Prok is right. SL is a dog's breakfast. Why do people argue with this?

A) Philip admitted that SL is not profitable in the article in Red Herring this month

B) LL could release a small subset of new sims (say, 25% of them) which are zoned by a 'zoning lord'. The zoning lord would be one of the residents of the sim who is elected democratically by the other residents as having final say over any build in the sim. The zoning lord would be re-elected on a periodical basis.

Meanwhile, the whole problem of "SL is a mishmash of amature content" isn't fixed.

True, but nothing is ever 100%.

Yes, but 25% (At best, and less when you consider that it is STILL mostly going to be amature content, simply because 95% of the people in the game ARE amatures) isn't enough to justify surrendering the freedom for.

I can't help thinking that these people need one of those corporate retreats and a makeover and to make some serious organizational changes if they are not profitable with a land auction and world idea like this. There's something wrong.

If they'd get out of the way more and just focus on fixing the servers instead of giving away teddy bears, then players making good content they charge properly for might be the draw, so that those kinds of customers help build the world and make a profit from it, but not through exploitation of their own labour, and through feting and subsidizing, which is never the way to make the world.



You know, I fully expected that the Lindens would do that, because with their considerable power and influence, if all they did is say "This some we're naming 'residential'" it would go a long way toward creating a public climate of opprobrium

You know, your idea of the zoning dude is going to be too hard to administer. So you have to make it simple and automatic. Whoever buys and KEEPS the most land on the residential set-aside sim is the zoning dude. So baron quick-sale choppers who buy a lot and sell and leave get nothing. Those who are end users who buy larger plots for projects, or for rentals that they are willing to upkeep, get this job. This person has some kind of tools. They make a community association that has better tools in the group functions to do things like discuss, vote, and recall (without the ability to recall land-owning purchasing officers, which is hugely unjust).


Unfair that the largest landowner gets to be king? But he is already king everywhere in SL, but with no responsibilities and no public expectation to induce him to behave better. Maybe all he does is get to be king for 30 days until he can organize a community association and get a vote for the new king or something.

The point is, all the Lindens had to do with this new continent is set a few signals and names. A sim that is called "residential" on the auction. The Linden builds on it include a big public park in the center with benches. The plots on the auction are smaller so that ownly homeowners get them. A location far from the telehub. Those three things -- a name, a park bench, a distance from the TH -- are all the Lindens have to do to go 50 percent farther toward resiential peace than where we are now. They don't have to administer a thing. The tone sets itself. Tone-setting goes a long way.

I would rather have LL work on a "per-parcel rendering" feature than any self government or zoning thing.
To me, SL is exactly like the web, only in 3D. It makes no sense that people should be neighbors with random strangers.
I mean, on the web, even if you share a server with someone, you arent forced to view their website. Why should it be any different here?
People should only be neighbors with likeminded individuals. LL should make it a lot easier to move. As in, click a single button and you are moved to a medieval zone.
Tired of medieval crap? Click another button and your whole build is moved to a futuristic zone.
LL just has to stop obssessing over this silly notion of a huge contiguous world.

I'm available for building non-TOS-violating walls that are transparent from your neighbors side, but textured inside with a panoramic view of the land, sans builds.

IM me for a quote!

oh, and in response to today's psychosis: what?

Hmmm... that's a very cool idea Eggy, hadn't actualy thought of that.

But yeah, I think it would go a long way to making the metaverse real. I like that idea, thought I'm not sure Philip's sense of continous community would work with that.

It's kind of cool too, because this way a parcel could be an 'island'. Speed up rendering, lag (though not sim FPS, because you're sharing resources..) etc Very very cool idea.

Prok.. I'm not so sure it would be that hard to implement. We already have groups with election features and groups can own land where the officers have special land privileges.

Agreed wholeheartedly. Everyone's issues in this game stem from this idea of a contiguous world. As you've said there's no reason for it, so why have it? The whole world is just numbers on a machine and those numbers can be changed arbitrarily with only the cost of computing the new set of numbers. The whole idea of a secondary market for virtual land is silly. There are a bunch of issues with having what would be a totally liquid world such as transportation infrastructure, and landmarks working. I feel all of these have at least conceptual solutions. Other MMOs have figured out problems like "per-parcel rendering" through tricks like instancing and sharding, why would it not work in here?

Unfortunately such a thing is so radical that I would not imagine seeing it in SL 1.7, or even 4.0, if ever.

I think that kind of metaverse does demand a bit of web plug-in type client as well because it would be less 'immersive' in nature.

Which I think would be a great idea, I'd love to see 3d websites..

Actually one idea I always had would be to control the client cut depth. So for example, if you were in a room, there would be no point in having a cut depth of 512 as you'd be rendering all that useless material.

If I am in Mr. Fairplays poker room, for example, I couldn't care less what else is in the simulator..

.. Nor do I particularly wish to wait for the whole sim to rez when I just want to play poker.



I dunno, Mendel. What if we just had a parcel setting - "set draw distance" or an LSL command "llSetDrawDistance()"

It wouldn't necessarily do *everything* that Eggy wanted, but I think it would go a long way to getting it done.

This just in, your prayers, answered.


* * * BREAKING NEWS * * *



https://secondlife.com/land/islands.php

Yeah, you know I think I've posted and read probably about 400+ messages and I've seen one interesting idea (parcel rendering) and learned one thing (microsoft is backing vanguard).

Kinda depressing.

Yawn.

Maybe its such a "dogs brekfast" because you dont charge for making stuff, if you did (like in There) then people would put more thought into making quality items, but not everyone can afford this at every step, i think SL is good as it is, i build here and i do everything else in There, the freedom to build is the best part of SL and i wouldnt want it changed at all

To my knowledge, this has been suggested in two other threads on these forums. Every owned parcel an "island" of sorts, virtually accessible but "physically" separated.

Regardless of whatever technical considerations, LL's purpose seems to be not so much to build a contiguous world, but to build a sense of contiguous community. The world is symbolic of that community.

Personally, I don't buy the symbolism, and I think there is merit in physically separated parcels.

Doesn't that sound like TSO? I rather like the idea of a contiguous world, rather than living in a bubble.

Sorry to be repetitive, but I wanted to bring the thread back to what you originally posted. I am not arguing against the desire to see SL look better. Prok is not arguing to make SL look better either. He is arguing to make what he sees look better.

Blaze, Prok has allowed inappropriate themed buildings to be stuck in front of me twice. When I've moved, or complained, he basically said I should just endure them. But when someone puts something in front of him he deosn't approve, he wants it removed. This has nothing to do with making SL successful.

Also, his tactics can be counterproductive. AFter trying to discuss all of this with my friends in RL. Several of them have suggested I leave the game. They thing with the amount of money I put in, the time I spend making my builds nice is not worth the hassles encountered.

Have you been to Pimushe and seen my build and seen the building next to mine? What is Prok doing that is improving SL and stopping it from looking like a dog's breakfast in this area? The lots he rents out in Sutherland are prefab houses plopped down with no real landscaping and not even Linden trees. Is he really the one we are to model our SL experience on? Yes maybe Ravenglass is beautiful but outside of his own sims, he's not as thoughtful.

Blaze, I don't know that zoning would solve the problem. So you'd have lots of little suburban houses designed at varying levels of quality instead of a mishmash of different structures made with a mixture of quality. What does that solve? (not that i'm not in favor of residential zoning, but that's different from design) If someone really wants to be a design overlord, well, buy a sim, build it out, rent it out. That assumes that users just want a pretty little place to "live" rather than to customize their own dwelling place.

2. or, you can solve the problem by having LL hire a hundred highly qualified 2D and 3D artists who then create gorgeous content for our world ... but that's what the other game companies do... and that's exactly counter to the purpose of this SL experiment

3. or, LL takes "great builds" like chinatown and keeps them persistent in world... but that also goes against LL's goals of making most everything in world user created and *supported*

Besides, I don't see that solving architectural design issues will provide the great leap forward you seem to be hunting for -- it is the tools for building high quality entertainment that need to evolve (giving scripters persistent memory, enabling seamless sim crossings, improving physics, etc etc) -- that expand our active experience.

3. I COMPLETELY agree with Chip's comment that a wiki of fiction is a better analogy. (I can explain why if need be, but are you really going to make me publicly insult the average person's attempt at fiction/poetry? )

This whole thing really is so subjective. Yes, I have moved because of a build that "moved in" next door. Yes, some large swathes of this world are ugly to me. I even find some so called "great builders" work unattractive. But as an artist, I am VERY aware that aesthetics are massively subjective. I cannot STAND de kooning... some people think his work is to die for.

i like that SL tries to unharness people's creativity, and entrepreneurship is a form of creativity as well... if the world is often a big ugly sandbox... well i can live with that

I still think it's too early to pass negative judgement on the SL experiment

Ciao Weedy,

Can I rewrite this while Iam still laughing-

(is the one who derails his own thread with contempt, attacks and general asshattedness).

Asshattedness- One who derails there own thread or post with contempt and general attacks on others.

LL please review and enter into the defined lists of SL Terminology




- never do card tricks for your poker buddies*

I think it is important to understand the real issue here, folks. April has a big tier bill she pays. On that bills is X amount of land. But her purchase in Pimushe doesn't fill her tier bill. She is paying for tier, but doesn't have that land productively applied to land in the game, so it is an empty expense.

First of all, let's once again address her claims about Midge and my supposed "plunking down of inappropriate themed builds next to her house" which makes me clutch my sides and roll on the floor uproariously. What are these "inappropriate themed builds"? I have loads of pictures and will post some times. In Midge, April rented 8192 square meters of rolling hillside and plunked down herself a giant, Victorian-style mansion, every girl's dream. On the plot next to it, but certainly not right in its face, due to loads of spacing, I put down Lordfly's custom-made stone house, which looked good on a stone mountain. I bought, not rented 2048 of mountainside under blaze spinnaker. He can step forward and describe this little "community" and explain that blaze and I put stone houses on a stone textured mountainside, more or less appropriate and certainly well within the norm, but April put a suburbany English countryside sort of dreamy place that I found made me sick to my stomach, but I would never dream of commenting because it is the norm.

My house was not intrusive, not ugly, and hardly took up any space. Lordfly is the best architect in SL, IMHO. It's a custom-house, not a prefab. It's just not April's choice. But she has 8192 square meters to rent, and can move her draw distance if she likes.

On the other side of her in Stump, on land of about 5000 I owned there, I placed 4 houses. The one directly next to her was the same kind of Victorian girl's dream by the exact same architect as the architect who made her dollhouse prefab. That is what is so uproariously funny. She made some snide remark once about me "putting cluttery prefabs all over" but I think putting a house exactly like hers on one side, situated on a foundation in about 2048 square meters, is hardly cluttery. And I might point out that this was the tenants' choice. They get to chose the prefab they put on their rented land for which they pay. Next, I had a house by Juro Kothari and a lodge by Barnesworth Anubus. They are prefabs but very good prefabs by SL top architects. They were not plunked, but placed properly on foundations, fitted with doors and so on and with rental signs. As it happened, one rented for awhile but in general, in the month I was there, nothing rented due to the giant builds overhead, and I another huge bad build down at the foot of April's property, that blocked everything for all of us on the mountain, and I suggest was the real reason for April's move to Pimushe. But none of my builds, whatever you think of these architects were inappropriate or ugly. They just weren't a Victorian girl's dream. When they didn't rent, and we got that ugly view blocker, I put another Victorian girl's dream with a foundation right next to the same property where April had her Victorian girl's dream by the exact same architect. A few tenants looked at it but saw all these big overbearing builds around them including a castle built out to the property line and they gave up. Then I gave up and sold the land and moved to Grace to relocate the community.

April bought land in Pimushe and immediately set about trying to grab the land around her to fill up her tier. This isn't a very effective way to fill your tier. The way you fill your tier is say, ok, I want 16K of land in one place. I then buy on the auction that 16K, that is the cheapest way. Or I find it contiguous in world, I don't go browbeating and hectoring and harrassing my neighbours to try to get their land into my greedy little clutches. That's silly. It's just not going to work. The neighbours April is complaining about so bitterly in Pimushe were in Furness before and no one around them moved, no one around them bitched, it's just a matter of taste. April's huge parcel in Pimushe, utterly dwarfing my 4096 there, has plenty of room to work with to create a space without having to look *on one side* at that white building if she wishes not to. It does not block her view or her property. These are important principles to fight for. If it blocked view all over and blocked access, I might insist about something. But changing this building from 3 storeys to 2 storeys is not the issue. The whiteness and the moderness is what intrudes so horribly to April's Victorian cutesie girl's dream. And the fact that she wants to fill her tier with land in the same sim, a laudable exercise but not one achieved by harassing neighbours. April could up scrim with see-through on the neighbours' side and trees or water on her side, and never look at it. Or she could plant HUGE TALL PINE which would help. Her Richard Sterns building pretty much utterly blocked her view of it if she was sitting on a waterfront patio, which she should do, to chill more.

Now let's look at Sutherland, where April has cast her voracious tier eye to see if she should buy and move over there, IF of course she can browbeat Ghoti or me or other owners to sell to her so she can take care of her overtier problem LOL. But here she is kvetching again about my "prefabs plunked down". We know already from the Midge history that even a custom-built, expensive made home by Lordfly, valued by numerous people in the game, is never enough for April. So the top-of-the-line prefabs in Sutherland -- Barnesworth Anubis's stone house and Azrael Rubio's beach house -- are not good enough for April. She doesn't like prim craftsmenship, which these architects represent -- that's their style. She prefers even lurid photo realism like or drawn/textured cutesie Victorian. If a tenant moves in who choses that, they may have it.

As for landscaping, I always give the tenants temporary edit so they can do their own landscaping. Many landlowners over or under landscape and that scares away tenants. One of the most fun things about having a home is doing your own landscaping. So I leave that for people to do. And in the case of Sutherland, we have three big problems which cause me not to take the time to landscape these things to April's or anybody's else's satisfaction (a well-made prefab on a beautiful beach front doesn't need a lot of landscaping anyway)

1. A large land owner here had a huge, laggy, stupid club right in this basin right next to my rentals for many weeks. She also had a huge laggy stupid store with a spinning sign. So I didn't know whether to advertise those rentals or not. It was just too risky to invest in that. So I just left the rental boxes on for those who were interested and smart enough to realize SL changes and the club would be gone in 30 days. Now it's gone. But...that land is for sale. Who will buy it and what will they put on it? Sutherland hasn't settled down enough to justify investment in advertising it heavily, so I leave it and see how it will go.

2. The terraforming on these parcels by Anshe is all the way up. And I left it that way because to change it means to really disturb the parcel next to it with a huge spikey thing or else oddly cut water. So whoever buys that parcel there, I will work with them to adjust that terraforming line so there is smoothness.

3. I can't be sure that it doesn't make sense simply to sell all mature waterfront land I'm not immediately renting as prices drop or as opportunities arise for sales because of the factor of the New Continent possibly depressing prices in the old. I never sell out from tenants. But if a tenant never moved there, I could justify a sale.

4. A tenant did move in on one of these properties for a time. And as there was a possibility he was going to link both of these properties for more prims, I didn't start filling it up with Plumeria as April might have wished in her dreams.

So you see, a property owner has many issues and things to weigh before he or she begins landscaping an area to April's specifications, or puts down houses that she may be happy with. And that's because a property owner has the right to do what he wants to on his own property. I committed the crime of "not even putting down Linden trees?" I committed the crime of "plunking down prefabs" which are in fact SL's best architects? April has never dealt with REAL crimes. She should try living next to laggy stupid idiotic ugly clubs. That would concentrate her mind wonderfully.

April's claims that I do not improve sims, that I do not chose houses propertly or locate them properly, that I do not landscape, simply o not hold water. It's merely a pressure tactic to force sale next to her in Pimushe, to discredit me, to start rumours burning everywhere so that right-thinking reasonable people like Seth Kanahoe, who would understand the problem instantly if he could just fly down and look at my properties and April's properties, are then willy nilly dragged into a biased perception of the situation.

I would urge everyone to fly to Sutherland and Pimushe. I dont' have time to post all the pictures now. April is an unhappy person who can't fill her tier in the way she wants and can't rule the sim roost. Her RL friends, hearing her SL unhappiness, are urging her to leave a game that causes that much angst. When SL begins to cause such unhappiness that it intrudes into RL, you have to give it a break or leave, sure.

April doesn't even know the location and builds of my other sims where there are nice houses, tenants who have landscaped, and my own landscaping. She has no clue. But I don't care. I don't need to spend my SL or RL days making April happy.

What I do wish is that others reading these regular slams on me by April would form their own judgements by flying to these areas. Rent a lot in Sutherland for only $350/week and landscape it. Buy a lot in Sutherland and make this area nice and preserve it from the dogmeat to come. Contribute to making a sim beautiful by your time and work as I do. Don't listen to April's endless whinings motivated by a need to fill her tier level.

I won't even try to respond to the whole message because the first line is not true. I do not have a big tier build. I have 16k at $75. But what does that have to do with the fact that you complain about a build and if somenoe else complains about another build their complaint is irrelevant.

I am not unhappy. that is another one of your unnecessary comments that you seme to make that invalidates your arguments.

The house in Mide stuck out from the ground with no support. You rented this house and never once lived in it. What was the point. In each case, I have bought land, put down houses, landscaped and actually lived in them. You have done neither and yet I am not suppose to complain and you can complain. Why do you not see this. Why can you complain and I am cannot.

I did buy a nice piece in Sutherland and I have landscaped it very nicely. But when I see your houses just plopped down with no sense of landscaping, it makes me sad and ruins the sim.

SL is a gateway for most people to learn the skills required. For example: I'm a programmer with experience in designing finite state machines so scripting is enjoyable for me but i suck at artistic things and will learn progressively how to model.

Plus, if everything is so crap then people who produce good things will be adequately rewarded, no? If everything was good then good work would not be rewarded or the rewards would be widespread and mediocre for the single-user.

In order to implement a perfect world every user would have to undergo an intensive several month course before playing the game and then the user base would be a lot less than 30k

I have it on good authority that you are looking to fill up that tier bill and you are not happy. And your actions in-game support this. You feign to be suddenly nicey-nice and respond to my good-will call for neighbours to rally together to buy Sutherland as a collective, then just when it seems we will cooperate, you swoop around and bite me in the ass again with this pressuring request: sell your 4096 in Pimushe, then you can pay for Sutherland parcels next to yours. Back up, it is not for sale.

? the house in Midge had support. It had rock foundations. It didn't stick out anywhere. I don't know what you are talking about. There were stone steps along the side that may have "stuck out" but then stone steps do that. This is some induced fever.

No, I didn't "live" in a house that was going to be rented. For one, once I saw how hostile this environment was, I had no need to spend time there. For two, it was not clear how the sim was going to go and if I could arrange a sublet under Anshe's terms. I also wanted to look at a few customer service issues. Some gigantic builds went up in front of me and I wasn't sure if I should move to another side. Sometimes these issues take time to settle. This hectoring, silly, pressury talk about how I don't landscape, or I don't live in a house, or do whatever you think is the 'proper' thing to do in a sim is outrageous. You don't get to intrude like that on another's property and second life, and then double around, pressure them constantly to sell, and then accuse them of making sims ugly and spreading rumours that then stick, harming their individual and business reputations. Nope, you don't get to do that without a pushback from me, so look for an AR to the Lindens the next time you approach me with a fly-up or an IM in game. It will be an automatic AR so please avoid it.

I just copiously explained the difficulties in Sutherland. Whatever. It isn't plopped down, tenants will landscape, other neighbours need to work on terraforming when they buy, and we need to see how the entire big purchase goes there on the one end to understand whether to bother with Sutherland.

Can we all now see the problem with April Firefly, people? These kinds of posts of hers only discredit herself as an unhappy busybody, flying around and hectoring people to induce sales by trashing their personal selections of builds and landscaping. Sutherland has good houses by me, and minimal landscaping because beachfront doesn't need it.

Fly off, April, I don't know how else to put it. Do not intrude further on my business and my enjoyment of the game or you get AR'd.

just to remind people that foul language on the forums is not wanted, and is against the forum rules.

We now return to out regular program