Doesn't have anything to do with 'membership extras' at all. Most first-time buyers don't even know about this kind of stuff at the initial sales meeting.
The guides have always had a 'cookie-cutter' agreement that everybody they see is offered at the initial sales meeting. I'd dare venture a bet that 90%+ of first-time
DVC owners that buy in at the initial sales meeting buy in at this cookie-cutter point value.
That point value has varied over time, but not by much. When we bought in, it was 160 at AKK. It was also 160 when we added on at BLT as founders. I'm not sure what it is today, but I assure you that the guides have a magic number their cookie-cutter contracts are already set up for. Both of our base contracts are at these values. We didn't know any different at the time. Most people don't either.
"We recommend that you buy 160 points. This gets you blah, blah, blah..." It has always been that way, and I can't imagine it's changed. Why would it? It's based on marketing and the magic pain-threshold that market research has determined that buyers are likely to buy without balking and to 'understand' why they need that number after having it 'explained' to them. Obviously, it is optimized to increase sales revenue for DVD because that is ultimately their end game.
Maybe I'm the only one that ever realized this, but I doubt it. LOL