Transforming the Second Life Experience with Big Spaceship

I do. It is part of the overall theme. Dark, Gothic, Vampyre, etc etc.

And you know what? You can't make everyone happy. It is impossible to do. And even if you could some lawyer would find an excuse to create a new class and file a lawsuit anyway.

Maybe people should be suing for movies like 300 or Sin City too. Better yet let's make art, writing, and music illegal while we are at it.

A better idea would be mandatory life imprisonment for lawyers and their clients for frivolous lawsuits.

It might come as a surprise to you, but there actually are people in SL who aren't involved in running a business. All they do is create a nice virtual environment, with trees and waterways and stuff. Some of them make music, others build sculptures, that sort of thing.

That's all I wanted to say. I now return you to your regular program of on-topicness.

I love this plan to retain the new Residents.

Maybe they can buy my Open Space regions. Oh wait, I poofed one already and the other poofs on the 25th.

After that Linden Lab - I'm out of here and you are NEVER getting a cent more from me !!

You know the old say, "Where the sun don't shine Linden Lab."

Bravo! An excellent speech, very well made!

Yeah, thanks for reminding ME about the nastily favoritist Showcase that features clothing, hair, shoes, etc stores of (like Brenda said) the FOL.

Oh! Another suggestion for new users:

Make it easier for new users to get L$! We've answered here in the Forumz SO many times those questions about "I've just charged $25 to my account but can't figure out why it's not showing up anywhere, and I can't buy L$ because it says I'm over my limit." The whole rolling 3-day limit thingy is really confusing to newbies, and while laudable, not intuitive in form or function. This would really help with new user retention; if the website is easy and $$ is easy, people would be more inclined to stay inworld, not wandering around on the website searching for help.

Big Spaceship seems like it is mostly focusing on highly US centric (even west-coast centric), solutions, and strategies for this target group.

Pretty logical that their ideas appeal to a US (west-coast) based company.
LL is Big Spaceships target audience.

The global community that SL should try to reach is not...

Maybe base your decisions on strategy on your target audience, not on yourselves

Like, how about advertising through L$ gift cards in grocery store checkout lines, like IMVU does? Those things are a great deal for companies, you get your money days or weeks before you have to hand it out as credit, and some percentage just get lost and never redeemed.

I wonder why we need a big spaceship company to make things easier. I have learnt much about 3D textures invited friends on here and taught them the ropes. It was a big learning curve for me and Lght but we have enjoyed the game. Will the 'big spaceship' take that fun away? .... me wonders

In which case, it's exclusively a luxury item, though this market segment hasn't really been complaining about it nearly as vocally.

I could be wrong, but my understanding is any prepaid gift card bearing the logo of one of the credit card companies SL works with should work in SL; no need to get brand specific so much as get the word out about this. Especially given every grocery store and CoinStar machine under the sun sells these, but I've yet to see an INVU card ever.

I'm confused. How does this differ from slurl's existing functionality?

When beauty and art are degraded to a luxury, the world will be a gloomy place.

ahem, Sim owners are not the only paying customers.

my wife tried sl, and it was infact the first hour experience

not that it was too hard, or she didnt understand how to click something

it was total fustration over horrible lag

after getting blaintly harassed 50 times in a row she managed to lag out of hell island met up with me, then we went to a social gathering, in which the sim crashed almost instantly

and that was the end of it for her

not "its too hard", its "what the fk is this worthless headache", nearly in tears yelling, "I CANT MOVE!"

adding bullship or whatever the outsourced help is this week is not going to solve that problem, and thus your first hour experience will not improve at all

quit wasting your time in meetings coming up with band-aids to the true problem, your grid

Not seeing any gray textures for the first hour inworld might increase people's tendency to stay.

Especially gray trees. Objects that are gray for five or ten mintues at least have their proper shape. Trees look really stupid and ugly being overlapped pieces of shirt cardboard for any length of time, even an instant, much less the minutes they actually spend looking that way so much of the time in SL.

(Of course, an hour of exposure to the blinding post-windlight SL sun might be damaging people's vision and impairing their vision.)

Being a women in my mid 40s and not one who knows computers that well I did not find SL hard to sigh into and that was 2 yrs ago. If you cant do the basic signing in maybe you cant handle SL. I have found none of it hard just takes time something many are not willing to give. You talk about wanting to make it better for the new ppl well many come in and start begging for money or turning to escorting. When I started new members got 200l a week. Most new ppl i have met dont want to spend their own money on a "game" they are happy with freebies or what ever they get given.Maybe going back to giving them so much on sign up a one off may help. Many new AVs are alts of existing members , some have 5+, and use them to camp.
As a premium member the only advantage it seems i get 400L weekly but trust me i spend more than that. People no longer have to be members to own land, the reason i joined, so why should i continue to pay LL whats in it for me ?

For me what would be better is to bring in the age verification as spoken about before, flag the mature areas cause i am fed up with running into "18" yrs olds who are not 18. Oh and give the male AV its parts Im sick of them asking me if i have one

I think that signing up is easy, it's what comes afterward that would benefit most from some renovation.

I think that what new users really need is actual help on help island, and on orientation island as well - 24/7. I've been through them three times and only once (briefly) saw a mentor. There are just confused noobs wandering around wondering what to do or how to do it. If there aren't enough volunteers then there should be a Linden to help.

I also think there should be some kind of a user's manual folder put into the inventory with information on how to deal with user preferences, attachments, inventory, griefing, finding/setting a home location, TOS, etc., with a big folder of landmarks for user-created locations that are helpful to newbies, such as the Ivory Towerof Primitives, the Shelters, the Particle Lab, Script Library, Robin Sojourner's Texture Tutorial, and such. Throw in some nice Linden locations like the Playground and volcano, Chateau, Linden Village, and sandboxes. (Or group the landmarks on notecards so they take up less inventory.)

And if you haven't done so yet, make video tutorials available on Help island.

I'm not complaining, just trying to make useful suggestions.

*edit: just read about the new help islands, so ignore any of my out-dated suggestions.

Based on discussions with people I've met in SL, I don't think that the problem is to do with a learning curve in SL, but rather if people are willing to INVEST time into learning SL.

Most of those who encounter problems are never going to be builders. Many residents learn the concepts of SL through experience, but there are also those who expect everything to be done for them.

I think that to have a 'lite' interface for new users is a good idea. Many people are not in SL to build or sell land, but just for fun and socialising. The current interface can be very intimidating to beginners.

Horrible documentation, poor support, and a general lack of interest in customer service are probably more to blame than the viewer.

I bumped into three newbies yesterday, stopped to help them out of course.

Newbie one: lost! didn't know how to use the search, landmarks, was stood alone in a store, talking to himself.

Newbie 2: a male avi stuck wearing a dress (aww bless) didn't know how to change his clothes or where to even find clothes in his inventory

Newbie 3: looking for money - running a newbie help centre myself I know this is a big question, many newbies tp into secondlife see it's mostly stores and clubs asking for tips but begin their life with no money. So what to tell a newbie? go camp? go fill in surveys? look for a job with a newb avi? or put money directly into the game? (a game which they're not exactly trusting from the outset).

Perhaps newbies should be given a little something to set them off on their journey or at least more clear and obvious directions on how to get money at orientation island.

I'd personally prefer no newbie being able to leave orientation until they fully understand the basics, I'm not sure if there's a way to do that or not but without the residents guiding folk, SL newbies are really lost in-world. I guess mandatory lessons/participation before leaving could stop a lot of griefer alts jumping straight in-world too.

I'm also finding with the new avatars a lot of folk who would usually stop and help the average newb don't realise these people are infact new so walk right past them. Don't get me wrong it's nice to see an avi looking more human than the old 'ruth' style avatars but i do think it has made things more difficult for new people coming in-world, they don't stand out as much.

With the changes in the browsers coming - new languages etc.. How am I to help a non-English speaker who's stuck dancing and can't stop? Previously I'd be able to say World Menu - Stop All Animations and they'd get there eventually... If I can't speak Danish, French, Spanish how do I help this newbie now?

It's good to see you're making changes for new residents, I'd like to see more residents joining SL as well as the current ones staying in-world.

Newbies who last the first 30 days often ask me where they can learn to script, build, animate - do i direct them to the incomplete and confusing wikis? I'd often send people to the SL blog to check out Torley's videos...Alas, you seem to have stopped posting them.

Another big question I get and it's from your new premium members - people who have PAID you so should have a clear view on exactly what they paid for want their 'free' 512 land, not realising they still have to go and buy it, so further clarity there would be cool too. I know it may be stating the obvious but if people are missing things like this, it's time to re-think how they're presented to the customers.

SL is one of the few 'online worlds' that doesn't seem to advertise, why is this? With Xmas coming and new pcs for many coming as Santa arrives it'd be prime time to advertise and get some new faces on here to give the economy a nice kick back into action.

I'm confident the Linden Lab can afford it by now...lol.

Thanks for putting in the 'showcase' although it could do with showing off some of the smaller names around SL, it has certainly helped curb the 'what can i do in Secondlife?' questions so many used to ask me.

Congrats for trying to make some changes but I do think people find the sign up forms OK to follow, it's once they're in-world, the confusion starts and that's what you should aim to fix.

Very little can be added to Broccoli's post.
What is happening smells very much "new economy style". For our sake, don't forget how miserably that "style" has failed and what we are actually paying, because of its "long wave", still effecting our life negatively.
Please don't fool yourselves with great sounds and images. The substance is deeply technical, and when it comes to technics, no nice make up can cover up flaws.
Technology development and the mangement of it need each other on an equal basis, without masters and slaves. Any unbalanced scenario has systematically caused miserable failure. Furthermore, please keep any know-how in reliable hands and take care of those hands, as much as possible.
Last, but not least, try to get really in touch with intelligent last users, independently on how big or small they are, abandoning the wonderful burocracy you have developed. Great and effective ideas, have been never born by corporations, but rather by smart individuals.
Please take these few words seriously. They are highly qualified and you don't have to pay one L$ for them.
lol...

Like alrady posted before in this blog, a new name for SECOND LIFE would be a good step moving forward. Most outsiders only have seen the bad side of SL, documentaries showing some people caught in-world and sh*gg*ng each other in RL, while there children are left alone!

is this what SL is ?? no it isnt, I came myself in here to increase my creativity skills and also to use SL as a platform to communicate in a more realistic (avatar) way with my friends allover the world. But more and more I have the impression that SL starts to become a 'social dump' place of the rl world. Looking around myself is already enough to see all the drama, profiles filled with LOVE messages, people who gets married, relationships, wtf ..... then they divorce - drama drama drama, etc ........ it is funny to see, note : if ya RL is f*ck*d then you will not find one in SL, and that is a fact. But last reason is also one of the reasons why outsiders are eiger to step into SL. The name second life is therefore a wrong choice in my opinion, it triggers weaker emo-people to step into disaster they create themselves, they try to find happiness but it creates the opposite. That disaster is affecting professional people, creators, developers to move or invest forward into this program.

A clear professional name would bring some more clearance into the whole situation, maybe BIG SPACESHIP will be part of this project.

Mhhh, what names would be nice ; LIVIT (live it) .... any other ideas

xxx
wildcat

Most grocery store debit cards do not work for anything but in-person purchases... I got a few of them for my kids for gifts once they got old enough to be more interested in spendable money than toys. Activating the ones that do work online for use on the Internet is a complex process that doesn't always work if the address database they're using is old or buggy, and reports are that there is no guarantee that they will be accepted by SL.

You mean, like, include the default textures in the download?

Or going back to the old smoke loading texture that meant a forest was a vague cloud and not a maze of solid grey walls in every direction?

Or both?