It's nice that you found a middle ground solution which means that the changes are less bad than they could've been.
With that said, I still find a fixed amount of points a really bad solution as the current situation with HB monthly should cleanly demonstrate. It directly promotes hoarding points via banking and making everyone uncomfortable in general because they can never be sure they have enough points stocked for a large event, train, bundle etc.
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Users receive 5 points every 15 minutes.
Bad
The point cap has been increased from 300 to 500 points.
Good
The maximum number of points to enter a single giveaway has been decreased from 100 to 50 points.
Good
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Seems the whole previous discussion was (nearly) pointless then, oh well.
At least then also make deleted giveaways refund the entered points, like it was in SGv1 before.
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+1, losing points when users delete giveaways is a big deal now with the very restricted points generation. Points are much more valuable now than they use to be.
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On an unrelated note, these changes make it more important than ever before to fix the issue with points not getting refunded when giveaways are prematurely deleted. A lot of fake giveaways are for expensive games hitting the 50p mark, but even for 10-20p games, these losses are going to cover hours of the daily point generation now. With the old system, this was merely a nuisance, but now it's going to cripple people's ability to enter if they don't get their points back.
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Yeah, I agree with that. I've had to delete giveaways once in a while and I always feel guilty that I'm burning the entrants' points.
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Seems sensible. On a fixed point system where you only get so many points over a given amount of time if your chance for a giveaway is removed by deletion (a choice made by someone else) it's only fair to have that chance back.
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I don't mind the low amount of points per hour, but this system is really flawed. 2 things:
First, people are gonna bank like crazy for every tuesday/first friday of the month/whenever they find a nice bundle. 4 weeks GAs you'll be the new hot thing around here. Your objective is noble, but your methods don't seem to be very good/effective. However, if you're sure that you wanna go down that lane, you're gonna have to do something about banking or else people will just circumvent what you're trying to accomplish by gathering points for important moments, making this update useless.
Second, I don't like this reduction of points for AAA games. It will encourage people that only want to farm cards or a +1 in their libraries to try to get one of them since they are "cheaper". That means fewer chances for people that really wanna play those games. If anything, they should cost even more, so only those who really want would enter. It's too sad to see $60 worth of games being farm for 30 cents worth of cards.
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agree with your first point (in what will happen, not so much the countermeasures) but:
reduction of points for AAA games. It will encourage people that only want to farm cards or a +1 in their libraries to try to get one of them since they are "cheaper".
let's be real here, games top out at $60, reducing that to 50p has nearly no effect
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I can asure you that any incremental change in the "price", doesn't matter how small, has an impact on the "consumer" decision making process.
Will this make every single card farmer/+1er join a AAA GA they otherwise wouldn't? Definitely not. However, for a small portion of them, it might make a difference and any extra idler trying to get a nice game is terrible news imo.
Well, maybe I'm too harsh because I really dislike people that try to win good games for the sole reason of card farming. xD
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i bet even if AAA games were 500 points, idiots +1ing their accounts would still enter them.
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I don't doubt people like that exist since human stupidity is as infinite as the universe, but I hope believe there aren't many of them. Therefore just a small increase should discourage a decent portion of them to try to get a game for a reason like that.
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Agree with these. Don't see any point in making +100p things "cheaper" to enter. Surely they would have participants if they are good. Would be nice to have an option to increase points entry price in range of x3-x5 of base price to filter out people who don't care about what they enter.
Banking can be solved with stopping giving points back when person takes entry back. (But returning them for deleted GAs). <3
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I really liked someone's idea that the amount of points that you get back should be proportional to the time you remained in that GA. 100% for just clicking. 0% for keeping your points there for weeks.
I think it was Cbones that came up with the idea. Not sure.
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Or then returning 100% if entry is removed in some short time, 0 otherwise.
imagined bots doing continuous recycling of points so they don't burn :D
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When that will be applied then in order to not waste points, people end up entering for stuff they don't want cause there is currently nothing there that they do want.
Isn't that contrary to what you want to achieve too?
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If I understood that right, then yes. Should be the fatal blow to bots/autojoiners. It should also decrease the amount of games people can enter, so they can't just enter everything, they will actually need to consider what they enter. In turn, it shall decrease the amount of entries in a given GA, making people that really wanna play that game have more chance to win it.
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em, no, what I meant:
Situation: No wishlist GA left, but still some points left.
To not waste the points people bank them and use them for wl GAs later.
Isn't that what you would like to see instead of them mindlessly joining anything for a +1?
When banking were to get blocked instead, then people would just put the points 'somewhere' which then eliminates any positive effect.
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In a perfect world, if there's nothing you want, you shouldn't join any GA or else you're taking someone else's chance to enjoy a game they want.
However, most people don't think about that, so you could be right and it could lead to them joining anything. With that said, with fewer points per hour and no banking, the average SGer will have to think twice before entering a GA, and tbh, I have an optimistic feeling about this change. I could always be proved wrong tho.
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In a perfect world, if there's nothing you want, you shouldn't join any GA or else you're taking someone else's chance to enjoy a game they want.
After reading that sentence I had an idea that probably most people would frown upon but I thought I'd share it nonetheless. What if instead of joining GA's (they might not want) and taking someone else's chance people could choose to put their points somewhere else that might give them some other advantage?
Say you could put them towards increasing/maintaining level, of course it should take tons of points to increase a level as creating giveaways should be the only effective way to do this but perhaps it would also help one maintain their current level. I never knew one could drop levels but it sounds like as games' dollar values are dropped over time on Steam, their CV value here changes and can drop one down a level if close enough to the previous level.
Just an idea. Perhaps it would offer a balance between those that like to use all their points and those that want to give someone else the highest chance to enjoy a game they want.
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Well I am not rly liking this change since when the new bundle hits the site there will be a lot of GAs and not enough points to enter what you want only the most wanted games at most :(
Rly would like if this change was just a reduction in the % of P people get from GAs, but what can you do.
Flash GAs will be hurt the most..
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Seems better than the last change but I still think that the old system was just fine. Are you sure there's no other way to combat the auto-join scripts?
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This seems much better. I can't wait to dump 500 points on giveaways when I visit tomorrow.
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Still better than IndieGala Giveaways, at least here someone is guaranteed to win.
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Would be good if the minimum time of a giveaway will be set to 24 hours.
All the missing ga's because of 5 points every 15 minutes. ;_;
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Thanks for the heads up, fixed it.
But still, 0.3 points per minute sounds much more sad.
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This upsetting change morphed sg into indiegala, but while in indiegala giveaways like 10 000 people at best, here 1 000 000, and 10000 times more giveaways, while points generated for indiegala is 240 per 24 hours and here 500 - 2 times difference lol
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Yes, there was a reason why I don't enter ga's on IndieGala anymore.
But still I wish that the timeframe of a ga would have changed from one hour minimum to 24 hours minimum to compensate the static system of 0.3 points perminute.
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For the people entering, 12 or 24 hours would be better if they are not on SG all the time but as a gifter I should be able to chose how long I make my giveaways. This is one of the reasons why I prefer to make giveaways on SG rather than other ones like Indiegala as XJ9 has mentioned.
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I'm a for trying something new, but I think it was a bad time to implement it.
Over the weekend would have given people time to get used to it before the next HB rush
At the very least, it'd allow everyone's points to regenerate.
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Imho only a halfhearted change. One main reason you gave for the change, was that people wouldn't have to visit SG so frequently ("in the middle of the night"), because they'd "miss something", with points exceeding the cap.
But that many giveaways last only one or few hours and that thus frequent visits remain as necessary as before, is ignored. Make 12h the minimum and I'd consider that a real improvement, true to your ambitions in the initial thread.
Currently its just a buffer for times when many giveaways are created. And I have mixed feelings about that being an improvement. Considering how many wishlisted 1h giveaways I (would) miss currently from the Humble monthly, I tend to oppose the whole concept.
I would still consider the old point generation system, a cap of 600 and a larger GA minimum time the better approach.
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+1 but a minimum time of 24 hours for a giveaway would be much better because there are people who work 12 hours in a row without pause and without access to the internet.
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I think that would only be true for a minority. And they'd still only miss those few GAs that are created exactly right after they go offline, they'd miss about 5% max. That's a great improvement to the status quo.
And the problem could always be pushed further: Some people can't come online every day, others can't at weekends etc etc.
I think 12 hours would be a pretty convenient and fair compromise.
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But what really sucks is, you get only 20 points per hour, regardless how many ga's was created, but it is still allowed that a ga may last only for one hour.
In my opinion it would have been a good move to set the minimum time of a ga to 24 hours to compensate cap of 5P/minute.
But most important: Happy Cakeday!
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Shit. Six years SG experience and I'm still never prepared for this day.
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My GAs rarely are shorter than 24h and most go for a few days.
Though I don't do that due to bots or point regeneration, I do it so people from outside my timezone and those working shifts also have a chance. So I would have no problem with an increased minimum time.
EDIT: Also, happy cakeday! 🍰
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I'm curious how this will work out in 2 weeks, or a month.
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though that would bundle games was 15% and not the full price of $/P
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Quick summary:
Reducing point-generation from the ridiculous 45+k amount seen last month is, in general, good.
Reducing them so radically below anything it was in the past 2 years to only 14k is bad.
Making the system static is bad.
Increasing the cap is good. Enough for at least a full day even optimal.
50p enter cap has nearly no effect, as most games top out at $60.
Better to fix 100p price bugs by not automatically accepting base-price increases into the database at all.
-
Overall it can be already seen here to become a frustrating experience to have to manage points and entries.
And the high demand games won't become easier to win, instead the crap ones will, to the rejoice of farmers and collectors.
'Middle ground' will benefit slightly, which is where my main focus is (as I skip expensive/new stuff unless I really want it), and here I am still against that.
To solve these:
System back to dynamic, with 25k average of the past 2 years as the target, combined with a long-term flood protection at 30k upper-limit. And the user cap put at around the new daily point influx.
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You are the voice i need, I give you an eternal +1 on this topic.
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- making all Levels earn same 5P in 15min is bad, as amount of games increases when you level up. Makes the whole thing of leveling up obsolete! ;)
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Only just read this due to laziness - but this is actually one of the more sensible posts on the topic I've seen.
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I like how the feedback from the other thread changed virtually nothing to the proposed changes... 🙄
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It did, higher points cap and lower max points to enter weren't initially planned, so 2 of the 3 update points come from community feedback
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Increasing the point cap while still crushing point generation makes as much sense as raising the speed limit from 120 to 200km/h on a highway while at the same time forbidding it to all vehicles but bicycles.
Edit: actually, point 3 is bad, it devaluates AAA stuff. Point generation was decreased so that people choose carefully what they enter, and for some reason, it was decided that carefully choosing should apply more to cheap games than to AAA games. I can see no valid rationale for this.
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What is the point of the higher cap though if we now get less points? I was very active when I came to this site and its like why even bother checking more than once every 25 hours? I usually come here 4x a day at least. Usually more. Now there's no point to checking more. There's never a surprise bunch of points waiting.
I do like the higher cap. But the lessened points ruins it. It makes it so that all activity to the site is no longer rewarded after rewarding us for being active for so long. Now it's just like "Hey you. Come here often? Too bad. Go away. Nothing for you here now."
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You will likely benefit from lower points generation. I'm guessing most of the time you have more than enough points to enter the giveaways you want, considering you enter around 6k giveaways per year. There are users who enter almost that many in a single month.
Now they won't be able to enter as many giveaways, while you should still be able to enter as many as you used to, so you're likely to win more.
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Exactly. And what about group entries? Bye to 5 entries minimum. And if I haven't points, and I want to enter to a GA with a duration of 1 hour... I couldn't enter. From 0P to 20P we we'll have to wait 1 hour, to only 20P. I wouold review the 5 minumum entries rule and the minimum duration of a giveaway.
And what about a level bonus? Okay, 5 points per hour, but if you're level 3, you'll get 5+3 points per hour. You're level 10? you'll get 5+10 points per hour. It would encourage users to do more GAs. And I think it could improve the new system.
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5-entries minimum rule is there to prevent (or at least limit) CV-farming abuse by sharing GAs between only friends. It would be a really bad idea to remove that without anything to replace it.
Reconsidering minimum GA duration, good idea. Seems to be a very popular and well-thought suggestion.
Changing points generation for different levels will almost certainly never happen. There are very few people who would want to see such a thing.
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Hi Theanyelpes, users receive 5P every 15 minutes, which means 20P in one hour, not four hours. Users will prioritize their points for joining giveaways with the highest odds of winning, which means not many users are going to pass up the opportunity of entering a giveaway with a 20% chance of winning, and use their points elsewhere. Therefore, I don't think people will struggle more than before to reach the 5 entry minimum.
Lastly, I don't believe levels need a bonus, as those users already have the bonus of entering higher level giveaways.
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Yes, it was a lapsus. I though in the 4 periods of 15 minutes and I said 4 hours instead of periods
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I know.
I'm planning already for the 1-hour giveaways storm of November Humble Monhtly, seeing how I stopped my sub for a month due to the early releases and they'll likely spite me by throwing one much wanted wishlisted game in there.
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Oh, and I just thought it could become a major risk too if the deletion not returning points is never fixed... all those banked points (2.5 hours) going up in smoke if there's one malicious person there...
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That is one thing I am worrying about but I have to take the risk if I want a decent amount of points to spend when those big AAA or big humble monthly games come out. Hopefully, they can fix the deletion of the giveaway and return the points to people but I suspect its not on their list of high priorities right now
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Well, it's not the same to be on Level 0 & on Level 3 or Level 10. If you go on time pumping of 5P per 15min, then you need to find a system to increase points according to games that are listed.
If it's 40% more games (example only) on Level 1, give us 40% more points on Level 1, which works out 7P per 15min. Then you'll also encourage people to Level up & giveaway more! ;)
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Users will prioritize their points for joining giveaways with the highest odds of winning
But doesn't that make entering giveaways stressful now? And potentially force users to spend more time entering giveaways? So the exact opposite of what this change was supposed to achieve?
Now with the limited points, if users want to maximize their chances they will have to spend time analyzing the available giveaways for games they want and decide which they want to enter (e.g. "I'll only enter lvl3+ giveaways ...oh wait, now there are more lvl5 giveaways, I'll leave some of the lvl3 to join the new ones ...oh wait, today will be humble bundle, I should not spend all my points" etc. And might even make users check the site more often than before, because flash giveaways will now give relatively much higher odds of winning.
...compared to previous situation where users would just enter every giveaway for the game they really wanted.
There's also the psychological aspect of 'knowing you have 0% chance to win in a giveaway (and having higher chance in some other)' vs 'having a smaller chance to win in a lot of giveaways' that I mentioned in this comment.
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Cool, now instead of seeing 300p all the time, I will see 500p all the time :D
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Damnit just when i got all those GA from HB monthly to enter.
Thank you anyway :)
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i dislike a lot this change. Raising the cap is fine and i aprove, but this rate is far way less than i use a day and i dont find pleasent seing giveaways i want to join just pass for not having enough points. I had a 4 day buffer than within hours of this system and with the humble bundle montly is down to a couple of hours. its only a matter of days (and a popular bundle) to begin the uproar. in the meanwhile the fun of participating in this site is already fading.... i still am confused on the reasoning (expecially the part of reducing visits to the site it doesnt make sense even in a business sense less visits less ad money) and i really hope the system goes back to normal, in the meanwhile i'll stop my giveaways since i dont fell motivated to level up and i strongly disagree with this decision. Please reconsider, thank you for reading
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MFW when the flood of Humble Monthly giveaways hits, but then this change happens.
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Hi SG,
After the recent discussion, updates to the point system are now live. They are as follows:
I think these adjustments will provide a number of improvements for the site. However, I'll keep an eye on user feedback, and try to make sure the changes are working as intended and meeting the needs of the community.
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