How landcutters are still hurting the mainland

There is no victim when somebody willingly walks into a particular situation. I did the same myself. I own 3/4 of the sim, but I built it up piece by piece, as land came up for sale. I knew about the grid of 16s and I knew about the two 256m ad plots, each of which had a tower of ads for most of the time I've been buying land there. I also knew about the ugly 1024 expremely high ad building. I willingly grew my land in that sim. If the grid of 16s, the tower ads, and the very high 1024 ad were still there, I couldn't complaining because I willingly chose to increase my land holdings there.

There are now only two 16s, two 265s and the high ad is now an empty 1024. I'd like to buy them all but only the two 265s are for sale and the prices are much too high. The fact that they are there prevents me from doing some things with the land, but I chose it, so I'm not a victim.

I've already said that a grid of 16s that's terraformed to be obnoxious is bad. An isolated micro that is terraformed to be bad can be dealt with easily enough.

If the glowing red lines are Property Boundaries, then turn them off. It's not usual to have them on all the time. If you always have them on, it's your choice, and you can't blame anyone else for what you see. "no ban lines" was in what I wrote, so you can't mean those.

The "use" of micros for extortion is wrong. Nobody is leaving it out. High prices are not wrong. I'll try to make it even more clear:-

Take a piece of empty land with no indication as to where the property boundaries are. It consists of a number of normal-sized parcels and a 16m parcel, which is not a doughnut hole, but there is no indication where the 16m is - you can't see it just by looking at the land. You walk all over the land and there are no banlines, so that doesn't tell you anything. That's the sort of microparcel I am talking about. It doesn't interfere with anything, except maybe other land owner's personal desires, so it's as good a parcel of land as any other parcel of any size. It is not bad just because it's a 16m piece, which is what I'm saying.

This thread is about one particular case, and nowhere in the first post does the OP say that the micro parcels and strips are or were created to be ugly. They sound just like I described in the last paragraph. As far as I can see, the only thing being complained about is the parcel sizes and the prices. Prices are not bad, and neither are parcel sizes.

No it's not irrelevant. If you want to keep property lines on, it's your choice and nobody else's. It's hardly the fault of landowners if you see the lines round their land, and it's not exactly a big deal for you since you want to see them.

I just have to chime in here again to say that I think this whole "victim" / "no victim" thing is beside the point.

This is not particularly about the current landowners in the sim. They may prove convenient for helping identify and fix instances of the problem, but the problem to be fixed is the Mainland, not just the satisfaction of the current crop of landowners.

So it truly doesn't matter (at least not to me) whether the current landowner bought a parcel with a donut hole in it, or if he bought up everything around a microparcel--or if somebody held a gun to his head and forced him to subdivide a 16 and set it for sale to Scammer McGreedy himself.

Rather, the problem is that the microparcel is stuck there, and prevents something desirable from happening--something that any private Estate would make happen without a second thought. The inability to fix these situations when they arise makes the Mainland less competitive.

I don't see this as an issue of griefing or property rights for either party, but rather just a missing process for managing entropy of Mainland parcel boundaries.

I love the mainland and am quite glad to see the improvments made. I'm also optimistic that it will only get even better.

When the adfarm ban was first announced, I picked up litterally hundreds of small plots as they were being dumped. Now, I'm lucky if I pick up a handful of these castoffs a week. Thats a good thing I suppose.

As was previously mentioned, you don't need a small parcel to grief you. A larger one can be just as annoying. My first parcel I ever bought was a 1024 on a nice green hillside with nothing else around but quaint little for sale signs sparsly spread out. I log in the next day, and a latex porn shop sprung up on the plot just below me and put up a 1000 RPM 10x10 spinny purple cube on the roof of their store. Since my plot was just above them on the hill, this huge spinny thing was at eye-level when standing on my land. My hatred for all things spinny began on that day.

So, I totally understand how 1 lousy prim can ruin your whole day/week/month.

But you know, I wouldn't want to live and work anywhere else but the mainland....drama and all. The complex social aspects of the mainland give it life and character.

Whenever I have to go out on a call to someone's island, I feel like I'm on the beta grid.... cold, lonely and boring.

Oh dear, I have to run, there's some noob at my door with a box on his head and his penis hanging out his pants asking me where he can get free Lindens.... where's my orbit cage gun?

Long Live the Mainland!

zg

I'm really happy for you and your super-fast internet link that means you never have border crossing problems.

I don't. Lots of people don't. Telling us to turn the property lines off is STILL blaming the bloody victim.

Got that?

Property lines are NOT optional for a lot of people, they're the difference between staying online and getting randomly dropped and crashed. Yes, Linden Labs should fix that, they should fix lots of stuff... like, I should be able to globally mute any object on an adjacent parcel from anyone on my parcel. I should be able to mute the terraforming as well. But the landcutters know that people can't do these things, so they take advantage of it. The LANDCUTTING is the problem that has to be solved. I would be just as happy if Linden Labs would fix the 20 or 30 things the landcutters use in their extortion, so they can't do it at all, but I'll settle for banning the bastards who abuse the loopholes.

And even setting that aside: That's not the real situation that people are talking about. That's a hypothetical one-sim-in-100 situation. Because the whole point to landcutting is to be annoying enough to get the overpriced parcels bought.

There's no reason for anyone, anywhere, ever, to create the subdivision of land (a mixture of low priced strips and high priced 16m parcels) except for extortion. You can not tell me that there's any other reason. If they're not abusively terraformed now, they will be after the extortion plots don't sell. Because that's the only reason to create them... and any tactic that works will be used.

The person I'm talking about already owned land in the sim when the landcutters set up shop next to him. The person in the original message in this thread is in the same situation. And the people who don't buy the 512 that goes up for auction next to them didn't "walk into it" either.

If you want to have Property Lines permanently on, it's your choice. If you can see more red property lines than you'd like, it's just your ersonal preference, and has nothing to do with whether or not microparcels are good or bad, so you have no argument on that score.

It may not be the real situation that people are talking about, but it's the situation than I'M talking about; i.e. microparcels are not intrinsically bad. I'm glad you've finally understood it. If bad situations exist, they exist - I haven't said anything different. But not all microparcels are bad, regardless of the purpose of them. So now you have no arguments against anything that I've written in this thread. Good.

So what? If the microparcels are as I described, who cares? (except maybe nearby landowners who might want to use those bits of land for themselves).

I had a very similar situation in my main sim. An owner of a 256 parcel cut two 16m corners out of it and then set the larger part for sale at a very good price, and the two 16s for sale at ridiculously high prices. You couldn't tell that the two 16 were there without tools like Property Lines, so they were just as nice as any other parcel. I immediately bought the main part of the 256 and left the two 16s for sale. I *chose* to buy, so I wasn't a victim by any stretch of the imagination, even though I would have prefered to get the whole 256. I eventually got those two 16s at 1L/m, but it wouldn't have mattered if they were still there for sale. It was my choice and the two 16s didn't affect anyone negatively.

So? Your reply was to me saying,"There is no victim when somebody willingly walks into a particular situation", so it isn't applicable.

As you can see from my previous post, I was in the sim before the person cut the two 16s. Now I'll add that I was also in the sim before the two 256 ad towers went up, before the enormously high 1024 ad building went up, and before a grid of 16s was created. I was there before any of it happened, so I fit what you talked about in that quote. The ad towers were quite good and, imo, weren't a blight at all. The huge 1024 ad was a blight, and the grid of 16s fit the land around and you wouldn't have even known they were there without a tool so they weren't a blight. The ad towers and ad building went soon after the new rules came in, and now there is nothing in the sim that could be complained about, even though there are two 256s priced much too highly, and two 16s that blend into the surrounding land.

Yes, there are still extortionate practises if you say so and, as I said before, THOSE micros are bad. But there are also many micros that blend in perfectly and THEY are just as good as any other parcel of land, regardless of high prices. I.e. micros can be bad but they are not intrinsically bad just because they are micros.

And my reply was "many people aren't willingly walking into this situation".

And no, turning off property lines is no more an option for me nor for the many other people who have less than your stellar bandwidth than buying every 512 that goes up for sale adjacent to their land is for people who are at their tier limit.

Phil, I have never said that individual microparcels are intrinsically bad. You know that. I've argued against restrictions on the ability to create microparcels. You know that too, or if you don't you've been wilfully blind, because we've both been in the same thread.

What I'm arguing against is the other things you're saying... that people should be expected to buy up land they don't need to keep from getting landcut, or that grids of microparcels don't cause problems. They shouldn't be expected to have to do that, and grids of microparcels ARE a problem.

I don't think Phil was saying that people should be expected to buy up ladn theyd on't need.

But a grid of micros is not a problem so long as they remain empty and non-banlined. High prices are not harassment in and of itself, whereas prims and banlines would be.

Yes it is, for people who don't have good enough internet access to be able to risk an unnecessary sim crossing.

Considering that if that was one unified plot to begin with, what is it your business crossing it? I fail to see how it matters. There are roads, use them.

And all I've been saying is that, although bad microparcels exist, all microparcels aren't intrinsically bad just because they are microparcels. So I don't see any conflict of opinions.

I didn't say that grids of micros don't cause problems - they can cause problems just like isolated ones can. I'm saying that even grids of them are not intrinsically bad just because they are grids of micros. They can, and sometimes do, blend in perfectly well - just like the grid that was in my sim before I acquired most of it.

I didn't say that people should be expected to buy land just to prevent it from being cut. I said that they can't complain about what happens on other parcels if they don't seek to ensure their surroundings, unless what happens really is bad, and cutting isn't bad in itself. Personally, I buy land in the sim to prevent such things as av-intensive clubs coming in. I want most of the av capacity for myself. If I fail to buy a club-sized piece of land, then I've only myself to blame if a club moves in, and just because I own 3/4 of the sim, I don't have any right to 3/4 of the av capacity at all times. And I *would* kick myself if it happened.

An ugly build adjoining yours is NOT automatically extortion if the land isn't on sale.



Except that we need to make sure that if everyone wises up, and nobody walks into this situation... that somebody is still buying land.

The only way to get land before it's cut is to join in the auctions.. and if extortion is working, extortionists will outbid you every time, because they can get their money back by extorting people.

The only real option is to pay tier based on land you influence, not land you own.

With the best will in the world, I don't see that some extra property lines are in any way a problem.

It's not "some extra property lines", it's "a hell of a lot of extra property lines in a lightly randomized 5x9 grid... all over the place".

Look, there's this thing called "empathy". It's what kept me from killing users who kept clicking "OK, Infect me" in Internet Explorer for the past decade. You should try it.

So what are you attempting to accomplish by pointing out this irrelevant fact and citing invalid excuses in support of it?

"empathy" ===> Optimisation ===> "empty"

I wasn't particularly trying to accomplish anything. I pointed out a simple fact, and also suggested that some people are judging microplots on the basis of the history of them rather than on the current reality. You chose to argue against it.

So turn them off if you don't like them. I never found the need for them to be permanently on when I was on a 4k connection. You really can't blame landowners just because you have property lines turned on and there are more lines than you care for.

When the landowners cut the land up precisely for that purpose? Sure as hell I can.

And don't bloody tell me that I don't know they cut it up for that purpose again.

And since people are still creating microplots for extortion, that is STILL the current reality.

I haven't disputed that, except that if the new cuts blend in nicely with the surroundings, then they are fine. Prices are irrelevant.

You're saying that they cut them up precisely to put more property lines on people's screens? As an extortion tactic perhaps? I'm not even going to reply to that suggestion.

Incidentally, you are the only person I've come across who *must* have property lines permanently on.

If you assume an falsehood you can prove anything.