Is telehub land value more important than direct teleporting?

Telehub land is some of the most prized land to own for business purposes. However, many residents want direct teleportation. Should progress on this feature be held up because of the impact it would have on the value of telehub land, or is change a risk that one takes when you buy anything?

Telehub land will remain valuable as was explained in other threads, because they are central gathering locations, and most new players, and many old ones, don't know the "special boutiques" they are supposed to directly teleport to, to buy "the better products". The "better creators" will still need to have some presence at telehubs for this reason. p2p TP will only reconfigure the scene, not remove it.

I still like the telehubs but I dont stay at one long enough to even let things rez, so the value issue is zero to me. But I like the Telehubs better than point to point TP so I had to vote Other

Why do you like them if you don't even wait for stuff to rez?

Most people I see at hubs just fly straight up and out.

Moreover, they did not have the effect that LL wanted - to get us to socialize more. They simply turned into lag traps.

They also can make or break businesses dependent upon proximity. Let's face it, regardless of the cost, not everyone can get land near a hub, it's just physically impossible.

I think its a shame that in order to TP, one has to bear that lag, getting caught in buildings that don't rezz, etc.

So I answered no.

I like them simply because I still see things I may want to see as I fly along to my destination..... maybe its just me but even in UO I seldom used runes for direct teleporting.... just seemd I would miss something

Telehubs are important not because of land value, but because they create an area where commercial centers tend to develop. Land value is high because commercial centers tend to be around it.

It's kinda like a RL highway... if your city is directly on a major freeway exchange system, you're going to have a lot of through traffic, which is a Good Thing for commercial services.

Telehubs are SL's public transportation system.

The hubs need to be expanded service-wise... some ideas might include grid-wide ad space, a direct tie-in to the Voting system (oooooh, there's an idea), Linden announcements that need to be disseminated, objects that are released by the lindens, and so forth. Give people a reason to want to stop at a telehub for more than half a second.

Also, if we remove telehubs and go back to point-to-point teleportation, you are destroying the concept of distance in our fragile little social world. Yes yes, I know, "BUT I DONT NAVIGATE THE WEB THIS WAY FUH FUH FUH"... great. This ain't the web, it's SUPPOSED to feel, act, and be a virtual WORLD, not a 3d internets. If anything, I feel they should try restricting transportation more, at least as an experiment. Space out the telehubs more, perhaps.

LF

I don't shop there but other people do.

This is a complex issue, and cannot be boiled down to simply a question of maintaining land values.

This discussion seems to come up ad infinitum, and every time, folks on both sides of the telehub debate make logical and valid arguments to plead their perspective on the issue, and we spin around to exactly where we started from.

About the only thing about this issue I think everyone could agree on, is that it is a very controversial one.

The idea (I think) to get rid of direct teleportation might had been to create 'social centers'(like malls). This is just a little theory. Perhaps telehubs might had been suggeted to create these.

With direct teleportation, land value around them (of course) drops, without a doubt. Which doesn't bother me any. Where as yes, I would agree that direct teleportation would be better (since we know SL is capable of doing it).

Perhaps we'll see a decline in mall centers if direct teleportation were implented. But then again, if it were implemented, there would be no defination on what would be considered a 'hot spot' since you could basically go 'anywhere'. Which people do anyway.

I'd like to see direct teleportation implented again.

It is true. The point that we keep spinning around is that LL have openly stated that their planned objectives have never been met by the telehub system of transportation. For that matter, neither have any of their planned vehicle-related objectives. At some point, I'm hoping that a Linden will end all this circular debate by clearly stating their intentions.

The options are few:

Implement P2P and leave the hubs in place
Implement P2P and eliminate telehubs
Leave everything as is

There are times that we need for LL to treat us like children and say "this is how it is and how it's going to be so shut up about it already." Some of us will cheer, some will pout, a few will continue to complain for a while. But at least we'll know what to expect.

Hmm. I don't think I've ever personally observed a group of avatars voluntarily gathering at a telehub. Sure, I'll occasionally bump into another av or two (being too lagged to avoid them)... but, I mean, you could call flypaper a "gathering place" too, but that doesn't mean the flies want to be there.

My opinion is that the system just doesn't work too well. The lag that arrives with rapid streaming and the various sim crossing issues far outweigh any positive aspects that telehubs could possibly have. If it were up to me, I'd call the issue moot for now, and ditch telehubs until the system can handle rapid rezzing as you fly and crossing a sim border consistently and smoothly. When that happens, when we can pop in, take off, and fly to where we want to go without a hitch, then we might want to revisit the issue and see if telehubs are worth having. It is a neat concept, after all.

But, for some reason, it's not up to me.

There are some other additional options, I think. My preference would be to leave things as they are, of course. But assuming that isn't an option, here are a couple other ideas:

-resident developed p2p teleport
-a new p2p teleport continent
-restricting p2p teleport to PG sims only
-p2p teleport for a fee
-additional telehubs
-additional teleport options, such as p2p to any group land you're an officer of
-multiple home locations

Each of the ideas above could be debated on their own, and I don't agree with all of them. Just pointing out that this may not have to be a black/white - win/lose kind of issue. Possibly the answer is just us getting creative enough to find a solution that provides the most options with the least impact.

Personally, I'd be highly in favour of Point2Point teleport, despite owning (and co-owning) large tracts of telehub land. The fact of the matter is, telehubs are an artificial encumberment, that have failed in their intended purpose.

-Adam

I think telehubs may be on the way out, and P2P on the way in, because of some decisions LL may have to make about airspace utilization as they roll the next couple of major releases out.

We already have the issue of folks perodically getting bounced off-course by aggressive home security routines. If that were the only thing on the horizon, LL's current stance (publish guidelines and invite ARs on anyone who doesn't stick to them) might hold the course. That seems to be the biggest conflict right now over who gets to do what with airspace.

But as I understand it, Havok II is going to make larger and more reliable physical objects practical. And, somewhere along the line, a more polished way of talking to outside hosts will replace the current XML-RPC implementation.

Suddenly, we're looking at the cityscape from BladeRunner...huge lit-up advertising bots driftin their way across The Grid on three-hour cycles, showing Quicktime ads for Dance Poles R Us, whether you want so see them or not (much less bump into them at 200m).

Now there's something to please a property owner, right? A 145-prim robo-blimp, controlled by a server in Hong Kong, ambling across your 4096m estate at 3m/minute, blaring every media stream known to avie-kind, and all fueled by your sim's resources?

So that's what I think is brewing: If these things are about to become possible, it seems to me the Lindens at some point are going to *have* to re-define airspace usage...maybe a "personal ceiling" level to please both ground-based and skybox-living property owners, an obstruction-free "pilot" level for vehicle owners, and a "commercial" level...?

Or maybe introduce the concept of traffic lanes. Say you can only set autopiloted vehicles to cross sims within x meters of the corner, and at altitude y. But what happens to the property values below those routes? The same thing, I suppose, that happens to neighborhoods when an airport goes in nearby. (Still, it'd be a cool visual...like Coruscant, with that constant web of sky traffic

Whatever they do, I think the Lindens' need to re-work airspace usage policy will inevitably lead to a demand for P2P TP's for folks who just want to pop over to a mainland event without filing a flight plan or whetever it's eventually going to take. And that will lead to the death of the telehub.

Frankly, that suits me fine. I'm a member of the post-Mall generation, anyway. I'll travel a long distance to a nicely-done, scenic boutique, (PixelDolls, L&F Gecko, etc.), but I avoid cookie-cutter malls in both lives.

-- jj

these things are already "possible", I don't think the planned changes have anything to do with those things. You can already make an unattended blade-runner-style adbot. (Ok, so you will be able to make a more complex one, but you can make a plenty complex one now.)

So I don't think those factors have any effect.

Buster

It is extremely frustrating when Linden changes things in ways that devalue land or work effort. Its hard to figure out what to invest your time in when you know the rules are going to change over and over and over.

I think telehubs were a bad idea anyway. I agree there is nothing social about them. I always get the hell out of there before all the junk starts rezzing and it gets laggy.

I like the compromise where land owners can "turn on" teleport to their land for a small weekly L$ fee. (SMALL!) Existing teleport land would still have an advantage then because they would not have to pay for direct teleport tunred on, and people would still use the teleport hubs to go places that did not have their own teleports.

Clubs, malls, attractions and events could easily afford a small fee, so that would remove some of the traffic from the hubs.

Buster

Thats not just SL or LL, Buster. Thats Capitalism, buddy. I'm sure carriage companies were pissed to see the automotive industry take off... but thats the name of the game.

CAPITALISM!!!!

yay!

Nah, they're not really important. Lets open up Point-to-Point transportation... LL, in with the new!!! Yay capitalism!!

Commercial centers developed around them because it is where people are forced to go, thus the land value is high. The land value is not high because of the commercial centers, but because of the fact that people are corraled through these points on their way to where they really want to go. The commerical centers developed there in hopes to snag the attention of people flying through, and perhaps grab them since people hate flying to places ultimately and would rather just go right to something.

Telehubs are not a magic bullet for business - two of my stores that are furthest from telehubs - Mavericks and Inari do 50% of my business - and I have four stores that are very close to telehubs.

It is so frustrating to be a creator/entrepreneur in SL and feel almost compelled to either rent a bunch of telehub mall space from enterprising land barons, or buy land around several busy telehubs in order to be a successful businessperson. Why isn't it possible to buy a couple large pieces of property, set up stores and properly advertise them in a way that will reach potential buyers grid-wide? This is supposed to be virtual reality where travel and interaction with others is facilitated, not hindered by a totally artificial construct like a telehub.

SL is supposed to be a game that has no "winners" or pre-set goals; right now it feels like the goal is to buy as much land in close proximity to a telehub as you can afford and set up shoddy-looking, cookie-cutter malls. The reinstatement of (free) point-to-point teleporting would no doubt anger folks who have spent a lot of money buying telehub plots. But LL has shown time after time that they are willing to make changes like this if the changes are in the interest of the greater good and the long-term success of SL.

LL takes a mostly laissez-faire standpoint when it comes to any sort of zoning that falls outside the constructs of the rating of a sim (PG or M). I think that enabling point-to-point teleport fits nicely in with this type of hands-off policy. Now that residents have the ability to buy private islands, there is a recourse for those who want to live in a more controlled environment where land owners can choose to impose zoning on a sim.

I suspect that when LL is ready to implement their forthcoming Classified Advertising section on the Find menu, they will also look at getting rid of or modifying the telehub system. I'm holding off on buying any new land until I figure out what's going on, and with the number of plots I see staying on the market lately, I suspect others are doing the same.

True, but doesn't it seem that one of the reasons we don't see more of this stuff is because performance issues are so tricky?

I just think a lower hurdle will mean more folks are tempted to try it, is all.

-- jj

Um, this is not the same as what happened to the carriages companies. It would be like the government coming in a removing all the roads and saying that no new roads would be built.

I don't look at telehubs staying because of the land value, I like the idea that I need to fly to get where I am going. With the point to point, I think we would lose a lot of what makes second life second life. The real question is not wheither the land value is overriding the point to point that people want, but how many really want point to point, and how many don't want point to point. There are many reasons that people don't want point to point, not all of them are economical.

*wild appluase* I couldn't agree with you more Beryl.

Rubbish.

This is the shopkeepers' view. "Highways are good if they weave in and out of the city center cause they go past my store window".

Never mind the fact it's much, MUCH slower for the people who don't want whatever it is you're selling, and are delayed by having to go VIA your little store.

Nobody denies in the USA it was a GOOD thing when freeways came. You can now get places much faster than when you had to wind through town after town.

There is a sick attitude in SL where shop keepers are of this mindset "How can I trap a customer into coming to my store, I know, plague the telehubs, trap them, drag them in".

We need a whole new line of thinking. Try this "How can I excite, interest and attract customers into my stores". Let the people go directly wherever they want. They should not be trapped into struggling past laggy stores, they should instead teleport directly to stores BECAUSE they want to, and they want to so much, they seek that store out directly. It can be done. It's up to store owners to find out ways how. Too much bother for you? Oh well you're bankrupt. Someone much better will soon take your place and work out how to keep attracting customers in. That's business.