Where SL is headed

Dunno about others, but I'm beginning to worry that with the recent stipend/dwell changes LL is going in the wrong direction to try and solve the L$ economy.
By removing dwell and basic stipends I fear that SL is going to move away from being a game and into an overly money-fueled place just like the real-life that people are trying to escape.
Already almost all of the free places that I enjoyed and got me into the game have disappeared, unable to support themselves despite continued popularity. The others that remain are scaling down or outright selling out, placing vendors and such, just I've had to do with apartments and a mall to keep one of my favourite places from going under as well (I'm a group member for it).

Anyway, I think that the removal of money sources from the economy is a really bad thing, and what LL needs to focus on is finding ways to remove money enough that these support mechanisms can continue to allow free, fun, popular places to thrive! Because the thing is that SL should foremost be a GAME, if it stops being fun then people will just turn away from it, close up their land, sell off their sims, whatever. It's a great place to meet new friends, but IM clients will do that job without the over-bearing commercialisiation that I am already seeing in my favourite places.

I have a thread for a suggestion, essentially a tax system, which while the word is instantly revolting, it makes sense and I feel is worthy of merit. It also links to my original thread where I discuss the problem from my perception/experience in more detail:
/13/60/110420/1.html

It's similar to the recent client changes. While OC rocks, I'm finding myself still wondering where LL is trying to go, because driver issues and support for machines that used to run SL isn't particularly reassuring, as all I (and others) want from SL is a 'game', a fun world to interact with and meet people in. Not the latest bling, not the latest new feature to make a product with, but a fun thing to spend time on.

Thanks

Some good thoughts here, so I've moved the thread to the discussion forums. The Answers forum is really best used as a place to get answers to specific questions.

Well, I think honestly that SL stopped being a "game" long ago. It has become a full-fledged virtual society... with all the potential problems that entails-- including a flakey economy.



Its for sure that the removal of dwell without anything to replace it has hurt SL in general. However, to tell the truth, there never should have been dwell in the first place. It cause people to focus on numbers rather than quality. The whole idea of "traffic" is messed up. Clubs pull in fraudulent traffic (through alts and bogus events) to push up their "traffic" figures to the point that traffic really has nothing to do with popularity.



Well, a lot of folks would disagree. There are plenty of "games" out there for the playing. SL is pretty unique... and is anything but a "game". It is a total social environment, complete with property, business and much more. But I agree.. there has been a lot happening LL-side that is removing a lot of the enjoyment from the system. Every time they make a decision that benefits LL more than the customers... it reduces the attractiveness and fun from SL.




Which LL has been told repeatedly. Right now, they're the only cafe in town, so people flock here. That won't always be the case. If they think there aren't other companies right now developing competitive products, they're wearing blinders. And you can be assured those products will see the mistakes LL makes every day and do things differently. It's the old IBM method of "let the competition make the mistakes, then bring out a product without those mistakes". Whether it's 6 months off, a year off, 2 years off... we are soon going to see a competitor come in and then LL will be fighting tooth and nail for customers. They really cannot afford to continue making short-sighted decisions.



It's for sure a proper sink is needed at this point. However, no sink is going to be beneficial until LL takes the smart step and stops pouring millions of free L$ weekly into an already glutted economy. Until they make that decision, the rest is worthless.



A major gripe of many people.. each new release bringing about new problems (which really, is to be expected). But one of my major gripes is failure to prioritize. HUDs, floppy prims and lighting is all very nice... but not when the grid is lagging to a standstill, freezing up, sims crashing regularly and textures taking 10 minutes to load. As a businessman, my main recommendation to LL would be to get their heads on straight and stop playing games. This is a business... pay attention to priorities. A more solid foundation and better graphics engine should be the primary focus right now. Upgrading to Havok 3 (or a more suitable graphics engine) should be top on the list, because if they don't... someone else will bring out a system that is already there and LL will NOT be able to catch up.