" Also I think the discount levels at the large sizes are too high."

Yikes!

Tell me about it.

Philip Linden: I'd be more in favor of a totally smooth per meter system than more tiers
Philip Linden: I'd like to see the tier prices be simpler...
Philip Linden: maybe just a flat price per meter.
Philip Linden: Also I think the discount levels at the large sizes are too high.

OK so what next? lol

A trial lead balloon!

*cackles* People act shocked!

We should be shocked:

/invalid_link.html

Economically, volume discounts make sense because it's FAR less trouble to sell 1,000 of something to one person than it is to sell 1,000 of something to 5 or 10 people. It's a win for the seller AND a win for the purchaser. Why mess with it?

Yay!

This is the best part of the whole town hall. Encouraging land consolidation isn't such a good thing.

It's still not so great that they're selling minimum whole sim auction parcels though.

Try telling that to those who prefer to rent land

Ownership is the source of all capital. It should never be limited unless for social reasons. Capatilism cannot survive without it. So anti up and but what you neeed or live within your mean. If the were not people willing to by islands and large areas of tland and rent it (Ash for example) then all those not willing to invest heavily in the game would not be able to build and play...


Ownership is the basis of any capatilist economy and land is the nexus. If you want more money from the land from the people who use it have a tax...erm.. Oh - there is one already

I am absolutely disgusted.

I am not too sure who the hell is going to buy $1000+ sims if the tier is higher and people are selling off their land en masse because they cant afford tier.

LL must clarify their intentions, because they are about to cause panic amongst their largest customers.

Such a panic will cause a ripple effect that will have profound effects on the SL economy.

^ what schwan said

omg LL WILL AHVE A PANIC ON THERE HNADS IF THEY RAIS THE LAND TIER FEES FOR SURE I OWN A SIM AND A 1/4 AND IF THE TEIR WENT UP I THINK I WOULD HAVE TO RETHINK MY LAND OWNERSHIP. OR RAISE THE RENTS IN MY MALLS WITCH NOW BARLY PAY MY TIER. AND THAT WOULD MAKE MANY PPL UN HAPPY.

I think there is a flaw in your logic. In a database, quantity of data has little to do with costs (aside from the scaling factor, which is somewhat linear). I think the costs in question are associated with accounting, billing and liason (i.e., "customer service" generated by land activity. There are per-parcel-of-land costs that are way out of proportion to the number of bytes on a disk someplace.

In other words, if one person owns one parcel and another owns two parcels, the costs are not higher for the one who owns two parcels. The costs are mostly related to how many people own land, not so much how big the parcels are or how many parcels a person might own.

If one person has one item in their inventory and another person has 100,000 items in their inventory, the 100,000 item person costs Linden only a very tiny, tiny, tiny amount of RL$ more.

Don't look at the number of bytes, or the number of asset database records. Look at the number of telephone calls, emails and billing records. That's where the costs are. The records in the accounting database, not the recrods in the asset database.

Buster

"Such a panic will cause a ripple effect that will have profound effects on the SL economy."

Sure. A handful of players who have been attempting to hold a controlling interest in one aspect of the game will have to sell land. Land prices will drop. More people will own land. Almost everyone will have a more positive experience in SL. A handful might not. More people will participate and stay in SL. LL will make more income. A handful of individuals might not.

Something is wrong when you have to deal with the same one individual to rent land for a shop in every good location. The current land tier system, with the favoritism built into it, has promoted a situation which is out of balance. There is no valid argument against a system which shows no favoritism. It would be to almost everyone's advantage to implement a system without favoritism.

It makes sense that leveling the playing field would hurt those trying to be land barons. It makes that method of taking advantage of the system obsolete. In that case the best way to play "land Barron" is to not be one.

The argument that someone deserves a price break because no one is occupying the vast tracts of cyberspace (certainly an appropriate term for SL) that they own, is countered by the argument that if they did not own it, there would be people there. Hopefully not just the same people spread out more. The drain on the economy that the land Barron scheme creates would be spread out more evenly as well. That's a definite positive result, once the bump in the economy that this change might create passes.

Currently, SL appears to have the economy and social structure of a banana republic. Is that accurate? Is there an influential handful of people would really hate for that to change? I'm not sure yet. I'm new here. I haven't decided if it's worth it to stick around either. It's better than ActiveWorlds was ten years ago, but I would have thought things would be much further along by now. There is a lot that needs fixing in SL. It would be good if those things were fixed. There are a few people who are betting on them not being fixed.

Even the playing field. Let the economic bump happen. It's good for SL in the long run.

Only LL has controlling interest in the game. No one else does.

I think, however, they probably deflect and amazing amount of critique by having a middle man take all the heat.

Let's all shed a tear for Anshe Chung then.

Who's with me?

Anyone?

Anshe is the underpinning of the economics of SL.

If LL mistreats her, what makes you think you or I will not be next?

It's so clear that she is in this out of pure altruism. Everyone benefits so much from the vast tracts of land sitting empty. I'm sure that if she didn't own pretty much all of the land around most telehubs, that land would still be there and people would still have shops on it.

Removing an unfair advantage that could hurt those individuals capitalizing on it, but it benefits everyone else.


So back at you:
If the Lindens do something to help all of the other participants in the game now, what makes you think you or I will not be next?

What if anshe writes trash in the forums and gets banned? Ha!

What if IGE Wheeling or Zeppi Schlegel gets banned! Ha!

There are a handful of residents who are so important to the economy that if they were to *poof* by, say, getting run down by a RL bus, the SL economy would be shocked and perhaps a large number of residents seriously hurt. I very much doubt LL foresaw that situation, and I am not sure they've thought through the implications. It is one thing to have "barons", but quite another to have so very, very few lynchpins. What other business has a situation where two or three customers could wreak such havvoc by encountering a misfortune and suddenly exiting the scene? Is that smart business?

Phillip said that "nobody owns half of SL, not by a long shot". But I wonder what percentage of land that is FOR SALE (within reasonable margin of market -- not counting the $1000 per m2 junk) that Anshe represents. It is the percentage of the land on the market that counts, not the percentage of all land there is. I would wager Anshe owns far less than half, but she does own a lot. Quite a lot.

If LL flattens the tier curve, that will have a very profound effect on the economics for Anshe and other barrons. Raising the carrying cost of unsold land would raise the price of land, until a tipping point is reached where barrons just dump everything, causing a feedback loop ("crash" where land trading is increasingly unprofitable so everyone gets out of the business at once, and prices go south really fast. Really far south.

I'm betting Anshe can't keep up with SL's growth rate and her mainland holdings as a percentage of land on the market will steadily decrease, and in an orderly way, and that LL won't shock the economy by making sudden changes to the tier curve.

In fact, my confidence is actually up, and I've tiered back up just a bit. There is enough low-key disaster unfolding (inventory snafus, etc), and Phillip mentioning bug fixing as a priority over new features, that I think the wake-up calls will be answered. One can hope.

The catastrophic effect of the disappearance of any one of only a handful of residents is quite worrisome, and a definite risk. I wouldn't want to depend on LL for a living with that risk hanging over me. But after all, its just a game, right?

Buster

Buster, actually the tier discount is not necessary for land baroning. If it disappears it would mean higher prices and worse service for customers and smaller market for barons.

What even one reduction of the tier discount would very heavily hurt is any enterprise where residents develop land and maintain it (not just buy/sell). Exactly the kinda activity community has been calling for people to do instead of flip land. Things like rental and zoning, community development. Projects and businesses where people stay involved and continously provide added value and service. And this kinda business is most significant part of what I am doing now. Buying land at auctions and selling it is just one part with decreasing importance.

Nice and mature, Smiley. Regardless of your or my personal opinions of Anshe, increasing tier costs will affect everyone - some more than others, but do remember, not all who hold large amounts of land are into land dealing of any type.

Quote: "What even one reduction of the tier discount would very heavily hurt is any enterprise where residents develop land and maintain it (not just buy/sell)."

I'm sorry, did you say that even one reduction of the tier costs would hurt those reesidents who maintain land and develop it with more "permanant" fixtures?

If I understood you correctly, and I hope I did misunderstand you, then I could not possibly disagree with you more. My personal stake in land would be able to more economically be raised, therefore I could add more prim intensive and attractive builds for customers and residents to enjoy and utilize, if there were a tier cost reduction.

I'll shed quite a few tiers.

Anshe went into the rental business and has invested over $40,000 USD. She claims she told LL what her intentions were prior to this investement. She should have been notified of LL's intent to make tiers linear.



I agree Blaze.

The vast majority of RL businesses offer progressive pricing for volume purchases. Including bandwidth providers on the internet. It makes absolutely no sense to me.