Direct TP Proposal for CN

[AlexiconKurka]

MY PROPOSITION
A mix of the systems of central and free tp has been CDS wide approved, to stimulate growth, prosperity and happiness of the citizens.

A central tp system works well on sims that are thriving around the tp HUBs. On CN this policy has not yet lead to growth of the forum as intended. It has at the moment a secondary effect: it slows new initiatives, from citizens that come later and cannot make it to the forum plots.

CDS gives a lot of attention to urban planning, a fact that has many great results. On CN the tp policies have unsatisfactory results, for completely different reasons. I propose to anticipate on the actual situation and allow direct tp on CN.

THE REASON
I haven’t talked to a single CN citizen yet, that do not find the situation around the forum sad and the commercial development status of CN behind expectations. Myself when arriving at the forum, I get thrilled cause of the great architecture, but I am discouraged by the emptiness of the shops around the tp HUB.

I have had the experience of been in a centralized tp sim before. My rental was about 20 meters from the tp HUB. I had regular IM’s of AVs that couldn’t find my shop, asking me for a direct tp. They were not all of them newbies. Tp seems to cause a short term perceptual disorientation.

MY PERSONAL SITUATION
I am in SL a small business with limited resources, just as in RL. Competition obliges me to stay flexible, rapid and have exit strategies. Appart from he general apealment of the CDS concept, especially CN is for me an ideal sim. The architecture is appealing to rp players, important part of my target group. CN itself is not into rp, a big advantage for the rest of my activities.

I am not based on casual shoppers, my visitors are all more than 100 days old. I have chosen niches for my activities, many of my products are not mainstream. That results that most prospects are mainly attracted by my own communication. In world my classifieds. I do always deliver a modest positive contribution in the traffic of my hosting sim and I hope to do the same on CN.

Two step tp is experienced as a ‘problem’. When the atmosphere at the arrival point is not overwhelming, it also influences the first impressions. I have past experiences and current measurements that support this statement.

MY OBSERVATIONS
1.- I have observed last weekend about 20 visitors arriving at the forum. About 1/2 went away soon after rezzing and turning around a couple of times, without ever leaving the hub. ¼ did wandered around the forum and left soon, always departing in front of an empty shop. The last 1/4 did enter the side roads.
2.- I am gathering information on (tp from my classified / visitors of my plot). Until now they do reveal loss of visitors.

ARGUMENTS
As direct tp has been discussed a lot on the site of CDS, I tried to gather here arguments that I found important.

PRO’s
1.- Enhance freedom of movement will stimulate development
Free tp will allow visitors of events and venues to arrive inside their destination. This will ease the logistics of attracting visitors.

2.- Allow decentralized rural development, compensating the problems of the forum.
Healthy traffic produced outside the center will enhance the forum as well.

3.- Allow easier integration with and use of standard SL communication means, like event and land directories and the internal search system. Respect the value of a simple and free of charge LM. After all, let events breath.

CONTRA’s
1.- Respect investments done around the forum
Answer: Some citizens have taken the risk of investing around the forum, that’s a good argument for keeping the status quo. However the value of these investments is not enhanced by the current situation. In reality the centre of CN will profit much more from improvement of traffic.

2.- Enhance the exploring experience by providing a starting point in a sim.
Allowing flying is a similar argument, I enjoy the CN much more walking inside the great buildings, still we do allow flying. The forum is anyway designed to be the easiest accessible point, all roads lead to it. Exploring visitors cannot avoid visiting the forum, unlike other locations with only one road leading to them.

3.- Privacy of residential areas
The design of residential and commercial areas is good and provides a natural protection. I didn’t meet any residents that feel oppressed by commercial activity yet. Otherwise round I did.

[Arria Perreault]

I have always considered that CN should have direct TP. I have already expressed my opinion on this topic in this forum. I know that there are historical reasons to maintain a unique point for landing in NFS and in CN. I think that we have to evaluate again the situation. The observations of Alexicon are interesting. Only few poeple do long walks in SL. My opinion is also that one of the ways to move in SL is to use keywords in the search engine. It is a totally different philosophy than in-world explorations. I personnaly visit SL with this method. If I need something or if I am looking for a specific topic, I do a search and TP myself directly. It is the same with events. If people are looking for events in the SL agenda, they would like to be directly teleported in the place where the event is held.
As I have already told, I have experienced the problem of Alexicon when I have made my exhibition. The house I have used is not directly in the forum, just down the street. A lot of people told me that they had trouble to find the place. I am sure that with direct TP and good tagged places (it is very important to enter good tags in the land description), we can increase our trafic. Some of these visitors will also explore the sim.
The new sim will have direct TP. Several people from CN have expressed their desire to have direct TP. I don't know for NFS's people. This is a case where we could make a difference between the sims and hear the needs of the residents.
I support Alexicon's proposal to introduce direct tp in CN and ask Chancellor and RA to discuss this point.

[Beathan]

I also support this proposal for CN -- but not for NFS. I would vote for such a proposal in the RA.

[Patroklus Murakami]

ThePrincess has submitted a proposal for this week's RA meeting which would, if I recall correctly, provide for a trial of direct TP in Colonia Nova so we could test how this might work in practice. If I can get this dratted hotel wifi connection to work properly I'll post it here once I've logged into SL.

[Patroklus Murakami]

This is the content of the notecard ThePrincess has handed to me inworld.

Pat
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The Teleportation Improvement Bill

Preamble

1. Direct teleportation and landmarking of specific locations dedicated to business, commerce and entertainment are vital for the success of such enterprises.

2. As more such businesses are being set up in Colonia Nova, and regular entertainment events are being held, the need for such teleportation facilities has become more acute and more citizens are demanding that they be made available.

Provisions

3. During a trial period of three months, from October 15, 2007 to January 15, 2008, the Colonia Nova teleportation system shall be set up as follows:

a. All teleportations resulting from searches on the LL search or map systems shall lead to the CN Forum Central TP point;
b. Individuals visiting CN shall be able to set direct landmarks to any specific location in the sim, and exact landmarks of specific locations shall be allowed to be created and distributed for business, commercial and entertainment purposes.

4. At the end of this trial period, a survey shall be taken of how CN residents accommodated themselves to this change and a decision made whether the trial teleportation system shall be implemented on a permanent basis –and if so, in which CDS sims.

[Dnate Mars]

As I am sure it is too late, I guess what I say will have no effect. I am against this idea. It is easy to point to the direct TP as in issue, but that is very far from the real reasons. Would someone please tell me how having direct TP will magically fill the shops with items that people want to buy?

Also, why is something that really is changing the entire thought process on how sims are designed and thought of posted on a Saturday with the vote the next day? I hope that this can be properly discussed before it get placed into effect.

[Beathan]

Dnate --

Your concerns are noted and are legitimate, but I think that a test of teleportation in one (but not both) of our sims is still a worthwhile project. We do have a chicken-and-egg problem here. If no one is selling anything anyone want to buy, then we will not have commerce even if we have policies that encourage commerce. However, if we have a policy that discourages commerce (as the centralized tp is claimed to be), then we will not have commerce even if we have good shops (in the tp case -- because it is inconvenient for people to get there -- and, in commercial space, location is everything).

For that reason, I support the experiment as an experiment. I think that having a provisional change in tp in CN, but not in NFS, is the way to test this. If it does not improve things, and if it causes problems in our experience of our sims, we can easily change the policy back.

I know that both our sims were planned and built to be more real in look and feel than most of SL. Travel through our sims was intentionally designed and thought-out -- and these plans require that there not be free teleporting. However, even well-made plans can and should be revised, and alternatives should be tried, if there are unforeseen consequences. I think that the general reliance on teleportation among the SL population, causing a general resistance to visiting CDS shops because doing so requires the little extra effort of locating and then walking or flying to them, is just such an unforeseen consequence.

Beathan Vale

[AlexiconKurka]

Would someone please tell me how having direct TP will magically fill the shops with items that people want to buy?

Also, why is something that really is changing the entire thought process on how sims are designed and thought of posted on a Saturday with the vote the next day?

Dear Dnate, direct tp will not help filling the empty shops indeed, nobody has stated that. It will however allow the shops that are well filled and the events that are well organised to recieve more visitors.

As to the late posting, I didn't think that this would be a problem as it is not a new discussion and the issue is well known. I did try to gather all sound arguments from tha past. On the top of that I have been waiting some time for my forum account to be activated. I posted as soon as I was able to.

[Tanoujin Milestone]

Entering Colonia Nova in map search - teleport: takes me to Draxtor's.
Logging in with destination Colonia Nova: the same

Congrats, Drax

TP by doubleclick on Map:
from Marketplatz, NFS to Forum, CN: falling from 200m altitude on my face.
from Inspiration Park, CN to Forum: takes me to cloaca underneath forum.
Trying to escape from there: now I am trapped under the streets.

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Knowledgebase Telehubs and direct TP
There are two basic approaches to controlling where visitors to your Estates appear. They are mutually exclusive. You can choose to use a telehub to force all visitors to appear at a preset location or you can elect to allow them to teleport wherever they wish.
If you choose to use a telehub, you must disable Allow Direct Teleport on the Estate tab of the Region/Estate window, as it will interfere with the telehub. In addition, you should clear any Landing Points that might be set for the parcels on your Estate (the About Land window's Options tab), as they can also cause the telehub to not behave correctly.
Equally if you choose to allow direct teleporting, you should disable or remove any telehub object that you have. You can however use parcel Land Points to give parcel-level control to where on the parcels people appear when they teleport in.

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I have set a Parcel Land Point to the Center of the Forum, this works for my alt, Dnate, Gwyneth, Moon and Sudane will probably keep the privilege to wade through the waste, can't help it. Looks like every parcel inside the walls of CN needs a Parcel Land Point now, I can set some more PLPs for public space later on where this makes sense, but be aware that the Thermae have two entrances and the Main Street cross is one parcel touching all 4 Sim edges! Please go to the Rhenus, try to tp into the walls and provide feedback here, thanks.

[Tanoujin Milestone]

cn_inside walls.jpg (94.19 KiB) Viewed 2463 times

Ok, the red zone is approximate the catacombes,
Forum PTP is set, IMO should avoid to send our visitors to the trap by all means.
we need some more for
NW walls, NE walls, Temple of Diana + adjacent street, MoCa parcel + adjacent street, Thermae.
And we need one for the main street cross - but where?

MoCa, NE Street, Thermae, NW Street, Temple to Diana: set & tested
Main Street: sorry, can not decide that

Notice to Colonia Nova Group.

[Moon Adamant]

Logging in directly at CN also makes me rez inside Draxtor's house...

[Moon Adamant]

Btw Tan, the cloaca runs under the cardo and decumanum, not under the whole area you painted red. What may be happening there is that when we built the inner city, seeing it sits on a slope, we may have terraformed down to have clear ground floors and created terrain gaps. I did that, at least, under some of the plots i built in SE sector.

[Moon Adamant]

I don't know why we fall at Drax's plaxe, seeing it's not the 128,128 point (it's quite near though).

I think you must keep the Direct TP option on the Estate Tools - but also link a telehub on the forum to be used as default by those not attempting a direct TP.

[Sleazy_Writer]

we need some more [parcel land points] for NW walls, NE walls, ...

And we need one for the main street cross - but where?

Tan,

I think the most fair situation for the main streets parcels is:
a Parcel Land Point at the position where the distances to the buildings on that streets (and inside the wall) are as equal as possible.
In choosing that spot, I would include houses that currently have no shops so that you can keep the Point, when
new shops appear. I haven't visited his shop yet, but Alexicon's shop might be just outside the walls.

As for the NW & NE walls, I would just pick a spot with a nice view, I don't think people have outspoken opinions about these parcels.

[Sleazy_Writer]

Hm, I can't get that per-parcel-landingpoint working for my own CN parcel. But if it does work, Draxtor can solve the problem by setting his landing point outside of his front door: that's still Drax's land.