Looney Labs Rabbits Mailing list Archive

Re: [Rabbits] Rabbit Only Items in Dangling Carrot (was Re: Gray 'mids?)

  • FromBrian Campbell <lambda@xxxxxxx>
  • DateFri, 26 Jan 2007 15:59:58 -0500
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.

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