Making Avatars Stick - your top 3 (just three) things

1. Voip - voice is instantly compelling.


2. Speedtree - They want their SecondLife to be beautiful. In the words of the wonderful Ingrid (when she's not slogging): "Never underestimate the value of a Linden tree"


3. Better Caching / Higher Fps - obvious.

1) Better interactivity (down with poseballs, up with true inter-avatar interactivity and better animation support)

2) Better search (down with Find, up with Google)

3) Better performance (down with SL 1.X)

(I am also going to put in a voice for VOIP features - LL could really do some cutting edge stuff in that regard)

I'll bite Blazie-boy, as I'm a little bored tonight with no raiding.

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VOIP -- it will never happen, not until SL has the software to disguise the voice. Afterall, this is Second Life, where men can be men, where men can be slaves, where men can be females... And those of the female persuasion can simply continue to be blonde, busty and confused.

If you really want VOIP within SL -- set up a Ventrillo or TeamSpeak server -- it doesn't cost much in monthly fees, and the client-side software is free (Windows and Mac). Get all your alts to join, and you can have some pretty good conversations with yourself... I'd even join the debates you have with yourself. (Second thought -- doesn't Cris have a TS or Vent server set up for SL participants to join and chat in voice?)

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SpeedTree -- I don't think there's enough toilet paper in the universe to help Khamon and his pants if/when this is implemented. We may have to basically stick him in Depends for a month or two until things quiet down. If SL wants to become more realistic, more flexible, they will work on getting this done. Sometime. No due date. No rush. Just keep buying extra toilet paper and mailing it to Khamon. Of course, when it's implemented within the software, Khamon will probably already be in Depends due to old age.


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Better Caching -- FFS. I downloaded the client tonight and logged in. After waiting 10 minutes, getting a cup of coffee, I rez'd my trusty airboat and thought I would trawl through some of the waterways around Midnight Beach. I'm somewhere, my boat is somewhere, I have no clue where -- I know I crossed a sim line, my screen filled with land textures, then it restored properly. I couldn't stand, release, nothing. So yes, better caching would be appreciated and faster speeds. But then again, this has been a high request for well over two years, it's stalled the growth of SL -- so why should this even be considered a high priority now? I'd recommend investing in toilet paper rather than faster caching possibilities. Besides, I heard a rumor that the cost of toilet paper may skyrocket soon, but that's between you and me, okay?

1. Performance. Low frame rates - whether its a server or client side issue frustrates many their first day & can prevent someone from giving us a chance.

2. User Friendlyness - SL should be easy enough for my Mom to figure out. At present, its daunting for many folks their first week here.

3. Reiliability - Linden takes a lot of latitude with reliability because this is an emerging technology with no strong competition. That's fair in the beginning, but for as long as they do, we'll take a hit from folks who log on for the first time expecting this to be a mature platform. Note: Lack of reliability can be offset by strong communication.

You know Travis, it's probably as simple as that.

Telehubs, Noobie Zoned Sims, it's all pointless.

Really what they need to do is fix the fundamentals.

But, you know, it's probably a lot more fun to rearchitect the world and switch on / switch off Telehubs and create noobie sims then it is simply to get the job done.

My daughter earlier tonight asked me for some headphones with a microphone, so she could use it to talk to a friend on Yahoo chat. I mentioned she could use skype or googlechat, there's three voice chat systems, I'm sure there are a ton more. SL needs to be able to compete against tihings like that. Yes, there are folks who want to disguise their voice, but there are also people who don't find that necessary, I suspect - why not satisfy them while waiting for the voice disguising systems to come into being?

The lack of multiple avatar gestures is embarassing when mentoring. Some new users come here expecting to be able to perform normal human interactions, that makes sense; why bother making an avatar if you can't make it act like a person and shake someone's hand or give em a hug? Explaining that we don't have anything like that built in but that you can buy custom ones but can't expect the hugging arms to not intersect the hugee's lungs takes some of the sheen off the greeting process.

1) Get rid of forum trolls
2) Get rid of people who milk every last cent off of noobies
3) Repeat

(1) Velcro

(2) Treacle

(3) Glue

Only problem with this: if (as seems to be intended) they're going to have to create stuff to earn money anyway, they're going to have to be exposed to the complex UI at some point.

BluTac
Duct Tape
Paper Clips

I don't see the big deal with Voice, really. It'll take up a huge amount of bandwidth, doesn't work as well as text for when people are having multiple conversations in a large area, and requires hardware. Plus, of course, there's the "folks hiding their voices" angle.

I know you can say "well, those who want to hide their voices don't have to use it" but that'll have a social effect too. How are actual female players going to feel if they get told that, if they don't have a headset and mic, everyone will assume they're a guy?

LL to take a more active role in creating things for us to do
99% of the events are crap. Building get's to be a snore after awhile.
Many of us don't really care about trying to squeeze money out of this.
The biggest complaint I hear from people is they are bored.

I do not see why LL can not put in sports or game sim and do the coding.
Since SL is all about money thease days. Phil could charge for it.
Think of the money LL could rake in from green fees or field rent on every baseball
game.

There some who say go do it. I feel this needs to be coded from with in Linden Lab and not a half assed kluge from a script.


The bottom line here is that sports is big money in RL. Time for Second LIfe to get on the band wagon. They have exploited the sex and gambling trade rather well, this would be a hat trick for Phillip. Everyone wins. The land barons get more rich by selling property with a golf course view. The trinket sellers make money selling ball park soveniers.


Okay back to the slingo game every one.

Rox

Never gonna happen.



Since it just popped up in my RSS and you're talking about it: Teamspeak's out for the Mac now if anyone needs to know.
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/mac/ventrilo-teamspeak-arrive-for-mac-139438.php

Here are a few ideas I've been munching around:

Seamless web integration / external asset support.
Every LSL function that takes a UUID should also accept a URL.
Imagine if you could llSetTexture("http://foo.jpg" or even llPlaySound("http://bar.mp3"

Also, we direly need llTeleport or something.
Even with P2P, we cannot create landmarks programatically and even if we give them a landmark and ask people to teleport its stupid and breaks the immersion. llTeleport allows any game or project to scale on demand by placing different levels on different parts of the grid instead of waiting for your land to sell or praying that land become available in their current sim. We should be able to enter a building facade and be teleported to it's foyer somewhere else, then open a door and be again teleported to another place.
Bonus points if you let us customize the teleportation text/image.

I haven't bathed in 4 days now because I have to keep on slogging. Are we in December yet?

Sure is. Nothing would compel me to drop SL faster than having to go to voice to keep up with chat. Now if it had real time voice synthesis and transcription to go along with it, so I could, listen to music, talk on the phone, and pop over to the SL window and answer a transcribed voice message by typing... that'd be OK.

Heck, it's just plain embarassing. "Oh, if you want to do something there isn't a canned animation for, you have to buy this expensive program and spend weeks learning how to use it."

Oh, I agree, I'm going to hate voip .. Frankly, I don't listen so well (I read much better).

However, Google is going "click to talk", eBay has bought out Skype.. So, I have to face facts. Voip may possibly be the future of interaction.

But anyways the question isn't so much what you (or I) want, but rather, what do you think will make Avatar's "stick"?

How do we get people to stay in secondlife? And then after they've been in SL for awhile, how do we get them to upgrade to premium?

One thing I feel is we need more activities that are enjoyable, work well and don't cost too much.

Most people I know prefer to socialise, go to clubs and shop in RL and aren't the feintest bit interested in doing it virtually, plus most other things are pale immitations of what's available out of SL - what's more fun, driving a car in SL or playing Burnout? We need to think about the limitations and advantages of the platform in more depth rather than making things because they're cool.

Fly Paper

Not to mention we'll probably get some lovely conversations like this one:

(Warning: Extreme language and serious anger management needed. Someone posted this a while ago.)

http://content.ytmnd.com//100000/100051/sound.mp3

Frequent incremental improvements to the system. Attention paid to long-standing annoying problems so people believe things are improving, and new features so people want to stick around to see what comes next.
Give us a reason to do it. Being able to quote-buy-unquote land on the mainland and build giant towers to hide the Impeach Bush signs next door won't do it.

2.0 renderer. FPS and draw distance are not impressive.
REALLY seamless sim handoff.
Grid updates/restarts that do not require the entire world to go away for five hours.

Being able to change the default camera position so you can see your face, or have a separate face display, And fix the stuck in an open mouth expression problem.