Double prim allotment type sims

Since I'm interested in Aleksandr Markov's 'Experimental' zoning for sims, I showed up at the town hall to ask Phil if we'd be able to get a specialized sim. Here's an edited excerpt from the public discussion:




Traxx Hathor: grr, I'm going to use up all your prims in the middle of the night again, and get screenshots of the great building you could have had if you weren't so picky about having prims left over for objects IN the building....




So here's the thread, folks. If you haven't seen the city sims of Miramare, Grignano, Barcola and Sistiana they're well worth touring. Personally I enjoy tall landmark buildings with lots of space around them. The method of having more prims on resident land offset by more Linden land sounds like a double bonus. We'd get the opportunity for intensive builds in a sim with lots more clutter-free land. Perfect for those who want to create something innovative.

BTW Aleksandr and I have been discussing a pilot project/feasibility demo of the 'Experimental' zoning idea. Suggestions are welcome.

I'd oppose vehemently any kind of special handover to uber-architects any double-primmed land.

In a sense, that's what happened in the past, when prim taxes were waived completely under the old system, to give players who wanted big themed builds a chance to shine. When this support was removed, there was howling. But those players of course still benefited from the reputation and posrates boost it gave them, and today, those uber-architects still hold sway over the double-prim sims, without too much question.

I'm all for double-primmed city land if it is put on the auction, and allowed to be bid upon freely, like any other valuable land in SL, i.e. telehub land or waterfront property in primo mature sims, etc.

I'd be especially happy if land barons bid on this land too and resold it in-world to help their land business. I'd be especially angry if a Ryan Linden-type scheme were instituted where these valuable sims were put out when 2-3 insiders get to e-mail him that they want them, and then people walked away from the micro-auction with a $981 double-prim sim if it was at an odd time for somebody.

Double-prim city land will be very valuable because people will be able to make city sims with high-end boutique shopping and prestigious apartments that look really well -- so it should be on the auction for the standard length of time, open to the standard bidding.

I think we'll find that when a city sim is put on the market (not a pastoral sim with double prims to fit Traxx's very peculiar notion of skyscrapers rising up out of wilderness), people will see more its commercial value, than its artistic value, and they will bid accordingly. Artists who want special deals should maybe just buy up private islands themselves at the standard rate and get enough prims under their projects.

BTW, since we're all having free ads in the discussion section now *cough* instead of in the classifieds, I'm starting a community in Furness where you can just pay $1 per prim to rent in the area for your experimental build. I'm for starting these projects in real virtuality and gathering the necessary data from them by leaving them more or less on the open market, rather than endlessly talking about them among me and my special friends to create a closed community available only to the uber-aesthetic.

Now why am I not surprised that you two found each other?

Well, my suggestion to Traxx would be, based on your considerable (and lately developed) aversion to giving "free architecture", is to figure out an advance fee for your advice and piloting efforts, and to get paid first. I think you'll find that other architects have foundered on these rocks here, as have rentals group managers, in providing lots of free stuff that then later got ignored, not acknowledged, or removed or returned.

And my advice to Aleksandr, if you think you're going to be getting free architecture and ideas from Traxx in exchange for showcasing him on land you pay tier on and paid the up-front-purchase on, would be to first get some healthy tier donations from him in the group as a pledge of good faith, or, if you can't get that, to instantly get a copy of the building that you think you are getting in exchange for your promotion of him and his ideas.

Just makes good sense.

Double prims are interesting, but more open space is the selling point from my perspective. Currently, big lots go to the resellers, resellers flip it for triple profit, and little lots are jammed together in a claustrophobic cluster without so much as an alley between them. Only the very rich (or large groups) can afford land and tier enough to build a structure and sufficient buffer around the structure.

Scatter smaller lots in a sim amidst greenbelt, plazas, streets, waterways and/or other protected land, and suddenly you've got less visual clutter and a more pleasant environment in which to dwell or conduct business.

It'd be preferable to have some mechanism to lock the barons out of the market for such a place (to minimize the inevitable gouging), but even without such a mechanism, it'd still be someplace I'd want to live (and might possibly be able to afford to live).

In fact, it'd probably be better NOT to increase the prim allowance in some of these areas, just to discourage overdevelopment.

I sincerely hope they pursue this further.

*Rolls eyes*.

Not much of a "market" if you can "lock people out" of it.

You call it "gouging." Somebody else might call it "valuation".

Ugh. And have no competition for uber-architects who want to suck up prims for vainglorious projects and get sims for only $981 from the Lindens?

Every once in awhile I'm reminded why I'm against player government.

Anyone who thinks nearly a thousand bucks is "only $981" is so far removed from the experience of the average American that they should consider entering the next Republican primary.

I'd prefer lots capped at 2048 m2 or so, one per player, lots of space between. That seems fairer than giving away huge chunks of the world for the barons to flip for an eye-popping profit... and fairer than catering to big groups with special backroom deals. It's just an extension of the successful "First Land" system.

Of course, there'd still be plenty of land under the current system for the moguls to manipulate. This isn't a replacement, just another option. Not everything needs to be funneled through parasitic middlemen.

Arcadia Codesmith:


You'd probably get a clear majority of people in SL agreeing with you on this, Arcadia. I'd certainly be happier living in a sim with more Linden land. Otherwise I just have to pay tier on the land I leave for a wilderness buffer. The problem is that LL doesn't benefit financially when I can have my buffer for free!


Arcadia Codesmith:


Well, my original proposal was simply to lobby for more of those double-prim sims with the increased Linden land in them. I hope my post didn't mistakenly give you the idea that Alek and I were looking for one of those special backroom deals you mention.

Realistically, we'd probably see the double-prim sims put up at auction as complete sims by LL. I'd expect them to fetch a higher price at auction, but who knows? Maybe they could be offered by a parallel iterative fixed-price system as mentioned in a recent thread:

That would be great, but we really need someone at LL to do some number-crunching using their own data, and see if recycling the fixed-price land back through the auction system would give enough ROI to justify the overhead.

"Only $981" isn't a reference to the average American's pocketbook, duh, get stuffed. Remove your hideous prejudices please, I don't vote Republican.

It's a reference to ONLY compared to the $1500 or more of the normal auction process. It's a reference to the fixed price/return-a-sim thing Ryan was talking about in his letter.

And really, no need to demagogically wave around "average Americans". Let's talk about "average Africans," Arcadia, and talk about how spoiled you are or any of us are for sitting here typing on the Internet instead of sweating in a field somewhere? So please, spare me your socialist histrionics.

Ugh, every bit of your philosophy stinks, I'm sorry. Branding middlemen as "parasitic" when they add value, provide a service, and create a differentiated economy.

Artifically capping lot sizes and prices -- as if this is a Soviet collective farm instead of a free market.

I'm happy if barons get in here, absorb the front-end costs of bidding, Paypal, tier holding, while people get their projects together. Let 10 of your friends come up with $10 if they are all on a collective farm in Vladivostock.

But thank God for barons who hold it while you get your act together. Some barons would even have you pay rent-to-buy so all rent went into the purchase price.

God bless moguls. God bless middlemen. A plague on those who keep peddling these discredited ideals that were rightly overthrown -- and overthrown with a huge bang -- in the last 25 years in real countries in the real world.

Interesting point. Does LL lose out on revenue from not selling the greenbelt? Maybe. But I'll bet that demand for the bordering land would push prices up enough to compensate.

Which argues against price/acreage caps and again shuts us poor folk out of the market. *sigh*

Pardon my fits of cattishness. Laissaiz-faire gets on my nerves, sort of like one flat note that keeps getting played over and over for three or four decades. People who don't deserve it sometimes get some of the backlash.

Who will pay for your vision, Arcadia, who? Who will PAY??

HOnestly, you're poor, we have to pay? Why? LL has to pay? Why?