Linden Homes no more rolls, real time home selection in world
under review
Sasy Scarborough
I would like to just see LL remove the rolls feature, and just have the letterbox on each property have an inbuilt default AVAILABLE sign. Then as an actual awesome experience, people can meander around regions, until they find their ideal 'home', they like the neighbourhood, they don't see any signs of things that may annoy them like strobe lights from next door etc.
Then they just click the sign which understands that they are premium or plus that they have the linden home allowance to use, and it is theirs. If they already have a linden home, it will say ' by proceeding with this transaction you will lose your other home' and you agree, that then sets the other home to AVAILABLE.
This means that if you do have multiple homes, with multiple accounts, this way if someone wants to swap homes between accounts or just let a friend have theirs, they can make it available when the person is standing there ready to snap it up, in the wee hours of the morning while the moon is covered by clouds (lol had to set the sneaky scene).
This means that LL no longer has to deal with any of this stuff, the only situation they would be needed in is if there was some sort of glitch and it didn't work, lag hitting something like that.
This also as mentioned gives people a more realistic fun experience, like buying that first home, and it ties in with the older promotion images of the couple in front of the home.
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Katarin Kiergarten
I tend to disagree that this is a good idea, given the abuse this would make possible with opportunities for really good locations just getting passed around amongst small groups of people (or alts). The likelihood of that going on is good, and it would make the experience less fair for everyone. Duplicating such aspects of RL isn't always desirable. Home selection being more realistic would be depressing in this regard.
(It would be cool if this could work without the inherent unfairness, but people being people, some will exploit any such feature for the sole benefit of their own in-group. If one wants to do this type of thing in SL, there are already quite a few other places where land swapping with friends can easily be done, such as most private estates and the mainland, so there is no shortage of such opportunities—Bellisseria doesn't need to fall victim to that as well. It being more egalitarian makes sense given that a Linden Home is ostensibly a member benefit. It isn't that compelling of a benefit anymore once people can game the system in a sanctioned way to play keep-away with good locations.)
On the other hand as Miro noted, we really do need to stop getting the same house on multiple rolls. That just plain sucks and doesn't make sense. There's no fairness in that.
Miro Collas
Personally, I don't mind the current "lottery" system as such. The problem is that you often get the same parcel twice or more in a single day, as was said here: https://feedback.secondlife.com/ldpw/p/change-linden-home-selection-process
If we had a guarantee that each parcel offered in the 5 times per 24hr period, was different, it would be fine.
Maybe, while that's being fixed, the number could be increased to maybe 7 per day?
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Abnor Mole
under review
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Abnor Mole
This is an interesting proposal. We are aware of the general dislike of the current Linden Homes selection process when it comes to finding a home that is "just right".
It bears remembering the original reason why it was implemented in the first place, which was to provide as fair a system as possible in allocating homes. Linden Homes are intended to be a perk for Premium membership rather than a commodity that could be sold or traded.
We are open to further discussions around this idea, keeping in mind that it may just be trading one problem for a completely different and even more significant one.
Sasy Scarborough
Abnor Mole thank you Abnor, I think that if you did go the route of letting people go outside and smell the flowers, walk around and find their new home, that of course a new set of rules could be needed. I think that choosing this way could mean one selection per ____ of days would be acceptable, because if you yourself are choosing, you would not need other options until you find out you have crazy neighbours or a friend has a home near them etc. Then if that did pop up the premium plus perc could come in, i think adding an option rather than replacing might be a good route, at least a testing time on the idea could be fun and knowledgeable.
Lyric Demina
The only problem that I see is when there is a new release of a given theme and there are people champing at the bit to get their preferred location (i.e. some ranches a bunch of people are waiting on at the moment). And the ticket system for the premium plus accounts really works well for that; the tickets arrive in a certain order and are filled in that order, so there's an illusion of fairness to it. No competing clicks on a house controller that is already sensitive to timing and clicking.
That said, I see this objection as temporary only, i.e. while Bellisseria continues to be built -- rather than as an objection for the long term. I see the potential to test-drive this proposed system with the existing Traditional house regions where there are many open houses available for viewing with no line-ups breaking the system with too many competing clicks. Maybe a test drive is worth testing (?)
Mark Sparkle
I like this idea but I also wonder how we could avoid scalper bots grabbing the best home locations before humans do, and then swapping homes with "friends" for a fee?
Gorgeous Aurelia
With the state of the economy, I highly doubt people are “scalping” linden homes. Let’s not assume the worst.
nu11value Resident
Gorgeous Aurelia Its not legal, but on mainland people still use bots to buy land faster than humans can, for the purpose of hoarding and reselling the land. The current LL system makes what the bots do on mainland not possible. But what it being suggested here, it would be easy for the mainland bot land resellers to just repeat what they do with Linden Homes. Please don't misunderstand. I would really like it to work this way. It would be a better experience, but I think LL learned from what happened on mainland and the current system exists to stop the bots. If we want what this canny is suggesting we need to be realistic about land bots and suggest something that gets us something like this, but also is not abuseable by the bots.
Sasy Scarborough
Mark Sparkle I cannot imagine what the real return for them would be. You can only have one linden home per account, you have to pay to have the account...sure the land bots in mainland have to have an account too, but they can buy as much land as they want with that, they have no limitations. (to also use up your 1024 of free tier on a linden home maybe vs a mainland parcel you can flip much easier with no interaction would be a silly use of land)
To grab a home that is the same as the homes on either side of it, on a parcel that is the same size as all the others, is not going to get that same reaction for eager buyers. Sure someone could knock on your front door and ask you if you would be interested in letting your home go so that they can move next door to their family, but there is no real control over that now anyway, even with the Lindens doing tickets, there is nothing stopping someone from saying, sure you do the support ticket we can swap but give me 10K first.
There would have to be a lot of bots, and it would be really clear very fast to the lindens what are bot accounts, because they would also most likely own hundreds of parcels of mainland :).
This could also have measures in place that also restrict how often you can do it, because there would be no need to roll five times to land on the one you want, because you would only pick up the one you want when you find it. So limiting the amount of interactions with a linden home could be even once a day or every 3 days etc.
Lyric Demina
Mark Sparkle Bots aren't allowed in Bellisseria for starters, so if this were happening someone would be in a lot of trouble.
soxybot0001 Resident
Mark Sparkle Linden homes are one home per account, so scalpers would have to invest cold hard cash that they would never recover to get one. Seems like an upside down investment from the get-go.
Mark Sparkle
Lyric Demina Do you actually believe that most, not even all, bots are actually correctly set as scripted agents in their profiles? Using bots to buy land is also against the TOS, but its been happening since nearly SL started, and still obviously is happening. If there is something to be gained by using automated bots in Bellisseria, and the only thing stopping you was not setting your bots to be scripted agents, then I don't think that will be much of deterant, as it has not proved to be a deterant in any other case so far. How selecting a LL home now though would be hard for a bot to navigate, so if things change, we need something a human could do, but hard for a bot.
Mark Sparkle
soxybot0001 Resident There are people who pay for land tier by getting several premium accounts. Since the accounts are not used for anything else, its just cheaper to pay tier that way, they have premium accounts they don't otherwise use. There are lots of premium accounts just sitting around that could be used for what I'm saying. The kind of people who use bots to buy land to flip, are also the kind of people who get multiple premium accounts to pay for the tier of that land while they are waiting to sell it - so they have premium accounts just sitting around they would love to use for something, especially if its related to something they already know, realestate related flipping.
Lyric Demina
Mark Sparkle what I said was, “Bots aren't allowed in Bellisseria for starters, so if this were happening someone would be in a lot of trouble.” What I believe is irrelevant. The covenant is clear and anyone found to be in violation of it will face whatever consequences are established.
Mark Sparkle
Lyric Demina I'll try again. Outside of Bellisseria, people ignore the rules against what bots can do by simply not setting the account as a scripted agent - a bot. Thats against the TOS, yet it happens. Why do you think then that people won't do the same in Bellisseria if they can find something they can make Lindens on with their bots? LL doesn't police its policies on Bots, they wait for people to report the bots, but even then I can say from personal experience that I have not seen action on the abuse reports I've submitted on bots actively breaking LL policies.
River Vortex
Gorgeous Aurelia even without taking the economy into consideration, I agree with you!
DittanyBelle Resident
Lyric Demina There absolutely are bots in Bellisseria. Have you been to Swordfish?
Lyric Demina
DittanyBelle Resident we all know there are bots in Bellisseria. WHAT I SAID WAS... BOTS ARE AGAINST THE COVENANT. Not that there are no bots.
And so it is with a clear conscience that one can report them, pointing to the covenant. Reporting things against the covenant is part of our job. Governance can't know unless we report it.
i have no clue what the OP even is for this thread it's so old. Stop @ing me.
Sasy Scarborough
You could also add a signboard at a hub for each region that showed what homes were available if they just want to tp directly and grab it vs strolling about, this whole process would be so much fun and just a great way to feel a sense of community
Lyric Demina
Sasy Scarborough you had me at "This also as mentioned gives people a more realistic fun experience, like buying that first home, and it ties in with the older promotion images of the couple in front of the home."