Creative User Hacks to Second Life Appearance Make Avatar Customization Incredibly Difficult for New Users (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: User-Made Mesh Head Heads-Up Display (reviewed by Cassie here)

Commenting on the appearance of professional makeover agencies in Second Life, reader "Pulsar" points out this is partly the outcome of innovation among the user community, as users came up with creative ways to improve avatar appearance options beyond what the default viewer offered:

And to think that once you could create your own hair style straight from the viewer sliders, as well as everything else (you still can, but it's outdated).

Creative users took advantage of each update and new feature to improve their avatar looks, sometimes even with hacks like the "invisiprim". Avatars became prettier and prettier, even incomparably better, but on the other hand fashion became more and more complex.

Instead of sliders, you had to edit your prim or sculpt attachments, then you had to use alpha layers, then merchants would sell their rigged mesh without setting the attachment point, so you have to carefully "add" it (or add to another attachment point) instead of "wearing" it, in order to not end up naked, just because you grabbed an ice cream. Then appliers, various HUDs, then you have a bunch of products from different brands and that aren't compatible with each other, as well as legacy content, so you have to know what's compatible with.

In other words, with every creative workaround the Second Life community added, avatars became more and more difficult to customize -- and became near impossible for new users:

[While I loved those updates from the start, experienced users maybe are used to that and someone never needed any help, but it's objectively more complex, especially for a newcomer.

Now if there are people who need tutorial classes, that speaks volumes of the lack of user friendliness. Imagine if you are new to a game and you would like to try it, but you need learning classes to change clothes to your character. How crazy is it?  

Pretty crazy! And because many of these workarounds have been embraced by the established community, it's become difficult for Linden Lab to update the viewer in such a way that the workarounds are no longer necessary. (Because if they did, the backlash would be intense.) The company could force the issue by fixing avatar customization so it's much more friendly for new users, even if that meant "breaking" these workarounds -- but that would likely create a balkanized Second Life. But then again, that's probably necessary if SL has any hope of growing.

Comment edited for clarity.  

Comments

[Riding]

Whatever happened to helping out your fellow residents and doing it because it was the right thing, without charging between 3-5K for something? I started back in the beginning of 2009 and I remember a very sweet, patient and kind lady helping me put together my av, all because she was paying it forward, for someone helping her when she originally started. Since that time, I have helped countless people, putting together their avs, helping them set up their mesh, helping them find stores with quality clothing (the men are a real challenge but it's fun) and I did all this without anyone paying me anything. Why would I do that? Because of a very sweet, patient lady who helped me and I love the idea of paying it forward. This use to be a community where that belief was a common one.

[NiranV Dean]

How is it getting more complex?

With all the "innovations" creators come up they take away any complexity in the same breath they add it. /s

The real complexity lies deep beneath all the laggy and unnecessary HUDs everything is delivered with today but even if you wanted to you couldn't start diving into it because creators take away modding permissions. They make users unable to fully customize everything the way they want it, they add unnecessary scripts to replicate what SL already offers, they tell the user its for their best but all they do is dumb the average user even more down and they have varying levels of stupid reasons for doing it and to top it all off they take a small fortune for their shit they call "content".

I'm infinitely disappointed, every day once more.

I wish people would stop being such lazy bastards and dig into this stuff a bit. Nothing in SL is complex, SL's complexity is incredibly shallow when you come to think about it. It is just each user's own laziness that adds complexity to a system that is not complex at all. Infact this very laziness is what brought us into this near-apocalyptic scenario.

They are taking 5.000 L$ for a goddamn HEAD. Wake up people, fucking wake up already, stop being lazy, stop defending them with your laziness, stop defending their bad practices, YOU allow THEM to make it even worse by the minute and YOU pay for it.

(Twitter auth is not working, RIP login)

[Clara Seller]

Thanks to NiranV Dean for bringing up many issues. He has a high enough profile to challenge the syndicate without being suspect, because wanting modify rights on mesh body parts is considered suspicious behavior any more.

He's right. Those of us who have been around for awhile are capable of being so much more than sheep. Are the people we admire so much always working in our best interests when they strap us in car seats and talk to us like we're morons?

[Scott]

While I don't disagree that creating a beautiful avi can be complex and difficult for new users, I don't agree with the implication this is a problem for second life. I remember the difficulties and frustrations of learning how some of this works. I still don't understand all of it, but it was (and still is) enjoyable to learn. I get a sense of accomplishment. The subtleties of second life avi construction become an "inside joke" with others who have had the same struggles. Not only do you get a sense of accomplishment, but you get the feeling of becoming a member of the "club" who have leveled-up and made a kick-ass avi.

As for paying for things, I am glad that there remains a market for the creators. New users can still experience Second Life for free. However, they can level-up and make "in-app" purchases if they want a shortcut. Alternatively, they can do the really hard work of creating mesh. I have looked into creating mesh myself and, although it looks like something I would enjoy, I just don't have time. As a result, I make the in-app purchases to create my avi and make him look good. The other alternative is to not level-up and use the linden avis. It seems to me that users are increasingly taking this approach (admittedly I am using my own anecdotal experience as a guide). I just think all of these so-called "problems" are really kind of the messy part of a user created world. They keep the community alive and vibrant with users of varying skills and capabilities all interacting and learning with one another. It's fun and relaxing for me.

Overall, I don't disagree with the "facts" of this post, I just don't agree with the implication that those are a problem for second life.

[NiranV Dean]

@Clara

I already tried talking to these creators. It's no use. They don't listen, they don't want to listen, they believe in their ways as the only option.

I told the Maitreya maker that their meshes are unoptimized, cause a huge framerate impact and in worst case can halt your graphics driver by overloading your GPU with too much work, for long enough to initiate the emergency restart (after 3 seconds) causing most rendering applications to crash due to the drivers shutting down, this includes SL. (You can do the same with setting DoF so extreme that it locks the Viewer for 3 seconds or more)

I explained them the case and all they told me was "some pc's can't handle their meshes". I've never felt the need to level an entire place more than in that moment. She was seriously implying that my PC can't handle their meshes because i was taking these experiences from my own tests and adding 1+1 together to figure out that a tad slower system would potentially crash their drivers right clicking them. I'm surely not getting the best performance in SL but the fact that i've been working on a graphics specialized Viewer for ~7 years now and that i've always been showing off amazing graphics with quite usable framerates should give you an idea what i'm trying to get at. There isn't much above my system, the only significant upgrade to my system would be a single-thread powerhouse CPU such as a Ryzen or Intel. If MY system can't handle their every day meshes, then WHO is supposed to handle them? What the hell are they thinking?

Worse even, they use it as an excuse to hide their other stupid reasons to not give people modding permissions. "People can't edit it anyway without crashing, we're just helping them". Right, yes, of course, you are such beautiful and nice people, you are such altruists, my ass.

The reality is, they buy their meshes for a huge stack of money from "professional" 3D modelers, these modelers create them under special licenses (hence why you have to do this whole license signing bullshit when applying as modder), they often don't know what these models are for and even if they do they don't know the ins and outs of Second Life, they don't know the special requirements for models in SL, they simply assume their highly detailed movie-meshes they create are fine as is. Little do they know that this is extremely bad for SL (This is often the reason meshes are overpolygonized). Those that aren't are simply "subdivided" later in Blender to add more polygons, doubling, tripling, quadrupling the amount of polygons in the process, creating many thousands extra polygons not necessary which need to be rendered regardless (This partly comes from the bad and wrong opinion that more polygons equals better at all times). It is true that with more polygons you can add more details but the amount of visible details you add in comparison to the amount of performance impact you incur, quickly shifts to a huge performance impact with little to no effect. Question: Many have seen my pictures, my avatars often are included in it, they do not have more than ~25k polygons, do they look like they need more? Do they look like adding more polygons would improve anything? The answer is no, the improvements would be almost nil. Maitreya for instance has roughly 4-5 times as many polygons as that and Belleza has up to 4 times as Maitreya, this is not counting extra/separate body parts from others like SLINK and this does not even begin to include clothes, hair or other such things. The biggest reason for their stupid no-mod policy however still seems to be the VERY wrong myth that no-mod prevents copybotting. It does not. To illustrate how easy it is to copybot: The server gives you anything the client needs to render the scene, this includes the full meshes, textures and sounds. This is absolutely required, these must be present somewhere, at least temporary to be able to be used. In this time any Viewer could simply "export" any of these into a usable format, Firestorm already has a mesh exporter implemented, one which's only difference to a copybot is a simple permission and creator check, it is a single line of code on the client's side that prevents copybotting as the server has no control over it. Anyone who would want to copybot something could simply take Firestorm, remove this check and would get a copybot Viewer, even the LL Viewer has animation and texture copybotting implemented, all it needs is a simple button that hooks this export function and uses it on an animation or texture. Don't believe in their lies. Copybotting is not a valid reason, copybotting cannot be stopped. All they want is to make it impossible or limit your modification possibilities into a controlled environment so they can decide how much you can change, they can control whether you can change your white shirt to a red one or have to buy the red one for the full price again.

Their entire system is a closed economy, the modders are basically slaves to the creators, the creators can decide when and where modders can offer their mods for the creator's product and whether it is compatible. This goes so far that creators can take away a modder's license and even take down their products, some force modders to sell their mods on the creator's own vendors and disallow selling it anywhere else. On the marketplace mods often get DMCA'd if the creator is for some reason not fine with the mod. In some of these economies (if not in all) modders get specialized "modkits" that include only the very parts of the dummy files that they need to create whatever they applied for. Example: You apply for making shirts, you'll get the rigged upper body only, the rest of the body will be a rigless, dummy with no information whatsoever. They use and abuse this extreme control for their own nefarious purposes, whether it is squeezing more money out of YOU, the user, or prevent other modders from getting the money they deserve.

If i were you, i'd keep far FAR away from any big names such as Maitreya, Belleza, SLINK and a few others. They are dirty little companies, they do not care about you, they only care about your money and they will do anything to get what they want, these recent dramas about a certain big mesh creator wasn't just nothing. The only way to get rid of these is not buy their shit and collectively demand better things, demand better optimization, demand mod-permissions, demand the very thing SL was made for, the very thing that makes SL so special, don't let their stupid god-complex take away what made SL what it is now and what you were promised on the official SL website: YOUR world, YOUR imagination.

Sadly i cannot change anything. I wish it was as easy as going into their shop and saying "dude, do you even know who i am?" and make them improve their dirty company practices but then again you can only hope i will never get the ability to change anything big, not even for a day, these creators would be banned in an instant on my watch, their content would be erased out of Second Life as far as possible and anyone wanting to revive this crap would get a ban as well, i wouldn't be as nice as Linden Labs with this stuff, i wouldn't accept compromises like they do on a daily basis, every day they take another one to keep SL running as it is.

[Clara Seller]

@NiranV Dean

Thanks for the information that pretty much confirms what I suspected.

All of these walls have just strangled a really enjoyable part of SL for me. I have no desire to be a merchant and I'm happy to pay creators a good price for my entertainment, but I like to participate in the creation of my virtual "self" without having to become a professional 3D artist, animator, and god knows what other hoops you have to jump through to get control of the basic edit tools.

LL should never have allowed their product and customers to be hijacked in this manner. Yes, and we're all stupid for believing we're unique, when it takes a snapshot and Photoshop processing to give us any real individuality. It's also a little screwed up when derendering everyone around you is the suggested way to navigate social environments.

[kenz]

Here is my suggestion.

Avatar Body Unification

1. Kill the variation

- obsoleted the classic body (I guess classic body may close to obsoleted after baking on mesh release)
- acquire the maintain mesh body and pick one for official default mesh body (Linden did the same trick on slexhange and onrez),
- alternatively, acquire only the main steam mesh body and establish the framework/openstandard for all other to follow (award a quality marks for those submitting for claim following compliance, this even work for clothes, mesh head, etc), and
- other alternative may compulsory every body made following the standard (any punishment and disadvantage not to follow, we can exercise our imagination ). I guess that selling of mesh body market income is heavily declining now.)

2. Wearing clothes according to embedded wearing location tag

No more wear or add. System wise implement wear tag system. One tag as a prefix on the name of an time. like, Tank (Chest), jean (leg), etc. Another within the object. Player only need to double click will wear the object according to the pre-design tag.

3. Premium shop for premium resident or paid member

- All premium user have clothes couple instead of premium gift. Linden give out tender for creating or supple from business creator. Linden can control the price reasonable to new resident. Linden can promote the more easier handle clothes for new user wearing. Further, it can promote any open standard made by Linden.

[Stye]

The avatars in second life are really beautiful in my opinion and anyone who needs help I offer freely. I enjoy helping people but sometimes the easiest things are so hard for new residents to understand. Nonetheless some come in not wanting to spend money to look nice, you get what you pay for.

[Cindy Bolero]

Today it's worse than "90% new users don't stay and play" as announced 10 years ago by LL. And we know the many reasons why day-old avatars get confused, frustrated, lonely, and never come back. Just keep killing them with complexity and user base and economy will continue to decline. There will be few to replace those that are leaving or have left.