On Jan 26, 2007, at 3:09 PM, Carol Townsend wrote:
* Veteran Rabbits - what do you think?
* Newbie Rabbits - what are you looking for?
* Blab Rabbits - how will this affect you?
* Demo Rabbits - what will spur on you to do more demos or find
more venues to teach LL games?
I dunno which kind of rabbit I count as (I have 3 or 4 official demos
under my belt, plus a lot of blabbing to friends, over the span of a
few years), but I think the current system is pretty fair. It used to
be that half the points you spent on a rabbit-exclusive item had to
be rabbit points, and that did have a problem with points being spent
too quickly, but the "requires at least one point per exclusive item"
is just about the least you could ask for. The one time I've been
without points and wanted to buy something was when I was going to do
a "Mini Experiment" and didn't have the points necessary, and when I
asked about it the Looneys lent me the points I needed to buy it.
The problem with the first system Marc recommends (you have to be a
registered rabbit to buy exclusive items) is that it doesn't
encourage Rabbits to keep on promoting; they just sign up once and
can get whatever they want. I do have to admit, though that the only
rabbit points I've ever gotten simply for the sake of buying
something was my first 10 for my pic & bio, which I spent on the
beautiful cyan stash. Since then, the demos I've done and made points
on have been because I love playing Looney Labs games and teaching
more people to play means that I'll have more potential opponents in
the future.
The second system, about your total points earned must be greater
than the number of exclusive items bought, is a bit complicated and
also has the problem of encouraging people to just do one or two
demos and then stop. If you earn 5-10 points at each demo, and do
just a couple demos, you could have 20 points, which would be far
more than you'd ever need (I don't think there are more than 3 or 4
exclusive items at any time, and I've certainly only bought a few).
I think the current system works reasonably well. It does mean that
you have to plan a bit and always leave a couple of points in your
account, if you want to be able to buy exclusive items in the future,
but I don't think that's too much of a burden. Yes, I've been a
college student and used up my Rabbit points to buy stuff that I
couldn't have afforded with cash, and then I was out of points later
when I needed them. If I'd been thinking, though, I could have paid
$1 more and left a point in my account, and then I wouldn't have been
in that boat.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really see much of a need to
change the system, and that it might provide less of an incentive to
keep doing demos if you made it easier to get the exclusive items.