Inventory Limit for free accounts

Im sure this may have been raised before, Im not sure where as there are a multitude of locations I can post a request for changes to SL .
But as the topic mentions I have been wondering how to either get more folks in to SL while moving the usage stats to something useful.

Bots do have some uses as has been discussed many a time, so banning free accounts is not the right way to go. Mainly as it will kill off the new resedient that wants to try before they buy in, I was one of those and had to research deep before I even purchased my first L$.

But if there was some way to put a KB limit on new accounts( read "free" accounts) without having to kill them off totally I think there would be more positives in that. Perhaps improving the current newbiee library with some better skins and tools. Therefore negating the requirement for them to have a vast inventory.

It would make life easier for mentors , knowing that each new AV already had the tools and notecards required to start them off enjoying SL. We would only have to advise them how to find the tools that they have and explain how to utilize them. This would also remove the occurance of sending a newbie to a " mates" shop to get kitted out ( yes it happens).

It would save on server space ( not that bots use much at the moment) and it would provide another positive to become a premium member. " Extra inventory content can be had and land for the price of a premium membership.
Would it affect the metrics... yes initally , would it affect the bottom line... I think you would see an increase in members becoming premium.

Another advantage to this change would be a form of averting the versions of copybot rampant on the grid. As a free or new avatar could only use the available items in their inventoryand not accept or upload any more we would start to see the real purps of IP thieft appear not some borrowed bot/new name that is dumped later.

Griefers would not be able to transfer tools to new generated bots to go about their task ( without a cost) LOL sort of a griefing Tax. And if they wanted those tools well they would have to become a priemum member which then leads on to a ID and payment line for those fun folk.

To wind this off as the thought train has collided with some very nice scotch.

I think this idea many have holes and perhaps huge ones . But after a year and a bit of SL and I have had a bash at almost everything ( except gor ?). Perhaps I should have dot pointed this. I look forward to the communitys thoughts.

Gumby- A paying customer in more ways than you realise.

PS: Yes there are typos in there just don't trip on them.

It's a really good idea, however, the free account holders who rent on islands and/or malls and who have a lot of stuff as active residents and business owners would have a fit over this idea. It's too bad there's not a fool-proof way to distinguish between basic accounts who actually want to contribute value to SL and the griefer noobs & bots.

Perhaps limiting the account inventory for free accounts by the age of the avatar is a better way to go, like they do with the LindeX - as avatars age, they can gradually have a higher inventory allowance. It would allow new residents to still get things they need, but prevent day-old griefers from accumulating an enormous weapons cache. I heard mention at one point of a Linden initiative to improve the library, and this is a good first step.

What about old-timers who drop to basic?

Are we going to arbitrarily delete their stuff to bring them within standards?

And this won't help griefing at all. Some people will pay for one real account which also has their arsenal, then make alts to do the griefing and just supply the alts (and alts of friends) with tools of the trade from their main account.

Yes, there are people dedicated enough to pay for an account to grief from.

TY Puppet and yes an area I had missed as a negative. Land renters rely on the free accounts to earn their L$. Although if they are free acounts then I guess we paid them the L$ to start with to rent that land, Naughty us payng those strippers. Ahh so to further that thought it would expand on to camping and inflated visit stats for regions. This would very much " tip the apple cart of SL" but I can still see for the better.

It will cause a bump / or dip in the L$ transfers in world.. but only till it settled and while we are still in a state of Flux and the World is improving with new things and given "new problems/challenges" I think we would all come out better on the other side.

Yes Im trying to stay positive during this chat and have spare rose coloured glasses on standby.

Gumby

Yep good points too Beezle, and if they really want to pay for an account to grief with .. it becomes much easier for LL to drop said account after an AR.
As for deleting stuff of old timers.. I dont have a problem with that as their iventory takes up server space ( yes not much & I have a bigger free account on Hotmail) If you decide to drop from the grid to non paying well perhaps Puppets comment above for slowly increasing a inventory size could work in reverse on closure.
After all it is their choise to drop to a free account. It will not stop interaction within world, music/video will still play, the sand boxes will still work( the camping spots may dry up)


Im trying to look at this as if I was some how running the company.. trying to please all but still sorting out some of the major issues that the community complain about. I mean the broader community.


Both good follow ups and My Scotch needs a refill.

They only drop the griefing alt account, unfortunately,



That would annoy me to no end. I'd like to keep all my resources for creating content, stuff I have memories associated with, etc, whether or not I continue to pay LL.

and I the same Beezel, thats why I still have a paid account.
Dont get me wrong on this < I have had paid accounts with lots of " games" BF2 , 2142, HL. most of thoes I have let run out as I no longer played them. but SL/ OL/ insert grid here... are similar to all the IM methods.. like yahoo ore MSN , you get an account and then build on it... and it is always there ( give or take a up grade) but still there . SL / OL / CG are all like that in part . If I like the environment .. Im in and will pay for it .. if not there are many other places to go to or back to.

Edit: very late . read this again in the morning

I'm a free account, But I both rent land and pay real money to buy my L$ for rent etc, So in my own way I contribute my issue is with LL vision of this being the future of the internet is it right to "Force" paid membership I dont think so, as someone pointed out on a free Hotmail account you already get a massive amount of storage, I build things and my inventory is around 4000 I dont know if this is big or small, I never ask others how big their inv is. I tried SL because it didnt cost and actually spent all of 10 mins on OI , then learned as I went and have had a very enjoyable time doing so, for the first week or so I really thought I was never going to get the hang of this, if I thought I would have to be paying shortly after I woulda given up, but as it is "Because" its free to play/use however you want to term it, I'm here still and through choice Purchase L$ and rent land & I share the vision of the internet of the future,
Most people already pay to use the internet with ISP fees and Telco fees, If it ever became forced membership I for one would move on to one of the other metaverses popping up. SL wont remain the be all end all of metaverse for ever, and in my opinion if they close the doors and force membership they will both lose users and prevent new signups.

Does your vague term "free account" mean:

1. Accounts that have not used payment info, or
2. Accounts with no payment info on file, or
3. All non-premium accounts

The number of premium accounts currently is very small. Even asking everyone who already has a "payment info on file" account to go premium to save their inventories would be a PR nightmare; LL would be far better served to simply put a fee-for-server-space structure in place that would apply equally to all. If they wished, they could "gift" a certain amount of server space fee to premium members.

Keep in mind that 80% of the land in SL is islands, and the residents who dwell on those islands generally have absolutely no interest in the main benefit of premium accounts, the ability to buy mainland.

/me has a fit

Not sure exactly what problem you're trying to solve here, but fortunately, LL is not likely to be listening. It would have little or no effect on copybots, which could easily be modified to give all their content to some paid user.

It might ease server load. If the limit is high enough, it wouldn't have much effect except on pretty serious inventory hogs. (I.e., 20K items.) I suspect there are few enough avs who keep that much that it wouldn't affect server load that much.

If the limit is significantly lower (e.g., 5K items), server load would be eased by the people who get pissed off and quit playing. I doubt this is the intended result.

If the limit were in bytes, as suggested, there would be a couple problems. First, it would have to be calculated and checked on every inventory addition, which I suspect would be nontrivial. Second, we'd need a feature to see how many bytes we're using, so we can avoid the limit.

I'm glad it's up to LL to decide how they run their business, rather than all the folks who want us treated as second class residents, at best a drain on resources and at worst griefers and bots.

So much truth in your reply .....
I'm very happy on my private estate, no ad farms no ban lines ...that alone is perfect for me.
& incidentally I'm a payment info used ... but through choice.. thats the key to me still being here .. through choice.

OK back, and just read through the inputs supplied. Thank you all for that.. It was a weird little train of thought that I headed off down..

I can see from the repiles that I had perhaps missed the dynamic of the islands.. Given Im not really sure the actual mix of mainland V's rented islands but LL still gets paid by the region holder each month. I have rented on the islands before and very much enjoyed it but moved on as I wanted build freedom ( commercial theme).

I was refering to Non premium accounts. Yes this would not be intended for LL to impliment but it was an idea that I wanted to thrash out as an excerise in making a silver bullet. But it would become omre of a rod for my back ( or LL's)

PS: just found out that the m key is not well on this lappy, if a word looks weird its more than likely to be missing "m".

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2205 <<< found this similar request on the jira but not as detailed . Please feel free to add further comments to this ticket/request.

They wouldn't necessarily have to do it for all existing users. Existing users could be given a bigger reasonable allowance of like 50,000 items which should cover almost everyone except people are really in-need of a poke, but new accounts would be limited to 5,000 inventory items after which they will be warned that they need to upgrade to premium for unlimited items or trim their inventory.

going to jump in here real quick, I am a free account and have far surpassed this 50k items you have mentioned. I do hold my full group builds in inventory as backup. If they were to limit us to 5k I would have to make alts to hold the rest. so seriouisly this is not feasible.

Or you could try tidying your inventory or upgrade to premium, this is precisely the point. You're using a ton of space and contributing a lot of strain (compared to others) to a system that is already heavily worked. You should really be willing to either reduce that, or pay for it as your 50,000+ items impact us all. It's nothing personally directed at you, but 50,000+ items is a LOT for a single person, why should you be entitled to this when it, combined with other people's similarly large inventories, contributes to lag and problems for everyone? If you're not paying for the privilege then it's unrealistic to assume that you're always going to be allowed to use a potentially unlimited amount of resources.

I'm a premium account but my inventory is around 4,000 items. I'm a builder and scripter, so it's difficult to keep it trimmed down, but those 4,000 items are all items that I want to hold onto. Heck, it's hard enough to find things with 4,000 items, if I could trim it more I would. I recently cleared out a ton of landmarks so now I've only got 10 or so that I frequently use or want to re-visit.

I wont be back to this thread, I can see where the issue lyes. Thanks for the input. have fun

You guys are throwing around free and premium accounts without much thought. What about us old timers who had to pay for our *free* accounts. Do I have to Pay a monthly fee no. however I did have to pay a fee to initially play second life. Those of us old enough to remember in sl had to pay s 9.95 or something like that fee to get an account to begin with.
What are your vast plans for us just delete the inventories we've been building for 3 years just because we don't have the disposable income to pay a monthly fee.

I remember those times, I had an account (for 2 hours) back when they had a 1 week free deal. I got fed up and left. I couldn't try out half the things I was told I could without actually paying the $10.

I have heard this discussion so many times already. Everyone comes up with their own ideas to limit something on Free accounts. Resticting logins for free members if everything starts working real bad, limiting inventories, less permissions, restricting access to certain places and the list of suggestions goes on and on.

Often this results from problems in-world (otherwise nobody would suggest these things in the first place...). The general idea behind this usually is "we are paying and nothing works! So let's limit the 'freeloaders' and let us have our SL back".

First of all. There are many (the majority actually) Free account holders that contribute to SL also. They create and sell things. Many also buy stuff. Therefore they all contribute to the growth of SL also in many ways. It would be really unfair to limit them in any sort of way.

Second. Linden Labs needs new influx of residents for it's existance. Given the current situation on the (game-)market, they have made an excellent choice allowing free accounts. Only this will keep LL going and growing (I feel sorry for the oldtimers that had to pay to join, long ago). Otherwise you soon won't have any SL anymore.

Third and most important point. The stability and performance of SL is a *technical* problem. It has absolutely *nothing* to do with premium or free accounts! If SL can't handle the load, they should do things like adding more or faster servers, increase connetions, rewrite code or whatever it takes to make things faster.

Conclusion. Users having problems using SL should "complain" to the makers of the game (use the Jira for instance) and ask for improvement of the service. They should definiately *not* suggest limitations on other users in any sort of way.

Kind regards,
Lisa Lowe

I think freebie accounts are limited enough as it is. After spending half a year as a freebie, I was glad I had the access and capabilities that I did have. Otherwise, the few negative experiences I had would have been the end of me here and I would have never considered going premium. (=_=)

I don't like the idea of "look but don't touch" access for free accounts. Limited logins, limited inventory, and even the currently available limited land access are all discouraging things for new residents. (>_<

Maybe I'm too optimistic, but, there is plenty of incentive to go premium right now. Maybe not for the most entitlistic types, but still, a 512 mainland parcel in the right spot and the current stipend ain't bad. It may just take more time for some to realize that than others. And for those people, having nice open freebie accounts help a lot. (^_^)

We see it here all the time... From accounts years old that still have never gone premium and get their L$ in sales on rented land... To people who just joined a week ago and have already dumped $5,000 USD into a whole sim, 4 adopted kid AVs, a dozen prefab castles, and more cars and boats than you can wave a megaprim at. (o.o)

There should be room for all of us here, right? (^_^)y

I disagree with some of the comments above and am not for a "full" but "partial" restriction on free accounts with a new category which is a content creator account.

These are also free, but do require RL ID validation in form of a matching PayPal Account / Credit/Debit Card being on file with validation similar performed by PayPal or Ebay. Not use, just checked.

Reason? Content Theft is a major issue in SL, just search on Google, read the blogs, or speak to any experienced creator in world. By having a creator account you get ability to transfer objects to another avatar (that includes setting them to sale for zero or above) / upload images/sounds to Second Life and more importantly exit cash from Second Life.

Current Free Accounts are the same, but do not have the transfer object facility or upload facility or exit cash from platform ability. This functions are mainly to do with distribution of product or making a profit from Second Life. (That I can think of, other uses feel free to post my brain is switching off other than because I want to give Bob this cool car I just made as a present)

It may be argued that the new free account wants to give away inventory etc (see above), so it may be prudent for it only to include texture, objects, sums of money over x Linden etc - e.g. snapshots can be transferred). The minimum amount of restriction as possible, but ensuring the free accounts without the Content Creator registration have education and ability to register for this as soon as they like (no fee).

Another side of this argument is those who only create and make enough sales to cover their land tier so are "flat" in terms of input and output. More thought is required around this element of the commnity (my question would still be are there residents in this category who do not have PayPal, ability to be RL Validated or credit or debit cards?) - what if their sales don't make tier one month how do they buy their Lindens?.

I only need to refer to people selling items on Ebay and whom use PayPal. Any cash exit over EUR 1700 in Europe in 1 year requires money laundering id checks. Yet not from Second Life...it's an interesting concept from a regulatory viewpoint.

This way every time we file DMCA and AR's for content that is "borrowed" where there is a legal copyright holder involved we have access to the person's RL data that we require for legal action. That gives us the content creators some peace of mind as at minimum we are able to obtain RL data for our case. It reduces Alt Abuse I also suspect and just as important it keeps the free accounts pretty much unrestricted. Note I am saying payment info on file and validated over USED here. I am not asking people to pay for this.

Whilst I understand Lisa's points above, I think some changes are required that help the user base's needs and that is likely to mean some elements of compromise in all camps.

Just an idea....

back after attending to some sad family business.
I see this thread has restarted. Cool .
I had a little think as I was re reading the above inputs and was very impressed with some of the replies. As for the old timers that have been with SL from the paid days I would expect that they would continue under the trems that they started with. Just like the free land that came with the account ( about 2004) I still know of some blocks that are not used any more ( well in the last year and a bit) and still belong to those origional folk.

I would envisage this to occur with the current members/residents as policy changes.

As this is streering in a negative thread direction I'm going to change the tact a bit and ask "what incentives would intice you to become a premium member ?" Be realistic as if you where running SL and had to turn a profit and cover wages.

Given that there is alot of experience in this forum for time in world, I look forward to reading the replies.

Really we just need to verify accounts so we don't have unlimited disposable accounts available to anyone who can click an "are you who you say you are and over 18?" checkbox.

I'm new, by some peoples standards. But I have a large inventory.

Why? Well I want to start creating things, like books, and I'm looking for the right place to lease land for all the stuff I have to have rezed to work correctly, and using Sandboxes to do all the stuff just doesn't make it.

So far, the number of images I have uploaded is approaching 1,000. Yea, that is a fair amount, but I am making books, and each page is an image.

With backups, work in progress, archived images, etc. I could easily see having 10 or 20 thousand inventory items in the next few months.

And what is worse, is that I GIVE the books away, as well. (BAD Business Model)

I really only want to do books for Non-profits, support groups, libraries, community groups, etc.

Should I be forced to go to a premium account?

In my suggestion above

you would have the opportunity to register for a content creator account - still free. But you are creating content I am assuming with 1000 uploads you paid for lindens so have payment info on file anyhow which is the same as my suggestion....