Leela Amura wrote:As a brand new user to Kitely as well as opensim virtual worlds I have a few suggestions you may
strongly consider.
1. You need to advertise
MUCH more! I had searched many websites to find something like Kitely and only after hours of searching did I find Kitely.. It was hard to find it in the search engine, and the name "Kitely" alone isn't enough to tell me that it's a virtual world so there's a chance I may have skipped over it.
2. You need to prominently display on Kitely's homepage that not only are you (
MUCH!) cheaper than the competition but also that
content creators retain ALL of their rights to anything they upload and that all uploads are
FREE!
3. There needs to be a
MUCH better way of finding active sims..I've been to quite a few now and I have not found a single person the entire time I've been in Kitely!(hours)..
Many people that log in will surely notice that there is noone around, leave and never return!
4. There needs to be a more streamlined way of obtaining your password as well as obtaining a viewer and also logging into Kitely. For myself I did not even realize that the in game password was
SEPARATE from the website's password and was wondering why I couldn't log in! I had to do much clicking around the website to find out that I had a separate password.. The initial tutorial box that pops up when you first join the site disappeared on me and I couldn't get it to appear again, and may have explained some of this..but since it disappeared it was of no use. Also, I did not really understand how to enter Kitely's grid URL in the viewer to connect to it.. Fortunately I'm usually very patient, but any potential user's will
surely get impatient with these hassles I've mentioned and just give up. This is why
if you ever notice many people join the website but never log in to Kitely, these may be the main reasons why!
5. Make Kitely attractive to people who play videogames & MMOs. A lot of people
LOVE playing Massively Multiplayer Online Games and "living" and playing in those virtual worlds. They are capable of building huge communities and attracting business. So I ask you, what would make them want to come to Kitely? A virtual world in
itself is not going to entice many to be here. Skills, proper NPCs, proper combat, adventure, these are things most virtual worlds like Kitely & Second Life lack. There's a chance you may be able to change that and if so I know that many more people would try and stay in Kitely. For many people who play videogames, something like Kitely's current form is nothing more than a boring chatroom!.. but once you add mechanics like skills, crafting, combat, etc those users will stick around and have much more fun! You may say that one could simply add those things by creating/scripting them for their own simulation, except that, unfortunately something like that would never be good enough unless it was hard coded into Kitely itself and also could match modern MMOs combat mechanics and such. Even "The Sims" known as one of the most popular virtual world simulations has proper skills, NPCs & adventure. If you add game mechanics to Kitely, it will surely become a competitor to not only virtual worlds/grids but also online games due to it's sandbox nature and the lack of sandbox games in the online gaming sector in general. For those who are not interesting in gaming, it can be ignored entirely seeing as sim owners can choose what they want on their sims and enable or disable functionality of it.
6. You need to display pictures of attractive human beings using Kitely & their avatars on the homepage to show people checking out Kitely that a virtual world isn't only for a "stereotypical group of people." The group you will want to advertise to are people who might have thought of trying a virtual world but thought it's too 'geeky' or such. I'm sure there's
quite a lot of them, and you need to make them feel like it won't effect their image or peace of mind by trying Kitely!
7. Allow people to search for groups, events and places using the in game search! It's very easy and common to use the in game search in Second Life to find things, but it does not work in Kitely! Why? This is a big part of the functionality of a virtual world and it's missing!
8. In terms of the homepage, most people, especially those unfamiliar with virtual worlds don't even know what "prims" are and that they stand for primitive objects, and even then most people won't understand what that means unless you explain it properly. Some people also honestly won't even realize if they see the homepage that Kitely is a virtual world they can explore just like Second Life is! So explaining things more in-depth on the home page will alleviate this potential problem. Hypergrid Business (
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/1 ... confusing/) points this out very well by saying "Even Kitely’s home page looks more like that of a hosting company than a grid. Grid websites typically feature attractive images of people enjoying in-world amenities and announcements for upcoming events, while urging visitors to sign up for a free account and visit the grid. Kitely’s home page calls on visitors to get their “own virtual worlds,” with a choice of pricing options.
If you didn’t know that what Kitely calls “worlds” are actually regions on a grid,
you might, in fact, get the impression that Kitely was a hosting company and a not a grid." I couldn't agree with them more as this is actually what I had thought when I first stumbled onto the website..
9. Mention on the homepage that the people who run Kitely are active in the community and actually respond to users in the forums! That is something that will entice many new users from other competitors seeing as from my research, many other grids have people running them who never communicate with their users.
10. Allow us to upload sounds longer than 10 seconds and preferably up to 5 minutes long! It would be nice not to have to split up songs that we create into small 10 second portions and upload each part of it!
11. The website design and layout while being clean, is certainly not attractive to me and does not look very professional compared to others I have seen. Improving it will become more attractive to new users as well as current end users.
12. Integrate mesh model creation tools into Kitely at some point. This is something I'm sure many people would love to see and even if you honestly tell people that you plan to implement it at some point and are serious, that alone will entice people to join Kitely. Many people won't like having to use third party programs to create mesh models(while surely a nice option to have) to do something which is a staple of creation in these virtual worlds. Having the potential of more attractive content for people to use, buy & sell is never a bad thing!
Final Note:
From my time in Kitely, I have come to this conclusion, Second Life is dying and Kitely is THE new frontier. Virtual worlds in general have yet to take off, and I know they will take off soon because of the virtual reality headsets & technology that is and has been developed and pushed to everyday consumers. When a virtual world like Kitely partners up with these virtual reality developers, content creators will start making more money than ever. It won't happen tomorrow but it WILL happen at some point in the near future.
Thank you for reading this and I wish Kitely success!
Sounds simple enough. 
