Should LL increase the terraform limits?

The +/- 4 meter terraform limit is one of the most annoying issues with owning land on the mainland. LL introduced it to try to decrapify the mainland, IMO it hasn't helped a bit. One of the most pleasurable things I remember as a newb was terraforming. One day my land would be an island, the next a mountain, an underwater club....

I think LL should consider selling mainland with the +/- 40 meters that they used to allow.

What do you think?

Yes please.

Yes, I have a mountain I would like to do more work on (Adding built in pathways and ways to form it so I can set a house or two on it's side, but it's virtually impossible the way it is now, I can't form it enough....and don't really want half the hill side being foundation)

I'd like this...terra limits on the mainlands are just far too restrictive to do anything interesting with.

And as I've pointed out in another thread, $1250 to get +/-100m is still a pretty steep price tag. That might be liquid cash for some folks, but for others its rent+food for a month.

Yes please!!

No, it would be just one more way for griefers to annoy people...

I voted no... now, I'm a terraformer.

The reason I voted no was because the mainland is meant to look consitant and realistic. Giving 100% terraformability on the mainland would kill the consistency and realism. On the mainland, we should be working within the contraints which makes for more realism.

If you want 100% terraformabilty, move to a private island. It was the main reason I did so.

-Ghoti

It's not realistic to terraform? In RL if I had a hill I wanted to do work with and I couldn't adjust it enough with a shovel, I'd buy a bull dozer and get it that way, here your hands are tied, which is unrealistic

I can see having a little less leway along sim borders, but when someone owns a full sim, they should be able to make more adjustments

Being someone who will never, ever own land that is not terraformable to +40/-40, my opinion is that it is too much for hacked up sims with small parcels because of the damage it can do aesthetically. However, what would be a cool idea is if a contiguous set of mainland sims were released with the smallest parcel size being 4096 and no ability to make smaller parcels. I say this after watching what land owners do to terraformable land when they don't understand how to work with it and don't care about the effect of deciding to raise your tiny little section up to 40m does to your neighbors. Terraformable land in the hands of someone who knows how to sculpt with it is gorgeous and results in some of the best terrains in SL.

That being said, I would like to see more terraformable land if for no other reason than to bring the price down. Some Land Barons (not you, darlin' ) treat terraformable land like it is made of gold and price it into the stratosphere ($30L sqm, anyone?) which no one in their right mind is going to pay. No land in SL is worth $30L a sqm....

It was a serious mistake for us to insist on 4m terraforming limits. It was worth a try too; but it only flies in the face of "Your World, Your Imagination." We were wrong LL! Hear our cry!

They could at least be raised to 10-15m on coowned sims and possibly 40 or more if someone, or a group, owns all the non-Linden land in a sim. But that requires flexibility and change.

Remember the forty-five degree rule? That still seems like a good idea on paper. I never understood why it was so disasterous; but it unarguably created a lot of jags and holes and ugly terrain that could never be repaired until it was coded out. I wonder if a steeper incline would work better, maybe a sixty or seventy degree rule. it's keep straightup cliffs off the horizon but still lend quite a bit of flexibility.

Maybe they'll talk about this in Views sessions. Or is that mostly estate driven?

I agree that terraform limits should be raised or uncapped I think the real solution is change over distance not change from original.

What about limiting the +/- height adjustment that you could make based on the number of sqaure meters the property is.

For instance, if you have a 512m2 plot, your terraforming abilities are the same as they are right now.

If you own 2048m2 your +/- adjustment would be more.

This would eliminate every newbie 512m2 plot being 80m apart in height. Differences in height on each plot of land is not usually too crazy, it's the differences between owners ideas that make things look unusual.

Something like this

512 = +/- 4m
1024 = +/- 6m
2048 = +/- 8m
4096 = +/- 10m
8192 = +/- 16m
16384 = +/- 32m
32768 = +/- 64m
64536 = +/- 100m

That way sim owners get the same options as island owners, and First Land owners and smaller plots don't look any different than they do today.

Just a thought.

EDIT: Looks like Jon had a similar idea as I did while I was writing this

I could go along with that Although I would say that it should taper down along Property boarders so it blends a little more naturally

Is that a technical term?

I'm not sure what to vote. Terraforming can be used to grief, i've seen it happen in the old sims. But like you, I love terraforming and making little rivers or hills.

Good point. I agree.

It should be +/- 4 meters within 5 meters of a land border, with a mutual border agreement that if you drop -4 the neighboring land may also drop -4(below you) in effect laddering the land restrictions based on agreement between owners. Outside the 5 meter zone around borders I think terraforming should have lesser restrictions.

I'd like to see some mainland sims which have minimum parcel sizes (ie: you can't split the parcel less than 1024 m2 or something similar).

Those sorts of mainland sims would be good candidates for looser terraforming limits.

Yes, this is a good idea as well, the limit in terraforming could be constrained by what borders it rather than it's original default.

That way, you could buy up large amounts of land and terraform to your hearts content.

On the positive side, maybe people would stop junking up lakes by building stuff that is not appropriate for water on them.

On the negative side, most of the lakes would disappear.

I certainly would like to be able to do a bit more teraforming that I can on my new plot. Maybe they could increae the limits to +/-10 instead of +/- 4; that would give most landscapers the flexibility to create something interesting and attractive.

That is a very good idea.

Make a voting proposal. I'll throw my 10 votes behind it.

You'd probably like the real world to be constant too..yet we have jutting columns of stone with nearly sheer drops in areas of the world. Buttes anyone? Badlands?

In order to have more realism there should be more room to adjust.

That's how this worked:

Some of the places that look best to me in SL are the places that look like big tall mountain ranges. The 4 meter adjustment range prevents these neat looking places from being made

I do not want constant, I want realistic. One only need look at the Color named sims (the old old sims with lots of terraformabilty) to see the chaos that develops from too much terraforming ability in the hands of people that don't give a shit.

Yes, I'm all for a badlands area (I think the Lindens made one, near Ahern somewhere?) with buttes and all that... the thing is, their's looks realistic. Parcels pancaked as high as possible right along the parcel lines look like shit.

-Ghoti