Pinpoint Teleporting

It appears that I'm in the minority here, but I would rather keep the telehub system we have now. It forces us to fly around a bit, and take in a bit of the local scenery.

My Second Life is not so harried that I can't spare a few minutes to get from here to there.

- Ace

That was what was missing from the thread so I felt obligated to add it.

Here are what telehubs <tend> to do now:

1. Concentrates commercial buisness around them like a magnet. (Yes, you can find commercial stuff anywhere on the grid. But with the current system, commercial enterprises are most concentrated within 300m of telehubs).

2. For buisnesses that depend upon traffic, the "green-dot effect". There's a good number of folks that when flying around looking for something to do, will tend to stop in & check out a mass of green dots - especially if those dots are not to far from their present location. Having a club or event within 300m of a telehub maximizes this effect.

I like the idea of being able to teleport directly to any plot of land you own - or teleport directly to any group-held or group-associated land you're an officer of. But if you open it up too wide, IMHO - you're going to negatively impact the people that want quiet, residential places, and the people that want their homes as far away from heavy commercial areas as possible.

I understand some folks like Kali are negatively impacted by rogue clubs and malls regardless of passive zoning. But if you look at the grid as a whole - there is nowhere else where commerical enterprises are more concentrated than within 300m of Telehubs. I think scattering those seeds into the wind would make Kali's club/mall problem worse - not better.

This all is inarguable, however, the world of Second Life, as it happens, is radically different from the real world and, hopefully, allows us to explore brand new concepts of location & movement and the subsequent effects on commerce, relationships and a hundred other things. Comparing SL to the real world results in promoting valid points; but the premise is fundamentally flawed.

Speaking of fundamental, explain to me why it's important for commercial builds to be lumped together in Second Life. On the surface, it seems that cramming so many textures, vending scripts and avs into a single sim is a bad idea to begin with. If it's the only reason we need telehubs, by extension, telehubs are simply a bad idea.

SL is different from RL - you're absolutely correct. But there are valuable lessons to be learned from RL that apply to SL. I don't believe my premise is flawed - but I recognize that's only my opinion.

Very good point about commercial builds being lumped together. From a purely technological standpoint - you're dead on. To get optimal performance, resource usage should be load balanced. From a marketing perspective however - having commerce lumped together makes perfect sense. That's why mega-malls are successful in RL. A successful urban planner needs to consider the needs of commerce, the needs of infrastructure, and the needs of the community appropriately to acheive harmony.

But that brings me back to my point - this is a multifaceted issue. To look at only the technological, convienience, or for that matter, commercial elements *alone* provides a skewed view that will hurt our world as a whole. I'm hoping that the ultimate decisionmakers on this issue will take a holistic view, and if a solution is warranted - provide one that will offer the maximum benefit to convienience with a minimum impact to commerce and infrastructure.

Here's my two-cents, speaking as someone who doesn't actually own land or any other money-making venture: I have a crappy computer, so in the extremely likely event that SL crashes, instant-teleporting will save me a lot of time travelling through various sims all over again.

The telehub system has fallen short of its intented goal to encourage travel and player interaction. It is just as likely to decrease the inclination to travel and mingle when met by a laggy mall and the common occurence of a required relog. Encountering various security scripts enroute to one's destination throws you off course, at best, and forces a relog, at worst, further detracts from the user satifaction level. Telehubs serve well to define a centralized commercial district and should be maintained as such. But most people try to avoid congested travel centers in the course of pursuing normal activities.
Those inclined to diversify their landing holdings throughout the world are challenged in accessing their secondary properties. The value of the financial expenditure to do so becomes questionable. Land parcels which are interesting and appealing but not the main choice for a primary residence lose value and lay vacant. I'm thinking of the snow sims and the new continent as well as parcels scattered throughout the mainland.
The addition of a singular telehub in a remote sim would likely the traffic in that area. But the ability to teleport anywhere is unlikely to increase visitors to a secluded spot. It may even decrease the occasional fly by occurrences.
A third proposal suggests that the teleport home option be expanded to include all property owned either individually or in group. A variation would expand this feature to a selected # of "favorite places" would be more flexible and be inclusive of non land owning players. Perhaps this final option should be considered as an acceptable compromise for sides in the debate of this issue.

I agree with the points made here. The first word, however, takes away from the post and simply not necessary to make your point.

I second it.

What SHOULD happen is:

Option 1) Telehubs

Option 2) Pay a small fee to teleport directly to a location

That way the asset sever won't die, there will still be rudimentary zoning, and you can circumvent telehubs if you really want to, for a couple $s.

And, yeah, the option to turn off teleporting into your parcel is a good idea, but it'd have to be able to distinguish between regular teleports and TPs given to others by you or other people in your parcel.

If you institute p2p teleportation again, telehubs will be abandoned. Why the hell would you use an inconvenient mode of transportation when an instant, free, lag-free one is always available?

It's like crawling backwards with a paper sack over your head instead of taking the city bus.

That being said, I am against re-implementing p2p teleport, because it would destroy any sense of place or distance. When everything in SL is a double click away from your front door, there is zero need for any sort of planned community, zoning, regional planning, or even any themed builds.

Plus you will have a uniform land market; every plot will be around the same price (minus the affect of water), leading to a club next door to you. Yes, next to you. Oh, and porn shops on the other side.

What should be instead done is to make the telehub more useful... not sure how, but it is preferrable over p2p teleporting.

LF

Agreed. We had P2P teleporting before. It's not needed, removing it for the telehubs was a good community improvement LL did.

Hm. I do appreciate the point about urban sprawl, but the effect the telehubs have on me is that I don't usually go anywhere unless someone who is already there sends me a teleport invite. Am I unusual in that respect? If not, I think the telehub system isn't working to help the community.

Keeping the telehubs but adding a limited number of "favorite places" that one can get to easily seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I don't mind using a telehub the first time I go somewhere, but after that, it's tedious. At the very least, it should be possible to teleport directly to events. Maybe the event owners could pay a little extra on event registration to offer this service to their customers. It sure would save a pile of time currently spent responding to IM teleport requests. And/or maybe the fee for teleporting directly to the event could go to the event host, to replace event funding! Kill 2 birds with one stone, that way.

The other idea I've seen that is kind of interesting is allowing scripted teleports for a fee. Then someone could conceivably set up competing telehub networks. I don't know how I'd feel about someone putting one in next to my land. It would not have as much traffic as a regular telehub, because it would (a) cost L$ and (b) only be useful to go to places it's programmed to go to. Though (b) would depend on whether one needs to own objects at both ends of the teleport in order to script a transfer.

If only vehicles worked properly across sim boundaries... there's a road up the hill from my place in Arena, but no reliable bus service I can suggest to people. What a great way for newbies to earn L$ and meet people... running buses, trains, balloons, etc. If the service were good enough, it would be an interesting way to travel, see SL, and meet other passengers, too. Much easier to stay with a couple of other players while you all go somewhere together. But there doesn't seem much point if you're only going to dump all your passengers at every sim boundary.

neko

I couldn't agree more!

Telehubs have never made sense to me. My first online gaming experience was "THERE" my "landmarks" in THERE would set me to the exact location that I was at. And things changed (ex: buildings no longer there, or a building that exists where it didn't before) you just simply adapt and either change the land mark or delete it.

I, (my opinion) HATE telehubs. I never in amost a year of playing have ever hung around a telehub "looking for some socializing" When I teleport somewhere I am in the process og going somewhere NOT to the TELEHUB!

I't absurd the Telehubs are implemented.

This is what really happens let's say you have six people that are getting ready to go to a party or a game or shopping. Usually one departs and throws the others a port to the EXACT location. I can't remember a single time where all of use teleported to a hub and then flew to the mall.

Next why is it I can log off at some XYZ coord and be gone a day, a week, even a month and when I log back in (providing my options are not set to go to my home) I can go the exact place i was at. If that is possible why can't I have a "list" of those "exact" places?

Maybe I can have a Top 10 favorite "exact" teleport locations if point to point can't be implemented.

How about having a button that says undo last telport. Kind of like the previous channel on a remote. Example: I am at a friends location. We discuss something and I say "Oh let me see if that shop is still where I think it is..." I teleport to the location where I think this particular shop is and either I was mistaken about it or it's not there any more. Since it is not there I am not going to send a TP back to my friend. So I have two choices a) ask my friend in an IM "tp me back" or B) teleport back to the STINKING Telehub and then fly to my friends.

When I want to go sight seeing I seldom use Telehubs unless it's an Island I am going to. I just fly around sims when I get the urge to do that.

regards,
wizzie

I'm relatively new to SL, after a year in There, and I find the SL system of teleport hubs cumbersome and annoying. I'm wasting time flying over and into stuff I can't see. When I run into a store or some construction that's really high, I get even more annoyed. If I want to shop, I'll look for a place to shop. If I want to go to an event, I want to just go there, not have to wander around for ten minutes trying to find it. It was extremely confusing at first, to set a landmark to a friend's house and then have to search for it from a hub. I've wound up in more restricted areas than I care to remember, not by intention, just because they were in the way of my destination. This issue is one of the main reasons I haven't spent much time in SL. Teleporting doesn't happen in rl (yet,lol) but if it did, I'd expect to go directly to my destination, not in the middle of a shopping district. And why on earth (or any other world) should we have to pay?

Pinpoint teleports sound great.

Hey, how about we have a:



And everyone is able to p2p TP.

Resident discussion with Lindens to follow afterward, and see what the community thought of it all!

I dunno how technically difficult this would be, but it would, at least, serve as an interesting experiment.

I think a better solution than P2P would be for people to be able to host telehubs on their land.

From there many other options are possible (though not necessary, get that.. not necessary)

a) charging to host a telehub
b) charging people who use your telehub

etc..

Also,given the various technical problems with teleporting, are there any technical problems on the server around this?

I think the Linden's should open up the kimono a bit and let us know what's going on behind the scenes. Our suggestions might be a bit more intelligent if we understood the cards we've been dealt.

However, I have to agree with the poser above. Telehubs have not made me look around one iota. All they make me do is fly up and curse like hell when I can't.

In terms of passive zoning, the solution is not telehubs, but rather more zoning functionality.

In terms of telehub economy disruption - yes, disrupting that economy would be a very very bad move.

Dear goodness, what a dumb idea. Letting people charge people to move around. Freaking hell, just let us be free for goodness sakes, how hard is it! The ability to go where we want, when we want, it's a no brainer!

Well, as I said - not necessary.

However, disrupting the current telehub economy woudl be disastrous. It would basically show a sign of huge disrespect to those who have made a commitment to the game in a particular way.

How would you feel it if you spent 100s of hours and thousands of dollars and then LL made a change that screwed you personally? Maybe you'd be OK with it, but 99% of people wouldn't.

It sends a huge message out to those who want to make a similar investment at some point in time.

Changes can not be extremely disruptive.

Apologies for the use of expletives, but if LL decides to cripple the ability of Second Life users to move around the world in order to make the odd few rich, Second Life is fucked.

How would being able to host your own telehub avoid this disruption? People who had developed near an existing telehub would still feel they'd been done wrong, don't you think?

And I'm not that keen to have my distant PG/residential plot suddenly accessable by telehub if my neighbor decides to put one up next door.

I think this would perpetuate the worst of the telehub problems, and not avoid disrupting the existing telehub-based economy. Unless LL also puts in some kind of zoning, as you alluded to, but that would be very hard to enforce.


Have to agree with you there.

neko

Well, make only certain SIMs "telehubbable".

Like the ones that Jsecure is in

Anyways, Jsecure, I do agree with yours and Kris's point. P2P teleporting would be great.

Unfortunate, LL went and painted themselves in a corner with all this telehub land. If they were to screw all those people over it would really be a huge mark against their credibility.

Everytime they do something people will be very resistant to investing any time because the inevitable question will always arise 'ok when is LL going to screw *me* over?'

Prop 266 suggests allowing landowners to turn on the ability to teleport directly to their plots via a landmark. A difference I see between this and the ability to make anywhere a telehub is that when you try to teleport to a place, you normally get directed into the "nearest" telehub. If a landowner sets their plot to allow teleport in, you'd only end up at that plot if that plot was where you were trying to go, not the one next door. It wouldn't disrupt the telehub system as much as adding new telehubs, or as completely open P2P teleporting. Perhaps this would be a good compromise.

There is still the issue that someone could go to a quiet residential area far from any existing telehubs and build a "laggy club" and make the land teleportable, which presumably they'd be less likely to do if people had to fly around a void to get there from the "nearest" telehub (this is presently the situation in Arena, for example). Perhaps it ought to cost something to add teleportability to land, based on how far it is from an existing telehub.

Beats me how to solve this problem. My favorite solution would be to improve the performance of sims so much that we wouldn't get caught in slowly-rezzing buildings around telehubs and having a club next door wouldn't lag a whole sim. But I suppose I'd better not hold my breath waiting for that.

neko