We need THREE types of Sim ? Rationale and suggestion

Plus you can get huge terraforming on the private sims.

Kinda cool for making basements, underground caverns, underground rivers, etc.

I agree 100% that private sim rentals are one of the best values in SL. I just don't think the current situation requires the suggested change in the system.

Nor does anyone else here, as far as I know, S.
Some of us are concerned at the sudden (and likely continuing) INCREASE in the rate of release of sims which affect the economy by increasing land "for sale".

Like the 13 someone just bought, and the 30 more you could order tomorrow if you just cough up the money.

We want to stop the inevitable results of a sudden uncontrolled increase in the land offered in the open market.

You know, maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems to me that Victoria, for instance, in Ansheland, is running a bit more slowly than I would expect based on number of agents, scripts etc, and assuming it is a brand-new single-sim fast computer.

Are these the new "two to a server" sims perhaps? I saw Midgard (?) down under a hundred at one point a few days ago. There was a yard sale nearby, but again it seemed not quite what I would expect. Anyone else felt the same, or am I imagining it?

I been thinking of "buying" there (no, don't laugh), and I'm trying to size them up.

Ok, I replied to a post.. that I no longer even see posted lol so disregard this

In other words, you want the lindens to abolish free markets and artificially prop up a failing market that has priced itself out of competition, and refused to adapt to changing markets, in order to protect the investors who should have known full well that it was a gamble when they bought in on it.

Kewl.

I want LL to ban all new vehicles so that all of us old vehicle makers can charge whatever we want for our vehicles.

Clothing too, while were at it.

Hell, lets just go all the way and say textures and scripts in general. No new textures or scripts, please. They force us to be competative, and this is bad.

Reitsuki

Your post stopped me in my tracks and made me think really hard. Is it that simple ? Am I talking rubbish ?

I racked my brains, but I really can't see that the situation is as you describe.

The arrival of new "for sale" sims has never been part of the free market. The Lindens have as far as I know always been in absolute charge of the rate at which they are offered. They have emphasized that controlling this rate is their main "Lever" for balancing the economy, keeping land values and exchange rates stable and so creating a climate which consumers and businesses can operate in with confidence. They think this stability matters, even if you don't.

The old private islands escaped this "arrival control" because they were crippled so that they did not compete in the main market, but in a separate little one of their own. Now the crippling has been unexpectedly bypassed, and they are participating fully via "tradeable leases" or whatever you want to call them.

So I am not actually demanding a change in that respect. I am suggesting measures to return to the Lindens a control they always had, which has been temporarily lost through an unintended technicality.

Albeit it a good technicality which should be welcomed into the market, but on an equal footing. ie supply controlled, price determined in auction. Two proposals made by Anshe herself, no less.

Nope, you shook me with your apparent clarity, but it was illusory. I must come back to where I stood.

To use your metaphor, its as though LL has been heavily subsidising the price of invalid carriages. Someone finds a way of improving their performance to compete with Ferraris, but wants to keep the subsidy despite the justification for it having been destroyed. How about the people making Ferraris? Is that right in a free market ? Of course not.

The "subsidy" I speak of is of course the two huge advantages of a low fixed price, and unlimited supply. Meant for the "crippled" private island. Not for someone competing in a market where supply has always been limited, and auction used to fairly distribute this scarce resource.

New simulators are a resource. It's like, say... oil. Lets use oil. Oil is a pretty safe investment, as a rule, because people are always going to want it. Right? We don't have any particular control over the rate at which new oil depoisits are found, or when governments allow us to mine them, but it's still a resource that's traded in. Much like how we have no control over when new sims are bought or go up for auction.

Now, lets say someone comes up with a new fuel source that is cheap and abundant. Lets say solar, although I know IRL solar isn't that useful. Now, lets say this was enough to cause the oil market to collapse, because now anyone can buy a few solar cells and not be forced to pay the oil barons, which had been charging whatever they felt like because they new up to a certain point they could get away with it. This causes a boom in the solar cell markets and related markets, but the oil and related markets are ruined.

Same thing.



My point is there should be no control.



You want to have the government force the halt of solar cell production in order to protect the in-trouble oil markets.



Who said anything was fair? Free markets are never fair. The only thing they are fair in is that everyone has an oportunity to try to do the unfair stuff first.

What a very bad communication medium this sort of linear textual posting forum is. People keep arriving late, the preceding thread is far too long to read and assimilate. The same misunderstandings keep reappearing, however often they've been dealt with. Earlier posters get irritated, get a little less polite. Later posters get offended, harden their positions.

Its like running in treacle. I gotta reorient my attitude.

What did Buddha say? The thing is not to struggle to achieve your desires, but to stop struggling and not mind that you don't. Stopping desiring is just as effective at bringing happiness as achieving your desires. Something like that.

I'm rambling.

I think I've gone over the ed....dg...eeee...........

Sorry Reitsuki

I edited the one you replied to while you were replying. I went with your metaphor, and I think the new bit is the nub. Wot u think ? You like subsidies to continue when their rationale is gone? Surely you don't like subsidies at all?

Why do you want LL to abandon all control of the economy ? Surely SL wouldn't be here in six months.

Shouldn't have edited it in like that, I apologise.
Should be separate. Here it is (unchanged):

To use your metaphor, its as though LL has been heavily subsidising the price of invalid carriages. Someone finds a way of improving their performance to compete with Ferraris, but wants to keep the subsidy despite the justification for it having been destroyed. How about the people making Ferraris? Is that right in a free market ? Of course not.

The "subsidy" I speak of is of course the two huge advantages of a low fixed price, and unlimited supply. Meant for the "crippled" private island. Not for someone competing in a market where supply has always been limited, and auction used to fairly distribute this scarce resource.

Who is Lindar Lehane?
Why does he care about devaluation of mainland parcels?
What does it matter to him personally or his group?
If he was only born in January 2005 and only game to the forums in March 2005, would it be fair to say he still has a lot to learn?

I personally am not worrying about Anshe. Anshe is pretty smart. I think Anshe takes care of Anshe first, but she doesn't do it by screwing and harming others. Especially Anshe. Anshe Anshe owns loads and loads of land on the mainland.

She's suggesting auctioning as a way to keep her value all around, but I would note she is suggesting this after being badgered and heckled to death by Lindar Lehane, whoever he is, suggesting there is something "ebil" about selling deeded island land and advertising it as a sale.

Back to your Zen meditations, Lindar, the sky isn't falling just yet. And if it does fall, well it was only pixels? Only money? Just a game? And you were only born in January 2005? And you only have 16k, which is only what, $75 of tier? So relax!

What is the sound of one voice ranting?

Who cares who Lindar is? Why does it matter? I personally think that the fear of a land market collapse is overrated. As I posted in here , I think that a fixed price for land will just make the market more stable. I don't think we have anything to fear, the markets being free will always move based on predictions in one direction or another, but I think a better way to look at the market is to look at indicators. The Lindens have added more sims to the grid. To me that does not sound like a crash coming to the main land market. I think the way things are currently setup, if nothing else, we will have a more stable land market.

Yeah, pretty bright & perceptive Alt, whoever it is. Probably a Linden

But, who cares. Good ideas are good ideas and that's all that matters.

I think Anshe said it best - LL was a genius in creative the perception of value with land that you bought in SecondLife, even if it has the same 'real value' that diamonds do (which is another virtual market).

To let SIMs go unchecked into the marketplace put the perception of value at risk and a major marketing muscle of this virtual world.

Your analogy is flawed. I neither like it or dislike it, it's simply wrong. The private sims are not a subsidy. They represent the absolute objective value of a sim: 1000 USD. It was not a gift, it was simply not bought for the after-market markup.

Private islands are not, and have never been, crippled. One of the very first private islands was Teladore Island, which was a refuge for Uru Online players. It was devided up into subparcels with geographic borders and parcled out. They didn't have the tools there are today, but they did it anyhow. There were others doing the same thing, again, before there were any of the tools we have now.

If anything is 'crippled' it's mainland, because of the insecurity involved in it, plus it tends to be more laggy, the teraforming (In most sims) is more limited, etc.

Nor, don't fool yourself, was land ever distributed fairly under the old auction system. If that was true, people would have never been outbid on a plot of land by a land baron, then have to go to the land baron and pay more to them more to get the land. And this happened. Not just once or twice. If anything, the new system is the first time it has approached being 'fair'... Everyone has exactly the same chance to get a private island as anyone else. No limited supply artificialy inflating the subjective value of land.

I don't care if everything is perfectly fair, mind. This is capitalism, not socialism. But if we're going to get into citing fairness, lets be clear what we're talking about.

The true problem here is that first Lindens tell us that they plan to control supply and provide stability, then suddenly make one 180 degree turn and allow for unlimited influx of land.

Many times we have been told about the magic land release formula tied to number of new subscribers, about Lindens watching the average land price. Now with land deeding and private island sims we suddenly have one land source outside this formula and out of control.

If you talk about oil and solar power you talk about natural forces at work. Investors can try to use science to make predictions and they know that there is no promises. But concerning land in Second Life you have people who make decisions. This is one very different case.

Lindens must decide: Do they want Second Life to be one place for investors? Or do they just want sell game to players? Do they want owners or subscribers? Should this be one game or one virtual reality? Things become "real" when there is value and some sort of persistency of value. You can only sell soap bubbles so long. At some point trust breaks, the perception breaks and we are back to simply one game. Active Worlds anyone?

Residents have invested approximately 300.000.000 Linden$ in land. That is 300 million L$ or about 1.2 million US$. Most of this is not owned by land barons, but by people who spent money to own something worthwhile, their own part of Second Life. This is about 300 US$ per land owner, on average, based on 27000 subscribers and 15% of them land owner. This is on top of monthly subscription fee. Hmmm, well,... I leave it as one question to the interested reader: What made people invest that much in Second Life "land" as compared to, say, land or houses in Active Worlds, Everquest, Shadowbane or your average online game?

For this reason IMHO the best thing for Linden Lab to do is:

o Put all land on auction
o Include private sims in the land release formula
o Keep land prices stable
o Upgrade land: more prims, better servers, texture updates for existing land

Upgrading land could also include increasing land size. Maybe one day in the future one simulator is capable of simulating not 65536 sqm but 262144 sqm. Why not one day log in and find you 1024sqm parcel suddenly become one 4096sqm parcel?

Well, there should always be room for sims for $980.

And the issue isn't really the auction, but rather the release rate.

They could use a lottery or a first come / first serve type of way to sell the SIMs as well.

What's important isn't the auction but rather that they don't flood the market and destabilize the perception of value.

However, to constrain people from coming along and getting their own sim, like backstage or brigadoon or something, seems like a bad idea all around.

Sorry, Anshe, not buying it. LL doesn't owe you or anyone else security. This isn't your game only. If other people want land, they shouldn't need to pay you (or other land barons). They should be able to get land without the middlemen. Hence, private islands. More power to you if you and the others can make money off it, but don't think your entitled to it.



Because SL isn't those places. Active worlds is incredibly primative and limited. Everquest and Shadowbane are even moreso. SL is currently the 'top of the heap'. Back in the days when Activeworlds was popular, players DID invest tons and tons of money into it. I know, I was one of them.

You don't even need to think about the money. Just look at time. Why are people here? 99% of them are not here for the money. Same with Everquest, or anything else. They are here to have fun. When SL stops being fun they will leave, not when it stops being profitable.

Yes. Private sims are expensive enough already. They have the added downside that they aren't on the mainland, restricting traffic. They should not be limited.

And you can't stop people from letting others live on their land.

Well, no, they don't owe it, but if they want to have a reputation for being a random, chaotic environment you can't plan in, then they might as well kiss away any investment by sophisticated users.

Well, you can remove tools that facilitate the process.

Which is pointless, since people were doing it before the tools came about. Now the idea is out. People will keep doing it no matter what tools you take away.

Pffffft. You sure as hell can plan in SL. You just can't create a single, unflexible buisness plan and use it for the rest of your life and cry foul with the market changes and you refuse to adapt. This kills buisnesses IRL too. SL is, and should be, no different. And yet, people still continue to invest in buisnesses constantly.

There is nothing wrong with change, it is absolutely necessary.

But random sudden jolting unplanned change is never good. Even if it is change for the better.

Well, I have to disagree. The group deeding tool made this an issue.