Developers Incentives/Popular Places!!

I would like to know how this EXACTLY works.

Each month, Linden offers a $US reward to the 2% of landowners who receive the most dwell .
Dwell also determines which "Popular Places" are selected each night. You can see these by clicking on the Find button and selecting the "Popular Places" tab. They also appear on the Map as a "thumbs up" icon.

House of Blade Mall on Samurai Island was delivered to us on Feb 9th, we hit popular places with in a day or two, only have dropped from it maybe a total of 3 times after and was still in the top 25 popular places.

Not once have I recieved any devlopers incentives that is paid monthly since we have been open.

I see land owners listed to get an incentive this month that barely hold dwells of 2k, at the old House of Blade in Mooaleo we held an average of 3500 dwells/traffic.

I would like to know how this works because my team and I work hard to keep us in popular places with mostly shoppers and an environment and not even holding daily events.

A real answer woul be nice since I see people listed this month that aren't holding high dwells.

Thanks for your time.
Kat

I'm also very curious to exactly how this works.
This should be public information, since it is about RL monetary awards to the players.

I expected to be on the list of winners in February, was a bit surprised when I wasn't, since my place hovered on the list of popular places all month. But I decided to hang in there and work even harder in March.

I did, and in March, I've been at #4-10 on popular places all month, dwell from 10K-15K every day, and now i was sure I had made the list of winners for March.
But alas, no! My name was not to be found on the list. Several of the winners on the list has less traffic than I do. Also if you combine all their plots. Makes me wonder how this really works.

Jeska Linden got a couple of PMs from me, since she was the one that published the list, but she did not bother to even respond. And no replies from support either. So I took it in-game, to Lee Linden.

I had over an hour of IMs with Lee Linden over the matter yesterday (thanks for at least responding, Lee, I really apreciate it), without really getting anywhere. I did not get an understanding on how it works. Basicly all I got out of it was that I wasnt qualified, even with 10-15K in traffic every day for the month. He insists that there is nothing wrong with their calulations. But then again, he also insisted that traffic numbers updated yesterday, which it didnt. Traffic is stuck again, but its not at 0.

Another weird thing is that Jvizzle Jacques place, Ice Dragon resort, has been #1 all of march, with over 30,000 in dwell (Fantastic job, Jvizzle!), but he was lower than #50 on the list of developers award winners! How is this possible, Lindens?

As it is now, im extremely reluctant to invest any more time and money to get into the popular places list.

Since there is no fame, or award to be won, even if you have one of the most popular places in SL, I have decided that the time invested is better used on increasing my sales, and the money I spend employing hosts and giving out prize money will give me far better return if I just cash it on GOM.

I agree moon, Then what qualifies?

I see incentives given to Sim owners (not naming names) that hold dwells on a regular basis 1500.

I don't like to get on these forums as you can see I don't post much, but isn't my $995 for the island and 195 a month the same as the other owner that has 65,536 m2 of land?

2 months of Popular places doesn't qualify?

It isn't like us Mall Owners are making a killing. With the bonus for ratings cut we are all having to work harder, Land owner, Designers, and shoppers.

I often wonder how it works myself, I mean I have always had Developer Incentive since having a sim, and have a steady stream of around 6/8k dwell (my sim is parcelled off). Although you rarely find us nowadays on popular places, because of the sim being in several seperate parcels.

Sometimes it dips, sometimes it soars, when we held the 24 hour fundraiser, we were No 1 popular place for a day or two, with over 15k dwell, but my developer incentive for that month was lower than the previous month

I'm not too sure how its worked out, but it does sound like you both should be getting something, I admit I didn't expect to get any when I first took got my sim, but I am not sure now, I could live without it, as I get mine knocked off my monthy payment.

An answer on this is very much needed because as of right now it all looks pretty shady. Almost appears to me to be more of a "we like your sim and what you do so here ya go" vs. something that has been earned by hard work. Seems to me there is some "fuzzy" math goin on around here to calculate this stuff but I might be wrong.

Kas

Thank you. Indeed it should. And since the dwell has been broken and not recording for some time, you wonder how they could be handing out the developers' awards fairly, because they are undoing the hard work of people who got up their dwell.

What I don't like about this system is that it creates an insular reward machine. The reason you are popular is because you got the dwell award and its visibility. You got popular because of dwell. But the whole reason you got the dwell is because you were already popular, such as to be visible on the list and in the awards, and then people saw you and came and gave you more dwell to keep your cycle endlessingly cycling.

They aren't necessarily coming to visit you and staying because you're actually good, they are merely coming because you're just there, and accessible.

It then becomes a feat of near inhuman strength to break through that cycle and try to get a purchase on that very slippery slope that is already clawed to death by those already on it.

Hmmm. Not sure how you can do this, especially being new. Indeed, the system ought to be studied with an eye to how many new people ever get on this list, or whether it merely rewards the same people over and over.

The problem is the lack of advertising capacity in the game. FIND PLACES and POPULAR PLACES and EVENTS are what you have. But FIND PLACES might not turn you up in the top 100 that draw out of the deck each time, someone will have to look you up by your name and already know you. POPULAR PLACES you can't get on unless you were already popular such as to be getting traffic. EVENTS can't be commercial gimmicks. So...you can buy an ebay link or a metadverse ad or...? Very hard to break through.

That's why some people have advocated a player-based TOP PICKS that rotates each week and is selected on merit but also has enough random circulation in it to give people a chance to appear.

Ice Dragon Resorts #1 In Popular Places Statement On Monthly Incentives Program

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Hi Everyone. So glad you opened the forum up for this discussion cause I have much to discuss and tell all. We have been the most successful on the most popular places list for the entire month of March this is true and we would like to thank all SL residents who frequent our spot fore it is the residents who make us successful and there are just an unbelievable community of wonderful personalities that make this game truly great and not Linden Labs, It's the people!!

Well back to the subject at hand, we were shocked to see our owners, Jvizzle Jacques in particular who is my husband RL show up as #56 on the Developer's Incentive Award list. When inquiring with the Linden's on this matter, they were uninformative, asked us to prove it to them that we were #1 all month long and even rude in their response stating when and where did they ever state that being on the popular places list would get you the top prize if your #1 all month anyways. Lee Linden was so point blank nasty when approached about this new found revelation. We discovered, the Developer's Incentive award is based on how much land you have cumulative and all traffic is added together for all properties that a land owner has, not how you rank on the popular places lists which concerns me cause we have no idea who these people are they never show up on the lists??.

People kill themselves working their butts to acheive the high prize and in a nut shell this is an unreachable goal for all of us because land owners who have extreme amounts of land are the ones they take care of and they are the ones who will always get the top awards end of story. They just recycle the money back into more land over and over every single month making it impossible to achieve the award. The thing is this has never ever been stated in the rules of the Monthly Incentive program and they blasted us back like this was a well known law that ever single land owner except for Ice Dragon Resorts was aware of. I ask all land owners, Did you all have any idea that even though you can be #1 by over 10,000 to 15,000 dwell points higher than 2nd place for 31 straight days only 25 of them could be seen on popular places list 11 days the stinkin traffic was broken. (WE HAD OVER 30,000 DWELL POINTS EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR MARCH)


You will only get a tiny amount of the award prize and the top prize getters don't even show up on this list at all!! Many of them in fact! Therefore that popular places list is deceiving if you think that placing high on the ranks of it is going to get you any real money. Unless you have a few 100,000 sq m of land and butter the lindens bread real well you are wasting your time and money.

New goal, you better start placing yourself on that list only for the sole purpose of maybe increasing personal sales or just for the sheer enjoyment of being labeled the hot shit with good popularity. Striving to place at the top of the Popular places list to get the high prize is not a reality and for all of you land owners who are true troopers in providing the entertainment and income for residents that linden labs no longer provides I applaud you all but warn you also to not break yourself thinking it will come back to you in reward in the end cause it will not!! We at Ice Dragon Resorts will continue to hook up our fine residents with gaming round the clock and stand behind the integrity of our Goal which is to give the residents somewhere to go to make some dough$$ have a good time and meet the other fine residents that make this game what it is. We will have to move to a different location to downsize but at the nw location business will continue to FLOW$$$ . Linden Labs has lost focus of what real business values are truly about which is.. it's not all about You Linden's!! You have to at some point start to care about who made you and one day will break you. BE CAREFUL LINDEN LABS and straighten the hell up! You are leaving a nasty taste in us high paying residents and land owners mouths. *BREATHES *

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Wow, Krystall. That's quite the post. And let me beat all the nasties to the punch who will snidely tell you to use "enter" to make paragraphs or stop building "whinescrapers".

Sometimes, things are so egregious that you have to make a huge breathless block of text, and this sounds like one of them.

The world of 30,000 dwell is so far in the stratosphere for me and my little group that I have one simple question: how many actual Linden dollars do you get in your box every week for having 30,000 dwell? Just wonder, because need to know if it is worth it.

As a landowner, I can say that having a large tract of land and having some dwell on it doesn't necessarily advantage you in this system at all.

I think if you are already on the popular places list, you stay on it.

The only moral I can understand from your story is this: the Lindens should provide a public explanation for how they calculate this.

Woot Henry!!! Let me get on it and space it out some hehehe. I want the message to get across and not get corrupted by my rambling. Thanks for the feedback )

It probably is how much TOTAL land and traffic you provide LL. Meaning if you spend a ton of RL money per month in SL, you'll get a kick back. Sounds like its more of a "Spenders Incentive" than a "Developers Incentive". This leads to situations where someone who owns multiple sims and simply rents them out is going to be rewarded and the person that owns a single sim and makes it the most popular place in SL will not get rewarded. I would be curious to see how much of a kick back you get verus what you pay on average for those making the list.

Wow! Did they ask you to prove it? They are the ones sitting on the numbers! Are we supposed to screenshot the pop places list daily now?
I can't help thinking something major has screwed up, or their description on '2% of landowners with most traffic' is grossly misleading.

Bumpity bump. A detailed explanation is needed, Lindens!

Henry, The best I can tell.. unless you are prepared to spend over 200$ us dollars on tier and other 200$ us dollars (minimum) for prize money .. dont expect any thing back from lindens.. except maybe a couple hundred lindens a week..is what i receive as a co-owner of Ice Dragon Resort.. so play the game, have fun.. but dont think spending your rl money is going to get you anything good..except some fun. Good luck with the game

FYI LL have posted how dwell is calculated here:

/16/ff/23421/1.html

It's not something that is hugely close to my heart as my poor tract of land will never qualify me to take part but I do empathise with those individuals/groups who work really hard to promote their events etc.

It's probably too simplistic but it would seem that there needs to be a different system to reward those that are generating huge traffic counts purely by holding large amouts of land. In effect, two sets of incentives. Not sure if it could be made to work though.

The description on how to win the developers award does not hold water, at least not when it comes to traffic. Several on the winners on the list has less traffic than me (or Kat or Krystal for that matter), even if you combine all their plots.

If you have to own more than a sim to win, they can just say so. We need some numbers to go with the list of developer award winners.

It's nice that the Lindens made that effort, but it's hardly the detailed explanation that's being asked for, and which should really be made available.

It's also not accurate. It says: "Dwell also determines which "Popular Places" are selected each night."

If that's the case, then the Popular Places should correlate with the Developer Incentives (which does seem to be a misleading moniker).

LL should provide a clearly written and transparent explanation of how those rewards are made and how they relate to the Popular Places list, as well as the purpose of the rewards in the first place. They seem to be playing their cards close to the vest in order to ward off complaints, but that strategy, as always, has backfired. By being transparent and saying, "These are the rules, go play by them," LL would be doing the community and themselves a favor.

I thought this was worth posting, as I have had troubles w/ this in the past.
As I understand it, transfer includes the deeding of land to a group....

From what I have seen any good documentation about anything having to do with SL is the true weakness of Linden Labs at the moment.

Aha, undisclosed information here. If you are right, Schwanson, that may mean that the fact that I kept on buying out neighbouring land to keep lag down and improve my visitors experience may actually be the reason for me not qualifiying. I kept on joining and deeding the land to my group throughout the month, thinking it would be better for my visitors with fewer prims and fewer active scripts in the sim.

I got that quote here:
/16/ff/23421/1.html

As I read it, it pertains only to private island owners. This should not have had an effect on your grid land purchases.

Here is a little information we have picked up after dealing with dwell for almost a year and a half.

1. DI awards are also based on parcels that are not listed in the directory. If someone has 50 1024 plots that aren't listed with between 50 and 200 dwell each day that adds up quickly.

2. Very few people are required to put yourself on the popular places list. 4 or 5 people spending all their daily dwell time on your plot will usually do it easily. This can be as little as 10 minutes each.

3. Being on popular places is its own reward, not a means to a DI award. Trying to use dwell to cover your tier costs is a losing strategy.

4. Daily dwell payouts are not enough to pay for anything, even for the highest traffic areas. Personal experience shows 20k dwell can equal as little as 400 lindens, usually a lot less than prize money to keep enough people there for those numbers.

4. If your land is in group your monthly dwell total is split between all your land donating members, based percentage wise on the amount of land you have donated. This seriously reduces your chances of any of you getting a DI award.

On the other hand the benefits in both maintenance time savings and the 10% group land bonus more than offset this. Example: If your group owns half a sim you would get around 3500 m2 free, a potential land tier savings of $25 per month. You need to be fairly high on the dwell list to get $25. The land tier bonus is guaranteed.


In closing my suggestion to you is to not worry about dwell awards. They are fairly meaningless, and they won't pay the bills. Use popular places for extra advertising. If you get a DI award great! Use the winnings to buy another pair of 40 prim shoes.

Thanks for replying..

1. 50 plots each getting 100 in dwell is only 5000. not enough to beat Jvizzles 30K, or my 15K for that matter.

2. In order to break into pop places, mature & PG, you need 6110 as of today. Thats 9-10 avatars spending 100% of their online day. According to my calculations since June you get around 700 points for each avatar that spends 100% of their time at your plot.

3. I agree. I cover my tier with my sales. For my part it was more about the fame, and to see what i really got out of it. It was an experiment. Failed one that is.

4. That is correct.

5. Agree. I am the contributor of land to my group.

#57 on the DIA list, which was also #1 all month in pop places by a large margin, got USD28, btw.

This simply does not give a good explanation to this months DIA.

Bumpity bump, Lindens

1. This was an example number. Certain people on the list hold much more than 50 * 1024m2 worth of unlisted lots, with the potential to generate much more dwell than 30k per day.

2. The answer here is go PG, its much easier to break on to popular places. Using your numbers it only takes two and a half AV's total time per day to be a PG popular place



I think this may just be a group issue. We went through this when the award first came out. We never received a DI award for group land, even when we only had a single land contributor, and despite being in the top 10 of popular places for the entire month. Only after land was moved to a single owner were awards received.

We honestly don't care anymore. Monetarily the award is a pittance. Its potential meaning as a mark of excellence is washed out when the winner of the award is most often an empty lot.

On a slightly related note I believe all awards bonuses and leader boards from LL should be completely removed. Rewards should be player driven, funded, and decided. Leader boards are just plain an invasion of privacy.

Uh.

The "kickback" is the developer incentive. You get that depending on how much dwell you have for the entire month. If the most popular spot in SL is a 512 First Land plot, then that person will be first on the DI awards.

Just having a lot of land doesn't mean you get money back. It increases your CHANCES, because you have more land for people to sit on, and all of it is (i imagine) developed.

LF

?????

The history Wiki?

The Tiki Wiki?

The LSL Wiki?

Hotline to Linden? New world Notes?

etc.?

This is a very confusing and potentially frustrating issue. I'm not sure any of us fully understands exactly how dwell/traffic works, even the ones of us who have been around a long time. And judging by the number of times that LL has had glitches with the calculations of our dwell/traffic, it's a bit of a hassle for them to manage, too.

I think that all leaderboards should be abolished and instead, a list of the top people with the highest dwell/traffic as it applies to Developer Incentive qualification should be made public each day; this list could be zeroed out at the end of each month (i.e., at the end of a Developer Incentive calculation period). I agree that the "Popular Places" list doesn't seem to be a good indicator of who will actually be awarded Developer Incentives, so it does look a little odd and suspicious.

If LL is going to use real money awards as a carrot for players to work hard at providing enjoyable SL content and events, they should give players a more easily accessible way of figuring out exactly where they stand, dwell/traffic-wise, in relation to other players. This is far more important than knowing exactly whose account has the most money, or who has the highest building rating score.