Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

Ok that was almost easy to digest. It's better, but LL you still have yet to apologize. You are the ones who set us up to fail. When will you apologize and quit blaming the residents for this? You never defined "light use" and even went so far as to double the prims. Whether you use these prims to plant a forest or build a house, they're still the same prims. Even if you make the trees flexi, they're still going to equal the lag that most reasonable scripts cause.

People would be less upset if you would just apologize and take a little of the blame off us.

Close, but no cigar.

Current OS sims (3750 prims) are still getting a price hike with no additional benefit. At least bump the prim limit up to a round 4000 or something.

This scenario is more acceptable than the last, though, and I applaud that effort. My only real gripe now is that it's so dang expensive to convert my one OS to full. A Homestead sim is still more expensive per prim than a full, and I would upgrade if I could afford to do so. I'm using my OS as a Homestead: light on prims and scripts, with (usually) only four people using it at a time. While those friends help with the rent, and together we *may* be able to swing the tier for a full sim, I strongly doubt we'd be able to come up with the $750 conversion fee.

In order to make a reasoned choice in which product to move forward with - I need to know what the script limitations will be for openspaces and homestead regions -

when is this information likely to be available?

To clarify with the limits:

1) OS price rise is proceeding as before, but the product is being renamed "homesteads" in the process. Additionally, these sims will be limited to a maximum of 20 avatars.

2) A new "openspaces" product is created at the same US$75 price point. These have only 750 prims, 10 avatars, and cannot place Events or Classifieds. Owners of old-openspaces can escape the rise by switching to a new-openspace instead of a homestead; to do this, they have to lower the prim usage on the sim to 750 and remove renters from the sim.

So is Linden Lab going to provide a method by which residents can make sure they are within the proper boundaries? Or are the limits on scripts and such going to be as solid as prim limits? To where you simply won't be capable of running another script?

This is progress and it's appreciated.

But what testing have they done to substantiate the slashing of OpenSpace prim limits down to 750? They worked fine before at 1875.

You have, on the one hand, a drastic reduction of prims for true Openspaces, and a form of zoning. Are both really necessary? Why not just enforce the zoning on the 1875 prim sims?

So, if you didn't use them only for water and trees, what's different now from your original announcement save a little bit longer at only a slightly increased rate?

And to those asking about performance, I imagine the CPU will probably be set up to hold a combination of OpenSpaces and HomeSteads to reduce load.

NO HE DID NOT!

So...virtually empty opensims (allowed to stay at current $75 tier) get cut down to 750 prims (should have done this in the first place)...

...current opensims (now 'homesteads')of 3750 prims...will have newly imposed limitations and no further improvements - all at a higher cost...no surprise there...

....but why on earth not offer an option inbetween these newly inflated 'homesteads' and full sims? Can you honestly not see that a large number of people would like lands with higher limits, not lower and can't afford a full sim?

Maybe if you'd drop the ridiculous current tier of a full sim from 295 back to 195 it would help regular people, sadly we aren't all millionaires...and sadly we can't all hold other people to ransom like this either or we'd all be rich.

What a wasted opportunity, I'm totally disappointed, like it makes the slightest bit of difference.

Hopefully they will simply use the existing script throttling and limit the total script time, rather than limiting it to a specific number of scripts.

This is a good change because it allows those who were using them for their intended use, to keep them at the same price.

Those who are upset because they will be making 66% fewer profits, are, of course, still going to be unhappy.

Of course LL can't make everyone happy. There will always be those who think that just because Twinkies are on sale for 39 cents it is a good idea to eat nothing but Twinkies.

Personally I think LL has done a very good job on the backpedaling this time. They are improving.

Okay..I've read it and the smoke has cleared and its what I said..CRAP!!!

This is not the product we were sold!!. This is just Lindens money grabbing 101 once again, no apology and insulting my intelligence thinking I will just look at this and think wow aren't they great..look what they done..

I'm seeing what you've done and I'm NOT happy and I'm sure you could care less but to make us wait and wait for an announcement then hand out this - well unreal..all i can say..best i walk away from this for awhile because right now all I can think of is that my partner is a lawyer in CA and a law suit seems necessary to get this corrected.

oh..and..

PROFIT??? are you kidding me?? We go in the hole each and every month already just so that we have the two open space sims, each with two rentals on them and the rest water, mountains, etc as an additional area our residents can enjoy - so off the high horse and DO NOT tell many of us anything about profit!!

Maybe not even what we are using now, depending on the script limits.

no matter how you look at it

its getting more expensive (too expensive)

subject to these limitations it is not reasonable.

sad

Please clarify:

A (new) Openspace region is not allowed for (rental) residential use even if the renter is willing to accept the 750 prim/10 avatar/whatever else limit?

I am sure that people who like privacy and space would be willing to buy that.

Why not allowing that? This may be subject to review and approval by the Concierge team, to prevent misuse of resources.

Why is the openspace being reduced half of the original openspace number of prims ?

Why can't I have an option to get my 250 usd back

and textures are being limited to linden textures? omfg.........so no nice looking forests then just ugly 1970s inspired trees ?

This changes nothing.

You've made an allowance for "empty water" that almost no one has, that's fine for sailing people I guess.

But all you've done is delay the price increase for the other 99.9% of openspace users.

This changes nothing.

I see so no real price change if you are a resident !!!
LL you do not listen to your residents at all. You have proved to everyone that you can not be trusted. Looking forward to other virtual worlds so I can drop you like a stone.

In the KB yes, the offer of converting back to a full region if you have 4 of the currently named "Openspaces" will be free until Jan 09:

* What is the policy around migrating from Openspaces to a Full Region?

You may convert your Openspaces to a full Region. Four Openspaces equate to one Region, and we are not charging a conversion fee, at least until the pricing change comes into effect in January 09. If you own less than four Openspaces, you can make up the difference at a cost of USD$250 per Openspace.

Will you still need to own a full sim before you can buy a homestead sim?

I personally could not be happier at this moment. Thank you Linden Lab for listening to the voices of your residents.

This compromise is both fair and reasonable.

About avatar restrictions.. does this also apply to others who purchase mainland or other smaller plots on estate land, etc?


Vryl Valkyrie



PS I'm personally flattered since some of the changes are suggestions that I also made. lol

That's correct. Also, what do they mean by renter? Are they simply referring to people transferring OpenSpaces to people who don't own full sims at the estate level, or are they talking about parcel renting, or what?

I'd imagine it would be a bit of both. Active scripts even if they don't do anything still lag the sim if there are enough of them. With the faster execution speed of Mono, that may well be the gating factor.

...that people are falling so blatantly for this ploy.

It's probably fair to say LL have played somewhat fast and loose and got precisely what they wanted. Forget the hype over the original 66% tier hike - that was never going to happen in one bite, and they knew it.

As others have said, the OS bonanza has resulted in what can only be called a bait-and-switch policy on the part of LL, and now people are seeing the "hike" reduced (INITIALLY) to a "mere" 15%, they're happy to accept.

Bravo, Mark et al! You've achieved what you set out to do, and what I suspect you wanted to do from the start - introduced yet another tier level, a "new" form of sim, got residents to readily accept it AND managed to portray yourselves as "listening" and "responding".

All through announcing what you knew would be an unacceptable hike in OS tiers....

I wonder if people would have accepted this "new" plan, Homestead sims, et al, if, rather than just announcing the so-called 66% hike back on the 28th October, Jack had simply posted what is in Mark Kingdon's "letter" to start with?

Somehow, I doubt it. The furore would have been as strong and LL would have had nowhere to go.

But now, through the clever baiting over the 66% hike, LL can sit back in the knowledge that most people will say, "thank you" and "well done!" in the mistaken belief they've been listened to and that they have "won".

750 prims is rather tiny for even a water sim, nice yachts can have more prims than that. The original void sims had 1875 before it was doubled.

So the price is still going to $125 for anything more than really purely water once you have to allow for boats sailing across it. For that price we should be able to buy direct and not have to rent these sims at a much higher cost.