Idea about SL Land situation

Ive been thinking about this for awhile....SL just added a ton of land with zindra, nautilus and even bay city. now that it seems there is an huge amount of extra mainland for sale, abandoned and otherwise laying fallow, would it make sense for SL to constrict the sm amount of mainland that exists?

the biggest complaints i hear from people are that there is never anyone in the places they visit, its hard to meet and chat with people, etc. with so much dead space, maybe SL could just remove some empty, abandoned mainland sims and bring the overall amount of available land back down to a more reasonable amount. then the amount of land available per avatar might make it easier to actually have neighbors, conversations, areas where people hang out, etc.

maybe im off base and this cant be done, but it sure seems to make sense to me...any thoughts?

As long as there is someone willing to pay the tier for an otherwise abandoned sim, LL is more than happy to provide it. The Grid has never been a crowded place. The only way I see to have more people buy land and establish a community, or sorts, is to lower tier, or at least, to equalize tier levels. The tier ladder as it is now, creates huge obstacles for landowners who would like to slightly enlarge their parcels without doubling their tier. On top of that, you have to include the cost of Premium membership, so it's a double dipping.
Must be a Premium member to own mainland AND must pay tier. There's very little incentive for Basic members to become Premium other than to own mainland.
Now, I know that most of the Premium fee is reimbursed to you via stipends, but most people don't see it that way...

im not really talking about having more people buy land....really just reduce the amount of land so that there arent as many barren sections...

The big problem with reducing mainland is what to do the people around the spots you remove.

Do you take all the mainland plots and shuffle them one square to the right and then down and over to left if you hit the edge?

Do you move individual parcels around until you fill in gaps?

Do you just leave gaping holes that people can no longer walk through?

Any solution is a nightmare.

The real solution is to reduce the the cost of mainland, double or triple what you can buy on a basic premium, and then take every 4 sims that are their own server and put them on one new modern era machine rather than whatever old 2003 PC running Windows NT that they appear to be on at the moment...

- Or to be serious, just reduce the cost of tier, and increase what a basic premium gives, and the land market will take off as people seek to gain more land.

And... start killing micro plots and adfarms. They're doing it with some, but they need to just flat out take away any plot that's on a parcel under 64m - unless it can be moved and merged to make more whole unified plots, or is linked to a larger in-use plot.

Nah, no need to do that when private estate owners struggling to exist can abandon their own regions instead.

ahhh good point des...i hadnt thought of that angle lol

I have... laughs

Nooooooo!

/me rushes to check that Caledon II is still there.

It would be rather nice if they created lakes and parkland out of the abandoned areas.

Is there any statistic that shows what percentage of mainland is actually abandoned? Beyond that, people are still paying tier for the place and not occupying it. (O.o)

Looking at all the empty un-abandoned land; I see low server load, paying customers, and little to no maintenance expense... That's a service provider's profit dream come true. (^_^)y

What may be barren land to some is a perfect place to ride dirt bikes to others. I like some open views on the mainland, and not being all squished together.

Sometimes I wish every cut created a 4m wide protected ring around itself...
- of course, managing that would be impossible. Its just a little idealized dream. It would completely break down on any system with a cut smaller than a 512. Hmmm... maybe it -IS- a good idea after all...

I'm no fan of areas where the builds slam right up against each other.

Hmm.. them shutting down sims would only cause grief, which is of course, why LL is likely to do it.

My idea is this: Up our "free" tier on premium to 1024m, rather than just the 512m. Then I could add that tier to my group tier, getting a 10% bonus.. and be able to buy more of the land for my shop. If LL wanted to charge a $1 USD more for the "bonus," I'd pay it.

Or LL could do smaller steps in the whole tier thing. I can't afford $40 USD a month yet, but 30? Sure. And I don't mind not doubling the mount. Just give me another 2048 and we're good. Or even just another 1024m!

I also think doubling the free 512sq to 1024sq would be a great idea. If LL did that I'd buy another 1024sq ASAP, which would help the economy. Also upping the first tier by say 512sq or better yet 1024sq would also help. In my opinion going from 2048sq to 4096sq and nearly doubling tier is a rip off. I doubt LL would cut into their bottom line like that so its only wishful thinking.

you guys have some great ideas...i especially like leaving some land open and just natural...maybe more planned space within mainland would be nice. just pocket parks etc. instead of giant new areas.

des you make me laugh....you think of these things and that is why you are the land baron and not me lol

I suspect there's a lot of abandoned mainland that hasn't been reclaimed by LL because it's better to leave the previous residents builds there so it looks occupied rather than mainland looking like a huge green field of plots for sale at less than $1 per metre.

There's a lot of truth in that one, Immy. As long as it remains like that I can't imagine any reason why LL would want to change it.

Elanthius dumped an amazing amount of mainland recently. There are still buyers, which equals tier payers. On the other hand, one of my parcels in Heterocera continent is surrounded by an increasing amount of abandoned land.

As a mainland property investor, Karas Family Trust is holding our parcels (old mainland historical areas), but not expanding at this time. Hard to resist so many cheap parcels on Sansara, but the whole thing reaks of bust atm.

At this point it makes almost as much sense to abandon/move than sell/move for folks swapping parcels. Pennies on the dollar for folks who have owned their parcel for any length of time.

My sympathies to the private estate owners trying to make a living under these adverse market conditions.

Agreed. But when there's nothing in it for them, they don't take action. There used to be a team that would clean up the trash, plywood cubes and wrecked vehicles strewn all over the Mainland. Long since discontinued.

maybe a new job for moles to do between building for themed mainland and infohubs, maybe even give them rights to join and divide govoner linden land.

The problem is that there are no complete mainland sims abandoned, plus that would leave a gap in the continent. Probably a better tier system, and (if financially possible) lower tiers would solve a lot.

Currently I am shopping for mainland, but I need quite a bit. And then you see buying half a sim is still not that easy. Half a sim is US$125. But since I own already 4096 sqm zindra land, half a sim would bring me to US$ 195. Of course I could use tier rentals or so to solve this, but I think it is rather stupid.

Too bad abandoned land does not show up different colored on the map. They do show purple when "show owners" is on, but the map would look quite surprising I bet. I was quite surpised to see 2 parcels, making 1/4 sim in total, were simply abandoned in Allana for example. Too bad it was not 1/2 sim, would have loved to set up shop there!

Halve the tier I will double my land,simple.

Just logged on.
Simulator primitive usage: 1872 out of 1875 (3 available)

See what I mean!

They should have a contest, and invite people to terraform and build a city.

Give them a theme, and have them submit a portfolio presentation of what they would like to do. Plus, the builders submit a 1000 word essay on why they would like to participate as well.

The selection committee is made up of builders and creators from across SL. (yes Yumi...you have a shot this time).

Those who are chosen will work as a group together, to create this city.

Those who survive and make it through the whole project without getting pissy with someone will have some kind of stake in the land....it can be divided up among the participants. (of course this dividing up plan will cause pissiness).

Or - keep the city as linden land - and give the participants chunks that surround it, to further develop the area. A sufficient reward would be.....20,000 sqm - 6 months free tier. (perhaps) That would develop quite a stretch of surrounding land, and considering that you gave it to someone who submitted an excellent portfolio in the beginning.....it may look halfway decent once they developed it.

The project will look amazing and be quite unique....so the value of land nearby will go up, and the development around the land will spread outward.

I think Calveen was proposing that this would fill up the empty spaces and encourage more people to be active land owners in SL. More people, fewer empty spaces. And I have to say I agree.