Reconsider Event Changes?

This is to go along with the Event Changes thread. I don't want to make any proposals in this poll, though that can certainly happen in this thread. I'm just curious how many people are satisfied with the current situation and how many... aren't. A very lopsided response might give this issue some more Linden attention, when they're not so busy with upgrading.

Havn't followed the event reconsidered threads much - but i know I use to both watch the Event Calendar AND do events.

Last month I did a few events - never had less than $1,500L prize money, and usual there were less than 5 people - and I haven't looked at the event calendar in weeks.

Wonder if LL will realize that it events weren't as broken befor teir fix as they are now?

Two tringo fans have answered already, so maybe I should propose. The "alternatives" choice is intentionally vague; it does not necessarily mean going back to the old system. A flat reward for holding an event can be gamed, of course. There could also be simple reimbursement for prize money given out, within reason. This could accompany event policy changes, so that people can't fund 24 tringo events in one venue over a day, or perhaps can't fund gambling events at all.

Option #2 is not to just undo the changes, it's whether you feel there should be reconsideration of the way, fundamentally, that events are handled.

What I would like to see:

LL support for an Event Host fee and a DJ fee for events not not involving sexual or appearance related contests. That would mean no support for "Best Rack in SL" or "Sexiest in Dark Sea Green". Events that actually take some work to put on, should be rewarded with LL support for the people who do the work. I especially would like to see DJ costs covered so more clubs would have decent music instead of an unpredictable Shoutcast stream.

Moneyballs and contest prizes should be funded through sponsorships and/or advertising. I just don't see the rationalization for LL to support a sexy AV event without a DJ and pay for club dancers and escorts.


I also want to add a note to people complaining about low attendance: list your music genre in your event listing. Your contest isn't going to interest people anywhere near as much as what kind of music you are playing. An tremendous number of people in SL will show up for an event featuring their favorite music, irregardless of a contest or moneyball.

Some good ideas, Isablan. I'm certainly not against tringo/slingo/*ingo and av contests; people can (and do) host those all day long and I couldn't care less. Obviously, one way or another, they have no trouble funding themselves, and that's fine with me.

The problem is when people want to host fun/interesting events that involve more than sticking people in a club for an hour. There are lots of fun events that are not self-sustaining. When I host Primtionary, I rely on my own pocket money and a few generous donations for prize money. Because I put my own money in, every event is a loss of most of my stipend for that week. I'm not trying to make money, I'm just offering prizes to encourage attendance. After hosting Primtionary last night, I saw 5 lindens back from group dwell this morning. And that unmitigated loss means I can't host it as often as I want to, nor as often as my attendees want me to. And if it happens that I start to lack the generous donations I rely on, then I can't host it at all. And that's the problem.

LL wants us to entertain their users, a job that most designers take upon themselves. Fine, hosting is fun for me too. But show event hosts something in return, or at least let us break even so we can keep doing it. It seems only fair.

I might just be biased here but what the hell..........

Gambling is NOT an 'event' is it? As you probably guessed I'm not a great Tringo/Slingo fan mainly because I just cant see the social side to it (is there one?)

I'm a fan of the good old 'sexy thong' - 'dare to bare' - 'weirdest avi' - 'toga party' kind of event.Why? because it brings people together and gets them to interact thats why.

Poetry readings? Fashion Shows? hell yes! Anything that gets people to meet and interact in fact,but gambling/Tringo? nah.

I agree that Linden Labs went about event funding the wrong way though.I've seen places that were little more than a textured box with three dancers in it pulling in $250 an hour for nothing.

If your club makes it into the top twenty then Linden Labs should look at supporting your events and the reason for this is simple - your a top spot in Second Life.You cant seriously tell me that places like The Edge dont deserve event support,it's been up there ever since I began in Second Life and Linden Labs should be supportive of that.

If you've made it up there and stayed there then your a part of Second Life,part of what makes this place so great - bringing people from all over the world together.

Not really fair on anyone wanting to break into the top 20 though is it as all the top clubs will be able to offer more and No other places will get a chance.

I still like the idea of supporting x amount of events a day, with the lindens picking it on a certain criteria (not sure what that would be yet).

Or maybe dwell payments should just be increased.

Dwell / traffic is one of the best tools for getting outa the weeds on this, if we stay in the weeds and keep trying to Nuke** the rules for event posting other than what LL had in place we will be at wits end and no farther along I feel.

A new higher Traffic formula is needed-

a) we all look at it ether on the find or picks listings
b) having numbers and something to show for it makes us feel good
c) playing a game to get outa whatever RL stuff and feeling good

our love for the dwell / traffic part of SL is very powerful. LL you need to give back to the
townsfolk or the kingdom will fail.

- Shariff of Nottingham

Not so - we made it to the top spot using nothing other than the $500 event prize and the $250 host fee.Lestats was something of a social experiment to find out if people did actually go to events JUST because of the size of the prizes - we made it to number 1 so go figure.

But event support was the important factor I have to admit.As I've said before it did place everyone on a more or less equal footing because you COULD compete with the big noises IF you made it fun.

The problem with event support is people 'gaming the game'.Some people put on an event in little more than a textured box with 2 or 3 'dancers' and get 2 people attending so work it out - how much could they make over 24 hours?

That was obviously the problem,NOT the quality of events,NOT the event hosts themselves but the 'gamers'.I know a hell of a lot of people who worked their backsides of as event hosts to make Second Life a richer place - those people earned their $250.

Event hosts at my club have ALL worked for nothing since event support was withdrawn - they do it now for the same reason they did it when we began in Alta - for the fun involved in bringing so many diverse people together.But we cant afford to keep going to GOM to buy L$ for prizes,donations of L$ from the club members and donations from our vendors only takes you so far.

We pay well over $200 a month to keep Lestats open - and we dont contribute?That top twenty spot is not worthy of LL support? Places like ours are a feature of Second Life and if Linden Labs want Gambling to become the mainstay of Second Life 'socialising' then they've gone the right way about it.

Where do all those dancers,escorts and event hosts go now? they go playing Tringo.Where do all the people who used to grace events go now? they go playing Tringo.

I didnt texture a box and hire 3 dancers - I built up the most succesful club in SL and the largest group in the game by helping people to have FUN and yes I did that with LL help BUT.........I didnt sponge off anyone,$125 land fee's,$200 radio station and $30 streaming fee's is not sponging - I paid my way.

I helped countless new players get a foothold here,my hosts taught them rudimentary skills WITHOUT taking them to 'class',they gave them clothes and helped them with advice on how to find your way in this world.I have well over 1000 people in my groups as a measure of the sucess of the event hosts in my club.

We always said we'd wait until the fallout happened from cancelling event support and it has - the fallout is gambling - casual players dont WANT to script and build and use photoshop they want to be in Second Life to meet other people and they'll use whatever means takes the least amount of time and effort.

I wont be waiting much longer to see what Phillip Linden has to say or to see what he does,if anything.Soon I'll be off to play something that only costs me $15 a month instead of the $200 I'm paying now.

I'm a relative newcomer to the whole table here, so I don't know what it was like 6 or 10 months ago. I just know that when I came in, there used to be a plethora of diverse events to rifle through - a good number of bingo games, plenty of "Best *" / "Sexy *" contests, generic club events, and people wanting to try out new ideas with users here.

I would, for my first month, bounce from event to event, often hitting a new one each hour to see what's going on. It's how I earned the few L$ that lined my pocket then - before I heard of GOM, or IGE, before Instant Lindens and Hank Ramos' services existed. It was fun, then. It was addictive.
I won't lie - it even helped my WhatPulse rating skyrocket back then. That's just how much time I spent in-world. I'd work a 40 hour workweek at my day job, and then come home and spend a good 4-8 hours online in SL.

I'd even have a choice of events to go to, late at night.

That kept me happy.

Then, there were the changes - rating a user became prohibitively expensive to many; hosting events became unprofitable for some, if not all users.

When that happened, the event diversity went down.

My problem with that is this: As users, we're expected to provide content for ourselves, and for others. This is all fine, if we're not having to spend our own cash on being able to be in-world *plus* handle events, which may cost us something, as well. I've noticed that in general, the less L$ you give out at an event, the less appealing that event has become.

But, inversely, the more L$ you give out, the more the players come to expect this, and will invite friends to make the event successful.

Therefore, events such as Tringo / Bingo / SL-ingo all thrive, as each user has a fair chance at a random pot of money per game for such a little cost (often just putting in L$10 or L$20, multiplied by an average of 15 players makes each pot enticing to the 'lucky'.)

Part of me wonders, thusly, as to why Linden Lab isn't rewarding creativity the way it could be rewarded? After all, it is our content that brings more people to their world.

To be very honest, I have no niche in SL. I can't build. I can't script. I can't texture to save my life. Last month, I was simply considering quitting. The only things that're keeping me in are my 'family' - the group of furs I live around, of which I invited the majority of the first wave in... and Settlers of Second Life.

Even though I'm actually quite peeved with LL about something best left undiscussed here, I paid my quarterly and tier.

Let's just hope for some improvement in the coming few months. Else, I too will move on to less expensive pastures.

</rambling-at-1am>

Looks like we've got two threads discussing the same thing at the same time

Just an FYI (Especially for Lindens looking at this thread from the link in the hotline)...

There is a lot of good, productive discussion at this companion thread:

/110/c6/40215/1.html

Just adding my support. I started playing a bunch right before this whole change went down. I can certainly understand the ratings and allowance/stipend changes, but the events changes have impacted my experience negatively.

I miss the tons of events we used to have to chose from. I know they are not for everybody, but they were a draw for a good portion of folks. We all come to SL for different reasons, for me it is to explore and socialize to entertain myself. Now socializing has become more difficult because it's hard to find a big group of people, often with something in common such as the type of event or music they enjoy, getting together to have fun and enjoy SL.

Not all events were "best thong" or whatever, I was recently exposed to Primtionary! What fun!! Unfortunately the host had to offer small prizes that he had solicited from another player and I almost felt bad taking the prizes from these nice folks, they put time and effort into a very entertaining event and then they had to put MORE in by worrying about prizes, that's a shame.

I hope the lindens do reconsider a change to this.

Even if they funded events the event list really isn't even worth looking at anymore.

What I think many are saying is that the two are directly related in a causal way, Kasandra. It is BECAUSE events aren't funded any longer that the events postings have become much less diverse. If you want to look for the sake of comparison at a before and after picture, look at the events posted January 11-17 and compare that to the events listed this week. You will see a dramatic change in the tenor and types of events. The reason has been amply discussed: because the only thing events hosts get out of hosting presently is the gratitude of others unless the host is paid by someone who is pouring bought Lindens into sponsoring events privately (and the only one I know of who does that at the prior level is Anshe Chung).

So in other words, the events schedule is a reflection of completely underappreciated events hosts.

Okay, this is a good question to ask with the poorly thought out change LL has made to the Events Posting policies...

Back when LL first changed the funding in January, I thought I would stop doing events, as along with the changes in the subsidies that LL was going to provide, they changed how the bonuses for the weekly stipend worked and upped the cost of rating.

I decided to keep right on running the events. I just dropped the amount of L$ I put into the pot and found a sponsor that would like me to run events on their land for a small amout of L$.

It worked. Yes, I had to move to running my BINGO event more often to have that extra spending L$ to go buy new clothes and avatars with. But it was FUN and that's what counted.

So, in the end, the funding only changed. It was possible to find someone else to purchase my services as a Event Host. And that was as it appeared LL was hoping to happen.

Of course, now, with the new posting changes... guess I am going to stop for a while, and go do something else with the 6+ hours a day I was putting into Hosting and attending events...

-KQ