Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Once again, accountability.

I personally wouldn't expect every resident to take interest in SL's economy, but I'm thankful there is enough to keep it honest.

Yes and this inner turmoil is hurting us all more than the actual price hike.

Will Linden give us refund on tier if we are not using the sim?

It is so lame to use such an excuse to rip us off.

Do you really believe that people are really used up 167% of the resources on average to justify a 67% increase in price for everyone who has been honest and used openspace ever since it started?

If Linden is really worry about taxing the system resource too much, why not put a cap on the max number of agents in the sim to 1/4 of a regular sim. Then it will never abuse or overload the system.

Cap the max agent count to 1/4 is a simple and logical solution if Linden is truly serious about solving the problem. But no, they just want to more money, and use that as an excuse.

Jack, I don't understand. The "intended use" of openspaces was never explicitly defined. We've heard of "ocean spaces", "forest areas", and "empty spaces", as well as a single reference to sailing sims as an example.

Forest areas have trees usually made with beautiful looking sculpted trees and high resolution textures. They can also have weather systems producing torrential rains, temp-rezzer bumble-bees flying around, textures rotating to produce gorgeous looking waterfalls, rabbits and other creatures running around, randomly selecting their path of travel, and hawks circling overhead looking for a mouse in range to close in for the kill. Sounds to me like this would fall into the "intended use". Frankly, I would avoid a sim such as this as the lag there would be incredible.

Let's look at sailing sims now. Open ocean. Islands here and there. Coral reef for the divers. Temp-rezzer jelly fish (we removed them from our normal prim sim because they were killing it). Sea turtles moving about randomly selecting the next path to travel. Physics waves for special effect and to provide enjoyment for the surfer in you. a couple cruise boats with a bunch of avatars on board out on a trip to explore the dive sites. Again, sounds to me like the "intended use", and again, I would avoid this sim as a "lag central".

I have 200 openspace sims. Most of them are residential. About 40 of them are connected to form a contiguous estate and the remaining 160 are stand-alone sims. Whenever I look at the connected sims, I'm lucky to see 20 agents present. That is only 1/2 agent per sim on average. The same is true for the vast majority of the stand-alone sims that are mostly purchased for the privacy they offer. In terms of load, these sims produce a smaller load on computing resources than an ocean sim as I have described above.

From a performance perspective, a typical residential sim differs from a forest sim in that a few prims are used to make simple objects to make a house, rather than 3D sculpites, and the sim is restricted for access only to a handful of avatars rather than open to the general public. I and the most of the users of the openspace sims fail to see how on earth is the residential use of openspace sims an issue from a performance perspective.

I think there are people here who would love to just complain and protest just because it gives them something to do. As a business owner, I am interested in recognizing the actual problem you are trying to solve and working with you to find a solution, but I am failing to see it. And I'm not the only one in this position. I understand the issues of being strapped for cash. I understand the issues of unexpected demand. I get it. I understand the concept of rising costs due to whatever reasons. I and several others are willing to work with you to come to the best solution. But what is the problem that you're trying to solve? Surely a sim with a house on it is not "unintended use" just because that particular prim is a simple cube rather than a sculpted tree. You're trying to feed us a solution and yet the way you're defining the problem does not make sense. And more specifically, what solution will cost the additional $50 / month? Define that solution please! And first, define the problem.

I understand that there are a few sims that abuse the resources, running clubs and gaming systems on openspace sims. Those make sense. Residential use of openspace sims does not cause a problem. I have a pretty good technical background myself. I understand the concept of overhead of running multiple sims on the same CPU core. Of course there is overhead. But I also understand the concept of the bandwidth requirements of an avatar landing on a sim and downloading textures from 15000 prims versus 3750. And I also understand the impact of that hawk scanning for a mouse within 96m on a normal sim v.s. openspace sim. Seriously, there are areas here of give and take. But if you have two sims, one open to the public, the other restricted to a handful of residents, and the only other difference being that one has sculpted prims that look like whales and the other has normal prims that look like a house, I do not see how the one with a house can possibly be considered as higher load sim. Explain this one to us please, or admit that residential use, even though perhaps not initially intended, is not a problem here.

There has also been references to "empty spaces". Meaning exactly what? A sim with no prims used? Is that the "intended use" of an openspace sim? If you allocate 3750 prims to an openspace sim, I would imagine the intention is for people to use them. Whether these prims look like a whale or a house really makes no difference, does it? So please stop talking about the "intended use". Clearly residential sims are not causing a problem here.

Throwing money at a problem does not solve it. Having a solution that needs funding might. We are truly willing to work with you. But first, what truly is the problem? Is it cashflow? Demand on resources of the concierge team? Credit unavailability to support continuing growth demand? Hardware maintenance costs? (I'm having a real problem buying into this one because with 200 sims we rarely hear of performance issues). Then, what is the solution? Once we know what the solution is, we'll know how much it will cost, and thus how much any potential increase in costs would need to be. However, you are increasing costs without specifying what solution will be implemented that requires those costs, and you haven't even defined the problem! In fact, you haven't even defined intended use.

Seriously, this sounds like a $700 billion bail-out plan! You have no defined problem, no solution, but yet you already have a cost!

Without a clearly defined solution in mind, increasing costs will only decrease demand. Simple economics. People will not spend more than they are willing to spend. You will end up with unused servers. Is that the plan? Free up some servers so we can support continuing growth without sustaining additional hardware costs? We really do get it. Tell us what the real problem is and we'll work with you to arrive at a solution. If your problem is cashflow and you can't find the credit to buy the next 100 servers to support the growing demand for openspace sims then this could be the right solution. But it is not the right solution if the problem is performance.

Define the problem first, please. Identify solution next. Assign cost last. So far you've got it backwards.

I just think at this point the reasons as to why they are doing this is irrelevant. It's just time to accept and move on. Personally I can't handle this stress anymore. This is hurting the economy more than anything else. I didn't come to Second Life to end up speanding my day in tears due to harassment. This is just insane.

There are those of us that did nothing other than build on our OpenSpaces because we value our privacy. I feel like I am being punished for something I did not do, our OpenSpace was completely private, we didn't even allow people to teleport in, all we did was build small buildings and objects, and deleted them when finished, never having more than two avatars on the OpenSpace at a single time. The reason we value our privacy so much is because of competition that would steal our ideas before they came to fruition.

What you should do is offer a lower traffic version of the OpenSpace that only allows a certain number of avatars on it, at a fixed number that cannot be changed by the owner or the renters of the OpenSpace. There should be several classes of OpenSpace, one for high traffic, and one for low traffic, etc.. This means the lower traffic OpenSpace will cost lower for people that build and value their privacy whilst building.

There may be issues with privacy, but that can be circumvented as well by verifying each avatar on the OpenSpace as an adult, and allowing only those avatars that are renting the OpenSpace.

For Example a monthly charge chart:

5 avatar OpenSpace: $80 USD
10 avatar OpenSpace: $90 USD
20 avatar OpenSpace: $100 USD
40 avatar OpenSpace: $150 USD

Well those are my thoughts on what can be done. It is a fair way to deal with the bandwicth and hardware issues without punishing those that did not violate the terms outlined in the OpenSpace guidelines. Those that are abusing the OpenSpaces should be the one to pay, not the ones that are using very little resources on their OpenSpaces.

It's just an idea.

(and I don't mean to be offensive to Mr. Beaumont either)

Jack had clarified the issue a bit in an inworld meeting. If I understood correctly, this is not about people misusing them. It is about there being a technical issue with them. Instead of them taking 1/4 of the cpu, they are taking 1/2 of the cpu. (if I understood it right).

Since there are so many openspace regions now, they are now noticing that this issue is beginning to affect the entire grid. Something that probably couldn't be seen until there was a certain amount of them online. They now have to scale the openspaces differently and this is going to cost money to do, plus requires a price adjustment to account for the added amount of resources they take as compared to other sims on the grid.

Anyone please correct me if this assessment is incorrect.

LOL, I am not a Michael Moore Fan, but Thanks for the smile and "chuckle"........I simply wish to be able to communicate on a two way street with the employees we are, as consumer/members entitled to communicate with. Trying to find out who they are is proving abit difficult *grin.
I understand the business tactic used, actually understand with the help of several computer and technical analysts what the problem may be regarding the lag issues.
I would like to see Jack Linden and the employees live up to his voluntarily printed word regarding communications. Also, I would like to see some proof in return communication that they are listening, not the willy nilly dumping of note cards sent, (one to each) of the publically listed employees.
Solutions will be forthcoming, whether to our liking or not, Linden labs will do what they feel is necessary to succeed in business. I have no qualms with that, if I disagree, I have the option to walk, I am not held prisoner here. If I disagree with a business tactic, and am offered the opportunity, invited to discuss, and request information on that invite's locale, from 400 employees, I expect as a consumer/member to get some semblance of response. Common sense dictates this. So, my concerns are in regards to this. Why did 1/4 to 1/3rd and still happening employees simply disgard the communique? Why was one employee so evasive in regards to 2 simple questions? I will continue to ask why, until I receive a decent response.
gain though, I am still smiling at your response.
TIGGS

I would be totally against it being billed as per traffic. Yuk. I think two categories is sufficient..

1. Original void sims with original prim count and price
2 Curren OS sim with prim count, new price, better performance

I just gotta say that I am horrified by the idea that I could have made a killing by owning 1 full sim and then buying hundreds of OSs, plonking them down in the middle of nowhere, and then setting up a website like some I have seen where I tell people that they can own their own island and do whatever they want there, with no restrictions or covenants, and raking in the dough.

It just never occurred to me that LL would be okay with that. But apparently they were. Now I hear that one of the biggest landholders in SL recently converted 100 fulls to 400 OSs (in fairness, I am guessing because those 100 sims stood vacant) and LL went along with it.

That's a lot of trees.

And it seems one can blame LL for going along with it, land barons for taking full advantage of the purshase of single detached OSs based on what could be a single qualifying full sim, and the renters for buying them heedlessly. What a mess this is.

But on the whole I am growing tired of this fracas. My estate will downsize to a point that the whims of the land market don't have such an effect on us. We will make a beautiful little estate. I will dabble in other virtual worlds in case this one implodes. ANd hopefully the next time something like this happens, it won't make me feel so bad.

I don't understand the technology or marketplace requirements for such a move to increase the costs of OS sims. If everyone just paid it, it would be a huge windfall profit for LL. If 66% of the people drop their OS sims because of the 66% increase in cost... umm, who wins then?

Let me see if I can figure this out using simple numbers.

100 OS's go from $75 tier to $125 tier
so originally, those 100 OS's were bringing in 7500
and if everyone paid the tier they would bring in 12500
but if 66% drop off because it's a 66% increase in tier cost
100 OS's go to 34 OS's - so you only get 4250 per month and not 12500, *and* you lose 3250 from what you had before -- You lose even MORE -- net loss!

If you lose 40% of the OS's you will still keep your original 7500/month income.

OK, so maybe you don't lose 66% of the OS sims due to the price increase. But what about those individuals who now hold off from buying any land and getting involved in any tier fees because they don't know what is going to happen next? You are now losing tier that you can't directly measure. Your losses increase and you can't see it quite.

What if in a few months you increase other tier fees 66%?

Not too many people are faced with 66% increases in any aspects of their life. It wouldn't matter if it was in good financial times or not. I love and am as seriously addicted to Sl as the next person, but there comes a time where the costs involved are too scary for RL.

Nice bonuses will be granted if this completes. As I stated before I will fold the single OS we own and keep the full island then fold the now free funds to increase retail. Simple solution we do enjoy the landscaped OS but I expect we will enjoy the increased sales just as much. Let them do what they want they will anyway. All the negatives posted here will roll off their backs like so much water on a duck.

I also tire from the lack of response from them. Again they show the true colors.

This has resulted in a broken confidence in Linden Lab on my part as I expect it has for many of you.

The game has followed the traditional bell curve of rapid growth then a plateau and if they can not continue the growth a slow decline. This is one method of showing growth, increased prices.

Unfortunately for them it is very transparent. The first sign of a problem was when the land glut began. The map now is a yellow morass increasing every day.

OS Sims were created as a stop gap for the land problem and now has run its course, therefore a price increase.

I doubt they expected the overwhelming rejection by their customers.

Without improved stability in the game all of this is a rather moot point as the decline will
gather strength as more and more customers become frustrated and decide to move on to more interesting hobby's.

And no matter what you think LL most in this game view this as a hobby. Perhaps that is why corporates do not remain.

I do enjoy this past time quite a bit and it is painful to watch as it is slowly eroded.

The game works much better than it did in 2005 when a dirt walk was the standard mode
of transportation so I really do not know what the problem is. With the fiber ring being established one would think that the performance will improve. I suppose they have to pay for it somehow.

Thus creating another concern, just how stable is the company. This can all disappear with the flick of a switch.

These are just idle thoughts that have run through my head in the last few days since this began as I find it very strange that this increase is just 7 months from the big OS release.

Sounds spot on to me. Minus this week of drama.
It also explains LLs own use of these sims.

My problem is in the way this has been handled.
I also wonder how a 100% overload took thousands of sims hitting the grid for them to notice a problem.

My post was addressing Ciaran's direct query to me. if you have no interest in my posts, feel free to ignore them instead of flamebaiting me just because you don't agree with my opinions.

What a big tough guy you are. Do you need any help finding the ignore button **?

I do feel sorry for some people getting screwed by this, but you are definitely not one of them. Is that the reaction you'd rather have from me?

Just look at the real number:

Sept. 2008 Land sale income: L$3,584,770
Oct. 2008 Land sale income: L$8,458,305

That is more than double the land in 1 month.

Did Linden double the system resources to make up for this phenomenal increase in just one month?

Why is Linden pointing their fingers at Openspace for using up their resources?

"It is about there being a technical issue with them. Instead of them taking 1/4 of the cpu, they are taking 1/2 of the cpu. (if I understood it right). "

Was anything mentioned about a resource bleed? Was anything mentioned about the "cache" bleed situation? Did they explain at all about anything in regards to the, I believe Sept. Band aid fix LL introduced to stop the crashing causing the rendering flood, or the rendering back ups? Now mind you these are not questions using computer technology, but simple lay terms. My understanding is a fix introduced in Sept to correct an update bug, (a patch as it were) created an issue that crept in slowly to the system. The fix created a slow bleed (my term) of resources to reduce cache loads, that were causing crashes?........and then it apparently began to accumulate world wide with each avatar in world affected simultaneously.(since it was the fix LL itself introduced worldwide) If an avatar stood stock still and loaded all about in a low prim area it was fine, but if a few more joined the loading (rendering slowed to a near crawl pace, at different speeds of course, depending on the computer system one was on) and each time you moved your line of vision the process would go back to square one. This would be happening to every avatar in world at the same time, creating a massive draw on the resource servers and the subsequent heavy load issue on servers. Several avatars in world tested this, sent data to LL and apparently it was the actual issue causing the lag and overload of the servers.
Was any of this explained by jack Linden? Was any of it mentioned by any technician there for the Linden labs?

TIGGS

Here's another post just for you JR. Add it to your record keeping of my post count, tough guy!

Oh and to keep on topic, unscrupulous landlords who rent openspaces to people for residential use while not explaining it to their renters, suck.

"Balpien Hammerer
Registered User


Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 5 OS SIM problems were there from the beginning

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This issue about open space SIMs and *general* 'abuse' does not make sense because the problems were noted at the onset of the openspace SIM conversion of the original ocean SIMs (sometimes called void SIMs). Back then the prim limit for those was 1875 (more or less), and they worked just fine hosting oceans, islands and modest builds and activities (meaning avie gatherings). Performance problems ensured immediately after the conversions, and since the conversins were the first openspace SIMs to appear, it indicates the openspace conversion itself was flawed. These original oceam SIMs wer not immediately rebuilt, BTW. See: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2219 where people are complaining of cyclic massive perfor manceproblems. Remember this was happening during the initial outlay of converted ocean SIMs.

Next, we all have experienced massive slowdowns even after a couple of spectacular asset server meltdowns that were remedied. Jack's comments imply that was opensim residents actions going beyond intended use. Read this longstanding bug. http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8503, which when generally confirmed, suggests faulty code in the SL viewers have been inadvertantly creating a distributed denial of service attack on the asset servers. Think about this: 50,000 people forced onto these buggy viewers all bashing continuously on the asset servers. Mistakes happen. It will get fixed, thank goodness, but it places any data collected to make this price rise decisoin, invalid or at the very least suspect.

Wrong decision based on faulty analysis is the crux of the matter. I do expect a rescinding of this decision and an apology from Linden Labs. "


Was any of this mentioned in the Jack Linden Open discussion?
TIGGS

I'm sorry, but I simply can't sleep at night knowing that people simply handed over hundreds of dollars to be put in the position where their only out is to let it go & not say anything about it.

The vast majority had it coming to them, but there are those who used the sims as suggested by LL and would pay the price for a market that tidal waved their corner of the virtual world. I don't mind if you won't speak up for them, I'll be here tomorrow and the day after & so will others.

Jack himself has mentioned the sailing community and I'm tickled pink that they aren't being overlooked, just like other groups or even individuals who DID comply with the OS guideline. He also mentioned grandfathering. I really think there is progress happening.



Exactly!!! Raising the cost of OS regions is a necessary evil. If they let it continue it will greatly hinder private region real estate and could almost completely wipe out the mainland. Financially, this is a big problem for SL as a whole.

It's not the fact that it's being done that's the problem, but how they did it.

I also think that people abandoning their OS regions, or even the renters pulling up prims at this stage is a bit overly dramatic. There is still a lot of time before January & wheels are turning.

Stay where you're at, but still express you're concerns. The ball is in the Lab's court & they're still absorbing feedback.

I will never accept this and move on. From all perspectives it is a massive scam.

I must have missed something. When/where did M sum things up?

(I've moved on, but I'm still watching this for the education.)

Firelight

I don't mean to be cruel or crass here but you know, for some of us this is all we can afford to buy because we are on disability and don't have nice cushy jobs that pay us more than minimum wage. I think all of us should be able to afford to buy a sim; be it open space or otherwise. I really don't find it fair that the prices of the open sims are going up. Yes, you may have intended on open spaces to be for bodies of water and forests but residents in SL have found that open spaces can be used for other things. If I was able to buy a different type of sim I would however being on disability and only getting about $650 USD per month and having bills to pay on top of that do you really think someone with my kind of income could afford to buy a different type of sim?! How about some equal opportunity here!

For some people, it may be the timing. It's the holiday season and perhaps a good time (for some) to look at how they going to spend their entertainment budget esp if they're already stretched too thin because of RL financial issues.

If you absolutely can't afford it in January, and your Nov 1 tier is due, you might think about saving the Nov and Dec tier money for something else.

This is one reason why I think that Linden should have responded with some decisions by today. Next week is already into the next month's budget.

I suspect that this is only true for a small percentage of the people who are abandoning things, and the rest should really wait another week or so.

But poor customer communication does affect customers. They do tend to react emotionally. It's something that any business should understand.

Firelight

Here's a link:

http://gigaom.com/2008/10/30/protest-threatens-linden-labs-profitability/

and here's a quote from the blog I just linked:

I contacted freshly minted Linden CEO Mark Kingdon for his comments about the protest. In a statement provided by his publicist, Kingdon told me, “We understand that this price adjustment will affect businesses and other projects of some our Second Life Residents,” and emphasized the cost increases were only directed at select landowners, who have until January 2009 to adjust themselves to the new rates. “To be clear,” Kingdon continued, “this price adjustment affects only a portion of land in Second Life; it does not apply to private islands or regular mainland property. We made this change to ensure an optimal Second Life experience for all Residents.”