Land Suggestion: Newb Sims

In reading some of the recent forum discussions on SL land prices and land-use guidelines (or lack thereof), this idea popped into my mind:

How about a few Newb Sims? (Bear with me here for a moment before the flaming flames up.)

I can't find the post where a Linden was kind enough to lay this information on me, but if memory serves, the land that gets sold off in each new sim is comprised of only about 1/8 to at most 1/4 First Land. (Correct me here if I'm wrong.)

As an oft-complained-of result, most of each new sim is bought up by residents with the RL funding and SL experience to compete in the auction process, at which point the auction land is usually flipped to a club-owner, a mall developer or a Tringo game, leaving all those hopeful newbs stuck in the middle (usually it's the middle) of a crowded, laggy, overbuilt sim. This doesn't happen in every sim, obviously, but it happens often enough that a lot of people feel they don't have anywhere to turn for fresh, fast land. Some people have lobbied for zoning guidelines as a way to combat this, but that doesn't seem to be very popular with the population (if the forums are a representative sample, but that's a question for another thread).

So here's a possible solution:

Why not lard up a few sims with a whole lot of First Land? Like almost the entire sim?

Instead of releasing, say, 8 sims and putting First Land on 1/4 of each (total of 2 sims worth of First Land), why not release 8 sims with something like the following allocation:

1. 1/8 First Land
2. 1/8 First Land
3. 1/4 First Land
4. 1/2 First Land
5. ALL First Land
6. NO First Land
7. NO First Land
8. NO First Land
(Total of 2 sims worth of First Land)
(And if I have the proportions wrong, please correct. The idea is perfectly scalabe.)

That way, you can take your chances in a sim with a small proportion of First Land, or you can get your First Land in a sim that's less likely to get overbuilt two weeks after you move in. It wouldn't have much of an impact on land prices overall, and it would give eager newbs more of a chance to hang out in a slower-developing, higher-FPS sim before they had to start considering pulling up their prefab stakes.

It might also be a non-regulatory way to solve the zoning issue, or at least have an impact there. And because for each sim with extra First Land there's also a sim with less, there's really very little argument you can make that LL is having any kind of a hand in the land-use decision-making process.

An alternative solution would be to checkerboard the First Land in some sims so that the auction land doesn't come in such large, easily mall-able chunks. Again, for each sim in which you did that, you'd want to also create a sim with normal, chunky auction land.

None of these proposals solve problems of alts, or of newbs finding land-baron-sized purchase offers irresistible, but it might give the newbs at least a fighting chance.

So that's the idea. Comments? Improvements? Flames?

And PLEASE, if this is already being done and everyone but me knows it, please some Linden delete this thread to spare me the embarrassment, or at least lock it so that it descends as rapidly as possible into the forum's fetid core.

Actually this sounds quite reasonable.

One note though, is the PG/Mature balancing. That could be fixed by having the 'ALL first' as one and the rest as the other, or some similar. Or they're all released as one rating (which for 8 sims is feasible).

This would also give LL a sim or two to auction as a whole.

Since there is another group of sims apparently incoming soon, it would be nice to see something like this done for the new land.

This is a bad idea. It means more government intervention, more Linden administration, and more socialist-based thinking from the Lindens, whereby they try to distribute a falsely-limited resource with faux equity, which in fact is unlimited (because they control its incessant roll-out on their pace), and which they sit on and distribute arbitrarily.

If you have ever studied new sims, you can see that either there is NO first land at all, because the entire sim or half or quarter of the sim is given to the auction to be taken over by barons -- and that's fine by me. The Lindens obviously see these as investors' opportunity they shouldn't lard up with first-land freebies.

OR you see that the Lindens have taken about 8-12-16 postage-stamp 512s and stuck them all together in a clump, usually in the center of the sim far from the river/water/mountain view, or in some unattractive place. They also take gutted out, slag-heap burning sims with FPS driven down to 200 and loads of ugly builds by absentee players and fish out the occasional 512 released by a player, and make that into "First Land". Ugh, beware of those, newbies!

The postage-stamp sheets on new sims rapidly fill up with a combination of genuine newbies who just don't realize yet that First-Land is never anything but a temporary financial investment (never a place to actually live on, only a place to re-sell), or with alts of people who just want to add more land, or with stronger new players who convince their fellow first-land newbies to sell immediately, sometimes with huge griefing spinning ugly towers, or with realtors who take the long view who have come in and bought out all the first-land of people who are very unhappy. I've often watched a sim like Hennepin or Cichlid or Pickerel and seen the fascinating saga of what happens to those silly first-land postage stamps -- they are not newbie sanctuaries. I would challenge any player who has remained on their first-land postage stamp in ugly 512-disease territory to come and post here about how you are gutting it out past 60 days. I will give you a prize.

If we must have new land in the game -- and this in itself is debatable, frankly, because it's another inflationary, socialist, dead-end policy -- then it should be sprinkled around the sims better. There ought to be some prime waterfront first-land that a few lucky newbs get as a kind of lottery -- this almost never happens. The rest of the land should be distributed around randomly or at least in a fashion to prevent an outbreak of 512-disease which facilitates virus-like sprawl. (512-disease is a bunch of ugly builds all jammed up next to each other).

There are already alternatives to the kinds of Linden-interventionist proposals you are making. There are rental communities such as ours (Ravenglass Rentals), or there are various cabins/villas/apartments for rent all over SL by various players --- just type "rent" into FIND PLACES and you'll see players like Gardinya Flora or Jamie Otis who provide these services in beautiful arrangements. There is Anshe's Midge project which seems to be shaping up nicely. Let those types of player-based alternatives for a range of housing, including cheap, affordable land access and free houses, established, as they already are, and put a better classified listings system within the game for people to access to find these alternatives, and stop encouraging Linden intervention.

Land is a commodity, and an expensive one -- let the free market forces determine its value. Anyone with a DSL line, a computer with a high-end graphics card, and $9.95 on a credit card is already someone for whom you ought not to be providing socialism. They are not injured World War II veterans. They are people who should either buy on GOM or pay a mere $5 to get more land than their almost-free first-land 512s.

I agree. But this is not in any way, shape or form a socialist idea. First Land is something you get for your US$9.95 a month. If LL were giving land away to Basic accounts, that might be socialism. This proposal isn't.



Actually, it requires almost no extra intervention, adminstration or thinking on LL's part. The proposal is specifically designed to keep the balance of land the same as it is at present while having an impact on the postage-stamp problems you reference in your post. It merely provides two new ways to release land (with a higher proportion of First Land per new sim, and with a lower proportion). Anyone can still build anything they want on any land they own.

Besides, aren't ideological tags like socialism nearly meaningless in a virtual economy like SL? Perhaps what we have going on here is Virtualism. (Coinage prize, anyone? Whoops, nope, guess not. And anyway, this.)



Is it really inflationary? How long has the exchange rate been hovering around US$4/L$1,000? I think the Lindens would back me up when I say that First Land has a very slight impact on land prices. Of much more significance is the amount of auction land released. If anything, this might strengthen the L$ by dampening land prices a bit (though not much, I imagine), because if it works at all it would lead to less First Land "churn" and so less demand on the open market.

I completely disagree with the idea that new land is bad policy. It is necessary to the Lindens' business model to attract new users. While some new users want to go clubbing or do various things that don't involve building -- I expect most of them keep basic accounts -- other new users want to build. New land allows those users a place to start building things as quickly and easily as they want. Even if they later end up renting or buying different land, new land allows someone to gain practical experience cheaply, which they can then apply to finding land they like more.

Aside from that, I have to believe that new land is the single biggest reason that new users commit to a paid account -- it certainly was for me. More paid accounts = more business for the Lindens = good things for Second Life.

But Linden *is* giving it away with premium accounts! It is still giving it away LOL. Call it a loss-leader in a business model, or call it socialism, the point is, the player-based market currently values 512s at betwee 2000-4000 depending on location and FPS, and the Lindens routinely undercut players' valuation by dumping first-land at the rate of 8-10 parcels a day, meaning I guess roughly ten percent of the 75 new players a day (is that the figure?) are actually using First-Land privilege and buying land.

Could we please get that figure Mr. Linden? How many new players buy land? On what time-table? And of what sort, first or used?

The Linden free land is put in crappy places and has value only as a resold item combined with others in most cases, and like all socialism, only serves to inspire griefer-type terrorism to induce sales of what has falsely been made by commodity in short supply.

The Lindens also give another free thing, called "tier" separate from land. That seems fine to me -- why not have 40 acres and a mule as you begin your life freed from the servitude of other games? But...512 is enough only to cover 512. You still have to buy a 512. Let ANY first purchase of ANY LAND available for sale be ONLY $512 and see how you'd turn the game around! But it is too open to misuse, so I'd reflect upon that. It's a way of randomizing the problem of location/FPS. Still, I'd lean more to the idea of awarding free tier, but not land at $512. It would go a long, long way to ending the persistent player confusoin about tier and land.



Oh, but it does. Instead of dumping fresh sim into the auction, they have to sit for a few hours and mark up the little postage stamps. The postage stamps then fill up with individuals who become trouble-tickets in some cases.

It requires them to do a different thing than they do now. In my relatively limited experience of this game, about 4 months, I see the Lindens tend to do what they want, not what players ask them to do, and they only give players a sense of participation through "town hall" meetings that don't really have the democratic power of the purse to decide things.

You're asking them to change their lucrative model of selling loads of land on the auction, and getting an incredible free resource -- players called "land barons" who are willing to pay THEM to solve their programming outsource problem! Instead of Linden programmers having to mark up thousands of meters of sims into parcels, the players mark up and administer land for resale as homes or projects like clubs, and the Lindens just sit back and collect tier.

By adding higher proportions of first-land to sims, you're asking for more socialism, more give-aways, and more land that is normally valued in the game at 3000-4000, not $512.

I would think the Lindens, in examining the proposal to create more nearly-free cheap land in the game would have to ask themselves if they really need to give this incentive to players. Because I suspect that many players never use this resource or if they do, they quickly resell it. It's hard to know without figures.



Why are they meaningless when they describe human activity, which has already been defined and analyzed for centuries? What, somebody who puts a world up in space gets a pass from being connected to history? People who sailed boats to terra incognito didn't get a pass from history...

The virtual economy of SL was founded by a California geeky game dude. He is a child of the 1960s, or a child of Berkeley, or a child of geeky philosophies that gain currency on the Internet like anything from Noam Chomsky to Ayn Rand, or a child of whatever he is --but he's a child of something! Nobody is born without parents! Let's research that, but let's not pretend he gets a brave new world without any reference to anything that came before him. Columbus brought his prejudices and prides into the New World, and so does Philip Linden.

And socialism is EXACTLY what you call subsidizing a creative and technical intelligentsia under less-than-stellar working conditions -- the Soviets ran a thing like that for 75 years called the Soviet Academy of Sciences. And socialism is handing out grants each week so the masses can be entertained. And socialism is giving away land at far less than market value. Yes, there is good reason to use these terms, and you don't get off the hook merely by being in cyberspace. Other posters on this forum have constantly made these comparisons, indeed, posters like Jacqueline Richelieu and Ulrika Zugzwang and others who have put for these analyses have helped me to notice this in the game.



At the rate of only about 8 put back in the game per day, yes, First Land doesn't have an impact, especially when some of that first land isn't fresh fast sim, but old slag-heaps from released land. Just look at the pictures and the locations!

Let land barons put out first land for lower prices if it makes sense for them as a loss leader. Or if the Lindens are in beneficent socialism mode, let them turn to more democratic socialism, and mix up their first land near-freebies in better locations so that they really have good resale value and are a real present to newbies instead of a present to those who buy them off newbies!

To respond to just one of your points for now, Random:



The proposal does not envision a higher proportion of First Land. The overall proportion of First Land remains the same. In some sims it is higher, in some it is lower, that's all.

What kind of prize are we talking about? It happens that I'm still on my First Land plot in Arena, and have been since last September. Nice waterfront place. Unless you want to count the fact that last week I also bought the First Land plot next to me from a friend, but she'd been on it for more than 60 days, too.

If you don't believe me, it's easy enough to find. Search on "money tree" and look for the Arena entry.

Oh, but I'm more or less a socialist in RL, too, so I guess I don't count.

neko

Congratulations, my friend! You have one of the RARE first-lands in the game, they are almost never on waterfront! Hooray! Don't let that baby go.

As for the prize, well...it might have been...something else...but since you are an avowed socialist, I'm thinking...a banana phone? Or a chicken? Let me rummage in inventory a bit...LOL

A player is not being 'given' free land per se. LL is giving players more options to fulfull what is part of the Premium account.

Basic account gives no land ownership, period, from what I understand. Premium account, along with the higher stipend, gives you access to ownership of 512m2 without additional tier fee. For my monthly etc. fee its worth it, and a reasonable incentive to own some amount of land. In fact only an additional US$5 per month bumps that access to 1024m2, which is still cheaper than any MMO I've heard of these days and is a respectable amount of land here.

Said Premium player has the additional option, when available, to have their first allocation of 512m2 to be purchased at L$512, to be selected from a series of lots set aside by LL. This is no different than the US tax breaks for owning their first RL home, and was probably modelled with that in mind. I see no major issue with that, it allows some of us that access at a resaonable cost very early on (i.e. within the first couple of days of joining, if thats what they want).

Yes, its a form of sponsorship, but its one-time only and only if you want to purchase land for first time - allocating group tier etc. removes that sponsorship.

As an example of *not* using that option: In my case I wanted something more established, more quiet, so I got the funds I needed and bought my first land in Boardman (960m2 IIRC). I've now left there for a larger, rented plot but I'm happy that the sim has done so well since then (thank you Ingrid! ).

You could make a donation to my Money Tree, if you like.

No chicken, please. Along with my other eccentricities, I'm also a vegetarian. I could let it run around my yard, but I'm not sure how it would get along with my crow.

Actually most of the first land plots in Arena were very nice. Waterfront (including both ocean and river), or just one block back from the water, on a hillside so all the spots have a nice view of the water. I was lucky enough to get in there before anyone else, and upgraded my account to premium on the spot so I could get my plot, then emailed two other friends to get them in next to me. I did think the land on the other side of me was going to be protected, though -- turns out it went up for auction. Oh well. The person there now is quite nice, and I've noticed that if you don't like your neighbors, time tends to take care of the situation pretty rapidly.

One of the really new folks who bought a plot down the coast from me sold it the same evening, though, for a pittance. More than he paid, but nowhere near what it would have been worth on the open market. I felt kind of bad for him.

Prior to buying this plot, I'd looked around and seen mostly snow plots, which were pretty, but not what I was interested in. There were a few boring flat plots available, but they didn't look terrible, just kinda boring. I think that must be a matter of personal preference. Some people in Arena seemed to think the first thing they needed to do was try to flatten out their bit of hillside, which puzzled me -- why buy hillside if you want flat land?

One thing about my plot that some might not like is that it's very far from a telehub -- there's a void between it and the nearest hub, so you have to fly quite a long way. Doesn't bother me, but I don't get many casual visitors (though I get more now that I have the Money Tree).

Getting back to the original thread topic, I'd like to see more sims with more nice First Land plots. (I'm not sure what that has to do with socialism.) They'll tend to accrete into larger plots over time, so I think arranging them together at the start would be fine. I was certainly glad to find a place where several of my friends and I could get started together. The idea of opening several sims at the same time and varying the mix of land seems good to me. One thing I'd like to see more of, though, is truly public land. I know it doesn't make any money for LL, but a lot of the existing plots seem really mashed together. More green space would be nice.

neko

Yes, the "protected land" nomenclature is really extremely misleading.

You know of course, Neko, that if you set your Home to your waterfront property you can tp there in an instant from anywhere on the grid. I know a lot of people choose not to do this (which is probably what you're doing), but I just thought I'd point it out in case you're like me, and didn't think about doing it until someone pointed it out to you.

Yes, I've set home to my home but thanks anyway. I can get there whenever I please, but as I said, people don't often drop by casually. If I'm logged in, of course, they can IM me and I can TP them in, but folks don't tend to drop by when I'm out.

neko

I'm still on my "land for the landless" 512. I love my little bit of land! I have my gallery and little house here, I have nice neighbors, and I'm on the water. When I applied for Land for the Landless I was assigned this plot - no choosing. I asked for land that wasn't flat - that's about all I requested, as far as I remember.

wtg, Osprey!

/me hangs head realizing Neko wasn't talking about *himself* getting to his plot, he was talking about his *friends*. Guess I would have realized that if I had any...

Neko is female. Guess I should post an av pic, or something.

Though I have to admit, people have been known to make that mistake about me in RL, too.

neko

Of course, I don't see it as a socialist idea at all. The big money is going to a Capitalist, Linden Labs, and we should never lose sight of this.

Besides, what's going to happen here, SL will be the first of the dominoes? *There* will be next, then the SimsOnline! We wouldn't want to have a Sweden on our hands, or a Denmark, or - Godless forbid, a Netherlands! I don't think I could handle the homeFULness, the prosperity, the equity!

I like how you are using what you have observed to be the ratio of First Land to Auction land, and are just redistributing it to be more clustered together. I think it is a very brilliant idea, and the least invasive on the part of LL. Yes they have to change something that they are doing (or not doing), but that was the whole idea. It's broke, so fix it. Many, many people think so, and it is a discussion I have had in SL as well as in the Forums. It is the kind of idea that even the most dedicated Libertarian could get behind. It is already managed by LL, indeed MUST be managed by them, so why not manage it well.

Cheers Walker!

Gomen nasai!

Guess I should turn my av pics on, lol.

And thanks, Alain. But don't let it get about that we're neighbors or we'll have conspiracy charges lodged against us in the courts. Oh wait. There aren't any courts. Whew.

I appreciate the thought you put into this idea. I am against it only because it promotes segregation based on time in-world. I don't like that idea. The current system is not necessarily the best but I'm OK with the selection criteria for first land.

Also, I'm concerned that many of the suggestions for perceived problems presented here involve government overhead. We don't need or want that.

But, great topic and worth discussion and consideration here.

Bruno, I'm interested in how you see it as promoting segregation based on time in-world.

There seem to be some hints that land baronny may be dying.

Hi Walker. Segregation always occurs when government becomes involved in apportionment. It is really just that simple. What the Lindens do now is the same as when government comes up with first time home buyer programs. Others may think it is great, I prefer to not see the 'government' get involved in these matters. The Lindens are promoting a form of community subsidized welfare.

Coming up with formulas that x amount of certain sims need to be allocated for newbies, is segregation. The result of these programs is to systematically herd people with a limited time in-world to areas of their choosing that fit into their formula. Hell, I was part of this when I started. Champlain looked like Ellis Island a couple months ago. Today, the end result is a shit-load of 512 lots rotting and up for sale at $3000 each.

I'm not saying I have the solution cuz I don't. But IMHO it is clearly segregation, whether that is their goal or not.

I'm glad that Bruno realizes this is welfare. It *is* welfare. It *is* socialism. Sometimes, you need welfare for vulnerable groups in society. Sometimes, businesses need to have loss-leaders to build a customer base for future sales. But...don't pretend it is capitalism writ large, it isn't.



Well, being given 512 paid-up tier with a premium account *is* being given free land if you chose to buy land and apply that 512 on to it. Of course tier and land are separate, but while land can't be had without tier, tier -- paid-up tier -- can be had without land. Some people chose never to use it, oddly enough, so it's an untapped resource in this game. Others use it on first land, sell, then never re-buy, because they feel burned by bad builds and viewblockers hemming them in. They might at that point tier up $5 and get themselves a 1024, using the next tier level.

Walker said he is not for increasing first-lands, but is for merely doing what they already do, just spreading them around more. Currently, some entire sims don't have first-land in them at all.

As we can see from these posts, the happy customers are the people who got first-land on waterfront, and they stay there. Of course these 512 first-land happy customers do the Lindens no good, they don't tier up, they don't move to fresh fast sims. So the Lindens don't at some level "like" them. They'd rather have unhappy customers who hate their first-land surrounded by build-griefers, who then tier up to get out of 512 hell and move to fresh fast sims by auction or by resale and keep the whole land-sale machine oiled.

Maybe it's reasonable to go on giving players that free 512 tier, that they can or not apply. I guess I think what is questionable is giving them that first-land privilege to buy the first-land at $512. It devalues land, and it is pointless for the customers. Very few ever stay on that land, they merely resell it. It fuels the player-based economy, so maybe that's a good thing. It is a form of socialism. It is providing starter fluid for the economy, as Philip Linden said. That means at some point he will stop pouring that starter field. If people could just pay a flat fee from the get-go and come in with a bigger piece of land, there might be more of those types of transactions.

I think a solution that allows for more waterfront first-land and land sprinkled around and not clumped together would be helpful.

Found this interesting.