Penny Patton

Also, I would suggest using better terminology. "Malls" are not "stores". A mall is a collection of stores. The stores themselves are run by the content creators. The malls are simply landlords renting out space to the stores run by content creators.

Phil Deakins wrote: But you are free to think that the marketplace hasn't had a negative impact on stores if you wish. Are you still talking about malls, or are you talking about content creator's stores now? If the former, you've got a memory problem because this statement contradicts even the first paragraph of your post here. Phil Deakins wrote: I was just pointing out that your "sand" was in fact bedrock when the stores were built, and LL turned it into sand later, when they unscrupulously started and pushed the marketplace. And you've failed to make a pursuasive argument. If that "bedrock" were so solid, the existance of an online shopping venue wouldn't be an issue. The purpose of in-world malls only served to provide content creators with more visibility. That's it. An online store achieves that much more easily. In addition, it makes shopping easier for the consumer. Browsing a content creator's selection of products is much more easily done in the online store format than camming around an in-world shop (or multiple in-world shops spread across multiple sims).

Phil Deakins wrote: Penny Patton wrote: The only people hurt are those who rent out shop space for stores and malls. But that simply wasn't a sustainable business model so long as LL's goal is to draw in more users. The domino effect described only applies to those whose business model can only be described as "building on sand". Your "building on sand" comment is nonsense. The stores that have folded because of the marketplace didn't build on sand. They built on bedrock. Some time later, LL turned the bedrock into sand. Care to back that statement up? First off, what shops have folded due to the marketplace? Why did they fold? Again, the marketplace isn't driving content creators out of business. The marketplace is a venue from which content creators sell. Second of all, I've pointed out why an online shopping site makes more sense (It's provides indisputable benefits to both the seller and the consumer above and beyond in-world shops), from an end user standpoint, than in-world stores. You've yet to back up why you believe the opposite is true. When your rebuttlel consists entirely of "nuh-uh":, maybe you should reevaluate your position.

The Marketplace/Walmart comparison is silly. The Marketplace isn't driving content creators out of business, it's simply providing them a more intuitive, easier to navigatge alternative to in-world shops and malls. From both a content creator and a content consumer standpoint, this is a good thing. The only people hurt are those who rent out shop space for stores and malls. But that simply wasn't a sustainable business model so long as LL's goal is to draw in more users. The domino effect described only applies to those whose business model can only be described as "building on sand". Also, contrary to that argument, there is still a market for in-world exposure. Content creators are best served by putting their content in front of large numbers of people. You can't do that with either the Marketplace, or a dingy shop tucked away in some forgotten sim, you do that by renting shop space in popular clubs, role-play sims, etcetera. What the marketplace does is make it easier for people to spend their money in Second Life. That's great for content creators and for LL themselves. The problem is, LL has done very little else to make SL more intuitive or otherwise draw people in. SL has a lot of issues and has seen very, very, very little improvement over the years, so when the hype bubble broke then user retention, whic hwas already poor, plummeted. That's why SL seems to empty these days. It started well before the Marketplace became any sort of issue. It will continue even if LL abandons the Marketplace right now. (Would probably get worse, actually.)

charliecav wrote: What are the main things I need to do to make my Avatar look good? Skin? AO? Clothes? What should I do first? That's a fairly broad question and the answers depend on how you define a "good" avatar. Personally, I would say you need to start with a good shape. The starter avatars, and even the default shapes provided when you create a new shape, are all pretty terrible. Tiny heads, wierd gimpy/short arms, absurdly long legs. LL also tends to start avatars off at about 7'/2.13m tall.Personally, I think a good avatar makes good use of scale, a human should be human sized so a wookie/dragon/minotaur can tower over them as intended. (And so they didn't need to pay more for land.) But since the majority of SL avatars are giants, you might understandably put a stronger preference on fitting in and that's quite alright. Regardless of your feelings about scale, you want to have proper proportions to look good. Most people will generally feel a well proportioned avatar is more atttractive The problem is, it's difficult to find well made shapes for sale in SL. Even the popular shops tend to be bad about proportions. Here's a guide on shape making that might help. It's just a quick run-through on getting proper proportions. Right at the beginning is a link to a longer version which goes more into detail explaining proportion and body types. A good shape needs a good skin, luckily there are more good skins in SL than shapes so they're easier to find. The problem is, they tend to be expensive. Still, you can find some great deals on slightly older skins that still look great. Of course, how you define a good skin, again, depends on what you're going for. If you want a muscle man avatar you'll need to have an appropriate shape and a muscular skin to compliment it. (You cannot max out muscle sliders on a shape to make your avatar look muscular, you need a muscular skin. Maxing out the muscle sliders for the shape just makes you look like a blob.) Since your username is "charlie" I'm assuming you're going for a guy avatar. I'd recommend opening up your SL search window and looking for *KANTO* or <TheAbyss> for some good athletic/average skins or .: SKING :. for a nice muscle man shape. (I would not recommend their shapes, tho.The SKING and Abyss shapes are particularly wonky in their proportions.) Clothes depend highly on the sort of look you're going for. Casual? Space marine? A Cimmerian warrior? A steampunk adventurer? It's impossible to make a recommendation without knowing what you're aiming for. As for an AO, I'd recommend peaking searching for the shops Oracul, Body Language, and Animazoo. Oh! Go to the RP sim Doomed Ship and look for their free starter avatar, it includes a free AO to play with. It's not the best AO out there, but it uses the free ZHAO-II scripted AO that lots of people use, so it can help you to get familiar with how it works. In short, I'd say try to decide on a theme for your appearance (ie: casual athletic guy, super hero, victorian gentleman, cowboy, etcetera) and then ask for recommendations around that theme.

Perrie Juran wrote: No, I am not expecting a weekly pod cast. But still, I don't think one sentence in a month can be defined as '"a lot." I said he has communicated through the profile feeds a lot, as in since the feature was added. It's been around slightly longer than "April".

I always thought of the complete lack of a sidebar in V3 being a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. People hated the sidebar not because it was a bad idea, but because it was used poorly. LL added the sidebar and began shoehorning everything into it, regardless of whether or not it was suited for the sidebar. I really wish LL would bring the sidebar back as an option, letting us choose what was docked in the sidebar and what floated freely. I love the V3 customizable UI, I don't think it's entirely a step back to V1, but I do think it would be improved with the option of sidebar docking. Then again, I also like the current web profiles and just wish they hadn't stopped developing them short of adding more useful functionality that they sorely need.

Perrie Juran wrote: Seriously???????? One post in the entire month of April. https://my.secondlife.com/rodvik.linden Not sure what you're expecting, a weekly podcast? I do agree that communication has actually gotten worse since Rodvik took over, but it's not like it has ceased entirely and he has been communicating when focusing on certain issues. Perrie Juran wrote: But they can be faulted for not listening better to their users. Please don't get me wrong though. I think it has improved under Rodvik. But it has a very, very long way to go. LL doesn't so much ignore their users as listen to the wrong ones too often. I'd say this has actually improved since Rodvik came into the picture. As for LL still having a long way to go, that's pretty much what I was saying. It takes a long time to turn a slow boat like LL and being only one man Rodcik can only give his personal attention to so many issues at once. I'm not even saying LL will definitely get there under Rodvik, just that if it's moving there it will take a long time to even notice it.

Bogging a conversation down in useless semantics isn't very constructive. The fact of the matter is there is a culture at LL, a mindset and way of doing things that is present in how they've handled development, customer service, addressing technical disruptions, etcetera for over a decade now. When you've developed a culture like that it takes time to change, unless you plan on firing all your employees and immediately replacing them, which isn't really feasible or necessary.

He actually uses his profile to communicate a lot, unless that's what you mean by "twit-face", in which I have to disagree was a bad move. If anything, my biggest complaint about the current profiles is that LL halted development on them just short of adding some extremely useful functionality that had been discussed, the kind of functionality that, like "Profile Picks" would have been superb at drawing users to user created content and communities that would interest them. SL has always suffered from poor social and search tools, and LL can't really be faulted for taking inspiration from popular social tools when developing SL's social feature set. In this regard he corrected Philip and M's mistake of copying the look of twitter and facebook without any substance.

Oh, one other thing that others have mentioned yet it still managed to slip my mind. 6. Interoperability with existing SL functions. Like letting us include animation sets as a part of an outfit!

Most AOs are well scripted and efficient, but there's a few out there which carry a significant resource cost. Also, dismissing efficiency because only a small amount of resources are saved here and there is not a healthy way to approach an environment like SL. Videogames with much more detailed and visually impressive graphics run so much better than SL precisely because efficiency and optimization is a top priority. That said, the real benefit to client side AOs will only be had if LL sees what it is they need to do to make client side AOs effective. 1. An intuitive, easy to use interface that makes a client side AO far easier for users new to SL to pick up and play with. Scripted AOs, even at their best, are crude and kludgy in terms of usability. 2. Reliability. An official client side AO should be, at bare minimum, as reliable as proven scripted AOs. Being an official feature, LL should be able to take it further.There's talk of the official client side animation system actually allowing residents to replace the default animations, rather than playing an animation over them. 3. Fully featured functionality. Give users the ability to replace ALL animations, including all those subtle animations users might not even be aware of. Allow users to make use of multiple animations for each avatar movement. Multiple walks, sits, stands, etcetera which play either in sequence or at random. 4. The more options the better. If LL goes that extra step and gives us the ability to alter height offset for sitting/crouching animations, the ability to alter priority settings for animations, or even the ability to increase/decreese our walking/flying/running speeds that would be brilliant! 5. Expanding the toolset. As LL implements additional features via the inclusion of an official animation system, they can extend the extra functionality to content creators via new LSL functions and other tools.

I still believe Rodvik becoming the new CEO has been a good thing. Since then SL has slowly been moving in a better direction. Sure, improvements might not be coming hard and fast, but you have to realize, LL made about 12 years of poor decisions before Rodvik was brought on board, and now he's tasked with turning that all around with less than half the manpower (Before Rodvik was brought on, LL began cutting loose employees over the course of about half a year, which ultimately amounted to about 60% of their workforce.). Not only that, but while the man in the hotseat might have changed, all of the employees under him are still the same employees and same corporate culture which have been with LL during the past decade of poor decisions, and not all of them consider the decisions to have been bad despite the situation. Due to the reality of the situation, there is no way a single personel change, even at the CEO level, could show a substantial improvement to the company within even a year or two. Still, we have gotten some nice signs of improvement. The Viewer 3 UI is awesome. Pathfinding is finally coming! SL has needed this for years, as well as other NPC functionality (more of which will hopefully follow). The Lindens are talking of bringing client side AOs to the official viewer. The Lindens have voiced a desire to include ex-Linden Qarl's mesh deformation patch (finally bringing rigged mesh functionality without which rigged mesh is arguably broken). There's also been a few missteps, but in the past Linden Lab reliably made the worst decision every single time. Now there's a substantial move towards LL making good decisions. That's worth noting before declaring Rodvik's bid to turn SL around a failure. Again, we'll need another year or two to see the full scope of Rodvik's changes to Linden corporate culture and decision making. I know that's not what people want to hear, but realistically it's the very best we could possibly expect.

Ariel Vuissent wrote: "Whoever runs this site" is Linden Labs. They no longer permit any viewer to show true online status because it was determined to be a privacy violation for residents to be able to see the online status of other residents they were not friends with. I believe the OP was referring to the fact that LL used to post the current concurrency level (number of people online at a given time) right on the SL mainpage and the SL login screen. That number has been declining steadily for years now and LL removed it. Regarding LL advertising more, I think advertising SL in its current state would be premature. SL gets an impressive amount of new user sign-ups, their problem seems to be in retaining those new users, as most sign in once then never again. A lot of residents will offer up one problem or another claiming it to be the one thing LL needs to fix to solve this retention problem, personally I think it's not that simple. I believe there are a number of issues LL needs to address in order to solve the problem. They should be paying attention to what those short lived users, and ther ex-users, complain about. "It's ugly." "It's too confusing." "There's nothing to do!" These are the three most quoted complaints about Second Life. From what I can tell, these complaints stem from the fact that LL puts too much emphasis on hiring programmers, and has neglected to hire people who understand the aspects of Second Life which most contribute to these complaints. I tend to point out SL's issues with graphics, and how most of the real problems with SL's graphics stem from poorly made, often outright broken tools, and poor design choices on the part of the Lab. (Ever noticed how almost all women in SL have freaky short arms? There's a surprising reason for that.) However, the same point explains the other two as well. Aside from Rodvik, has Linden Lab ever hired game level designers? People experienced in crafting tutorials? Do they have any user experience experts to point out the problem with SL's profile functionality and poor chat tools? LL desperately needs some professionals with experience in disciplines other than writing code. I can guarantee you they won't be able to turn around their new user retention numbers otherwise.

I'm engaging in the proud forum tradition of replying without reading what others have already posted, so I might be repeating some advice here. Not spending money at first is good, even if you were already certain of staying. It's easy to get a skewed impression of what's available in SL by the quality of the starter avatars and avatars lingering in the starter environments. I'd definitely give it a week or so while you search out some of SL's more impressive locations to get a better idea of what's out there. In the meantime, you have access to all of the clothes, hair, skins and accessories from any of the SL starter avatars, plus some more hidden away in the library folder. You can find these in Library>Clothing in your inventory. Also check out Library>Accessories. Especially the Hair Design Options folder. Most people don't know about the hair options in there, many of them are extremely nice. From there, do lots of window shopping. Look for avatars that impress you, check out the "Picks" tab of their profile to see if they list any shops. When you visit a place you can create a landmark from the "World" menu at the top of your screen. Collect a bunch of landmarks of shops so you can go back to them after you have a good feel for the quality and prices of avatar clothing and accessories. Also be on the lookout for freebies. These can vary in quality and tend to, overall, not be as good as stuff you can buy, but there's definitely some gems out there.Some role-play sims provide free avatars for new players to jump into the RP with ro to use in exploring the sim without breaking theme (I know Doomed Ship, Tombstone and 1940's Berlin do this). Eventually, if you want to put together a quality avatar, you'll need to get some money and buy some stuff, or learn to make your own. Don't worry, tho, a $300 outfit is less than $1.25usd. Throwing $10usd or so at your account will get you plenty of play money to last you a while so long as you don't go crazy. But like I said, window shop first. Check out freebies and the clothing you already have in the Library. Get a feel for what's out there and how much most places charge. Nothing worse than buying something only to find someone else makes a version that's a hundred times better at half the price.

Pussycat Catnap touched on it, but figured it's worth pointing out that a large part of the "short arm syndrome" is simply that whoever created the appearance editor was apparently entirely unfamiliar with human proportions. Several of the proportion sliders in the appearance editor are skewed unnaturally in opposite directions between the male and female shapes. For instance, men are unable to have legs as long as women and women are unable to have arms as long as men The arm slider difference is the most startling because it's pushed to such an extreme that women over about 6'2" and taller are entirely unable to have proportionately long arms. Worse yet, most of the female starter avatars have women starting at about 6'8", way being that limit. The starter shapes themselves tend towards poor proportions, all of them suffering small heads, short arms and super long legs. Add to this scenario that LL has failed to provide any sort proportion guides in the appearance editor and it's no wonder SL avatars tend to look so odd. It's amazing anyone manages to make an avatar look good with so much stacked against them! Touching on the height issue that also popped up, it'd be great if LL fixed the height displayed in the appearance editor (it's currently wrong, tho most TPVs fix it, if you're unsure hop on a pose stand and stretch a prim from the bottom of your bare feet to the top of your avatar's skull and check the size of the prim. All prims are measured in metres!). I'd also love to see them scale down the starter avatars to realistic sizes for two reasons. First, the giant avatars require everyone to build larger to accommodate them. Second, when everyone is pushing the extreme tall end of the scale by default, like they currently are, it makes it impossible for those who wish to be giants to be so. Also, given the weird social stigma against short avatars, this has narrowed the size range you generally see in avatars, creating an environment of fewer possibilities and less variety in shapes and sizes. Like Pussycat, I've put together a couple tutorials on shape making with an emphasis on proportions. A long version, that goes into detail explaining how proportion works, and a short version which is a trimmed down step by step guide to creating a proportional shape. I also provide a selection of free shapes in-world and on the Marketplace. The in-world versions are full perm. The Marketplace versions will be after I update my inventory for direct delivery, but until then are no-transfer. They're just a way to help people start customizing their avatar from a good, proportional base.

Like others have pointed out, you can use an RLV script to force-wear a "wet layer" clothing item on people using RLV relays. Another way to do it is to have the water rez a temp prim that follows a person for a few moments after they leave the water, dropping water drop particles. This doesn't require RLV, but doesn't look as realistic as also adding the wet layer clothing. Depends on what you're going for, really.

Electronic Mode wrote: Who misses avatars with full names. First and Last name? i am kinda sick of those Johnny563273 names Please lets bring back full names. thanks This really shouldn't be an issue, but it is because Linden Lab gave into community pressure over irrational fears and made usernames visible by default. Combined with failing to explain display names to new users, that is the reason you see names like Johnny563273 . If Linden Lab hid usernames by default, as they should, and properly explained display names to new users, then it would not be an issue at all as display names allow for first and last names.

Baloo Uriza wrote: Penny Patton wrote: There's a fe AO HUDs that let you replace the typing animation with something else. I replaced mine with talking gestures and a friend made a script for me that lets my avatar speak simlish instead of playing the typing sound. I find this to be a lot better. Hopefully, this animation is not the same as your speech gesture when you're on your mic. Really annoying to think someone's typing when it turns out they're talking and you're not on voice. Penny Patton wrote: Philip Linden used to use the word "immersion" a lot in speeches about SL, but I'm not sure he ever quire understood what the word actually meant. How so? SL has developed it's own idioms and customs. No, it's not the same as the speech gestures that pla y when you're on mic. What I mean by Philip not understanding immersion is that SL is full of immersion breaking choices made by Linden Lab. The typing sound and animation that play as you type are one of those immersion breakers, they're a reminder of that divide between you and the world you're interacting with. I'd also cite the camera placement (which is far too high, like you're an outside observer looking down into this separate world, rather than immersing you in it), the undeveloped sound tools and general lack of sound in Linden environments, and the lack of tools allowing content creators to make interactive experiences (something which, thankfully, seems to be changing).

Hunter Stern wrote: Maybe, because not everyone wants SL to look like or be presented from only one point of view. We are not 'One Opinion', we are Many. When I joined SL, there were many tips on how to improve things, and many helpful souls. In the end though, it came down to ME simply getting out and doing it and finding out for myself. You can't break SL. Sure things might not be what you expected in the end result, but that's the learning process too. There is no 'one way' or 'simple answer'. Even when SL becomes stagnet and dull, the human mind is generally always changing, evolving, and discovering. Have you thought of applying for a position at Linden Lab? They do have openings and that would be a great way to get ideas through and in practice and testing as well. Well, these articles are observations about the content Linden Lab provides, as well as pointing out long standing issues with the tools, and how both of these factors wind up limiting the ability of the residents to create content, rather than opinions on how the residents should be creating content. I did apply at Linden Lab either last year or the year before that. At present, tho, they'd have to make me a really nice offer to draw me away from my current job. :matte-motes-smitten:

It sounds like you're trying to create an avatar that is larger than the 8'10" height limit avatars can reach. If that's correct, you need to understand that eight sliders affect avatar height. Height Head Size Neck Length Hip Length Leg Length The above are the main ones. These straight-up affect your height by increasing them. Torso length also affects your height, but not in the same way. Primarily it changes the ratio between upper body and leg length, but it also adjusts height slightly, however increasing it can, in some cases, result in slightly reduced height. Now, you can also add some height to yout appearance by wearing an avatar shoe layer and sdjuting the following sliders; Heel Height Platform Height From the sounds of it, your best bet is increasing the neck length. If that doesn't work you may want to play around with some of these other sliders. I've posted a more detailed article about avatar shape and the appearance editor here.

There's a fe AO HUDs that let you replace the typing animation with something else. I replaced mine with talking gestures and a friend made a script for me that lets my avatar speak simlish instead of playing the typing sound. I find this to be a lot better. Philip Linden used to use the word "immersion" a lot in speeches about SL, but I'm not sure he ever quire understood what the word actually meant.

Hello, just sharing a two part article I wrote pertaining primarily to how Linden Lab could better present Second Life to potential and new users, in both their marketing materials and the new user experience. This evolved into explaining how these same actions could nurture better created content among the community (as better tools and examples go a long way towards helping first time builders dive in, and allow more creative freedom to more experienced builders) and providing tips that anyone could user to better their content creation projects in SL. As I couldn't find a forum for suggestions aimed at LL, I figured this was the most relevent forum to linkl the articles in. Beautiful Second Life Part 1 covers Linden Lab's presentation of the Second Live avatar, explaining the proportion and scale issues with the starter avatars LL still provides new users as well as existing bugs and shortcomings with the avatar appearance editor which make it difficult for anyone to create an impressive looking avatar. Versus Beautiful Second Life part 2 covers the environments and imagery used for both the new user experience and LL's promotion of Second Life, as well as visual presets which Linden Lab could improve at no performance cost to users. Presets such as the placement of the SL camera, camera FOV settings and the default windlight settings. Versus Among the tips are links to a guide on human proportions, including how to create a well proportioned shape, work around appearance editor bugs, and achieve different looks using different proportions. There is also a link to a guide on improving the SL camera, tips on FOV settings, links to improved windlight settings, tips on using lighting and sound in environment design, and other helpful tips and techniques for making Second Life look as visually stunning as possible.

Ceka Cianci wrote: ya i can't get the arms the right length..that was kind of frustrating...i'm 5'1" and they are still short of making the length..also it would be nice if they had upper and forearm adjustments..because it all feels like it is the forearm that stretches ... You're 5'1" with a maxed out arm slider and your arms still aren't long enough? I never seem to have that problem until I get a shape up past 6'1" or so.

Maelstrom Janus wrote: What a laugh for ages we've had people on these forums droning on about people stealing their ideas and designs even going to court... Now they've got a law designed to stop it and another gang are moaning.... god bless america land of the corporate and the free You are seriously misrepresenting the issue here.