Points Giveaway

[Sethera]

Title is probably clickbait but not sure how else to word it without it getting really long.

 

Basically I've noticed that there seems to be some sort of trend going on with people giving away points, starting from moderators or former moderators. Normally I'm not one to mention when something bothers me on this site, because it's a forum for card games and stuff, but in this case I figured I'd speak up because it's like a sucker punch to the gut.

 

As someone who's your average member--mainly frequenting RP sure, but I do dip my toe in other places--I have worked hard by posting to get my points, because for the longest time, my goal here was to buy a permanent member group. The only exception was when I received a Christmas gift of 300 points and another time when I went above and beyond to help organize someone else's RP and got a lot of points in one go as a thank you. But I'd say most of my points were just spent posting. I was also very conservative, never buying anything from the shop unless it was free, not even spending points for a name change, which I've wanted to do frequently during times such as Halloween and Christmas. Instead I waited it out till I was able to change it for free, and by then the events were usually over.

 

It might sound like I'm whining, but the point is, I really worked for those points. And now all of what I did, all of that, is cheapened to nothing, because apparently you can just go up to any moderator or former moderator and ask for points. Which I remember hearing when I first arrived at this site was not really the done thing, because people were trying to make points meaningful.

 

Long story short, I feel like I worked really hard trying to be an active posting member of this site for nothing. I mean, obviously I posted here because I enjoyed this forum, but there was also that thought in the back of my head of achieving permanent member group status. I guess it's the same feeling you get after running a race and finding out somebody else drove a car to get to the finish line at the same time you did, but it doesn't matter because you both are getting the same trophy.

 

I labeled this under "Comment" because I'm not really sure what to suggest since what's done is done. But I figured I'd get my thoughts out there, anyway.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

I have to agree. Honestly I've felt a bit annoyed by this but didn't want to comment anything because I am tired of pointing (I can pun too sethera) out these kinds of things. It's tiring. But it does kinda bother me because points already have very few uses so the more this kind of thing happens the less they mean. I know a lot of people see it as something unimportant. But to those that find it important this sucks and to those that don't not allowing this sort of thing doesn't really change anything.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

(That would likely be Enguin at the moment.)

 

Back in the old days (MyBB), you really had to work for points; either post like crazy or during the old days, either participate in card contests or do GFX orders / get paid for that.  A reminder that the old system was 2 points for threads, 1 for replies and I think 2 for making a poll.

 

So, a more comprehensive list of what you could do with points / how to obtain them outside posting.

 

TO DO

• Use it to pay entry fees / prizes for contests in CC [nowadays, it's free for the most part]
• Purchase GFX templates from the old vets who are no longer here (usually ranged around 2000-10000 points in old style)
  • Also Yin's render gallery which was 20,000 iirc.
• Shop prices for GFX [generally depends]
• Buy name changes [1200 points; PM a mod to do it.]

OBTAINING

• Posting (obviously)
• Contest prizes
• Shop fees

(To be fair, I had around 15,000 points at the time we switched to MyBB, and mind you, that was under the old system [well, also heavier activity helped out and some minor shop stuff]. Right now, that would probably equate to about 375-400K in current values. FYI, they didn't carry over and had to be manually added later.)

 

====

It technically is your points and it's your decision on what you choose to do with them; we can't tell you what you can/cannot do with them, though not a fan of it either. Perhaps finding more outlets for you guys to invest them in [either adjust the price tags in the shop to match inflation or get newer stuff that you can do with them]. Obviously, anything pertaining to the shop needs to go through evilfusion/Flame as I cannot adjust shop stuff (and iirc the thing is still broken). 

 

Then again, I should talk being the guy having over 1.4 billion points obtained from posting and/or doing member requests. I do give out a heavy amount of points for prizes (meaning you gotta earn them), but even then, it's still pocket change compared to the points I already got. I don't give out free points [even though I did have a service in contests that you could ask for help with fueling prize pots; that's it, and I only did it once by request].

 

=======

Most that can be done is just prohibit those types of threads; we cannot bar you from giving points to other users for miscellaneous reasons without infringing on your rights here.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Mods shouldn't have billions of points. They can create points through ACP if needed for events, and then when they are no longer on the team they can just give away points however they like.

 

Honestly I'd change the mod forum point values to 0 and set everyone with "mod points" to 200,000 but I doubt that's gonna happen.

[Enguin Enguin Enguin Enguin]

I think it's quite funny, bordering on hilarious now I reread it, how much of this post you dedicate to lamenting how your hustle for a custom group has been devalued by people being rewarded for nothing while you're in the member group Giga set up because he had excess points and all you had to do to get into it was ask him to pay your way in.

That aside, I'd argue that there's no meaningful inflation. The global economy is at around 6 billion points, but 5.3 of that is held by the top 10 members. I'm 25th, Dae's 26th on just over a million, 27th and 28th I don't know and have 1.3 million between them, then 29th is Striker on 444k followed by Fusion at 257k. Of the members over a million, only Dova, Dae, and me were never mods, and we have the fewest of that group. For 99.99% of the userbase, nothing has changed. I have no need for 2.5 million, nobody does. Beyond the point where you've got your colouredy name, there's nothing left to do. It's digital Monopoly money.

100k is still a huge number. My highest legitimate point total was around 35k. I have had the fortune of being subject to two seperate instances of moderatory memery, where first evilfusion gave me 5 million (later stolen by CUCK MOD Aix after an anonymous CowCow complained) just because I asked, and then many months later Dad offered 3 million to change my name and went through with it.

I set up my thread because I know how annoying it is to be a poverty fraud and I want to offer an escape, in exchange for mediocre to excellent entertainment and with rewards scaled to said performance level. I still don't know the specifics of Dova's backroom dealings with Sakura that landed him over 3 million, but that was the point where I realised that this is an utterly stupid mode of currency. There's also the :thinking: worthy implication of the value of posts - if a regular member gets one per post and a mod gets a million, does that mean to suggest the mod has achieved a million times what the peasant has? Or the mod's input is a million times as valuable? I haven't phrased it well, but you get the idea.

In conclusion, this has been Engy-chan coming at you live from a toilet stall wiling away half an hour of waiting for a lecture attempting to discuss the economic climate of a children's card game forum. Give that like button a tittyslap and be sure to subscribe to one of my myriad of channels.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

 

Honestly none of this made much sense. It seems to amount to "Points don't matter and it's not like most people have that many points." Which is an easy position to be in when you're the one with more points than would ever be needed by the average member.

 

Plus parenthesis's member group thing is sort of a moot point because someone could still want one of their own (the point of the "custom" part) and because parenthesis got the points for it by participating in events. That part of your post is legit a poor argument.

 

The idea behind the thread is in part, as you yourself said, mods having that many points just by posting once or twice in the mod forum is silly. But them giving those points that shouldn't exist already to others basically just makes points mean even less.

It's not about inflation, there's no real "economy" here to inflate. It's about that there are those who care about points at least in some manner and it's off-putting to realize that someone could possibly just "Hey gimme points" and get it.

 

People can say that points didn't matter before but there are plenty of people who have proven that they care to some extent about getting points. Even if just, for me, something to look at for fun. Clearly if there's people who have issues with "point abuse" as it were then that means points have some importance.

For people who don't care about points neither way really matters. But for people who do care this sort of thing being allowed is just frustrating.

[Sethera]

Definitely sounds like the points rewards are greater now than before. And yeah not really sure what can be done. There's some potential to the idea of limiting the point reward for mod thread posting, or at least just asking mods not to randomly give points away, but that's something for them to discuss amongst themselves.

 

Also I'd like to clarify that before getting invited to join the Dollars I was going to make my own permanent membergroup.

 

Basically as Cow said, I care about points, other people do too, and what's happened recently made me feel like all of what I did was...pointless.

[Eshai]

I also find it funny that card reviewing gives you a lot more points than ACTUALLY MAKING CARDS. Feels weird and a bit unrewarding outside of getting some feedback, which is nice but I'd like to at least get some more points from posting cards. 

 

I think if this were to actually happen, I think the reviewer should post a link along with a sort of score out of 10 that defines how many points the creator makes, so only your reviewed and graded content will be given points. Probably some modifiers based on how many cards you made and if it was in Casual or Advanced Card Design.

[Ire]

End the points system, make everything become free (I guess with that platform I'm the next president). Then, there will be no more points problem, and we will live in peace and harmony.