Introducing T Linden. What would you do to improve Premium subscriptions?

A six month pass to The Perfumed Garden?

Yes that would definitely work, nobody was saying that a locked down client could not be made to work that way. However then you split the user experience very firmly down the middle too. Basic account becomes very much more an under-resident too as they cannot switch clients if the official one has issues like they can today.

On a further technical note, people are ingenious and I have seen ad blockers that don't require changes to the closed source application to remove them from sight, this is more challenging to do but is obviously possible. Going down this route would open yet another arms race between those who want to force something on someone and those who push back against it. If the reason to push back is compelling enough then a way will be found.

For me personally, I already stated that an SL experience supported by ads for basic accounts could be justified, I mean everything has to be paid for at some point by someone or something right?
My main gripe was that if you force the ads experience on everyone (in the original proposal it was not espoused it be only basic accounts as far as I read it) then it simply makes SL less compelling for those who hate ads. I do not subscribe to services that make me watch ads even though I am paying, if a service wants me to watch ads then they better be offering their service free or at a reduced rate. If I pay for a service then either no ads or they need to be paying me to watch them.

I think it would be a shame though if basic accounts were downgraded at all in order to make premium look good though. T here seems to be wanting ideas to improve premium, not keep it the same and make it look better by making the alternatives worse, please correct me if I am wrong T.

In my opinion there are already far less real residents (instead of alts) than there ought to be and anything that reduces this makes SL poorer for all. The more people you have, the more diversity you have and the richer SL becomes. If you make the gap between basic and premium too wide then I believe you will lose significant amounts of residents. I could subscribe to the idea that basic accounts only get a main and no alts though.

Because they would loose the free tier allotment thus increasing cost of tier.

Frankly right now I don't have a problem with current stipends and tier. But I have no particular loyalty the grid as my choice of alternate reality. As soon as there is a comparable alternative I shall have to make a choice. I suspect I am not alone in this. We are waiting as Second Life as a creative space seems to have stagnated while rumours of viable alternatives which may offer more creative options are growing.

I would pay more - yes more! - If I felt I was getting value. But this is true for your competitors too. I'm sorry no direct suggestions, I'm not that smart, and the steely knifed cynics who seem to breed in forums would probably slice me to ribbons if I did suggest some whacky idea.

How about additional profile features for premium members?

512 to 1024 ... yes!

Your arguement was good. Thank you, it made me think my previous statement.. Good Job

Currently "Openspaces are only available to Residents who already own Private Regions."

I would like the option to purchase an Openspace without the added cost of a Private Region. This would permit me to work on my builds without the hastles of an open sandbox or the restictions of a small region.

As a side note: I REALLY don't want to "crash" anymore.

Thank you.

smiles, I have great memories of you guys at Macromedia in the early days, looking forward to what you do

Good luck!

Personally, I would write any/all accounts/passwords on a card, wrap it in blind paper, and seal it in an envelope, with "Emergency ONLY account access" written on it. Then place it in a secure location, like a safety deposit box, fire safe, etc. Let your partner know where it is. If you change your password, update the card.

First, welcome on board T!

I once finished to tell people that I pay for a premium account, because at some point I had no arguments why one should pay for it, when it comes to debate that. Well, it really was a little bit awkward to admit to pay...well, at least, for no better service than basic accounts have.
I stayed on it because I see a lot of opportunities in this platform...and maybe my few bucks help you to work on it?

Okay, live chat, forums, jira, aer...just have forgotten the "benefits" almost ...

Somebody said here, you cant decrease basic accounts on their options, hm, but could you really increase premiums aside offworld services inworld?
I think, as LL is a profit org. and the intention is to have more premiums, and as basic accounts can do anything they want in SL - as premiums could do - you maybe HAVE to cut abillities for basic ones? - Don't let them Teleport anymore...we'll see if they can afford all the shoes they need to explore SL! o.O ... so much for this

No, seriously, create more and advanced inworld services for premiums. Why "throwing away" the voice feature to ppl. don't paying for it? For me, it would be nice to have something like a real document sharing system, give me a calendar, more GIS functionality (will explain that on question , something to share my computer screen into SL..."basic's" wouldn't take care of, but that would be a real improvement for ppl who do business "virtually"..give me business opportunities in SL and you would improve my premium account.
I started to work on OpenSim Region-Modules because I think the platform as a whole has so much opportunities...don't just speak about the secondlifegrid.
Why should I contract with a third party like "Immersive Workspaces" to have basic functionality on collaborating?

Some ideas:

Give us the ability to share our desktops inworld, a lot of programs offer this, why not the SL viewer?

Make SL a real alternative to some basic programs for collaboration like MS Outlook (tm, (c)..and so on) for sharing calendars, task lists...hmmm...'n stuff. Yes, re-invent the wheel, why is it that I have to have 3 open windows during an internet based meeting? (make the inworld web browser a full web browser)

Make SL an replacement for telephone calls I hate these conference calls (we couldn't afford video conferences) with "wait, I'll send the email to you.., do you got it?, please open attachment and go to page 3..., no 4, sorry...what? no you have to install Acrobat Reader first....you already did and can't open it? sec...second mail with screenshot is on the way...).


Oh, so much ideas...but, lost the track a little bit. Will try on OpenSim meanwhile )

Well, very selfish (and not so good on english)

Cairo

First, thanks for going to the next level on Premium and serving your customers even better than you are now. Strategic option!

1) File Uploads: reduce the cost from $10 to $5.
2) File Upload Management: allow for file maintenance, setting permissions before uploading, mass renaming of files, redirection of files to certain subdirectories in the inventory, reduction of duplicates, ability to stop bulk uploads, reduction of cost when deleting files off Linden servers
3) Group Size: increase group size to 50.
4) Multiple Island Management: a way to review and manage all of your owned islands at the same time.
5) Open space options around islands for premium users
6) Free vanity names for clients over 20 customers
7) Free island renaming
Free island movement (limit up to 5)
9) Free metrics
10) Increase prim count on island 25K

Just a start. You're doing a fine job and we really appreciate all that you're doing to make the end user experience better. People aren't looking for a free lunch, they are looking for better services to provide to their customers. But, where Linden can make it easier for the premium owner and developer for a return in "higher subscription fees", let the vetting begin.

So not to repost that discussion I will just add the link.
/13/82/258640/1.html

It just occurred to me that LL could use some sort of increase in the benefits to a premium account to leverage increased participation on the mainland, which seems to be lagging due to the popularity of private islands and openspaces. Instead of increasing the price of openspaces to drive people back to the mainland, why not entice premium members back with some sort of worthwhile mainland benefit.

Just a thought.

Assuming LL would not compensate by restructuring the tier system.

just another thought..
be real careful what you ask for..
you might get exactly what you want, the perfect premium membership, all the things your little heart desires...

and in six months from from now... Shazam! its gonna cost you 67% more.

If it fits, yeah! Whats your benefit now from premium?

Premium accounts are not some cunningly crafted product feature.
Premiums are the "so what do we do about the existing paid subscription?" after free accounts were introduced. They are simply an anachronism.

From a bean-counter point of view, they make little sense.
Pay for a Premium account on an annual basis.
The stipend almost balances the subscription cost.

Rent out the 'free' 512 of tier. There are businesses that will pay you for it.

This is why "Force the bots/campers to be Premium" and "Only Premiums should generate Traffic/Dwell" calls are misguided. Premium accounts are basically free over a year.
That would only have an effect if the number of accounts linked to a payment identity were limited to one or a small number.


Preventing mainland ownership by Basic accounts seems silly. It's cutting off a potential revenue source. What is the conversion rate from Basic to Premium?




Why not have a free entry level, and a range of paid add-on packages that would be of interest to various types of user?

Why not force entry level accounts to use the standard viewer?
Display advertising to entry level accounts on login and/or pop up ads at intervals.

Suppression of the advertising would be part of any of the add-on packages.

An obvious add-on package would be all of the existing Premium benefits for the same costs as the existing Premium accounts. This would be so that existing Premiums would continue to get whatever bangs they currently get for their buck.
Have lower-cost packages that are sub-sets of the existing Premium set.

As an alternative to packages, have an a la carte preference setup, where people choose to pay for individual features and levels within those features if applicable.

OK. I have read a lot here and many of the same things keep coming up. So, here are some of "my" thoughts on them:

1. Basic accounts. A) as some said, basic doesn't mean no land, but it also doesn't mean "no building", no "business" or a load of other things people seem to assume. B) not everyone that does build either wants to, or does "sell" the result. This can especially be true of people that are really good at building, but prefer the RP aspect of some areas, so they might have a "free" account, no land at all, but also have 500,000 things in inventory, 10,000 of them stuff they have made, or are making, or parts of things, from all their RPing. Don't touch the damn basic account. It will piss people off, and many of them are the customers of the clowns that seem to think we "should be" getting rid of it.

2. Groups... This is either a "database" issue, ***AND*** it is a "client design" issue. Why? Because on the DB end, the system has to keep track of which groups you are in, which ones are chatting, and tell the client what to display. This means, the more you have, the more the system has to scramble around, trying to figure out who needs to get them.

However, it is "also" a client design issue. Currently, you cannot tell the client *or* the server that you want, for example, notices of which groups you have either a) announcements in, or b) new message traffic. You either receive announcements, or you don't, there is nothing in between, nor does the "group list" show which ones have unread announcements in them. And as for messages... You can't shut that off at all, unless you leave the group. I can tell you right now, the single biggest pain in the ass I ever have to do with is ***every*** group I am in, all, simultaneously, sending me messages from people chatting, when I am already in the middle of something important. I can't turn it off, I can't keep the client from auto-sorting the "inactive" windows so that its harder to find the ones I "am" having conversations in, and closing them does no good, so long as all 15 groups I am in all all still jabbering away.

What we need is an option to a) see visually that announcements are available, even if we are not receiving them, b) shut the chat off on ones we didn't specifically open, or don't want to automatically see everything posted in, and c) some visual way to tell that people "are" chatting on one of them, so that, if we do want to check in on what is going on, we can open the window, see what ever it is, and then enter the conversation "if" we want to, instead of being thrown into is, just because we are in the group.

Note, since messages "still" need to be sent to the client, so we can read them later, this still means the DB issue is there. That means that *yes*, we still need limits, which means, maybe dropping how many the free accounts can use, and increasing the paid, but the *last* thing I need is 50 chat windows opening and messing up my ability to keep track of the conversations I already am having, instead of just 15, which is bad enough. Fix the client side group system so we can "ignore" messages we don't want to read **right that second**, and provide some better way to check on announcements, which doesn't involve spamming us with those too, or not telling us they exist at all (which are the current options). Then we can talk about how many groups are actually "possible". As things stand, adding more would just make things worse.

Point is.. This isn't some magic wand idea that they can just "make happen". There are serious issues with trying to do it, not the least being the existing issues with "using" such chat in the first place.

3. Tier, starting space, and increments per year. Ok, mostly agree with all of these. 512m is close to "worthless". Its barely usable as a sandbox, if you have "nothing else" on it. If you do, its worthless as one, because a) way too many people are really good at making high prim junk that looks pretty, than low prim "functional", especially if you still expect it to look pretty. But, even without adding other people's stuff... I wiped out "most" of my prim allotment making a single cave, intended to make it "look" like the land was flat (it didn't), when it wasn't, and adding a 'single' Alteran Stargate. Its simply not practical to place a "home" on a piece of land *and* also use it for anything else. It would be nice if we had about double what we get. Tier... is, as many people mention, just crazy. Just the jump from what premium provides to the next level is more than I can afford at the moment, or will likely be able to for some time. As for incremental increases. Love the idea, but.. realistically, adding 512m each year is "probably" a bad idea. I would do something like 256m, or 128m. Its not "much", but it adds up over time, and frankly, without creating quite the same possible issues with land needs, cost, etc.

4. Inventory backup.. Sigh.. Same issue as removing free accounts. Do you people **really** think only mega business owners and premium people "need" to back anything up. This should be a "basic" client feature, not something some third party makes, and "not" something that you have to pay more for. Same goes for limiting what one can build with, etc.

5. Cost reductions on some things. I agree with the people suggesting that a reduction to 5 or even 8 would be a help. Some free uploads, as one person suggested, each month, (non-cumulative), might be interesting, but just the cost reduction would be nice, by itself. I do not agree, given the margin involved, that stipends should jump back up in the process though. Someone like me, Linden isn't making "anything" from. I don't use Lindex myself, since my money exchange "and" selling is done through someone else. And what items I do have for sale are either obscure items only a small number of people are likely to want, or obscure RP things I made, and thought I might be able to sell. I have gotten "very few" hits, and no sales so far, so paying me back in stipends 90% of what I pay into the system each month, isn't making Linden anything, and this is "probably" true of half the premium people in the system.

6. Special tools... I am of a split mind here... On one hand, the biggest "tools" needed are either already available from someone "other" than Linded, like ones to align/resize, etc. prims, don't work worth jack (most sculpty tools), are not "designed" to work with SL (everything else that us used to make sculpties, since they are made for meshes of "indeterminate" numbers of points, not scuplty complaint meshes, and thus make it either too easy to break them, too hard to get the result you want, or require like... 500 times the understanding and skill, to get the result at all), etc. Some, like animation, are "all" third party, often limited in what you can do, since they are also not "designed" to work with SL's limitations. I could go on.

Absolute best tools I could see for SL premium would be a) mesh upload and b) animation design. The former is not going to happen until they fix a "mess" of other things, but the later... We have, right now, buggy 3rd party apps that never worked entirely right, and tended to crash, which where abandoned in favor of things like Poser, which "can" do the job, if you use the right "old" skeleton systems, and have the right exporters. I hate all of them, mostly because, if I could afford the ones that "do" work and don't crash, I could also afford Linden's tier fees. lol Make me an "in world" type tool, that lets you animate, isn't reliant of the blasted in world script and physics, then provide the means to "save" the result to disk for backup, and automatically "upload" it, either as a separate application, or as part of the client, and I would, if I didn't already pay for it as it is, beg, borrow and steal to get the cash for premium.

Real sculpty tools, which let you do all the crazy stuff you see the "experts" managing, somehow, with stuff that makes "me" want to pull my hair out, do to how illogically it works, given they tend to be limited in scope, or just plain "not made for sculpties in the first place", and an animation tool, which doesn't crash, and bloody works. Those would be among the greatest gifts you could give someone with premium. Some things that have frustrated me, to give examples, is extrusion, intrusion, which doesn't "add" geometry, mirror of design, but "inverted", like two sides of a mask, where the inside matches the "outside", but the whole things is curved (sort of like '}}'), and some way to create the "gaps" some applications provide, like spokes, and the like, where parts are "not there". All of them are things either "specialized" tools can do, or which you can do with a lot of extra work, etc., but almost all of them are "not" possible in one single application, and even if when many of them are, the applications themselves sometimes can't "transition" between the ways they handle the result, without distorting, reverting, messing up, or only partly supporting, changes made in "other" modes. Scupltypaint is **really** bad at the later issue of actually fowling up what you where trying to do because like.. rock mode is not compatible with flower, or something, so it "reverts". Others, like Tatara, have the later problem. Lathe "doesn't work" with things that are not lathe based, and most of the other methods also limit your control points, your point of view, how much you can "change" the points, and or how you can, such that some things are just not possible, even "in" the same application. And, the ones that you could "edit" those things in, often don't display sculpties right (different method, such as mesh), or don't have imports for the map, so you can make the raw, but easier, changes in things like Tatara, then "fix" anything that you can't do, in something that will do them.

Working with these things is a complete bloody mess, and the number of people that know the tricks of getting around the problems are... seemingly tight lipped, and not too prone to offering "useful" idea about how to do the same. Why would they? They make their money by bending and twisting the apps they have into pretzels, to do it right, and most are probably still using some of the Lindens they make to convert to cash and pay off the damn high end apps they are using to do it.

Of course, the problem there is, if "open" like the client... you would have a tough time "limiting" them to premium, so, I am not sure how viable it would be to do them.

Oh, right.. 7. Mega/micro prims.. What part of "these things cause lag", do some people not get? That, and they behave really weird sometimes, even when there seems to be no rational reason they should. Unless some "solution" to those issues can be found, I am not sure this is the most brilliant suggestions being made. There are "basic" limitations to OpenGL, and to scanline rendering systems in general, but which are "worse" in OpenGL, because a) when a card doesn't support something, its done "on the main CPU", instead, cards do not always "report" that they do not support something, instead saying they do, when they only "partly" or "incorrectly" do so, and so long as DirectX drives the market, most of these problems are "never" going to be fixed well enough for, frankly, the client to ever be 100% stable on "every" card. Throw in stuff that neither the OpenGL on the card "or" on the CPU can deal with well, and... Things get ugly real fast.

Point being, this may be an insoluble issue, or it may be an issue that is solvable, but requires the solution to happen on a level that will effect "all" people, not just the goofball that decides he needs a 256mx256mx20m hollow mega prim, because they think its "easier", and costs fewer prims, than making a bit over 100 10mx0.1mx20m wall sections... Well, they got it "half" right, but.. its not someone doing this who has a grasp of what the "technology" is doing/able to do. And that trumps what people "would like" to do.

But, yeah. Some interesting and good ideas here. Even if I "personally" consider some others to be technical issues, which effect all users, not just premium, and can't be "fixed" for one, but not the other, some just.. bad, and a few others impractical, for purely technical reason.

To put it simple: Less expensive access to mainland.

Right now, to get more than my free 512sqm/117 prims, I would have to pay more than twice as much per year than I pay for my premium membership. Even buying ridiculous additional 16 sqm that join my land would cost me "a little fortune" in maintenance. This policy keeps me from growing. I use my land as a workshop, but my creations are limited by primspace.

With kind greetings - Your Millennium

Like most everyone I been thinking about this alot and taking in what everyone else is saying and they helping to form my views. So thanks for that people =)

If I have a annual premium account for $US72 I get:

1) 300L per week. 300L x 52 = 15,600L. If I cash this in then I get maybe 1:265 so $US58.
2) I get 512m tier a month so at say $US2.50 is another $30 that I would otherwise have to pay for.

So I get 88 - 72 = $US16 a year from signing up as Premium.

Is not true when some people say that stipend is not real money. It is when it gets cashed out. Maybe not by me because I spend all mine inworld. But someone cashes it eventually. eh !!! Anshe =)

Im getting paid $US16 a year by LL to play here. I dont see how this is sustainable. Even if I do want it to go on forever =)

So I think that what Sling T. and others are saying is this is where we have to go, whether we want to or not. Cancel the whole idea of 'premium' and just have one kind of account - free entry level - pay as you go - with all basic services provided to everyone, including the ability to buy a land tenancy anywhere. LL will have to honour many of the early adopter contracts as they should, but in my case my premium contract runs until renewal date and thats it I think. So if I cant renew as "premium" and have LL continue to pay me to play then is ok and I will go onto the pay as I go plan.

In my case I just want to buy a tenancy on a well-managed mainland parcel, pay a reasonable monthly rent to my landlord (LL) for which I expect a reasonable amount of landlord support and service, and to buy anything else I need inworld, including other services from LL, at a fair price. If I can do this as a pay-as-I-go account then is kool with me.

Please note I want to buy a mainland tenancy. I want to be a tenant with LL as my landlord. I want a tenancy contract spelling out my obligations as a tenant and yours as a landlord. I got the ToS to help me to understand my obligations as an account holder, but is not the same thing as a tenancy agreement that also spells out your obligations to me as my landlord.

At the moment is not like this really on the mainland. U King. I Peasant. I live on the land by ur whim and ur soldiers sometimes come to help me and sometimes they don't. And sometimes the soldier will help and next time another soldier say other soldier was wrong and not help. And sometimes the soldier will say I cant help anymore because the King has made another proclamation and everything is not what it was before. Is not fair really. I dont like being a peasant. Is to hard. Is probably why lots of kings got their heads chopped off. I not chop ur head off really... but u kno =)

P.S. I still want a much better profile page and a email please as part of the basic service.

Sorry - but from what I've been able to find out about SL's history - this has been tried.

What seemed to happen, from what I dug up, was someone would buy 4096 in the middle of a new SIM, and then buy up all of the extra prims, leaving Linden Labs sitting with 61K of land they couldn't sell because there's no prims available for it - effectively giving someone a whole SIM without paying for it.

May I suggest something that costs noting and might go a long ways towards improving relations between Linden Lab and its Premium account holders?

I think that if M Linden were to make a apologize for his now infamous "Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business" comment, it would restore some lost goodwill.

If you get rid of premium accounts and allow basics to buy on mainland all the work done on cleaning up adfarms will be for nothing as you cannot police SL anymore effectivly so i would suggest not going that route.

This has to have been one of the most constructive, on topic threads ever!!
(did someone warn T to be careful what he says?)
I think all partipants deserve a T Linden Bear!

and--

more tier--

more L$ ---

more service ----

more features!

Well yes, I know its all technically leasing... but the difference that MATTERS is that when I deal directly with LL there's no middleman. Plus I take a little pride in the fact that MY NAME is attributed to LL's return on the land I own. With renting, all you do is help someone else pay their own tier, under their name.

Again, I suspect the reason for entertaining ideas about how to make premiums more attractive is that LL wants to close the stipend program. In a strictly business sense, it's lost dollars and counterproductive. I also suspect that all these ideas about free uploads, extra tier, lower costs, more support, etc.. are all against the grain of where LL wants to go with "profit streamlining". ANYthing you have to pay for normally (uploads, tier, etc..) will result in more of the revenue drain like stipends are if you get it for free. You just replace one headache with another and I doubt they'll even consider it.