Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

The open space sim policy is and has been nonsensical, which is why people have largely ignored it:
What is the point of having a 3750 prim limit if you aren't allowed to use it?
ok, though I don't understand what prims are for if you aren't supposed to build, and how does setting my home to a sim impact performance at all?
A regatta is going to impact performance far more than most houses. A "scenic wooded area" with wildlife, sound, and poseballs is going to be higher prim and texture load than most residences. The first open space sims I saw were for surfing - surely a sim full of scripted waves and a dozen surfers is a whole lot more expensive than two avs in a house.

I fail to see how the policy change will address the performance problems. My prediction is that the new policy will drive out the sims that are actually low impact because they weren't for profit in the first place, and retain only the high-impact sims because resource abuse isn't addressed and leaves it still a bargain for for-profit concerns. I applaud the sentiment, but the policy appears carefully designed to have exactly the opposite effect as the stated goal.

Disclaimer: I co-own an open space sim. We have several relatively small structures, a large number of unscripted plants (dare I say, a "scenic wooded area?", some environmental effects, and have never had more than 10avs present. Script load is trivial (top script is almost always a water fountain), physics is barely exercised at all. We *might* be able to justify paying the price increase in return for being able to walk around more naturally, but this policy looks like it'll make things worse, not better.

Simba, I have no idea why you're in this thread. Maybe it's time to STFU. You can google that to see what it means in English.

There is no point to buying an openspace sim now, even as a decorative sim. It's too expensive and not worth it. I understand wanting to throttle back on their use. If you really wanted to do that, you would cut the prim limits back down to 1875. I suspect that the problem is really in script abuse, and the 1875 limit would probably take care of the problem without increasing costs. Now you are going to completely stanch the sale of these sims, even for their intended purpose.

I would never buy one now. I had planned to buy one for sailing water and a sandbox, but you have effectively made the decision for me. Not worth it.

I will note that it is now more cost effective to bid on a mainland sim for the same cumulative price, which is probably the real underlying cause of the price shift.

There's alot of possiblities why they offered 3750 prims, BUT they did and is why people rent them or buy them to have a nice home and lots of land and water around it and have total privacy! My main concern is my tentants who pay weekly and enjoy there open spaces and built there dreams on them. How do we go to them and say sorry rent has gone up cause LL thinks your abusing the land? Its going to hurt when tentants start packing up and leaving just like they did on the Full prim sims when open spaces come out in april.

Price increases are a fact of life. People hate them, but they happen anyway. I do not understand all this whining about it. LL from the beginning stated that these openspace regions were meant to be used as scenery such as water or empty fields. How is it the fault of LL that people decided to take advantage of these OSRs by building flawed business models around them?

They were never meant to replace a mainland parcel or a full private island. They were never advertised as a "lite sim" for those that can't afford a regular private island, yet people took it upon themselves to decide they should be used for that purpose.

Should LL offer a "lite" version of a private island with capped resources and avatar limits? Yes I do think there is a market for that, but OSRs were never created to fill that demand.

I feel bad for those that decided to try and profit from a shady business plan, but in the end they only have themselves to blame. The true losers in this are the renters of these OSRs and those that truely do use them for their intended purpose. But as i said before, price increases happen and 2 months is sufficient notice of the pending increase.

As I see the logins/60 days decline
As I see the world economy tumble
As I see in the WSJ that emerging business models such as virtual worlds will not be supported by new advertising strategies
As discretionary income falls
As we face a worldwide depression???
As my time use in SL decreases due to more attention to my real world.
Linden labs is nearly doubling the cost of one of its greatest growth areas?

Smart move Jack!

I hope the Otherland Group can survive. They devalued my investment 50 percent already in my open sim.

And Many others like it will face a tough economic landscape.

I am sure Otherland will increase my monthly fee............

And my minimally used space will be available soon.

Bud

We created a neat continent with lots of love, work and support by us and our friends to have a home for a noncommercial group with reasonable amount of members. It is all free, advertisment free and open to public. Also with alot of free water space for fun and ambience. Not to mention the work that was put into. Now we are going to reduce alot of that since we at first are not the ones who are gonna support LL's money machine and second we feel actually cheated since we do this for alot of people, for free just so they can enjoy it there, talk, sit, build and hang.

So LindenLab this is a great thing, awesome policy, just go on pissing people off and scaring them out of the game... that will help SL to grow for sure.

And it will encourage the noncommercial supporters to gladly and happily go on supporting!

Thanks alot!

I came into this forum to see what people had to say but most importantly because IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A DISCUSSION WITH JACK LINDEN!!! AND I WENT THROUGH 52 PAGES (I AM SURE BY THE TIME I POST THIS IT WILL BE 53 or 54) AND NO JACK LINDEN HAS POSTED! (

I did think for some time there were certain people that were using the openspaces in a very wrong way and i agree that the lack of reading on this people should be punished, i say lack of reading because it's very well stated on secondlife wiki or any other second life guide the proper use for open space sims.

Now.... the measure of raising prices being taken is just crazy and puts Linden Labs in the exact same position as those who want to take economic advantage of the openspace sims... Greedy bastards...

The only possible FAIR solution is for Linden Labs to worK A liitle on hunting down these people that are misusing the sims, which I'm sure wont be hard and probably they know exactly who they are and punish them individually...

Linden Labs..... with out the residents Second Life has no purpouse and this is like taking a shortcut to SL's apocalipsis.

Think.. Think... Read...

Some people were renting void/OS sims even when the limit was 1875. It is the luxury of privacy. Clearly, whatever abuse occurred occurred because of the spike in prim limits and the explosion of people using it with tons of scripted stuff.

/me is still awaiting a meaningful reply. It's not late in the UK right now!

They increased the prims and made the Openspace look appealing to everyone that wanted the privacy of a sim but didn’t have the need and or cash for a full prim one. After and only after 1000's were ordered, LL raises the price just because they know they can. They knew what they were being used for, they were being used for the exact same thing before the big change. And LL would have never doubled the prims if they didn’t know what they were being used for. Open water ways my leg, you don’t need 3750 prims for a open water way or any other light use. 1750 prims were even to much for that so who do they think they are kidding?
Yes some people do abuse them but in all reality these same people have heavy lagging scripts and builds not fit for any region. The problem is not with the Openspace but in educating people about resources and how best to use them.
I currently have 2 Openspaces and I am going to abandon both of them I refuse to be a part in this and I’m sure many sim owners as myself will be doing the same with their Openspaces. So guess what LL raise the price all you want but those 1000’s that were ordered are most likely coming back to you. Making Sl a smaller place to live and less for people to do. Good luck with that…

I own or i guess rent an openspace island,i suppose many of these islands are being used for profit by the estate owners,maybe sl sees this and they want to share some of those profits
All this increase means to me is,instead of paying $112 a month tier fee,it will go up too who knows what now,If he (the estate owner) was paying $75 tier fee and charging me $112 then he is making $37 profit from one OS island
The estate agent is making a nice little profit from these islands,which i completely understand
I love my OS island,i live there and love the seclusion,i experience absolutely no lag at all,i experience no problems whatso ever.
There are only two avatars that use the island, mine and my lovers,the island is our paradise and we spend all our time there
If some are abusing OS islands then why punish those of us who treat them with respect.
And such a lovely time to increase prices when the real world economy is going to the dogs

Anyway, drop the cpu part all together than... whatever...
The point still is, that it's a boxed in sim (like a vmware machine is).
It can only take as much resources as it is granted, and not borrow/steal from other sim's resources.
So, still, their explanation of HEAVY usage, or OVERusage, is false.
And cannot count against, the REAL reason for this change.
My guess is that they don't want it anymore, because less full sims are bought, and thus less income.
(AGAIN GREEDY ON MONEY)

If you dont rent a open space then you wouldnt have the 1st clue about profit on these sims. There is Min profit and if a privately owned estate is providing them for rent its cause they are in demand and making there tentants happy in supplying them one as they cant order one if they dont own a full prim sim. anyone who isnt in the land business in SL or owns a Open space sim shouldnt be in this discussion. Some comments are shocking!

I am the owner of 7 of the FurNation sims in Second Life. I own both of the sandboxes and the mall. Now the change of the pricing and details of the Openspaces .... Needs to be done. Change the buy price straight away. I told Linden Labs back in March that this was too cheap in the first place.

Now I have been reading over things here and I can see that the general consensus is that those with Openspaces now are getting the same argument. And not to beat a dead horse that argument is as follows:

It is unfair to refuse to grandfather the Openspace sims after everyone just bought up a ton of them. And worse yet you are forcing those that have class 4 Openspaces to upgrade to 5 and increase their cost by 75$

Some have called this a Bait and Switch. Unfortunately I cannot say it is or not but I will make a few things pointed out for those fellows over at Linden Labs. You are abotu to almost double (67% increase) the current cost for the sims and you are going to have more than half of them go offline with nearly no future use in the next few months. This is going to cause a LARGE influx of members to pick up and take off. Paying members mind you. The free accounts that you make nothing off of? Yeah those stay cause they have nothing vested in this game at all.

There WILL be full island owners like myself that will sell off all assets because of this because you are showing a blatant disregard for your paying users.

As you have stated in previous posts and announcements there are HUNDREDS of Openspace sims out on the grid RIGHT NOW. And they are there because you made these easily accessible. To further state, if anyone expects us to believe that not a single person in Linden Labs team thought that these would be used as private homes and dwellings you are flat out lying. As they are now and have been in use for that exact reason in the Valley sims for years and have been rented out for years. The Valleys are only one example of their use gridwide for these reasons.

Now. How to make a solution to make the screaming flood of people stop bashing your door in. Simple:

Raise the purchase and teir price on NEW Openspaces. Also reinstate that four must be purchased at once but add in that you can opt to buy them one at a time after.
Grandfather in the older ones and yes ... I would concede to see the older class 4 OS's converted to class 5 OS's FREE but with the 75$ a month rate not the 125$ rate.
DO NOT THREATEN TO REFUSE GRANDFATHERING EVER AGAIN IN YOUR LIVES.

Refusing to grandfather was your biggest mistake. You sell TONS ... Literally TONS of them to entice people into an asset and then raise the cost of maintaining that asset once you have a ton of people with that asset. I picked up Four Openspaces for others just to basicly host them. I was asked to. And now we have a nice Northern region. But this is really going to kill things off.

To conclude: If this change in the Openspace sims goes unmodified, I will have lost faith with the abilities of Linden Labs and sell off all Private sim assets. The reason is because there is the underlying fear that the full sims I have now will suffer the same fate. I would be forced upgrade and devaluation of the estate. I would thus be forced on December 31st to shut down the Openspaces and Auction off the other three sims to maintain my own assets. What would happen to FurNation from there? I don't know. I love the community and I know it would hurt them. I would end up having to refund in full quite a number of renters. I don't know where they would go. Most likely when I explain to many many thousands in the furry community that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars into Second Life every year ... They might just leave for 'There' or 'IMVU'

Non-openspace owners/renters are wasting space in this discussion.

Well, my alt owns/rents a openspace from fantasyland and it has perfect up until now. Now with 3 weeks left on my tier I will soon be forced to hit the 'Abandon Land' button as I won't be able to resell the sim, I mean who is gonna buy it? I paid $L35000 and feel like I have been robbed. I have never used all my prim allowance and at most had 15 avs on there at one time.

Thankyou Lindens for fucking me over.

That's exactly the point. I don't like to return to mainland! Mainland is ugly in most cases, and if not (like Nautilus) there's more lag than on any OS SIM I've seen so far.

Like it really matters which day of the week they put us out of our homes and our businesses?

I've had my openspace sim less than two months. I've never felt more raped.

Technically, you realize that "profit" doesn't start until your own setup and carrying costs are met, right?

But, that was a high markup; he s/he was trying to pay off the setup costs in a hurry -- which in hindsight, was prolly the smart thing to do!

I am more then outraged to wake up to this pricing change, this is unfair, I have put 250/USD per each open-space I have bought in to this, I have bought quite a few and now this is happening! This is simply outrageous and not fair at all, I feel as if the money that I have put in to this was a complete waste this should be illegal. I can not say how much this effects my feelings towards second life I am livid. I have been a long time customer and have brought residents and stood by second life the whole time. This is pure greed. By me leaving second life and a lot of other people leaving second life how are you going to keep your residents? This is just not fair and I am more then upset in all the open-spaces I have bought to find this news out what a waste of money everyone was telling me how stupid I was to invest my money in to second life and now look yup they were right and I was wrong. Thanks again linden lab for this your losing a long time customer here. What a waste of money I have put in here...

I came from Myst Online which due to business reasons (i.e. financial) closed down. I was saddened by the loss of Myst Online as I fully enjoyed that game (or online service).

I then decided to try Second Life, and like many others became addicted due to the enjoyment I got out if it.

Now, suddenly Second Life make insane price changes - 67% increase for absolutely no service benefits and my ability to enjoy Second Life has now been capped. For one there is no point buying another Openspace (I own one already). Secondly a full sim is a lot of money and will probably suddely increase cost in the future, just like today, so could be risky to buy into. And thirdly how many enjoyable Openspaces will close down as a result of this decision?

To be honest I now can't say that I trust Linden Labs and forsee that Second Life could get worse not better (I realise that people who have been in SL longer than me have already lost that trust in LL).

Who's to say that prices for Full Sims aren't going to see a huge hike in costs or Mainland won't become more expensive.

Who's to say that Linden Labs aren't going to make another bad decision which will affect us all in a negative way.

Days like today just reinforce the fact that an online business model is RISKY for customers no matter how much bling they have on day one.

I for one will not buy into another online service if I care about wanting to keep receiving that service, which is ironic considering that big companies (i.e. Microsoft) want to move to an online business model.

Too disappointed to come up with anything constructive to say.

YES! The useless blurbs of the simba fuhrs in this threat arent good for anything but to bloat the volume to unreadable. Talk for your own matters but son;t raise yourself to talk for others just because it doesn't concern you this time. Next time it might be you, dear egomaniacs! - or do you expect that this is the last hit in LL's long history of crushing every sort of business in SL that turned out to be a tad profitable for someone?

I own a real private island and considered renting out OSRs myself, so i do have a clue as to the profit potential of renting them. The thing that stopped me was the statements from LL that OSRs are only for lite usage such as water sims. I'm glad I listened to them.

When the Sims are abandoned, after the folks put all their objects in inventory, and the servers sit in their server farm with no need for electricity let alone maintenance, the Linden Lab will modify the the program. I speak only as a user of the United Sailing Sims, which have a beautiful set up for passage making in boats - sail or power. But, as long as the community of Avatars ponies up the cash - Business as usual.