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I don't feel inclined to provide an item for those who offer less than 500 points. I usually (but not always) post to the blog within a couple of weeks, so the low-ball offerors will still get it eventually (usually). Also, I'm thinking of extending the time I post to the blog to a month. In that month, if someone wants the requested item, I'd still give it to them for 500 points. It's not the points I care about, it's to encourage higher bids and to keep stuff off 3dload/renderstate/etc for a little longer just to screw them over a bit. Thoughts?
It could depend on what the file is, and how much it cost. I personally don't care too much about points, so long as they pay what they said they would.
I also don't really care if the stuff I buy ends up on 3Dload, renderstate, etc. I posted some stuff to the blog just the other day, and and a little later it was available on one of those sites, that didn't stop people here from getting the asset off the blog.
I giggle like a school girl at the thought of screwing around with the sleazsites and making them wait. I know that when items have been available here for a time, the trashsites lose members. I was a (non-paying) member at one of Phfuondgzu's sites when TZ (The Zone) was becoming popular and it was hilarious to see the shit she wrote on her site trying to dissuade people from coming here.
@ethiopia I don't lump 3dload and renderstate into the same bucket as Phong's crappy sites. And I know that as soon as I post stuff to the blog, it's going into the wild within an hour. I've filled a couple of requests here that I never posted to the blog, and, afaik, they've never made it into the wild.
My memory could be a bit fuzz so correct me if I'm wrong but didn't people regularly use to drop 1-5K offers on bounties? Some people have over 2 million points and still offer 500 for items. Id encourage asking less points. Even more a reason for people not to go other places for content.
Id wager that if you asked for 10K points for a bundle it would still be uploaded within a minute to at least one site.Id encourage asking less points. Even more a reason for people not to go other places for content.
Id wager that if you asked for 10K points for a bundle it would still be uploaded within a minute to at least one site.So you're suggesting that the "cost" of downloading from the blog should be less than 50 points?
Yes, I remember when bounties were often in the 10's of thousands for a $15 item and 500 points was considered low. That got frowned upon a couple of years ago iirc, with some of the newer mods calling this out. Whatever, I just started offering 500 for run-of-the-mill items, like everyone else. Baaaaa, I'm just a sheep following the crowd 😉 And the only real value of points here is to be able to encourage folks to share items by offering lots of points, so those who share can, in turn download lots of stuff and/or offer lots of points for even more sharing (like a giant circle of points and sharing).
I still don't know where the 25 points goes for downloads. The poster gets 25 and the downloader pays 50. Since points have zero monetary value, where does the other 25 points go? It's not like those points can be used to pay for system upkeep and, if hunter wants points, I would suspect he can just give himself some. I know this has come up before, but either I forgot the explanation that made sense or I missed it (if there was one). Sorry for the rabbit hole.
@ulysses it's economic attenuation. 100 Points are generated by logging in every day or buying points with real money. Without having *something* to destroy points, eventually their value would diminish even more.
I see the point offers in a thread as "how bad do I want this?" and the number of points in a request thread helps me justify making purchases when I have money; and vice versa, the points I offer are equivalent to "god I hope this helps someone fill it sooner cause I can't"
The way I look at it is 500 points = standard, "will use this in the next little while", have an idea for a render or comic scene or character, is themed in the style I use, etc. with more or less points reflecting the level of actual desire to have an item. If I definitely want to use this asset ASAP I will offer a lot more, and if I am thinking I might eventually have a use for it, I might offer less or not worry about it.
@Wflg-Gm, I still don't understand where the other 25 points goes/what purpose deducting them serves. If the intent is to destroy the value of points by not allowing people to accumulate them in large quantities, then just have the cost to buy an item set at 25 points. It's not a big deal, just kinda puzzling.
@ulysses it's a pretty common factor in gamified virtual economies, which the points system is. It burns 25 points per blog purchase out of existence, they go nowhere, while the person who listed it gets something. Prevents runaway inflation/devaluation, since significant amounts of points pop into existence on a daily basis some method has to exist to destroy those points.
I used to play a lot (a LOT) of MMO games and any game with a player-driven economy uses similar methods to control things.
Rank:
interesting discussion...
the folks that 'usually' offer less than 500 are "tier" 1 members, who might not have a lot. But if a tier 3 is offering 300pts... well... shoot.
As Far as 3dLoad/Renderstate go... I see them as kind of "remorah' sites that feed off the Great white that is the zone
They can be helpful though, as when some of the links at the zone have gone dead, there is a decent possibility that if it is on 3dZone/Renderstate, the link will be active.
So, Zone feeds to 3dZ/Rstate, and then they can feed back into the zone.
I wish more stuff was being posted to the blog. Seems like a good number of bountyhunters are just holding on to stuff... lots of reasons, and folks can do what they want.
@Wflg-Gm, then why not just charge 25 points and give all of that to the uploader? I'm not a gamer, but that would seem to be a more efficient way to control point inflation. It will probably never make sense to me, and it's not the point of this thread anyway, so I'm just gonna drop it.
@barcgwcc, it's worth remembering that Requestors make offers, but Fillers choose the offers they will accept. These are not purchases for fixed prices, after all. Requestors tell you what they think something is worth, and you decide whether their valuation agrees with yours.
Feel free to ignore low-ball offers, in other words, but try to be clear about your reasons when you announce your fill, so that your decision doesn't look like a rude snub. If you post something like, "I have PMed everyone who offered at least 500 points", then someone who only offered 300 points knows why they got passed over. Without such an announcement it's easy for someone who did not receive a link to get paranoid and worry that you don't like them or something, and take it personally.
The one compromise that I am experimenting with is that I do "delayed" fills for people who offer less than my threshold. So if I value an item at 500 points and someone offers 300, I send them the link after a 7-day delay. Essentially I accept their low offers, but I interpret their offers to imply that they don't want it that urgently, so can afford to wait a bit. I post items to the blog after around 4 weeks, so they still get the item 3 weeks before it hits the blog, but they don't get it immediately.
Keeping track of the delayed fills is one more bit of bookkeeping, though, so if it becomes too burdensome I may just drop it altogether. My hope, either way, is that Requestors will be encouraged to keep their offers at or above established market rates, since they can't know ahead of time who the filler is going to be. The more fillers set thresholds like this, the more Requestors will realize that making below-market offers hurts them more than it helps them.
When I uploaded to KAT I never required points.
When I shared with friends here I never required points.
I can get most if not all content off other sites free and in some cases SECONDS after it hits here. I had one item I uploaded here hit another site as soon as my upload finished.If this site were absolutely free from points, I would feel obligated to share just because others do. "Some" share for a currency that is only good on this site. It is a mechanic that appears to have done well and keeps content rolling in but is it something you require to give back to a community that gives you way more than you give back?
Its an argument I have with myself constantly and at one time I purchased items others wanted to horde for bounties and posted them. Ive bundled tons of content and uploaded 50 items for 25 points. For me it was more about a community and when the community fractured so did I.
If you purchased it with your money then I guess its yours to do with what you want. Sit on it for weeks till it doesn't make you feel fuzzy inside anymore. Legally it isn't yours do with as you wish yet stuff still finds its way here. If you really want to protect the artists never post anything and never download anything from here. Go buy at Daz and support their hard work.
I legitimize my corruption by saying its a hobby and I make no money from it. I dont sell anything I render. If for some reason I were to take requests or create book covers or comics I would 100% buy whatever it was I used for that specific render.
The mindset of sitting on content, point hording, delaying post and backdoor trades is why I no longer post content. If people want to trade content for points then Ill pay points.
I think it also comes down to whether the filler is sharing first-hand or second-hand. Points matter more to first-hand fillers, since they are the ones who paid real money to buy the asset in the first place. Second-hand fillers found the item on other pirate sites (for free) and so it makes no real difference to them whether it was originally a $10 item or a $250 item.
The vast majority of my fills are first-hand--I spend hundreds of dollars every month on content that I share here--so I find that I'm more sensitive to the level of appreciation I receive for my contributions. A simple "thanks for sharing" is nice, but the points system makes it possible to express degrees of appreciation, like leaving a tip for good service.
We don't have this mechanism on the blog, where everything goes for the same fixed 50 points, but when it comes to filling requests there is an opportunity to offer an amount that signals to the filler that you know you're asking for something significant from them--their money, which they earned with their time and labour. If I drop $200 on a Kitbash3D kit and people offer me 500 points for it it tells me that they either have no idea what the asset is worth, or they think it's a second-hand share that I didn't have to pay for (and therefore shouldn't care about the points offered).
First-hand shares are one of the things that distinguishes ZoneGFX among the many pirate sites out there. There's a good reason they all get their content here first--we're the idiots who pay for the products and then give them away to be shared second-hand everywhere else. So to a lot of pirates out there second-hand sharing is all they know, and it's what they're used to, so they come here expecting things to work the same way--one digital asset is the same as any other when it's free, so what do points really matter?
Well, they matter a hell of a lot to first-hand sharers. Peer appreciation is what drives fools like me to spend money in the first place. I might be on the fence about the idea of purchasing an asset for myself, but if I see a lot of interest from others in the Requests forum that can make all the difference. Low offers tell me it's not very important--something someone wants to have for their collection but will probably never use. High offers tell me people are eager to use the asset ASAP, and are willing to spend more points to get it sooner.
Point offers drive my purchase decisions, in other words--and my desire to continue doing first-hand sharing at all. There are certainly other things I could be spending my money on, and I could sit back like so many others and just watch for second-hand shares, never injecting any new content into the stream. When first-hand sharers feel burned out and taken for granted, they (understandably) stop contributing. So yes, points--as a measure of appreciation--very much matter.
And you're right, there's no practical use for the 2+ million points that I've earned. I can't turn that back into cash. Another 500 points isn't going to make any difference to what I can or can't do with my points. I'm still going to be able to donate large sums for contests and such (which is kind of the social duty of the "points millionaires", IMHO), and I'll always be able to buy anything I want from the blog, and make offers on requests of my own.
So should I really care that someone offered 300 points while everyone else offered 500, when I already have more points than I need? Well, believe it or not, this isn't entirely about me! 🙂 If I start accepting low offers it sets a precedent that will ultimately affect the market for other fillers. If I let somebody have an item for 250 points while others are offering 500, more people start offering lower amounts as they see that guy get away with it, and they begin to feel like they're overpaying like suckers. Eventually the market settles at a new "normal" of maybe 300, then 200, and downward still until there's little difference between a bountied request and a blog post. That would kill the motivation of a lot of first-hand fillers, including myself.
The other argument I sometimes hear is, "you should be looking at the total pool of offers, not the individual offers," as if to say that if one person offers 300 points and someone else offers 700 points it balances out to the same 500 points per person. But again, to a first-hand filler the points are a measure of appreciation, which is expressed individually. In that example, one requestor deliberately expressed less appreciation than expected, while the other expressed more than necessary. Going forward, I'm more likely to go out of my way to fill requests for that second person, obviously--generous "tippers" get better service, unsurprisingly.
Sorry for the Wall-of-Text; I just felt the need to articulate my thoughts on what points "mean" to me, and why they may matter more or less to others. 🙂
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