Prim Welfare
The latest Second Life knowledge base article of the week available, How can I get more prims on my land?, I bit back on commenting on the announcement. I was going to write that it boils down to the fact that if you want more prims, you need to pay more money. It is that simple. The knowledge base article does point out that there are ways to allow more prims on plots of land - but as it also points out, that means you still only have the same amount of prims in a simulator. In other words, if you want to give people twice as many prims, you need to have half of the land empty.
Not really rocket science.
Some of the comments are good, but I noticed a disturbing trend of what I think of as 'Prim Welfare'. The sad truth of the matter is that people go out, buy or rent plots of land and then either buy things or build things with, quite simply, too many prims. Rather than get creative and live within the prim limits or simply pay for more land, they gripe - they yell, they complain, they jump up and down and perhaps even cry. Lots of energy wasted there.
It is a matter of budgeting one's prims. If you get 512m2, you have 117 prims. This should be a hint and a half that one should not get a house over 50 prims, so that you have 67 prims to furnish with. Yes, I know, you avatar needs the toilet and the kitchen - what goes in must come out, and those byte buffets are quite filling these days - so budget for your toilet and kitchen. That super 117 prim bed? You might want to just leave the house out of it and simply stick the bed in the open and convince your neighbors to build walls for you.
I know, I'm ranting a little - but the whining gets really old. Most people start with 512m2 plots and quickly outgrow them. They move up to 1024m2 plots and more. If that isn't enough, they get more - and the more prim-conscious folks come to a nice even balance of the number of prims that they have for the amount of money that they pay.
Do I think prim limits should be increased? I don't know anyone other than Linden Lab who would turn that down, but let's be serious: More prims creates more resources a server must deal with. Do people really need that many prims? Perhaps for island-sized builds, yes.
The average person? Maybe. Someone mentioned going from 15,000 prims/island to 18,000 prims/island. It is really 14,976 prims per island, but lets run with the 18,000 prims on an island. There are 65,536 m2 on an normal sim. This is 128 of the 512m2 plots. That comes up to 140 prims per 512m2 plot. 23 more prims? All this ruckus for 23 more prims? If you think you can do a lot with 23 prims, you should be able to do a lot more with 117.
It will never end. Everyone wants Prim Welfare to be started. Everyone thinks that prim limits are directly related to server limits (and no one can nail down what a Class 'X' server is anyway), but it probably isn't. Its probably more to do with... software limits. Database limits. Response times.
Should we have more prims? I don't know. What I do know is that if you only want to spend $X, then you might want to save prims by wearing your house. Because those prims count on a server's load too.
Yes, I'd love to hear LL raise their prim limits, but come on...
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Thinking backwards
Sometimes I like to think backwards especially when I really don't understand what's going on. But somtimes I think wouldn't it be great if we had open borders and instead of buying land we buy prims. Then we can stake out a space or random spaces and build to our hearts delight. I wonder what kind of catastrophe or art that would produce?
Just a thought.Arnaud Villota
"When you got nothin' you got nothin' to lose"
Dylan late 60s'
Sounds a lot like there.com
Sounds a lot like there.com I had spent 4 months there before making my way into SL. This was 2 and a half years ago so please excuse me if I'm wrong or it's changed. I remeber buying the size space you wanted and getting this device that you dropped anywhere you wanted and that was your space. You could also pick it up and move it elsewhere if you decided to. That was a cool feature, but everything else at there.com sucked big time.
I actually tried to run a
I actually tried to run a sim like that once. You could build absolutely anywhere and just rented the nuber of prims you used. Personally I thought it was an awesome idea that everyone would jump at. I think I gave it about two months as a trial but we basically attracted 0 interested parties. It was very sad really because I think it really could have created a beautiful living space. But you know, you try enough crazy ideas and some work and some don't.
Elanthius
heh. I think I know why.
That sort of idea would not show up in land search.
But honestly, I just don't think the community could handle something like that. Everyone has this mindset that they have to have borders. A common area, as you described, is pretty alien.
On Sentience, I made 1/3 of the island a common area. No one uses it (except me), though anyone can. And I think this is mainly because people like not having all the lag. I considered another island, but I'm not really comfortable with how Linden Lab is doing some stuff...
Second Life Consultant
We'd probably see less houses.
I think a lot of what people build is linked to what they see next to their own plots.
Second Life Consultant
Don't think too far
Don't think too far backwards.. ROBO MARX would have 10x10x10 ad signs instead of the 2x2x10 signs.
ThaBiGGDoGG Richez
-={{ THA PLAYERS CLUB }}=
ROFL
What more can I say. You are right on!
ROFL!
I get asked for by tenants
I get asked by tenants at least every other day if I can ad prims to there parcels. Most are more than willing to pay for it, but the fact of the matter is, we don't have the ability to give or take prims from lot to lot. I think the fact that people offer double prim lots confuses the average person, so they assume that estate owners do have the ability. Most people arn't aware that when someone offers double prims, they have to leave 50% of the island bare. On Nerdville I offer a 10% extra tier bonus because I had extra prims from all of my walkways. From my personal experience no matter what you'll reach your prim limit if you keep adding stuff and like you said people just need to learn to work with the limits they have. The faster they learn to live with that and get a set up within the allowed prim limit that they enjoy, the faster they'll be happy. All the cool lower sculpty prim furniture coming out is making this more and more possible.
A good tip is when you buy/rent a parcel and go house hunting, instead of buying the largest house to fit your lot that will take a million prims to furnish, try to buy or build a home thats smaller or made for a smaller lot. That way you can furnish it without having large bare areas inside.
(shamless plug) And if you need prims for building come build in the Nerdy Sanchez Sandbox!