Zoning

No, I don't really think they enjoy looking at the chaos, either. But I think they are wedded to the idea of the chaos so much (i.e., the hands-off approach), and in observing the results, that it LOOKS like they enjoy it. What you explained is probably much more to the point. I don't think that it works, though, because we're stuffed in here together - it's not like a bunch of separate websites at all.

coco

That is hands down, the single most, hyperbole riddled, fanciful bit of pure fabrication it has ever been my displeasure to read here. No wonder you are on the fast track to so many ignore/plonk files.

Yes, LL isn't out to make money... in reality they are a Cal-tech behavioural science team operating on a grant from the Bush Administration and toying with chaos theory.

Completely insane.

I agree with Cocoa's observation of the progressive withdrawal of LL interaction and intervention in SL but think Suzanne is far closer in identifying the motivation rather than the suggested fondness for chaos.

If LL is not intending such, they might want to consider allocating some employee headcount towards servicing paying customers. If they want upgrades from basic to premium, and find benefit in retaining tier paying customers of the less than a private sim variety, they will have to provide some options. The mainland is certainly large enough to provide variety. The revision of group tools really needs to be given a higher priorty.

Me too, well, obviously.

You want the folks who can't manage to keep non-events off the event calendar to do what?

You want more than 3 people in SL to work in unison for longer than 10 minutes?

As Joy Division once sang:

And love, love will tear us apart......again.

Precisely. As residents we are almost totally powerless. But honestly, I do not want power to tell other people what they should or should not do (unless they're in my house). I believe in freedom of expression as much as any right thinking person.

( Here's my fantasy, so called because it's not likely in SL ) ...
Rather than zoning I'd prefer to have the power to determine how my "virtual area" connects to other "virtual areas" and some method to determine what can be seen from an area I "control". Even if it's only some default horizon and a teleporty/portal system to start with it would be better than what we have in SL atm. I've had people tell me it would destroy community, I say the opposite, it could create communities where none exist at the moment. Each area of "virtual land", no matter how big, linking on to somewhere else as each owner dictates would create something like strings of conjoined parallel universes. It would make a very interesting map! After being here over a year, I can no longer see a benefit to pretending a virtual world is like some fixed RL continent.

I believe a system something as described would naturally weed out undesirable elements.

Interesting concept. For a nascent metaverse-wannabe SL is awfully constrained by its geographic metaphor. Especially since there is nothing about SL that requires planar connectedness as the islands demonstrate. Compared to the web and social networks, etc. forced adjacency in SL is a bit of a step backwards.

Historically speaking, arbitrary virtual world geometries are anything but new. The computer doesn't care which pointer it follows to the next place. Why not the land of Introvertia which is bordered on the north by person #1 whom I pretend likes me and bordered on the south by the jello-wrestling with alligators and moneyball club?

I guess my idea of zoning consists of the following:

1. Residential areas

a. mature
(1) low builds
(2) high builds allowed

b. PG
(1) low builds
(2) high builds allowed

2. Commercial areas

a. mature
(1) low builds
(2) high builds allowed

b. PG
(1) low builds
(2) high builds allowed

3. Anything goes areas

a. mature
b. PG

That's about as detailed as I can get with them. I threw in the low and high builds, but essentially it could be just 1, 2 and 3.

coco

Now I wish I was as eloquent as you

First let me say I agree with Chip, Surreal, Margaret, and others who have pointed out the dilemma with retroactive zoning. It's simply not possible without massive upheaval and pissing scads of customers off.

I would be all for LL delivering new sims that are zoned, however, that's just not their business model. So, what we need, is some barons who will develop and zone auctioned mainland sims, versus the butcher shop approach we see now - "Heres a nice NY strip, for 5 bucks a pound, SO very sorry if someone buys that liver next to you at 50 cents a pound, and craps up the neighborhood, but I am here for that QUICK CASH baby!"

I am reasonably sure LL had hoped that we would take it upon ourselves to zone, and in some cases we have, in the older sims that have had 2 or more years to coalesce into something a bit more structured. The problem we face now has a multitude of catalysts. The butcher shop mentality of the current sim buying barons, the "it's my land and you can piss off if you don't like my spinning signs or my 1000 scripts and particle generators" attitude, the hands off approach by LL, the cramped feeling of sims, etc.

Now, for those mentioning LL's ever mounting hands-off approach - they have been saying that this was their plan forever and a day now. It will be interesting to see, if by employing this strategy, the fruit can be harvested and a nice wine made of it, or if it will rot on the vine... They're REALLY going to have to take a long, hard look at this strategy when the other, heavy-weight developers start creating "games" like SL.

It may be true that the land doesn't have to be linked the way it is, but personally I like it. I've seen way too many virtual worlds that are just a bunch of "worlds" linked by "portals" and the whole disconnected nature of them kinda bugged me. Sometimes it's nice to have everything tied together a bit tighter to give the place an overall structure. When locations are separated you just end up with a bunch of chat rooms.

This is exactly my sentiment too. But sometimes it takes a brave sideways leap to succeed even if it means pissing off some of your current user base.

Could you list them ? I'd love to take a look myself. I've yet to see anything better SL in terms of streaming technology. I've not seen anywhere that can compare to SL in terms of creative input .... yet.




No reason at all why the current grid couldn't coexist in a portal system. If that's what you like simply create it and make it your part of the "metaverse". Many people would agree with you.

We already have a bunch of disconnected chat rooms, so no difference there.

There was actually a good post listing a bunch a while back but of course I can't find it now. A few of others I've used in the past is Active Worlds, Outer Worlds, Worlds Chat. But you're right that that were nothing compared to SL in terms of creative control. There was the first large scale land mass kinda thing I've seen (that isn't strictly a game) but the system of having to submit content in there truely sucked. There's one portal style thing in particular (which I've only looked at a little) which was in that other post I was looking for. Looks kinda promising but still very new atm. I'll post a link if I manage to find it again.




Well now we have P2P teleporting, some sort of linked portals really wouldn't be much diff, so I guess you're right there's no reason why we couldn't have both.

Lucky break.... I found it....
http://www.opencroquet.org/

It's the scripting in that one that would shy me away from it a bit. Nice that it appears to give the user control to a very low level (they appear to be creating objects by writing raw OpenGL code), but far too complex for many to use.

But see Coco, a sim operates best with a few land owners that live, work and socialize in the area. Mixing residence with business and a small club or event center gives the residents a lot of flexibility. The key points are building styles that are acceptable to everyone and enough mutual consideration to keep down the lag.

Any residentially zoned area can be ruined by some goober using 287 1024x1024 textures on their house and dragging everybody's frame rate to the floor. Any commerical area can look nice enough to live in if store owners just make an effort to accomodate the views of nearby homeowners. Those same commerical areas can be made useless by some goober placing 25 multilistening and av scanning vendors in their store.

I'm sorry but legislated zoning just very simple doesn't work in SL. Even in Boardman and Brown it doesn't work unless the land owners are mature and caring enough to make it work. Am i saying that Linden Lab shouldn't try publishing more zoned sims or, perhaps, that they should unzone Boardman and Brown? I suppose we'll have to read your reply to see ha ha.

No, I'm saying go find people you can live with and conquer a sims worth of land so y'all can enjoy your second life. Given our lack of tools, it's the only viable option.

It seems fairly clear that what some of us want is "suburban America" zoning, with rows of tidy houses in similar architectural style. The main problem with this is that commerce is pervasive in SL, there is no escape from it. We go to such lengths to teach people to build and start their own businesses, do we really want to then tell them they can't run a shop on their land? Others of us yearn for "SeaCliff" zoning, a sim owned by a group of like-minded individuals that is an island on the main grid. There are no ugly views in SeaCliff. No Impeach Bush signs. No instability.


The only answer is to move to an environment you can control. I say this as someone who's been fighting the bad neighbor battle in RL for some time and have finally come to the conclusion that there is no answer other than relocation. Even in RL where you have cops to call and city code officials to pester, there is only so much that can be done about "quality of life" issues. When my city finally told me that there was nothing else they could do and we neighbors were going to have to file a lawsuit against the homeowner, it became clear that getting out of dodge and into an area that I could control more easily was the remaining option.

The same is true in SL, where it genuinely is a free-for-all. The only answer is to group together to buy up a core sim that is terraformable or to buy a new island sim.

This very workable suggestion has been repeated several times in this thread, yet people continue saying things like "we have no power" and "its not possible without more group tools".

Zoning, land use and behavior controls ARE possible in SL, and you can find many examples in the privately owned islands and those commonly owned with restrictive covenants. Why are those not acceptable to those who complain its not possible? Is it because it is not free?

Freedom is never free. It always requires a sacrifice, an investment, an expenditure of some kind. Those who insist that their own freedom be bought at someone else's sacrifice will almost always be disappointed. Those prepared to invest in assuring their own freedom have some chance.

I love this nonsense. It's so ironic in so many ways and it means absolutely nothing at all.

Of course we can buy sims and group together, it's currently the only solution. There is no other choice. I don't think it is a "very workable solution" though for a few reasons. Not the least that as a group any individuals "investment" is permantly at risk. I don't accept any 3rd party provision would be a "solution". If that 3rd party for any reason dissolves their a/c everyone else loses. The only true solution can be provided by the service providers LL. I will never trust my money, effort and peace of mind to someone hiding behind the anonymity of an SL avatar.

Well if we're going to go far out I'm going to repeat something form this thread.

Personally, I'd like to see something which takes advantage of virtual reality to go beyond the limitations of the physical world rather than adhering to them. For example, a system that allowed as many different ways to arrive at a build as possible. I mean multiple, parallel spatial arrangements of the parcels, based on different indexing or even live searches. So that I could search for "zoo" and literally walk from one zoo into the next because they've been arranged that way.

Khamon is right, this is what it boils down to. Having friends in SL is invaluable in so many ways. When people get together and decide to do something they are able to completely change the look of a sim, even an old burnt out one like Boardman. The Seacliffe people all know each other and are friends. They all worked together to make Seacliffe the amazing place it is today. (anyone seen Reitsuki around at all?) Luskwood, same thing... Taber.. same thing.. Indigo... same thing... Miramare. And there are probably more.

If individuals are interested in owning 5000m or so of land, it wouldn't take too many like-minded people to take over a sim on the main grid and "theme" it. That's about all we have at our disposal to work with. Although I do wish we had more.

How many groups have you participated in and how well did these experiences work for you? Can you consider the possibility that the people who are calling the group tools inadequate came to this opinion out of experience? That they have spent money for the privelege of learning just how lacking those tools are? Do some research. No one's asking for a free ride. What is being asked for is a way to better appreciate the moneys spent on SL. If someone donates the majority of the group land, do you think they should be equal to someone who has donated little or none at all?

An improved user experience could improve retention. The percentage of land owning, tier paying customers is steadily dropping. Does the current view of the landscape act as a sufficient inducement to attract tier paying customers for LL? While there are some who will indeed tier up to $200 per month to acquire the land control associated with a private sim ownership, more people will ignore that suggestion and leave.

Maybe LL's future vision is a private sim minimum for land ownership and the demise of the mainland. It's certainly an option and the choice is theirs. If not, then some attention paid to the considering the issues of customers who are paying monthy fees might be a good plan.

Good point.

This is the attitude LL requires it's paying customers to have. Seem like a good business model to anyone else?