Lexbot Sinister

Actually i haven't! I feel like i've missed out on that entire scene. I have no experience thereof. I think the scenario there is a little different, people come in and stay for the whole event, right? So it's not people leaving and coming constantly.

I think you don't understand. A highly successful landlord or merchant is always a net money gain for LL, because tier and L$ are always paid for with real life currency. The only way to take out more money than you put in, is if other people are paying you with L$ they have bought. LL doesn't buy L$ - they only sell it occasionally, with Supply Linden. You can only withdraw money from SL as long someone else has bought your L$. Minus fees and the L$ sinks, LL can never lose any money in that transaction. They don't pay any merchants or successful landlords, they skim their profits with fees, tier and L$ sinks. The only plausible scenario where LL could lose some money is if they mess up with Supply Linden. There has been rumors circulating that LL perhaps also buys L$ on certain occasions to keep the value stable, but it's a rumor, and completely unconfirmed. I don't think it's a good discussion to have here though, whether LL is or is not manipulating the L$ Market.

Actually, that is exactly all it is, just a personal opinion of what makes sense to you. General common sense is recognizing the psychological aspects when seeing patterns emerge. No, we are actually discussing avatars on full sims, which covers a couple of scenarios but the most often encountered currently being full shopping sims. This one is the one reoccurring on a very regular basis, in the same sims, over and over. There are of course other cases, like (but not limited to) : 1. Mainland sims full of bots, so the property owner can't enter 2. Live events like music or other performances where the audience gets very limited 3. Clubs and hangouts running occasionally at full capacity (mainland mostly) 4. Live gatherings with prominent speakers 5. Full homesteads In these cases, the added capacity can come in handy. In the case of mainland property, it will only help if you are also premium, and not a basic account renter, since then you are not more privileged than a bot. So it's not entirely without merit, but still very little reason to make it premium account only. Parcel owners should always be given priority to enter their own property. Then there's full sims, that are not running on full capacity, but simply get full: 1. Shopping events that have capped the number of visitors below the region maximum 2. Roleplay sims that have capped the number of visitors below the region maximum 3. Clubs and hangouts that have capped the number of visitors below the region maximum These actually don't benefit from the added capacity at all, because they don't use a sims full capacity to begin with. For those, the sim being full is still as much of a problem as before, but now they also have a VIP line to worry about, and how their regular customers might never be able to enter no matter how long they wait, unless they become premium. That premium account is just less money the shoppers can spend on products, donations and tips. It is obvious that LL rather prefers the money for premiums to go directly to them, instead of being sieved through content creators first, to later arrive as tier for sims. It's at the expense of the content creators and sim owners though, that can not turn the VIP line off, and who's customers LL is urging to pay up, or not get to enter the sim at all. As far as it comes to avatars that never go to foreverfull sims (the ones with "common sense" i suppose) this discussion was never about them, because they are just not a factor. It's much harder to recognize a problem that doesn't happen to you, but it doesn't mean the problem isn't real for others.

Yeah but the assumption of : ..that it's how this extra capacity is supposed to work, and that it won't affect basic account at all and everyone is bickering to the extreme, is based on either an error or oversight. Over 100 avatars on sim and you shouldn't be able to get in at all unless region manager, owner or premium account.

If there were 107 avatars on sim and you had no problems tp'ing in as a basic, non-premium account, then something is broken.

There's a lot of things in SL that "don't make any sense", perceived scarcity being one of them. Why did gachas ever become so popular? Artificial scarcity in a digital world where you could make unlimited copies at will, makes no sense at all. Trading items where you could just instead buy exactly what you wanted, seems like a major hassle, doesn't it? *Hint* If creators pick gacha over regular item releases, you can actually figure out which sells best. Despite the better utility of the customer getting what they want, at a fixed price, in everlasting copies. The same goes for events. Why is event popular? because it's popular. The popularity whips up popularity. If every fashionista in town wants to be there, then all the rest of them wants to be there too. The crowd, and making the items slightly unattainable is exactly what makes people stand, banging on the sim door. The perceived scarcity. The scarcity adds perceived value to the items, making them more desirable. Nobody talked about collab88 before it was full. Then it started showing up in chat "..i want to go and buy x and y but the sim is always full" and that wasn't a detractor. That just made people line up, screaming " i want it too, i want it too!" The fact that the sim is full on opening day, makes people want to come in and shop just that much harder. Especially that you could actually get in by luck of the draw. (This is the change now.) It's clever, it plays on peoples perceived wants for digital commodities that no one actually needs for anything at all. This is one of the things that come close to an Sl game accomplishment- the endorphin rush of completing a game mission - " I got it first, before everyone else ". You don't think that's a thing? If there was no reward in hammering a sim for hours just to get some shoe or hair, nobody would be doing it. I would love to see if anyone has ever kept statistics of it, what the relationship between sales is in an completely empty sim (one visitor) compared to a sim that is nearly full, but still functional enough so it doesn't inhibit sales, is. (Scripts working, items rezzing) I would wager that the more bodies on sim, the higher quality and value for money the items are perceived to be. Given that the items are not of obviously sub-par quality. We'll see how it works out with the VIP line to full sims, and obviously LL is watching things, but the adverse effects might be slow and silent and go unnoticed. Premium subscriptions will increase at least to begin with. But if the basic account spending goes down over a longer timespan, especially at events, that effect will be entirely unnoticeable because it can be attributed to many other things instead, like seasonal changes, trends, etc. If basic accounts spend less time inworld, that will also go unnoticed, hidden by other plausible reasons. If that happens, that will be a far bigger loss than a few extra premium accounts can make up for. Also i find it misleading to call it a capacity increase. I haven't been on a single sim yet that has been at full capacity, 100 avatars, during my ...10? years in SL. I might be going to all the wrong places, but most sims tend to cap capacity at far lower, don't they?

I don't know how it works where you're from, but at least here, handicap spaces are only given to those that need them the most. Obviously, nobody complaints about that. Nobody is handicapped for fun. But maybe where you're from, handicap spaces get sold at premium, and nobody even blinks at that? I hope this isn't the first step in making basic accounts into second hand residents. What SL needs is more residents, paying, non-paying to chat with, any type of live bodies on the grid in order to keep the economy going. People with a stuffed wallet and willingness to pay find SL desolate and boring. This is where all these pesky basic accounts come in.

If the sim is full, it will not be harder, but simply not possible at all to "hammer your way in", or in other words, try to teleport in and try your luck. When a sim is at full non-premium capacity +1, then no non-premiums can enter until there are basically no premiums anymore that also want to enter (and bump the sim to +1) As far as tp hammer goes, there are people that try to enter a sim for several hours (6-8 from what i've heard) for popular events, before being able to get in in the first 3-4 days. This Premium VIP line means that there is effectively zero chance of getting in until the event starts falling in popularity. Lets not forget, that popularity breeds popularity. It's the frenzy that keeps the frenzy ongoing. So if locking basic accounts out of popular events first days, and deterring tp hammer is part of the point of this change, it might very well succeed. It'll be interesting though to see what happens with the events popularity once they become a premium walled garden. Maybe that's how the full sim problem gets sorted out in the end. Not sure if the event sims will be stoked at falling public interest and less sales tho.

I explained how it changes more than "nothing". Try reading. Also not "their sim, their rules" because the top 10% will now always be reserved for premium accounts, no matter what the region owner thinks about it. LL's sims, LL's rules, always.

If people feel pressured to get a premium account just to be able to enjoy SL shopping like they used to, then it most certainly "works". The more people with premiums for this specific reason, the lesser the advantage though, too.

None of course. But there's also a reason why they are not full the entire time. The longer an event has been ongoing, the less "new" and attractive it gets, and the whole point about events is that you get the stuff while it's brand new. Otherwise, why hammer the teleport, when you could wait for the in-store release ? Most events have very very few exclusive items. By the time the event is easy to get into, there's another one somewhere elsewhere. The excitement for the old event is long over. If the idea is that new events are for premiums only, that is going to repulse a lot of non-premium residents. Yes, the ones with money.

The problem i see is not the extra 10 available slots being empty and only for use for a premium user, but when at least 1 of the extra slots is occupied. 100 people on sim, 1 leaves, 99 people on sim, everyone has an equal chance to teleport in. 102 people on sim, one leaves, but only another premium can come in. 110 people on sim, some people leave, but only premiums will be able to get in, over and over. As long as the sim doesn't go below 100, only premium accounts get circulated on who can enter when someone leaves. So for very popular events, the risk is that only premium accounts will be able to enter at all, because the sim will never fall below the premium bonus. Will that cause problems? Well, would premium account only- events cause problems? Would it cause problems if not the event makers, but LL decided that all high-traffic events are now premium only events? FYI being premium or not doesn't matter at all in how much money you spend in SL or not.

Is that because they can't, or because they don't need to? I'm just wondering if making gifting from the marketplace optional would solve it, or if the thieves would just use another viewer with little or no problems at all. Meaning that the gifting itself isn't the risk factor but the item being no copy/trans.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but if it's a copy/trans item that is bought, nothing stops the scammer buyer to manually hand the trans item over to another account. It's not as fast and handy as directly gifting the item to another account, but doesn't make much longer than a couple of seconds either.

Sorry, it wasn't my intention that it would feel personal. It's still possible to look at mesh in wireframe and decide if " does this shape really warrant this much geometry" but if you are wearing the rigged mesh, you won't see any LoD swaps. Looking at the rigged mesh while rezzed on the ground, will indeed show that the object might not have any lower LoD's. The first thought then would be " No lower LoD's, this is garbage then?" but that is in a roundabout way false as well. Why would you need lower LoD's for a rigged mesh, if it doesn't collapse with distance? It would only add to complexity! This is an oversight, a genie we can't put back into the bottle. Your addition to the discussion is absolutely valid, otherwise we would have nothing to discuss ...which means calling out the designers that haven't found the complexity "trick" yet. Or designers that do unrigged mesh, and can't use the trick. That bunches them together with designers that both do the trick AND get high complexity numbers because of overly dense mesh. Do you know how to tell the difference between the three? If you don't, i wouldn't be so quick to name and shame. (please read the jira posted earlier) Also it appears i wrote the zoom out, pan in backwards. It's Zoom in, pan out. I do it without thinking usually >.<

And if it's rigged mesh, you will see exactly none of it happening, because **** drumroll**** it doesn't happen. You can't compare rigged mesh to non-rigged mesh in complexity, because they aren't handled the same by the viewer. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-11627 Rigged mesh has been having an unfair advantage over other attachables for... as long as they have existed? Don't compare someones piece of non-rigged jewelry to someones onionskin body, because LoD's don't work on them the same at all. The reason why you don't see worn mesh crumble into lower LoD's is because it doesn't. I don't want to explain this in detail, because it feels like i'm letting on a huge cheat secret that most mesh body, head and clothes creators have known for a long time now, being able to get really low render weight for really complex meshes. This gives rigged mesh an ENORMOUS, unfair advantage over non-rigged mesh. The eyes in the snapshot? All they need is to have something at all 4 LoD's to get that high complexity, which they might need for photography, to work with the photography techniques most use. Zooming out and then camming in, would otherwise make their LoD's crumble, while not affect the rigged mesh at all.........

Well, the problem is that most of the mesh clothing makers have discovered a very handy workaround for rigged clothes, giving themselves superlow ARC they don't deserve. Non-rigged mesh attachments don't have that same "benefit". So if the eyes in the photo aren't rigged, they might be getting problems with collapsing LoD's instead, when someone zooms out+cams in onto a head, for taking a photo of a portrait. (Zooming out and then camming in removes most of the frog-lens effect, but LoD's collapse like if being far away)

Some of your clothes have no demos, or the main listing is not connected to the demo. At that price point, i would expect more/all the colors available. Consider that. A single buyer might select just one color and not buy several copies of the same dress, but the dress in several colors would increase the chance of making a sale. So while at first it might feel like you are giving so much away for free, you might actually not be losing many, if any, sales on it.

It's not the first time it's been suggested that we should be able to use avatar bakes on mesh, the topic came up already with the first mesh bodies, where people started to question the necessity of appliers. Some went as far as to make Jiras, and illustrate how it could function inworld ( Darien Caldwell, but i bet there was more). The showstopper there was that if you are wearing a full body alpha, in order to hide it from cutting through the mesh body, the avatar bake becomes fully alpha too. And then there is nothing to apply on the mesh but a full alpha... That's where people stopped testing, because LL had to make it so the system body was fully alphaed out, while that alpha was then omitted in the bake itself. LL was not interested at that point, at all. Mesh bodies were for a small fringe of fashionistas. We did say that this will be the next norm but... yeah. So now i'm both happy and a little jaded when we could potentially, eventually get to apply avatar bakes onto worn mesh. happy, because it would be a great improvement, if implemented well enough for creators to want to adapt ( Like upping the bake limit to 1024, from 512). Jaded because this is so much " We told you so, for many years now" and i wish it had been done proactively, and we wouldn't need to have so much unnecessarily render-heavy content. Nobody *wanted* to make onionskinned avatars, but that was the only option in the evolution progress of avatar appearance. When the userbase of SL longs for something, it will be made. If there are no convenient tools for making what we want, we will use the inconvenient ones.

As it was said before, everyone is welcome to the content creation meetings. It's not a secret club, and you have the adress now. Don't have time? Well, that is a priority no one can make for someone else. Also don't think that the Content creation meeting dum-dums couldn't come up with something bigger and smarter than putting system clothing layers on rigged worn mesh. First time i suggested baking textures on rezzed prims, was shortly after we got server side appearance. I'm also pretty sure i wasn't the first to ask for that even. There are feature requests for it, in different iterations, jiras that other people have written. I suggested it again when this subject, of avatar bakes on mesh came up. There will be people who suggest it again, most likely. So it's not a bunch of uneducated dumbs that sit on the meetings and direct where things are going, it's that some things have already been suggested, and rejected several times, and will continue to get rejected, yet we will still ask because who knows, maybe next time. Can't have composite textures. Ok. Can perhaps have avatar bakes on worn mesh. Great, we take it!

I'd like to thank Medhue for persisting and explaining what seems to fall on deaf ears. There's one big problem that no amount of appliers can fix, but baked layers have no problems with: Combining several textures with a blended alpha layer without risk for glitches. If my mesh avatar has freckles on the tattoo layer, she can't can't have any tattoo's, because they will glitch. But maybe it's my lucky day and i don't see them disappear or flicker, so i add tattoo's on the underwear layer, and then sheer tights on the clothing layer. That is 3 blended alphas (that can't be made masked without looking like crap) ontop of eachother, and i'm nearly guaranteed that one of them will glitch. But since it's my superlucky day, they don't. Oh wait, but i have this really cute applier undies that i want to put on too, because mesh panties ontop of tights really make no sense. But i can't. I have used up all my available layers in my onion avatar, and i'm starting to feel like it's 2007, where you could have one shirt, one underwear and one jacket, and that's IT. So not only will my tattoo's, freckles and tights most likely alpha-conflict, i'm also limited to how i can layer things. Now, if i go out, people seeing me will have to load 4 separate textures, one for my skin, for my freckles, for my tattoo and for my tights. 4 times as many as really needed. If the deferred texture was baked, i could wear as many different tattoos, beauty marks, scars etc as the system allows to layer. They would not alpha glitch. Also no matter how many textures i'd stack, people would only need to download and render 1 composite texture. Whatever UV map layout is used is really, completely irrelevant. People will adapt to the standard they find most useful for their creation, or make their own, and mark things up accordingly. Assisting customers with issues relating to standards, like Omega compatibility (and lack thereof) already happens, and it wouldn't change. Having different UV maps on different avatars isn't exactly news. Another thing is that this uses mostly what we already have in place, meaning it has a chance of actually happening. Surely it would be fantastic to have a photoshop equivalent in SL for texturing, but that's not likely going to happen within my lfespan, and avatar baking is a good feature that is underutilized because it can't be used on mesh bodies.

The " new fashion" of making hair IS making it with rigged mesh though. Analog dog adds some flexi prims to it as far as i know, so you will need to learn how to make mesh hair, rig it, and then make the flexi parts as well. If i'm misunderstanding, can you show a picture of what you mean?

Innula- could that be potentially gamed by attaching the objects in a No Script region?

If you are wearing one of the LL mesh starter avatars, there is nothing you can do. Clothes won't fit, and you can't wear alpha layers and you can't alpha any parts of the body. If you are using it, ditch it and buy a mesh body, or pick a Cassic starter avatar instead. If you have bought a mesh body, it should come with a HUD that makes parts of the body invisible. Use that. Good luck!

Vulpinus wrote: Well, now you know. 70+ physical objects all colliding with each other like that can bring a sim to its knees easily. Hence you probably being thought of as a griefer. Lets not overdo it. 70+ physical objects won't bring a sim to it's knees, not unless it's already stumbling heavily. I have rezzed far more than 70 (around 1500) physical balls on a sim, while monitoring the simulators physics use. It didn't bring the sim to it's knees, but it did stumble for a few seconds, until most balls started to settle. I have done physical chains made of toruses, to see how long they would hold up before physics+ lag shook them apart. One should not however hog that much resources on a sim meant for sharing, and without a reason. Also rezzing a lot of physical objects at once without an explanation, looks like griefing.