On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 12:44:26PM -0600, Carol Townsend wrote: > On 1/26/07, Marc Hartstein <[1]marc.hartstein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > May I ask the reasoning behind needing to use at least one rabbit > point on orders from the Dangling Carrot? I want to make a > comment on the policy, but I'd like to start off from a position > of knowing what the intended consequences of the requirement are. > > The reason we restrict some of our merchandise with the requirement of > "you must have at least one Rabbit Point to purchase this" is as a > reward to our loyal fans who run demos and spread their love of Looney > Labs games. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, Carol. You've sort of answered my question and sort of haven't. I think what I'm looking for is why it's "you must have at least one Rabbit Point" rather than "you must be a registered Rabbit". Is this to encourage Rabbits to go out and do more demos and such? Maybe I should just make my point, and then it will be clear what I'm driving at with my question: I think the current setup has some unintended (and unfortunate) consequences, which turns the whole Rabbit Point thing into a sort of game in its own right, and not a particularly fun one. The issue is that Rabbits have three potentially limited resources: money, Rabbit Points, and time. Rabbit Points and money can be substituted for one another at 1 point:USD 1 with some restrictions. At the time I choose to make a purchase, I need to decide how many of my Rabbit Points I want to allocate to it (with a minimum if I'm ordering from the Dangling Carrot), and how many I want to hold in reserve to be able to make future Dangling Carrot purchases. If both money and Points are in low supply for me, this can be a tricky decision. Here's an example: Say I decide I want to eventually own both a Daddy-O Plush Pyramid (17 points) and a Martian Icehouse Bag (16 points). I currently have 10 points, and can allocate USD 6 out of my budget for this purpose (plus enough money to cover shipping on the bag alone, which I don't want to look up). I expect that in three months, I'll have another USD 17 (plus enough to cover separate shipping on Daddy-O) I won't have an opporunity over those three months to earn any more Rabbit Points than I already have. If I buy the bag, I'll have to spend all my Rabbit Points, and I won't be able to buy Daddy-O next quarter. My other option is to wait. What's frustrating is that I actually have enough total resources to afford to buy the bag now and the Daddy-O later, but the rules of the game mean I can't have Daddy-O unless I wait on the game. It's a contrived example, sure. Of course it is. But I've definitely been confronted with the "I want to buy this item from the Dangling Carrot, and I'd like to pay mostly in points so it doesn't hit the wallet so hard, but how many points do I need to keep aside for future Carrot purchases?" question, and I'm sure other Rabbits here have as well. Points may be easy to get, but it's not always predictable when you'll get another opportunity. I have two suggestions for alternate ways of doing this which I think would preserve your goals, but remove the weird meta-game: 1. Only registered Rabbits may purchase items with prices listed in points. Any portion up to and including the full price may be paid for in cash ($1 = 1 point). This preserves some of the "this stuff is only for people who are dedicated fans" aspect, but loses some of the "you need to keep being dedicated to keep buying the stuff" aspect. It has the advantage of simplicity. 2. To purchase an item with a price in points, your Total Points Earned must be greater than the number of items with a price in points you have ever purchased. You could think of it this way, or as there being two kinds of points (discount points and stuff points), where one kind reduces the cost of items with the carrot symbol, and the other allows you to buy items with a cost listed in points. It's the same thing, really. You spend exactly one "stuff point" on an item with a point cost, and use "discount points" to pay for some or all of the cost. It's also sort of like letting people always spend only one Rabbit point on each item they buy, while letting them pay for as much of the cost in points or dollars as they wish. I'm not sure if I'm communicating this idea clearly, which is a shame, because I think it might be the preferable one. It has the advantage that it preserves the "you have to do stuff to be able to get these really cool things" idea that you have going right now, but it removes the "how many points do I have to keep in the bank to get cool stuff later" "feature". It has the disadvantage that it might be a little harder to explain, and that the ordering system would need to be changed to accomodate it. If there's anybody out there who understands what I'm driving at here and can rephrase it in a more clear manner, I'd welcome that. I'm in brainstorm mode, which probably isn't the one in which I communicate my ideas best to non-engineers. So what I'm looking to find out is what the specific goals are for which the current system has been engineered. Is what I'm perceiving as a flaw actually an intended feature? (It does result in more money, rather than points, being spent on point items.) Is there an intended feature in the current system which one or both of my suggestions would remove? Another question, of course, would be whether there's a better approach to correcting what I see as a flaw in the system as it is. I find that probable. And, yes, to anybody who's read this far and is wondering, this issue *has* resulted in my choosing not to obtain items from the Dangling Carrot which I otherwise might have, choosing to conserve my points for future purchases. (I was in a phase when money was very scarce, but expected to become much less so in the future, so I could have bought something then for points, and another thing later for money, except for the wanting to keep points on hand for later.) Marc
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