A Reasonable P2P Solution

This is buried deeply inside this thread which was started as a simple rant. It's the most sensible p2p idea ever posted on these boards so I'm submitting it as a formal feature suggestion.

It's so elegant a person wants to cry for not thinking of it themselves. Okay maybe that's just me. It does though fulfil the promise of additional premium benefits that was made to us when 1.2 was released. We've yet to see any more than we had then.

I wholeheartedly endorse this feature.

*stamp*
Now that Basic accounts are free it makes a lot of sense to add value to the Premium ones. LL has stated that their current marketing focus is to get more people to subscribe, so more Premium features make perfect sense.

Khamon what's the source thread? It can't seem to find it when I click through... /invalid_link.html doesn't work?

Great idea.

It works especially well because premium accounts are usually savvy enough to ignore telehub malls, so the impact wouldn't be that much.

It might foster some jealousy, but hey, you can't complain about FREE.

Sorry, correction made.

Ahs there thanxies.

Actually, let me qualify that. Premium account holders can teleport to governor linden land or their land anywhere.

Generalised P2P might be a bit too invasive. I'm not sure I want everyone popping out of nowhere onto my property.

Maybe our land can have a "accepts p2p" flags. Not sure.

At the very least, we should be able to go to "My Land", hit teleport, and actually *go* to my land.

If LL must, they can have a minimum size on the land that you teleport to.

This will probably leave out a few people including myself who own land but have it in groups

True, might discourage people from contributing to groups.

Well, the solution that'll probably be accepted is the one that is simple to implement and least impacts the economy.

Premium p2p sounds like a cool idea, but only if LL is desperate for premium subscribers (which they might be!).

Otherwise, I think they'd be wise to take baby steps.

I like the idea too, there is a land option in the group information with a map button, but basic members could join the group, so unless its a server controlled thing then it could work from there too

I support this idea as well. I'd still like parcel owners to have the ablity to establish a landing zone to control where people appear on thier land.

I don't like it as a premium feature only, obviously because i don't have a premium account.

Ultimately SL -> Metaverse, and as you can dial in any Internet address, free P2P teleportation to places that allow it is inevitable.

Hate to be a stickler, but Stephenson's "metaverse" involved traveling across virtual space and rarely, if ever, teleporting directly. Furthermore, it did entail telehubs to some extent. Otherwise the end would not have been as fun as it was, sans spoiler.

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At core, though, I break the basic idea into three parts:

1) Utility - getting from place to place rapidly and efficiently.
2) Place - immersive sensation of a coherent world.
2a) Cohesion - how well regions connect to one another, in both a literal and figurative sense.


Now, I'm a veteran from MMORPGs from long before I knew Active Worlds or Second Life existed. I personally valued Utility the most, and in the grand scheme of things, it appeared many people did as well. In games ranging from Dark Age of Camelot to Horizons, players would frequently game the ability to "Teleport to their Bind Stone (Home)," sometimes by commiting virtual suicide.


Despite this, the value of Place should not be underestimated. However, Second Life suffers a problem with its sense of place, simply because the world has very few cohesive elements (as opposed to MMOGs, that are developed by one company). This has led to many people wishing to fall back on utility, so they don't have to deal with the other two problems.

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My opinion is that all three should be preserved and properly balanced, yet not imposed on users that value one over the other. The suggestion above is meant as a compromise - and as an incentive to help develop the grid.

I feel the problems of place and cohesion will solve themselves over time, as focused communities form around sims. Residents are simply more likely to gravitate toward like-minded people, who in turn are more likely to cooperate with their neighbors.

Some of the older main grid sims and several islands are perfect examples of this, including Rose, Lusk, Fairchang, Faded Reality, Neualtenburg, and many parts of Ansheland. Over time, it should be a pleasure to explore your surroundings, and I feel this is happening in many parts of the world.

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The remaining element in this is, of course, the telehub advertiser and businesses. P2P incentives for Premium Accounts will likely lead to more competition in the land turnover market, but at the same time means a greater likelyhood of developing the grid and forming a symbiotic relationship with newer residents.

The telehubs themselves would also become more efficient for business, as the likelyhood of new residents and consumers passing through is increased, and the existance of telehubs themselves would no longer be threatened.

As such, advertisers would no longer need to use "avatar traps" to get their exposure, leading to less frustration and a greater likelyhood someone might buy their product.

Just my trailing $0.02.

baby steps!

let's at least be able to teleport to the land we own

Yes and no.

Stephenson wrote that people, as an etiquette, either in the privacy of your own home, or designated rezzing areas. There's no reason with p2p tp in SL could not simply allow a landowner to set a rezzing location on their land that is only accesable via the Find Places interface.

As to the original post in this thread (and the post when it was in another thread.. hehe)..

I fully support this idea!!!

Just to get everyone on the same page here, let me tell you how P2P teleport worked in Beta / 1.0 :

You paid a small fee, dependent on distance. It could go up to $30-$40 IIRC.
You could teleport anywhere instantly. Including the inside of someone's apartment.
However, if the "Landmark/Set Home" option in the parcel tools was unchecked, you couldn't make a landmark to it. This used to default to checked.
There was also an auto-fly feature that kinda sucked, but at least it was free.

Here's how we can safely bring that back:

Fixed, capped, or greatly reduced cost. Scaling the old payment formula to the current world would result in people paying $500 per teleport which would be unacceptable.
Defaulting landmark privileges to unchecked removes most possibilities of griefing / invasion of privacy. The land owner can also explicitly allow or deny access to people at any time with the standard land access control tools.
Restricting use of this to Premium users, and charging a per-teleport fee, should mitigate telehub mall owner's concerns.
Bring back auto-fly, but this time do it right. I've never used ROAM but people claim it's wonderful, so...

My only concern about ROAM is it's extremely inefficient in terms of asset lag. It's a good hack for the meantime. But really, teleporting should not require connecting to every single sim on the way to somewhere.

Actually, there is already a "landing point" option in the land controls. It looks like it's 2D only, though.

I think that there should be a flag in the land options to allow people to teleport directly to our land. Telehubs are irritating and simulator handoff issues makes high-speed travel hazardous and annoying. If I could cruise at 250 knots across the grid and never have to worry about getting dropped out of my plane, or going diagonally across a sim border, I wouldn't bother with telehubs too much. But as it is, we have to use them for reasonably reliable travel, and it's just a nuisance to have to fly over a bunch of stuff you simply do not care about.

What about people on private islands? We can't just fly across the grid to get to where we want! This will be obviously UNFAIR to us! People on the mainland no need to teleport, thus no need to pay fee, but people can't FLY across the EMPTINESS to the private islands!

Well, if I misread somethings here, then I'm sorry. I think I kinda sleepy.

I don't like the idea of direct payments for teleporting privilages. I would however, be for the idea of being able to port to your land or land owned by groups of which you are a member. Than the group officers can set the "landing zone" or just allow it to be unrestricted. And otherwise, you get to use the hubs for porting. This will loosely tie teleporting privilages to land tier payments, so LL will get their share, and still alow the land owner/group officers control over who can "pop in" without notice.

Check the announcements forum, this is on its way, looks set to replace telehubs.

I am the Author of the Proposal that has now gotten us p2p. I reject the proposal you mention P2P is for everyone not the Elite. And P2P as I wrote the proposal is free and to be used by ALL. and All means ALL. not just the elite.