Immigration Surge Problem

just a "what if" question. what would happen if the immigration surge plus the call for residents to come one down and help the new people led to the welcome area having more than 30 or so people? no more people could come in so would new people be stuck on the island?

Aren't there multiple areas for the welcome area?

like, backups?

LF

Yep, there is one other welcome area that is a perfect mirror of the one we already have, which is used as a backup in times like these.

If you're talking about the Prelude Islands, there are actually 4 of them which randomly disperse all newcommers among themselves so none of them become completely full.

and the way SL is built makes it relatively easy for the Lindens to add another prelude in an emergency situation (if one went down or if there were lots of newbies)

Tell them that whenever a certain number of people join, new sims are added. Also tell them that they're better off not buying land right away, or buying too much of anything. They should save most of their money at first so when they're ready to buy land and build on it they have some cash saved up. I met a noob yesterday who'd been in world for less than an hour and only had $400 left!

I met a newb that had only ONE DOLLAR left. They go and buy something for $999 and then don't have the cash to even rez it!

We added a jump station from the Welcome Area to the border of Boardman and De Haro where there are in expensive plots designed for new residents.

and what would happen if all these new people run out and buy land and then don't decide to stick around after their trial? how long would that land be tied up? seems like it would be pretty easy to run out of land even when the land that's bought is never going to be used.

Objects created and land bought by trial users who don't subscribe are erased pretty quickly.

Also if you are looking for land, check on these regions - followed by % of objects used and % of land purchased:
Mocha - 40 - 78
Rose - 60 - 79
Ritch - 82 -68
Perry - 75 - 53
Minna - 60 - 66

You could just tell them to come to me and ill build them a nice place on my land.

I am a 1 day nube... I am working on scripts so I need a place to build. Bought a little 32 by 32 or something small plot for 400 ish... Spent like 30 for some scripts I wanted to see.. and have 450 or so left to rez stuff. No need to go too slow.

I have to admit that I am losing faith in the system. Tonight I tried to give hope to a newbie by saying how there might be some more sims opening now that the number of users has increased. I tried to give him some hope, while I am struggling to keep mine. All I would like is for some reassurance that the situation is going to be dealt with. I don't need any details (like when a new sim is opening, or how many sims will open soon), I just want to feel like something is being done to help us feel more at ease and not feel so frustrated with the situation. After all, once a game stops being fun we lose interest in it.

The situation is alright (or not that bad) for the newcomers that want to start small. They can buy a small plot of land in a prim-light sim and hope to expand once they acquire some ingame success. This was actually my dream and now that I have the money to expand, the sim (Taber) has increased in land ownership and has really increased in prim usage . I have watched as many residents create prim-heavy houses, while my store (without counting the items, which do not consume that many prims) is actually made of 18 prims (plus 1 more for the upstairs door). And while I understand that we want to make our homes look attractive we should try to do so with less prims and more textures. I have remodeled many times trying to build a store that was reasonable in prims and also space-savvy. I am finally happy with the end result and now that I would like to have more items for sale, I am scared that the time to expand is running out.

If opening a new residential sim (or a few to accomodate the new residents) is absolutely not an option, then how about having a "Save the Prim" Event. Prim-savvy residents can educate others on how to save prims and can even give out some textures to help them with the cause. We can teach how to effectively use the textures so that we can all save on prim usage. Freebie textures can include: stairs, house and castle roofs, and any other textures that give the illusion of being made of many prims.

Introducing the mighty "delete" key... endowed with the power to drastically reduce object usage on any sim... and save you lots of money in taxes!
Come on people this isnt TSO, building an expensive house with lots of furniture isnt a goal or an accomplishment in this game.

Haney,

Unfortunately, the land usage figures can be deceptive. Flying over much of SL, I found many people who own plots of land surrounded by narrow ribbons of public land. Often the land owned is only directly underneath builds. These narrow ribbons are not practical to own, but are not counted against the land usage figures. Also, areas of land that are underwater or on steep inclines are often not usable.

Speak for yourself, Eggy. It was one of MY goals. Now that I have met it, I want an even bigger house with lots more furniture. A private island would be nice, but I will never have the money for that.

Another situation that I have found is people who buy a small plot of land, make their build larger than the plot (many of their build's prims are on public land), then they link all the parts so the ones that are on public land won't decay or can't be deleted. This also makes the public land available unuseable.

Report it as abuse.

I was referring to the fact that in the sims you basically play to have more money to build a bigger and more lavishly decorated house, whereas in SL you can do much more than that. Plus, building a house in SL isnt much of an accomplishment since any noob can build such a simple shape.

Maybe so, maybe not. It took me a few weeks before I got around to building anything. And there are people who freely admit they're not much good at building something that looks good. So for some people, building a house IS an accomplishment. I know it was an accomplishment for me when I built my first ambitious object beyond a random hollow, cut, and twisted torus.

...says the man who wants me to build homes for him

Why not just hire any ol' newbie off the street then? You can pay him peanuts, and still get your stuff, eggy

Not just anyone can manipulate shapes around in world, eggy, just like not everyone can script an analog clock.

LF

Kats, I think you should hold the Save the Prims event--you're a wiz with texturing. Maybe you could make a business out of textures that reduce prim usage.

I love the system and I think there's always going to be people irked.. just how life goes in FL and SL...

Hire? Who said anything about hiring... you made an "architects" group for the specific purpose of building stuff for other people, so I had this idea and came to you wondering if you would like to team up.
Besides an analog clock is easy... it was actually coyote murphy's first noob project. Want me to make you one?

You know what would be an interesting competition?

A 'Efficiency and Style' competition.

The idea would be to build an object (ie, something reasonably complex), out of as few complex prims and textures as possible. ('Blank Texture' doesnt count as a texture).

The winner would be the one with the object that looks acceptible, but uses the least amount of prims, and textures, not the person with the one that looks pixel perfect but uses 200 prims.

Alternatively: a "junkyard wars" type dealie, where there is a list of prims (ie, spheres, squashed spheres, cubes, hollowed cubes, cut cubes, and thats all... no cut spheres).... and a standard package of like 4 textures, and a prim limit of say 25.

My argument, I guess, is that learning to make efficient prims is just as important as learning to make pretty ones. The people who can improve the prim usage / speed problem are the SL users themselves.

Also, there needs to be a change in the way people percieve high prim usage.

When an ugly building turns out to use 200 prims, it should be rated DOWN. Or at least not rated up.

Prim usage should be seen as a BAD THING, not 'wow you used a MILLION PRIMS for your home, crafting your log cabin out of individual logs and stuff instead of using a clever texture...how amazing!!!'.