Please stop releasing updates... they usually make SL worse

I agree with TS.

The amount of updates is insane and the fact they mess up more stuff they they usually fix is even more insane.

If you make a game that people pay for you need to provide them with service instead of half arse tested rubbish every week!!!

Great post, Kelly. Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. Stopping updates is a silly idea. We need them.

For me the problem feels like a QA issue. I usually don't come across that many bugs after an update. But this last time around (before the current update), I came across at least 6 bugs in the UI without looking for them. It would seem that these bugs should have been quite easy to find, if there was a more thorough QA process before release.

Improvements in the code will always include bugs. Bugs are bound to find their way into release versions. But as a user, when I see the number of easy-to-spot bugs in recent releases, I can't help but believe that something in the QA process needs to be addressed.

I can't point to a single feature that's been added in the past three months that has made any difference to my SL experience in terms of improving it. I can point to a few though that have made it worse (e.g. the silly new Enter functionality and the snapshot interface). I can also point to many bugs that have got me to the stage of seriously questioning whether I should stick with SL.

Don`t we get a few of these types of threads before or after updates?!

Stop updating as it is true nearly everyone of them causes more problems then they are worth. Instead please for the love of all things gaming, fix the LAG issues.

Delete items whose owners have not logged in for 6 or so months and fix the lag. The lag in this game is so horrible it nearly makes playing in it virtually impossible. It has to be hurting the individuals who make and sell things, as I know I can't use items I've bought withoug being reduced to running in place or falling through the world. Then of course the crashes that come shortly after.

If I can't use an item because the lag is so bad, why buy it? Also a good reason not to buy land here as paying for a service which you cannot use to it's full extent more then 10% of the time is simply not going to happen.

Stop the update, fix the main problems, please.

There are about 5 times as many people online at time now than there were a year ago. (Probably more.) Throwing more hardware at the problem isn't going to fix an architecture that needs to be re-fitted for this many people.

Lag issues cannot be fixed without updates.

Forgive me if I don't understand correctly but wouldn't deletion of the thousands of useless and unused items, whose owners have not logged in for an extended period of time help with lag? Maybe a policy which states that items made by a person who has not logged in over a certain timeframe would be deleted could help? At least in the case of buildings.

And forgive me but if there is more then 5 times the number of people it would seem to me that additional hardware would be essential and fundamental. Just as it is with a home computer, things change, you upgrade. If the game is being run with the exact same and number of hardware items as it was without those 5x increase of people, isn't that just really, really bad managment?

Also one of the points expressed here is that the updates tend to have tiny uneeded additions, asthetic changes that most don't care about if they can't move. Or have chat lag that runs into minutes.

To me if your paying for a service and it runs as poorly as this seems too, then I say throw more hardware at it and keep throwing it at it until it helps. Make the game playable now, then make things pretty.

I think someone else stated that everytime you throw code into this game it is going to affect a whole new set of areas. If that is the case then the path of updating to fix the issues is nothing more then an infinite loop of creating new problems too fix. Test things for longer periods of time. But at least do what can be done here and now to make the game playable and worth the time spent on it.

I understand of course your point. And I agree, but with the above stated actions being also added.

There's a lot of builds out there containing stuff created by folks who haven't logged in in months, but that other people are using. Some is no-transfer content that can't be shared with a group. Killing all the objects owned by these avatars would produce a whole lot of damaged builds, and cost a lot of money to re-buy the old objects.

Where did anyone say there was no new hardware coming in?

I'm confused... if I'm paying tier, but haven't logged in for a few weeks/months... you want LL to start deleting things off of my land?

Most Linden-owned land has auto-return set.



LL has been adding servers and upgrading servers left and right.

SL is just growing faster than computer hardware performance is increasing.

LL needs to innovate better ways for SL to operate so that it can perform better.

Like putting a freeway into a growing town, things WILL get knocked down and broken while the work is in progress, some will like the end result, others will mourn the permanent changes to their quaint town.

It's a compromise.



I haven't seen chat lag in SL that wasn't the fault of my internet service provider. The FEW times that I can't walk were during the self-replicating grid attacks or when there too many physical objects colliding... or when so many prims were coming into view at once that my internet feed was saturated.

None of that has anything to do with the handful of aesthetic changes that slip in to each update, and eliminating them in the future isn't going to speed up getting those issues addressed.



"Runs as poorly as this"... poorly compared to what??

You want lag reduced? Appoint a secret police force to storm through the world arbitrarily removing greedy scripts, stripping people with too many prim attachments, deleting unnecessarily large and too numerous textures... and banning anyone running one of those stupid unending slide-show prims that never stay on one pic long enough for it to rez. Destroy every animation overrider that checks 50 times a second if someone is typing or walking or sitting.

Lag in highly populated areas would be greatly reduced.... and... there'd be MANY angry people leaving forever... making SL more lag free than ever! Woo Hoo!

It would certainly be more effective than wasting money and time upgrading every computer every 6 months to get a paltry 10% performance improvement.



And do you have any suggestions on how LL should "test" having 10,000 people online at the same time without REALLY having 10,000 peple online at the same time?

SL is evolving. If you think it's not playable or not worth your time, then simply go find something that is. It's really as simple as that, isn't it?

(No, I know it isn't that simple. But neither is "just fixing it". )

SL can and will improve. It will also change in ways some or many of us don't like. That's "evolution" and without it, SecondLife will rot and die.

I have almost 30 years in software development, and its quite apparent that most of you have no idea how it works or why.... Dont get me wrong, thats not a flaming. The fact that the base sentiments expressed through this thread are correct isnt entirely by accident.

I feel thre are 2 inherent problems wth SL. Lack of a good Change management process, and lack of controlled user entry to the system.

The Change management process in a proffessional IT environment is absolutely critical in a business environment. There are a lot of builders in this game that ARE using SL as a viable source of income and they ARE paying LL to provide a service to realise that income. I personally pay over $270 a month torun my business, which I pay without fail every single month...if I didnt, would I be allowed to stay? If I trickled that money in at the rate of 1c every 10 minutes, would that be acceptable? I dont think so.....the trickle may be barely acceptable, but non payment most certainly would NOT. How then is it acceptable for LL to provide ME, a paying customer reliant upon them, with unreliable, slow, and an almost unusable business environment? Since 1.12, the lag has been so appallingly bad that we have curtailed creation operations significantly and are forced into maintenance mode....simply because we CANT create stuff anymore. Has this reduction in LL's service provision seen a suitable reduction in my Tier price? uhh...noooo. Management at LL neds to make programmers accoutnable for what they are presenting to the public. The change management philosophy MUST demand signoff at each and every level of the steps from conception to implementation....1) projection, 2) scope, 3) test, 4) development, 5) Quality assurance, 6) implementation.. At completion of each phase SOMEONE puts their name on a piece of paper and accepts responsiblity that what they have passed on is good and wholesome. If they are wrong, expect a kick in the ass or even make sure your resume is up to date.

Server equipment these days in extraordinarily cheap. You need grunt, buy more for almost nothing. Yes, if we were talking about S390 mainframe hardware then its mucho dinero, but a hyper fast rack mounted server can be had for under $1000. Look at the number of properties in SL and tell me they arent making enough to spend it on hardware!! Instead, they are spending vast buckets of money on developers who are being allowed to run off and develop what they want, without question, and most improtantly, without having to be accountable for the use, usefulness, or impact of same on the general PAYING populace.

Allowing unverified users into the grid is just ludicrous. Yes, it will make some people back off, for sure, but the system doesnt have to CHARGE their credit card anything except a token amount for verification. Demand a CC, hit them with a $1 registration fee, then activate the new user. No more CC hits unless they elect to own land and go into the premium / tier charging sytem. LL think that by letting all these 'free users' come online that they are generating a bigger business. Well, reality check time. The people who PAY big $$$ (and mine isnt big compared to some) are bankrolling the hardware and software development for these same 'free loading griefers' that are dropping grey goo and self-replicating objects into the grid. I class this as total financial irrepsonsiblity on LL's part...to use MY money to THESE people to take my business away.

What if all of use folks owning land >32000m were to refuse payment until a CC verification systems was introduced? Would LL change their policy? Would we be justified in doing that? What if I was their network provider and I decided to let all the SF community use THEIR network bandwidth uncensored and unthrottled? Would LL complain and file for financial retribution? You bet your ass they would. How does that make US different?

I dunno why I'm saying this. The management at LL think they are gods and dont have to answer to us... Our money will be in their bank on the next billing cycle, so why should they give a rats ass......They dont return phone calls on customer service, even if you leave a number after being on hold for 20 minutes, so why would they bother reading this?

makes ya thikn, doesnt it??? Well, dont bother, they dont give a shit.

LL, as has been stated in this thread, has been upgrading servers.



The illusion of a democracy here is just that. Our priorities aren't necessarily the same as LL's, whether they have unified goals and objectives or a bunch of scattered ones doesn't matter. Sure I'd love for them to have a strict code review process. I'd also like to not have to wait several months between updates.



Stores, with *VERY* few exceptions, don't charge people an entry fee, nor do they demand proof of identification. Given the stated direction LL has for SL, the current entry method is logical, despite there are hazards and risks that come with it.

Who are we to say that the risks aren't outweighed by the benefits? Can we measure either? No, we can only make wild guesses based upon our experiences.




I've no desire for LL to institute CC checks, so this >32000m owner won't be participating in that hypothetical scenario. There are likely more full sim owners than half sim owners... and they'll have estate management tools to throttle whom they allow into their areas and not care much either.



Then opt out already and spare the rest of us your whining. If you can't provide constructive critism worthy of being read and acted upon then why should any of us care, much less LL ?



Only thing it makes me think is that you're bored and need a better source of entertainment.

Can you walk into any store iRL multiple times without walking out again?
Can you clone yourself 14 times to look different and run around burning property?
Blow it up?
Carve giant didos into people's lawns?
And when confronted just *poof* the clone into nothingness?

Didn't think so.

Neither can you pull a shotgun out and blow me away and then empty my cash register in SL.

I'd rather suffer a few grid attacks than armed robbery.

Uhm... perhaps this is a silly question, but... you actually manage to get more than 100 fps? I just wonder a bit, because usually the refresh rates of the graphics card itself don't go any higher than 85 Hz, effectively limiting your frames per second to 85 too. Very few drivers offer a refresh rate up to 100 Hz, but I've never seen anything beyond that.

Besides, I use a pretty fast computer too, and I'm glad to get my 15-20 fps in high prim areas. Not because my system couldn't handle more, the server just doesn't work that fast. 30 fps and beyond only seems to be possible while I'm standing still. Ok, I don't use 4 graphics card at once, perhaps it's that I prefer just one fast graphics card. SLI is a nice technology, but I'd fear incompatibilities with SL and other 3D applications, like crashes every few minutes.

I think LLAbs is finally going to get the act together wit this rolling update......If they seem to have gotten the message that attacks and or abuses withinthe game. I be all for supporting the gameinthe future in all levels.

There are likely more full sim owners than half sim owners... and they'll have estate management tools to throttle whom they allow into their areas and not care much either.

Even with the tools to "throttle whom they allow into their areas" and whatnot, these estate/region/sim owners are still completely locked out of thier own land and cut off from the production of thier own goods whenever scripts are disabled or the grid is taken down. What good is having those tools on a sim, or even 8 sims, that you carefully police and maintain, only to have those same sims become unavailible or unusable for hours at a time? What good are the tools then when your region can be reset by an outside force without warning or consent?


Then opt out already and spare the rest of us your whining. If you can't provide constructive critism worthy of being read and acted upon then why should any of us care, much less LL ?

Forgive me if I missed it, and it's quite possible that I have, but what constructive critism have you provided thus far? Have you put forth any ideas of actions or steps that could be undertaken to make the SL experience more enjoyable for the general populace? Often in your posts I see you comment on your own experiences, and of course that's fine as you can't play the game for anyone else, but those of us who would like a more enjoyable experience on our end you seem to dismiss us as whiners and complainers.

In the same vien that you can cut down and wave off several of the ideas and positions being presented in this thread I have to say....If you can't offer any constructive critism of your own, why should any of us pay attention to or heed to your posts? Many of us in this thread are trying to provide our feedback on this current version of SL (something you yourself so kindly reminded us to do), while you seem more interested in providing feedback on our opinions and stances.

Just a reminder, this forum is "Current Version Feedback", not "Do You Agree or Disagree With the Poster Above You."

If you disagree with us, so be it. I can whole heartedly respect that. But unless you're replying with feedback about the game and it's current version (whether it be it's praises or not) your posts are serving no purpose here.

To Ishtara: Yes it was able to get more than 100 fps. In a fairly empty private sim it even peaked at 320 fps. This is the fps as reported in the debug window. Yes the monitor refresh rate is 85 so having more than that is rather useless but the point is that the quad system allows me to almost always stay over 85 even in high prim, high particle areas. It dropped to about 65 in a few cases.

As far as not wanting to use SLI or expecting SL to work well with it... well it is probably the wave of the future. It has had noted compatibility issues with some games, but most software engineers try to make sure their code works well with the latest and greatest (and probably soon to be common) technology. In my personal experience, only SL fails to work on that computer. A Dozen or so other games work fine. Had a minor problem with one other game. Even SL used to work fine. It was one of the poorly tested updates that now prevents it from working on that computer. I'll try to spend more time on the test grid as I have many very varied computers to test it with, but doing so on a lot of machines takes a lot of time. Even keeping up with the normal updates, emergency patches, and bug fixes on multiple machines is a part time job lol.

In all fairness LLabs techs do the best they can. But after almost 2 years and countless OS langugebugs( in my case japanese) which is a nighmare with the secondife client..........I can`t even use kanji other japanese fonts( other then romaji! Shit i hate writing long long replys with true japanese fonts! ITS SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! with the Sl client. Now I am not going to buy and install a english OS for this game and install the japanese fonts that pretty stypud on my part if i did!!!!!!!!!!! NOWAY!..........Not untill LABS fixes this bug will the japanese will not come here.Unless they are use native english OS systems.

Jopsy, now I see why your an outsider.... This is a valid "whine" based upon almost 30 years of senior level management in the IT industry, something that you obviously cant say that you have.

You have good points, certainly, but within good IT management practice what I have stated above is true. LL are trying to run a major service provision organisation while still wearing diapers. They need to grow up, get some decently experienced IT management in the place, and stop 'playing games'. For many, SL is NOT a game.

Yes, you say there are more full sim owners than half sim owners. Did you miss that 'greater than' symbol on the front of the 32,000????

So, you dont like my whine... Well, unless your going to read whats written, understand it, and think about your reply, then you have nothing valid to ay, except countering for the sake if it.

So...those people in SL that use it as a business platform and making ALL of their real life income being hit with a grid attack ISN'T armed robbery?

Draco18s- You're right. It isn't.


disisme Misfit- Developmental maturity will come. In my own experience it settles in when the initial architect/developers have dis-engaged and the remaining support team doesn't have the talent nor the vision to hold the product together without strict change management approval processes.

When SL finally gets to that point and becomes yet another monolithic immovable AOL-like service... I will undoubtedly lose interest in it and move on.

In the meantime, despite the inconvenience, I'd rather participate in a world of change and potential, which I feel SL still is, despite the overwhelming nay-saying and end-of-days braying going on.


Joseph Worthington- You're right, I'm off topic. (Not like that ever stops anyone.)

I apologize, I'm bored, I've been sick with a cold for a few days and it makes me rather snippy at people.

Especially, when they're using seemingly baseless facts to demand vague changes that I feel are short-sighted or counter-productive.

Granted, my perception and your reality may differ.

I'm in total agreement. Don't get me wrong - I love SL! - but this rapid-release thing is causing a great deal of frustration among the SL community. As software consumers (and video game consumers, in a lot of cases), we're accustomed to waiting YEARS between releases in many cases. I think most SL users would be perfectly content to wait a few extra months for a much-desired feature if that meant keeping the system more stable before and after the update.

I'm a developer for an online service myself (one which has been around much longer than SL and so has many more years of legacy code to deal with). A while back, the company I work for went from issuing a release every 6 months to issuing one every two months. The idea was that having a more rapid release schedule would a) allow us to be more flexible and adapt more quickly to changes in our industry, and b) reduce the risks and downtime required for a release because there would be less code involved with each release. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

In actuality, what has happened is that, on average, the number of problems occuring with each release increased due to insufficient time for integration testing, and the downtime required for each release is just as long as it once was, which effectively means that we've more than tripled the downtime and the number of person-hours spent in release-related activities. The only area in which we have improved is time-to-market - and that only marginally.

At this point, the only solution that will likely give us the hoped-for rapid-release benefits is to re-engineer our product for better modularity from the ground up.

Seems like Linden Labs is learning a similar lesson. (At least, I hope they are!)

its been almost a month since ms kelly posted this and ya know what? those very "bugs" she claims ar ebeing fixed are still an issue? hmmm investors reassurance doublespeak maybe?