Should LL reduce tier to keep the failing economy in SL alive?

@Argent - unfortunately right now Yoville etc do not have user generated content. But they are a good example of the thirst out there for virtual worlds

Please note ... Metaplace which has a similar spec to Yoville does have user generated content and the economy will go live fairly soon

I just looked up Metaplace. It's cute, but it looks more like the There.com crowd would be it's target. It is way off from being a competitor to SL. Ironically, it might have a better shot at grabbing all the "More Predictable" (tm) people LL is looking for.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaplace

Seems to me that LL have deliberately controlled the market by releasing sims.

I rather think they're a smashing example of the thirst out there for chat systems. Chat systems have always been more popular than virtual worlds. Virtual worlds, in fact, are rather a specialized taste, and by no means pleasing to the everyday palate.

User generated content is a necessary but not sufficient condition to consider an environment a virtual world. IMVU has user generated content, but it's still no more than a chat system with paper dolls and wallpaper.

Thirst for virtual worlds mean nothing.

Producing a virtual world according to the Argent Stonecutter™ description, which I fully support, is a different story.

There is a thirst for "internet social networks", not virtual worlds per se. I think if LL put up a FaceSpaceTwitterBook web aspect of SL the world would grow beyond their ability to keep up again, why? Because the Thirst is for virtual places where people can interact, FaceSpaceTwitterBook and other limited virtual spaces just attract people who want to be social, and places like SL take the social aspect beyond the scope of what most FaceSpaceTwitterBook people can imagine is possible over the internet. Sure those places will always attract people, but people who want the next level of social interaction i think can come to SL and find something better than MySpace booty calls.

Unfortunately, until LL gets wise and creates a virtual web presence for our avatars SL won't capture those SpaceFaceTwitterBookers.

Where do you get those amounts? I bought L$ last night at L$273.3 per US$1 and the order took less than an hour to fill at that rate.

Most definitely reduce the tier!

If they did that, I could get some more lots, and set out the high prim stuff, then people would buy it, but they would need a larger house and a larger piece of land, to set out more prims, but they wouldn't be stressed over it, because the prices are so good!......so then they would buy a larger house, and maybe a guest house too, and a few more pools, and add on another piece of land, maybe three more pieces.....and then they would be so happy and having so much fun, they would need more clothes, and more shoes, and more gadgets! And they would be going to more clubs and live events and dropping more money in the tip jars, because they are so happy! Everyone would be happy! Not to mention, they would be so happy, they would all be getting married....and paying for weddings! Then prim babies! And prim baby stuff! Then the prim babies would grow up, and do the same!

LL should open Mainland ownership to ALL accounts that provide PIOF. Give them the tier free 512, and increse the bennies for Premiums. Free the Non Premium serfs, I say. *shakes fist.

I could go with this. I want to increase my plot by 1024, not double it by another 4096!

Or LL could increase the free tier by another 512, since most people use that much land to begin with.

That would be a good perk to give Premiums, if you allow all residents a free 512.

Sounds like a good way to create more "Space Junk"

LL seems to only limit the number of accounts per email address (this has changed so many times it may be wrong but go with me on it a mintue...). Even if they limited it per actual verified person to 5 alt accounts, that would be 2816m2 (with group bonus) for every person with their 5 legitimate alts' account payment info on file ... the way all of my alts have payment info on file.

You would have to have some way to tie a single person's alt accounts altogether and have it be that only every actual person with payment info on file got the free tier. But as long as I can create an unlimited amount of free accounts using throw away email addresses and still be able to put the same payment information on all of them, this won't work.

I honestly don't think LL is interested in making Mainland property ownership any more attractive to the average resident. The concessions they seem to make are always geared to the major landholders and in finding ways to help them become more profitable.

LL doesn't really want to be your landlord; they'd much rather only deal with the major land-barons and have the majority of residents rent land from those individuals. They still get the same money for the same amount of land, but only have to deal with one person instead of 25.

Should LL lower tier? Absolutely; the prices are ridiculous for the level of service and the pricing sturcture is even worse. But will they? Heck, I think the only thing holding them off from raising the land tiers is the crappy economic climate.

Of course my idea has holes in it..if it didn't, I'd be running SL! *shakes fist*

I agree, it would require better account management on their part, something that they seem uninterested in doing.

I'd love to see a serious business analysis instead of all these individual "it's too expensive" remarks. Can anyone really quantify what a given decrease in tier would relate to an increase in land sales? Without that, how do you know that a decrease in tier would be to LL's benefit? Or maybe they should raise tier, which might cause some loss in total revenue but could let them increase customer support staffing, improving the quality of service to those who remain?

I don't know the answers, I doubt anyone without inside information could come up with a thorough and accurate analysis, but it may be possible to come up with some reasonable quantitative models to help understand the issues.

Er.. I don't think LL heads to EBay looking for deals when they need new sim hosts.

With the new class 6 hardware coming soon (for some strange LL-defined value of 'soon') and using nehalem (westmere?) processors, it's gonna be a bit more than US$150-200 for a new host.

Interesting. I'm going to disagree with you gently (take this as philosophic, it's about ideas).

Say tier was lowered. Now, I do agree, either a) tier should come down or b) services should be added to justify current pricing. But let's say it just dropped suddenly to 195/mo across the board for all class 5's.

Land barons make margins based on tier. If tier is X, real dollar take home percent is Y% of X. Drop tier suddenly by 33%, and guess what happens: Anyone making say, 150 USD per region is now making 100 USD per region.

In addition, estates will bleed tens of thousands of residents, as many find their own region now affordable.

A bad thing? Oh, of course not, for the individual. The loss however, will be just about every large scale project on the grid. Rather than coherent continents, see an even bigger explosion of "house/shop/skybox on an island."

Which will actually make the grid a lot less compelling overall. Imagine three trillion square meters of island/suburbia, and not much in the way of themed estates, which all just collapsed overnight.

The survivors would be the themed corporate builds like Bay City and Nautilus; anything even remotely like my Caledon would be obliterated.

* * * * *

And with regard to propping up mainland by limiting private estates to say, 8 regions... let's say I did the maximum, 8 regions each with a profit of say, 100/month. That's not even ten thousand dollars a year, before taxes... about six thousand after taxes.

There's no way I could afford to do that ~ to have the work of a part time job, for that little... I'd be out of business fast. And everyone in the business would be in third world countries or simply hobbyists, really.

Hobbyists are often great, and some of the very best gems of a landlord when you find a good one... but most are also the first to say "bleah, I'm done with this" the instant it is no longer fun for them. Simply because they *don't* need the money. I see single regions appear and vanish all around my estate like twinkling lights as the years roll by... not exactly a recipe for stability. But yes, I do agree it would thoroughly favour the mainland if such region ownership caps were imposed.

That's not quite true - it only equates if land is held in whole regions - a mainland region split up into different size parcels can bring in higher revenue because of the tier structure. So LL can get more for a region they supply to multiple land owners.

I don't think reverting the class five price increase would have that effect, if there's demand for estate land... and I think there is, as the OpenSpace bubble demonstrated.

What if they reduced tier through estate tiers... so getting regions one at a time up to five regions cost you $245/month, but paying for five regions at a time was only $1095 instead of $1225, and then each additional ten region chunk was $1995? That would extend the "tier" concept upwards, and give larger estate owners an edge.

Or allow Basic PIOF to own land, but without the free 512 tier.

As someone who would clearly benefit from this... I have to say, it would have to be done carefully or it would obliterate most of the small operators.

Even with a themed estate, a difference of $L 100 a week is quite enough to make people consider their options. Using a discounted tier effect of say, 50 regions... not many could stand up to the pricing I'd be able to offer. Provided I could survive myself, in the face of dirt cheap offerings from the 500 estate megabarons.

As terrible as this sounds... tier stability is probably more important than most people realise. It would be easy to tip over 100,000 applecarts while the grid re~stabilised into the new order of things. Any change will come with a cost as well as benefits.

A total nonsense....how do you ask Dreamland Estates to downsize from a 1000 sims to 8 or Fantasyland Estates from their 700? Most of LL's real income comes from those 22K Estate sims Tier collections.

I could also go for this, as long as the basic PIOF (which will then become PIU) do not get any of the other perks that come with paying the premium fees. Have them go straight by the land pricing chart. I could see myself doing this with my alts.

The tier structure would be better off mirroring how regular hosting works. It makes no sense that someone who has a sim/homestead for personal use is paying the same amount as someone running a business/club on it. One price does not fit all.

There should be a basic cost for tier and an additional variable amount based on bandwidth used, resource usage, settings (higher agent limit means a higher basic tier fee for instance), etc.

That would make it significantly cheaper to own land for purely personal use (you + the occasional visitors would fit into the basic pricing) and those running a business will either have to scale down or start paying for what they're actually using rather than the current model where everyone else pays for them.

That makes sense but given how profitable clubs usually are, I think we'd just end up with fewer clubs in SL..

My suggestion, and I've thought this for a long time, is that LL could make the first 1024sq metres tier-free instead of 512 as at present. That would mop up a lot of the slack in mainland at the moment and it would give small landowners a better experience, since they'd have 234 prims to play with instead of 117.

While I have nothing against basic account holders, rather than enhancing basic accounts, it would make much better commercial sense for LL to make the Premium account more attractive, to encourage more people to go Premium.

To do this they could:

---Make the tier-free limit 1024sq m (as I said above)

---Allow Premiums to belong to up to 50 groups - Personally I'm happy with 25, but I often read about people who want to belong to more than 25 groups.

---Safeguard the inventory of Premium account holders if they choose to revert to basic or if they accidentally default to basic.