Better, more explicit support for SL communities and subcultures

This was posted in a separate thread, and it has been deemed worthy of further discussion by a few of my peers, so I am reposting it here. Let's hear your thoughts on how we can better support a more fluid and diverse social environment in SL.

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Thank you Cris for being such an enlightened person in a world where so many people choose willful ignorance. This sums up my position rather well, and it is why I (and a few others) criticize LL's notion that this should always be ONE world, with ONE community, all forcibly centralized and intertwined.
Guys, give me a break. There is no community. People hate being crammed into the same place with random strangers and all you get out of it is drama, which in manager speak translates to increased support costs.
SL should be more about themes and mobility. Being able to easily move into a community without waiting a month for your land to sell, or establish your own communities and keep the rest of the world out.
This is why private islands are so popular. There's only so many friends you can have, and after the community size exceeds that number, people just want to be left alone.
Right now the map is useless, for it merely depicts geography. There's a thousand-sim strong continent and a heap of randomly scattered islands.
We can't even see at a glance which sims are rated M or PG.
More concretely I want:

- Color coded sim rating overlay, for starters. We had it on the hand drawn maps in 2003!
- Built-in support for Communities, separate from the current group system - groups of loosely connected individual sims or parcels that list themselves as belonging to a certain theme
- Color coded Community overlay on the map with mouseover description
- To keep things in theme, you need to have some membership management mechanism
- Facilitate parcel mobility so as to allow users to progressively aggregate parcel communities into a contiguous region over time
- Facilite the moving of islands belonging to the same Community into closer proximity on the map (right now you charge USD$50 for this, IIRC?)
- Linden would create a few seed communities (say, Sci-Fi, Medieval, etc) where players could list themselves, later adding the ability to create our own community for a price.

Bravo! I second this post by Eggy!! Very well said Eggy.

/clap stamp offer to serve on resident committee that meets with robin to discuss this

This is a topic close to my heart and, as someone who has now spent a year consolidating my holdings in SL, I think I've a reasonably informed opinion.

Here are are some of my interrelated ramblings ( possibly the longest post I've ever made, please accept my apologies now ) ...

** Mainland Sim vs Private Island ownership.

I believe if you possess an entire sim, you should be entitled to use the estate tools, including land texturing and full landscaping. The current system of private island sims serves no purpose( as far as I can see ) other than to provide LL with the $1200 setup fee. I abhor that and smell a tinge of corporate greed that seems inconsistent with the rest of LLs dealings.

So you might ask: "What about the discontinuity this would cause" ?
I say open your eyes and take a look around the grid ....


** The grid

What a pile of poo the mainland grid system is !

Over the past week I spent maybe 3 hours, possibly more one night, simply flying around the grid. I do this periodically because I like to get out and explore. Most times I island hop for reasons I'm about to describe, but this time I decided to go around the mainland because I hadn't for ages.

What did I find ?
- 75% of the grid is basic prefab, what I call "middle american suburbia". ( ok it's slightly insulting but it's what I call it )
- 24% is malls and clubs
- 1% is stuff that I'm interested in.
To me that stinks, just 1% stops me long enough to admire or say wow, awesome!

When I joined SL I'm sure that figure seemed higher so what's happened ? ...
- SL is bigger, much bigger. Bigger and more popular always equates to harder to find the cool stuff.
- More significantly: Many "artists" have got fed up with the mainland and left SL, or obtained private islands and hidden.

Here's a true story...

PersonA comes into SL, buys a bit of land, builds her vision.

PersonB buys the plot next door, builds his vision.

PersonA's vision is poles apart from PersonB's yet they are forced to build up to their parcel boundaries because the parcels are too small. Instant discontinuity

PersonC comes along purchases a plot adjacent to A and B. He's an asshole and a newbie, doesn't know about local light, has accidentally switched all his red and blue blocks to light material, swamping A and B with unwanted colour. Will not respond to IMs, has put up NO ENTRY bars on his 512 plot.

PersonA can't sell because of C, so ends up releasing land in order to move fast.

I was PersonA a couple of times in the past year.

I see this scenario in varying degrees all over the grid.


** Point to Point teleporting

Not so long ago I had a long discussion with one of my best SL friends about p2p TP. He is totally against the idea. I am all for it. My 3 hour flight across the mainland grid has convinced even more of the need for p2p.

He believes p2p will prevent people from exploring and has an almost convincing argument.

I believe there are basically 2 fundamental types of people in SL: Creators and Consumers.
( ignoring or including those who simply use SL as a glorified chat room )

Creators are, by their very nature, also Explorers and of course some Consumers are also Explorers.
Those who are not of the exploring frame of mind, already rely on friends to TP them and so don't see the bulk of the world anyway. Explorers will explore regardless of the existence of p2p TP. In fact oft times a combination of good map detail and p2p will aid exploration.


** Themed areas or freedom of connection

Recently to my delight I've had people invite me to go live in their sims and build there, I'd love to, but I've grand plans of my own, it's my ambition to own an entire sim by the middle of next year. I'm well on the way now too. I don't particularly want to have to pay $1200 for an island. It's too much unless I can save it up in Lindens!
I'm sure I could rent land in themed islands but I'm not prepared to be beholden to a landlord other than LL.

My ideal solution would be for a group of likeminded individuals to say, hey let's take our parcels and join them together to create our vision.
This would mean
- A: Pulling down and rebuilding would be unnecessary.
- B: Themed areas would happen automatically.

Of course I can see a few technical problems, wasted server space and such, but this is a "VIRTUAL" world, it's created with "SOFTWARE" ! eh ?

*nods encouragingly in full agreement*

That entirely possible to do now, with caution. Over in Eldora, Squidsoft's bought up about half the sim, although due to people having to reduce tier the amount of actual group-owned land has gone down (a bit is owned directly by me). A portion of the other half is bought up by another bunch of fellows who are cool, leaving only a very few "other" places, and only one of them is really annoying - a casino by someone who must have cancelled or was banned, as their name no longer comes up in Find... yet their land has sat without even being claimed by the Governor for ages.

Name those peers!

Not quite, I'm talking about taking a parcel with all it's build and moving it somewhere else. It's my utopian ideal

We currently have a situation like yours in Alviso and Orwood, trouble is that it's reliant on 2 main landowners, me and the person I share Alviso Island with, (not allowed to mention names ? ) both of whom are always on the edge of being able to pay for tier, meaning, at anytime either of us could be forced to tier down. In my utopia I could tier up or down without the fear that some eedjut will purchase the land I'm releasing.

It was me and someone else actually, please don't troll this thread. If you have something constructive to add please do.

One problem I thought of since I applauded Eggy's idea in the other thread.

The Lindens are probably not likely to make it easier for people to organize and clean up the main grid, since that would make buying islands less attractive, and thus make them less money. Would I be wrong in thinking that?

coco

LL is paid a setup fee of at least $1000USD, usually more, for mainland sims.

Interesting idea.

I'd never really thought about that as a solution but it seems like it would work. But then, the problem comes up as Coco said: This might result in less buying of private sims if the mainland isn't horrible anymore.

It would also mess up First Land nicely.

Suddenly you can't use your First Land, because it's in a themed sim and if what you want to build doesn't fit the theme then you can't build it there. Suddenly the main goal of buying First Land is to guess what theme is fashionable this month, grab parcels in that themed sim and flip them.

And the 75% / 25% / 1% division just sounds like most RL cities to me, to be honest...

I think, in a most condescending fashion, it's adorable how you believe the Lindens care about building a community. Really, I do.

This is where forum conversations generally break down into extremist shouting matches. Nowhere in this thread have I gathered the impression that anyone has even remotely suggested that LL discontinue gridding non-themed sims filled with first land plots. Allowing people and groups that own entire sims access to the region features, and the ability to reasonable manage their groups, in no way precludes the addition of first land sims.

(nod)

I was referring more to the follow-up message that "person A builds their dream, person B builds their dream next to it, but they both have totally different dreams, and both want to build all the way to the edge of their parcel".

If you wanted to tidy the mainland as a whole, you would have to deal with this on First Land sims.

Read what was said a little more carefully, I'm suggesting anyone should be able to do this with any size parcel. Get out of the "has to look like a real continent" mindset and use some imagination. With a combination of p2p teleport and movable parcels the grid would start to look far less like a gridded continent and more like a sea of islands, but so what ? That's cool imho.


And of course even though it could, it won't happen because LL like the income they get from islands.

They'd get more income if mainland land was so popular that the auctions were putting prices over $1200 regularly.

LL get at least $1000USD and $195/month from mainland sims.

Woops - removed.

What are you saying here Khamon ? it makes no sense to me. I can buy all the land in an entire sim without paying $1000USD for any setup. Or is there something I'm unaware of, possibly there is ?

What I "think" you're saying is it's the auction price ?

[edit]
Ok it's the auction price, but that's irrelevent when we pay in Lindens that we made in game, I'm talking about not being willing to shell out from my credit card.

Well, you will be shelling out from your credit card for your tier..

The point is that the cost of mainland sims, and the profit LL make, is higher that it is for private islands. I mean, any extra resulting from the auction process is pure profit for LL. The fact that you can buy mainland land for L$ from other players isn't relevant - LL still got their US$1000+ when the mainland sim was installed, and if you want to you can buy private island land for L$ in exactly the same way.

It's nothing to do with LL's profits, it's more likely just to do with the fact that people don't see that much advantage in connecting with the mainland, and buying a private island lets you know exactly what you're paying instead of having to worry about winning or losing the auction, missing a market gap because someone else bought the land, or paying over the odds because some dodgy land baron shill bidded you.

All sound like great ideas.

You will shell out $1000USD to purchase a mainland sim at auction. If you don't, somebody will. LL will collect that setup fee either way.

Plus they generally collect more monthly tier from mainland sims because the land is owned by people who are paying less of a discount to NOT own an entire sim's worth of land. Even just quartering the sim between four owners nets $300/month rather than $195.

I don't understand what you mean when you say "And of course even though it could, it won't happen because LL like the income they get from islands" when the amount of money they make off mainland sims is at least comparable if not better.

Was an honest question...Liten' up...