Zoned Sim Ideas\Feedback (Meins)

As some of you know, the Gigas Group (www.secondserver.net) has created a Residential Sim\Zone pilot in the Meins simulator on the mainland.

I would like some feedback on this project so we can make it better and start planning for bigger and better things in the future.

So why are\arn't you \\ don't\want to own a piece of land here?
Constructive ideas\suggestions\comments are very welcome.

Refrence note can be found in Meins or here

To get the ball rolling, would it make a difference Meins would be a telehub sim? Perhaps a park? More events? Bigger\smaller community?

if it were a telehub sim, residents would constantly be invaded by random people rezing themselves and their millions of attachments all the time.

i think it would be a bad move, i like the 'remoteness' of meins and having to fly out there to get to a house.

your teleporting system from garrison to meins is great, but usually not functional with poor connections and lag

i would own a piece of land in meins, but its still too expensive for me and it seems, a lot of other also. substituting the rent charges with more events would give you more dwell so maybe rent could be cheaper? 1-2k a week (charged at 1 or 2 of the plots) seems a bit high for the majority of sl residents who have to pay othe rent for their stores etc in other places.

Perhaps you should lease out smaller plots of 1024m or 1536m?

Thx for the input Alan, as for the rent rates, i'm gonna correct you. For 1440 sq meters the tier fee is 550L$ a week. Which adds up to about 8USD per month, which in turn is the cost for 1024 from LL for a month. All our fees are very good value, plus the peace of mind you get from owning in Meins (the no commerical setup) I think that's a pretty good deal!

A little update, we still have these lots available,

1. -2880 @ 990L$ a week (~16USD a month, well under tier fees)
   
2. -2880 @ 990L$ a week (~16USD a month, well under tier fees)
   
3. -1440 @ 550L$ a week (~8USD a month, well under tier fees)
   

Ok Nexus, thanks, I didn't realise that.

TBH, I don't know why Meins didn't fill up the day it as opened, everyone wants a residential sim, it's cheap and a really tidy sim.

yes, Meins is really awesome.

However, I think it'd be very cool if you brought back the art object.

It kind of distuingished Meins a bit more than the current contents.

I think people also stopped by to check it out and look around.

Agree strongly. It was a great centerpiece, especially in motion.

yea the art was very nice

I think perhaps the new continent buzz & opening has effected the community filling up. Was also surprised it didn't fill right away, this is what stood out to me as to why it hasn't.

I miss the sculpture, as well... but really preferred the non-spinning version. heh

I thought the sculpture was too much spinning and intrusive, but most people liked it, so leave it? I mean, why not just take a vote now and then of the people who live there.



My problem with these numbers is that you are not factoring in the free 512 that LL puts in your acccount automatically with a premium account and which is part of your tier level always, so that the $5 1024 tier level is really a parcel-access cost of 1536. So when you advertise something as "cheaper than LL tier" -- something I do myself in my rentals -- you have to factor in that 512 or you are misleading customers, since they could buy 1536 worth of land and have $5 to cover the tier on it, not 1024 with 512 left over in their account not used.

I love Meins, and if I had the energy, I'd move in and then sublet it to someone (subletting polices aren't clear or I would do that), possibly as a loss-leader just to stimulate zoned communities.

But...I don't myself feel like supporting them on a massive scale because I feel like the real challenge of the game is to take the wild open spaces available on the open market and devise solutions for organizing and managing them that still keep them free and make people feel free on them.

Great thread, but I think it belongs in Land and the Economy.

I'll leave a redirect here so everyone can find it.

another idea.. make it so I can set the media URL.

Sigh. LL isn't making renting very easy, are they?

Well, I set the media URL but the texture thingie would upload and none of my textures of the last 24 hours are uploading, but, whatever, it's not like I have a texture shortfall in this game muahahaha

blaze, are you trying to rent out stuff? What? Can I help?

Could you *please* apply your scripterati illuminati powers to making a competitive rental script that:

1. Enables one to twelve weeks of rent.
2. Can be configured for any plot size, prim size, or price.
3. Can be easily understood how to work by anybody, i.e. it says PAYME BY RIGHT-CLICKING DUMBASS.
4. Provides a chat-history thing in-world that says what it is doing
5. Leaves a hover text above it with the name of the tenant and their time remaining.
6. Sends the client the IM telling him his rent is due 7 days, 3 days, 12 hours.
7. After 48 hours tells them to leave the rentals group if they have not paid.
8. Offers them a chance for a refund at any time for a small configurable fee.
9. Accepts money from me.
10. Accepts money from the guy.
11. But does NOT take my money and send it to a scripterati who is selling these things for "free" but for anywheres from 1 percent to 5 percent commission.

That would be a service to simkind. If you and others who "get it" about the liberal free economy could make these competitive scripts (and have other bells and whistles to them) then we could break the backs of the oppressor class that charges $5000 a pop for these rentomatic things to be "non-commission" and hacks into each and every rentals transaction on each and every box to claw back a commission, whether $2, $4, $200.

That's a lot of clawbacks for people who just wrote a damn script. Since the Lindens didn't think renting would be as important as door-closing, they didn't put such a renter script out free in the game. But it is important. And the scripterati tend to be often the ones either knowingly or unconsciously supporting the anti-commerce gang and hate the idea of malls, rents, etc. so could you take this one on?

I find other brilliant scripterati have jammed on the refund issue. Not sure why.

Is the $5000 copyable?

20$ is not a lot of money for something only a few people in SL are going to purchase.

Some of the expensive rentomatics are by the item, like I have been quoted prices of $100-$200 per machine

The $5000 is not copyable nor transferrable. Now, that may seem normal if you don't want a thing merely given away after you sell it. But you can't even give it to someone else in a group. That's the problem. It's like those expensive casinos. Which is a pain-in-ass when trying to have a group of officers doing a rentals group or some other project with rentomatics like a mall.

I think $5000 is too high a price for these, even if you translate that into $20. If I have misunderstood something about this, and you can just buy one rentomatic for $5000 and copy it throughout a mall, whatever, it is still too expensive for what it is. There are few other things in the game that cost that much, even skins that took days for craftsmen and designers to draw. But that's not what appears to be the case in the ones for sale.

They are hard to find in any event in-world.

People constantly IM me about them and I redistribute the free one which they will then have to pay the 1 percent commission on.

And there are many people who would rent out some part of their land, or rent some subset of their store, or do whatever they want with it. It should be a function that is freely-available and not cost an exhorbitant amount.

What happens is that everyone sees its capacity for grabbing into every transaction like a sales tax, and they grab and won't work for the public good.

This is why all this TOTAL CRAP from the scripterati that they work for the public interest and put out free scripts and groovay free things everywhere is hypocrisy, because when they have the chance to grab, they grab.

Well, I've never been a big believer in altruism.

Loss leaders make sense to me, but doing things simply for the sake of helping people?

Learn to help yourself in a way that helps others. That's the best way.

The two classes of objects are not readily comparable, Prok. Most objects are sold to individuals for their own personal use. This is reflected in the permissions and price of the object. If someone were purchasing that same skin for resale, the price would (and does) very easily exceed L$5000, because the merchant is trying to garner a little profit from each of those future sales. For a rent-a-matic, the primary use is commercial. The average rent-a-matic device brings its creator significant profit. As an object creator, why should I supply you with the means of making your fortune without expecting appropriate compensation? Just as in the real world, businesses incur significant expenses in the setup phase, which they must recoup over time. If you don't like this idea, then you need to create your own rent-a-matic (or solicit someone to produce such a thing and give it away to you, if you lack the talent). Otherwise, expect to pay a reasonable amount of money.

Your other complaint (non-transfer, non-copy) is kind of extreme for such an object, though. The creator of that object should really make the object non-transfer but give copy perms. 5,000 per EACH rental plot is too steep.

My very first major land purchase in SL was during the time land was at an all time high & I bought into a sim that became the most laggy, unstable sim I have ever experienced. I lost a bundle getting out of there, but I really had no choice because my land basically became intolerable. If I found a problem LL would come & remove it, but finding those kinds of problems shouldn't be my responcibilty. IMHO

Yes there are minor drawbacks to 'renting', but I think the advantages far outweigh them. And many things can be done simply by contacting an officer. Nexus & Adam have both been very quick to respond to my questions/requests.

To be able to own land & pay comparable tier fees in L$, on a basic account, without having to trade on GOM, is an awesome service.

To live in a sim that I don't have to worry about a club, mall, shop, an intensely ugly build, or a nasty sim killing land owner... in SL... priceless.

Edited to add that I am not, nor do I feel like a renter.. I paid for my land & allow the group to manage it for me & I pay them my land tier fees. Personally, I feel I've got the deal of the century, because I got in on the ground floor.. kinda like the older SLers that got those infamous lifetime memberships.

Ardith,

All of these remarks ensue from your ideologies and assumptions that have to do with a kind of allergy to commerce, especially if it is commerce of the kind you think is "wrong" which is "land barons" or whatever. First, you have a belief that the average rentomatic brings its owner significant profit. I can't believe that, not only from experience, but from how I see others using them in the game. There are many people using them and many people with little stores and minimalls, not just the big land barons. And you are forgetting evidently that anyone who is renting land first had to purchase it, then maybe had to wait 30 days or more to get it rented, paying the tier on it, and continues to pay the tier on it, and goes on always paying the tier on it, whether he rents out that land or not. A mall that can extract value out of smaller chunks of land for more layers of rented space might do better, but they also have significant expenses. I would challenge you to show how anybody has really gotten rich off just renting or just malls in this game. You won't be able to do it. Everyone who seriously studies the economic possibilites will instantly tell you that the economics of renting are very, very poor in this game, and one of the reasons is the rentomatic monopoly issue.

Um, an object like a rentomatic isn't some big talented thing. It's just a script. Nobody has really bothered to focus on competing in this area and bringing cheaper and higher quality, that's all. And it doesn't mean I'm an untalented cretin just because I didn't make one or commission one. In fact I once commissioned one but it didn't do enough of what I wanted so I had to go back to using the monopolists' version.

One thing that the monopolists get out of their hog-tied possession of the rentals business as a whole in SL is INFORMATION. They grab loads and loads of commercial information they have NOT paid for from people who are renting. They get information about how rentals perform on sims, how long rentals last, and all sorts of things. I personally resent people who have scripting devices that they have set up to talk to servers not only grabbing percentages of every transaction, but also loads of commercial information which they can exloit or resell. You just haven't thought this through.

A script maker should get compensated. It is my experience and belief that charging $5000 for each rentomatic to be free of commissions, or to endlessly charge 5 percent commission on every single transaction, is overpriced, and is monopolization and is taking advantage of the situation where the Lindens supplied players with the means to sell, and put sell tools for free on the land, but they didn't supply the means to rent, and didn't put rent tools (although 1.6 has better deeding functions I hear).

You and others have an ardent belief that the Lindens "frown on" renting because they want everyone to be uber content-creators and only sell land at the price the got it from the Lindens at auction. But the Lindens can't possibly want that because it would be death for their game and they know it. Mall barons and huge zoned sim owners have appeared in the game, and it is only with Linden blessings as far as I can tell, and why not? It enables other people besides the Lindens to put their time and expense into managing land.

Of course businesses incur expenses. I am not whining that my business is incurring an expense, or that I have to pay someone for creating something I need in my business, or that I have to calculate their time or my time. Don't be silly. You are turning this into a personal bash to try to make me out to be a whiner, a loafer, and unappreciative of others' efforts to boot.

Try to see that this is about economics, and economic behaviours of actors or classes or interested parties, and economic commentary about what hinders economy because this is a thread called "Land and the Economy" not called "Animal Crossing, Tom Nook, and my Furry Friends".

It is a significant hobble to the game that a few people who bothered with rentomatic scripting now hold everyone else hostage. Any normal person studying an economy and how it can make the transition from Soviet to Western can understand that.

So I called on people to supply that competition which in any normal economy improves products and gives people more democratic choices. I've already hired scripters to make alternatives, but I pointed out that the problem they faced was the issue of the refund. And I find some people have an ideological mindset against refunding because they are more ruthless merchants perhaps but I think the refund is a vital tool.

And yes, any class of object is comparable in this game. Goods and services play similar roles and anyone gouging for a service in order to remain king of the hill should be challenged.

Dear, Prok. Try reading posts intelligently before knee-jerking. No where in my post did I suggest that I was uncomfortable with capitalism. In fact, I suggested that producers of goods should receive appropriate compensation for their creations. That's such a shockingly socialist viewpoint isn't it? No where in my post did I suggest that I frowned on renting. That's because I think renting is a completely valid business model, which generally benefits both the renter and his tenants. However, I do think that the people who make renting convenient should be rewarded for doing so. Of course, you don't like such a capitalist idea, since it means that you're beholden to people with far more talent than yourself. Instead, you advocate a socialist utopia in which the Lindens create everything.

I could keep going with the glaring inaccuracies and vicious slanders in your post, but since you apparently are completely incapable of actually comprehending English, I'm going to excuse you. However, I am going to have to ask you to remain silent until you're reading at least at a 3rd grade level.

By putting loaded phrases in your post about people getting rich ostensibly in the rentals business, you are putting a judgemental curve on the whole discussion, when my point is that the economics for rentals are very poor. And my inducing all kinds of deliberate misreadings and introducing phrases like "knee-jerk" etc. you are merely one square away from "name-calling" and you know that is not permitted on these forums.

Where do you get any idea that I advocate socialism and Linden sponsorship? I challenge you to find any of that in my posts, it is just not there and constitutes some gross misunderstanding. It's a deliberate misinterpretation of my posts to try to play "gotcha" induced from malice over previous postings.

But all I do is advocate that the function of renting, which is a normal functioning like selling, should be a normal game mechanism, just like it is a normal RL mechanism. In RL, if I want to sell something, I don't have to have a script for it, I just do it, using advertising, or ebay or stores or my back yard. In SL, the land is also freely and openly available to put a price tag on it and sell it as a game mechanism, I don't have to pay some feted oldbie a commission in order to sell land. In RL, if I want to rent something, I just rent it, sublet it, or make it available for a free without a special script. In SL, I have to first go pay homage to a special script-maker and give them a commission. I challenge that, and my request for that is not related to "socialism" or "subsidies" or my own personal business of choice in this game, it is a commentary on the whole society and its economic system in a legitimate debate.

It's not personal. I'm happy to go on paying homage and commissions because I don't have a choice and I'd prefer to be in the rentals business than not. But I put out the challenge to both the Lindens and the scripters who are interested in a real economy that they should challenge this monopoly run by a few players. It just makes good economic sense. The economy grows and becomes more productive when you remove these arbitrary obstacles that in fact are byproducts of feting and socialism and all kinds of belief systems. Other people in the sales and rentals businesses have said matter-of-factly to me that they wish the Linden land tools permitted renting, as they used to provide ticket admissions, etc. but they don't.

I don't advocate a socialist economy in which the Lindens create everything, far from it. But I do think that the Lindens have not given me full, capitalism, liberal, laissez-faire title to my land I buy not only because I have to pay them tier -- that is a separate debate -- but because I have no free mechanism to rent it with. And the mechanism that allows ticket-taking and admissions prices which might have been used for rentals is broken and buggy. Instead, due to the socialist conditions prevailing in the game, a few people long subsidized in their work get to make a few scripts and for ever after profit from it, and the Lindens, in their infinite socialist wisdom, send me to their self-created monopolists to go get my renting-rights capacity. I find that troublesome as a philosophical issue, that the Lindens turn over their socialist utopia to a few oligarchs they created. But, I guess they didn't have better ideas. So my call is to those who have the talents and the skills to step up to this opportunity, that's all. It would create a better, freer, economy for all of us.

Many people IM me in the game and ask where they can get rental boxes. It is not even very widely known or published information in the game. There are only really 3 people you can get them from and they all charge a fortune because they have a monopoly. All of them are themselves in the store and mall business and have every incentive to cull all the economic information off those who depend on them to enhance their own businesses.

I love it in this community. I don't feel like a renter, either, AT ALL, and I don't feel like my freedom is in the least trampled on. This is because the only thing I'm not free to do is have something commercial, or have things that make the area laggy. And since I live there precisely in order to AVOID being surrounded by commercial and/or laggy things, these supposed constraints actually represent MORE freedom for me! I, too, feel like I got in on the ground floor of the greatest deal going.

To answer Nexus's questions, here is what I would like to see:

1. The art object brought back. I live right in FRONT of where it used to be, and although I'm normally not crazy about spinning things, I thought this art object was perfect for the community, and provided sort of a symbol for it, and sort of an indication of where the community center and buildings were. It was classy. It was eye-catching. I even liked the spinning. Somehow it captured the whole look and spirit of the land.

2. A bulletin board. Is there such a thing in SL? A large bulletin board in the community area where people can post whatever they like. Notifications, suggestions, silly stuff, or whatever. Example: "Open house, my place, Saturday the 16th, 8 game time. Everyone invited!" I would really like a community bulletin board.

3. No indoors furniture outdoors in the community area.

4. I would really hate to be near a telehub. I am living in Meins in large part because it ISN'T near a telehub. The only telehub I ever liked landing at or being anywhere near is the one on Spitooney Island.

5. I would love any kind of events. I also like the idea of a park area. I saw the one built by Ingrid in Boardman, and it is just wonderful! I know that sort of thing takes up valuable space, but that, and the ice cream stand, and the other things in Boardman are delightful, so a little park would be nice.

6. If there is trouble selling a few of the parcels, subdividing them into smaller pieces, like you offered to do for me, (or making part of the one across from the community area into a park) might help.

But basically, it is all just wonderful! Nexus and Adam are wonderful! I love it there! Have I mentioned that? lol

coco

Coco, I'm glad your suburban soul has gotten such a fix in Meins LOL. My suburban soul gets a fix in Boardman and Brown and Clara (which I understand is now in disarray?).
I think probably more game players want suburban-soul fixes in M rather than PG...but I think PG really offers a lot in terms of quietude and freedom from idiocy.

What I worry about in the kind of controlled community you describe is the queuing up of requests to managers who have to go to school or work in RL and can't really cope and then stuff doesn't get done. That's what I see happening. If you are all in a community where you set your objects to the group, and anybody in the group can set objects, and you are voluntary/free, you can say, anybody who has an idea for the public space or commons can put something down. So if somebody wants the statue to go back spinning, it could if the object were in "share to group".

And if you have a liberal policy about land editing, any body in the group can get land edit and do their own landscaping and feel free and creative.

I used to put a lot of objects in "share with group" just so people could move houses and trees out of the way but then I had to stop this rather liberal practice as people began to simply pocket houses, sometimes by accident, and sometimes on purpose. Now I'm just a bit more judicious with it but I still try to offer people the chance to do their own modifying.

If somebody can make a bulletin board and make stickeys on it, then go for it. BTW, I saw a bulletin board like this from one of my tenants on the boardwalk in Wakeley. They have a bulletin-board like object that can accept screenshots but somehow I think they are in reduced form. I think that's how such an object would havel to function. Well, check out whether that one works for you or maybe somebody has a better idea how to make public stickies like that. Did you know there's also a blog thingie that enables you to blog from in-world up to a website? Walker has them.

The other thing I wonder about the controlled communities is how closed they get, how exclusive, how gated, and how "steered". In the zeal to keep out griefers and trouble-makers and anybody who is "building ugly" or whatever, do they suppress creativity? This is obviously a balance.

I get a bit of a chill looking at some of these really planned communities with a lot of rules and exclusivity, especially when they set themselves up to be tone-setters, lords of the sim, etc..

I guess I prefer to have some untidiness but to have some human life.

Well, I don't understand about that setting objects to groups stuff. But that's okay, I don't have to worry about it.

As for the problem you mention of things being overly-controlled in some communities, or the real property owners setting themselves up and behaving like little kings or something, yes, I knew that could be a problem in some places, just from common sense, and also from living in a free apartment once where the rules really weren't fair.

But that is one of the factors I took into consideration when choosing Meins. I had an understanding of the rules, such as they were, and the place itself had sort of a laid-back look, and I also got that feeling from the guys when I talked to them before I "bought" my property. I think you can sort of tell a lot about a community - even a fairly new one - by talking to the people whose baby it is, and by just looking at it.

This sort of visceral impression is exactly what makes me prefer Meins over Boardman, lovely though it is. If Meins didn't exist, I would want to live in Boardman. But, given a choice, Meins seems just a little airier and more laid-back.

By laid-back, I don't mean I think the guys running it would get taken advantage of, or let bad things happen. I just mean they seem to be tolerant, nice, and reasonable to anyone else who is tolerant and nice and reasonable. Enough of that, and voila! You have a good community!

Then, too, if and when any such complications as you mention ever did become a problem, well - it's easy to move out!

coco