Snowlord Resident Ticketing enables the Lindens to review the demand on these scarce stores and stem the tide of multiple alts taking stores. It's not possible to put a different RL name and different form of RL payment on every alt, and so the Lindens could simply have a policy to limit requests to one RL person/one form of RL payment. Often a suggestion like this is only edgecased to death as if you focus on how it could be overcome (people have multiple credit/debit cards where there name may even be slightly different) instead of focusing on the fact that filing a ticket is a kind of friction that does open the request up to scrutiny, formal and informal, and of course will lesson the likelihood of taking multiple shops.

There isn't that work here involved. Some 1365 stores have been taken to date -- you can see the figures on the Bellisseria Online page. https://feedback.secondlife.com/ldpw/p/enable-requests-for-bellisseria-commercial-stores-by-ticket-only

It's not tens of thousands; it's 1365. So until a whole new drop of dozens of stores on mulitiple sims is made, there might be a few hundred people at most -- and not even -- trying to get stores. How do I know? I am in two Bellisseria groups, Bellisseria Merchants and Bellisseria Citizens where people discuss store availability and also those wishing to abandon a store put a notice in for others to try to get it. I also fly around the area and see who is actually there hoping to find a store -- tiny handfuls of people. A few have posted they were looking on the forums -- and got one. The time consumption here is on the part of desperate store-seekers trying to keep up with groups, in-person visits, forums, etc. - and will drop their $15.99 Premium Plus account. It is not on the part of Lindens who receive way more requests for abandoned land per day than they would stores. It's eminently doable and doesn't require even the same work of abandoned land, which they often have to move to auction or sell directly after clearing -- the store turnover is an easier job.

The kiosks do not take a location SLURL the AVAILABLE sign goes up. But often there are people already camping abandoned land because they've been tipped off by friends or one of the Belli groups. I frankly don't understand what you "don't like" in the fact that people are coming to the regions to click on the kiosks as the only way to get a store instead of...what...? shopping at my store or you store? But why can't they do that?! Or do you mean they go to some other location to get the news of availability. But again, why can't they do that? If anything, the ticket system is more fair, less random, less frustrating and the Linden time is minimal to ensure that they retain a Premium Plus customer. Premium Plus the feature of being able to request an exact you want and skipping the random queue. All my proposal does is rationally extend this same feature to the stores provided in principle in the account so that people can really get them.

Prokofy Neva I stand by comment, and your link to the online page is the link for this feedback (which is fine as I'm familiar with the sites and not interested in them anyway) a small part of the issue is from those who post when a store does become available; while the gesture is thoughful it just stacks avatars up at the shops door competing for the chance to obtain it vs letting the process happen with users actively searching in person/at the kiosks. As it stands we all know the demand is super high without changing to a ticket system. Really the number of stores all together vs premium plus account holders who want one is the main issue.

Snowlord Resident You don't seem to grasp the essence of my proposal which is precisely because of this bedlam whereby people have to camp out by a store and wait it to drop and struggle with others also t

Instead, I am saying cease that system, cease having people camp for 1.5+ hours, cease having people put notifications of abandonments in groups that not everyone will have heard by word of mouth that they must join (there is no other way to hear), and ceases scrambling like rats when the Lindens drop a whole bunch of stores, waiting by the sim edge all day for them to drop it. I'm saying END that system, which is crazy and unfair.

And I'm saying INSTEAD, have a ticketing system that works like the existing ticketing system when you request a specific by location, submitting a SLURL. If there is such a thing as an abandoned store you spot, you request it by name. But more often, what you would be doing is submitting a request to get ANY STORE AT RANDOM. So the Lindens look at their dashboard because they run the kiosk system and instantly know the list of available stores as a whole. One at a time, first come/first served, they go through their tickets by date and give each one a store that they have 48 hours to pick up (let's say). I think the 7 days given to pick up abandoned land parcels is too long for stores. So make it 48 hours. If they miss the notice, too bad, they get in the queue again.

This is eminently more fair; more speedy; less frustrating; and its "randomness" is no different than the existing "randomness". That is, when there are a lot of stores available, people burn through 6 different options looking for what seems "better" but with the stores, waterfront or parks or corner or whatever don't matter. All that matters is being next to an actually existing popular store so that your offerings might also get a gander while people are going to the cool kids' stores -- which are sometimes clustered together (like many of the Fantasy Faire core merchants are on Cloverleaf and the next sim over as they must have heard of the big drop in their builders' group and came over en masse).

Someone who has been waiting for a store and now has one is not going to immediately dump it. That is, ideally, in a Better World, you would have stores in a random pick of 5 per days just like the houses on the web. But there aren't enough of them. So a ticketed system makes sense. The only wild card is the Lindens' time and trouble processing them. But I'm not seeing this as the outlay and logjam some are imagining. They are very speedy on turning over requests and switches within minutes of their filing or the same day often. So they will do the same with the half dozen stores they might turn over in a day.

Prokofy Neva I'll try to clear it up... I like the way it is currently. With the scarcity of shops, changing the method to obtain one isn't going to help imo. people sharing a location that is becoming or is available is the key thing that stacks avatars wanting a shop. As I mentioned too if someone is planning an abandon, they could easily tell several people (friends/alts) under the radar who then all ready tickets to obtain that location and submit it right after the location is let go thus decreaseing further the chance for others looking for a shop manually by physically going around/using the kiosks. The real answer is having more shops or too perhaps doing something to let new shop owners/creators have first dibs. i.e. do larger shops that have full region stores really need a satellite store?, isn't the whole idea to have an easy in for new store owners/creators? [shrugs]

Snowlord Resident I get it that you prefer a closeknit society of people who know each other and are already cleared -- and not banned -- from Bellisseria groups to control this social good -- and that works for you. But it doesn't work for lots of other people who don't know of the groups' existence, don't want to have to join and scour the messages of yet another group, and want a more orderly system that works like the Bellisseria homes do -- which currently is by direct request and random options from the web site or by direct ticket for Premium Plus members. This idea of "telling others easily" is where it all falls apart because not everyone is in your closeknit circles around Bellisseria and its events. Most of the world isn't tuned in and all and doesn't want to be; they just want the advantages of the Premium Account and they want a store that may have some slight chance of having shoppers going to other stores and who might then see their wares. I don't see how the Lindens can keep putting out entire sims of shops. They will eventually run into the problem of Bellisseria in general -- each new drop leads to a mad rush of churn, and then half-empty sims. It's hard to believe now, but I think the Lindens, if they put out dozens of more sims -- especialy in different styles than the Brutalist boxes -- they will see churn and half empty sims eventually. That's why they are maintaining this artificial scarcity.

Each full sim the Lindens put out costs them resources in Mole labour, maintenance, management and server expenses. I don't see that they will do this currently when likely as not they are waiting to see how sales develop through September and October, as Halloween is the largest sale day in SL IIRC, more than Christmas because of all the costuming and gifting that goes with it that is more secularized than Christmas let alone Easter. Lots of people play trick or treat in Bellisseria, and likely the Lindens will allow the pumpkins to be put on Bellisseria Commercial stores which will give them a new pump-up and possible more visitors/sales/conversions.

remi EnerslyI get visitors to my store and even purchases and click throughs to conversions on rentals. It's only a trickle every week but it's worth it. It's been better than my random roadside store I had inworld. I and others can put the Bellisseria store as the location inworld where someone can come from my Marketplace to see the offerings in world. What's not to like? That's the best use case of it, in fact. Right now, one resident group has gotten the windfall of all the registrations coming to them automatically registered, and they haven't done much with this except to allow people to put up promotions now and then. But other groups will come along and do more with their own and friends' stores and it will move more eventually.

A simple thing many don't realize to do is to put the parcel in search -- which you can do in Commercial Bellisseria unlike the residential area where this function is disabled deliberately precisely to prevent commerce. So work on key words, put the land in search/places and get more attention.

Prokofy Neva You misunderstand. I don't have a store, bar or anything else. Just a Linden home and a mainland parcel. And a frustration over the small number of available stores, 0.

remi EnerslyNo, I understood perfectly. You didn't get a store. And you resent the fact that you walk around and see all these empty stores -- no shoppers. So it feels like hoarding to you. So I am proposing a way to make store distribution more fair by enabling you to go and ticket it instead of wandering around hoping to find one -- all along resenting other people for hogging stores that you feel aren't getting the shoppers that "somebody" should require -- or be shut down. But if you had a store you would hang on to it even if you had no shoppers, too.

Prokofy Neva No. You are mistaken. You don't know me at all and you insuinate falsily. I have given up same as Dana. Stop putting your judgement on me.

remi Enersly I don't need to know about you and your wishes or motives to make a judgement here: you didn't get a store, you are mad at the way the system works, and you are also mad at anyone trying to suggest a remedy -- if for no other reason that they have a store and you don't. So be as mad as you like, it's all good, but somehow the problem needs to be solve. So if you are no longer waiting for a store, then I hope you find one elsewhere in SL that will suit your needs. Meanwhile, I care about more than just myself; I would like more people to have a chance to get a store without this crazy frustration and waiting and without having to join the various Matriarchs' groups and remain faithful to them to succeed in their quest.

Garnet PsalteryWell, "at random" a fair queue, by which I mean "use the same system you already have in place for allocating Linden homes which is 5 tries per day, at random" -- which would be more orderly than the randomness of forcing people to wait around for hours or even days for the kiosk to get a notice of abandoned land and then serve it out when clicked.

The Lindens have proven incredibly resistant to changing their alleged "at random" allocation system (which is the same sort of flawed system they used to have for delivering the newbie stream to various welcome area resident-run sites). "Random" when you have such a finite set of items as in SL means that you can repeat a single choice several times and even in theory five times in a row -- and that should be eliminated and likely there is a Canny on THAT problem. That is already a very frustrating bug-not-feature of the existing Linden home distribution system.

A truly fair system in fact would involve a serial processing of each available home or in this case stores as they came up -- the "random" idea only leads to repeats and ultimately failure. The same system tht generates the list for the kiosks can be taken over by the ticketing system, since 90% of the time when the stores are NOT dropped in huge batches, waiting for the kiosk proves to be a fruitless and frustrating system. As I know myself, only by persistently hanging around for entire days at a time could anyone ever catch an abandoned store accidentally. The other way is also accidental -- to be online, and in the "right" Bellisseria group, to see the chat about somebody dropping their store.

Yes, people claim more than one store on alts, and enterprising owners or brand managers simply line up a whole bunch of alts and/or actual real-people friends and they wrangle the stores. I see some people then doling them out to friends after they've wrangled bunches in a big drop. This follows the "Game of Homes" pattern where at peak times you will find people even with 100 houses, or all the houses on several sims.

Prokofy Neva In my experience most of the avatars visiting the commercial regions are the ones hoping for a store.

remi EnerslyThat's fine. Let them. No matter where your store is -- on the back of the moon or the Mainland on an obscure sim, or a booth at some high-traffic event, you yourself have to promote it in your group, on your profile, in search, etc. The Lindens can't hold your hand through that.

Prokofy Neva No need to be snarky

remi Enersly The brutal truths of merchandising and sales in SL where too many goods chase too few buyers can engender hatred and blame and vitriol when people like me articulate them. But they don't stop being truths for all that. Not everything sells; but most things sell if you put them to sale and the price is low enough and enough people can see it through your efforts at putting in ads, search, Picks, groups, etc. etc. Good luck.

Dana Enyo Well, that shouldn't happen! And you shouldn't have to keep roaming around and checking daily. With a ticketing system you file the request and you may have to wait awhile, but you don't have to stress manually checking and manually camping by the store to get it.

Prokofy Neva I totally support your suggestions and hope something happens.

But in the meantime, being buried among 1,536 stores doesn’t sound so great anyway.

I have 19 shops around the grid. I got them by talking to sim owners and arranging to pay for them on commission (instead of fixed rent).

I mention it because there are a lot of vacant storefronts in malls and urban sims around the grid, and some of them could be filled up by avs just talking to each other. Full shops look a lot better than empty ones; that brings more avs to come and visit, and everyone wins.

Remi is correct, too--"If you build it, they will come" certainly doesn't apply to SL shops; it takes work (and a lot of experimentation) to bring avs in the door. That's certainly easier when the shop is jn a community where avs come for other things--music, art, RP, etc. Becoming part of that community helps your business, and makes having it a lot more fun.

Dana Enyo Whether your store is on the Marketplace only, whether it is inworld on some little backward Mainland sim in the boondocks, whether it is on a high-trafficked mall on an island or a huge event, YOU YOURSELF still have to promote your store all the usual ways -- through groups, ads, picks, etc. etc. I personally wouldn't want 19 stores because it's too much work keeping them tended to and stocked. There are vacant stores because the owner of the mall doesn't promote their mall. I know because I have full malls that I bother with and put ads in and mention in newsletters and plug on social media -- and other malls that I don't bother with and don't have time to finish and they languish. Just because some mall owner has vacancies because he hasn't assessed the market or doesn't have the skills to fill his mall or isn't attractive as to his location -- and I myself can be guilty of all these things -- doesn't mean that therefore the Lindens shouldn't make Commercial Bellisseria. Of course they should. it's good they got over their allergy to commerce -- and they need to get over it MORE in fact and allow networked advertising that they themselves could even control.

Of course they should have rolled out it out differently, not in all one ghastly Brutalist style; not in these giant stores of one size even if you can change the style; not with all these strange empty parking lot and park spaces which I guess have to exist to give the double prims. They could have integrated them more with the residences and most importantly, mixed up the style so you'd have log cabin stores, Mediterranean stores, even trailer stores. Why not? Each could have a style of store that fits in, General Store, fashion boutique, tail-gate gatcha resales. But that would be work that the Lindens didn't have time for.

The main purpose for the Lindens was to sell more Premium Plus accounts. They may or may not add to these 1350+ stores -- my prediction is they will see a lot of them dumped next month when people return from vacation, have to do back to school or back to work or whatever, and face RL expenses. Then they will be easier to find. But a lot of people will keep them as they are "good enough". A real problem is that all registrations were funneled deliberately and automatically to one resident group -- instead of to Lindens -- to manage. And like every other resident "helper" group, that will -- and already does -- collapse in on itself, favour some and not others, and most will never even hear of it. The existence of this store opportunity doesn't harm other opportunities within communities as you imagine. I personally find that sometimes work and somestimes doesn't because not everyone wants their residential home next to a gift shop that has people streaming to it constantly and then wandering into their yards.