Land Prices, Why make people struggle.

I'm so sick of seeing sims that are simply providing a fun place for people to go struggling to pay land fees

It's these places that are actually making second life worth playing yet they are forced to go down the route of renting large portions of the land just to try and scrape together enough money to cover a small percent of their costs.

I think places that are simply malls/stores should be paying the current fee, but places that are just set up to give people a fun place to go, really do need giving a serious break!

Excellent post - I agree, Lindens should give out grants or prizes to residents who build places for people that benefit SL

So come up with a plan and propose it. Maybe to Everett Linden?

I _totally_ agree with this idea. The trick is coming up with a plan that makes it hard to be gamed - if there's money involved, people will try to game it.

Friends and I have a place for tai chi, meditation and dance. Another friend has a lodge that anyone may use. All is given for the enjoyment of ourselves and others. But the monthly tier is killing us. And we may have to let some of this go. In the long run, LL would fare better by giving a break to those who have made things clearly for the public benefit, so that those same folks don't wind up putting land on and already overcrowded market.

There were systems for this at one point - they were called Dwell and Developer Incentive, and they were L$ and/or US$ cash prizes paid to the most popular locations each month.

The problems were
a) there was no good way of measuring popularity - two methods were tried. One was based on the amount of time people spent there, which was gamed by using camping chairs. The other way based on people voting for each location, but this was gamed by groups of friends all voting for each other no matter what.

b) the result of it was that the limited number of people who won the awards had less ot worry about their land fees, but everyone else still did. So those few winners could make their places even better (or at least less commercial) and so maybe win next time too.. eventually pretty much the entire list of winners was identical every time.

There's a lot of really great places in SL that are for the public benefit. Unfortunately, the public that benefits from them refuses to pay for them. Unless the people that visit the fun sims actually start paying for their support, we will continue to see them disappear.

unfortunatly this is something alot of people struggle with, just make an effort next time your at one of these places to give a couple hundred L's to the tip jars usually provided or buy some products to help out, i know i always do as it's something i struggle with as well.

hopefully the lindens would be able to lower tier prices to these sorts of places one day, but it's doubtfull

-Crunch

I wished there would be a grant. I'd do stuff with a sim and make it as interesting as I could to make it worth visiting, offer hangout areas of different styles for groups to rent time for free, oh I dont know... something to make people go ahhh or smile.