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Belldandy Schmajuk

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  1. Certainly a nuisance and a telltale Second Life is prioritizing cheap revenues over corporate image (one of a sucessful, independent plattaform), I can finally feel this year SL is not on a existentialist crisis, but this could be just my own particular perspective. Saying that, I can´t avoid but notice, that kind of destructive process some enterprises dare to make, when the leader of the meeting ask his minions around the table on how to maximize their profits and cut some losses?, and they decide to remove the lettuce on a burger to make their business more profitable, on the next meeting they decide to lower the bread quality just a bit, (a cheaper supplier etc.), at the end, you start losing customers "inexplicably". But Second Life is still the most developed 3D plattaform out there, its total GDP output is bigger than some real (but small) countries, and what all the alternatives? to this date the alternatives are simply underdeveloped jokes, the 3D engines cannot outpace the current bandwitdh/cpu assets and Second Life is pretty much efficient on that aspect, load times are near the user capacity, and those plattaforms who dare to dimiss this effect (such as "blue mars" to name an example) have ominous pc requirements and skyhigh download times (just to tp from one place to another!) make the whole experience limited to certain "gardens" without real practicality. Certainly the "user generated content" industry cannot die with Second Life (the idea behind SL) is too big to fail, just like some banks circa 2008. What does this means is, the content creators will either flock to the most promising plattaform left or to revive this idea on their own, an alternative tailored to their needs. Saying all of this, Second Life future seems promising for the foreseeable future, assuming they do not commit to the destruction of their own business. Sorry my english! feel free to correct me!
  2. Hello there, I´m pretty aware my reply is too late for your issue, but I hope it will help others who read this thread just like I did today. I faced a similar (if not the same) issue as you today, and I share the same feeling, my UV mapping is perfect, my mesh model is perfect, everything is perfect (as done several times in the past, *cough* don´t send the newbie tuts please *cough*)... but yes, we are noobs at the end, and getting to the point, I noticed the problem starts at 3dsmax, basically, when you finish your model and your UV Maps are complete, you start thinking about baking textures right? its normal. And you may be tempted to change the "MAP CHANNEL" just for baking purpouses right? Its an easy way to start baking those faces, limited by Second Life to 8, but, talking about adding textures, no matter the program if 3dsmax or Second Life, you need to properly assign the map channels to each material (if it has a texture on diffuse), and it seems, Second Life will only recognize the UV maps if the map channels are all set to default basically. So set each map channel back to 1 if you modified them in the past and this will fix the issue. :matte-motes-little-laugh: Basic pipeline: 1) Build mesh, build lighting setup. Do not continue until your mesh is 100% finished and perfect. 2) Set material ID´s per face 3) Over your finished "edit poly": stack a "mesh select (use material ID´s to select the polygons) + Unwarp UVW" combo per face (8 faces per mesh max for SL), stack a final mesh select atop everything for mind peace and face counting. 4) Apply the textures, just assign a single "standard - multi/sub-object" with 8 (max) materials per mesh, be careful using the proper material IDs here, try to avoid vray materials for the object to be uploaded. 5) Change each map channel for each "Unwrap UVW" in the stack for baking purpouses (it helps a lot with RTT), return to the default map channel (1) when you have finished. 6) Export --> Export Selected as DAE file. (do not use spaces for any name, material name etc.) 7) Import in Second Life. Cheers.
  3. Drake1 Nightfire wrote: How do you know? Where is your proof that LL "suddenly changed the algorithm"? How do you know the free items aren't selling better? Okey honey, I am not interested in a mindless discussion, I think I answered this question earlier in the thread. Let me be a bit agressive towards you, and forgive me for that, I´m not that kind of person: I think you do not understand the issue because you are not a merchant period. or at least.. a "relevant" merchant, no disrespect intended. What I mean is, you have not been affected at all by the problem and you only know about it because you read my original post, and hence, this day looks like any other shopping day for you. Rewriting this idea: from the perspective of a consumer or from the perspective of a store with little to near zero sales (near zero relevance as well), marketplace really looks like any other normal day, and I should agree with you: freebies outsell many many shops, these shops do not have enought sales to outpace the most relevant freebies, but like anything in the world, this is not enterely true... freebies really have a hard time trying to outsell most relevant shops. How do I know LL changed something from one day to another? its simply, when you notice a sudden sales drop, you start looking for problems, delistings, issues with the magic box (in the past), problems with the mainstore (SIM isues etc.)... etc. in this particular scenario, a change in the algorithm LL uses to sort results seemed to be the problem after careful examination on how MP looked that day. example: oh my gosh! my item dissapeared from the first page relevance/best selling! and.. what the heck? what are these freebies doing around? never saw them before! and so many!! <--- merchant severely confused. This kind of perspective is the result of years of experience dealing with MP trying to survive and making a living from SL. And this constant check and care for your business gives you a deep and daily insight on how MP really looks normally on its best days (most of the time) and how MP looks like when LL decides to go nuts. pd: read the whole thread, I think I mentioned somewhere that LL tacitly acknowledged the changes in MP in the reply I got from my ticket. (if you are still needing a proof written in stone).
  4. Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Screw it, you know what. i went onto the Mp, under the avater accessories>jewelry>rings catgory and hit best selling.... you spout off about freebies and cheap items pushing the "high quality merchants" off the fromt page. Just to point out, JCNY has a 10L mood ring in the 3d spot. perhaps you need to rethink which merchants are to blame. smiles, well, I won´t considere JCNY a high quality product line, but certainly, they do not produce that many freebies as you suggest, I personally do like Earthstones the most and where are they on these lists even relevance? guess the answer: nowhere to be seen, at least to the last time I checked. The mood ring (the freebie from JCNY) we all see, is the remnant of several, high priced items who had the best selling positions in the past (+3 days ago) and now nothing, relevance sorting is also affected I repeat. btw. "pushing" is not the right term, because it implies some sort of "tug of war" action going on for a period of time (like a sales battle), I would said its more like "instant replacement of high priced/relevant/high quality (in most cases) items by non relevant/cheap and low quality freebies" due to a template replacement done by LL where the highest sales volume and age>oldest-first items are getting an unfair promotion up to the top..
  5. VonGklugelstein Alter wrote: there is no tuning..it is their default template which is higest sales volume and age > oldest first as the algorythm.. Incompetent marketing trend is more acurate. Agree.. btw.. "fine tuning" was the "wordage" they used in the reply.
  6. Drake1 Nightfire wrote: You are stuck on the "best selling" filter.. i have asked many many people in SL that use the MP how they sort things... number one answer: RELEVANCE!! Get off your high horse and deal with it. Are you still selling things? if so stop complaining, if not perhaps you need to revamp things. well this is kinda of dumb, "relevance" is the default for all searches, no action is supposed to be taken by anybody to sort of lists by relevance. And who said "relevance" is not also affected? to my understanding, all the sortings have been affected in more or less degree. That said, if this issue affects me personally or not is not relevant to this discussion at all.
  7. Rival Destiny wrote: So you are saying that LL has deliberately 'fine tuned' the search system so that their revenue stream will generate far LESS revenue? Is this some new kinda masochistic marketing trend? Yes.. is my guess.. but "VonGklugelstein Alter" has mentioned/suggested (and I agree) this happens every now and then (2-6 months), and the problem is always fixed due to pressure from merchants, so... its more like a problem waiting to be fixed by a person taking a nap @ LL headquarters (think about Homer). btw. I not sure if their revenue stream is affected at all, a study should be done on that matter to reach such a conclusion.
  8. Drake1 Nightfire wrote: the OP stated that JCNY only had a freebie on the front page (I'm assuming the 10L item is what she calls a freebie) and all of their other best selling items were getting pushed down the list due to the other freebies.. as i stated many times, perhaps the freebies are selling better than the higher priced items since a lot of people have less money to spend in SL. Yes to the first statement, and no to the rest... I stated quite clearly in my last post that the freebies did not get their new position "due to hard work and steady sales", not at all. This was the result of a sudden change in the algorithm done by the commerce team in a single day (or whoever pulls the cables). If you have searched for rings in the past, you should know, these stores (JCNY, Earthstones, etc.) had several high priced items in the first positions (1-6) now, nothing appears, just a freebie now and then.
  9. Drake1 Nightfire wrote: I'm sorry but, are you freaking kidding me? You weapons are at most $40L. Griefer weapons at that. Best selling is just that, the best selling items. Whether they are $2000L or $1L. 99% of SL users do not sort by best selling. they search for a specific thing and sort by relevance. By the way, most SLers with any money don't but freebies. So I am not sure what you are worried about. Well.. just imagine the case of Mr. "I", my beloved competitor, he was ranked mm... 6 in relevance also best selling.. since this update, he lost ground on both categories completely, his product is pretty deep in the list and surrounded by freebies because a flood of freebies got an unfair ranking from one day to another due to some "fine tuning" done by the commerce team (their own words in the reply I got). But wait!, these "freebies" did not get their position by hard working and steady sales, no!, not at all, they got these positions thanks to a poorly implemented algorithm update by the commerce team on MP, now, can you tell my beloved competitor he must not be angry at all? and that most SLers wont buy freebies while he is not getting a single sale because the system decided to kick him out from the search results?.
  10. Spica Inventor wrote: hehe. It looks like L.L. finally decided to stop pumping the expensive stuff to the top of the list and have the search listings by relevance based solely by sales volume. Seems things around a 1000L$ where being pumped to the top for a while. I don't know how they are weighting things now, but it seems much less biased toward expensive stuff last I tried my typical search phrase. Hopefully prices will come down more now so that alot more peeps will come in and play the game as a result. ;-) You certainly have some imagination but no, it won´t happen. What is at stake here is the reputation of the system as a set of "clear rules", because in reality no matter which rules are in play (even this aberrant update), merchants always adapt and succeed, because the only path to a sucessful product is quality, sucess wont come from a broken update based on who knows what criteria, and the "official LL aid to the third market world" is really hurting his own pockets since the biggest sellers are being hurt, and hence the commisions for LL are reduced as well, is my guess. What merchants do not like in any market is a set of rules who are constantly broken, or definitly "broken" per se: no rule at all to succeed, just pure randomless, in such an scenario is becomes harder and harder for customers to reach the right products: those merchants who "deserve the sales", I could not put it more elegantly.
  11. Nefertiti Nefarious wrote: For all of that time I have been hearing that freebies are ruining the SL economy, that freebies are hogging the choice spots in search, and that freebies should be banned and their creators run out of town. They whined about it on SLExchange's forums They are still whining about it on the Linden Marketplace forums. ===================== I just looked at the "rings" category, sorted by relevance, with search term "wedding rings", and within the first 20 results, the price of the rings was from $1 to $1599. Maybe to you that is "partially flooded with freebie results", but to me it looks like the usual mix or results. smiles. What you have written could be relevant in another post, sadly.. I´m not complaining about freebies runining the SL economy, as you say. I really dont care about freebies & dollarbies unless they are unfairly and massively promoted up to the top of the ladder based on nothing else than poorly implemented unsupervised LL algorithms updates. If you are unaware to this point, let me tell you, LL implemented two days ago a change in the search results engine for MP, affecting the results, all sortings were affected, mostly "best selling", relevance as well, several dozens (maybe much more) freebies and non-related (keyword spamming) items are clogging the results, getting an unfair promotion up to the first positions (pages) "with no effort or merit at all", a sudden promotion from "non existencial" status to "top" status in less than a day as opposed to laddering based on results over a long period of time (steady sales etc.), is this fair for you?, if this is fair for you, LL has a job waiting for you. I also must point, some items have survived this problem, why? I don´t know, is the result mix of freebies & dollarbies with reputable items a proof to say nothing has changed from yesterday? pffff of course not, you simply do not know how the MP looked a week ago to do a fair comparison, and the differences are BIG. And its not the freebie flood issue alone, but also a secondary problem when reputable stores have lost ground from top positions to "non existential" status due to this problem, this is a more serious issue and this alone will fix the problem itself hopefully due to merchant pressure. I would also say, this mix you see right now is somewhat close to having put everything from MP into a blender machine, and some stores are behaving like bubbles trying to stay afloat amid the viscous paste.
  12. smiles, that is not true. At the beginning of Xstreet, you were able to buy your way up to the top just by purchasing a premium spot, if you had a low quality item with poor sales, without money to purchase blue spots the freebies should have surpassed your items easily, thats no mistery. The system now is somewhat different, you can still buy your way up to the top... *cough* fake sales *cough*, but only as long as your money flows into the strategy. The real sales must start pumping money or your business venture will crash (and the zombie freebies will eat your items alive) and your relevance will never build up. Again, I´m not talking about the evil freebies old discussion you try to bring to this thread , please read my previous posts, I have written very clearly, freebies are not my concern... until they wash the shoreline like a tsunami looking for nothing else than to clog the system and other symptoms who may clear out the problem as an independent issue such as: 1) well stablished brands who are being snuffed out from the search terms (relevance/best selling) such as JCNY, Mandala, Earthstones, Icarus, Deimos... etc etc. not even mentioning my own brand at all lol, case apart. 2) flood of a ton of freebie (some are even unrelated freebies) items up to the top lists who were not there yesterday or in the past months, in just a second. <--- this is the single most important piece of proof I can bring to the table, and is irrefutable for as long as the problem persist. Would like to talk with you after the problem solves you seems very active on these forums and it will be very helpful for others to learn from this experience.
  13. Smiles, you got the right results freebies and more freebies... and not the relevant/best selling items who should be appearing. Its just that.. you are not accustomed to how the results look normally with those terms, thats why my original post is called "...flood of freebies on all marketplace search results" because I searched a few more terms with similar results. "freebies" aren´t always best selling items. If you have an item of low-medium quality, (and definitly not a high quality or best selling item), you will be overrun by freebies yes, they are 0L$, expect them to be sold faster, but when your items grow in importance and ranking, your sales are higher than them, way more important sales provides you with enought "relevance" for your item to stay atop no matter if your sales volume decreases. When you search for "ring" there are so many freebies atop who shouldn´t be there by far, they were NOT atop yesterday, they have never been in the top pages (1-6 page) for as long as I can remember, the pricey items you see around are some items who have survived the glitch somewhat (my product(s) also have survived if you read my previous post) notice some freebie sellers have increased the price already to take advantange of this problem (read what I wrote about AXL in my previous post), some merchants (as AXL) are reacting fast to this, definitly. Its not also the flood of "freebies" who is affecting, but also the systematic snuffing of well stablished brands/products. For example, if you search for "ring", JCNY, MANDALA, EARTHSTONES (and other brands) must be top results... (because of their quality, because they have been atop for the past 5 years.. lol, you name the excuse) and NONE of them have items in the first 3-6 pages today... : ). the ticket has no answer yet, but I assume the problem will solve itself.. like in the past. have a nice day.
  14. Smiles, Thank you for your answer, but I must point out to other merchants and future replyers: I´m not complaining against the "evil freebies". I should have pointed out, the store I´m concerned about is "big" enought and has enought steady sales to be on top position on his category (1-3 due to competitors) from the past two years, both in relevance and best selling categories. Sales are high, and the problem is important for us, just to be clear: the items our main accounts are selling, provide an income around 70,000 L$ per day approximately, to give a number (it varies), clearly I do even like freebies, they are cute gifts, interesting somewhat cheap products, but certainly not a threat to us, or to our business... until something like this happens. and freebies "clog" the whole results from night to day, and no one seems to be aware, in my personal case, our product fall from top position to 4th position, other competitors were snuffed away completely from the lists. Let me give you a couple of examples you can test on your own: 1) If you have searched for the "ring" term in the past, you must know "JCNY" is a big brand who has a lot of products on top positions... today, he only has a freebie in the first page, it doesn´t appear in the following pages at all (relevance, best selling), and lots of freebies around... (this is not my business niche). 2) If you search for "youtube", AXL comes to first place (followed by two freebies, two respectable brands more who survived the problem, and 7 more freebies follow)... if you have searched this term for the past months until yesterday, you would have noticed: freebies have a hard time getting up to the first page, taking one or two places at the bottom in the best scenario, AXL product was a freebie and in the past was not present in the following 6 pages (relevance, best selling)... but AXL rised his price today from 0L$ up to 499L$ to take advantage of this glitch... (this is not my business niche). Test yourself, and you will notice the problem I´m pointing out. : )
  15. Smiles, I understand your point, its normal for some people to misunderstand my message as a complaint agaist the "evil freebies" on marketplace.. I have read similar posts before, sadly, that is not the problem I´m pointing out here, not even close. I usually monitor marketplace terms, such as "youtube", "ring", "hair", etc. and similar common terms to assess and monitor sales, and other issues.... daily, and since yesterday, there has been a flood of freebies (not only one but a LOT) climbing up to the top positions in no time, this is obviously a change in a variable, a glitch in the system, I really dont know, but definitly something who has happened, has been fixed in the past, and I´m pretty sure it will happen in the future. Take note, even well stablished competitors were snuffed out from the search results due to this problem... Thank you for your concern but its not due to the causes you mentioned at all, For further reference, I´m talking on behalf of two big stores, and definitly not complaining about freebies, or their nature per se, also I have submitted a ticket on this topic, I advise other merchants to do so. Have a nice day, any reply is welcomed.
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