Whys this good?

Ok .. as the people of SL get split on the topic of whether these changes are good or not here are the real issues, that i see. Any good answers will be appreciated.

For a lot of people SL is associated with high real world costs. So the value of the L$ goin up benefits them a lot. And as Chip pointed out to me, if these RL costs go down , because of L$ goin up, this will provide more people with incentive to provide good content and hopefully offer more good content in the future. They say because there will be less money in game, the price of goods will go down. But essentially u can see people buying less stuff, less people selling , so the best people (a minority) will be rewarded. And since only a few will truly be rewarded, these people will continue to get better offering better content.

From my perspective: First of all, the content is this game is very very weak, compared to other online games. People complain about the grinding or the monotony of other games, but these other games offer a lot more content than second Life currently.

So why play SL?
Because there is no clear goals, this increases the socialization of SL , which makes this game so unique compared to others. What else is there really to do , but build, script, or chill wit people at/with developed content.

Since pretty much all you can do is build or script .. people will do this regardless...

These changes will get more people to build and script and create more content....
First of all, I dont wanna do anything like this, and this my choice just like it is for all of u. But building and scripting are isolating and can be compared to soloing in other games, that while your building or scripting, your usually not socializing or meeting new people. And the socialization is a huge reason many play this game. Plus the learning curve, and how motivating is it to develop based on the uncertainty of future revenue.

I pay the 9.99 a month to Lindens for the fun and socialization on SL. Like me there probably a lot of us, that could care less if the world get flooded with Lindens.......
I dont understand why the Lindens dont provide a lot more content. Instead they give us crappy patches like a login queue. And pay someone to crunch numbers on a fake economy than developing better content.

These changes will cause more people to upgrade accounts or become more motivated to learn because of the less welfare....
Again by the Lindens providing better content, this will attract more people faster than users with RL schedules to try and develop content.

The welfare and the rating system I could really care less about too..
but I can see there probly will be less events and less people attending events which will hurt socialization and fun.

So like a lot of people are saying wait to see whats gonna happen. Which I will do. But to me it seems like these changes are implemented to really increase the building, and scripting community and the people that are truly motivated to make money, on SL. For a majority of us this is not fun. We just wanna chill, buy stupid stuff, mess around with it ,and mess around at the club and attend events. So build and create all the things u want, but in the end how many are still gonna be around to enjoy it.

Tupac, you have no idea what you're talking about.

"Crappy patches"!?

In 1.0 we didn't have particles, custom animations, had 3/4ths the amount of prims, no bump mapping, no shiny, no RPC...

ALL OF THOSE WERE FROM PATCHES!

Get a little experience under your belt before you try to make another social commentary.


EDIT: Changed version number.

I was not around the day shiny was included, but I will cherish it always!

Ooooh..... shiny.

Lance, no offense, but we have always had particles, even in early early beta, (I used to experiment with glittering attachments and snow long before 1.0), RPC is only one way so the use is extremely limited, you used to have unlimited prims even if you owned no land...

careful there laddy.

Well, yeah, llMakeSmoke. I was referring to the complex ones we have now.

Again, no. We have always had llParticleSystem (or whatever it was). Makesmoke and makefire were just convenient wrappers. In fact the old system allows for slower and tighter generation of particles (I had to use it to confine snow to a small snowglobe on the Taber tree), so I still use it.

The observation about patches is not without some truth. I'm not going to argue it, but remember, taxes were implemented with a patch...and 1.5.9...

Sorry we got off on the wrong foot Tupac. I think your attitude of wait and see is a good one. I really think the impact of these changes will have less effect on your SL experience than you think. For SL to thrive it needs every kind of player. It needs content creators and it needs consumers, and a lot of people are both. For people who just want to play around with cool toys and clothes and go to clubs and whatnot you depend on the content creators, event hosts, club owners, and so on. At the same time they all depend on you.

I think you're right in saying that SL doesn't have the kind of advanced quality content that a more traditional online game has. We all want that to change. For that to happen it means a huge investment of time and effort for those that try to develop that kind of content... so much that they aren't likely to do it unless they're getting paid... not because they wouldn't do it for the fun but because people need to eat and pay their bills and it's hard to justify spending as much time working in SL as you would at a day job, not to mention that owning a lot of land in SL is expensive. That's why GOM and IGE are so important. That's the mechanism that rewards the hardcore content developers and is also why keeping the economy stable is so important... so that the exchange rate stays at a reasonable level.

It's absolutely vital that people get over their fear/resentment of buying L$ on GOM. I've heard a lot of people make comparisons to There and how you had to pay for everything as you go. There was pretty much a greed machine. The only ones really making money off the backs of their payerbase was There inc. SL is different, because when you buy stuff in game or buy L$ you're supporting those in the playerbase who are working so hard to provide cool stuff to play with. Before it was possible to sell and buy L$ there was still cool stuff around and cool stuff to do but not really enough to draw in many mainstream casual players. The content that's in the game now has increased in quality amazingly since it became possible to make money here. Some might say there isn't a correlation, but I think there is. It will continue to get better and better but that requires the participation of the casual partiers as much as the content creators, and that means being willing to pay a little bit for stuff. That's how I see things anyway.

Todays changes were made for the benefit of those who buy and sell lindens on the gaming markets. And nothing more.

Right, Magnum, it has nothing to do with the mass amounts of frivilous, loophole events that clutter the event board on a daily basis. What an astute observer you are.

Magnum - I'm honestly starting to think you are a bit of a troll. Your points are - well - for want of a better term .. pointless!

I tried to see your point of view - but now your just wallowing in your own self induced misery.

Siggy.

magnum, you are feeling the immediate hurt because you have super high ratings, but remember you will always get more bonus than other players.

when the effects come about, we'll see that the real result is to give more buying power to premium account holders over basic account holders.

imagine this - a premium and basic account holder, both with 500 rating bonus that is cut in half

premium
before - 1000
after - 750

25% reduction


basic
before - 550
after - 300

45% reduction

if you don't have a premium account, there's a good reason to get one now.

Are you portraying this as negative, positive, or neutral?

I see it as a positive, personally. Basic account holders shouldn't get NEARLY as much stipend as premiums, as they are actually costing LL money (Bandwith, support..)

i'm portraying it as your mom. what kind of question is that?

i'm just illustrating to poor sad rateminers what the real affect of these changes is.

with a lower money supply, sellers will lower their prices to compete for the L$. but in the new economy, premium account holders will have greater leverage based on stipend alone.

those who buy large amounts of L$ on GOM or IGE will feel very little difference.

Just wanted to know, it was kinda vague, and open to interprentation.