SL: what it is doing right, what needs to be improved.

With the grid being down it is time for a tl;dr thread. This is about how I see SL, and what SL needs the most.

Often when people examine SL and its problems and benefits, they look at it piecemeal instead of a complete picture, and only look at the present instead of the long-term development of SL. The basic components of SL are 3D content creation, the social aspect, and the economic aspect. Take any one individually and SL is medicre compared to alternatives. However, all three combined is what gives SL its magic. Underlying all of this is the issue of lasting stability. Let's look at the individual pieces:


Overall Stability/Scalability

Most of the criticism of SL is focused in this area, and legitimately so; without a doubt it is the most important piece. The recent issues with failed hard drives and colo communication issues shows that LL needs to develop backup systems that can keep stuff running if something _does_ go wrong.

Message Lib is a big step towards scalability. Much of SL's problems with scalability result from how it was originally designed; services and code is often tangled together, with services interdependant. This means that if they wish to update one service, the whole kit needs to be updated, and if one service is having problems, it affects all the others. LL is currently untangling this mess, which is a monumental task, but extremely important for SL in the long-term. With systems being independent, they can be updated individually, and if one system is having trouble, additional servers/resources can be allocated to compensate.


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Economy

Currently SL's economic gameplan is superb. It seems that they are using a "trickle up" or demand-side model by actively lowering the price of land by auctioning many more mainland sims. The cheaper the initial price for purchasing land is, the more users who will buy land who otherwise wouldn't have, and the more money left in the pockets of people who would have bought land anyways. What do people who have land need? Content! They need prefabs, furniture, landscaping, scripted things, vendors, and textures. Because they have a place in SL of their own, they are also much more likely to buy clothing, vehicles, and avatar accessories.

So, more consumers with more spare money will buy more stuff from content creators. This encourages content creators to make more content, more RL 3D/graphic design professionals to experiment in SL business, and encourages competition all around by the potential being larger. This makes SL overall a more exciting, beautiful place because of the new content, which adds value to the whole game, raising the new user retention level.

Speaking of retention level, the base price for getting one's own slice of second life is very important. It is well known that $20 is the "magic number" for products and services; if something is this price or less, it will sell a lot more. Right now the price for a 512 meter plot is around $12-13. Premium raises this to $23, which is just slightly more than that magic number. Since the lower mainland tier levels are rediculously profitable already, LL should consider lowering the price of premium to $5 a month. Then, for $18 anyone could go premium, snap up a 512 plot, and experiment for a month or two with no long-term investment into SL. If they don't like it, it isn't a huge loss.

Finally there is the casino issue. Casinos in SL were a huge blight, contributing little to SL and in return lagging up the sims they blighted, used intensive camping to game the search system and create even more resource usage, and was a huge legal liability to SL. In my opinion, if SL cannot exist without gambling, _it shouldn't exist at all._ However, I think it can more than just exist without gambling, but do even better in the long-term. The former casino operators that haven't left will be forced to find alternative, legal business models. Gambling-like but legal systems are already being created, which actually drive content creation instead of suck resources from it.




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Content Creation

Sculpted prims are the single most important building feature to be added to SL ever. Qarl Linden's creation is such genius that it extends far beyond the original intent of rough organic objects; they can be used for literally everything, from vehicles, to jewelry, architectual elements, and even replace Linden water with something that looks even better. I have not yet found something that sculpts cannot create. They can be far more efficient than even the sacred standard prims. In time, they will make parcel primcounts irrelevant; the efficiency of sculpts and their correct use will be far more important. They of course can be used incorrectly; you have probably seen sculpted forests that use 20 sculpts for tree (20k vertices, eek!) or sculpted rock formations that use one sculpt per rock, and create excessive renderlag.

Windlight is also a major step in world-building. Atmosphere and lighting is a huge element of setting theme and mood. Windlight gives parcel and sim owners the opportunity to create a uniform user experience and add much more beauty to their builds. Best of all, the windlight system is very resource-conservative, so it is "shiny" without the "bling."

There is another bonus of the aquisition of the windlight team: SL uses just one shader mode, GL_Smooth. Because of this, standard prims need many more vertices than necessary in order to shade properly, which is one of the reasons why SL is so heavy on graphic resource use. With a team like Windlight focusing on a single issue (lighting, shading, and atmosphere), they can update the way prims shade so that they can use less vertices while looking the same. This would result in about 1/4 of the renderlag SL creates.



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Social/Communication

This area is one that LL has ignored for a while, but is the integral element that ties content creation and the economy. There is an extremely high learning curve for social networking in SL that rivals content creation in difficulty. What LL needs is either a Qarl Linden of social networking tools, or to aquire/contract out work to completely overhaul groups, search, and communication.

In my opinion, several of the social aspects in SL are such because of the limitations of social networking tools and the learning curve to use them. The system is weighted to favor established land owners who have already mastered these tools; that is why security groups, the JLU, and banlink are so popular, whereas consumer communication/advocacy groups are so rare. I am not saying that sim owners and business types are _bad_, just that they have different and sometimes conflicting interests with the common avatar. The imbalance of means to advocate one's interests between the two leads to many social ills in SL. If a business is unethical or a scam, or a sim owner abusive, the protests of the common avatar are often unheard; instead, the system relies on other widely established users to "blow the whistle" on such groups.

SL is supposed to be "web 3.0," but its landmark and search tools are still stuck in 1998. SL would benefit greatly by looking at social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us or digg. Instead of inventory landmarks, what about a separate feature that would allow users to make a list of their favorite places in SL? Then other users can look at someone's profile and copy favorites into their own, which would automate word-of-mouth. Then, LL could impliment a favorites search on the main site, with filtering/weighting tools such as user creation date (to get around attempts to game the system), keywords, and grid location.

Groups also need an update, with more powerful tools. They too could use a del.icio.us search function, with filters such as group chat activity, users, whether the group owns land or not, etc. Additional features such as group place favorites would also enhance it greatly.

Finally there is search itself. Because people are most familiar with web search engines, it would be beneficial to make search a site-side service. This would allow for much more power without integration into the client that would affect other features. One could search based on location (within x sims of a certain sim, for example), advanced thumbnails and webpages of the parcel could be linked as well as the SLURL, and filtering methods could make search actually useful.



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So, SL is doing great in content creation and economic matters, is having current issues with stability but is working to achieve lasting stability, and needs a lot of improvement with social networking. So, I ask you: looking at the entire picture, how do you see SL? Is it improving? What are the elements of SL you use the most, and how do you see them improving or degrading?

I agree Aminom...Great post and good analysis...And you make great Sculpties...Too




Kurt Ludd
"The Gesture Maker"


Stop at the Store in Malra and have a Lemonade LOL

What is sl doing now?

Does it really matter? Does it ever matter for the most part? Does it actually help? From previous other times, the answer is a big resounding NO!

What needs to be improved?

Everything! As the game is in chaos, nothing seems to work. It's gone from bad to worse and it doesn't seem like any useful changes will be added anything soon. This, from sl experience.

Fix the borked asset server that keeps eating inventory. LL must know what the cause of the issue is by now, and the fact that it isn't being addressed is not only aggravating beyond belief, but it's dramatically hurting SL because it's sapping people's interest in buying things and creating things -- two of the core aspects of the SL experience. It's no joke when massive amounts of inventory go "poof". This is a showstopper issue that needs to be addressed before more "bling" features are added, in my opinion.

Oh please give me bump maps and object shadows. And I would give up sculpties for displacement maps any day.

I know that everytime We have an UPDATE... or a FIX.. or something like that.. stuff goes missing from my inventory..well over 5000L$ worth of stuff at one time..I was choked. Luckily i contacted who i baught from and they replaced it all when i provided them with my purchase transaction records for those items..this was AFTER i called LL and asked for help, in which they said it wasnt their problem!

Well ..after all these " updates" and " fixes" my SL crashes more then ever.. usually every 5-10 minutes..

Lowering land prices will not encourage many more users to purchase land. Lowering land prices is never a sign of a healthy economy.

If you want to see more people owning land then it's tier fees and not initial land prices, that are the issue. Lowering tier fees will encourage more people to own land.

Camping won't go away until they start giving stipends to free users (take away the reason to use camping devices) or totally redo the traffic system (take away the reason to supply camping devices).

Losing casinos helped but I don't think you can dump it all on them - many places want traffic. Some get it the honest way, some don't.


Not yet, IMO. There's still no in-world editor for them, they don't collide they way they look like they should and there's compression loss issues. If they fixed 2 of those, I'd be jumping up and down agreeing with you. Without them, sculpties are still "very promising but not quite amazing. Yet."

Very true. Some stores (especially the shady freebie resellers) game traffic also.

Lossless sculpts are possible right now using a third-party ap: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLImageUpload

Cool! Wiki is having problems now.. Hopefully the program comes with source or does not require my SL name & password.. It's still only 1 of my 3, though.

Actually, forget the other two - inventory loss is (IMO by far) the biggest threat to SL right now and has been for a while. They really need to figure out the issues there and start knocking them down faster. I sometimes wonder if they know how serious this problem is.

Or if they care? It isn't their dime thats being lost. They can laugh and mock us all they want for putting up with such shoddy service and still handing out dollars (or euros) hand over fist.

So how stupid are you for staying then?

There are plenty of other bitch threads.. Maybe you could go make your valuable contribution to one of them instead?

That's all fine and good but there are other problems with SL that also can be looked into.

More and more Second Life has become one big grid of Shopping, Sex and Shooting. Role Play island ratios keep dropping and finding places to hang and meet new people gets harder every month because of the cost to run these places without buckling under to creating mini malls or free sex areas. What I'm trying to say is without support either from a community already in place or other sources creating a community place is a very expensive task and a risk because to attract new people and gain a following takes a lot of work and money just to overcome the flood of "commercial" venues in searches and classifieds. So as I see it those community places are the diamonds of SL and they are slowly going the way of the dinosaurs. Linden Labs needs to help save these community places or help them build up with some kind of incentives not unlike dwell was in the past. Camping was the direct result of dwell and even though dwell is long gone camping remains as a way to fraudulently boost traffic for malls, clubs and other unsavory places. I might suggest some kind of discount application program similar to non-profit is in RL. If there was a non-profit system places that cater to community space they wouldn't feel the need to add malls and other means to offset cost of a community space.

Why? I pay the same as you do to voice my opinion last time I checked. Its not like I'm guiltless anyway; I'm still here aren't I? There are a lot of things I love about SL. The creativity is mind-boggling at times, I've met some really good friends and probably done some self-improvement in the process. But I will NOT blow smoke up anyone's a$$ and look the other way; twiddling my thumbs and pretending all is rosy. Its not..and i hope someone in charge figures that out before the SL I love is beyond redemption in the eyes of their faithful public.

I think Meade doesn't realize that her post came across as complaining and that you was just joining in with her voicing your opinion about the problems.


You two need to kiss and make love and stuff.

Post pictures..

Yup tier makes even free land not worth it
Tier needs to be cut in half but they wont they only care about corps now not the people that made sl what is it now..ie the regular customer

*chuckles* I'm willing if they are..I'm a pretty easygoing person 99.9% of the time. Its that 0.1% total biotch that tends to bite heads off first and ask questions later.

I see some listing and prioritising their gripes with the platform. What about a simple list. Say.. three things that you'd REALLY like to see fixed. For me...

1. Viewer instability (that NVidia freezing thing in partic. )
2. Building bugs (unanticipated rotations, prim drift, etc.)
3. Teleport inpredictability. (Why can't it fail gracefully; oftentimes it needs a complete relog if you ever want to tp again.)

Honestly, if teleportation technology does turn up in RL, I hope Linden Lab aren't behind it. We'll all be lost to a parallel universe within five minutes.

um... don't we already have that on our profile picks page?

Animom that's a very good insight about the social tools.

Going around Second Life for me is like trying to barbeque while on the phone, on the cellphone and on two other cellphones at once, while someone is texting at me and I'm watching two channels of television and the newspaper.

I've literally resorted to teleporting people to me, rather than respond to IM. So others could see my situation, when I'm already bending 40 typed wpm into 60 wpm (and badly). With the addition of voice... @_@

More than once, even before voice, I've ported 6-7 people to me at once. One or two asking about West Trade Imports, 4-5 re: Caledon land and an old friend or two in the mix. Not everyone takes the tp so I'm *still* clearing IM's. Busy mode? Nope, I gotta take notecards or I'd have even *more* traffic!

We need some kind of tool that lets people see when you are dealing with more people than a McDonalds employee at rush hour. Or even some kind of 'attentivity' flag if you are in Photoshop - 10%... 90%... whatever.

Wouldn't you be better off answering customer queries with emails?. Seems to me like it would be asking too much to expect a customer to have to monitor your busy status before sending you a message.

I expect most customers just want to send a message to you and are happy to wait for a reply.

I think this thread is interesting only if we confine the discussion to the points in Amimom's oringinal post, depite the thread title. There are 5 billion threads about what SL should/shouldn't do, but Amimom makes some unique observations.

I think the point about social networking tools is VERY good. A couple of ideas on this:

> Having better "presence" indicators (e.g. the Busy, Back Soon etc. status indicators in other IM clients), would be an excellent addition to the friends list and, for my money, could replace the 'see on map' and 'edit my objects' indicators (make displaying those an option). I would so love a busy indicator that doesn't have the current dire consequences of missing inventory or notices that you are sent. I would also love to be able to set my own presence to whatever I wished, ie "back soon". But good presence indication is surprisingly difficult to implement, and LL seems to have it tied to the asset Search mechanism and therefore has persistent problems with it. If I had control of LL's pursestrings, a good basic collaboration/unified messaging company would be my next purchase. One with an excellent, scalable presence server.

> The "groups" concept is excellent but needs more features. Even simply having hosted forum space automagically linked to from the group details page would be great, with automatic authentication to the forum for group members. As it is now, only group members who are concurrently online can participate in discussions. Which come across as spam if you're busy elsewhere, so ironically, there is pressure to LIMIT discussion within groups. Not a very helpful social networking mechanism!

Some people expect you to be chained to your computer.

There's an absolutely perfect example of where SL fails abysmally.

I think the quoted bit is absolutely correct. Desmond's customers ought to be able to have - and would lilkely be satisfied with - asynchronous communication (e.g. e-mail). Guess what feature of the real world LL never even publically *considered* adding to SL? Yep, reliable, asynchronous, textual messaging, a.k.a. e-mail.

For those customers who need an answer sometime today or tomorrow, SL simply doesn't have a mechanism. Yes, IMs are stored or forwarded to e-mail but it is broken to the degree that you are never sure if it has been received. It is also hard to express some thoughts in 255 characters or less.

Ok, so use forum PMs. Well, most players don't use the forums and PMs are capped in quantity. Ok, how about e-mail? Not every customer wants to ruin their pseduo-nymity or set up an SL-only e-mail account.

In the real world, if an office or home or cafe has any internet connectivity at all, they at least have e-mail. SL has no such basic capability in any form and those bits that might be cobbled into such use are chronically broken.

The 3D-Internet, indeed!