Nice game, but...

The way the game is set up now, this is unrealistic. Because the game charges you a monthly fee based on the amount of land you own, IN ADDITION to having to pay for the land up front (the newbie plot next to my house is going for L$3000 currently). So 512 meters of road costs the same as building a house. Even if they are going to charge for building roads, this seems unreasonable to me.

And Infrastructure in a game like this is something that I think is reasonable to expect for free.

Thanks. I will do that.

So because not everyone wants roads no one should have roads?

Since it is simulating the real world I think infrastructure makes sense. At least as an option if nothing else. As a new player, I didnt have a choice...the plots I could afford were all in the middle of fields or even burried in the middle of several houses.

Frack,

There's one other thing I forgot to mention: There are many roads winding through the mainland and they all belong to Linden Lab, so nobody has to buy them. You can probably find a nice roadside plot at a reasonable price. While I rarely see anyone driving on the roads, I often find myself flying along roads when I'm exploring, so they do serve a function.

I'll look for them...the only first land plots are way way away from any roads. Maybe in a month or so I can buy one of those.

"The way the game is set up now, this is unrealistic. Because the game charges you a monthly fee based on the amount of land you own"

What are you after, a free lunch?

"So 512 meters of road costs the same as building a house."

Land is land is land. You don't get it at a cheaper or more expensive price depending on what you want to build on it.

"And Infrastructure in a game like this is something that I think is reasonable to expect for free."

Why on earth do you assume that? They provide a virtual world for us, not them, to build in. That's the attraction of it.

Why is having "infrastructure" so important to you anyway?

Besides, you're obviously not looking hard enough. There are MANY planned neighbourhoods in various sims about the place, complete with roads, trees, and housing plots of a conventional nature.

But I guess you'll be explaining how it's unfair to have to buy a plot of land if you want to live on it.

Life IS hard for the cheapskate!

Musuko.

You clearly don't own real estate in Reality. Ever heard of property taxes?

P2

Asking for infrastructure = free lunch? Huh?

Why stop there? Why not charge for each polygon and texture you use. And for each change you make? If I opposed those kinds of changes would I still be after a free lunch?

Why is asking for infrastructure unreasonable?


Why not?

It SHOULD be free anyway IMO.


Because the game is simulating the real world, and that is how it works in teh real world. It seems like common sense to me.

Judging from the responses in this thread, I am not alone in thinking that.


Really? Then please explain to me why there is a sky, and a moon, and trees and grass and water in the world to begin with. Why are they deciding all those things for us...it is supposed to be a world for US to build in, right?

Was it also unreasonable for them to include all that stuff for free?


I already explained why. Because it adds to the experience for me. In the same way that the trees/water/sky/moon add to the experience.

Hey, I thought this was a "platform", and not a game. If so, why cant we have whatever we want?


Not really, because I can see that this is obviously a game, and not a platform.


I agree. How much did you pay for the sky/trees/moon/water and other various free services? Why are you leeching off the developers? Dont be such a cheapskate, heh heh

In the real world you have to pay for the materials to build your house too. How far would you like to go?

Obviously, none of you seems to have a problem with getting some stuff for free. The only difference in our opinions is on the degree.

I look at gaining skills, such as other 'games' have, learning skills in SL.
Any game has basic materials that cost you nothing but time to gather and work with. the prim for example is one of those free items in SL but, learning to use them takes skill. Anything in SL takes practice. Learning to build, texture, animate, script.... any of those skills you learn, the more you practice that skill the better you become at it.
It's all in the way you look at it

And clearly they agree with you as much of the old mainland is covered in linden roads that go from sim to sim. Actually, the older the land, the more linden infrastructure there seems to be in it. Check out sims like Bodega and Davenport, Hooper... you'll find long stretches of road that go from sim to sim, really nice, massive linden bridges. The city sims (like Miramare) are loaded with it. As is Boardman and Brown.

They are trying to get away from that now, which is too bad because the content guy's work kicked ass. You really have to see the bridge in Hooper, it's fab.

What I don't get is when people moan about how conventionally we build when we could make anything. But LL has already set up a frame of reference, as you pointed out, with lakes, rivers, oceans, land.. trees... Why is it such a stretch to conclude that infrastructure and conventional looking builds would work best in a world that clearly mimics our own?



Bridge built by Xenon Linden in Hooper:

Actually, I rather agree about the infrastructure point; we do have trees and grass and so on, this is a partial simulation of RL rather than just a blank virtual pixel space, and it's aesthetically appropriate (to me at least) to have things that are linked to that. There's a certain resonance.

The other thing is that it's noce to have some things that you know are not just going to disappear and the land is subdivided and turned into a dozen spinning ad cubes.

First land parcels are almost always a crap shoot. It would be interesting to find out how many landowners in SL still have their first land parcel after 3 months, my guess is that the number is pretty small. It is easier to assume right from the start that you are going to resell your first land and buy with an eye towards resale value. First land gives you a sandbox to start playing in, it is there that you will meet with the reality of prim limits and start understanding how to live within your prim means. You will also get an idea of what you actually want to do on land, which doesn't always involve putting up a prefab house. Land is your space to create, which could be a house, a store, a garden, a medieval tower, a club, an airport, there are endless possibilities. People build underwater and people build in the sky, there are so many options and your only real limitation is prim allotments, which are based on how much land you own in a given sim.

Buy your first land and play, that's what it's there for. You may decide to stay where you are at. You may decide that you don't want to own land at all and would rather rent in a zoned sim. You may decide that you want a bigger parcel in a nicer sim with more infrastructure.

Most of the First Land plots don't have roads initially, no.

But look for a section of "protected land" winding through the sim. That will be a road, eventually. That's one reason The Coonspiracy bought the parcels in Noonkkot that we did... it's all going to be roadside one day.

They do. It's L$10 per texture you upload, and US$5 for an extra 117 prims (which is how you pay for polygons).

But you start with a free library of textures, and free primitives.


That does look pretty sweet. I've been basing most of my impressions off the newbie areas. I havnt explored the landscape a lot yet.

Frack, welcome to Second Life!

I hope you do stay and enjoy sharing what our wonderful community of residents is building.

If you like road systems, let me let you in on a secret. One of my favourite things to do in SL is get on my BMX, teleport to the very pretty Infohub complex at Waterhead (look for the building by the lake with a parking lot and totem pole), then start cycling.

You can almost smell the pine on the breeze around there, and there's virtual kilometres of attractive lakeside roads for you to enjoy.

Have fun!

Prims aren't free. In a lot of ways prims are what you buy land for.
Oh, most of it sucks, never fear. But some sucks less than most. Check out Abbotts and Rodeo, for example.

Frack, you seem to want it all to be free...free land, free everything.

You do realise that a huge, complex system like Second Life costs money, right? You do realise that companies have to run at cost or above, right?

You do realise that being offered some free content doesn't give you the right to demand the rest be free, right?

Musuko.

I will have to look for them tonight. So far all I have seen are the white trash newbie lots in the middle of fields, heh heh

All that is missing is a car on blocks on my front lawn.

I know. How dare I want to enjoy the game, heh heh

Um...yeah. As I recall I havnt complained about their pricing structure. Why are you so defensive?

I'm not demanding the rest for free. I am demanding roads for free. Actually, come to think of it, I havnt "demanded" anything.

Why are you exaggerating my argument?

I got free land with my premium account, and it came with 117 primitive limit free. I also got unlimited use of textures on those primitives for free, as long as it is from the in-game library...I am only charged for textures I upload myself.

As long as there are SOME areas that I like, I could live with the fact that most of it sucks. I'll do my time in the newbie area until I can afford to move.

I don't know if anyone has posted this on this thread or not... I admit I didn't read the whole thread.... just up to the part where the discussion concerned whether or not SL is a game.


Anyway... the Man himself says it is not a game so I think that is what we should go by.



/139/65/98819/1.html#post978622

Hey Frack, one the things I always suggest to newbies is to head to Abbotts Aerodome. There are skyship tours of SL departing there on a regular basis and there are 3 or 4 different routes IIRC. You can see a lot of great areas at a nice pace just sitting and relaxing in the ship. Try Sky Diving while you are at Abbotts, too...

Not quite.

Your virtual "land" exists in Second Life whether a resident owns it or not. It therefore, in and of itself, is a constant wrt computing resources; a part of the sim's polymesh geometry.

What we pay for as residents is computing resources. And those are, afaik, measured by the number of prims you can rez and allow to remain persistant in the world even when you aren't online. So the land and the prims are tied together. You don't pay for one and get the other free.

I consider it a game inasmuch as entertainment is the primary purpose of the software. However, it isn't a traditional game by any means, because there is no ultimate goal inherent to it, and it lacks all the traditional game mechanisms of play (unless they are created for a particular sim).

It's really more of a social environment than anything, although the tools allow for the creation of games within it.

However, being as most entertainment-based software is considered a 'game' in loose jargon, I don't mind it being referred to as such.

Also, premium accounts do not come with free land, but rather they come with the privilege of being allowed to own land. You have to buy the land, and pay upkeep for any land over a certain amount. There is, ultimately, a limit on how much land can be made in SL, even if that limit is very large, because it does have to be stored in digital format, and computed by processor power. The same for any non-land prims which persist.

Selene, didn't he also say 1.9 would fix bugs? And havok was coming?

Oh yeah..

So why should what he says sl is or not affect how we see it?