Our focus should now be on SINKS not STIPENDS.

Cheyenne, thanks for your thread!

If you read post #257 in my thread (http://forums.secondlife.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1064055), you will see that I basically agree with you.



New, creative sinks are a great idea, an idea we should discuss. At this point, though, the only real control residents have is to voluntarily control the money supply be returning their Lindens. That is what we are doing. We have no easy control over the creation of sinks so were exerting control were we can.

I support your sink proposal and have thought of some ideas along this line before. We all know that the SL economy is truly a non-consumable economy, unlike the RW. Residents do not need food, medicine, etcetera. This is fine and I do not think it should change--who wants to feed an av anyway. However, we can create a pseudo-consumable aspect within SL if we think creatively.

Here are a few ideas to do just that:



These are just a handful of sink ideas. There are many more.

A quick look through Feature Voting yealds lots of new features that could be implemented and charged for. They range from Landscaping (make your land green for a fee) to new classified tricks and more. If you haven't used your votes, go check it out.

The bitterness and anger that the removal of fifteen cents has instilled in some is disturbingly astounding.

Problem is, Bloop, King Phillip either didn't think it through or is a snake oil salesman par- excellance. The more commercial it gets, the more 'average' players go away (I've lost about half my friends list...common refrain 'it isn't what it was when I started, too much money, money, money'). The game NEEDS the causual players, the newbies on basic, to provide a market. I have been here quite some time, learned to build some and have a few small stores. I buy very little anymore....I either build it myself or ask a friend who is one hell of a builder/coder for help...or trade items among my circle of friends. What happens when, due to jerking the game around in the name of the sacred 'economy' the newbs either aren't coming or aren't staying, the casuals have migrated on because its too hyper-capitalist? How does King Phillip expect to offer real economic value when the causual players and the non-builders are gone? How much can one business sell to another business?

All the short-term fixes (such as the recent stipend cut for new basics) is attacking the wrong end of things. They NEED to concentrate on fixes that impact the well-off first, and not so deeply that they leave but deep enough to matter....rather than pruning the roots while the branches get bigger and bigger. Eventually the tree will collapse when most of the roots (newbs, low end premiums, small businesses) fold and only the big content creators and land barons remain...without a market.

As far as Cheyenne goes, he/she is a nutter if he/she believes 'voluntary sinks' will work...ever try to pry a penny from the wealthy? They'll either not use them or underuse them in order to horde more and more lindens. The ONLY sinks that will work on them HAVE to be required.

Left as it is could mean the potential elimination of premium stipends. I am suggesting an alternative.

According to your post, if that were to happen, then you would be the one to go.

I dont believe you read my post, but I wont hold my breath waiting for an apology

I'm premium, BTW, never been basic for longer than the 14 day trial. . But my sympathies lie with the the poor newbs and the disproportinate impact it has on them...and the secondary impact it may have on content creators (and indirectly LL).

To the newb, it was an incentive. I've met quite a few that have been 'saving for something big in a few weeks'. You suggest buying lindens and they go 'Hell no!' you suggest premium and they just aren't sure the game is for them yet. Couple weeks later, they still aren't to their goal but are more comfortable with SL and upgrade to premium for that stipend. Eventually, they may get comfortable enough to use the lindex to buy. That helps LL, that helps the content creators. Now, they can't save up and when they realise they have to pay $US for lindens, a LOT of those 'hell no!' newbs are going to leave SL....potential customers of both LL and content creators gone! That 15 cents as you put it was a security blanket for many a newb...gave them a goal to shoot for until they either felt comfortable going premium or buying lindens.

Was taking that 15cents worth of lindens out of the economy worth the potential loss of customers to Linden labs and to the content creators? Worth the chance of reduced sales due to market saturation? Myself, I would rather have the newbs join with their crummy 50L a week and tier up than to go away.

If you think we need more sinks, I'll start building one now. I have several other kitchen items available in my store, after that I'll start on bathroom stuff.

Lewis

Any of it Victorian in appearance? I will have to swing by the store and check it out if so.

We need toilets to flush the declining $L value down, too. Build some of those

Maklin, trust me when I say I understand your point. But it was necessary. Change is painful sometimes, but we get over it.

Frankly, I would have to question a subscribers motivation to stay in SL, if the removal of a free $L50 stipend, or what amounts to fifteen cents, was their sole purpose for leaving SL. Particularly in light of the fact that they were able to access the platform for FREE!

How many other MMORPG's, games, or platforms out there allow you to play, participate, join etc, for free.

Not many.

Furthermore, I would venture to say that the large majority of our basic residents could care less about a $L50 stipend. Maybe I'm wrong, and I truly hope I'm not, but I just can't see a majority of grown people seething over the loss of a FREE fifteen cent handout.

But I accept the opinions of residents like yourself, Lewis, Dmitri and a few others. Thats what makes SL great and dynamic. Hopefully we will find ground that we can agree on in the near future.

Just a thought, but I wonder if any of the content creators/business owners, knowing that newbs are no doubt a large part of the customer base, will step up and save the poor newbies by starting to invent new jobs for those newbies to have? (erm, this does sort of have a Wal-Mart mentality, though, having someone work in your store for just enough to be able to by stuff from your store...)

I made a feature suggestion on this issue as a result of my topic on dwell (needing more sinks). Because I for one am paying the premium fee so that I get my L$500 a week, if I don't, then I don't pay premium and that's about the end of it, because if I don't get my stipend I can't afford to keep my home so that goes too and I never log-in or pay another $.

The suggestion essentially boils down to (DIRTY WORD ALERT!) taxes, but I think it makes sense as most sinks are on-off, which makes them very inconsistent and low in value: /13/1.html

Basic stipends is a good portion of where the sales of in world busineses came from. By eliminating those all you ahve done is kill the in world economy. and all in the name of tyring to foce pl into buying your L's. Maybe we should be focussing on geting rid of those who will kill everything just to line thier own pockets because they don't know JACK about how an economy works.

Content creators need those basics to have an income since hardly any premiums buy anything. LL needs to make it so that ALL in world employers MUSt pay thier employes a wage and/or commission. They also need to ban all third party transactions for L's and set a value for them that does not change. All you want is for them to cater to the wants of less than one percent of the account holders in SL, well over half of which are probably alts of one another. You want to drive in world expenses up and make ppl buy your L's at whatever rate you and your's decide to jack it up to. Now that you got basics tipend eliminated you're looking for newer and better ways to cost pl L's while removing any way they have of making any. Now better get Jamie logged in and RBD to help you rebut this.

And don't bother waiting for an apology. I apologise to those who deserve one.

What if instead of burning the stippends, we set up a scripted object that would keep track of names (UID numbers) which get wiped every week, donate our unneeded stippends into the object, and allow newbs that don't get a stippend to pull out $50l a week? There's already essentially a big cut in stippends from the newbs not having any, and this will hopefully entice them to go out and buy more, since the $50l won't buy much at all nowadays.

Nice thought but you'd end up with the "end stipend" money mongers making alts to grab them themselves.

Already on sale.

Plus a washing machine if you're into "money laundering" I guess.

Sink coming soon.

Lewis

$50l a week? Pthbt. If they want that, they're obviously very desparate.

Not my idea, but someone else mentioned it and it makes sense to me. A perfect sink would be sales tax, say 5% would probably be enough to match sources.

Great sink, only problem I see with this is it will cause content sellers to raise prices to compensate for the %5 charge, which will no doubt lead to more whining and complaining by the poor about the "land barons" screwing them *sigh*

Cheyenne Marquez-

I often disagree with your points... but I strongly agree with your original post for this thread.

Of course, it's harder to talk about sinks than stipends... which is why every thread in the L&E seems to get hijacked by "Yet Another Stipend Argument"

I'm tapped on sink ideas however... certainly someone else has some to suggest?

--
Down with YASA.

First, being 10k usd in the hole after less than 3 years of running a RL business would be pretty damn good. Most businesses in RL are in the red for their first 5 years. If you were running a RL business, you would be deeper in the red or out of business.

Second, you had the chance to read the TOS when you signed on and every time you invensted. You knew you were pegging your business on the what people were willing to buy L$ at.

Third, most of you knew about stipends, dwell, et when you invested. These did not come as a surprise to many of you.

LL didn't promise that you would make money.

okay i see this and my eyes bug out now as someone who does buy stocks for my retirement i think LL is a very high risk venture and would not do this. If people are doing this they are willing to take the risk of loosing their money this is their decision and quite honestly not a sound one in my books. But to each his own the fact remains they are trying to fix something that likely can't be fixed.

*boggle's at number again*

why are people investing so much in this games are boom and bust things they die out and well it looks like they haven't done their homework. They might have gotten away with this at the start of the game but they would have had to take their money out by now in order to not loose it all. If they left it in i am pretty sure they would loose it.

This is a high risk short term type thing

*boggles more*

they really need to go see someone with some knowledge about how to invest wisely if they have 10k real world dollars tied up in this game then they must be bringing home a good 100k per year or its really not quite sane even then well i still question why someone would do this and find it incredibly hard to believe..

Now you're talking Bloop, offering ADDITIONAL functionality for Lindens might be a positive move, however...

You have to bear in mind that if LL could in anyway charge more US$ for that extra service they would, both because they need real world profitability and some things, such as faster servers themselves cost US$

It's the same paradox we keep banging our head against. We want the L$ to be a real currency and while I can't dispute it has value, the fact that it's issuing "government" can never accept it as payment somewhat screws it.

As a newbie. Been on SL for less than a month.

I think the loss of the basic stipend was a really bad move.

This 50L$ was a way for people to 'do' something in SL

I joined with a premium account and decided I would work within the 'budget' of 500L$ and try and make a few L$s to add to the interest.

I have since bought on the exchange as that 500L$ for an impatient newbie, just doesn't go far enough. But that's a personal decision. If I just wanted to be on SL, meeting a few people, running a home and clubbing and was more patient, that would be fine.

If I was a basic account holder, I could do something in SL, not much, but buy some clothes, etc. But make the game more interesting. The newbies on basic for the future won't have that opportunity and as has been put in the thread elsewhere, this has a detremental effect on the SL experience.

The one factor I really noticed when I joined was, no taxation. OK there is an argument that goes something along the lines of no taxation without representation. But that is a different argument entirely.

To me the principle of taxation is absolutely fine. In most economies taxation is used to 'support' the poor, needy and greedy in addition to providing income for the infrastructure of the economy (in SL this is servers, LL etc).

Of course this will mean an adjustment in prices, but that increase does not mean the death of the economy. What will kill the economy is if new players are forced to us the exchange to be able to play the game. taxation is not the same as issuing lindens, but it does permit LL to distribute some of the economic wealth to where it is needed.

The newbie on a basic account and the newbie on a premium account. Newbies are able to obtain income from 'the tree' It is quite possible to have a rate of taxation set at 0 for newbies for a period of time. TO have taxation at different levels of income. For land owners to pay a higher rate of tax on sales as a capital income than they would if they rented out land. It is possible for vendors to pay a tax rate which is different to capital sales.

The talk of sinks is absolutley fine and there is no reason why these shouldn't appear, on premium content, the ideas talked about such as 'revenue accounting systems', are good. But until taxation is introduced the discussion will always become seen as a divisive issue between those with alot of money invested and those without.

I am now trying to work within my 500L$, plus investment I have made and it is happening. I can budget for a taxation figure, no problem with that. What I can't budget for is the fact that income for newbies being reduced any further and I can't understand why anyone thinks it is a good idea for people to have no money to play with and why they think they would stay in game.

Yes, there is an argument that everyone should pay a fee to join. But why? I have never played in one of these online games before. I joined SL because there was this 'free option'. I didn't use it, as I wanted to do a bit more, but that bit more I could see would be covered by the sales I made to those with a few L$ in their pocket.

The onbsession with the exchange rate, I can understand, but I live in teh UK and our currency ahs devalued consistently for decades. I survive.

I also run a RL business and I would be happy to be paid in L$ for some of our products, so that I can enjoy the SL game more. RL products paid for in L$. Similarly I would be happy to be paid £ for SL items. It is through the creation of ideas such as that, that the value of the L$ will stabilise. Too many of these threads talk about the L$ in isolation to RL economy and when it does go to RL it then ignores completely people like me who have £ not US$ to spend. I need to go through 2 exchanges to buy Lindens. This is another avenue to explore. Offering £ and EURO exchange rates, or else players such as me have to think about holding lindens or dollars or our own currency.

This all does tie into sinks. Taxation is the most progressive way forward, keeping money in the economy by permitting new players to have back their 50L$ stipend and no more cancellation of stipends will all make it a better experience for the new player, expand the exchange to other major currencies being used by the gamers in SL.

Have some creative sinks for premium contect, sure, but a basic rate tax on sales and a higher rate for land sales will add interest and stability.

Follow this up with businesses such as mine being incentivised to accept LS$ for RL services. The incentive being structured SL banking and a way to make this happen outside of SL, as I need to account to the RL revenue for the L$ income. Then there is the possibility for people to take money out of SL into RL and get something for it as well as avoiding yet another L$ withdrawl.

I could see myself working to a limit of L$ of sales per annum. Get enough of us doing that and there is a dent being made in the L$ withdrawl rates, stabilising the L$ and enabling the 50L$ stipend to be re-introduced.

I agree good sinks that dont hurt people are the best solution.

Any change that hurts large numbers of residents can cause them to leave (or cause other people never to join) so isnt a good businness practice.

Eliminating basic stipends causes many to leave after their moneys run out. How do you know that some might not become premium after a year of getting addicted to it and seeing all the cool things they can buy if only they had a premium amount of money.

Elimination of dwell hurts "parks" and since they are an attraction to SL for many people (more so than shops), hurting them hurts Linden labs if even one paying customer leaves because they think SL is just endless shops.
By "park" I mean any place people go to because they like it. This can be a park, a club, a themed sim, a tournament or anything else that benefits primarily from getting visitors.

Elimination of premium stippends is stupid from a business view as it will cause many to tier down. Many people dont care about land and only hold a premium for the stipends.
Sure some of them MAY buy money from lindex instead (but not all, many hate it), but even if they do, LINDEN LABS ISNT GETTING THEIR MONEY.