What if... "medium density" regions?

Hey, here's something I've been thinking about... and I think a Resident Answer from a bunch of people might be a good thing.

Say there was a region available that was roughly half the prims/performance of a standard region, but yet roughly double that of an openspace.

For example:

- 65536 sq. m
- 7500 prims
- "moderate" or "light use" script performance
- 150 USD/mo


Questions:

- What would this do to the land market?

- Would it increase or decrease total revenue for the service provider

- Should it have a restriction like "must own a standard region first" (remember, if our service provider's revenue evaporates because everyone down-converts, we are all screwed)

- If it was only for people with existing standard regions, would anyone bother or care about these?

- What would this do for Joe Average on the grid

- What would it do to us socially (i.e. most openspaces are dead 99% of the time)

- Would we see things like people starting with an openspace, 'moving up' to one of these and then maybe getting a standard region after a while?

- Is this just the dumbest idea ever?

Isn't it amazing all you can come with when you ask a certain question such as: "What if....whatever"

Sorry Desmond can't be of any help on this one, but I found it to be very interesting queries.

Ashe

Absolutely, these would be popular. It's prim whore heaven! You can fill a full sim pretty decently with half the prim limit. It would allow for elaborate single or multi-home estates (in the traditional sense) to develop, and would provide a lower cost alternative for landlords that would be more viable in terms of performance.

You couldn't stack four of these things one core, so the performance factor would probably shoot upward. People would only have to worry about 7 neighboring sims on the same server, not 15. This is assuming it is used moderately, as you said.

Smaller regions and smaller commitment lead to smaller responsibilities but bigger risks.

I'd be happier if they had smaller regions with the same performance, at least then it would deal with the grey area.

End user/budding content creator perspective: I'd love it (if I didn't have to own a standard region first), this is something I could justify pulling the trigger on even with my piddly-ass little business. The additional incentive to grow would probably give me the kick in the pants I need to make something of myself. And I have a feeling there are thousands of people out there who'd find a price point like that equally attractive, whether to start/grow a business or just to play house on a Large Scale.

My first reaction was that it would kill standard region sales dead, and if it was just a matter of script performance it probably would, but it seems to me (a total outsider to the land biz) that most sims intended for residential rentals and "sales" need to offer full prims to be viable. Of course there are all kinds of exceptions, especially where the owner's holdings have a depth and breadth to support a variety of more unusual "borderline" scenarios as well as themed builds and community areas (yes, I'm looking straight in the direction of Caledon ) but really I suspect the average renter usually expects, nay, demands full prims.

So my thinking is, the market for this type of sim would NOT be run-of-the-mill land barons; it would be small content creators and middle-class recreational users. These sims wouldn't be competition for standard sims being parceled out for sale or rent, and as such the "conventional" land sale and rental business would only lose approximately 1 customer for each of these new sims sold.

Hard to say about revenue to Our Benefactors - maybe a push, with more people like me springing for a sim but some lost revenue from those who were on the edge of buying a regular sim but scaled back with the new opportunity.

/random thoughts

It would be nicer if LL allowed for tiered resource, full region plans, just like any given webhost.

I expect that will happen sooner or later.

They probably would still run 4 of these per core, they may just start using class 6 servers, which I assume are available for other businesses and perhaps SL R&D have a few, we just don't have any on the grid yet.
Wonder what would happen if they dropped high prim sims on us as an option too.
65,000 prims per sim? Could really stack some high rise or space stations in. Maybe it would need run on it's own quadcore.

Between Tegg and Desmond's ideas I see a potential new business model for LL: selling sims with different prim (and script) capcity limits: 3750, 7500, 15000, 30000, 60000.

What I would like to see is the removal of the requirement for open-space sim owners to own a regular sim. Why? Because the current system makes unwilling landlords out of people who have to buy open-space sims for their friends and it makes unwilling tenants out of people who can't afford a regular sim and/or don't want to get into that landlord business merely to have an open-space sim of their own. The current system forces people into 'marriages-of-convenience'. Sure they can be profitable for some but my experience in life is that as soon as commerce and money enter into the equation of a friendship between people it's as good as dead.

Just my 2L$ worth.

I'd like to see tiny sims made available. Say 64x64sqm and 500-1000 prims and 4-5 avatars for about $US15-20 per month. 8-16 to a server I don't mind, as its not going to go much slower than a mainland sim does now. Advantage is that I get a private home space of my own for an affordable price. I'd buy one anyways.

What we really need are "NO-PRIM SIMS" - sea only with no prims supported that way we could start filling in all the blanks on the grid.

Now that would be amazing

I have a feeling they would hit a somewhat limited market.
If you want to split it up and rent it out, I think you generally need the full prims, or each parcel would be rather crippled.
As a single-person (or small group) operation, they would still be rather expensive. The current openspaces hit a level where I could justify having one for fun and the small profits I make here; a half-sim would be too expensive.
So I think they would cater to people who were setting up a shop/showroom for a fairly successful business, which didn't quite pay for a full sim yet, but had outgrown the openspace level.

While you can always use more prims, the openspaces seem to offer enough to build one, themed thing on them. I think a more interesting thing would be to open up for openspaces generally, and engineer them to actually support "true" use. That way, smaller hobby areas/themed builds/clubs could have their own area.

Socially, I don't think it would change all that much. Openspaces are empty most of the times, but so are any given club. If you see such "micro sims" as one, specific place to go to for an event, it wouldn't change the dynamics much from going to one specific venue, and teleporting away after the concert.

So if prices for sims dropped, I think we would see more dedicated roleplaying areas, art showrooms etc. We would see less "synergy" between an exhibition drawing a crowd which then goes shopping in the nearby mall, but I honestly think that's pretty much non-existent anyway, with people teleporting freely around after word-of-mouth.

A half-sim might hit a sweet spot for some, but I think it would be the free access to quarter-sims which would be really popular.

Obviously, this would pretty much wreck the standard "land baron" business model, if people could just get the amount of prims/price level they needed directly from LL, but it's a change which *will* come anyway, when private grids start appearing, and people can host their own sims for their friends.
Also, it would add more value to the land barons who do more to build a community than just the bot-slice-markup-routine.

But bottom line is that I think LL needs to make sims more available to the average user before the external grids really start working, or we'll see a mass exodus of the tighter circles and cliques.

I don't think that a product between full prim and open space is needed.

What I'd really like to see is something else: a region 4 times the size of the normal one, but with only the prims of 1 normale one. Something you right now only can do with putting 4 low prim sims together, but you have sim crossings and are not really free on where to use those 15k prims.

This sums it up. And Jeffrey's suggestion of tiered resources are probably right on target with how to best accomplish it. Probably an entry level at the current openspace offering at $75/month, with additional resources available on a tiered pricing plan all the way up to the fullly equipped regions.

Another consideration might be add limitations to how land on the lower cost/duty sims can be parceled out and deeded, with an eye toward keeping the "premium" regions attractive to land barons. Maybe you can't cut parcels at all, which would make it rather unattractive as a conventional rental sim.

It's a difficult one - I would love a full sim that I could justify the cost of. On the other hand, I'm sure there are very real concerns for revenue dilution as sim owners downgrade.. but on the other hand, what Tali says here:

Why not just charge as clouds do?

Pay for what you need rather than be restricted to predefined parameters - this is pretty much what is discussed above but slightly more granular...

The grid would fill up fast that way

I think it is a good idea - and I also like Alazarin's suggestion of sims with different prim and script capacity.

For a small business, the jump from half a region to a whole region is a big one to make and if you pay VAT (as I do) the tier for a half region is approaching 150 US$ per month. A level in between would help small businesses to grow.

I'd really like to see a tiered model. With no requirements to own any specific other types of sims. You order what you want/need, like with any web hosting service.

* Something close to zero prims for JUST navigable water - if that is all you are using it for, you don't need even close to the original prim count for an OpenSpaces sim. Free to very cheap to obtain, since they use almost no resources. (Perhaps these could remain tied to owning one of the larger types?)

* The current OpenSpaces sims. 1/4 resource load.

* Desmond's proposed "Half-prim" sims.

* Normal sims

* Double-prim sims (two cores per sim, double resources, same land area)

* Quad-prim sims (4 cores per sim, 4x the prims and resources, same land area)

I'd also like to see any of these able to run a land area that was 4x normal.

So for example, you could order a dedicated server as a 4x power sim, with the same land area as 4 normal sims, bit WITHOUT internal region-crossing issues and restrictions on resource allocations between the 4 quadrants. And you wouldn't be sharing a server with anyone else, ever.

Or order a 2x performance sim at 4x land area, and get essentially four half-prim sims with again no internal region-crossing issues and restrictions on resource allocations between the 4 quadrants.

I've designed large projects for clients who ended up using 1 normal sim and OpenSpaces, but who would have been better off with a cluster of 4 half-prim sims and no resource boundaries between them.

One thing that's probably going to reel in some of the granularity ideas is the fact that even a low resource usage sim is still likely to get the same server hardware thrown at it.. so while it does use fewer simulator resources, there is still the expense on LL's part of deploying the server hardware and maintaining the environment.. there's a break-even point somewhere in there I suspect, with the ongoing maintanence costs..

I like your thinking, Ceera. Daniel and Tali both pointed the same way but didn't articulate it quite as well as you have: A granular scaled range of sims available to residents.

The positive side of this is that sim-owners could coalesce their sims into mini-continents on an ad-hoc basis creating worlds free from the adfarm / land-extortion ravages that plague the mainland while still having a similar (or possibly even better!) level of ownership and control over their land resources. If LL isn't prepared to clean up the mainland then they really ought to create the environment where residents can vote with their wallets and create 'unpolluted' environments.

The mainland is dead and this suggestion could open the way for 'regular' premium residents to build an alternative.

And no, I don't see how it will kill the island estate land market. It will certainly be the demise of many 'landlord' sims but I do see that the market for 'value-added' sims will remain the same. Value-added meaning sims that are built up / terraformed / themed to order. As a matter of fact that particular market might take off explosively as the start-up price hurdle is lowered. So for people in the 'sim-building' business it could very well herald in a new boom. Some of the larger landlord continents may well undergo reorganisation... which could be a good thing.

Just off the top of my head, I'd like the idea of various owners more easily joining an estate-like unit, so people could "chip in" with sims and build a continent, possibly with various areas separated by dirt-cheap, ultra-low performance spacer sims. (Openspaces were always too expensive to really use this way).
The estate owner/managers would have the power to "evict" a sim from the estate, and possibly reshuffle the positions, but the sim owner would otherwise retain all rights of their own sim, including the ability to move it away from the cluster again.

With a system like that, it wold be a lot easier to build zoned continents, rather than one person having to go all out, buying 20 sims and hoping s/he can rent them out.

Yes I wondered too whether we could get bigger sims than 256mx256m and so get rid of the border crosings somehow

I realize that under the current business model, "raw land" resellers provide a needed service, being the investors who pony up the initial cost for the full area, allowing others to buy smaller slices cheaper, but I gotta admit I'll cry Tøkk's dry tears over the demise of that business model.
I'm all with Alazarin on this one; I think we would see a lot more beautiful, themed areas if people weren't at the mercy of which parcels happened to be carved out and terraformed.

I like this idea - combined with the granular approach to sim performance.
Without the option of spacer sims, issues could arise as people look for others agreeable to join sims at the edges of a continent.

The 256 limit is probably very, very deeply embedded in both the running server code and in many scripts inworld, so it would probably require some clever workaround which would make a larger area still look like 256-meter tiles in many respects.

Yes!!!! And I'd wager that there's many an existing estate owner who'd love to whole merge blocks of their 256X256 sims into a smaller number or 512X512 or 1024X1024 sims. I can see potential downsides tho.....the frequency of sim reboots migh go up as well as script loading issues but they're all manageable. But getting rid of that border crossing issues would be a definite plus.