Selene Gregoire
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Posts posted by Selene Gregoire
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13 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:
In all but some very iffy and narrow edge cases, its always cheaper to increase your tier than to premium up an alt. This increase only makes this slightly more true.
Single private region holders will see a $17.75 savings off $255/m. It is literally not much more than a token gesture, but I'll take it. This will help pay for the slight increases in mainland holding I did for frientals and I won't need to sell off any old mainland for now.
In case you didn't know, when you highlight to quote someone quoted in another post it won't show the original OP's name. It shows the other person. Like it's showing you quoted me when it was someone else. Not the first time it's happened.
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19 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:
Was originally 10 groups.
Nov 10, 2004 it was raised to 15. http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/32/40/26961/1.html
2006 it was raised to 25.
2011 it was pushed to 42. If I remember right, there was a technical limitation preventing it from being higher than 25 before this and Oskar or Andrew made it 42 as a reference to HHGTTG.
2015 was when the 60 bonus was added to premium.
Ah, so it was 2006 when they upped it to 25. Just seemed longer. Thanks!
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17 minutes ago, animats said:
Yes. That's a key point.
LL claims a huge number of signups per day, but they don't disclose what happens to them. The onboarding funnel is
Website signup -> First login to world -> Complete avatar setup -> Get through initial user training -> Reach new user area -> Go someplace beyond new user area -> Stay 1 hour -> Stay 1 day -> Stay 1 week ->Buy premium membership -> Buy land.
At each stage, SL loses some users. Where is the big leak in onboarding? That's a marketing problem. Someone needs to be calling up users who dropped out and chatting with them. No, not sending them a link to SurveyMonkey, calling them up and chatting with them to find out what went wrong.
It's really important that the number of SL users go up, not down. That totally changes the perspective of investors. The current growth rate is maybe -2%/year. Turn that to +2%, and it starts looking much better. Get it to 10%, and Ebbe gets to give keynote speeches at conferences.
Slow performance is a big issue for new users. Read some of those new users "this game sucks" comments. SL is very sluggish to someone who has played GTA V Online or Fortnite. This is a hard technical problem, but not an unsolveable one. LL needs to own that problem and start working hard on it. As users, we should neither make excuses for LL nor accept excuses from LL.
Fortnite has a social aspect. SL needs to figure out how to tap into that desire to socialize in a 3D world and start picking up users who want to socialize more and shoot less.
The Sansar money drain needs to stop. High Fidelity gave up ("pivoted to enterprise" - yeah, right). Sinespace is less than 100 concurrent users and not going anywhere. Sansar has about 11 concurrent users on Steam. More non-Steam users, but under 100 concurrent users. Sansar has 30 people working on it, one for every 3 concurrent users. SL has 70 for 45,000 concurrent users. The Sansar market segment, which I call "VR game level loaders", is a flop, along with VR headsets. Even VRChat is only a few thousand users. So it's safe for Ebbe to admit failure now that everybody else has failed too.
That's a starting point.
I hope you are sitting down.
I agree with everything you've said here.
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14 minutes ago, SlyDog4 said:
You can bypass it a little by enabling offline IM's to go to your email i believe. Also you can make it so inventory offers are automatically accepted (I believe those count towards offline ims and if you run out there is a chance you will not get that item). Next thing they will say is the offline ims to email function will be removed or become a premium option
Oh for... !
Don't give them any ideas!
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9 minutes ago, ErikMouse Dawid said:
What about the volume of complaints and protests with basics going from 42 groups down to 35 groups would create?
I am basic. DUH!
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13 minutes ago, Fox Wijaya said:
a little thinking in solutions
... : when getting at home after work, i check my post, mail and left messages. People inworld could do something like that in groups too, check the received posts in the groupwindow, when all who post make the first word their store name, it would be a matter of a minute to filter the interesting content.
Not everyone has the time to go through several hundred emails coming from SL after work. If you've never been a part of one of those groups I mentioned, you've never seen the sheer volume of notices that are sent out, much of which duplicates because it isn't just the merchant sending them, it's their employees too. Then there are those who receive a high volume of email that has nothing to do with SL.
And how are you going to enforce uniformity so that all duplicates are titled the exact same? I'm sorry. I just don't think you are thinking this through far enough. You know what they say about engineers? It looks good on paper but it doesn't work.
Or maybe it's just me. I'm tired. It's been a long day thanks to the waste management running their trucks too early in the morning and waking me up before 5am. Then, of course, the migraine sets in due to lack of sleep. The TBI doesn't help. So, if I am misunderstanding what you are saying, I'm sorry.
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9 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:
I've been a free account the entire time too. Nothing that happens to Premium accounts affects my experience...those people getting more doesn't mean that I get less. I understand that the Premium price increase affects people who want Premium accounts, but if, like me, you've never had one and don't want one, I don't understand what we've lost?
You will be losing some groups and offlines. They are removing from basics and giving to premiums.
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1 minute ago, Matty Luminos said:
Well this settles my debate on whether to put my alt back on premium - its no longer worth it. But keeping my own is still within my budget. Yes it's a 37% hike all at once but I've been in SL for 12 years and I don't remember the Premium fees ever increasing, it's been $72 a year since for ever, so averaged out over 12 years or more, it's not so much.
These changes hurt everyone except land barons and I suspect the lowering of region prices is to combat the expected exodus of users out of estate rental and into Linden Homes.
On the upside, there will be a lot of new Linden Homes available by the end of the month as swathes of Premiums downgrade to Basic.
lol Matty. Leave it to you to find a silver lining in all this mess.
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14 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:
Was around 15 at one point, I can't recall if it was lower than that.
It was 10 when I joined in 2004 and didn't increase for several years. I don't remember off hand what year it was but I want to say it was around 2007/8/9 when they upped it. It may have been as early as 2006 but I doubt it.
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6 minutes ago, Fox Wijaya said:
thats a personal choice not based on facts but on feelings .. there are ways enough to keep up to date with DJ's and parties, social groups could go use the same priciple... connect in subject groups instead of all on their own, even merchants could unite in those.
( just suggestions .. but thats easy for me because i don't hoard groups that much)I can just imagine the volume of spam that would create. Basics won't have a snowball's chance in hell with the offline reduction. Offlines capped daily. Emails crammed full. It wouldn't be much better for premiums. There are already a lot of similar groups out there that I've had to leave because of the constant spam from all the different merchants and their employees. Maybe rethink that one a little?
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2 minutes ago, Fox Wijaya said:
there are clubs on nearly every parcelcorner .. all are more of the same, nothing outstanding good in build or theme, and every noob is a "experienced" DJ
many clubs kill themself by their policy on tips and gestures .. the constant begging and spamming the chat full of rubbish won't invite me, and others, to come ever again.This is all too true. We've (RL other half and I) owned and operated a few clubs in SL over the years. Never again. The truth is the majority of those clubs do not make money. They lose money. They operate at a loss, not a profit and are lucky if they break even once in a while. That is the real reason most clubs (and RP
simsregions) disappear after a relatively short time. -
1 minute ago, BelindaN said:
Well, Photobucket went on a similar policy of self destruct, thinking that introducing a high charge would be accepted by its users, and that didn't end well.
I was one of the ones who dumped Photobucket when they went full pay. I wouldn't have minded a small hosting fee but they went more than the whole hog. I was using it to host some of the images I was using on the FS forum before I discovered that particular forum provider didn't limit that sort of thing, just in the nick of time.
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2 minutes ago, Nextio said:
it's early userbase has already moved on.
Some of us are still here. It's been a long 15 years. Holay crap I'm old. lol
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9 minutes ago, j0Q said:
Just saying it would be a nice option.
Yes, it would and I would love to have that option.
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8 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:
Michael should have been canned years sooner, one of the worst things even to SL. Complete feature stagnation and many dumb mistakes like paying a design firm, who had never touched SL before, to design the Viewer 2.0 UI. It took years to begin to recover.
I remember all too well. I was still on the FS support team back then and heard a lot of things the rest of us "plebs"
never had an inkling about. There were times when I was actually scared he would succeed. He came way to close to succeeding for comfort. SL would have been dead long ago if they hadn't canned him when they did.
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3 minutes ago, callistanull said:
They could open name changes to basic accounts if they do it at all, but either way they have to charge more than a trivial amount, to keep people (of either account type) from abusing the privilege. Realistically they'd probably charge extra for basic accounts on top of whatever the change fee is. At that point it would make more sense to get premium for one month, get the change done, and then not renew. Still no real idea what the fee would be, but I've heard numbers around $20 or $25 USD floated as rumors, so I don't think a one month membership, especially factoring in the stipend, would be a huge barrier to anyone who was willing to pay the change fee in the first place.
*sigh* So because I'm basic, I'm to be punished for being basic by being charged more for a service? The axe is about to fall on my neck isn't it.
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5 minutes ago, j0Q said:
''IMs get capped please send a notecard.'' I pretty sure I will continue to read that. lol I want one of those one time fee Charter Memberships I was told some of those old timers are getting L$500 to L$1,000 weekly stipend.
They stopped selling lifetimes in 2004. It's not ever going to happen again. Sorry.
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4 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:
From what I remember, the plan with bring back last names was to allow for paid changed. Given how long it has been without any news on it, I think there have been further complications to bring them back. I think we can all agree that this is Michael's fault.
OMG! Yes! Even though he has been gone for years now some of the crap he pulled (and tried to pull) still chaps my @$$.
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5 minutes ago, Fox Wijaya said:
i can have misread but i hear nobody about the VAT... as far i know EU residents now get the VAT on premium waved away, but it seems to come back again according the post!
That is a adittional 20% for the raised premiums!!! ...ehm...guys that gets a bit nuts!
VERY small font...Since I do live in the US, I didn't want to bring it up and be the bearer of more bad news. I'm glad you did.
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2 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:
In my experience, stores for human female shaped individuals are more likely to have an active in-world store. That appears to be one of the larger classifications market segments in SL. For those of us in the margins, the sales volumes on merchandise for our demographic is often not enough to sustain an in-world presence on its own.
You're making the assumption that the majority of my shopping is for clothes. Sorry, that isn't what I do the majority of my shopping for. .
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4 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:
chosen to do a single larger increases later rather than several smaller increases over the past few years.
The smaller increases over a period of time would have been the better business move. Makes a bitter horse pill a bit easier to swallow.
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2 minutes ago, callistanull said:
The "premium perk" I'd actually want is being able to pick a surname. I've been Resident since 2014. Didn't like the generic surname then, really don't like it now.
It would be better if groups stayed the same for existing basic members and the number available went down for NEW basic accounts, and the surname change was rolled out as an extra paid feature available to premium members only. New basic accounts are either brand-new people, who won't be as involved in as many RPs / social groups / merchant things for awhile as people who have been here for years or over a decade, or they're alts and the user behind the alt can get by with fewer on that account. I rarely exceed a dozen groups, but that's apparently unusual.
I think you may have forgotten to take one thing into account on the changing last name thing. A lot of us basic accounts have last names because we've been here that long and longer. So why shouldn't we be able to pay to change our last names?
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11 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:
That seems a bit petty, probably only like 10% of the stores on MP have a inworld.
For some reason I rather doubt we shop at the same places for the same things. When the big move to the MP occurred I thought I would be losing the vast majority of the inworld stores I buy from. Fortunately, for me, I've been proven wrong. The majority of the places I shop at still have inworld stores. The ones that are still creating content anyway. Some of them are gone from SL and no longer have either location.
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12 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:
The good for region owners: One region will cost $17.75 less per month with the $20 region decrease and the $2.25 member increase.
The good for all other premium members: ???
The good for everybody else: ???
The whatever for all premium: 10 more groups, ok then. Offline messages have been bugged for years and 30 more is unlikely to make a difference.
The whatever for basic: 10 fewer IM's, see previous line.
The bad for premium with less than full region: Pay $27/yr for almost nothing more.
The bad for non-premium, basic plebs: Less groups and if already at the 42 limit, will have to leave 8 groups to join 1 other group.... wtf?
Since I own a region, this change seems to be a slight positive for me. The region price change isn't enough to actually make a difference, its more of a nice gesture than anything less. Now if they dropped it by around 40%, I'd start consider get another region or two and starting up a resident created experience, but at the current prices, such things are beyond being economical. If they offered the buy-down program again, I would be quite happy (I missed it last time because LL didn't post it anywhere other than the blog).
I am having a hard time seeing any upside for every other class of resident, eg. all that don't own full region(s). The premium raise doesn't seem too bad given it hasn't changed in forever and inflation is a thing, but it would have been nice if there was actually something of value for non region owners in this. Given how extremely unreliable offline group notices are (50-95% failure rate on average in the tests I have been doing over the last 2.5 years for BUG-40824), the higher limit is near meaningless.
Making premium more expensive and basic worse is not a good start on convincing more residents to upgrade. The $17.75 savings on $255/m is unlikely to sway more than a handful in to getting a new region.
- At a minimum, the group limit needs to be unchanged for basic, this alone is the most stupid change. Basic should just remain the same, or at worse, new limits only affect new users (and that would still be poop).
- There is still a massive volume of abandoned mainland, seriously, another tier boost would be nice to see.
- If they want more region owners, drop the price to an even $199, lower the setup few to $50-100, and do a week long promo in June to waive the setup fee.
- After the cloud move: Add more adult mainland regions and finally finish the Zindra continent. Further region and tier price drops to promote more new land owners.
This was the primary benefit, and often whole reason, for being premium long ago when billing was a constant problem and billing tickets were backlogs over 6-9+ months for years.
What is it about you that makes me feel good whenever we agree on something? Thank you for chiming in!
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... : when getting at home after work, i check my post, mail and left messages. People inworld could do something like that in groups too, check the received posts in the groupwindow, when all who post make the first word their store name, it would be a matter of a minute to filter the interesting content.
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What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
ok Now I am confused. I can't make any sense out of what you just said. English isn't my native language either.