Terraforming

If it's my land and I can do whatever I want with it, cover it with pink prims, build giant flashing purple towers, or execute a thousand scripts, why can't I terraform it to 100m?

Why draw the line there? If the Mainland is a compelling mix of diverse ideas and international cultures and varying styles and exciting creativity, why do we need contiguous, uniformly textured landmasses? What good does it do us to have a strictly imposed landscape if it's covered end to end with our highly individualized dreams clashing against each other?

Is the idea of all the Mainland sims being connected for vehicle flyover explorative comradery not enough?

The best looking places in SL to me, so far as landscape goes, are the places with mountains and valleys.

It is kind of sad that the fear of parcels raised to the max alternating with parcels dropped to the min leads to no chance of landowners being able to work together to make some mountain and valley areas.

I've seen some pretty extreme variations in Elevation Including the Mountains in Voss (those alone soar well over 100 meters in hight, and the Deep Canyons in Bragg.
There are peaks, and ravines, and deserts, and Deep Oceans. My own Property in Crooked has about a 130 meter climb from Seabed to Level land.

Now, If you are asking why you can't take your brand new 512 Sq. Meter Plot, and raise it 200 meters above the immediate surrounding landscape, I think, apart from software limitations, the answer would be simple.
Something like that would just look Bug Ugly and would Most Likely Elicit complaints from Your neighbors. Imagine several parcels with a Lovely Ocean View, Suddenly, someone on the Waterfrond decides to Improve his by Raising his land well above the others. Oh, But if you didn't like it he would Gladly sell you his Land, for an exorbitant Buyout Price of course.
These Limits are one way of avoiding Conflict, it puts everyone on (Pun Intended) a level Playing field.

Angel

Imagine several parcels with a Lovely Ocean View, Suddenly, someone on the Waterfront builts a giant wall blocking everyone's view, places several particle generators marring everyone's view, opens a club that attracts 40 people at a time so land owners can't even get in the sim to see lament their lack of view, or places scripted items that lag the sim to the point of uselessness.

There are no limits imposed to avoid those types of Conflict.

Why not?

If everyone deserves every kind of freedom to do what they will on their land, why are we terraformers, gardeners, landscapers and naturists so strictly limited in what we can do?

It's not fair, it's not right, it's not even reasonalby arguable. It's a blantant double standard, that's what it is.

I'm with you on this Khamon. Alot of people feel the terraforming restrictions make the mainland have a contiguous look. I agree it looks good, before its sold and built on. Don't get me wrong, I love the diversity and total randomness of it all, alot of people don't.

I don't think the terraformable sims look any worse than the rest of the mainland. I would love to see LL even try an experiment and sell a few more +/- 40 m sims.

Buy one of the old "color" sims. That's why we bought ours!

I suggested it as the Probable reason, Nowhere did i state that the reasoning would be Logicly, or reasonably applied to All aspects of the SL landscape. I will propose that at the time, they saw Major Land alterations as a more likely source of Irritation than scripts, or Builds. It wouldn't be the first time an Inventor Misjudged potential use or effect of his/her Invention.
Still, we can't Ignore the Posibility it all comes down to Software limitations regarding how connecting servers communicate.
Either way, it Isn't permitted, and i don't see Benefits of permitting it as Outweighing the Probable detriments. (Again, don't expect that to be a hard barrier to it being done anyway, Just look at Free Accounts).

Angel.

It wasn't LL's mistake Angel as much as it was ours for bringing it up in the first place. We foolishly complained about walls of land in 2003 before realizing that it was just part of the celebrated diversity. We've admitted our mistake in demanding it; is LL willing to admit their mistake in listening to us and willing to undo the damage?

While I'm tripping down memory lane, they first implemented a 45-degree rule that held land to no more terraforming than would allow a 45-degree slope to adjacent property. That didn't go over well at all. It may have worked better as a sixty or seventy degree rule to allow for steeper slopes without quite reaching a straight cliff face. Dunno, there was no experimentation, just on and off again then 4m limits.

What was the problem with that?

Was that before 12-23-03?

Here is what I see as a posibilty in this excersise... lets say that LL does change their minds back, and re-allows us the ability to terraform to our heart's content...

We all know it will be a matter of just days, before people begin to abuse it on the massive scale.

Then we will be right back to complaining again.

Personally, I would love to see it happen (except the eventual problems part). But then, there is also a small part of me that says.. "Just make all the land flat as hell!"

your solution pass by getting a private sim.

at no moment LL should give up such grief potent option

I agree. All the creative tools can be used in a negative fashion. A prim. A script. It is a double standard, and with the current limits, it's barely functional at all.

I've been making a park for someone, I was hired to 'landscape' the land. They offered me way more money than I accepted, but knowing how little I could do in the way of true landscaping, I couldn't in good conscience accept it. In order to give them any kind of value for their money, I ended up making structures for them, it turned into more of a building job. I wanted to do so much more for them.

Perhaps they could bring it back, but with some sort of relationship to the size of the parcel, and surrounding land... a 60-70 degree rule, as you suggest could work.

Yes that's the answer, sequester yourself onto a PI, abandon the Linden Estate, give up and go away ~ because I don't like the cosmopolitan look and feel of the Mainland and it's communities? ~ no, because they don't like how I might terraform my land.

This is not me railing against the compelling anarchical wisdom of the crowds, it's me wanting to be part of it, to contribute to it; but my skill is frowned upon and limited by those crowds. If they can build, script, barter, socialize, host, whatever they're heart desires on their land No matter what effect it has on their neighbors. Why can't I?

More to the point, after being talked down by a few people, if limiting terraforming to 4m is a good idea, because it preserves that contiguous landscape and ensures a nice environment for everyone, if people who want to terraform should be shunted off to private estates where they're actions won't adversely affect Philip's precious fucking commuuuuunity, then everything should work that way:

Avs should be limited per square meter and people who want to host perpetual crowds should be shunted off to private estates so they don't prevent their neighbors from being able to access their sim;

Ban lists, access lists, and security scripts should be eliminated and people who want privacy should be shunted off the private estates so their neighbors don't have to see ugly floating lines and be cast around like dishrags;

Texture load should be limited per square meter and people who want to overload an area should be shunted off to private estates so they don't lag their neighbors' fps to 3;

Scripting cycles should be limited per square meter and people who want to operate excessive scripts should be shunted off to private estates so they don't lag their neighbors' sim to Hell;

Underwater land should be limited to no build and people who want to build over water should be shunted off to private estates so they don't block access to the waterways.

I question why terraforming is singled out and picked on when all of these other examples, and several more, warrant just as much attention and, certainly, the same argument.