expansion sims -- my very rambly thoughts

I've got a lot of concerns about the expansion sims, and I'm seeing a tremendous amount of stress about them, so I wanted to take a few minutes to throw some thoughts and ideas out here.

Everybody wants a whole sim for their group. That's a given. Not every group can currently afford a whole sim. The 1 1/16th max per person during pre-sale is seriously limiting. Granted, a 16th of a sim is much more than many people can afford even before taxes are taken into consideration.

From my chats with a few others in world, my *impression* is that most of the groups are worried -- they don't have enough members right now, they don't have enough combined cash right now.

So now at least some of the groups are letting in new members. I'm all for this. And yet, it's a risk. What if SuzieNewbie decides after a few days or weeks that she wants to do something else *instead* and releases her land to public without telling anyone in the group? She's just opened up a hole for a complete outsider to come in, scoop up that land and build something seriously out of theme / lagalicious. Or maybe she doesn't release the land, but instead builds the seriously out of theme / laggy structure herself.

One week for pre-sale simply isn't enough, IMO.

What I'd like to see LL do is this: add a "group owned"
feature to land. Land which is "group owned" can only
be purchased by group members. Go ahead and set the
new sims into owned by the group status (without
charge). Connect them to the rest of the world
immediately and give out landmarks/let people
fly/walk/wander in. Let the group members purchase
their plots, build, be selling stuff and garnering
votes for a couple of weeks, THEN turn whatever land
is still "group owned" public. I think there should be tax breaks (not *no* tax, but discounted tax) for a couple of weeks or even a month.

Thoughts?

I would reccomend that only one person from each group be allowed to buy land initially. They should be given the money from the group (a certain amount per member based on the amount of land they wish to purchase) and then go into the sim with the other group members, choose a piece of land, then that one member buys as much as needed.

Once it becomes public, each individual member will decide which spot on the group owned land they want and then (depending on group decision) either build there or get the original owner of the land to release that patch of land and give the cost of the land to the new owner.

This would be the closest to Group owned/group pool that we can do at the moment.

while the 1/16 is still much better that 1/24 I wonder why these limits are being imposed. Some people can afford much more while others cannot afford even that much. If you have a group and are let in, why cant that group buy what they can each afford? Whats the difference?. If I can afford a half (I cant, but for arguments sake) and my buddys can each afford an eighth, whats the difference? We're all in the same group.

Listening to people talk, most of the existing groups cant come up with 16 people. Iif they can the members will need to sell land and dump buiilds to get in. Seems the Lindens want to preserve the themed builds, yet put members in a situation where they are having to toil with giving up everything (including their portion of a theme) to get into this new opportunity.

I agree with #!, this whole situation is causing a lot of people a lot of undo stress. I dont have the answer, I wish I did.. but there HAS to be a better way.

In this case, one member buying the land is probs financially out of the question. Even if someone did have a great deal of cash, the tax on that much land would be brutal, and most likely drain who ever purchased the land in no time.

fen-

I too am experiencing a lot of stress over this. If I want stress, I'll go to work!

This whole new sim thing is happening to fast and not enough information is being put out. I've already asked in another thread what exactly will 1/16 cost, but what if I don't want to move....can I stay in the Theme I'm in now and in it's current location? Once the new sims are open, will the existing Themed Communities go away ??

I think #!'s suggestions are good. Give us a little more time to figure this out once the new sims are open. Let us take a look, see what's there, bring prospective new members to the site and let them see EXACTLY what can be bought.

What about the rules the current Themed Communities were developed under? Is this an example of how Linden Labs is going to handle future contracts with groups and individuals? We were made to follow a specific set of guidelines, and now at THEIR whim, they are tossing them out without any conversations with existing community members. And not only are they saying "to heck with you people, this is how it's going to be", they aren't giving us enough information to SEE how it'sa going to be!!!

SL is almost no fun any more, and I for one am getting WAY to stressed out over this.


-TK

One more question that I have yet to see a real answer on is what is the plan for the sims where the themes exist? Will the current Linden land remain under Linden control or will the sims have land that goes public? Bonicacio is currently at 71% object usage. The future of the rest of the sim has great impact on the future of these communities. If land around them goes public we'll have another natoma on our hands. Max objects = stagnation and lag death. So please, what will be happening in the sims where communities currently exist? Official Linden answer please, not speculation.

I agree with the 1/16th of a sim limit. That is a fairly large portion of land. thats a 64m x 64m block of land. I don't know about you people but my place is only 20x20 and thats a decent amount of land. Probably more then I need.

4096 square meters of land seems like enough for at least 10-16 people. Especially if you want to have group houses and buildings. Thats 256 blocks of land to purchase.

Additionally I'm sure all of us know that there are a frustrating number of people out there who purchase large or scattered plots of land and build NOTHING on them. This will help prevent a group with few members and lots of free cash from purchasing huge amounts of land and not using them.

Plus, If there are a number of people with themed buildings out there, and they need to release their land and move their buildings into their inventory till they can move, this might be a good thing. The reason were doing the group purchase is to allow people with similar buildings, ideas, themes, and purposes to work next to eachother instead of scattered across the world.

This will also free up land in the existing sims for newcomers and those who are having an incredibly hard time finding land.

If you don't want to move your themed community, then Don't. This is mostly to help those who DO NOT currently have communities or are unable to build toghether due to a lack of neighboring land. My house right now is located 3 sims from the friends I originally wanted to build with.

At least this is my 2 cents.

Using Ama's figures from Tracey's thread over in Projects:

1 16th of a sim costs $14,500 to purchase ($12,000 land / $2500 tax).

To purchase all 16 shares of the sim would therefore cost $232,000 (land and taxes combined).

Weekly taxes thereafter: $40,000

That's not taking any "neighbor discounts". Assuming a purchase strategy that would allow you to receive a 50% neighbor discount on each parcel, weekly takes would only be $20,000.

According to the Net Worth leader board here on the site, our wealthiest resident is only worth 129742. Assuming he were to delete ALL in world objects and sell off all land he currently owns, he still couldn't purchase an entire sim. He could snag half of one and have 13,000 and change left to pay taxes for a week or two.

[ note: math is not my friend. even using a calculator chances are fairly good that I've made at least one mistake in the above calculations ]

That sounds about right, so if we have a group of 12 people, its going to cost them about $1,210 each for land, plus maybe another $200-$400 for 2-3 weeks of taxes each. That sounds just right.

What I meant by one member buying the land, is one member buying the 1/16th of a sim or less for their particular group with money given to them by that group, not one person buying the whole or most of a sim.

Well, there’s lots to think about here. Before we figure how to address all the concerns here, let me give you some of the simple information that we didn't make clear enough in the beginning.

We are offering all the Themed Communities (except for Native American village) the option of first crack at the region adjacent to their current community. Since NAV is an exception -sharing a region with Linden's Wild West Town - we will discuss options with them separately.

Re: the regions where the current Themed Communities reside: Oak Grove, Dore, Bonifacio. There is no plan to open these up for settlement by others.

Yes, there are risks in accepting the challenge of expanding into a new region. If you try to expand and don't buy the whole region then you will probably wind up sharing it with others. In our minds the process we are offering now is much more favorable than the Road Map for expansion that we had proposed earlier.

We would like to see the current buildings of the Themed Communities stay in place but if that is impossible for any of them, we will try to figure out how to make it.

RE: the timing of having to decide whether to expand or not. If you need more time to make the decision, we will figure out a way to give it to you.

The purpose of limiting each resident to 1/16 of a region is to increase the chances that the region will be home to a large number of residents. If our business model is to succeed, then we need each region to support many more than 16 subscribers.

Keep letting us know what your concerns are and we will try to make it work and give you the information as we know it. We really didn't mean to make you guys nervous. This is going to be fun.

So by some shear magic we were to get 16 like minded people to each buy a 16th, we still wouldn't own the whole sim?? Which means you will open the rest of the sim up to the public?? Which means we will be competing with everyone else in script and primative count, ending up with another Lindenburg where no one can move!!

However, if we stay where we are now, we are surrounded by Linden land.........oh gee, what to do.


-TK

Tracey - If you can buy the whole region - 16 x 1/16th - then you do own the whole region and no one else can move in.

No one else can buy land there -- but others can -rent- from property owners. I'm pretty sure I've heard a Linden say that one of the goals is to increase stability and such to the point where there can be more than 20 avs in the same sim at the same time, yes? That's what you were referring to, when you said "we need each region to support many more than 16 subscribers", right?

#!

Well, the overall number of subscribers supported by a region can be made up of residents who don't have a home anywhere but spend part of their time hanging out there, as well as those who who live there but generally come in-world at different times.

In the announcement it says that you can only be part of one community. Does that mean one NEW build or one theme, period?

You can only buy land in advance on one community whether it is new or an extension of existing themed community. Your support only counts for one new community when we are selecting those that get advanced access to a region.

Haney, now I am REALLY confused.....first you say

"The purpose of limiting each resident to 1/16 of a region is to increase the chances that the region will be home to a large number of residents. If our business model is to succeed, then we need each region to support many more than 16 subscribers."

To me this says that the only way you guys can make money is if there are more than 16 people per sim.

However, you answer my last post by saying "If you can buy the whole region - 16 x 1/16th - then you do own the whole region and no one else can move in." which means 16 people CAN own a whole sim.

So answer this...will there be ANY Linden owned land on these new sims ??

-TK

Yes, 16 residents can own a whole region. We hope that on most regions, more will live there and other homeless residents will visit so that the Linden business model works.

There will be some Linden-owned land on many of the new regions - primarily on the edges of a region so as to provide a buffer between them. The regions that the Themed Communities can expand into will need less of a buffer since they are on the edge of the land mass.

Is this answered anywhere else? If not ....

How much exactly will 1/16th cost (as Tracey has asked elsewhere)?

How will we know when we have bought exactly 1/16th or bought too much? (since you will release the land of anyone that buys more than 1/16th).

As a side note, without tax breaks of some kind there is no way we (Darkwood) will be able to keep both a new sim and the old one, as much as I would like to. How many of the themes will be able to?

To be frank, I think the themed communities are already getting enough of a benefit out of the system. Let's not increase the unfairness by giving out tax breaks to the lucky residents who have enough friends and pull within Linden Labs to get, effectively, an entire sim to themselves, with no chance of outsider interference.

Nice to meet ya frank

To be candid, I kinda wish ALL the SIMs could be themed in some way. As it is, there are the "official" themed areas that are under discussion here, and then there are the previously built informal themed areas where people got together and agreed to build similar structures.

Then there are the rest of them. Some very good builds, some not so good ones, but to me it is distracting to see a space station next door to a Chinese pagoda, next door to a haunted mansion (OK I made that up, I think). But the point is that every individual build is enhance (or detracted from) by those around it. What I hope happens is that as the number of themed (both formal and informal) areas increase that people will move and the areas they vacate will continue in whatever theme seems to fit best there.

Will there always be junkyard looking areas in SL? Probably so. But one would home that as a SIM "matures" it will become essentially an informal themed community of some sort. I think the existing themed comunities (formal ones) are being rushed at the moment. Not sure why that is. Ideally as the flood of new users increases it would be nice to not have to turn them all away from the theemed areas because us testers grabbed them up already.