Isilmeriel

A bit off topic but can everyone chill out and stop pushing the linden sell cost please?

If being impacted by a sudden increase of 5-15% cost or a 7.5% decrease in income means one should switch jobs, a good portion of the population should quit. People have gone on strikes for a mere 2% pay raise, meanwhile we shouldn't be unhappy/concerned about what amounts to several consecutive and ongoing pay cuts?

I wrote this back in June when LL doubled the processing fee. Turns out I was being overly optimistic thinking it would be an annual fee increase, instead of twice in under 6 months. Judging from the wording, LL is shooting straight for that 30% cut as their end goal. The problem with this increasingly regular fee hike is that as a creator, I now expect a diminishing return for new products down the line. Additionally, these changes add to a sense of instability which further erodes the confidence in SL market and longevity. I don't speak for anyone other than myself, but I've felt increasingly unmotivated to devote time for commercial SL projects.

When the superduper premium is out will they subtly nerf regular premium to encourage you to subscribe to the higher tier option? 🤣

That's why this fee bump is worrying. Not because of the 2.5% itself, but just the business-as-usual tone of the announcement and the recent fee hike in 2018. Feels like annual fee hike is going to be the norm now (quoting from the announcement, "our ongoing efforts") until SL finally dies. They will keep raising taxes on us because they can, and there's not really anything we can do to discourage them realistically. Would creators quit SL if they increase fees by 3% or 5% every year? Eventually, maybe, after being milked for a few more years. But that's tomorrow's problem, for LL.

It's irritating but not apocalyptic, except that the processing fees were just increase in Jan 2018 from the original 1.5% that had been stable for years. Another drastic increase in such a short window is cause for concern if this annual fee increase is going to become a pattern.

I am looking for a digital concept artist who is able to come up with original design artworks. Currently I'm working on hard surface type projects so any experiences in vehicle, architectural, furniture, or prop design are ideal. Payment will be lump sum or percentage-based depending on the complexity and scope of the project. Long term cooperation is also possible. Please IM isilmeriel inworld and include a portfolio or links to previous work if interested.

Perhaps vet and recruit some Moles to look after this on a mostly volunteer basis? Must set some ground rules of impartiality of course

You can use Caspervend to do this. Set it up and download your marketplace store transactions as a csv or compatible format and upload it into caspervend, and then set up ANS so that all future MP sales will also be recorded on the casper site. You can mass update after that.

You could try using a third party WebGL site like Sketchfab to demo your mesh buildings. It won't be the same as having people walk through the buildings in scale and seeing everything with SL shaders, but it's a free alternative that still lets people easily see your build from different angles.

Probably better off establishing your own reputation as a creator and a designer without resorting to groups such as SLOCCA. Not entirely sure why but SLOCCA always struck me as something pretentious. Like someone else mentioned earlier, if you sell anything full perm (things that you made yourself) at all, you aren't original enough for them. I can understand that perhaps making full perm items available decreases the originality of other merchants in their view, but that also brings to question of the furniture and clothing makers among their members who use full perm animations and scripts. Where do you draw the line? Not to mention, for a group that preaches originality (which is wonderful), they don't mind architecture stores that reproduce iconic buildings from popular movies. The fine details of legality notwithstanding, the group's idea of originality seems a little muddled while managing to appear holier-than-thou at the same time.

Any way to check with LL on what's happening? Would be reassuring to hear some official response. Do they take questions at their Labchat things?

Charlotte Bartlett wrote: So now we are seeing speedier payouts... I noticed the Lindex on limit sells is slowly taking a nose dive - even selling at 251 is hard pushing us nearer to 253? This is very different to earlier months as we transitioned out of 248 to 249. Pennies on the dollar but with larger cash out / across all merchants it's not a small amount of cash. Purposeful devaluation or just reflective of specific activities over the past few months (e.g. people cashing out for the sim discounts etc to USD?)... Yeah what's up with that? It's been 248 for most of the time I've been exchanging L$ and then a L$1 inflation last winter, now suddenly up to 251 this month alone

I'm confused about this "Each transaction actually costs us more than the $1 (USD) fee we have been charging" statement. It's not like we've actually ever had just the flat $1 fee. There's also a 3.5% fee for converting L$ to USD in the first place. Adding in the new 1.5% makes it a 5% fee in total from L$ to paypal, and this is on top of the 5% fee for those of you who rely on marketplace for the majority of sales. Granted, 5% isn't draconian compared to some other virtual asset market services, it's still a major increase relatively especially at a time when overall user numbers are declining. Just seems incredibly misleading to complain about receiving only a "flat rate" of $1 per transaction...

Is that the vertex number reported by Maya or Second Life? Not 100% sure about Maya but in Max the actual exported vertex count isn't the same as the one displayed within Max. vertices along hard edges get split when you export. Unless you have everything in a single smoothing group, you are likely to see an increase of real vertices in SL versus what the modelling software shows.