Current Land Prices - Redux

In an attempt to avoid the disheartening personal attacks going on in the original thread of this name, I'm re-posting Hank's original post in case anyone actually wants to talk about "Current Land Prices" in SL and *not* talk about the relative value of various human beings and their avs. Whoever wants to slug it out can stick to the original thread.

As a small time player (tiny, only starting but with solid base) I wouldn't like to see the value of land move backwards.

Well if a player buys some over priced land from some mean land dealer then that player should not be surprised to see his land value drop down to a more realistic value.


Anyway... back to land value.
It it surely nicer for a player when buynig a plot of land to know that his money is well spent and not going down the drain.

From my point of view, if people are ready to accept that it is ok for your land to be worth less after you buy it... then what is the point in paying the current price? If a certain stability in land value does not exist, why would you pay L$3000 today for a 512m2 plot of land if you know and are happy with the idea that in a few weeks times it will only be worth L$2000..... maybe because 3 more new sims have just been added to the grid and stuff like that.

A certain level of scarcity in land and Sims would be a good thing as it could keep existing Sims more populated making it easier for people to socialize. It would help each current/old Sim to become more popular and useful possibly because with less land whatever it is built on it receives more attention and pressure to be good, or people will see it as a waste of space. But with infinite SIMs people will just look elsewhere without pushing improvement of current builds and landscaping. More traffic on less land will also rewards more every ones effort in creating entertainment and especially for those people building useful things good for the whole community like Libraries etc…

Less SIMS will give Lindens a chance to use more resources to control, manage and power existing SIMS to make the current grid a better place to be in. With less new SIMs coming up they could put new hardware in to replace old servers instead to add a new SIM to make the current Grid generally faster without losing out on subscriptions because with the amount of total and current unused/unsold plots there is plenty of space for more people to join SL as basic and premium accounts without the need of adding a few new SIMS… Of course LL still need a trigger to go and add a new SIM, but this trigger should be less easy to activate allowing current SIMS to get a bit fuller and with more powerful hardware…

Something along these lines would still bring money in for LL as we have enough land to host many more players, benefit all SIMS with new hardware focused to improve current grid, and easier management with less new sims-servers to maintain in the shorter term, and a general awareness that space/land has some value because we are not going to have a new SIM added every day.

Then when LL see that land prices may start to go crazy and new players may be falling victims of inflated prices to the hands of mean land dealers… then add one or a few new SIMS to keep things under control… also there will always be users buying and creating a new highland that usually offers more space anyway for malls, or residences or parks etc..

i would say slow down releases ever so slightly, LL should shoot for roughly a uniform value of the total for sale land in SL, and i've noticed it slightly increasing over time (thus the slowly falling land prices).. they used to have a very simple sum on the land page, i noticed they removed that some time ago which is a shame.

It seems like the overall decent average for land is about 25 total sims, (in area) for sale, give or take, it may be closer to 30 now though

Land prices are fine. They haven't moved much (if at all) from their original price way back when the land prices "thing" on the Land Page went up. Prices were at about L$4/m then, they're at about L$4/m now.

I've written before and will continue to carry on about this topic. There is TOO MUCH land being released and all would be better suited by a fair amount of overcrowding. It makes bad business for all involved to have one or two decent sized lots (businesses) and a couple of houses in most sims. Force people to use up existing land that is either held by barons or never is claimed. Way too much open spaces. Once everyone is packed in a little tighter, come up with a reasonable set of criteria for releasing new land.

The have's can continute to move to the burbs where prices will be significantly higher and the have nots can live in the more urbanized areas where land is cheaper. It will give people something to aspire too and will satisfy a lot of the zoning concerns some have here without the need for boards and committees.

I thought I’d give you some insight to what we feel are the important considerations we discuss how much land to put online.

- Stability – we don’t want people investing when land prices are inflated and losing their investment if prices drop. The run up in prices last summer was a result of Linden not being able to keep up with demand. We don’t think that will happen again.

- Enough reasonably priced land so that new residents are encouraged to buy land and pay monthly land fees.

The income that we get from auctions is great but secondary to these two concerns.

By the way, the number of new sims that show up on the map at any given time doesn’t really indicate how much land is being auctioned in the near future.

We plan to publish some historical stats soon, showing the average sales price per meter in-world next to the average auction price as well as the number of sims auctioned each week.

I look forward to more discussion.

Haney, we would also appreciate more detailed information on the rate that sims are expected to be released in the near future; say the next 3-6 months. How many sims going public? Do the sims have any particular features that might positively or negatively impact their "value"? Distance from telehub? Expected future expansion? (more telehubs/land going in nearby?) Unusual terrain/land features? Certainly the rate at which you release sims is flexible and dependant on a number of factors, but even a rough estimate would be kind.

A detailed census of residents would also be helpful. Instead of hearing broad numbers like "15000" or "20000" accounts, I'd like to see a breakdown of how many unique players there are; How many total accounts have signed up at all; how many activated their membership after the free trial period; how many cancelled/banned/lapsed accounts there are; how many unique individuals (not accounts, players or CC#'s) that have been active in the last week/month/quarter; How many active (meaning, logged in within say 1 month) Basic vs Premium account there are at the moment.

if they are secondary then WHY are so many of the current auctions for USD and not L's ?

Because they have bills to pay.

You don't see gas stations giving away free pepsis just because it's a "secondary income" to gasoline.

LF

Thank you, Walker.



I'm touched by the Linden concern about my investment losing value. But if that is really your bottom line, why don't you have equal concern about my investment losing value when you roll out the next fresh sim??? Now all of a sudden you're admitting that yes, you do expect land to retain value (if it can be lost in something like "last summer", showing yourself to be altruistic in ways that a number of jaded posters discount. But I'm perplexed. I think you should have just gutted out the high prices in the summer, past the inevitable slump that occurs due to people being on vacations. Roll-out of land in a game could concievably be driven by authentic demand for land, but you have pegged it to demand for subscriptions with free 512 tier and free subsidies of $500, and that's what is the socialist rotted core at the center of your system.



Ah, you confess that you encourage tier addiction muahaahahah! I feel many players do not really believe there is reasonably priced land in the game in part because they do not believe that tier is reasonably priced, especially when it gouges them on the double-ups where they get caught between tier levels. They are discouraged from going on older sims due to horror stories about lag. They are repelled by the ugly griefer builds. And they are scared of devaluation.

I'd love for you to give us the numbers of how many real, authentic subscribers there are minus the alts, how many of them log on once a week, and how many of those actually own land above the free 512 mark. Could we get those figures? So that we can see putatively *for whom* you are rolling out this new land?



Naturally tier addiction is the real cash cow. But Bri is right to ask why there aren't more parcels available for LL then, if income from auctions is truly secondary, and following your goal of maintaining tier addiction, providing more LL sales would help feed that better.

Hokuto Graham has written the best post I've seen on this subject in a long time. I agree whole-heartedly. Let society form better. I believe that more coherent communities, better group land tools, and better means of collectively dealing with griefers could really increase value of land and value of the game. I was just out watching Biff Pendragon's spinning horrid lurid tower -- he's now reduced it in size, but left it on land not even for sale. His parcel is small, and it would be good if there were mechanisms for say, 2/3 of the residents of a sim to vote to have a small land-owner like that clogging up and ruining three sims (in terms of view blockage, ruination, and lag) to be deal with in some fashion. Another way might be to have those who heavily use particles, scripts, textures, etc. to simply pay more for their land. We would see a marked decrease in grief and lagging if use of sever resources taken as a whole, on all their parameters, and not just literal meters taken, were factored into tier fees.

I've watched club owners on 2160 square acres of land hold people in 3 neighbouring sims hostage with their lag, including huge landowners of islands, etc. It is simply unjust. Why should a tiny idiotic juvenile mind who paid $5/meter to hold 2160 for a laggy club with shooters and griefers hold up adults investing thousands of dollars on 4 neighbouring sims? It's irrational for a business.

I think slowing sim production will force people to begin to conceive of the sims they have as communities that they need to work on building better, more sanely, with better builds and landscaping, and less idiocy. This will put value into people's labour and meaning for their land, rather than value into constantly flowing newly-baked pixels. It is an an entirely unnatural situation when the Gods can constantly make new land and pour new money into our world. Our RL God, as someone once called Him, does not keep pouring new land into the finite earth, much less new dollars, so we shouldn't expect this in a virtual world.

As for prices, I can't understand the irrational fears generated by August, because not enough time was allowed for them to reach their natural levels. Land barons would release excess inventory that they pay too much tier on. Prices would seek a level, they wouldn't stay too high.

I was out shopping for 512s today to put in a raffle. I found fresh fast mature from Anshe with a great view at only $2999 and fresh fast mature from SecondLand.com at $3750 with a great view. People mean different things by "great view" and their reasonable expectation that the view will go south or not. PG is down even more, $1999 or $2250.

The Lindens would go very, very far in convincing us of their genuine democratic concern for our investments and the value of their land and the value of our valuation of their land by putting out more First Land in decent locations. I have literally seen one waterfront First Land on any sim in months and months. The usual norm is to create a dense sheet of postage-stamp 512 squares in the middle of the sim which are crapped up almost immediately, leading to a slug-fight over who can take control of them to rescue them from 512-disease, with usually one banned griefer or absentee bad-builder in the mix holding the entire area hostage. 512s should be spread around better to encourage people to stay on them and to increase their value and to avoid the griefer hold-out phenom. If the Lindens are of a mind to engage in social good works, like concern about our land's value in the era of inflation, let them plow that concern into better placement of First-Land 512s, less frequent roll-outs of sims, zoning at least of club sims to siphon off clubs to faster sims where they will not be tempted to lag cheap land far from the telehub.

How exactly can a club in one sim on a server cause lag in another sim on a completely different server?

As for the tirade against the tiny juvenile mind ( as you put it) he/she has as much right as you do to buy land and do what they want with it. Some people detest land resellers but you have the right to buy and sell as they have the right to build a club.

Easy. They're called child agents. Each Av in the club sim looks out into neighboring sims and are registered in those sims as child agents. Those neighboring sims have to do work to support them. I don't have any hard statistics on it, but I have observed significant lag created in an otherwise empty sim by child agents.

Similarly, a really complex build with lots of textures, animations, particles, etc. can create client lag in neighboring sims.

Also, if I'm in a neighboring sim, then I might be a child agent of the club sim. If the club sim is laggy, then my child agent updates are laggy. The list goes on, but the point is that different sims are not as isolated as we might think.

And let's not forget that some stuff spreads across borders from server to server.
If you talk near a sim border, you will activate all listeners on the other side of it.

NO NO NO!!! I did not sign up for this world to have mechanisms in-place for 2/3rds (or whatever fraction you come up with) of any group to be able to tell me what or how I design or use my land. If Linden gives me x number of prims for my lot you and anyone else should have no say in how I use it save whether it is PG or mature.



Your beef should be with Linden, not displaying this elitist snob attitude by resorting to name calling anyone who doesn't subscribe to your way of how people should act in the world. If Linden provides the capability I grant anyone their right to utilize it. You want everyone to adjust based on what you want. I would say let you and your ilk pay more for wanting to deviate from the parametsr we all subscribed to.



So our virtual world should be shaped much like what this so-called rl god may have done here? The irony is delicious when you consider that it is quite possible that our so-called rl god is not actually there. Thet he or she may be just a figment of the imaginations of a billion or so people. Hmmm, a virtual god. But we're not debating the existance of God here.

Again, you resort to name-calling. If you don't approve of their labor (builds, landscaping, etc...) then they are somehow idiots. This is why I rant against any type of building controls out of fear of people like you deciding what is asthetically correct. It's scary.

I do agree that sim production should be slowed but for different reasons.

Can I be the voice that speaks up and says that constant expansion of space is actually a BENEFIT of virtual space vs. our increasingly crowded planet? I see no reason that anyone should expect land here to operate as an investment in the same way that real estate does.

However it is arranged, the overall community (not just land resellers) is best served if the supply of land expands in proportion to the demand. Keeping it at that sweet spot where the equipment gets paid for and the prices are kept as close down to cost as possible is the best formula for survival of the grid.

Secondly, various parties fighting over territory is a symptom of not having enough resources to go around. The elegant solution we can have here (vs. Earth again) is to simply increase the total amount of space in which to operate. Cutting down on sim growth would be exactly the wrong thing to do in this situation.

I don't like the idea of 2/3 of the neighbours voting somebody out because they don't like what's on their plot, but I'm trying to figure out how to solve the problem of recurrent devaluation of investments and value-add by the lone griefer who holds people hostage -- kind of like the problem of terrorism. People without consideration for their neighbours can grab a tiny plot, put lag-inducing crap on it, and drag down 3 sims. I've seen this happen over and over and over again. The only way to stop this is a) zoning or b) billing of server resources based not just on pixel meters but on resources drawn on -- whatever they are called, run agents, or cream cheese, the technicians can determine what gets drawn on, and determine that a "club bill" is what people who open up a club and use these resources have to pay, just like tier. I can't think of any other way, other than to make it impossible for those on tiny plots of land to access those server resources, and require that only those taking half or entire sims designated as club sims can draw on these resources.

These battles are not unlike the battles of nomads and farmers in Darfur, Sudan -- they are essentially battles about the fair and equitable distribution of scarce resources, in our case, not water and grazing land but server space and fastness of server performance.

When we talk about trying to deal with problem people on an individual sim, we aren't talking about somebody's style we don't like -- say, we had Alpine and he went Jetsons so we vote him out. Not at all.

We're talking about people who seriously devalue property by making it literally inaccessible -- putting up blocks around the edges for example in the form of walls or giant builds hogging up water space or whatever -- or builds or particles that lag a sim so low (to 27 FPS) that one's home becomes unusable. That's a horse of a different colour than the Alpine/Jetsons problem and it really is important to keep the discussion focused on these narrower definitions, so we don't regurgitate the usual flamewars about hedonists vs. good neighbours. Bouncer scripts that bounce avs trying to fly to parcels are also in this category of behaviour and items completely disrupting the game experience for other players.



It is common received wisdom in this game that what happens on one server can't affect another. Even the most savvy tekkies will not believe you when you try to explain that their conventional wisdom is all wet. But these servers function as teams of streaming entities harmonizing a world together, and you don't have to be a brain surgeon to realize that in fact they do affect each other! Badly!

It's also common received wisdom to claim (often airly and smugly) that "client-side issues" of packet-loss or lag is just the customer's problem, not the game's problem. But you don't have to be a nuclear scientist to see that if your "client-side" fps is showing 14000 in a fresh fast sim and 27 on a laggy griefer club sim that your "client-side" issues in fact were INDUCED by people lagging sims, and the game mechanisms unable to cope and redistribute those laggers' burden, passing the problem on to the customer. So one customer's bad behavior is passed on to another customer's perhaps less-than-speedy connection/system because the game company simply cannot cope and redistribute the burden on the servers.

If there weren't particles and textures for my system to cope with, it wouldn't have packet loss -- that seems clear to me. If I don't have packet loss in Moraine, but have it in laggy clubland, then packet loss is a relative problem, and a game problem, and not merely my own ISP's problem. Tekkies are hard-wired to pass on blame for everything that is negative to customers, not companies, to individuals, not systems, but SL is a venue that enables you to see the validity of the old expression: don't spit into the well, you may have to drink from it. People who spit into the well and force others to drink their lag operate in a context made possible by failure to siphon off or control lag and make problems for others that they themselves may suffer from someday!

From extensive field research and interviews of others, I have determined without a shadow of a doubt that lag on one sim causes lag on neighbouring sims.

But I'm not a computer expert, so I took the extremely rare (for me) measure of calling out Lindens to examine the situation (taking the example of a friend who did the identical experiment). I got two Lindens who explained in no uncertain terms that yes, indeed, lag on one sim affects the neighboring sim due to the child agents issue Shack discussed, and due simply to the issue that one server passes along data to another -- they are seamlessly streaming, and avs move from one to the other, look at one from the other, take stuff from one to the other, etc.

Time and again, we witnessed how lag of one sim down to 27 by the mafias, clubs, and griefers who used particles, weapons, bouncer scripts, etc., was influencing our own 3 other neighbouring sims. So it's a real issue to ponder. Those who have fast FPS and don't have griefing clubs near them don't get it because they experience it. But the Lindens concede it is a real problem.

I can only conclude now that this is a serious devaluation of land that will stop serious further investment in SL by serious investors. I have compiled three very extensive case studies of how this phenomenon works, and I intend to write this up and distribute it. I digress on these issues in the land-value thread because land value basically comes down to two things: ability to move and ability to see. If I can't see a good view, if my view is blocked, if my view has ugly griefer crap, my enjoyment of the game collapses to 0, and I have no value. If I can't move, if the frame rate is so slow that I chop around like some kind of ancient Disney cartoon, then I don't have value!

The Lindens current solution to value loss is to bake fresh sims and get everybody to stampede out to move to them. I do not agree that is a rational and beneficial method to create a game for a million people.

Stability is important?

Around what target price? Around the current one? Or around the concept that you want a 'stable number of people buying new land'.

I suspect it's the latter, rather than the former.

Myself and some friends are new to second life having come here from other 3D chat/game sites. We are watching what happens for a while before taking the plunge into premium membership. None of us are rich and so it is doubtful we will start with anything other than new land.

So far we have seen only one plot of new land that was of interest and another newbie was just in the process of buying it. It was a piece of waterfront which is what we want however it seems most of what is currently being built is landlocked.

We are not complaining we can enjoy Second Life quite happily with the single payment and wait until what we require is provided by Linden after all a lot of the land already created has lots of inlets etc to provide plenty of water frontage and no doubt Linden can design more like that, so why rush in?

I think all newbies would do well to consider this, after all Linden Labs are wealthy enough to get by without you paying a monthly contribution, so pay the single one off payment and sit tight and watch for a while if you can't find what you want straight away.

RM

As interesting and useful as this information would be to the user community, Linden Labs would be mad to release it. I'm surprised they release as much information as they do in terms of total users (which you can get idea of if you create a new account you'll be near the bottom of the leaderboards), and the number of land owners (giving you the rough number of Premium account holders from the total user base.

The kind of information asked for above would be regarded as commercially sensitive. It shows whether there is any future in the business model and allows potential competitors to estimate whether their is profit to be made by cloneing the concept. I estimate that it would take a small group of programmers only about 6 months to clone the technolgy behind SL (at least to get to a beta stage) so for LL to tell people how much money they're making would be commercial suicide.

Most likely if the Lindens do come out with new land it will be bought up rather quickly at auction for the same price as you can buy it now.

Sitting tight isn't as clever a strategy as you might think it is.

As a consumer I have found sitting tight is usualy a good thing to do, rarely does it work out badly. Linden Labs want people like my friends and I to become customers who pay a regular amount every month therefore it is in the interests of newbies to sit and wait for the best possible deal.

The only point of becoming a premium user is land ownership so the more attractive that proposition becomes the more people are likely to stump up the fees every month. If it isn't an attractive proposition, and what we see available right now isn't then we will wait until it is. LL will react to market forces so newbies should sit tight and think before jumping in.

One problem with auctions for $L is that bidders need to have the $L in their accounts before they can bid. For some, that means buying L$ for US$ before they can bid, and then not always winning.

However, if we thought that more auctions for L$ would mean greater income from land tiers, then I imagine we would offer more.

Any thoughts from you all? If we offered more parcels for $L, would you buy more land?