How much money do you spend on SL every month?

[Vaelissa Cortes]

Okay, that said, given the numbers in that list...I have seen a loooot of attachments that are worse than bodies. By now I regularly see rigged *hair* that is in the 150k to 200k triangle range.

Truth hair is a good example of this. They combine all of their styles into one linkset, resulting in hair that is at minimum 250k+ triangles, with 300k+ being common. They have recently made the move to no mod too after a decade of everything being modify, so you can't even unlink styles you don't use anymore.

Taketomi takes the cake though, with single hair styles that are 1.4 million triangles. Something desperately needs to be done, because triangle counts have become far beyond excessive, and is only getting worse, especially in the mainstream human market.

I can't actually think of any hair creators that consistently make hair with reasonable triangle counts. You have to look at very old items anymore for that.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

People who wear 160k SL hair are literally wearing two modern rigged Street Fighter characters on their head.

I want to see someone actually do this.

 

[Victorianna Writer]

I had lag then and lag now?

And I've seen many people now wearing as much stuff as they possibly can, exceeding into the 500k complexity thing. I see no difference with that and the people who wore everything at once back in pre-mesh days.

I'm not anti-mesh. I just had an easier time modding avatars back then than I do now. Now I find it to be too much work and too expensive to be an active modder like I was.

That's because some ppl figure since mesh is less impact they think they can wear everything but they don't realize the scripts cause lag too.

 

[Brenda Archer]

More good reasons to stick to my Classic avatar and old hair. My computer is barely enough to get into SL, and I don't like the lack of diversity in mesh fashion styles anyway.

 

[RyanSchultz]

I've been very lucky this past year. I found a SUPER SECRET camping spot that pays L$1 per 30 minutes, which has actually funded my rather inexpensive purchases. And of course I am the freebie queen of SL, so that helps I haven't had to spend anything on SL this past year!

 

[Adeon Writer]

I've been very lucky this past year. I found a SUPER SECRET camping spot that pays L$1 per 30 minutes, which has actually funded my rather inexpensive purchases. And of course I am the freebie queen of SL, so that helps I haven't had to spend anything on SL this past year!

That’s almost 1.5 cents per hour! Nice find

 

[Chalice Yao]

That's because some ppl figure since mesh is less impact

*up to a certain degree of mesh complexity, especially when rigged.
I can think of a lot of meshes out there that sadly definitely don't have less impact these days.

 

[eighthdwarf Checchinato]

Occasionally, I spend about 10€ on SL. It used to be more, and more regularly, but my RL costs have risen and I'm on a tight budget.

 

[Amity Slade]

I think Linden Lab has been missing some real economic opportunity by choosing not to upgrade Ruth.

There was a thriving fashion business in Second Life before mesh avatars were introduced. You could create an individualized avatar to your vision because the avatar was easily customizable, there was so much available, and for the most part you could count on the clothes/skins/shapes you bought to pretty much work as expected.

I certainly spent as much time and money on fashion in the pre-mesh era as any of the most dedicated SL fashionistas spend now. The difference for me is not directly related to what I think of the new technology. The difference is how much happiness I got out of the process.

A more customizable default avatar might encourage more people to care about avatar appearance. Making those source files available will help creators make clothes/accessories that work more reliably. It would also force mesh avatar creators to start caring more about customization and usability of the avatars they want to sell.

I suppose Linden Lab must be turning some sort of profit off the Marketplace as it is. Maybe. But I suspect that there is a lot more money to be had that Linden Lab has not figured out how to pursue.

A highly customizable and functional avatar, available to everyone, was one of the great accomplishments for Second Life that really made it a world in which people wanted to stay. I have trouble imagining what reasoning Linden Lab uses to decide that abandoning one of it's truly defining features is the road to riches.

 

[Vaelissa Cortes]

I think Linden Lab has been missing some real economic opportunity by choosing not to upgrade Ruth.

This is just one of the many, many things they have missed over the years. Linden Lab has demonstrated very well that they are a clueless company that's never understood their own product. I am certain they are only still afloat because Second Life's surviving dedicated user base gives them enough money to keep running, with enough free cash to mess around with flopped projects. So long as they can keep the income flowing, it doesn't matter. They have never had any serious competition, so we are stuck with them wishing for what could have been.

I think a big part of the issue is that most all of the actual talent at the lab is long gone. The current staff doesn't seem to have the ability to do much more than keep it going and apply some rather poorly implemented patch jobs they pass off as new features, and those in charge of adding any kind of features in the first place are weirdly against change (like adding basic stuff that's been standard in games for 20 years). It is very frustrating.

 

[Val]

I also had much more enjoyment out of fashion pre-mesh era and loved walking all over the grid and finding random, unique shops. If something buggered - no worries, few edits here and there would do! And all the layering and mix and matching and unique edits and.... *coughs* . Now it is mainly a daunting task of never finding what you are after and you cannot just dissect a clothing item to fit it into outfit so it is endless frustration.

Good news is that us who will probably hang around till bitter end will be future influencers of direction LL takes with SL as unlikely it will innovate something to make it appeal to new group of users.

 

[Sid]

If LL were smart, they would reposition SL in the market. A bag full of cosmetics and a splash of new features, topped with a new grafic user interface, roll the drums in the media, et voila Second Life, Edition 2020 is born.

But they are still clueless after all those years, so..... yeah, you're probably right Val.

 

[Han Held]

It's budgeting time irl. So I sat down wrote out my virtual world expenses, and thought of this thread.

Second Life
cds:
Colonia nova: normal price: L$3218; this month; L$1182 (I have the rest saved)
Friedsee: L$756
NFS; approx a year on the clock

Other:
XXX Vista; L$998 (two weeks, the rest is saved)
Janus: L$7000

JUNE TOTAL: 9936
---
Dsil: $7
Premium: $9

For a rough total of $57.08

Opensim:
Metropolis Region: $34
Dedicated Server: $20

So in June I'll be shelling out $111, roughly.

 

[Noodles]

Currently nothing monthly. I have not logged in for months and cut my land back to be covered by my premium tier, which covers itself with the Stipend each year.

When I was active I think I topped out at maybe $20-30/month. For a while I paid I think $8/month for a Digiworlds region and $15/month for land tier, plus I wasn't accumulating any L$ to cash out to cover my main tier.

 

[IrishSpring]

$22 per month in tier + Premium Membership