Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

Here's my comparison using metrics pulled out of thin air:

Mainland sim: 64 points for area, 64 points for prims, 0 points for estate controls, 1 point for terraforming, 0 points for privacy, 4 points for agent limits, 5 points for scripting. Total = 138 points.

Homestead: 64 points for area, 16 points for prims, 4 points for estate controls, 25 points for terraforming, 10 points for privacy, 2 points for agent limits, ? points for scripting. Total = 121+ points.

Wow, I pulled numbers out of thin air that says a Homestead is worth 88% of a mainland sim! So at 125 bucks it's a steal!

Or maybe numbers pulled out of thin air don't mean anything?

AC, thanks to Meade Paravane who posted the links to "all" - LOL, sorry..! - the replies by Jack and M, you can find them, here:

[Partially quote Meade Paravane]

........
edit: Responses from Jack can be found at this URL, since this thread is likely to get big: /invalid_link.html . Responses from M will be here, tho he hasn't replied to this thread yet: /invalid_link.html .

hope this helps!

Well there may always be exceptions, but as the mainland is a massive overpopulated contiguous area its extremely rare.

By traffic I'm talking about passers by,not users TP'ing into you shop - users will likely TP anywhere from adverts etc. On an Island there is no way for traffic to pass by unless its part of a large estate, and then its not that busy either.

You only have to zoom out on the SL Map and watch the green dots to figure that out.

Well there may always be exceptions, but as the mainland is a massive overpopulated contiguous area its extremely rare.

By traffic I'm talking about passers by,not users TP'ing into you shop - users will likely TP anywhere from adverts etc. On an Island there is no way for traffic to pass by unless its part of a large estate, and then its not that busy either.

You only have to zoom out on the SL Map and watch the green dots to figure that out.

As we all know by now, your price increases are not related to more cost you have with the OS and are based just on the "value".

I made a comparison and it is clearly whatever method you use that you overpriced the value of the new homestead and OS sim. The value of a homestead is approx 83 USD per month, the new OS has a value on paper but as you cannot use it for anything it is zero.

Feature.........................Mainland SIM....................Private SIM
No Covenant................+++++............................ +++++
Privacy.........................+......................................+++++
Agent Limits.................++....................................+++++
Terrainforming..............++.................................. +++++
Estate Manager Rights .---.................................. +++++
Unpredictable...............--..................................... +++++
Total Points..................3 +.................................. 30+

If you look at the "table" you can see that a private sim is worth more than a mainland sim. 27 points more you could argue if 27 points justify a price difference of 51%, but lets assume for the following comparisons that it does.

Now lets compare a private sim with the new called “homestead” sims:

Feature.........................Private SIM............Homestead SIM
No Covenant.................+++++..................+++++
Privacy..........................++........................+++++
Agent Limits..................+++++...................-
Terrainforming...............++....................... +++++
Estate Manager Rights..-............................+++++
Script limits...................+++++...................--
More Space......,,...........-.............................+++++
Total Points.................17 +....................... 22+

As you can see in the table with the new agent limits and scripts limit’s the value from a ¼ private sim compared with the new homestead with limits is just 5 points lower. That doesn’t justify a price difference of 36%, it actually should be approx. 11% which is approx 82 USD

Ok, now lets compare the new homestead sim with the new OS:

Feature..........................Private SIM...........OS
No Covenant..................+++++.................+++++
Privacy...........................+++++................+++++
Agent Limits...................+++++..................-------
Terrainforming...............+++++.................+++++
Estate Manager Rights .+++++..................+++++
Script limits....................+++++..................-----
More Space...................+++++..................+++++
Prims.............................+++++...................-----
Living allowed................+++++.................-----
Total Points....................45 +.................... 20+

The value of an OS compared with the new homestead is 20 points lower which would on paper justify approx a price of 50 USD, but as the OS sim is unusable for anything the value of that new product is on the second life market zero.

So it is clear that you overpriced the new homestead sims and created an OS product which is not usable.

Your so called more value doesn't justify the price increase, and any judge will see it too that way.

Yes, but in the Mainland <> Private SIM comparison you left out the most important metric : Traffic ... where Mainland scores 5 and Private 0

"You get passers by? Are you in an area with no ban lines or pay to enter parcels?"

not really... i spent 18 months on mainland and 9 months on island and both are same size and i can tell you i got 3 or 4 times the traffic i was getting on the mainland.

I'm also rather confused why you are here. Apart from talking down to everyone and appearing to have an opinion on everyones lives you don't seem to be doing much except antagonising people. If you're waiting round for M or Jack to appear and give you a big smile and a pat on the back you've got a long wait.

After a lot of thought, I believe this is worse than I thought. I think they want openspace people gone. Either back to the mainland, or gone outright. I don't think they care if we leave.

I think sometime last spring or early summer they decided they were on the wrong path. Buying server after server after server for a handful of individuals each wasn't the road they wanted to take when they could otherwise be crowding us onto 1024s in ritzy preplanned areas for huge auction prices. Why sell someone a whole sim for $1k when they could be getting L$100 a meter as they did in bay city?

So, I think they are happy with the negative sim sales. They made a lot of money on openspace setup fees this summer to bankroll these losses. Honestly, I think they are praying you all dump your sims, and that the ones that are most mad WILL leave. More hardware for mainland, and a pretty, cleaned up world map that is less complicated for LL to manage, and a new 5 year plan, comrades.

My prediction is this. The price of estate sims will go up in the next year, and homesteads will be discontinued after a token amount of time. Eventually, they will raise the setup costs of estates and contiunue until it is silly. People who want 65k will be offered mainland 65k islands in Linden water and they will be auctioned and sell for outrageous amounts.

So in the end people still end up with islands, they just have to bid at these crazy bay city style auctions, and LL makes a buttload more than 1k each out of them. Homesteads, discontinued at first convenience, leaving the ones that are there, raising prices gradually to run people off them. Openspaces, probably settling at 250-500 prims, 50 bucks a month, 30 avatars or so, and only allowing what is necessary for boating, flying, surfing, etc.

That's my take. I think they have decided that it was a mistake to market in such a way that we are attached to hardware. They make a lot more money letting us bid at auction for land, and they will get the same tier either way. If you leave, they'll just retask the hardware to something else, your setup fee tucked under their mattress.

Brave new world, and I don't think they really want us in it. Anyone that would be here bitching would probably be someone they'd prefer gone. I think it is their feeling that customers are like streetcars, there'll soon be another one along.

Here's my comparison using metrics pulled out of thin air:

Mainland sim: 64 points for area, 64 points for prims, 0 points for estate controls, 1 point for terraforming, 0 points for privacy, 4 points for agent limits, 5 points for scripting. Total = 138 points.

Homestead: 64 points for area, 16 points for prims, 4 points for estate controls, 25 points for terraforming, 10 points for privacy, 2 points for agent limits, ? points for scripting. Total = 121+ points.

Wow, I pulled numbers out of thin air that says a Homestead is worth 88% of a mainland sim! So at 125 bucks it's a steal!

Or maybe numbers pulled out of thin air don't mean anything?

yeah it is called discussion with LL, so not sure whats your position here, are you one of them??? anyway i will just skip your posts cause they are worthless. peace

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. The Lindens asked us to post feed back, suggestions, ect.. It seems that some of you don't want anyone posting anything positive. Instead you simply attack and flame anyone and everyone that posts contrary to them raising prices. Sorry you can't accept that. If you don't like what I have to say, then don't read it.

I am still waiting for them to actually come up with something constructive from the previous thread, other than their re-worded original statement with a couple of minor additions, one of which is totally laughable (New Openspaces). They said then that they would read and discuss. 2 replies constitutes discussion? Not in my eyes.

So who says they will take any more notice of posts in this thread ? I think the 5 miserly replies within this thread says it all.

Thanks for the info, I was never into mainland to be honest. On the traffic issue, that would actually say that mainland is more valuable for shop owners than a private sim, would question the 100 USD they ask more per month for a private sim.

Thanks for the valuable input! when i made the post I knew people like you would show up.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. The Lindens asked us to post feed back, suggestions, ect.. It seems that some of you don't want anyone posting anything positive. Instead you simply attack and flame anyone and everyone that posts support for them raising prices. Sorry you can't accept that. If you don't like what I have to say, then don't read it.

When I had an 8k in St Lion i got probably on average one wander in per hour. Usually willing to enter my house, right clicking everything they walked passed.

After a week I installed an orb, and then I had to weather them IMing me asking me what I had to hide and cursing at me because they were too stupid to back off the land before it sent them home.

In the end what LL doesn't understand is that the average human being is stupid and rude, and the ones that aren't really don't want to mix with them.

Surely that depends on how many campers and what gaming?

As for your 5120 spot ... just wait till those other spots fill up, then comment about the lag.

Theoretically the same content hosted on a full sim vs it spread out over 4 OS's should be similar.

In fact I would suspect the OS's to handle it better ... as there is sim boundaries between the spread-out content thus your business is not as "affected" by your neighbors (who are possible not even on your OS).

My position is the fact I think they did ok with the new plan. I've stated that. If you don't like it, then simply don't read it. Your the one flinging around insults and laughing at anyone that doesn't agree with your ideas. Please do skip my comments.

Working most of my life for large advertising companies I have learned to do case studies, here is what I have learned from this situation.

1) Always have your people do a marketing survay, Q&A target groups, research before you introduce new price changes or product changes.

2) Learn how not to make sticky situations into PR nightmares, there are to many mistakes made here I don't think I need to state the obvious.

3) Product research, it seems to me that you will not have a good new product (homestead) I think it is priced wrong, I think you will find out the hard way of how to set pricepoints and create service products. In fact I think in one swoop you will destroy most of your open space product lines.

4) Clear explainations, please explain how the Estaste full sim 15000 prims with the freedom to do anything on it, with the EXTREME usuage made by some, cannot be divided into 4 pieces the resources divided in 4 pieces and the price maybe around 85 USD x4 = 340 compared to the 295 USD for the full estate sim? Personaly I have asked 3 experts and they say they can cap resources.

There are more minor points but I do not want to take away focus from the major problems, unfortuntly people are getting more and more mad at this situation, you need closure and you need it now.

I hope you see this as helpfull because that is how it is intended, I plan on working full time in SL in 2009 and this situation has me as scared as the world economy.