[RIP Mr Altberg]

I am sorry to hear about this. The lindens do their best and by all accounts he was trying to build the legacy and grow this world. LL is a good company and headed by good people to the best of my knowledge. I often say SL is one of the most free spots on earth and it is due to people like him who enable the free exchange of ideas. There are very few companies I will brag about when using their platform, this being one of them. I am sure he will be remembered fondly. Thanks for supporting the dream and putting bridges between worlds!

[We have the power to make SL a "big thing" again (really) and tip the ongoing narrative, let's do this! c= let's do our part (for our sake)]

I certainly adore LL as a company despite any of their flaws/failed ventures in the past. They implemented many things like animesh and bake on mesh to update stuff and improve things as of recent years and they are a company that doesn't step on our personal freedoms within the platform, which is nearly unheard of for a company. They give us a very long leash. They genuinely seem primarily driven by their support of the platform and potential others like it. I don't think its unreasonable for us to support the community we are a part of. If people only did stuff they were "paid to do" then stuff would fall apart pretty fast.

I do what I can at times to bring new players to the platform but it can be a little daunting for them to learn the new systems I suppose. It really comes down to what they are exposed to first - if I take them to a really cool place with cool avatars they will tend to get more interested. Some of the scripting "nerds" I try to show SL can be a bit turned off by the "limited" scripting or the latency which can make some stuff like in-world shooter games lag behind. I have to remind them about the workarounds we have, and teach them the UI, etc. The fact of the matter is nothing "better" exists unless you count full body tracking as a "be all end all" feature. There is even an updated VR viewer, now.

There are certainly many misconceptions about the platform (I think some people think the game looks dated even though some of the best screenshots from games in existence are from SL) but I think the primary thing keeping us from getting new players is the limited amount of people willing to teach those new players in a way that lets them jump the hurdle of the initial confusion they have when they start learning how to use the systems in place. On one hand a dumbed down UI would be a mistake as it kills off the feeling of immersing yourself in something more deep.. so obviously making stuff too simple is a bad idea. On the other hand, many of those players just don't have the patience to learn stuff, it takes time to learn some of the words and what they mean. 

What is an alpha? A prim? How do you link and unlink prims? Etc.. This is second nature if you have been playing for a few months/years but a new player will often either give up or as we have seen do the bare minimum amount of learning they need to accomplish whatever goal they have and possibly miss out on any room for growth that would open the platform and let it shine.

I think access to better tutorials might help with user retention, which I am sure exist but then theres the problem of getting the people to actually read the manual/watch the tutorial and most people skip those in games because most games are kind of just the same thing over and over. Even then, they won't know the spots that look good, will ignore the destinations list and end up in some area that looks like it is from 2007 (no offense) which will kill their enthusiasm.

Anyway, I certainly agree with you that spreading the platform through the users is something we should be doing, but like people have said the official advertising often avoids talking about certain things you can do and focuses entirely on the social aspect. People can already be social on whatever MMO they play or discord. That doesn't "grip" someone. Maybe it wouldn't be terrible if some adverts promoted the creation, artistic, roleplay, etc side of things - even the adult parts. Being banned from twitch is a problem as far as advertising goes, certainly. I often wish I (or someone else) could just stream exploring some of the beautiful areas but our streaming options are I guess limited.

Also, rewarding people who make high quality free nonspecific (stuff that doesn't require something else to work) stuff for new players and putting it front and center in some sort of directory/listing would probably help infrastructure too on some level. Finding free stuff isn't hard, but finding free stuff that might be useful to a new player without requiring something else is harder for a new player. Those nice gift dresses for maitreya/whatever are nice, but they don't help a new player who doesn't have maitreya (or whatever other body) and wading through the listings will take its toll on them. I often think about how like, there are so many free bodies, heads and clothing on the marketplace that are kinda hidden away and I try to keep up with those things for when I help new people but it can be hard (though we usually just end up pooling some linden from our group and buying them proper stuff instead if we think they will keep playing, usually anime stuff since anime stuff is kinda inexpensive and easy to work with for a new player comparatively).

TLDR;

If we want more new players we have to put our best foot forward during their new user experience. I don't really know how to best do that. Simplify how easy it is to get in and established while making people fully aware of some of the more in depth things they can do, I guess. People often play games on their steam list for like 5 minutes before moving to another game and never play the previous one again because it is like speed dating these days. 

[A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.]

Wow, after we mentioned the downsides and explained the problems with the group limit reduction they reconsidered, evaluated it and changed to a more reasonable and probably much healthier solution for the economy AND the players! 

It appears I was still right to consider Linden Lab the best developer all these years. Still ahead of the pack this many years in in freedom, transparency, adaptability. ^^

As far as things that might help the platform go, since my last post covered reasons why the group change would have been bad overall, lets speak of changes you are doing that will be unilaterally good and how I see making sure those changes go over the smoothest! It may seem off topic but my previous post touched on this and the real topic at hand is essentially grid health and decisions pertaining to it, isn't it?.. 

I believe that bake on mesh will be very healthy for the grid as it was suggested as a way to unite the mesh new and the system old/sl roots to promote cohesion as well as make it simpler for new users. One thing I must suggest though - make it somewhat easy for developers to continue supporting the applier systems in addition to system layers on their mesh with this change via some sort of scripting method to disable or enable it dynamically via script. I know this is easy to overlook and it might already exist in development. This will make sure the new system is actually used and reduce conflicts between the inter-medium of appliers and BoM. Make it so someone can script the bodies to swap between omega and BoM easily via scripts the developer adds in an update and it should encourage people to continue buying a wider variety of things instead of going into smaller holes economically speaking, perhaps? Just make sure the feature isn't too "static" or it might slow down adoption.

I just came to give credit for what I see as listening to the players and possibly some more insight.. 

[A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.]

Have you considered the harmful consequences that reduced group limit from the vast majority of users will have on various small businesses and therefore lead to reduced linden purchases for those stores due to less of the "group effect" on purchasing being taken into account, as well as the likely increased group join pricing (to prevent people from leaving VIP style groups) causing less exploration as far as VIP groups (therefore the increase not translating into linden purchases) etc which will effectively hurt the economy and on a much larger scale than premium can help it, causing a ripple effect. Almost anything that leads to stagnation of an aspect of an economy is bad for that economy.

....Or.... people leave their social groups for those groups instead and end up in a situation where the social aspect takes a hit which would also have a ripple effect that would in turn also hurt the economy. Also that would hurt premium due to perceived  lower cost efficiency of the platform.

Yes, it is partially conjecture but I find it more of a realistic outcome when I think about it than premium purchasing going up enough that it would offset the potentially hazardous effects that I have detailed here merely on the surface of the change. Did linden purchasing go up after the previous increase in group slots per capita?.. and do you expect it won't go down by the same amount with this change? This would be very important to know because this kind of change is like changing the shower head - it might direct the water away from your target and cause it to miss, reduce water pressure, etc... there are many options that do not lead to the intended outcome.

What I am asking is do you have an economist on board that plays actively enough to predict this sort of thing and has taken it into account with proper math, facts and figures?

I am not that economist.. I merely suggested animesh, bake on mesh, etc years and years earlier and suggested bake on mesh as a way to maintain backwards compatibility when mesh was first announced. Those things are recently being added while I saw the need for them a long, long time ago. (which is fine of course.. development takes time, just demonstrating that I do think about the health of this platform in at least a somewhat realistic way sometimes.) I have been wrong before (everyone has) but I am getting band-aid solution vibes from all of these changes.

I am worried about a possible bottle-necking effect where the current beast has less breathing room for the economical or social aspects of its frame and ends up suffocating a little.

While I myself realize alternatives to groups exist, expecting the vast majority of users to be set up with Flickr groups, Subscribe-O.. etc is unrealistic because most casual users operate merely with what they have in front of them. If people are using the groups currently, it would stand to reason that there is a purpose for their current use of those groups in many cases. I am all for the stability of the grid and am not entirely opposed to making sacrifices occasionally.. but I don't see this as an effective decision from my perspective and have seen MMO try this sort of route and choke themselves out before. Some of those MMO are now gone. Linden Labs is still the most fair and transparent developer and has cultivated a large world with more freedom than any other platform... but I fear you might be treading a beaten path here.