Stopping Developers Incentive?

That I agree with, thankfully, I can honestly say Slootsville's DI is most definately not gamed, or I would expect it to be much higher

FREE THE LAG!

I can't wait to figure a way to game the new system

The last paragraph seems to indicate that they do intend to continue rewarding those who own genuinely interesting places. And they certainly left a good amount of time to receive user input on what types of places should fit the qualifications. True, there's no 100% objective way to determine rewards this way... but IMHO, it's better than the way things are working now. I say give it a chance.

Money chairs and their ilk were an exploit of the DI system. Frankly, I don't see how else they could have fixed it besides overhauling the system.

well. Same here, we don't have any moneyballs or camping chairs, etc, but regularly gain popularity simply due to the fact that we are plain old popular (i.e., a lot of people come by and hang out.)

As for a replacement though, I wouldn't hold my breath. This is about monetization, not community benefit. Which is to be expected, since they do have investors to serve, but expect a change from the 'old LL' to a 'new LL' - the move from a small company to mid-size.

I think a lot of people who have complained about LL in the past are going to realize how foolish that was.

Unfortunately, I agree.

LL needs to give us MUCH more notice if this is the case though.

I think we pretty much all saw this coming. The developer's incentive hasn't done what it was supposed to do - all it has achieved is a huge number of pretty poor places gaming to get a bigger slice of the pie and, also, the support of large land traders. Neither of which, I suspect, were the intended recipients of such a "developer" incentive.

It will be interesting to see what it is replaced with, if anything.
What LL needs are attractions that add something, that keep people coming into SL and entice them to stay. What they don't need is the most visible places being carbon-copy, poorly designed, dwell monsters that use anything they can to gain the most and poorly represent what is possible in SL.

Hopefully, Willow, you won't have to let go of your sim, if they can come up with something better. Slootsville is popular.


I wonder if we'll see a lot of island dissapearing off the map come January.

They develop a program, leave it in place for a while, and if it doesn't work out they don't try modifying it to better produce the results they want... instead they dump it completely...

Instead of introducing P2P gradually by letting people turn it ON, they defaulted to having it on everywhere unless you turn it off.

Instead of nerfing the reputation bonus to stop people gaming it, they killed it.

Instead of changing the rules to make productive citizens more valuable than camping chair addicts, they're killing the developer's incentive.

Is this a fair summary? Everything's all-or-nothing at Linden Labs?

It sounds to me more like it's simply being reborn, not killed per se.

good lord... I am seriously starting to believe LL is trying to go out of business...

Well, I agree with that Moopf, and while the "ends" may be correct here I just don't think that's the motive.

Yeah, dwell and traffic-gaming had to be taken care of, and of course this means the end of camping chairs. But what will come to fill the void? It might be worse, I don't know.

I think this will shake out the legitimate business models from the 'loophole based' business models; and I think that after that, LL will find a way to intercept some of the margin and profit streams for even 'legitimate' businesses in the form of increased fees.

There are two economies in SL: The in-world economy, and the economy that services Linden Lab.

Unfortunately I really have a feeling that this decision has more to do with the latter than the former. But what else is to be expected? They're a company and their purpose is to make money.

The announcement was that they were discontinuing DI, not that they were replacing it. (Yes, a few words were said about the dev directory, but who knows what in the world that's oging to be and if there is even an actual plan for implementation.)

It just makes me wonder if LL believes in their own system or not, or if this is the beginning of a write-off phase where they 'ride the decliine' for as much profit is left in the system, and then put it to bed.

It all depends on what their actual focus and motivation is for this. I'm not defending dwell gaming. I always thought it should have been stopped. But as Beatfox said, an "overhaul" would have been the right approach for that, not all-out elimination.

Deletion versus repair, to me at least, signals motive.

Read what I said about "riding the decline". This could be so.

As for the replacement, I do not see how a directory could in any way replace an incentive. The 'directory' will likely be similar to the classifieds. Whatever form it takes, it will not take the form of a check from LL to a resident.

Nor should it, perhaps, but don't be fooled into thinking that this is about anything but margin.

I wonder if they will still have dwell numbers showing for each plot of land, to indicate player traffic patterns, or if that will be gone eventually, too. Dwell could still be used as a way for places to draw users since they will rank on the Popular Places list with higher dwell numbers, even if there's no money tied to it via the monthly DI awards. Of course, dwell could still be gamed, but from LL's perspective, they wouldn't be monitarily rewarding land owners for fostering vast numbers of camping chair zombies.

I'm agreeing with others who say that LL's focus looks to be shifting in the coming year. I figured DI's would go away eventually; I have also always believed that stipends and perks accorded to lifetime accounts (the latter of which admittedly few regular players benefit from, anyway) will go the way of the dinosaur soon enough, as well.

The times, they are always a'changin' in SL.

Perhaps I should have phrased that better. I meant to say that I do see this as an overhaul, effectively. I don't get the impression that the Lindens want to eliminate all monetary incentive.

Michi, your concerns seem to stem primarily from uncertainty about LL's future plans. I say give LL a chance to clarify what they have in mind first. They've got a ton of customer satisfaction at stake with this particular move, so I'm confident they'll greatly value the input we give them.

Argent, a lot of what you mention is stuff from around their Beta days, and is better slashed out of the codebase to be added in fresh. Can't imagine the mess of the original 1.0-1.2 sets.

I'm agreeing mostly with Michi here. They have been focusing on development in the past to keep their numbers up, but at the cost of huge turnover in the userbase (and lots of bad word-of-mouth in the process). They now have to focus on service, automation, and stability to be able to keep that userbase, before something else comes along.

That's going to mean LL squeezing their own system for US$ as much as they can, so they have the proper money to fund this change.

Just like There, but more subtle.

I still find it funny that people think the DI awards weren't working.

They were a quantifiable measure of where people are spending their time. People who owned the land that people were spending their time on, got rewarded. Pretty simple.

Ahhh, you don't like how or where people are spending their time? Make something more compelling. And I don't mean more compelling to you, I mean to the masses.

I think the wiser route for LL to have taken in this matter would be to freeze the current dollar amount and number of recipients. Use that in conjunction with whatever new games and contests they put in place.

I have been a DI recipient since it's inception. I have never had a money chair. (Though my latest plan is now screwed as well. I was going to have money chairs of torture.) The DI awards certainly helped me provide the compelling content to attract the masses.

My biggest concern is the almost certain change in the tier structure, if you are reading this LL, PLEASE,
GIVE US MORE LEAD TIME TO ADJUST!!!

PLEASE.

Maybe, but again I think this is mostly about the redirection of cash flow. Luskwood will be paying an additional $150.00/mo at least to Linden Lab - definitely better for margins on LL's side of the books. People like Anshe will be paying an additional $4000-$5000 a month that they didn't pay before.

Part of this is coupled with what was said in a recent townhall about the driving variables which motivate the decisions on what features go in, and which are eliminated. This was the first time I had ever heard that the #1 variable is revenue.

Again, I don't really expect it to be any different, but in a way we've gotten used to being "the other half of the experiment", not just "paying account holders". It seems to me that our roles are changing - where LL's interests do not neccessarily mesh with that of the community. Though in the long view, I think that if people cannot run successful businesses in SL, the draw will go away.

In other words, it's already an expensive game. It's about to get yet more expensive, and I don't know if that will be good for the community, even though it may be good for Linden in the short term .

My concern is that they are only worried about the short term.

Damn,

While I agree the dwell system is borked and being gamed - and should have been, at least, refined - I'm not for killing the patient off to get rid of the cancer. This seems a bit drastic.

Regards,

-Flip

Flip, if the concern was repairing the world and the community, it would have been refined.

I don't think the concern was that it was being gamed --- if so, it would have been addressed a LONG time ago because it has been gamed for a LONG time.

I think the concern is that it's there at all. The change is that it isn't going to be there anymore. This is essentially code for SL getting more expensive, which it is.

I expect to see SL get more expensive into the coming year.

I don't think that's a good move if the goal is longevity.

I think it's an excellent move if I were an investor looking for end-of-FY results.

This is interesting to me. Do you feel it's about to get more expensive for everyone? Or for just those previous recipients of the DI? As I recall that list was fairly short, compared to the size of the population.

I'd genuinely like to understand the scope of the statement.

Like I stated earlier, I don't get the feeling this is intended to be an all-out "kill" of monetary incentive. But what would you have done instead? I'm genuinely interested in what alternatives could have been taken.

Exactly.

Anyway, seems to me like this isn't quite the right time to be announcing stuff like this.

They should be giving us presents this time of year!

coco

Everyone. Because, as I said, if the focus is turning towards revenue being the primary motivator as a whole, DI will only be the first to go, not the last.

Furthermore, I hate to say it because I don't agree with the model - it's already a real bitch for a newbie to bootstrap themselves in SL. As bass-ackwards as they were, camping chairs DID spread the wealth somewhat.

Newcomers will get less L$; businesses' margins will decrease, which they can either eat, or raise prices to compensate for.

Either way, the gap will widen because the net sum of this is that Linden is going to be taking more of the revenue streams that occur in SL, whether they are honestly had or not.

The means may be wrapped up in a noble package, but the ends are going to kick everyone's ass.

Removal of the DI does not just affect those who receive the award, it will affect those that spend time on the award winners land. The DI went to those who had large numbers of people on their land after all, and not all of those places will be around as a result of this. Now we all have our opinions on when this is a good thing or not, but the simple fact is that this will affect the 'good and bad' places for SL.

The system by which it was calculated was ridiculous, and there have been plenty of discussions about reform in the forums. "Five minutes on a parcel" - it's easily gameable. Activity can be measured, not just "ass on parcel".

It could have been reformed, not simply eliminated.