Spica Inventor

"Does anyone knows what effect the age of the item has on rank? Are older items with the same number of sales placed better than new ones?" Probably, but being placed high up on relevance search results due to long time total sales is getting more ridiculous as time marches on. It's having the effect of favoritism and keeping new Merchants and especially new quality Merchants out of the game because they can't effectively compete with that. But it is having the effect of price deflation which is probably the only good side effect imho. LL should emphasise recent sales much more than they do. They have increased that factor a little bit over time, but nowhere near enough. Instead of for example, selling two times in three days pumping up far, it should be selling two times in a week getting significantly pumped instead. Selling the same product once per week should get a significantly higher pumping too. Significant pumping by price is still going on, which is bad, promoting a false sense of quality based on price. People leave the game if they feel they are being deliberately deceived as price pumping contributes to a hostile environment.

Let me elaborate on my idea a bit. Say I have a Drow Elf skin for sale. If I am allowed 12 keywords, then I can emphasize say 'drow' three times, 'dark elf' three times, 'skin' three times, and that would leave me with three more keywords for the rest to place under perhaps 'evil', 'demon', and 'fantasy'. So whenever someone types in 'drow' and/or 'dark elf' and/or skin, (especially when it is 'and' over 'or'), my Drow Elf skin product should jump up on the rankings pretty good. (Perhaps be a multiplier effect of prior/recent sales to keep the quality aspect alive). Of course these things are relative as others will be doing the same, but such a system would work much better relevance wise compared to what beta accomplishes so far imho.

Oh yes, and I failed to say the first time that significantly bumping up products with the search words in the product name as opposed to existing only in product keywords, only encourages long product names just like merchant name prominence does. Again, if this area is limited in allowed words or characters, then that potential problem could be greatly minimized. Don't copy Google or Yahoo generalized algorithms. They won't work for SL which needs to be much more target specific.

You are giving far too much prominence to words in the merchants name. This is very bad since merchant names usually have little to do with specific types of merchandise and the SLM is inundated with merchant names. Guaranteed fail. Can't make heads or tails out of the rest of the 'logic' in the product placements doing a relevance search. The old system based on popularity is much better still. Plus this new system encourages long merchant title names which would be another very bad thing to encourage. Even if significant limitations are placed upon merchant name length. The way I would do it, is allow product keywords to be emphasised by the merchant is some way. For example, allow repeat usage of the same keyword to give the product a higher placement on search results when that keyword is used. Total sales and recent sales should still take presidents however. Especially recent sales as those are a significant indicator of quality (to save the consumer time and heartache, and help keep them playing and spending their money in the game). Keywords for each product should be limited to about 12 to 15 maximum.

I agree with you Dustyavi. In addition, alot of peeps have taken their marbles home with them out of SL due to hard @sses like that creating a hostile self serving environment. Similar types of hostility found at sandboxes has caused the same. Peeps like to blame the griefers and trolls, but they are only a relatively minor attrition component in reality. It's the uptight control freaks and @nal retents that are a much more significant problem when it comes to getting peeps interested in SL and growing the population base and such.

If Sansar flops, I'm going to blame you personally, Dresden, for keeping silent beforehand when you should have expressed what you wanted it to be like in no uncertain terms. :matte-motes-sarcasm:

90% of CEO's are NOT boat rockers. But if I was the CEO of LL, I'd be rocking it like a kayak at the rapids. :smileylol:

"feh,secondlife is quite tame compared to alot of the stuff on twitch,including warframe,which merrily has enemy bits raining everywhere" That's usually par for that hypocritical double thinking duck speaking course. Slaughtering 'Commies' and Muslims on the Malabar fronts are to be encouraged, but nudity and sex of course along with thinking for oneself is right out! Very Orwellian, very 1984. lol

I wouldn't be surprised if a full half of revenue generated in SL is sex related stuff. So if that goes poof, does anyone actually believe that it could be replaced by religious fundamentalist stuff to any significant degree? Also it is my belief that uptight control freaks and @nal retents sent far more peeps running for the hills than griefers and trolls ever did.



(rolls eyes)

It's Nibiru. :smileywink:

I agree. Relying on expensive high performance PCs to play a game largely revolving around head sets, and discouraging creative diversity will not be good for the bottom line. Let's hope those factors are minimized.

A banning from Twitch will actually have the result of bringing in more revenue to SL and LL via a positive type of negative p.r. Darkwingz99, I suspect that you might be in the employ of LL and doing a sock puppet thing to create more revenue for LL. C'mon and fess up would you? Are you a LL sock puppet agent, Lightwingz77? :matte-motes-evil:

This is the way it really is.... In an eggshell: Constant price pumping by LL, particularly in regards to land costs has kept tons of 'marbles' (read customers) out of the game. LL did everything they could to promote inworld shopping over SLM but of course failed in that regard because they weren't willing to jack up their 'service fee' 5% commission to something more reasonable. Many Merchants still not willing to sell their wares for more reasonable (much lower) prices also contributing to many marbles being absent. Anyone who implies that LL is interested in a Socialist SL is just duckspeaking and p.r. promoting and probably everything they say should be taken with a large grain of salt. A vastly improved economy would be based on inventory placeables and not land revenue. So yes, the SL economy, and by default due to LL's virtual monopoly that exists, the VR economy as a whole is still in depression.

1) You said: "... land rent to the well off ..." I was talking about land profiteering in general, LL in particular, and yes, the definition of 'well off' can vary depending on ones personal criteria or biases. 2) You said: "... Sansar could have ten times the userbase ..." I said 'SL/Sansar'. Understanding that should change it a bit huh?:smileywink: My ten times the userbase was a conservative estimate. 100 times is possible in the next 50 years if LL plays its cards right. Don't need a halodeck, but the next best thing is quite possible in a relatively short period of time. imho. 3) You said: "All that really matters is total net profits...That is correct at a very simplistic level." Well yes, there are things such as moral and philosophical principles at work as well and being factors, but imho, the profit motive is a much greater factor for most (to keep the game running at maximum improvement levels), and particularly for merchant types and the LL for involvement in these VR games. 'The profits currently earned by Merchants/Creators and Landlords are workable...gross profits' The only peeps who really care about gross profits (outside those interested in a general economic analysis) are the stock holders and only because revenue is an indicator on how a company will do in the longer term. Merchants will compute their time involved producing things as a gross expense rather arbitrarily imho, and SL has entertainment benefits that most RL jobs do not. So how does one figure what is credit and what is debit in virtual worlds? I guess it depends on the individual mostly and how he want to weight things more than some standard equation. 5) You said: "... a catch 22 exists." Absolutely correct. I agree, there are many catch 22s going on, but the main one by far at the moment is the existing very detrimental price pumping, rich man supporting exclusively economic model.

Like I said, net profits (after taxes and other expenses) is all that will matter to a merchant or LL in any real economic analysis. Tax rates or whatever you want to call them are quite irrelevent taken by themselves. More merchants equate to greater profits because competition increases quality and greater selection and diversity brings in more customers and therefore a larger 'marble' pool. Libertarians are 'trained' to not look at the bigger picture because the bigger picture promotes 'commie thought'. Free your mind from philosophical horse blinders for a better economic analysis.

A real problem with SL is that most peeps can't help but wish to tamper with things. It's human nature to do so, and if their only way of doing so would be to form a government system that gave them that ability to do it, then that's the way they will go. But if SL was liberalized instead, the benefits would become apparent, not the least of which would be the growth of the game, and perhaps even end up changing human nature for the better as a consequence. imho. More restrictions, more laws would all be a disbenefit for SL and register negatively on the bottom line. Less restrictions and laws would have the opposite effect.

You need a userbase to make profits. The way the SL economy is right now, LL profits are largely based on land rent to the well off while merchant profits are largely based on sales to the commoner. The high price of land keeps the commoner out of the game which means less profits for the merchants. The only question is by what degree and I think the degree is massive. I believe SL/Sansar could have ten times the userbase and therefore ten times the profits (or 5 times at 50% sales tax) if the revenue stream was changed from land based to inventory based. Peeps are willing to spend money on things they can show for it such as inventory placables, and the commoner is not anywhere near as willing to spend their money on things that go poof such as land, and they do very much want their own land to play around in. All that really matters is total net profits and not Libertarian philosophically based public sector (LL is the public sector, right?) hehe tax ratings and how always evil taxes are. Just call it cut distribution if it makes you feel better. :smileytongue: Since most professional merchants are highly motivated by profits, having an increased userbase to support those profits is the best way to get more high quality merchants into the game. This in turn will have a snowball effect and increase userbase as well which will have a snowball effect and get more merchants into the game, and this in turn will.....etc. etc.... As it is right now a catch 22 exists. A virtuous circle is what everyone needs instead.

The top 10% get to play around with it for the first 5 years, then the price gets lowered for the plebs to play around with the 'old' technology afterwords. Isn't that the way it always goes these days? Silverspoon worship is an important philosophy to reinforce above and beyond profits now?:smileywink:

Sounds like sales tax about 30% and improved land in the form of size and maybe increased pixels at a cost of probably $100 a month instead of $295. 50% and $10 respectively would be much better. 1 free relatively small plot of land per account would be best as another option. Limiting creation tools to Maya only would blow the whole thing for sure. I'm sure LL thinks they might increase overall quality that way (which they probably think is the main reason holding things back), but it wouldn't end up having that effect for various other rather obvious reasons. So we need 'very' cheap land and an economy heavily based on merchandise sales. We also need an easy to use inworld sculpty and/or mesh creation tool that doesn't need to be real complex with all those unnecessary bells and whistles that come with existing mesh programs, and as few limitations as possible and no arbitrary philosophically based nonsense. If LL can manage such all will be well imho. :smileywink:

Sansar could be this.... 100 high class and prestigious merchants selling to 2000 silver spoons with total gross profits of say $20,000,000 annually. or Sansar could be this.... 10,000 prominent merchants selling to 200,000 Hoi polloi (along with everyone else) with total revenue of say $200,000,000 annually. Nine out of ten peeps speculate it will be the first one, and God help us if it is. Even if the earnings ratio is much higher in the first possibility when compared to the second, what good is that? It will just leave it open for someone to do it right eventually and ultimately put the first possibility out of business due to the loneliness factor even by itself, unless a riffraff accepting and supporting SL2 is produced in which case SL2 would put Sansar out of business for that same major reason.

"It could only be a failure if it failed to meet its objectives. Since we don't know what the objectives are, lack of inworld creation tools or cheap land may not be relevant. I suspect many will be in for a surprise when they discover what and who sansar is aimed at." Well, now we get more of a clue that Sansar will exist to serve the silver spoons even more so than SL did. (A prime reason why SL topped out or more accurately tapped out so early). All those wonderful things/philosophy's such as exclusivity, and elitism promotion in the most efficient way possible my discouraging the plebs and unwashed masses from participating and using up so called costly resources. This all reminds me of the Ayn Rand book 'Atlas Shrugged' where all the Optimates (read silverspoons) had to move to their own island nation to find refuge away from the so called beggars, leachers, taxers of the rich and other tyrannous victimizers, pesterers and other evil undesirables constantly on their back right? so that they could finally live in 'well deserved' peace and comfort. In their own little higher grade and much better supported virtual reality avalon. And of course all the servants that silver spoons require to serve their needs will only be the high grade types. It's a brave new virtual world, pleb. Keep your dreams to yourself. Believe it or not, I'm all for it (the segregation) just as long as the much greater majority get our SL2 at a later date. Incorporate Blender inworld. Not as expensive as they want you to think, cheap land, and a sales tax driven economy. Do you know if that's on the table, Sassy? SL2?

'Duckspeak' in RL so 'Duckspeak' in SL. I hope that answered your question sufficiently. If not, how bout this.... Both Daddy and Mommy are right wingers. Meaning stuff rich brats pockets exclusively. :smileywink:

Sansar needs these three things for sure.... -Cheap or free land -Revenue based on inventory placable/item sales, not land sales or rent. -Good inworld mesh and/or sculpty creation tools. The lack of any one of these means complete and total failure imho.