Old System: The tokens you collected over time, by watching Cohh & stay in the channel while he is offline, had an influence if you were considered to be turned into a VIP.
- Advantage: Long time viewers were rewarded for being there for such a long time.
- Disadvantage: It only rewarded long time viewers. They even got more tokens in the past, when Cohh gave away more tokens in the same time frame. This is now much slower, so new people can only slowly gaining enough points to be chosen. This leaves out a big portion of new(er) viewers to get into the system.
New System: Now you have to be a non-lurking, non-sub to be chosen to get into the system. The exact requirements aren't told and that is okay, in the previous system we also didn't know how high our token count had to be.
- Advantage: This creates a larger pool, for old and new to get access to the system. It is more fair, but not to all.
- Disadvantage: Lurkers are now excluded. It's understandable from a community standpoint. Socializing strengthens the community as a whole and keeps chat active. Nonetheless, there is a good portion of lurkers in the chat and we all know, "lurkers make the world go around", to quote Cohh.
Suggestion:
Combine both systems. To give long time viewers and newer ones, lurking or active, all the same chances to get into the system. Of course, this might need an adjustment in the token count, so newer lurking viewers have a fair chance to get into the system. To make it fair and square, it shouldn't give priority to high token holders. All are eligible, if they reach the token count and lurk, picked randomly at a set max amount of VIPs, so we are not drowning in VIPs.
Lurkers have many reasons, why they want not to participate in chat or cannot. Some doing it for personal reasons (social anxiety, shy etc.) and some cannot do so, because they're at work or doing other things and some just have not really anything to add to chat that seems reasonable other than "chat reacts", which they might not consider as reasonable enough to participate in. All of that is valid to be a lurker and they're still a part of the community, even if you see them once a day typing something into chat.
I hope you had a good read and consider my feedback to the current state of the VIP system.
