Do Away with Telehubs?

Hi all. My first post here...

I voted for something else. I think that both, PtP and Telehubs, have good intrinsic value. My suggestion is to keep Telehubs AND have a "modified" version of PtP teleporting.

The modified version provides for "closeness" to a destination. Not the exact landing point requested but a "random" point within a certain radius of that point. Let's say 500m or 1000m from it. This "closeness" to a destination would give the traveler a chance to explore the surrounding environment and perhaps interact with other people IW.

I voted to keep telehubs and bring back point-to-point teleportation.

Sometimes I just want to go from one location to another as quickly as possible, without having to fly through laggy sims and get stuck at sim borders on the way.

Other times, I want to fly and see the landscape and new builds that may have arisen overnight, and choosing a telehub sim and flying toward the next hub is a good path.

Teleportation should get one from point A to point B, not some tiny platform (point C) hundreds (thousands) of meters from one's destination.

If one wants to sightsee, mingle, etc., one can always walk.
DO AWAY WITH TELEHUBS.

BB

I think telehubs should stay as they are. But we should be able to "set home" in more than one place.

Even being able to set home in two or three places would be a big help. And this wouldn't change the existing structure as much as some other suggestions would.

Amen!

Multiple home locations would be lovely.

Being able to directly teleport for places you have a landmark for would also be great.

I voted "something else"...

-- Keep telehubs.
-- Add: if you have a landmark, you can use it to teleport directly to it, or to the landing spot for that parcel, if set.
-- Add llTeleport() call (to landing pad prims) to LSL to allow us to build our own cross-sim teleporters. See /13/a1/27896/1.html

That way telehubs maintain some use, but once you've found your way somewhere and have a landmark you don't need to bother with them if you don't want to.

^what You said Chase....

Ah! All good ideas. Especially the "if you have a landmark you can teleport directly to it" one. I don't mind telehubs personally either.

Well, in my opinion Telehubs are ill concieved and in many cases the source of utter agrivation. Nothing like wanting to pick up an item real quick for a contest and teleporting to the shop only to find it is 700+ meters away from the Telehub you are forced to use. Some of these hubs are covered by a transparent roof that you can't see but you run into easy enough as you try to fly up. You have to fly up because the hub is at the bottom of this urban canyon or next to some ugly casino or pathetic mall (of which you swear you would never go into because of the obvious commercial exploitation). I utterly despise the Telehub system.

There is even a new twist where they are covering the telehubs with these large pavillions to force you to walk out of the hub area so you can see all these wonderful information kiosks from LL. I can see it now, a line of people ready to beg for money, heard newbies into cubs, escorts looking for their next john or whatever as you are forced to walk out from the hub. I completely despise this sort of social engineering as it rarely works and all it really does is piss off people.

You will never create rual land as long as the land is put up for sale. People who own land will put up what they want since they are paying for it. You want rual areas you will have to set it up, create sparse cabins in the wilderness and rent the cabins with limited prims. You will do nothing but create inconvenient urban sprawl otherwise. People will put a store wherever they can get land, they really don't have a choice.

We used to have a system where you could teleport anywhere, but you'd have to pay to use it -- the further the distance the more expensive it was.

Being a newb then, and poor, and the world being so small - I used to fly everywhere, as it didn't take long.

Now with the world being much larger, flying wherever you wish to go may not be 100% desirable.. so I'd suggest not doing away with the Telehubs.. but using them as a 'free transport system'

I know each plot of land has a place you can set as an arrival point for when you return home.. so why not utilize this too - tie it all together:

You want to teleport to a place - via the map or landmark - have the option to do a point to point (with the associated cost in $L to do so) or to the nearest Telehub for free (as we do now).

If you do a point to point, you arrive at the 'arrival point'.. and all is good -- the landowner can still have a nice special place set aside for newcomers to arrive at.. even offers a few possibilities for creative people (transporter - the 'pods' from the fly').

Of course I can hear a few landsellers sphincters' starting to pucker at the very thought of such an idea -- but yeah, I think it would be cool!

Siggy.

i voted for option one. it's no secret that i think telehubs, and charging for direct teleportation, are both horrible solutions to problem that doesn't even exist.

if this is going to evolve into w3b software, we will have to be able to browse from parcel to parcel, site to site. can you imagine having to go to google or yahoo first in order to link anywhere else on the web?

forced socialization? whose bright idea was that? such experiments have failed for thousands of years. nothing makes this one any different.

Olmy's " .... if you have a landmark, you can use it to teleport directly to it ..." would work for me.

Linden Lab designed and sold land as it is, with transportation system as it is. There are people who spent huge amount of US$ in order to have their home/store/club/mall near telehub. We are talking about 3000-4000 US$ for some mainland telehub sims. While it may be legal and possibly popular to make telehubs obsolete, changing system at this stage would nevertheless mean one betrayal of all those who invested money in the system as it was presented to them during time of land auction.

Somebody here compare telehubs to pop-ups. Maybe this is not so wrong actually. I think there are more good reasons there exist telehubs. But one reason some people paid heavy investment in land near to telehubs is traffic, which means mindshare. And mindshare has value. People flying through telehubs and past the stores there create value in same way as people looking at popups. Your flying through hub create value for retailers there. This increase income of land owner. And this in turn is what made land owner pay 3000 US$ or more per sim to Linden Lab. Some land in Clunn just was auctioned for 90 L$ per sqm.

If tomorrow there would be one poll to abolish all TV commercials, what do you think would happen? I could imagine such suggestion become very popular and people vote for it. But what would be result? Well, you would have to pay. And TV station might not have money to provide same quality program.

In Second Life, if there would be free teleporting, then one result would be that nobody would pay thousands of US$ for telehub sim land. So how to make up for this? Increase land price in other locations? Increase subscription fee? Fire some liasons?

Maybe one solution would be teleportation tax. But this would still leave the question of fairness towards those who already collectively paid Linden Lab thousands of US$ for mindshare opportunity. And would you enjoy having to pay money every time you teleport? Every month Linden Lab sell thousands of US$, 5 digit figure, worth of telehub land. So how much are you willing to pay monthly for point to point teleport? 1 US$ per month? 5 US$? More if you travel much?

Its cool, most of the greed and overbuilding are killing telehub usage anyway. If they don't get discontinued, they'll eventually be shunned - just depends on how stupid the people are that build trapping structures and the like around them.

I say - keep it up! You're killing your own market you morons.

As one of those people who rarely hangs around a telehub longer than it takes to rez my attachments and get airborn, I voted "other". I don't mind them, but my typical method is to clear any overhang, immediately fly up to 150m, and then head to my destination (assuming where I'm going is more than 200m from the telehub).

I'd like to have a limited number of "Favorites" that I can TP to directly. Maybe 10-15 total, possibly those listed in my profile. I don't see any need to charge additional L$ for this "service", but I wouldn't be adverse to a nominal charge either.

Usually if im shopping I don't stop at the first store near a telehub myself, i am usually looking for a specific store; though I think the "Find" system could use some sub-catagories for different items specifically.

I'd think with TV, the TV station gets the money from airing the commercial, which allows it to broadcast and make other programmes. In SL the money that's made from advertising or commerce around telehubs doesn't get reinvested into SL or the environment, so I can't see why there would be any kind of loss to be made up elsewhere? On the other hand, I would definitely not want to see people who have made large investments in land around telehubs getting that wiped out over night.

- Why not _increase_ the number of telehubs significantly?. This would dilute the advertising problem - if there were lots more telehubs then commerce around them wouldn't be so frenzied and the price of the land would drop to a lower level. And with a higher number of hubs people would allways be much closer to their destination. If there were one or two hubs per sim they would probably become meeting/socialising places too for regular visitors to the sim.

I also really like the idea of some kind of proper physical transport system.. but I'm not sure this is really feasible.

The telehubs dont bother me a bit. I only notice the ads if its something Im interested in anyway. I really would like to see normal transportation made more effective. The lack of control on them really bites . I agree with the point to point for, say, places in your fav list.
Does LL really need L$ for point to point? They create the L$. Why give it back for nothing? Or am I missing something there? Paying US$ to teleport is absurd. I find it hard to believe many ppl would EVER do that. I would not go there before I did that. And I make quite good money irl.
The people who have already been screwed into paying enormous, ridiculous amounts for virtual land near telehubs should not be screwed again. Leave them be. They paid their dues.

Exactly!! I have a kick ass computer and still vehicles are usless! I went to a new area right after it opened and drove a car I was given. It worked OK in this new sim, but when crossing a bridge one of the front tiress it went through the decking and got stuck. When I retrieved the car I then had to find a place to drop it where I could regain access to the road.

Everytime I got out in my boat I end up losing it. then I have to wait a few days for it to return. Vehicles are the worst feature of SL, but not something I dwell on since I can Fly and TP.

PTP TP'ing would be my preference. You can even leave the Hubs for exploring. I just hate flying 600 meters to a place and then find that the creator doesn't put the red marker at the door!

*sighs* so many good points... personally I would love to be able to use my vehicles. Im still dying to use my boat and sail around un-obstructed waterways where I dont run into every "access-only" shoebox along the way. I know we all value our privacy at times, but even when you are not home? We have a nice size island oasis to call our home.... I never lock it up, strangers come and go as they wish I have no problem with that. If we need alone time, I turn the key and its locked up But why lock up the water ways while you are not home? Personally I dont get it.... but i know there will be arguements otherwise *shrugs*

come on will ya... give me an inch to sail my fine ship past your privatized shoe box

sim to sim lag I can deal with for the most part, but I do agree land travel by vehicle can be difficult at best and it needs to be fixed. I think there would be a lot of fun opportunities for buildings, shopping mall parking lots, good RP like wedding limos or carriages or Indy racing.... but all that aside, tele-hub or point to point would still be the best route of travel. Both are faster than getting in your car or 'hoofing' it.



I voted to bring back the point-to-point but saw this opportunity to ask bring forward the vehicle transportation problems as well...



Incoherient babble over... be well SL

this is true. people have also paid loads of us dollars to own land on the edge of the world that is no longer on the edge; to purchase parcels surrounded by linden buffer land that has since been auctioned; to own islands so they could have water front property that is now eclipsed by dozens of connecting water sims; and to buy lindens that are now virtually worthless due to massive land releases.

our investment in telehub land is no more guaranteed or ll's problem than these others. they will do what's best for their long term success and what's best for their long term success is direct teleportation.

and now for something completely different, i have thought about it and it does make sense to charge a small fee for direct teleportation. it doesn't make any sense to charge proportional to the distance; it's still just a coord update. but we do have to download practically a whole sim's worth of textures when we arrive at the new location. a small fee would at least make us think twice before we ported all over the map and used (i would say "hogged" but i'm not being cynical) so much bandwidth.

This is not only greatly exaggerate but wrong. Adding new sims and selling off Linden owned land parcels has always happened and is one constant since SL exists.

Removing the one and only reason why people paid up to 10 times normal land prices in some sims however is not only one major change: it would have to be called one major scam.

make people pay for a p2p teleport...? I mean are you joking?

you surely want people to freely go around.. visit shops... meet people etc..
to charge to teleport would simply be to much even if it only was L$1 per teleport

what's next... pay a fee every time you want to log in into SL?


maybe some sort of planning permission could be implemeted for areas close to Telehubs.. as in if you own that land, you can still have good traffic and business, but your buildings cannot be taller then so many meters or stores.. many times indeed you do fly off a telehub but most of the buidlings around are still rezzing... and I already had a few occasions where I flew into buildings I could not see (rezing) to then find myself STUCK into the prims... I had to quite the game and log in again to be able to move again

i understand your concern. but i've heard people say exactly the same thing in these other scenarios over the past year. i remember the call to arms after people paid ten times the current worth for snow land before ll suddenly released loads of new servers. you were one of a few serious investors that, instead of complaining, defended ll's right and responsibility to do what was best for the company.

they will eventually reach a critical point where they'll make more money lowering tier fees and allowing point-to-point teleportation in a huge world where everyone is better off with individuals and groups owning entire sims all around.

it won't be tomorrow; but it may be soon. just a year ago we were all hyped up about having twenty new sims doubling the size of the grid. that seems like a hundred years ago.

What is a telehub?