Group land bonus tier % - obsolete?

"I don't think it does exactly what it is supposed to" is not synonymous with "broken". You're taking more liberty with that statement than I am willing to give. Then you take another leap, and assume that he is referring to alts, or maybe that people aren't grouping as was intended, perhaps you could clarify what you are inferring. Either way, you have no way of knowing these things, and no quotes or data to back it up.

So, by this logic, do you think that everyone in a household should be banned if one member is banned, just because one or more might be alts? If my room-mate joined SL, should he not be eligible for first land because he might be me? These are all avenues of potential abuse, and there is no solution, short of physically traveling to each person's dwelling and checking IDs. We know that's not going to happen, so let's hear your idea of how LL can "avoid the potential for alt abuse", short of limiting us to one account per IP.

There is a limit to policy wherein multiple accounts per household are involved. There has to be, and that should be self evident. Perhaps it is, and you are refusing to acknowledge it.

If my car "doesn't exactly" get me to work, it's broke.
If my computer "doesn't exactly" run software, it's broke.
If teleport doesn't exactly get me to my destination, it's broke.


There is a rule that dictates a limit, but that rule is essentially unenforceable. But I don't see how this is relevent.

This is a disheartening thread. Just this morning a friend and I created a group so that the land we use to sell my friend's creations can support some more prims. No group bonus would mean quite a few missing items and not the showcase it could be for him.

We're almost ready for serious advertising, though he's selling already. At this point, believe me, every prim counts.

Again with the flawed analogies. Well at least you left out race this time. The incentive isn't analogous to any of those things you compare it to, not even close.

You are dodging. My point is that you cannot read Philip's mind. You are telling us what you think he meant by that statement, and that's just not going to fly with me, no matter how many times you avoid my point and instead substitute flawed dialectic. Perhaps you should study those fallacies in that link of yours a bit more.

All we can discern from his statements, is that it he thinks it could be better. Not why. There are many things in life that are not perfect, yet beneficial to those who don't abuse, and they exist, and work, even though some take advantage.

Not to mention, LL has never stated that grouping alts for this purpose is against policy.

Are you so anti-land baron that you would have no qualms about screwing the rest of us over to have a swing it at them?

I don't think you want to see. It's not enforceable unless they limit us to one account per IP. "I don't think it does exactly what it is supposed to" could be applied to first land, suspensions, or any of the other programs and policies that are vulnerable to alts. Do you think we should punish everyone because some folks abuse these programs and policies? This is not the miltary. Clearly, 80% of the people responding here think you are wrong, but nevermind that Hiro, you keep right on trying to take it away. Good luck and good bye - this is a waste of time.

I did read your thread, I think your argument is a bit weak at the seams. So I was asking you to nutshell it.



Hiro, I'm not saying this to be rude or because I have any kind of bone to pick with you whatsoever, but I really don't see the harm in what you just typed. Casual players can group up and get the same bonus. The tier bonus is available to anyone who makes a group.

The harm caused by removing the bonus far outweighs the good it's doing now.

I think I have lost myself in the middle of the discussion, and perhaps that is why I'm a bit confused here.

Jeffrey commented on this post where you can read factual information on what the effects of a) the current bonus does for the community overall; b) why it is such a bad idea to remove these sorts of incentives, and asks the ultimate question: why remove it?

For the sake of completeness as well, this seems to be Hiro's answer to the why question:



And the rest is rhetorics.

So, the issue is about fairness. "It is not right".

One thing is to discuss if the bonus system is "broken" or not. Unfortunately, unlike the example "if my car is broken, it doesn't work", the issue here is not so clearly cut. Philip is much more careful in his words — he just says that he thinks that the bonus is not being used towards its "intended purpose". He's not sure.

Now the big question is, again, rhetoric:

What is the intended purpose of the 10% bonus?

The truth is, there is no intended purpose clearly stated. The best I could find as an official document on this issue is the this entry on the Technical Wiki by Lee Linden and edited by Jeska. If you read that carefully, you see that there is no "intended purpose" described there. Lee carefully points out that the bonus exists and not why it exists. We can only assume, from that article on the Wiki, that it's simply a "feature" and that any "intent" behind that is simply a matter of wild speculation.

So, pragmatically, this thread is just about if it is "fair" to give groups an advantage (ie. a bonus on tier) or not. Since everyone can create a group (nevermind if it's done with alts or not), this is a pretty democratic measure. It's available to all, like Ingrid so correctly pointed out. Thus, I don't understand what the problem is. Even throwing in the theory that this could be "gamed" with alts, the point is, anyone can create alts, create a group with them, and get the 10% bonus. So what's the problem here? Why is it "unfair"?

Or perhaps I should ask the question in a different way: under which moral system is it "not right" to group together and benefit from the 10% bonus?

This is the only issue that could be under discussion — the concept of "right" or "wrong" in the Metaverse. Because we know what the advantages are for both real estate agents and for groups wishing to do something cool in SL, as well to the small, tiny owners with low tier who can get a few more prims this way. Under my own moral system, there couldn't be a more fairer system that benefits both small (to the point of the single individual and their two alts) and big (to large estate agents who are able to use the 10% extra land for uncountable reasons beyond mere profit) and which is accessible to all without any restrictions. What could be more "right" than this? I fail to understand.

It's not "the issue", it's "Hiro's, Jauani's, and a possibly a couple of other folks' issue."

I agree with nearly all of what you've said Gwyneth, well written.

I think the "fairness" issue that Hiro is pounding on here is - barons pay less per meter square, due to the higher discount at higher tiers. So, when you add in the 10% bonus on top of that, they gain more than people at lower tiers, from the bonus. This doesn't bother me, but it apparently bothers some. I myself don't fundamentally have an issue with barons, it's the way things work, in RL and not surprising in SL.

Oh, so this is an anti-capitalistic thread?

Well, oops. I hadn't figured that out. Sorry for being naive!

I'm definitely in the wrong place, then — I'm definitely not in the mood to discuss ideologies

I'll just add that SL is big enough for all sorts of ideologies to be given the same opportunity to thrive and be experimented with, even in isolation from each other. If you don't care about capitalism or even money you can simply move to a left-wing community somewhere and enjoy yourself a lot on your utopia; whereas if you despise any left-wing promoters, you simply can let them stay in their utopias and not care about them. Just pretend that neither group exists and we can all work happily together

Both in iRL and in SL I work with both ideology spectrums, but that's my personal choice. The only reason they I can work with both at the same time is that there is a meta-organisation (LL in the case of SL; my national government in the case of RL) which sets the rules that allows a peaceful co-existence of both extremes. But of course it does provide me with excellent stories to retell my grandchildren (if I had any, lol).

Right now, the 10% bonus is something which appeals to both extremes. It's one of the fairest measures in SL. Capitalists may use that bonus to make more money (or even better, they can use it for non-profit projects, without threatening their profitable operations); left-wingers can benefit from the bonus to enlarge their own group-based land with lower costs. That said and done, there is no more here for me to discuss.

This is interesting to me on two counts:

(1) For practically every carrot in the game, there is someone wanting to take it away.

Why? My personal guess (and this doesn't necessarily pertain to everyone with any idea of any carrot they would like to see removed, such as Hiro, but with the overall philosophy behind why there are always so many calls to remove carrots) is it is because once all carrots are removed, the only thing left is to buy Lindens from people already established in the game. (No stipends = buy Lindens, etc.)

(2) For every game feature, there is someone claiming it is an exploit. And a lot of this often centers around the question of alts, as if alts were somehow against "the spirit" of the game as well.

Now let's say Philip had some sort of idea/hope that the group tier bonus would enable several different people (people who apparently can't afford enough land or prims on their own) to get together, either for the purpose of creating something good, or maybe just because they have gotten together they will get the idea for something good. Which apparently they will then be more likely to create on account of the 10% bonus.

If what often happens is individuals and their alts get together for the same purpose - more ability to create something good - what's wrong with that?

Or land dealers take advantage of the 10% bonus in order to make it profitable to deal in land. And as I have pointed out in other threads, I think these dealers provide us with real and valuable services. (Such as the ability to purchase contiguous land when it becomes available, to get rid of our own land quickly, be able to rent, etc.) If they did not provide a service of some kind, they would cease to exist, no? So they also "benefit" the game by their existance.

And even if they didn't benefit anyone at all - but merely promoted their own success and growth, so what?

Personally, I don't get how grouping and the 10% bonus is supposed to somehow lead magically to all these cool, creative things that wouldn't happen otherwise.

As you know, I just went through this long, long issue here on the forums regarding the fact that my alt had bought First Land.

I then thought ahead a bit and asked the question: Ok, then, I suppose when I make my third alt (this time a basic) in order to group and combine my lands (which are contiguous) into one shop, will that be unethical, too? I received no clear-cut issue on that question.

All of this has made me draw several conclusions about some of the ways people in SL think, and some of the ways in which Philip himself is assumed to think, and may in fact think:

1. Buying First Land on your new, real (permanent) second account is unethical because it wasn't what First Land was originally supposed to be for.

2. Grouping with your own alts and getting the 10% bonus and thus the extra prims is at least questionable, if not unethical, since it was originally intended to bring actually different individuals together to make cool things.

3. Actually using the system as it stands, as it would ethically be used in any other game or online environment, and as it presented itself to many of us who joined after these things were put into place, is tantamount to "exploiting loopholes" in the system, or "gaming" the system. I don't think of the 10% bonus AS a loophole.

Why do others view these things as loopholes and exploits? I would posit that the common thread in all of these is the word "alt." That alts are somehow bad, unless either played intensively in some role-play manner (on separate land, and not grouped with the original player), or played so minimally as to scarcely warrant their existance (to test products, for instance), but nowhere in between. But they should not be used to buy First Land, or to form groups. (And one gets the impression that if one could turn back in the extra $500, one would be expected to.)

This anti-alt thing is new to me. Also new is the phenomenon of players always trying to get rid of any/whatever feature benefits us at all; in this case, the 10% group bonus.

In fact, from Philip's point of view, I would think he thinks of the 10% bonus as something that makes players create premium account alts to take advantage of it. That increases subscription numbers, and increases monthly income to SL.

This business about some original idea that it would somehow lead to more creativity sounds good, but doesn't really hold water, and certainly isn't as important to SL as an increased number of more premium accounts.

The purported original premise also makes the assumption that people work better in groups. Actually, not everyone works best in groups. Some people reach their most creative heights, and provide the coolest things, when working alone. (Such as with their alts in their own group.) By making it easier for those people to create on their own, we get more cool things..

coco

It's kind of funny, Hiro. If the 10% went away, we'd have to sell off a good portion of our area. Now, we don't make money off of our land. We don't rent it, (oh, except for the *free* rent we provide to newbies, as in: it doesn't cost them anything so we don't make anything), and we don't resell it.

Do you know who would buy that sell-off?

Yeah. That's right. The land barons you're railing against. Getting rid of this 10% would be an awesome way to, say, turn our free-rent areas into overpriced plots ready for club-mall-casinos.

Yeah, let's get rid of Luskwood, the Aerodrome, -- you know, because we're just rolling in it -- to make way for more 512x512 plots at L$12/m2.

There's currently nothing besides the 10% that makes the mainland any more desireable and viable than private islands, and frankly I'm sick of everyone telling us to buy an island. What do you want the mainland to be - a long contiguous strip mall?

There are certain Barons who are just *itching* to get their hands on our land since it's near Ahern. You can bet that once we have to fold, they'll sell it at a nice, fair price because it *is* near Ahern, right? Right.

Every month we try to break even through avatar sales; this is how we pay for the tier. We developed the area on Linden's guidelines; having this be whimsically dynamic is kind of a kick in our ass, after we've spent stupid amounts of money to consolidate Lusk and Perry over two years, sometimes paying L$1200m2 for 32m2 to extortive "land barons", just because we wanted to make a decent, nonprofit place on the Mainland where *anyone* can go.

Yet repeatedly we get lumped into the classes of profiteers and land barons just because of the amount of m2 we manage *across four people*. Yeah, if we didn't have a group, and collaborate, we couldn't do it. That's because we *AREN'T* independently wealthy. But we've shown that if you get people together with a goal, and are persistent, you can make something work.

Repeatedly we've been praised as one of the best places for newbies to go; We're known to help, no matter who you are - we give people things for free, hell, on our 2 year anniversary a few weeks ago we gave out L$111,000 just for the hell of it. Yeah. That was great for our ledgers and bottom lines. Pretty stupid way to make profit: free leases and giving out cash. No, we don't make it up in dwell. We don't even try for dwell because we don't care. The steaming-hot L$180 a week we get from dwell doesn't exactly offset it.

But, no, we're just filthy rich profiteering capitalists looking to make a buck off the population. You're so wrong, and you don't know us. And penalizing us for building on a structure that was a given is vindictive and does nothing but satisfy you personally and harm us in a rather significant way.

I'm really sick of people presuming and throwing a fit that ANYONE who has ANYTHING more than they do has to be filthy rich, exploitative, or assisted by the Lindens. Have you entertained the fact that maybe we went through two years of work and MANY setbacks and quite a bit of cost that we scraped up whatever we could to pay, to do something that we wanted?

God forbid anyone new today ever makes what they want to do on SL into a reality, because you'll be cast into that group as fast as you can say "Content Baron".

Profit has NEVER and will NEVER be our aim. Keeping on doing what we want to do - have a good noncommercial mainland area and make avatars that people like - will always be our aim. Unfortunately, Hiro, we can't do that completely "pro bono", because Linden *does* charge us tier, and a hell of a lot of it; so if you're aiming our guns at us saying, "Well then why don't you give away everything for free", you know full well that that isn't possible, well, unless we WERE independently wealthy, which we aren't.

Cutitng the 10% would be a great way for a lot of mainland projects to be forced to dump land quickly and cheaply. Awesome for the land brokers. Great deal for them. Becuase, you just *know* they'll pass the savings on to the customer. Right.

You shouldn't paint with such a broad brush. Not eveyrone using the 10% is gaming it. And I don't think we should have to suffer for the ills of those who are. And the fact that you've insinuated that we're gaming or profiteering off of it is really fucking insulting.

All Reve and I have is our group land, which we use for our pleasure period. We have shops yes but do not charge rent. We love to build and make our home there reflect that part of us.

We cannot afford more land and we have held on to what we have paying out of pocket since we have never made a profit in SL. And when money was good we held free raffles every day and gave it back into the community.

I am tired of paying the price for others abuse.

Gwyneth - my god - great post. My sentiments exactly, and you expressed them more elequent than I could ever dream of



Very well put, Gwyn I agree wholeheartedly..... SL *is* big enough for all sorts of ideologies to thrive. That's one of the things that makes it so great

Excellent point Michi.

What abuse? What gaming? How can anybody game this system? It is THERE.

coco

WHy would anyone care if this is obsolete or not?

How is it effecting your enjoyment in world?

How is group land impacting SL's culture/enviorment in a negative way?

What does it matter to anyone, how much money it is saving someone? If you want the same savings just tier up and buy land.

Why do people like to create and force stuff to become an issue?

You forget one thing:

Right wingers say, "that which benefits me is good".
Left wingers say, "that which benefits you is bad".

So, while you'd think that the lefties would like the group idea, they don't. They're too busy hating the idea that anyone would benefit from anything.

Buster

Beau, it can simply be explained as such:

"Someone else out there got more candy than I did, so therefore NOBODY should have ANY candy at all."

(It doesn't seem to matter if someone worked for their candy, or shares it with everyone else.)


I don't see how the group bonus is anymore "obsolete" than it was when it was implemented. What Hiro's actual post should have read was:

"Linden, Raise tier for people who have a lot of land. Because they're obviously rich and can afford it, and I don't like the fact that they have more than I do."


Unbeknownst to him, the "rich and can afford it" part is actually not neccessarily true. I'd like to compare my socioeconomic status with his RL. I'd bet we're at pretty similar levels. Being a full time student, mine may even be lower than his.

We've reached a good equilibrium between our av sales and tier cost. People already say our avs are too expensive. (They cost less than two donuts but I won't get into that.) Strange enough, a lot of landless people and basic accounts call our area home; some of whom I know are going to premium soon.

I have been told that someday we will rent our land from a certain land broker, whether we want to or not. If Hiro has his way, perhaps this will become true. If quantity discounts and 10% discount goes away, we would end up paying US$1200 a month for 12,000m2 less land than we're paying ~US$400 a month for right now.

No you wouldn't.

I mean I'm guessing you wouldn't pay $1200 a month, you'd cut down the amount of land you have instead. Or maybe you'd say pfft and go away.

Buster

this issue is far more complex than any of you give it credit. it also ties in directly with the point that free basic accounts will lead to more furries. these two exploit are being used by furries to develop organized communities of highly motivated and talented animal type critter avs that will eventually lead to the marginalization of the humanoid avatar!

can you explain your math here? 1200/month is the tier cost of approximately 6 sims.

I say dump the land tier all together! You can build what you want where you want, for as long as you want! Free land for all!!! Think of how many more people would want to come into game if it really cost them nothing, ever!

Now that I got that silliness out, I think the 10% bonus is a useful bonus. I know I have used it before to do exactly what it was intended for. I have used it to group land with others and it allowed us to build bigger places. You also have to realize that the 10% free tier is only free from land fees. If you are buying land, you still have to pay the L$ to buy the land to someone else, or buy it from auction.

Agreed. This whole getting rid of the 10% bonus thing is not sweeping enough. Down with land tier fees - they only benefit the rich, because only the rich can afford more land!

Quantity discount removed. Which has been talked about by Linden. With no quantity discounts, that's US$5/512m2.

US$5/512. Two sims, 131,072/512. = 256x5 = US$1280.

oh yeah! i forgot LL's mission statement was to run SL into the ground