12 Suggestions From A New User To Kitely & OpenSim Worlds

[Leela Amura]

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!

[Dundridge Dreadlow]

Where are the active worlds - I'm working on it !! Coming very soon In the mean time, the most popular worlds show at the top of the public worlds page. This does not show worlds that are popular, and private. It seems most people are on private worlds.

Proper NPC and adventure - have a go a the murder mystery. (If you need a hint to start, read the newspaper) We have a lot of talented creators in Kitely, they just need proper motivation to make more things that make others happy (that, and more time ) Scripted add ons for players is something SL can handle well if done right, but is likely to always be an add on (sorry). It is possible to do things HUD-free and attachment free though.. Just easier with.

Add on event system - Coming soon.

Logins - Kitely used to have an easier way to log on to the world, but unfortunately the browser manufacturers (Google Chrome, Firefox..) blocked all plugins of the type that made it easy, no doubt Ilan will comment below further.

Kitely is currently working on a website upgrade, so hopefully this will make you happier


Most importantly - Welcome to Kitely

[Keith Selmes]

Welcome to Kitely Leela.

Thank you for your suggestions. Some of the points you've raised are actively discussed in the forums and the weekly Kitely Community meetings (that are help every Wednesday at 1pm PST at the Kitely Welcome Center.

We've recently started a website redesign project. First, we'll be updating our logo with something more professional. You can read more about our logo design contest here: http://www.kitely.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1257.

We're planning an advertising push after we've finished rolling our Hypergrid access in Kitely and updated our website.

We're constantly adding more features to Kitely, we'll look into adding better search support after we've finished working on the high priority projects we're working on now (you can read more about them in our forums).

As Dundridge correctly stated, we used to have a browser plugin that made it much easier to login into our grid from the website. One of the problems we're encountering is that people who come from SL automatically start their viewers and try to login instead of following the instructions in our welcome dialog which direct them to press the big Enter World button in our Kitely Welcome Center web page. That's understandable but it also causes people to miss the information that will help them get inworld. Whenever people press the Enter World button they are given all the information they need in order to successfully login via the viewer. We're investigating what can be done to improve the login experience.

Thank you again for your feedback. Please join us in the weekly community meetings to meet some of the other people who are actively involved in making Kitely special.

[Constance Peregrine]

Welcome Leela-))

I typed "Kitely Grid" in my chrome omnibox search and got:

https://www.google.com/search?q=kitely+ ... 3&ie=UTF-8

Which probably does not answer your pure statement, I guess...lol

[Keith Selmes]

12 good points.

In particular

1) advertising - I think Kitely have (as usual) got it right - too much advertising too soon would be a damp squib and possibly even bad publicity. Now, with the new pricing plan and market ready for hypergrid, content and events building up and the welcome centre looking nice, this is a good time.

3) The Kitely index pages are for me the best example I've seen of how to do find active and interesting worlds.
I can give complete newbies a web link and they can browse the pictures and descriptions. If you have a viewer installed, it's then easy to access the worlds you choose.
The most active worlds with the best pictures and descriptions are somehow auto selected to be on the first page. The real problem with finding activity is probably that there isn't much. (see para 5)

4) "a more streamlined way"
if only!!! I think there's a limit to what Kitely can do with this. When I first tried using Kitely, I hit some minor problems, but found they were covered by FAQ. This was OK for a fairly techie or persistent person, but it still is difficult for complete newcomers.
An old friend, having seen my Flickr pictures, and seen the Kitely public pages, started an account. Easy. But the viewer installation failed and as yet we don't know why. Talking through this on the phone with someone who has an arts background and not much computer knowledge is frustrating at both ends. Unfortunately, viewer installation is not something Kitely can control.
I've yet to see how we cope with a non computing new person logging in to the right grid with their avatar name and password. But yes, it is a barrier.

5) Good point. I've found that people with no VW experience, and no practical reason for using them, tend to view it as a game. They are most interested if there's something interactive to do and especially if there are rules or objectives, scoring etc.

But, I see Kitely as a service provider, not a gaming company. I expect games will come from their customers (that's us folks). We have made some small progress in the past few months.
I did some work on aircraft scripting last October/November, and hosted a flying day in December.
Kayaker has sailing lessons ongoing, there is a hunt in planning, and some role play worlds are in progress. There's a brand new event calendar . And I'm sure there have been/will be other events.

6) "thought of trying a virtual world but thought it's too 'geeky' or such. I'm sure there's quite a lot of them "
very true

Anyway, back to what I was doing, one or two details to tidy up on this http://www.flickr.com/photos/81395094@N ... 1267775834

[Serenity Sinclaire]

Agreed!

If I can help, let me know.

And for the love of god will somebody puhleeeze make some combat zombies and killer sharks already?

Do I need to just do a strip tease or something? Seriously. Combat zombies.

Thanks!

Over to you, Oren!

[Deuce Halsey]

I'm going to address Suggestion #5 in particular since in addition to being involved with virtual worlds since late 2008, I've also been involved with MMORPGs since early 2007.

I've been playing an MMORPG called RuneScape since January 2007. I'm actually in a clan in that game, although we refer to ourselves as an online family. The group is called the Association of Essentially Sane Older Players (AESOP), which should give you an idea that not only kids play these games. I am not the only retired member of AESOP.

Yes, MMORPGs provide NPCs, scoring (usually in the form of experience points and levels) and story lines to explain the background of the game's milieu. But not all of us in RuneScape are only in it for the dragonslaying, the quests, tasks and so forth. In fact the only reason I'm still playing RuneScape after seven years is all the friends I've made in AESOP over the past five years. So in my case it's the social aspect of the game that attracts me more than the game mechanics. The games themselves tend to be repetitive, with a lot of grinding required to obtain higher levels. But you never know for sure what your clanmates will say or do, which makes it fun.

In my opinion the strength of virtual worlds like SL, Kitely and other OpenSim grids is their completely open nature. As large as MMORPGs like RuneScape and WoW are, they do tend to be limited. Once you explore a certain area of an MMORPG world it probably won't change much, if at all. Any such changes would probably only be part of a major redesign effort. With OpenSim virtual worlds, you never know what you are going to run into.

Even once you've been in a particular Kitely world, you can never be certain it will be the same the next time you go back to visit. World owners can make changes at will as their time and talents allow... they don't have to run everything through a design committee like the folks who develop MMORPG worlds. For some of us this is a big advantage, and offsets the fact that there will never been the same kind of active player populations in OpenSim virtual worlds that you find in major MMORPGs.

There is room in this life for both OpenSim Virtual Worlds and for MMORPGs. But comparing them to each other is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. They serve different purposes, although there could be some overlap, to the extent that virtual world designers add RPGs to their worlds.

[Sarge Misfit]

Regarding #5, the gaming MMO stuff.

I'm working on it, I'm working on it!

Sort of. The Myriad RP System is here in Kitely and it has all the components needed for anyone to create pretty much any theme of RP they want. Its free, dual licensed under CC and BSD and its open source.

I simply have too many projects on the go that I am trying to finish up to have time to devote to making combat gear lately.

[Ghaelen DLareh]

I opened a new account for an alt avie, and I didn't see much of anything advertised about upgrading to a premium account. If the goal is to increase revenue (which would be great for everyone) then I would expect to see something right away explaining to me why a premium account is THE THING I WANT.

At one point during the sign-up process a largish window came up and I did see a brief line showing me where to get credits. But again, it didn't explain to me why I might want to go ahead and get them NOW (buy stuff! see hidden worlds!). I didn't see an advertisement suggesting I upgrade to a Premium account and why I would want to do that right away - not that I remember anyway. I think there are a couple opportunities lost there.

Because I've been in Kitely, I know that the emphasis is now on the sim owners to pay for users time in-worlds and an assumption that all sim owners/builders want lots of people in them and so will pay for users' time. Couple this with a certain fear that users will leave if they are asked to spend money, and we leave out all those folks who WILL spend a few bucks here and there. I've played my share of freebie games, and there are always things the player is told they should want that require spending money in-game. It is unmistakable, and although in the way at times it doesn't stop me from playing the game if I like it. If I want to GET that REALLY COOL THING or go to that REALLY COOL PLACE I'm asked to spend 99c.

Kitely is a whole lot less expensive, and given the great builds I've seen, I am positive there are plenty of visitors who will upgrade to premium or spend a few bucks on credits if only to check out that really great build. So I would suggest advertising the purchase of credits and a premium account right away (and often) during the sign-up process.

[Ozwell Wayfarer]

I heard there was stripping and combat zombies on this thread, but sadly things failed to live up to my expectations lol

There are a lot of good suggestions here. As others have pointed out, much of this is being worked on already and though its frustratingly slow sometimes, I know the guys running Kitely take their time to get it right.

I would like to see longer sound uploads, but 5 mins seems a bit excessive and might end up costing a lot of storage space if people went nuts with that feature. I think 30 seconds would be ample for most things.

You can find people via the search I do it to get in touch with customers sometimes. It could use expanding though, but for finding worlds the website is good enough for now I think.

As for a mesh editor, I would love to see Kitely beat SL to the punch on that one. On a very basic level I am sure that it would not be hard *for someone who knows what they are doing, that is * to build in a function where people build using system prims but then have a sort of "bake" button where the redundant geometry is removed (thats the tough part) and a UV map is baked. You can sort of do that with the latest OS Firestorm viewer. if anyone would like to see a thread on that in more detail I would happily oblige.

EDIT - As to the MMO stuff, I think may of us are in the same boat right now, that is, getting our regions looking nice and ready for visitors. I think I have mentioned in other places that Kitely as a grid is still very much in the building phase. I am hoping to have a medieval region ready on the architectural level by the end of this month. Once the main chunk of the building is done, I plan to look at making some mini games, such as hunting bugs and creatures in the caves. Any work I manage to get done there I will contribute to anyone wanting to make a similar game with zombies or whatever. But giving the difficulty I am having making just a simple booby-trapped box, this may take me some time