Is your experience of SL getting Better or Worse?

Well since LL are asking this question to a random selection of people each month i thought id ask the same question but with this Poll we all get to see the results.

Feel free to post the reasons behind your answer. I know as well as anyone that SL can be a rollercoaster when it comes to random issues and bugs one look at the Jira will show anyone how complex SL is and how fractionary and inconsistent the playing experience is from person to person.

Personally, things have been getting better for me than average over the last year or so. With Windlight about to hit, and Havok 4 and Mono waiting on the sidelines, I think SL is moving towards some significant performance improvements.

However, that said, it is currently digging itself out of a dark period, where performance steadily got worse. So overall, I'd say we're about where we were two to three years ago, but with future developments looking good maybe we won't see another decline this time =)

Personally, I have found the lag, double TP's and crashes have increased considerably over the last year.

If there's 60k people online I know I'm in for a laggy time so for me, I guess it's just they've not kept up with the increase of users as yet. Although I am sure that's something they are working hard on to try and improve.

It's hard to say.. I have fewer viewer crashes and sim crossings seem to be getting better but large parts of my mainland home region, ~15 different residents, went away last week because of a "parcel change that precipitated a cascading prim return" whatever that means.

So.. It's getting both better and worse, I guess.

I have to say better.

It's still getting better.

I've expanded my products again, opened a few key vendors, and my texturing competition continues to grow and please the public...

Not to mention I've been cast in a pretty extensive feature-length machinima (Kingdom Calling, Valley Spirit Productions) as one of the leads...so I'm excited about that too.

SL is fun.

Definately better, no question.

Its getting way too much like real life for my liking with all the rules, restrictions and legalese of late. I still crash on tps, lag is deplorable, and items seem to take on a life of their own sometimes. I have a collar which keeps migrating from its set spot to several meters away and under me of late when I teleport somewhere.

I think it's more subjective as it depends what you consider "better" or "worse". For those with high-end PCs and turbo-nutter-warp-engine graphics cards that can soak up the buggy code the graphical improvements will certainly increase the feel-good factor but as usual, instead of optimising for mid-range hardware the coders just assume you will "go large" as soon as you can and so as with many games on the market today there is a class divide in terms of the end-user experience. Speaking on behalf of the Mac users community however, we've just got used to lagging behind in the development cycle... I've yet to see a Mac client optimised for dual-core CPUs and the core graphics engine.

On the non-technical side, I would say that some of the enforced regulation has taken some of the attraction away from SL - although I wasn't a big user of Casinos I didn't see them as a bad thing and just wonder how long it will be before the majority of the grid is rated PG! I don't condone some of the activities that went on in-world but at the same time I think that there have been several knee-jerk reactions that have been a bit over zealous. The converse of that is that too-little attention is paid to the "junk" that is scattered all over the main grid. Ugly builds, annoying note-givers etc. What is the point of buying a nicely undulating bit of land and then dumping a giant cube on there just to make your build easier... ok so you can move to estate land with zoning rules but then why bother with a prem account if that is the case etc etc.

Anyway, simple answer to the original question is - NEUTRAL. Some stuff better but negated by other stuff.

Week 12 - 2008
Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 7:05 AM : Login problems
Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 2:30 PM : Inworld Services Interrupted
Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 7:22 PM : Reports of Stale Transactions
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 4:28 PM : Unable to Login
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 12:27 AM : Some Regions Not Reachable
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 3:00 PM : I see gray people
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 5:49 PM : Region Data Corruption / Loss Problem
Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 12:49 PM : Multiple Known Issues
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 5:37 AM : Some Regions Currently Unavailable
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 7:40 AM : Short Region Outages Planned
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 12:16 PM : Loading Issues


Week 13 - 2008
Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 9:30 AM : Disruption in inworld services
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 11:37 AM : In World Service Disruptions Under Investigation
Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 1:13 PM : Inworld Issue Affecting Transactions
Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 2:30 PM : Inworld Issue Affecting Transactions REOPENED
Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 5:32 PM : Inworld Issue Affecting Transactions RE-REOPENED
Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 3:45 PM : Asset Server Issues
Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 2:30 PM : Inworld Money Transactions Problematic at the Moment
...


What's interesting to see is that we actually got 3 days in 2 weeks that didn't have any problems!
I'm thinking my SL experience has been getting worse...

Soon Havoc 4 update to maingrid, and hopefully they do something about the assetserver and start with a clean sheet in Week 14!

This is where I am. I remember a time when I could log in 4 alts and set them camping and not have to touch them for 24 hours (at which point I'd stand them, sit them, and consolidate the money to one account). I've given up camping because it was getting so bad that I coudn't run more than 2 accounts per CPU core for more than 3 hours before one of them would crash. Or the sim would crash. Or the entire grid would go down.

And logging in? Hell, I used to go "ok, grid will be going down, these are the chairs I want" and leave the account nearby and when the grid came back up 99 times out of 100 I got all the chairs I wanted.

Now I'm lucky to get 1 out of 100. I simply can't log in fast enough because of how many login requests there are, it takes me 45 minutes after a grid shutdown to log in a single account--for camping purposes or otherwise. How long does it take the bots? No idea, but I'm guessing less than a minute. How long did it used to take me? Upwards of 30 seconds plus up to 5 minutes to realize the grid was back. Now with the instant notification (plus or minus 5 seconds) it takes me 45 minutes of failed attempts to get one account.

Note: Data as of Late August, Early September 2007. I haven't logged in my campers since then, and I personally haven't been in world more than 5 times for a total duration less than 5 hours since then.

I don't think SL is ment to be used in the manor you dewcribe Draco. There are far better methods to earn money in SL. Laa you have to do is put some time and effort it it.

Amiryu Hosoi,

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Click for matching products on SLX

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SLUrl Hosoi Ichiba, Japanese Gardens & Lifestyle

* Never Argue With An idiot. They'll Lower You To Their Level And Then Beat You With Experience!

Oh, I made things too. And my camping money isn't something to sneeze at. $2,000 for near 0 work.

But with SL the way it is now I don't even bother putting up with it to make my products anymore. It's almost more effort to get the client working than it is to make something.



I am that idiot! I proved definitively that camping was worthwhile once and got quoted abou tit later. 4 accounts -> $4/day -> $120/mo. vs. Electricity @ $80/mo. + cable internet @ $30/mo.
$120 - $110 = $10 pure profit.

And that's electricity for my entire appartment, including microwave, lights, regridgerator, and other things and cable internet I'd have been paying for anyway.

I find that sillly Draco, if you took some time you could generate a million a month, Lindens that is Also proven by me, hehehe

Amiryu Hosoi,

Click here for Second Life Search

Click for matching products on SLX

Click here for Hosoi Ichiba. Blogspot

SLUrl Hosoi Ichiba, Japanese Gardens & Lifestyle

* Never Argue With An idiot. They'll Lower You To Their Level And Then Beat You With Experience!

I take your millions and raise you a guarenteed L$300,000 mo. disposable income, more if you put it back into running more camping alts. It grows exponentially. Taking the steps shown below one further it breaks L$1 million. Two steps and it grows to L$2.3 million a month (a mere 256 campers running on 64 machines). I stopped at the $300,000 level because that was the point at which I was theoretically paying for the appartment I was living in at the time, all my bills, and ending up with $1000 cash to blow on whatever I felt like. I have a hard time spending $1000 in a month, that's really difficult, that's $33 a day above and beyond bills--I currently live on less than 10 most of the time and have a hard time breaking 20 (unless I'm paying for something that's a one time cost, such as a new game).

Thread where I was quoted:
/142/d6/212151/2.html (post #56)
Thread where I made the detailed observation, publicaly, for the first time:
/333/8c/167504/1.html#post1421825

Screw your millions, I'd rather do infinitely less work for fractionally less money.

I agree it's just got so worse, more lag, crashing sometimes i cant even TP anywhere.

Today in fact i spent 30 mins trying too connect too the Server without crashing out after a few seconds at the moment i'm stuck in one sim as i can't bloody TP anywhere without crashing.

It's been almost a whole week since I clicked that "Better" button and I wish I could click it again. In the few short months I've been on SL I have met tons of nice people, learned how to be creative with simple scripts and prims, adventured around a virtual world seeing things I've never seen before, and have been constantly entertained for a minimum of 4 hours a day - every day. (^_^)

I've been able to create my own person who is in many ways impossible for me in RL. I seem to have a confidence level in myself that I've never seen before. I have discovered some newly formed outgoing and charismatic side of myself that I have never seen before. I would go as far as saying I don't even recognize myself in SL. My fiends list grows almost daily and I've gone from having a hard time finding people to hang out with to having a hard time picking which group to hang out with first. The whole time NEVER leaving my kid shape. (^_^)

Technically: I love Windlight in its Ultra setting. My computer can handle it without any serious client lag. Since Windlight has gone RC, it had been the most stable time for me, except for some obvious grid-wide problems. And, even then, there are the forums and Snapzilla to fall back on. But teleports, purchases, building, rezzing, and even flying my new spaceship has been trouble free. I enjoy the building tools and the NCI sandboxes. I'm not really interested in the whole land-ownership thing. I kinda avoid the parcels of land I have permissions for because I'm still prone to introverting and isolating myself. (=_=)

I joined a little too late to explore my deviant nature, but that doesn't bother me one bit. I've been able to have a ton of fun and stay relatively within the LL rules with nothing more than a couple IM warnings and some self-driven griefings. (Can I call it a griefing if I asked for it? (=.=) ) I have NEVER been harassed in any way that I would describe harassment. I find most people to be very tolerant, even if they are creeped out or annoyed. And for every one that feels the need to attack me, I know at least 2 other people that will defend me to no end. (^o^)

If that doesn't sound like a positive experience in SL... I don't know what is. \(^_^)/

I have to say worse. It's been frustrating. Logins are strange and unpredictable, I've had inventory problems. My skirts disappear and I have to rebake and repeat and then hope they are still visible after I teleport. And frankly, I don't understand all the fuss about windlight, it just seems I've had more problems since it showed up in the last client. I turned of the avatar alias or whatever thingy and it seems more stable.

At least my friends and the people I meet are all great!

ct

My SL experience has been progressively worse over the past six months, both in terms of the client AND the community.

CLIENT ISSUES
- Crashes more than ever.
- Alpha "bleeding" just as bad or worse than before.
- Color drag-drop to palette is broken.
- Rendering times for sculpted prims are horrifically slow, even when I can load everything else quickly.
- Ability to record movies missing/removed.
- New color scheme is ghastly and eye-straining.

COMMUNITY ISSUES
- Thanks to the government being a twat, and to bankers for being overreaching idiots, we've lost two of the best sources of (significant) income for -all- users: gambling and investment banking.
- Community spirit has taken a back seat to greed. Once the Linden dollar started to gain real value, I watched SL fall into the same mires of "I only do things for the money" that plague the real world. It's getting a little better now, but only very slowly.
- Promotion and acceptance of discrimination. The idea of having "human-only", "furry-only", "fey-only", or "whatever-only" sims and regions is abhorrent. People have actually invented "speciesist" discrimination on SL, and it sickens me...not only because it exists, but because the Lindens allow it to happen.

Well, if you had asked me about a week ago, (before last down grade) I would have told you GREAT, AWESOME, LOVE IT. Now after the downgrade, I thinking about canceling my account and finding something else. This SUCKS! I keep crashing afterbeing in world after only a couple of minutes and I can't seem to get any answers. Well, I've got one more trick up my sleeve and if this doesn't work...BYE BYE

Seems like the better the graphics are becomming, the less stability.

Uhmmmm did i kick an open door now ?

Very much worse. Suddenly, about one quarter of the objects in my inventory will not rez. This is a problem reported by several avatars, and is very reproducible (by passing an unrezzable object to another avatar), yet the Lindens have not responded to my customer support ticket nor to a critical JIRA issue describing this problem. My inventory is riddled with bad objects, and it is going to take a lot of work to weed them out and try to replace the ones that I want to still be able to use. I was feeling very enthused about SL, had just bought a bunch of land and had lots of plans. Now I hardly feel it's worth it to log in.

For me the things got better. The last SL viewer 1.19.1(4) is very stable on my pc.
The amount of disconnects and crashes have decreased nearly to zero and also the double TP´s and TP failures are really seldom now. I also do not have or had graphics problems with all viewer i had installed on my pc since i joined SL.
I think i will keep the 1.19.1(4) viewer as long as possible running. Until now this is the best viewer i used.

The same - not better or worse.

Aside from the lag, it's actually become a little better for me.
Since the release of Havoc 4, I have not had a single incident of shoes or hair or any other attachment up my butt on teleport. I have not crashed on tp either.

After optimizing my viewer for the minimalist graphic card that I have (Intel), my overall view is much better. I think perhaps another gig of memory (from 2 up to 3), will help my performance.

I read daily of people who crash and I'm amazed at my own stability. So I can't really complain too much now can I?

If we could just kill off about 25,000 bots, I think SL as a whole would improve vastly.

Edited to say: I have not updated to the latest viewer. I never update until it's made mandatory so I'm running off of our last mandatory viewer.