How landcutters are still hurting the mainland

My neighbor got it in his head that with the ad farm ban there's no harm setting land for sale without consulting the neighborhood, so I woke up today to find a couple thousand sq m of my home sim had been bought and cut into expensive narrow strips. A couple of the strips had already sold and, in turn, further divided. I now have a few very expensive tiny parcels, a sign left abandoned to Gov Linden (apparently the purpose of purchasing the property), an SLX server and a couple empty tiny parcels as neighbors.

So, I started buying up some strips, but I just got a sour feeling about the whole thing. The place doesn't feel like my home anymore. I could spend twice the market rate to buy up the rest of the narrow strips that aren't outrageously priced yet, and still have holes cut in it, or...

The hell with it. I sold off a few thousand sq m, and I also accepted an offer on my precious Hyles property. I'm down to half a sim, and I'm sour enough on mainland that I may just sell the rest of it.

Landcutters: eat my shorts.

I'd AR the land cutters. It's still extortion, with or without a sign on the land.

where is it, can we go have a look at it?

i have been looking at the mainlands i thought i would give them a try. but i found i coul not really move there due to lag and it is not nice to look at. i wont buy there now. why is this neighbour not allowed to cut up his land

There's a parcel cutting policy on its way, you should have held on until that appears.

Yeah, the ad policy is not enough. There are a couple of 4x4 roadside chunks eaten out of my secondary plot near my shop, for sale at between 10000 and 20000 each. No ads or ban lines so I probably shouldn't whine publicly about it, but damn their presence is irritating. They serve no other purpose.

Sentry. Middle of the sim. It was worse this morning before I bought four of the strips.

You wouldn't be alone. I've been flash-mobbed by the Arbor Patrol

If you have a land problem - If no one else can help - And if you can IM them - Maybe you can hire (for free!) The Arbor Patrol!

what a mess!

that really sucks!

I love my mainland November we have keept it pretty good besides the ugly yellow walls around the center lol;

Nobody expects......The Arbor Patrol!

Ugh. The bastards. As much as I love mainland, it's hard to have the constant worry that one of your neighbors could up and sell at any time to one of these landcutting sharks and you'll come home to a mess. Sorry it happened to you.

At least we don't have to worry about the adfarms anymore, but from what I've seen, people are still reluctant to move anywhere near the remains of the adfarms, with all the extortion plots still standing for sale.

I hope that landcutting policy comes soon. It took so long to take care of the adfarmers, though, who knows how much longer it will be.

I pee on landcutters.

Because everyone loves mob action and witch hunts.

LL has been promising a policy on land cutting for at least a month now. We wait and watch as more land is cut up every day. The same old extortionists buy the plots because they know that sooner or later someone will get sick of the holes or corners and fork over the 777L or 1495L or 9900L or even 12999L just to get rid of them. And then they can have their alt go cut up another cheap 512. The best we can do for now, until LL steps up to the plate as they said they would, is to NEVER buy an extortion plot. And there are some promising indications. In several instances, donut hole extortion plots have been forcibly relocated to the roadside by LL so the landowner around the hole can have a continuous parcel. So.... AR those extortion plots!, especially if you own the land on all 4 sides of them. LL is watching the situation closely.

I've asked both the original owner and the current owner for more info. It's been suggested to me that the current owner wouldn't do such a thing, or that he's too lazy to go to the trouble, but I'm not buying it. Short of someone telling me of an intermediate buyer I'll AR him tomorrow.

Tomorrow one of my alts will also dump the rest of her land and go Basic.

so cutting is making it into small parcels? and what is extortion plots please?

Setting the small plot for sale for a ridiculous price (like L$9995 for a 16m2 square)

oh i thought so, thanks

There are still two 16m plots near my place that have been for sale for L$5000 each for 18 months or more! Just forgotten, presumably, by some get-rich-quick newbie who hasn't checked their credit card statements recently and so their Premium automatically renewed, I'd guess.

so what is a reasonable price for a parcel on mainland?

do you mean 16sqm that is tiny

WTH?

I just heard from the current owner. It was the original owner who cut these up, and he sold them for bot-sale prices. I wonder what the hell he was thinking.

Oh haha, I thought at first you might be subtly referring to me. You should have asked. The answer to your question is very simple: some people in SL are straight up retarded.

I'll never understand it but a lot of people think it makes sense to buy a decent parcel, cut it into crazy shapes, dump parts of it for massively under the market rate and then try to sell the remaining inner bits for a large price. I suppose they think of it as getting one over on the evil land bots, but the joke is on them because I pretty much view it as taking money directly from land cutters. Perhaps we're both happy, I dunno.

Unfortunately for me I turn over so much land and I rarely bother looking at it so sometimes I don't notice when there are lots of contiguous parcels that could be joined together. Maybe I'll write some sort of analyser that can alert me to parcels that need joining, hmm.

It looks to me that there was a 1024sq.m. adfarm chopped here before, just south of the strip-chopped parts (the remnants of which have been glued back together now).

That long East-West strip: I don't see how that came into being without being carved by the original owner, unless it pre-dated the other strip-chopping.

I think it's clear that a mere landcutting policy isn't going to address the mess that's been made of the Mainland. Had such a policy existed from the start, it might have been enough, depending on the details. But now, LL has a choice: either adopt an aggressive policy to clear out the crap, or write off the existing Mainland to remain forever the hell-hole that they've allowed it to become.

At first glance, they'd benefit from everyone fleeing the existing Mainland to buy into auctions of new, zoned Mainland. But if they did that they'd be left with whole continents of mostly abandoned sims. The Mainland market has already collapsed: sales now are just flipping between operators of "the greater fool" hypothesis, and a few who haven't yet completely lost faith that LL will actually take the kind of action needed to heal the disasters they've encouraged by inaction and gutless half-measures.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I don't know why there are so many people spouting off these lies that mainland is an unsaveable mess. Large tracts, maybe even most of the mainland is wonderful, well crafted terrains, amazing features, it's a unique beauty. There are a few sections which could use a little cleaning up with regards to parcel sizes but largely speaking the size of surrounding parcels is nearly irrelevant. The problem of ad farms is essentially solved while LL maintains their aggressive policy of following up on ARs.

If there must be a "solution" to parcel cutting then I (as you might guess) hope that LL will go for a technical solution. We can adjust behaviour through the simple implementation of some economics. Its just a matter of making larger, squarer parcels more valuable than smaller, mishappen ones. Generally this is the case but the value curve goes a little weird down around 64sqm.

I agree with Elanthius and those who over generalize about mainland either have not seen much of it or have an agenda. Mainland can be lovely and as lag-free as any island I have visited but it depends on where you buy. It is not even as if you have to look hard but I think a lot of people just assume mainland is all bad due to that line being repeated all the time and don't bother to take a look having written it off in their mind.

For those of us who love mainland and have nice areas to live in, I think I can safely say we are sick of people rubbishing it all the time. If you personally don't want to bother with it, that's your choice but respect the choice of others by recognizing that whilst it is not for you that does not automatically make it all bad.