Alternate solutions to blanket fee increases. (Could a Linden please read here.)

First off NO FLAMING OF LL DECISIONS HERE! This thread is to discuss fair alternative to all sides.

Alright, I have to agree with LL in trying to bring resource usage of these sims down, however I disagree with the blanket increase in maintenance fees so I propose the following solutions. I realize these sims were implemented to allow residents to build green spaces and water ways without paying for a full sim and using a small fraction of its resources. Now some have taken these sims to use as residential and commercial spaces, this is fine as long as again you want the space without playing for a full sim and using a small fraction of its resources.

I see how Open Space sims were intended so I will put this forward along with my proposed intermediate sim class.

Open Space:
Intended for recreational "Terrain Builds" such as forest with hiking trails, lakes with fish schools and other builds of interest, or ocean spaces with dive wrecks, etc. Not intended for live in residences or commercial spaces.

Moderate Use (Proposed):
Intended for reduced density residential and commercial areas, such as rural residential build or light duty commercial, for example 4 live in residences or 4 modest shops. Not intended for high density residential or commercial uses such as "Town Home" complexes, malls or clubs.

Full Sim:
Standard sim with full prim and other capabilities. Able to support high desnsity residential (Dosens of residences.) and commercial (Malls, clubs, you name it.).

Now proposed solutions in phases.

Proposed solution phase 1:

As it is apparent LL can monitor and detect abusers this would be the simplest solution for them and would keep those not abusing Open Space resources happy. Instead of jacking up the maintenance for all Open Space by %60 percent, leave it at $75 and target just the abusers and charge them $125 to $150 maintenance as an overage fine for each month they're peek resource use is over a reasonable maximum. Now in order to have this be fair to those residents owning Open Spaces they should have a tool that shows there Open Space resource usage and clearly mark the reasonable maximum, this fine should also be clearly mentioned in the user agreement.

Proposed solution phase 2a:

Implement a new sim class "Moderate Use" this sim would have the same prim, and other limits as an Open Space but be given twice the system resources than an Open Space, meaning they run only 2 per CPU rather than 4. These should be able to be safely used for light residential and commercial use. Charge $500 for set up, and the proposed $125 maintenance for these sims. Please note these sims come with a server side benefit not a material in world benefit and would be intended to allow these sims to cope with great traffic and script loads yet still not function as full sim.

Proposed solution phase 2b:

For major and chronic abusers implement a "Forced Upgrade" to the next sim type with all applicable charges for an upgrade applied on a 1 to 1 basis. In other words if a resident is continually over their resource allotment or consuming large enough resources to cause major issue across other sims sharing the server, LL may choose to force a sim type upgrade charging the transfer fee and additional maintenance for the upgrade. This would be done on a 1 to 1 basis rather than the standard merging, meaning that if a resident owns 4 Open Space and are forced to upgrade to a Moderate Use, they will then retain both however now be charged Moderate Use maintenance on one or both (Assuming both were being abused.) rather than have the two Open Space become 1 Moderate use. The same can be done for Moderate Use to Full Sim. This also protects renters as the owner will not loose one or more of the sims in this process.

With this it is strongly suggested that if LL does not already provide tools to monitor private sims resource usage with a clearly marked limit, then they implement such so that estate owners can monitor there usage relative to there sims resource allotment. This would help LL against ignorance claims.

Please feel free to post your comments, or additional fair solutions. I give any Lindens that monitor this thread full permission to delete any off topic posts. This is not a thread to nonconstructive voice your distaste at the current decision.

Listen to Mortus!

I would like to see one additional type added... A BUSINESS CLASS SIM -
beefy and intended to handle 100 people and all their various arc unfriendly fancy clothes and AOs without choking, with 20k prims or more.

Oh i realize client side issues are always in there.. but.. there are venues that simply need to be able to have more than 40 or 50 people in sim.

I do not agree. These OS sims were sold as they were and still are. They were advertised. There was no exactly specified definition of "light" usage or whatever and there was no "built in" restriction. When LL sells a sports car and wants people to keep the tempo limit, it is LL business to control this. But they either informed nor controlled, but only took the money.

The solution is NOT reducing resource usage and NOT raising the fees. The solution is make the product they sold WORK as advertised and actually sold.

The only compromise i could think of is keeping the existing OS sims as they are and upgrade their capacities and stop selling new ones. Then i agree with your idea of a more diversified offer - including a "built-in" usage restriction. This would be reasonable, imho.

The problem with this is that OSRs are already overloaded with 16 to a single quad core cpu, 4 per core. If they reduce it to 2 per core making it 8 per cpu, then for the price you suggest, i would demand that my full region be on it's own quad core processor alone rather than shared with 3 other full regions. It's only fair for those of us that own real sims.

I think you're making an assumption here that may not be correct. LL may not (or may) be able to see things at that granularity.

Hitting up the various techoLinden office hours would be a good idea for people who really want to understand this problem and suggest solutions. Beware of complaining about the situation to them though - that's not their gig.

edit: and, I think a lot of this problem would go away if they made it so that openspace sims had to be connected to the estates full sims again.

I have some other suggestions that directly address the problem that created the Open Space fiasco listed here:

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