Alternate money sink ideas to help save dwell and other bonuses

Are you people really saying that your strip club is such a miserable dump that you can't justify charging $L 5 for the privilage?

~Lefty
just stiring the pot...

I see charging for uploading content (textures, animations, sounds) as punishing the people contributing the most to SL. Punish the creative talent so that casinos full of camping chairs can collect dwell for doing nothing? That's not the way to go.

I agree on changing to sell land, that mirrors the real world. Talking about the real world, why not look at what governmentsdo. Create a linden wide lottery 50% paid out in prizes, the other 50% burned. Require people to buy a casino license before opening a casino, base it on the number of machines allowed.

What I think is the real way to go is to charge more for more functionality. That would be like a tax to be paid by those choosing to pay it. Allow a person to join more groups for a fee. Create a better items for sale engine and charge people to advertise.

Finally, allow a portion of teir to be paid in Lindens! I know this probably can't happen since it's where LL makes it's profit but some variation on this might be useful.

I second LupineFox and the land selling fee + casino license + LL-owned lottery idea.

But I'm STRONGLY AGAINST the original 256L per 512x512 texture! And surely a NO NO if that cost cover animation upload! I won't say anything more else it'll turn up into flame.

From what I've heard, casino won't be effected much by lost of dwell. They have much more L$ in and out than dwell, as i've heard.

Well the upload fee is to prevent stupid abuse. It means that people will only upload content they truely WANT as compared to just every single thing in the world. It reduces the ammount of resources that LL has to pay to STORE all that data thus keeping their costs down, THUS keeping how much they must charge down.

And with dwell gone there has been an improvement in the camping chair issue. I was actually hired -today- by a casino owner to write a new camping chair script. One that rewards people actively staying busy (playing games while sitting, or chatting) and discriminates anyone who goes AFK. Even wants a failsafe put in so that every so often a random message is said to the person sitting and if they dont speak an appropriate resonse they lose all bonuses. Bonuses are actually only queued while sitting and not awarded till the player leaves. Thus if they IDLE out for too long their queued bonus gets forfeited ensuring the only wya to get rewarded is by being an ACTIVE camper. My point is some people can offer camping bonuses that DONT encourage abuse and that reward active people rather than idlers.

And if we could pay tier using lindens that would require all stipends to go away for anyone who owns land. No point in LL giving us game currency if they're gonna allow us to pay our bills with it.

When I first came in game, I was amazed that the clubs actually paid users to be there. That backward concept puzzled me. How could they afford to it? Asking around some I discovered dwell.

Spending all my time in laggy clubs hoping for that next sploder was not very productive. At 300L$ to 1, I was totally wasting my time groveling for the little trickle of L$. I kicked in 25 bucks, bought 7,500 L$ and was off having fun free of the money chairs and sploder balls. With all my free time, I could engauge in more productive persuits. Learned to build at the sand boxes and I am getting a grasp on the scripts.

Removing dwell could very well change the model from get paid to be here to pay to be here. If you find a service to be of value whats wrong with paying for it. Players would either become premimum subscribers and enjoy their L$ stipend, or buy L$ as needed or both or drop off the game. BTW, Everquest charges all their players 12.95/mo. SL is a deal at 6 or 7.50 a month especially when you include the value of the Stipend.

Players paying for their entertainment will be more discriminent of where they go. I predict the quality of the surviving services will actually improve. Land owners will have to do more to improve the experience to draw in paying patrons. A vacant lot with camping chairs will draw in the free loaders.

I don't think that every SQ meter will occure a charge. Some places have a well developed retail presence and would bennifit by offering a richer experience to keep their traffic volume up and justify the space rents they charge sellers. Competition for traffic volume will up the creative anti. I see things improving for those who pay their way.

Two months in, I became a parcel owner where I practice my building and scripting skills. I enjoy being around something I have an investment in. I found that I have gravitated towards other land owners and spending most of my SL time either on my own land or that of my friends. Some of which have their own club like features.

Killing the dwell will have no effect on my SL experience. Charging for bandwidth saving features is counter productive. I am refering to P2P. To drive or fly or walk is time consuming, but also bandwidth intensive. As you move through the land you must download at a high rate to keep up with the changes. P2P is very efficent. Charging for it will be counter productive.

Increasing the costs for gamers able to enrichen our experience will only make the goods more expensive. Attempting to artifically transfer costs from the consumer to the producer always comes around to bite you in the ass. Its just never a good idea.

cusprider said exactly what alot of us have said. Exactly what I said in this same thread but with more words.

Why are some of you still thrilled about taxes, increased fees and permits ?!! I think it's safe to assume none of you have actually ever had to deal with permits or liscences in the real world. You wouldn't be so quick to suggest them.

Anyone suggesting changing fees for the actual content creators and providers are biting the hand that feeds and suggesting the other hand isnt' worth compensation for its troubles... You're insisting content isn't worth paying for and that content should be more expensive to create?

Try building a club that is worth admission. A talented personality can make very respectible money in this game if you let them. Let yourself...

Jenna wrote "I agree charging people to go to your venue is a dork of an idea sorry there will always be the new player who will go buy up 100k and open a club with naked people and cheap rental stalls then host big money events with no cover charge while your venue will be charging to enter pfft yea they will pick u over that new linden pumping club! "

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. What exactly are you saying? that other players will simply voluntarily lose money in the hunders of thousands of $L?

~Lefty
P.S. where would MGM be if they depended on dwell and stipends? Second Life is simply an entertaining world. Charge for it. Don't insist the Lindens tax for it.

I think what Jenna ment was that there will always be places that will not charge for entry. If you look at the trend many new casino and clubs open daily from people who dumped a lot of usd into linden and want to become popular and its all about being on the most popular list. They wont care about charging rent, they are the ones who will offer huge salaries and then leave dozens without jobs when are broke and fold. Those venues are a dime a dozen in sl and come and go faster then you can say Linden tos change?

I think an increase for upload charges is a good idea. It takes money to make money and if your not willing to invest for those uploads then you need sit your butt down on a camp chair and hush up.

I want higher fees for larger image files, but not so high that it becomes a punitive tax, such that teh only justification for uploading an image would be to make something to sell. The pricing should be such that it shouls still be a satisfying experience to make something unique for teh sheer art of it, with no intent to sell. SL should be a platform for artists as much as capitalists.

Popular does NOT equal quality.

The 'most popular' gaming place is a lagfest because of all they try and run to remain popular. Popular is also based on how much land you own.

If the popularity rating was based on traffic divided by the amount of square metres of the parcel - THEN we might see a very different picture.

Unfortunately, the use of camping chairs and dance pads to pay zombies who override the timeout, cheating their way to a few L$ an hour, have effectively killed the 'popular' list from being any use whatsoever. It's just a shame that new players don't realise that, and actually go to what appeals to them rather than what looks popular to others.

If the population would swing away from vegetating at clubs and casinos, I think SL would be a lot more productive and a lot more fun.

Lewis

OK im making one major addition to my suggestion that isnt fee related directly and should quench the thirst for blood im recieving from clothing creators.

After increasing these fees to the exact values i suggest.. allow the CREATOR of a texture the ability to "re-upload" the last texture they uploaded for free if at exact resolution.

This would OVERWRITE the data currently in the asset server under the asset UUID of the last texture they created. This would allow the key to remain the same thus maintaining the same total ammount of a resource hit by the uploader. Makes sense for people to be able to upload the texture till they 'get it right' when designing something. Im not saying allow arbitrary update of ANY texture a creator owns, just of the very latest one they uploaded and ONLY during the same login session.

Ok that takes care of the 'waste' side of the increased cost while still preserving my desire that a content creator should pay based on the resource hit they create on the server and users. If the proposal makes 500 votes and we get a Linden response id truely appreciate this specific aspect to be commented on.

It's unfortunate that this would require an overhaul of the asset server. Last I heard there was no way to determine if an asset on hte server was still in use in any object, inventory object, or as a texture in an inventory. Thus, not knowing if a texture is used, how would you be ale to determine which texture should be overwritten?

Keep in mind that every chage to a notecard creates a new notecard too (and LL said it).

o.O now, that's new knowledge O.o

So, everytime a notecard is saved, the UUID changed too?

Sorry, just to go back and pick up this point (I need to read the rest of the thread later, it's grown since I posted!):

iirc, the files are stored as JPEG-2000 or something, which allows both lossy and lossless (depending on the file-type you use). So if you upload a lossy file, it will be lossy server-side. The point really is for file-size, that it's a measure of the file's bandwidth use. While I do still agree that they will end up treated the same at render time, having a texture download quicker is IMO more important, for me anyway most lag is from connection lag rather than the rendering.
That's my thoughts anyway, you're quite right that lossy images do have to be expanded again to be useful, but having them lossy helps bandwidth and IMO is what should be rewarded/punished by lower/higher upload costs

Oh, also for texture uploads for clothing. This one annoys me too, but I think that a change in the cost of uploads is not the real problem, what's needed is a way to preview textures without uploading them. ie, either a 'full body' preview of a texture, where you can apply a texture to YOUR avatar in the preview window, that would be awesome.
For example, you made a T-Shirt item that is to line-up with a pair of jeans, you are wearing the jeans, you choose upload and the preview pops up after you selected the file, you choose "Upper body" and it asks you what location (skin/undershirt/t-shirt etc), then displays your avatar with your texture in the place you suggested (or replacing anything there for the preview).
I don't see why this isn't done already. Even the ability to perform a 'local' upload where your texture appears in the list and can be used, but is only a client-side effect. e.g, if you change a texture in the world around you, it isn't changed server-side, and is lost when you log-out (since the texture never leaves your machine), however, you get to see it in all it's glory. The latter is likely more complex than a preview that doesn't suck though =)

Well the whole POINT of this entire thread isnt just upload fees. Its that LL is removing all the bonuses we recieve one at a time to reduce the rate money enters circulation as a means to combat inflation.

Personally i DONT CARE what the linden trades at vs the USD. And neither should LL. The fact is that people will still buy and sell no matter what. We s hould not base game currency decisions around real currency issues.

Now i DO AGREE that having a 5 to 1 ratio of currency entering the economy vs leaving (fountain vs sink) is a bad thing. The rate of currency circulation should be regulated to be proportionate to the number of active accounts. THAT should be the goal. This would keep a level ratio of lindens in circulation per resident and that is a good thing.

A stable currency / capita ratio is what effects the inflation cost of in-game items. And as a side effect would stabalize the USD value (though i still dont care about it personally) as the REAL value of a digital currency is based on its USABILITY which is its in-game value.

So the end result is we need to make the currency coming into the system equivilant (not equal) with the currency leaving circulation to meet that goal. And one way to do this is reduce the money fountains. BUT we dont want to kill all the fountains that encourage people to come to second life. And we dont want to kill the money fountains that are the only sources of income for non creators.

This leaves us wtih needing an increased outflux in $L circulation. And if we're gonna increase the cost of things it needs done in a way that applies equally to people based on the reason for the increase. So upload fees were my prime example.

Now if this increase in uplaod costs causes some inflation in the content providers, THATS NOT A BAD THING.. we may have a slightly higher cost to purchase but it will be the same for everyone. And that one-time inflation will stabalize quickly becoming the norm quick.

I want this looked at SEPERATE to what other features of SL might be lacking. I understand that the preview capabilities need upgraded but that has nothing to do with money sinks. So i provided a solution to the repeated upload issue so that the clothing designers would STOP thinking of this idea as a detriment because of some OTHER issue thats also broke.

Please as you read this article take into consideration ITS merits for what it would do. And dont just wine that "it'll make XXX more expensive.." YES ITS SUPPOSED to make stuff more expensive on a certain scale. if it DIDNT make some aspects of the game more expensive then it wouldnt be fulfilling the original point of increasing money sinks in fair areas so that OTHER bonuses dont need to be slaughtered.

And those other bonuses do bring life to SL. Encouraging a myriad of other methods for someone to help others.

Linden Labs needs to also look at another possibility that i DONT want to be part of what is considered in the vote proposal. How about people who routinely cause various disturbances in SL forfeit their stipend for a period of time realative to offenses performed in the various abuse reports. Repeated TOS violators should NOT be getting paid for sitting around using orbiters and C4 on every newbie they see. THAT would be a fair means of hindering the influx of money a bit. And more fair to the rest of the community than most the others i listed.

Woot 147 votes !! Not bad for just a few days i think.



ack.. somehow missed that thing before. Permits would be useful ONLY if there was world areas very carefully designed by the lindens with visual themes and zoning regulations. The world as-is with no zoning at all (roughly) would not justifiably benifit from requireing permits for certain things. It may have a place at some distant point in the future but not now and do NOT want any type of permits to be included with the proposal.




Ok another response i somehow missed before. And you have a GREAT point when put in that manner. People wanting to use something for their private use in a restricted manner cause QUITE a lot less resource usage. So I'd suggest an option to checkmark 'no-trans' on a texture so that it couldn't be used on anything but the uploaders OWN objects. When selected the restricted texture option the texture saves in inventory without permission to be given away and the upload cost would get capped at 10$L (still allowing small textures to benifit from my proposal price guidlines).

You had a really valid point Warda and hope that minor tweak addresses your issue.

Bumped due to pointlessly having yet another source of joy to new players removed.

Charge the prices you sujested & no 1 will upload textures,,, $16 & more pending on size????...

I still support the idea of scaling the costs, I think though that it needs to look at the average size for each thing and have that cost a little over the current L$10. So, say 10kb is a good size for a texture, that should cost around L$15-ish, smaller textures would thus be cheaper.
Doing it on file-size is still IMO the best option due to the bandwidth incurred.

However, I'm of the opinion now that even making these sinks better probably won't change things a huge amount, since upload fees are one-off, and paying for them repeatedly makes no sense.
I had an idea on taxes which would provide a greater flow of money without really hurting anyone, that might be better suited to compensating for dwell.

Commented on our taxes post (if its the one im thinking of) and quite liked the idea you listed there. Also all the above fee bases was assuming people STILL HAD STIPENDS and STARTING CASH.

The bonuses need to come back. The bonuses gives more methods of allowing people to SOCIALLY contribute to the community and MAKE IT MORE ENJOYABLE. The fees i list in here are strictly sinks that will remove money from where it naturally collects.

Also yet agian I'm not adamant about the exact fees i suggest here. And the texture upload fees was more to curb BEHAVIOUR than to increase revenue though it would do a great job at both. People upload too many stupidly large textures. That needs to stop. There are not half as many money sinks as the game needs. So here are some more.

Vote for the taxes proposal too. I like it /almost/ as much as i like my own proposal.

bump

Posted another topic in the Second Life Answer forum, as this is getting stupid. LL doesn't even seem to really be acknowledging the problem let alone taking into consideration this and other good solutions to it. All you have to do is look at the economy page to see that LL is creating 3 times as many L$ as are brought in by the sinks, meaning those L$ need to come entirely from tier and sim fees, which are ridiculous

Well ,as a new owner here that just shelled out about 300 US$ for 7168sq and club the money means nothing too me as long as there's users ,but i agree totally i see bad things,so i gave ya all ten of my votes,i think the residents will run like the wind,i see all entertainment crashing just as u suggest,,,,i hope im wrong..

LL seem (sensibly) comitted to eliminating all free handouts.
Dwell is good for non-commercial projects, but IMHO is too abusable - LL does not have the manpower to stop people using camping chairs to milk the dwell system. Life without dwell is a tradeoff - traffic counts mean something now, but popular projects lose their little bit of income. Guess they should ask for donations to support themselves instead, or charge money? I went the donation route and I have over 1/4sim devoted to my main project, which has about 14,000 on the traffic count - I appealed for donations to help us make ends meet and it worked wonders.

When appealing for donations :
1) have a concrete, numeric goal, and tell people how close you are to the goal before and after donation
2) have some list of major donors so you can give them credit. Give public praise to the donors to encourage others to donate.
3) be nice, encouraging, but not demanding.

Sure they do.

All they have to do is quit handing out dwell for having Basic accounts on your land. Limit it to Premiums, and maybe people who use LindeX or rent land on islands (i.e., are officers in landowning groups).

As alnd holder in SL I disagree with the proposed changes in upload charges. I have already lost my dwell bonus on my land and must cover the tier by making new content and reducing prices due to the exploding number of free accounts in SL. These new people have little money and they provide no dwell bonus for me so I have to lower my prices in order to get them to buy. The other option is to lower my amount of land and start going out of business.