Seven Overdrive

First, I would post in the forums that, after all these years, the virtual sky is finally falling. Second, I would start passing out hardhats to everyone in-world. Finally, I would be happy I was only losing what time I had left on my premium membership and then I would meet up with everyone else at one of the less expensive grids that will surely still be operating.

You got a red bowling pin next to the pseudonym you use on an obscure forum lost in the backwaters of the internet. If that isn't grounding, then I don't know what is. :smileytongue:

Pussycat Catnap wrote: Seven Overdrive wrote: I told them that they should lower tier to encourage people to only use the Linden Homes as a stepping stone to land ownership in SL. Mainland tier would have to be lowered enough to make living in a big junkyard worth it though. My idea for that would be this: Premium gives you a linden home, as it is curently set up, OR 1024 of mainland tier. - That would actually make mainland an upgrade for everyone, and not just those of us who know how to make more out of less prims. Actually I would like to see them ditch the whole Linden Home idea and make mainland the starter choice again as it once was. Remember First Land? It was gamed to death by land flippers, but at least it introduced new residents to the mainland market from the start. I would like to see a minimum of a 2048 sq m premium land allotment or an even larger 4096. This would require a reworking of tier though or even the premium membership. It could be offered for premiums that pay for a year or they could even offer a premium plus membership, or something similar. Any amount of land beyond that and the normal tier rates would kick in. It is quite obvious to most of us that it isn't the initial cost of the land, but the cost of the ongoing monthly tier for that land that is the issue, and a much larger free tier offering would give people more incentive to put down some roots in mainland and SL in general. Mainland really should be LL's economy land product, but at the current tier rates for it.. it isn't such a great deal as all the yellow on the map indicates.

I would like to see the premium account free tier raised from 512 to 4096 sq m while cutting out the group bonus. A 4096 plot of land is a perfect starter size that allows you the room to express yourself. The larger plots of land may also cut down on the junkyard effect the mainland suffers from and make buying there a more attractive prospect. Yes I know LL will be taking a hit in revenue, but I think the prospect makes mainland and premium memberships much more attractive. And before the private estates start to moan, they have to remember that this is mainland we are talking about. It is a completely different experience than estate land with extremely limited options and controls for the land.

I'm disappointed that Rodvik spends his time on a third party site, but I will answer his question from here in the Official Second Life forums. @Rodvik - I think most new sign-ups do not stick around because their computers simply can't run Second Life very well or not at all. So many people now days have off the shelf laptops from their local Best Buy. If you want more people to stick around then you must tackle this problem with the viewer and make it work well with lower end computers. Go to your local electronics retailer and buy some low to mid-ranged laptops and make your employees work on getting SL to run on those machines. Also you really need to tackle the cost of running your business so the price of land tier can go down. People are used to only paying about 10 -15 dollars per month for their online games. A linden home or a tiny parcel on mainland just isn't going to cut it for many. The creative people that come to Second Life get put off by the high tier too because the cost of having a decent sized amount of land to keep a persistent build for their creations costs way too much for many of them. PS - I think it is great that you want input from current residents, but judging by many of the responses, I doubt you will be getting many suggestions that will be disruptive enough to achieve what you want. The residents are set in their ways and won't put up with much disrupting of their second lives and will be satisfied if that means the population stays the same and does not grow.

Koltari wrote: There was a survey about Linden homes a few months ago. I wonder what kind of feedback they got all in all. I told them that they should lower tier to encourage people to only use the Linden Homes as a stepping stone to land ownership in SL. Mainland tier would have to be lowered enough to make living in a big junkyard worth it though.

Cloud Party is not going to kill SL. If Cloud Party survives its beta phase and is able to provide a well functioning marketplace and affordable islands, then it could be another outlet for SL creators to sell their wares to the 3d chatroom crowd for extra profit.

Charolotte Caxton wrote: Point Lighting is not just another name for shadows, but rather a type of light source or perhaps a way light is projected. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Lighting-and-shadows/ta-p/997819 In the official viewer, the rendering of attached lights can be disabled, as has been mentioned before. Develop > Rendering > Render Attached Lights Not necessarily directed at you, Pussycat, just generally speaking in reply to a few points you mentioned, no pun intended It was my mistake. I thought point lighting controlled the number of lights visible, but you cleared that up. Thanks for the education. :smileyhappy:

With shadows turned on I see many more light sources than 6 even if the prim creating the light source isn't being rendered in my viewer. Not sure what the limit is with shadows turned on though. Correction: In Firestorm the setting is called Point Lighting which "Changes the degree of local lighting, from none, to limited, to maximum." , but again I am not sure what the maximum limit is. I only know it is more than 6. A lot more. You can see all the visible light sources belonging to all the derendered Linden Homes as an example.

Storm Clarence wrote: You may find this link interesting. I saw that and think it is pretty neat, but sadly it's not available for iOS. Good to see that someone is trying to get a graphical version of SL on mobile platforms though. :smileyhappy:

The experience would be no more diminished than it is logging in with what is available currently for SL on mobile devices. My point is it wouldn't necessarily need to be a full functioning viewer that gives the same performance as the regular viewer. I would be satisfied to be able to see more than only text when I am enjoying my morning coffee at Starbucks or where ever. The lag wouldn't matter to me. That certainly didn't stop me from enjoying SL when I had to use an under powered laptop to log in.

Sassy Romano wrote: You haven't played a game on a phone with an Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset have you? That gets somewhat uncomfortably hot and as far as specification goes, yes it's not going to compete with my desktop but I believe that there's plenty of scope in it to get a fully functioning SL client working more than adequately given that plenty of people plod along with the woefully inadequate Intel embedded graphics. That's the truth. I chuckle when people quickly dismiss the idea of running SL on a phone or tablet. If they only want to use SL on their desktop computers, then great. But many do run SL with low end machines already. Personally I would love even a halfway functioning client for my phone or tablet that allowed me to still see the world even if it is only at 5 frames per second. It would be a huge leap forward from the terrible text only clients currently available.

Hitomi Tiponi wrote: Rebranding is not important at this time - it is only really useful if people have lost interest in joining or you wish to attract a new demographic (fancy word for different social/age group). Currently Second Life has over 10,000 new registrations every day - converting them into 'stayers' should be Linden Lab's main focus. When has it not been their main focus? They just keep failing at it.

You said it was switchable graphics so I assumed it would be the same as Windows 7 machines with nVidia graphics cards (which is what I use). Guess not. Sorry to not be much help. Good luck.

Leeroy, I know you said you set the control panel to run SL at high performance, and I am going to assume you are running Windows 7 on your machine. Have you, just for trying it, tried to right click on the shortcut for SL on your desktop and selecting your AMD graphics card in the 'Run with graphics Processor' option? Sounds like SL is defaulting to your integrated graphics card.

It was lame lol. No worries. My skin is vulture proof. (just keep Peggy away from me. She scares me. J/K)

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: ... Lastly, there are more people in SL now comparatively speaking, that think everything should be free and refuse to spend any money even though they have it. Back then, not many thought SL was 'free' and most people were willing to buy Lindens to get what they wanted. They also had to because freebies were few and far in between. ... Don't forget that back then, you had to spend money to even be a basic account in SL. People were already conditioned to spend money on SL because of having to pay just to join (which I was never against, but the Lab felt differently).

Storm Clarence wrote: Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Seven Overdrive wrote: But... but... I thought you were a chipmunk. :smileysurprised: /me scratches his head in confusion. Have you ever heard the term 'over thinking?' You ain't the only one... dats nuts. Meh.. was attempting to be funny. Guess I shouldn't quit my day job huh.

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Seven Overdrive wrote: But... but... I thought you were a chipmunk. :smileysurprised: /me scratches his head in confusion. Have you ever heard the term 'over thinking?' Yeah... I tend to do that. Hard habit to break. Hehe

But... but... I thought you were a chipmunk. :smileysurprised: /me scratches his head in confusion.

Best advice is to never take any comment made here personally. Some people are just more gruff with their comments than others. I know I am sometimes even though I don't mean to be, but that is usually because I am running low on coffee. :smileyhappy:

True, but I don't really consider the OP to be saying the sky is falling. I would recommend to them to make sure the marketplace is working well for them before closing their in-world shops, or at least consider scaling down their land holdings for their shops to the bare minimum of what they can afford so those customers that use marketplace for only a way of searching for things can still see the products in-world first before they decide to buy.

Senobia Xenga wrote: Why do these threads crop up every so often from disgruntled members? Is it to get attention from the Lindens? Do they really think one gripe will make much difference? I mean, it's kind of like threatening suicide. Most people who intend to commit suicide don't give warnings. They just do it. Same with people who truly get fed up with/burned out on/sick of SL. They don't carry on with long farewells. They just go. If you need someone else to point out the good/bad reasons for you to stay somewhere - anywhere - you maybe should have left a long time ago before your ability to enjoy it hinged on other people. The most damaging type of customers for a company are the disgruntled ones that leave and never say a word, because the company has no idea why. Sort of like all those people that supposedly sign-up for SL and never return without a word as to why they never came back. It all becomes a guessing game for the company with what is wrong. Contrary to some beliefs, LL does watch the forums. They may not respond to most things here, but I'm sure they do watch. PS - Comparing customers that leave a company to people that commit suicide is ridiculous. Just saying.

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: ... Just like RL things cost, and in RL if a venue can't earn a profit , it eventually shuts down. Why do you think it should be any different here in SL when the standard isn't a profit so much as breaking even. I am always puzzled why people think that a handful of people (venue owners) should pay all the costs for entertaining THEM and even in some cases to pay them to come to the venue in the form of cash prizes and give a ways. And where did you get the idea that SL is a freemium virtual world? LL is a for profit company not a charity. They allow basic accounts, relying on people spending money in world and LL getting a cut of the exchange of RL to SL currency and vice versa.. But its not working that way now due in part to the RL economy but that isn't the only reason the other part is just plain misplaced entitlement and miserliness as evidence by people who won't spend a dime for whatever reason complain about seeing anything commercial at all. Because I think it is unrealistic for a roleplaying sim or a club to expect the cost of their sim to be completely covered. As you pointed out many people aren't generous enough with donations to such venues. The reasons for this are probably because they cannot afford to put any money in SL or are supporting their own high tier and can't afford to support someone elses. If someone is so desperate to turn their roleplaying sim or club into a mall with some roleplaying attached, then they should really rethink things. It is not like there is a shortage of clubs or roleplaying sims in SL. Amethyst Jetaime wrote: And where did you get the idea that SL is a freemium virtual world? LL is a for profit company not a charity. They allow basic accounts, relying on people spending money in world and LL getting a cut of the exchange of RL to SL currency and vice versa.. But its not working that way now due in part to the RL economy but that isn't the only reason the other part is just plain misplaced entitlement and miserliness as evidence by people who won't spend a dime for whatever reason complain about seeing anything commercial at all. Because that is essentially what it is. Free client, free to sign-up, free to use the service with free avatars to choose from. You never have to ever spend a dime to use SL. If you want some of the better stuff, then the micropayments begin. Even though the content is made by the content creators and not LL, LL still gets their cut out of it at some point. I am not sure where you got the idea that I was calling LL a charity. Their price gouging for server space is evidence enough that they most certainly are not a charity. I have to say ditto to 16's post in this thread. I do not mind that these places have malls to help cover tier. What I do mind is being forced to navigate through a maze of vendors just to get to the real reason why I came to the sim in the first place. I don't mind landing in the middle of a mall when I go to a sim to RP. Just put the teleporter at the landing point and give me the choice on where I want to go in the sim. That's all I am asking. With that said... I just want to say that I respect your opinion and I thank you for responding. :smileyhappy:

It will become a dress up game for virtual dolls on smart phones.