to play with!). With that hobby gone, all I had left to do was play around with avatar styling and photography, which I did a ton of until I finally hit burnout (and my wallet started yelling at me). So now, a break! 😂
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Nah, I seriously do not care, lol. I almost never venture over to mainland and I usually remain on an island on ground level or up in the air when I'm not shopping or taking photos somewhere or something (though I've recently abandoned my plot as I'm technically on a break), so I don't really have any glaring inconsistencies in my view on a regular basis. Mesh away. Prim away.
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I know. Was just wondering what all that had to do with my post.
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Well, when PBR is generally used, things are (usually, hopefully, ideally) optimized for that content. So no, a game full of PBR or ray tracing or all the fancy current tech will not overwork a PC IF (huge if) the PC meets and/or exceeds system requirements AND the developers do a good job with optimizing and making the game run well to those standards. SL is, of course, rather different. We don't even have current system specs. And like I told Scylla, we'll have all kinds of content optimized all kinds of ways. So in SL - yeah, there might be more issues once everything lands. It's a wait and see situation. Do I personally think we needed PBR? No. Do I particularly care whether mesh and prims clash in a battle to the death? No. Do I think it's going to cause more issues than not? Yep. Will it look good and be worth it all in the end? Remains to be seen.
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Oh lawd, I know the feeling. The amount of time I spend shopping for a single room or photography scene to find cohesive pieces is a THING, both for myself and when decorating for others. I like odd themes, so that doesn't help. Everything from witchy kitchens and gardens to my old neon vaporwave "woman cave" bedroom to a cyberpunk cafe. Shopping for that takes TIME. I'm dreading what it'll be like to do it with a mix of PBR and non-PBR stuff, ugh. I actually think we've got some top tier designers in the home furnishings category, so I don't think it's a matter of being done well. It's just a matter of so many doing it their own way under their own ideal lighting conditions. Maybe when we get all of our updates it'll be a little easier to work it all together. Or, maybe I'll keep spending 5-6 days shopping per room (maybe longer now, or maybe not at all, lol). 😩
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Yeah, it's definitely not ready for prime time yet and it'll take ages to get enough content. My main issue, though, is you're going to have an endless number of people creating with it and I'm not sure how that'll hold up when someone's building entire sims with all of that mixed content. Maybe it'll work, but what I'm comparing it to is a type of game where an entire series of scenes are completely consistent as you move from one to the next since they've all been designed from the ground up by the very same people. Wander around indoors, step outside - it all just works and flows and looks great. That's where SL may (or may not, I don't know yet) struggle. I could be overthinking it, but will a PBR leather chair designed by one person look consistent in a scene next to some PBR appliances designed by another, all under an EEP chosen by the decorator while someone else rolls in with an entirely different EEP setting? Maybe? Maybe it's a non-issue. I just can't tell yet since it's way too early, but I'm just thinking maybe that's why some people aren't seeing the benefit of it all at the moment. I'm just wondering out loud. Don't mind me. 😂
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Yep, and I think this right here is exactly the challenge. What PBR does well is bring consistency and predictability to complex scenes. Light behaves properly whether indoors or outdoors, matte materials look properly dull and matte, natural textures like plants and leaves and grass look waxy or have a gentle sheen, glitter glitters and shimmers, mud looks wet and slimy, wood looks shiny and new or aged and worn, furniture, floors, door handles, dinnerware, upholstery, fabrics, plastics, glass, metals of all kinds - it all looks as one would assume it would. It balances expectations well and flows from one scene to the next. But then there's SL where you could have ALL that right next to a prim structure from 2007, so..."immersion ruuuuined" to quote some in the gaming crowd. 👀 Get a bunch of connected sims all on the same wavelength, and I think it's going to look really nice, though. Eventually.
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In fairness to the tech itself, PBR, when done properly, can be really nice. I just don't see where it looks as good as it does in other games right now because I think we're missing some critical elements for that to happen (don't ask me what, I'm not that techie). Perhaps this will get fixed in the future. The way it's been implemented here is definitely not ideal and it's going to be weird anyway with how absolutely everyone can change their own environments in dramatic ways and all of our content is user generated, but don't let it sour you on PBR done well.
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I admit - I don't see much difference other than the often-mentioned darker shared environments. That's why I swapped to a PBR version of CalWL, which means I see even LESS of a difference, but I can live with that. Firestorm's just my shopping/decorating/doing stuff viewer. I'm sure the slow-loading gray-forever texture issue will likely be fixed sooner than later (I doubt that's related to PBR - the stores didn't have any I don't think) and I'm not having any FPS issues. It's just if I log in to grab something fast, I don't want to have to wait around for a vendor to rez and some never did at all. It seems location-specific, though. I couldn't get anything in one store to stop being gray at all while another store rezzed almost instantly. Just glitchy thangs. It'll be worked out eventually.
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I can barely even find PBR content in the home decor and furniture market. Out of curiosity, I just hit up some of my favorite haunts for such things (only about 13 locations - I didn't do a full run), and only 2 had a few PBR products on sale. I'm on the Firestorm PBR viewer, but I can understand the desire to revert just given the slow loading I'm experiencing everywhere. Stuff stays gray foreeeeeever (which is why I only hit up 13 places - would've taken all day otherwise). I'm sure that'll be addressed down the road in an update or two, but I can't see much point in staying on the latest version for now if few are making content. I only have two PBR items in my inventory with legacy versions included and both are food items, naturally. 😂
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I only think of the ones that require payment as shopping. Those are usually small hunts found in stores. I was primarily thinking of the free sim-wide hunts. The last one I did was in a massive outdoor roleplay sim with free items hidden all up in the trees and in rivers and whatnot.
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Yep. Took me a bit to learn this. You can cam around with the search running and it'll populate if you get near-ish to the thing. Not sure what the max range is.
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Hunts. I won't get into the ethics of that, but it's a big thing. Decorating. I work with a lot of transparent items (nature sounds and particle emitters for butterflies, etc.). Highlight transparent can work, but some things are too damn tiny and I often hide them within other items. Photography. Same use - finding specific invisible scene elements, like lighting or particle boxes that are a pain to grab. Other possible uses - finding a certain backdrop if you're standing on a platform filled with dozens of them (like at Backdrop City). Finding a piece of art or an artist in a large gallery. Standing in the middle of Trompe wondering where the heck this one specific house is...
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Lol. There's a woman who reports, quite diligently I might add, on courtroom fashion under the hashtags #TrialStyle, #FashionedJustice, and #CourtroomCouture. Goes as far as hunting down the outfits worn by attorneys and the defendants and posts the designer/store pages alongside the court photos in gallery format. Peeve: How have I never thought to do this myself? Now THAT'S how you combine your hobbies. 😂
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