Save us from the Lindens

I miss point to point travel, especially since everything I seem to want to visit is at least 2 sims away from a telehub and my poor AV gets whacked by half-rezzed floating objects.

Thanks for the headsup Pen but that's not why the hotline exists. Let the opposition abuse the system. We'll stick to the evils of draining Di's lifeforce under the heavy burden of logical debate in the open forum.

What I hate is that a month after they put point to point in, everyone will treat it like it's been here forever. But the fear of a few who just dig their heels in, means that we may never get this simple, common sense idea.

What could be wrong with being allowed to go where you want. Job done.

Contrary to popular assumption, money is not what everything in the universe revolves around:

Commercial zones have alot to do with telehubs.

Telehubs have nothing to do with commercial zones.

Part of the original reason Telehubs showed up was because people used to complain about per-pay Point to Point teleportation.

The reason people used to complain about Point to Point teleportation was the same as the reason people complain about telehubs today: Its a pain.

When you want to get from point A to B, you want to get from point A to B. You dont want to walk, you dont want to fly. You want to get there. Its part of the assumption that because you are handling an artificial, digital world, you'd be capable of moving from point to point as easily and elegently as pointing a browser to a URL resource.

Commercial zones will adapt, just like they adapted to the formation of telehubs. They will adapt to the return of P2P reality. Human greed will make sure commerce will always adapt to the best way of extracting money from any given circumstance. If anything, the economy is not what i'm worried about here.

One true issue is that lag hotspots like clubs and malls will feel less obligated to stay away from sims that have been spared so far by being far away from telehubs. But.. then again, i've allready seen countless malls and clubs that one day have just ploped right in the center of a quiet nature sim that was far away from the telehub - just because someone sold large sections of land in that area for relativly cheap. No sim is safe, even today.

This is also not the reason they succeed and stay. Some of these clubs and casinos seem to make dwell just fine, being far away from the telehub by 4 or more sims.

LindenLab's reason for prefering to limit P2P teleportation - first by making people pay and then by introducing telehubs - was purely social. Check the forum archives for the background.

Like There.Com at the time, LindenLab felt that direct point-to-point teleportation will fragment the world and its community. Both have tried to place artificial restrictions on teleporting to combat this problem. However, both have not concidered or could forsee what have happened eventualy:

- The community splitted anyway. This is how sociaty works. There is no one true constant sociaty - people gravitate toward hanging with people who share their intrests.

- Telehubs never became a center of sharing information or meeting new people. When was the last time you've seen anyone rez at a telehub and not fly away as soon as the world rendered sufficintly to fly without lag?

- We have a large and complex road system, but its barely used. The reason is not just that "vehicles do not work so well in SecondLife", but also because its downright stupid. Sure, riding a car from place to place can be "fun" and "realistic", but it would not be what you want to do whenever you want to reach any destination in SL. Its a waste of time that most of us do not really have.

And finally, there's always the best test for finding if an idea works right or wrong: The workaround test. Simply put - flight-speed and auto-nav scripts such as Roam are not here to "enhance the Telehub experience". They're here to help you either fight or circumvent the telehub "problem". People concider telehubs to be a pain, people work around them.

I think telehubs are pretty much nothing but a pain on the mainland and should be replaced by direct point-to-point teleportation, for free. Because so far, in all the virtual worlds i've been to, this seems to be the only option that actually makes sense.

Bah! I know you are right Khamon. I thought that even after I posted it. But I won't take back what I said because I already put it out there. I'm not very ruthless, else I would have posted something in the Hotline myself.

Anyway, you're right and I'm sorry.

Frankly, silly as it seems, I support the idea of being able to make land nonteleportable. People will never understand that we can't realistically expect privacy on The Grid All Hail The Central Grid. Ergo, a necessary concession will be allowing them to set their parcels with a nonteleportabilty feature so that avs can't just pop in on them unannounced.

As far as the US$ value of telehub land is concerned, I believe the economy will recover rather quickly from LL compensating telehub land owners with some bonus of Lindens. The resultant growth in population and premium land owners will balance the market in due time.

The economy will continue to die a slow death if the outdated notions of telehubs, singular community, and central grid are enforced to maintain the original dream. We owe a lot to that dream. But at this point, it's holding back the development and future of Linden Lab and Second Life.

actually to contradict, I'd love to drive out on the open road with a girl on my arm. Try out There.com. Their vehicles are second to none, they handle really well, and they're easy to drive. I love them to bits. That's one of the reasons I still maintain a There account. If I could have a car in SL that drove as well as the There cars, there'd be steady traffic on the roads as people hop in their motor and burn up their miles, not to get from A to B, but cause it's fun.

We do need Point 2 Point teleporting, I agree totally. I just wanted to say I would use the roads, if cars were even half decent here.

Hubs do not need to be pre-fab'd. In every MMO of any kind I have ever played, if they don't exist, social hubs emerge. I can't think of a better example than the east commons tunnel in Everquest, which was never meant to be a huge social junction, vs. the city of Freeport, which was meant to be one but is now a ghost town. Same to some degree in every game I know. It is well documented in the dev journals that frequently the best social interaction hotspots are emergent, not planned. Sort of the difference between the town hall Teen Center and the woods behind Caldors.

However, up to date games that seem to implement what the customers want, as opposed to what they're told is good for them, all seem to be implementing advanced notions of teleporting. EQ recently expanded the mage ability to call players to their side, taking out the boring travel and often danger. WoW has hearthstones, summoning, party stones, etc.

And, the things that wind up being the hubs in the end are always the same. The one point where it is easiest to get to any other will win. SL attempts to flatten that by making no one hub infinitely more valuable than another, however, land prices etc. work against that in SL. A super hub would become the most sought after, or shunned depending on lag, area, and the populace would say no fair.

The first 20 times you flew, you probably gaped out the window amazed by the checkered ordered of the receding land, etc. etc. But now I bet you either just pull out your book, wait to be able to pull out your laptop, or just fall asleep.

CoH has an interesting thing called Explorer Badges. You get them for basically travelling around. Sequences and combos of them get you gifts and such. So, there is a point to travel and exploration. I would submit that after your first few weeks, SL provides no such motivation, unless you're just in the mood to browse. When I log in, there are four places I always go. I find it frustrating to have to fly between them at all. This may never change, since the only people really capable of building a long term system to make travelling actually have some valuiea in the world are the Lindens. Nobody else has access to the entire grid to the point that would be required, and the Lindens typically shun adding any "point" to anything in the world, preferring to leave that to the player base, which in this case, has made a couple of interesting efforts, but nothing that really "works" the way you would expect it too.

Interesting problem this travel thing. Poll gamers with a list though, and if travel is on it, it'll rate high in the "I hate it" scores. Earth and beyond, a stable, attractive and fairly deep game largely based on extensive travel, is now nothing more than gamer history.

One simple suggestion, possibly fun for noobs. You can't port to a hub unless you go there to "register". You need x hubs in y combo to get z. Something more interesting ya know.

I fear that a few people that are very out spoke will get a change that is not good for Second Life in general. A few people that want instant gratification will ruin the entire grid for now and forever more.

What could be wrong with forcing people to see more then just their backyard?

I fear that a few people that are very out spoke will prevent a change that is good for Second Life in general. A few people that want instant profit will ruin the entire grid for now and forever more.

What could be wrong with forcing business owners to advertise rather than rely on trapping people?

Now this I agree with

I own land, but not at a telehub. I don't do business. I could care less where my little plot of land is. I don't like the lag that the TH cause, but I STILL think that P2P is a bad idea. I really think that there are far reaching consequences for switching to P2P that most people can't see. I am unable to see what will or will not happen to SL if we switch, but I don't think P2P is the answer to the unknown question.

I think there are many of us on both sides of the issue that believe our point is the right way for SL to go into the future with. I really think that both sides have self serving motives, also. I have yet to hear a reason for me to be if favor of point to point, but that is me.

I used to be all for telehubs, because as a wide-eyed and bushy tailed urban planning undergrad the fabric of my being almost yearns for some sort of order in the chaotic, blighted suburbia of 90% of the main grid.

The telehubs were supposed to be a grand experiment in "what if", back in 1.1. The lindens didn't really give them much fanfare, they just sorta... dropped them in.

My earliest memory of telehub stuff is when living in slate, I noticed a Linden held an amount of land that was roughly the size of the telehub. As Slate was at the time one of the most remote areas on the grid (edge of the world, residential), I remember IMing the linden asking them not to put a telehub there.

They didn't, incidentally.

Anyways, over time, we have the current situation; dozens of megamalls and other dwell-trapping buildings crowding around telehubs without any semblence of order or common decency. They hope to snag passerby within their huge walls.

It saddens me to say this, but I was wrong

Telehubs, as they are, are broken. They serve almost antithetical to what they were designed for. There are about half a dozen ways I can think of to make the concept better, but, like all good ideas, they require work, time, effort, and dedication, stuff which the thinly-spread Content Lindens rarely have the resources for.

P2p please, I am broken.

LF

There are always "far reaching consequences" when it comes to innovation. Mass transit was supposed to destroy the auto industry; VCR's were going to to destroy Hollywood; MP3's were going to eliminate music around the world; and the Internet was supposed to burn every bookstore to the ground. None of these (increasingly hyperbolic) scenarios have happened. We still have cars, Hollywood still makes movies, iTunes is opening up whole new venues of music sales, and I haven't seen a single, smoldering Barnes & Noble to date.

maybe this is the best course of action then, fix the telehubs. P2P may be a better option the the current system, but maybe the best system is fixing the telehubs? I am not sure how you can do this at this point in time, but maybe there are other options that may be even better then the all or nothing systems that most people want.

The best thing to do is to make them draws themselves. If you want them to be social and economic hubs, you have to provide a reason for people to go there.

For instance, you could show a live ticker of the going rates for all the major $L trading houses. You could show the top 10 forum threads. You could show a running ticker of how much money is being spent right now. You could add social networking games, have billboards to announce important information (downtime, patches, town hall info, etc.). You could also redesign them to be flyer-friendly, have ample seating for hanging out, and built well into the surrounding areas.

That's a start.

But I don't think the Lindens have time for that.

I smell another building contest...

LF

MP3s have been shown to decrease music sales, why else do you think that the RIAA is wanting to put all the P2P out of business? The internet was not against book store, but it does hurt Libraries. Usage of a library is way down since the internet came about. Wal Marts are great places to save some money. But are they good for the small communities that they move into? That is debatable. Lots of Mom and Pop little businesses have gone under because of the big box stores moving in to town. Everything has an effect on everything else. We can't always predict what will and will not happen with change.

If you read the RIAA funded reports, then yeah. However, hard data seems to say otherwise, as well as other studies. Music sales increase in areas of the US where piracy is rampant. (read: college campuses)



Source?

I would argue the same reason they want to catch shop lifters and bootleggers. Don't mistake MP3 with "illegal file trading." MP3's have spawned markets such as MP3 players, Podcasts, and iTunes. Music theft is one thing, MP3 technology is something else.

Maybe so, but is that a bad change? Library usage is down, but I'd wager it's because people can look what they need up online. Library use being down is a sign of change, sure, but is it a bad sign?

I'll cede this point with the single addendum that while Wal-Mart may hurt mom and pop stores, if a mom or pop becomes a Wal-Mart employee, they might end up with better benefits than they would owning their own store.

No, we can't, but the inability to predeict something is not a reason to halt change. It's not a reason to eliminate a feature or a tool. Some changes are bad, some changes are good, and some changes are just changes.

Makes perfect sense to me!

This is not LL's assertion, they don't have to "prove" anything. You are allowed to think for yourself. Find a telehub (other than a squeaky new one), and look at what's around it.

When I say "defacto commercial zones", I mean DEFACTO commercial zones -- they have not been somehow designated as commercial zones, but they may as well have been. This is pretty obvious.

Can anyone argue that telehubs aren't defacto commercial zones? Find me a neat and proper victorian house that is adjacent to the telehub in a telehub sim. Eye betyakant.

Buster

Does your use of "defacto commercial zone" require that commerce actually take place, as in people are actually buying stuff? Or is it sufficient that the builds around telehubs are mostly stores, and their success of lack of success aren't part of the definition.

I ask not to challenge your assertion, only to make sure that Im on the same page with you.

But Anshe SL is a tool not a game. It should be like a web browser to facilitate commerce.

Here here. If the purpose is to create a community then do things that create a community. I have plenty of time logged in my corsair flying around the grid and not teleporting. But when I wat to go somewhere, it is very frustrating to show up in a commercail zone and get trapped in a rezzing mallspace. Right now ther eis nothing about telehubs that creates a community.

When was the last time you saw thrity people hanging out at a telehub that was not the wa?

Not often I find myself agreeing with you, but here we are definitely on the same wavelength...

Link to my observations elsewhere

Your observations are completely at odds with my experiences: