If LL woke up...

People who are satisfied with an artificial link should probably stick to games. SL has been moving in the opposite direction from where you want it to go.

I'm not saying anything about "where I want it to go"; and being satisfied with an artificial link doesn't mean they wouldn't accept a real one.

The advantage of the artifical link is that it provides a feeling of progress for all, whereas SL has the problem of consumers not having that feeling. Now, I'm sure some consumer users don't mind that, and some find progress elsewhere, but it's by no means all that many.

LL is targeting the "platform" market precisely _because_ they think it will introduce real progress, but the problem is, towards what?

My guess currently is, 'a phone box/shopping/entertainment channel.' But time will tell. I'm not sure anyone really *knows.*

If people want progress in SL, the Ivory Tower of Primitives is always open.

Learning isn't the same as progress. Learning is finding out how to do things; progress is actually doing them, and gaining from such. Now, yes, anyone can visit the IToP and then set up a basic build in a sandbox, but are they going to gain from doing so? Some might consider being able to create a simple build and then put it into inventory to be a gain, but many will not. Precisely because of the "rising quality" you mentioned in your post, gain from that kind of thing is a _long_ way off, and may not be possible at all for some people because of varying natural ability. (This is exactly the same reason why more people don't gain progress in _real_ life by taking up creative hobbies.)

The same thing they gain from solving a puzzle in a single-player game. I used to be into that, back in the '80s I had world high score at "Food Fight". Now I'm not. People change, people are different.

On the other hand, some people might consider getting a level 80 mount progress, and others consider it a complete waste of time and don't understand why you'd care. People are different. Some people are attracted to SL. Others are attracted to other games. That doesn't make Second Life *or* World of Warcraft a failure.

Why? Are they closer to "completing" Second Life? Do you know that they enjoyed the building process? There is some gain in that they now know a "secret" which they can relate to others with (ie, having solved a puzzle you can tell others, who are playing the same game, how to solve it) but if it's just basic building that's unlikely to be interesting, because everyone else can go to the IToP too.



Yes. But that's sort of what we're considering - how to attract _more_ people to SL. The thing about WoW is that _all_ forms of progress are linked to the same thing - levelling up. It increases your "power level" if you're a gamer, but it also increases your social value to groups, provides evidence of your experience, and moves you further into your character's role.

(Or at least it can do, I only played WoW briefly myself, and I stopped when gaining levels only gave me newer version of the same abilities, precisely because it become apparant that there was no more role integration to gain. But I stopped playing Achaea even faster when I discovered that role advancement in that world depended on meeting/knowing the right people which, because the game community was relatively small, was impossible if you had a day job and lived outside the US.)

So in WoW there's just one thing, that you can _always_ do, that's _guaranteed_ to grant you gain in almost all areas. Now, yes, some people won't care about those gains (although the kind of person who says that gaining a level 80 mount on WoW is a waste of time tends to be, 70-80%, the kind of person who doesn't engage with virtual environments at all and who also says that building a beautiful house on SL is a waste of time) - and others will find levelling to be boring enough that they don't do it, despite the gain. (Although it seems that quite a few people who do like WoW actually appreciate the "tedium" of levelling - it enables them to come home from a hard day at work and "zone out" while still feeling that they have gained.)

But SL doesn't have that. The behaviours involved are much harder work - well, that's ok - but you are likewise never guaranteed to gain in the same way. It isn't going to satisfy that progress-demand that people have, and since that's the number one thing people want from virtual worlds, then, well...

They're as close as I ever got to "completing" Food Fight.

If they didn't, there's plenty of other fish in teh sea.

Actually marketing it might help. No, that doesn't mean releasing Enterprise Second Life and making fancy press releases. They need to get through to people who would actually enjoy what they're best at. They need ads in every Hobby and Fabric store in the US.

See, that's where you're missing the point. Being interested in grinding and being interested in virtual environments are unrelated attributes. There's plenty of people grinding away in Facebook.

Thank god.

Bzzt. Wrong. The people actually interested in virtual WORLDS aren't interested in grinding at all.

That's actually a really good idea.



But you are also equating grinding with progress. They're not the same, it's just that grinding has been the only way we have found so far of making progress available to all.



I don't think that's true. SL has substantial grinding. Prim alignment? No shortcut for changing coordinate system? Or, write a script with llDialog-based menus and I expect 70% of it will be spent "grinding"..

On teh contrary. I'm saying it's NOT progress.
Precisely my point.



I have *never* had a problem with prim alignment.
Not hardly. It's trivial to replace all the "grinding" with a couple of simple functions. If you're still "grinding" your dialog parameters or handlers your problem is that you're not making any progress as a programmer.

It is close enough to progress to satisfy the human desire for such.



But the alternative is that progress is not available to all, which means that the size of the user base will be limited.



Grinding doesn't mean you "have a problem". It means it's artificial awkwardness.



Even if you have everything set up in functions, you still have to do a fair bit of copy and pasting. Plus, of course, your script then isn't optimal.

No, it means that you actually have to learn and grow to progress, just like in First Life.
I don't see this as a problem.
You have found the wrong solution.
llListFindList() is more efficient than a series of nested if()s.

There is no problem with that. The problem is with it not being universal.



You would if you were not one of the ones who was able to progress.



Cut and paste is the only way to do a function library, other than including an extra script, which has a big lag penalty.



Any amount of computation to calculate a predictable answer is wasted. It's why good languages have preprocessors.

Nothing is universal. Games like WoW bore me to tears. They're not suited to me, nor I to them, so I don't play them.
I am one of the ones who isn't positively reinforced.... by Wargraft. So... I don't play Warcraft. No problem. If you don't enjoy SL, don't play SL. Play a game that's suited to you.
If you're not going to try and figure out the solution, don't waste your time complaining about a different one.

Many more people would enjoy SL if they could progress. If SL chooses a model where not everyone can progress, then it prevents those people enjoying it.



It doesn't matter _what_ the solution is; any computation that returns a predictable result is wasted.

If LL chooses a model where THOSE people can progress, it would prevent the ones who currently enjoy SL because it's the only place where you aren't stuck in a grind from enjoying it. Given that there's roughly forty zillion games that the people who want to grind can play, I fail to see how destroying SL for their benefit is supposed to be a good thing.

You miss the point. In LL's model, it's not just that not everyone in the world can progress on SL; it's that not 100% of the people on SL can progress at once.

How true! I think LL should pursue the 'Professional Fantasy Factory' path. It would be able to accomodate everything and anything: The role-player, the businessperson, the fantastist, the facebooker, whoever. In RL and SL, we are but actors who strut and fret awhile upon a stage. All we do no matter how real or imagined is all a vanity and a fantasy we pursue while life flows through us.

It was all a dream on a Tuesday afternoon....

Well, no, 100% of the people can't even PLAY at once. But everyone can be positively reinforced when they DO play, if they're the kind of person that SL is suited to.

No, that's not true. Here's why:

Person A and Person B are in competition (for a market, or a social role, or anything similar). Since there is a competition, one must lose; therefore, no 100% positive reinforcement.

But does that mean "they're not suited for SL"? No; both people have the same opinions about SL. If those opinions make the loser "not suited", then they would apply to the winner too.

This getting too complicated. Reading all this I've arrived at the conclusion that I've progressed in a complete circle. From a brand new confused newbie in a purple shirt scratching her head wondering what the hell is this anyway? To an oldie in a self tailored lace halter top with spaghetti straps scrathing her head wondering what the hell is this anyway? And here I thought I was supposed to be having fun.

If they're approaching SL from the point of view that anything less than dominating a (market/conversation/role play/whatever) is a loss, they should both be playing Eve Online.

The competition is usually for attention and the losers are simply _ignored_. And in a system where all positive reinforcement tends to come socially, being ignored guarantees you won't get it.

Next time you log into SL, try positively reinforcing _everyone_ online. Not everyone you see (you'll miss some people), but everyone. Of course, you can't do it. Nobody can. So nobody does, so some people are going to get missed..

And the loop starts over. There are forty zillion and twenty three games you can play where you don't need to actually interest the people around you. Second Life is not one of them.

Nope. There might not _be_ "people around you". They might not share your interests. They might already be interested by someone else, so that you trying to interest them too would just be griefing the whole occasion. Can there be any group where _everyone_ is interesting those around them and getting positive reinforcement from them? Only a plain conversation - and that, you can have IRL..