Hunts & Bans
Posted: 9/02/2010 by .Loviathar Hellman in
0
Hunts & Bans or "Why we have no shame in banning cheaters"
Way before being designers, Moolfryt Klang & myself are residents and, alike any typical resident, we love to shop and of course we won't spit on some free or cheap stuff.
Every time I will join an event, I will automatically visit my event colleagues (means the other stores participating to the same event) to check out their items and I will eventually (and even often) purchase it. This is a way to get something cheaper of course, to get cool and exclusive items, to discover new stores, to support the designers and the event.
About the hunts now, way before being designers, in our younger SL days, we used to hunt a lot. We had to slow down a little bit since hunts take a lot of time that we don't have anymore, there is also a huge amount of hunts and we aren't always interested by the theme.
I have to say that I LOVE quality hunts with not too much stores, especially when some new designers are welcome to join and not only already famous stores that don't need as much as promotion as the baby stores.
To me, a hunt is a way :
- yet, to get free stuff,
- to get exclusive stuff,
But also :
- to discover new stores,
- to meet new people,
- to remember to me my good childhood memories of Easter, when my parents used to hide chocolate eggs in the garden,
- to keep good adresses in the aim, later or the same day, to purchase the awesome stuff designers can create.
A good amount of hunts are EXTREMELY well organized, in respect of the vendors & the hunters, with a good support team behind.
A good amount of vendors can respect the delays and can produce really great gifts that will surprise, make smile, please a lot of people.
Of course, as a designer, I give a lot of time to my gifts wether the hunt is a big time one, a very high quality one or a tiny/new one.
It doesn't mean that my gifts can please everyone. This is impossible. I know that a lot of what residents hunt for will often end up in their trash bin simply because there is too much and they are sure to do not wear it. This is also my case. For example, I don't wear brown. If I get brown pants for free, as beautiful the pants can be, I will throw it away.
This isn't mean. This is a matter of taste.
I am therefore not shocked nor offenced if someone doesn't find anything he/she likes in my hunt items.
There are enough stores and styles to bring to anyone something he/she will like in a hunt.
Of course, when I'll be building my gifts, I will think about this :
- Is there a female and a male item at least ?
- Is it really exclusive ? (even if the hunt organizor doesn't ask for exclusive, in 99% of the cases, the gift WILL be exclusive)
- Is it of good quality ? (means that if I'm not sure of the build, I won't give it out)
- Is it able to satisfy a bunch of people ? (means : "if I designed stuff like this before, was it purchased a lot ?)
- Is there at least a very new design ? (means : not using OLD stuff)
All of this means, actually, that I will take TIME, ENERGY, I will spend LINDENS (in sculpts, in uploading textures...) to design something new and that you can potentially love.
Does it mean that you've got to worship us ? Of course not.
But even if we don't always like what we are getting during a hunt, we won't spend our time criticizing in a mean way every design we dislike for some reasons. Criticizes always have to be positive, it means that it has to help to improve stuff. Destroying is way easier.
We have the chance of never have been noticing any bad criticize about our stuff. We also have the chance to have customers who send us "thank you" notecards very often and nice hunters who, seeing us at the store, will thank us for gifting something.
We aren't asking for this. We just are giving out because we want to do it. We could chose not to do it. We're just happy if someone's satisfied. This is our only aim.
Now, there are another kind of people & hunters on SL. Those just are greedy. Some want to make money without any creativity, yes, unfortunately.
But some hunters also want freebies without doing anything to get it.
They won't enjoy meeting new people during a hunt, seeing new stores, spending time doing something cool, ... All they will do is asking for items locations, screaming it out loud on LC for friends, insulting the store owner for hiding the item, use radars & other scripted items to find the hunt gift, they will use SLURL...
Doing it, those will destroy the other kind of hunter's pleasure. Some hunters REALLY love to get the reward of their efforts and are happy to find the items by themselves. It makes them happy.
Of course, to those who only think about getting free stuff, this can sound weird. But this is how it goes : SL is a GAME. Social game. If we don't play the game, what is it remaining ?
We could, as some other store owners, chose to provide you some bad quality items, thinking that "anyway they will cheat". But we think that some of you are honest and therefore deserve quality".
We'll therefore chose to give out to the honest ones the quality gifts they deserve for their efforts.
But...
This is also why we will ban :
- people we will find using scanners,
- people telling a hunt location on local chat,
- people asking for a hunt location on local chat,
- people copy pasting direct SLURL to our objet or another's store object,
- people tping their friends to the direct location of the objet
- and people who, after having been warned by us, will get angry or will ignore us.
We consider this as extremely disrespectuous of our work.
We will, by a ban, prevent the same hunters to come back for other hunts & start again and to some who think we will lose customers : we don't need that kind of customer.
Sorry for being straight to the point.