I also like the current system. Maybe the point cap can be set up to 450.
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Just out of curiosity, why is 300 set as the cap? Is that value open to changing - either up or down - as well, regardless of whatever other changes are implemented?
I'm not entering any CTFusion GAs myself, but when those waves come through, if someone really wanted it, they're not very well able to enter as many opportunities, because one entry would nearly obliterate their bank as it is.
I think a cap is just fine and useful, though I don't have a recommendation for any alternative value.
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I'm not entering any CTFusion GAs myself, but when those waves come through, if someone really wanted it, they're not very well able to enter as many opportunities, because one entry would obliterate their bank as it is.
Yes, they would not be able to enter as many Clickteam Fusion giveaways, but the same would apply to other users, which will lower the entry counts. For example, instead of entering 30 Clickteam Fusion giveaways, each with 150 entries, they would be able to enter 10 Clickteam Fusion giveaways, each with 50 entries.
Just out of curiosity, why is 300 set as the cap?
The point cap controls how often users need to visit the site. If we remove the cap, then users could visit the site once every few weeks, enter a few thousand giveaways, and leave. The cap encourages them to check the site daily, and be a part of the community. However, as mentioned in the topic, when users reach the cap too quickly (for example, every few hours), it becomes too demanding.
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Thanks for the reply!
Oh, never, ever remove the cap! Everyone essentially being able to enter everything would be terrible, I agree. I have at times found myself trying to avoid the cap/losing points, but c'est la vie.
I guess my point was more about the specific value of 300 versus something else is all.
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Depending on the retail value of the most recent bundle, I tend to run out of points as soon as they come in or have 200+ points at any given time. Right now I have entered all giveaways available to me that aren't for games I've hidden and I'm sitting at 240P, but when the All Stars 9 Bundle dropped I couldn't keep more than 5P in my account.
I think the points awarded per giveaway created could be lowered and the point cap boosted. If the issue is people having to visit every few hours, this should help that without people missing out on games they really want just because a $40 game was slipped into the BTA tier of a bundle.
Though this is just based on how I use the site: I only enter for games I actually want (even though sometimes they get put in my backlog), buy bundles I discover here if I find myself entering for most of the games included, and have 6500 games hidden.
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I think the points awarded per giveaway created could be lowered and the point cap boosted.
I think this is my overall assessment of the situation at this point. I'm ok with the proposed changes, but the devil's in the details.
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Less points per giveaway and 400 point cap. 300 never seemed enough, enough when the half point system got introduced.
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This.
I have the exact same experience, I'm entering only games on my wishlist (except maybe one or two sometimes) and don't use my points most of the time and when a bundle comes out with a lot of wishlisted games on it... I cry.
So I find this sugg great :p
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+1, if the issue is people need to visit too often because of the point cap, and the point cap was set precisely to force people to visit often enough, the obvious solution is just to increase the point cap. Point generation is fine, if points become too scarce (and, worse, non dependent on the recently created GAs) this might increase the risk of getting GAs with fewer than 5 entries.
visit the site 6x as often
An obvious and quick fix could be to just set the cap at 6x what it is now. A more advanced one could be something like 500-1000 + 8 hours after reaching that cap: this would allow absorbing the massive spikes that occur after a bundle gets released. People would still need to connect once or twice a day if they don't want to "waste" points, but not more often (and notably, they could sleep or work for 8h without worrying about their point cap ^^).
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The point of this update is also to incite users to be more selective with the giveaways they enter and not just enter any random giveaways because they have plenty of points, which wouldn't be achieved just by increasing the cap
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you write, "The point of this update..." but in the OP cg wrote, "I'd like to get some community feedback..." did this change already get implemented or is it still in the discussion phase?
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That means users need to now enter 6x as many giveaways, and visit the site 6x as often just to use all of their points.
vs
If we remove the cap, then users could visit the site once every few weeks, enter a few thousand giveaways, and leave. The cap encourages them to check the site daily, and be a part of the community.
And that makes me wonder why you don't simply consider the most logical approach: Modify the cap.
We don't necessarily need it to be 6x as big, but why not double it?
It solves absolutely everything you mentioned as concerns. And contrary to a fixed point recharge rate, it would still adapt to the high and low times of created giveaways.
Plus: The reason that is mostly responsible for (my) frequent visits on SG is that giveaways can run for just 1 hour.
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The desire limited entry with the new point distribution would only work with cheap bundle games though (indiegala, groupees, humble tier one, bundlestar $1 dollar bundle, etc,) . Since they are cheap to buy hence the flood of them on steamgifts and the flood of point generations. But for games like humble monthly, bta humble bundle, non bundle which people still want the most will have the same amount of entry since not many people give them away compare to bundle games and hence smaller amount of giveaway created (its even smaller if you take level restriction into account) for them which means everyone will have enough points to enter most if not all of them. People can also remove points from entered giveaways ends in the future and re-enter them later when points regenerates to enter giveaway that ends sooner and repeats. I think its better if we have a hourly generation point cap instead. Points will scale to the amount of giveaway created but once it reach a cap for example like 100 points per hour its cap until next hour.
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If we're going to be limited to 480P per day, why keep the 300P cap? Doesn't that still force people to visit the site at least twice per day? Also, what is the point of having the points slowly tick up at 5P/15mins? It seems like an unnecessary wait time to me.
I feel like everything would be a whole lot simpler if you set it up as such:
- A fixed 500P per day. (I like the nice round number better than 480.)
- No tick up, all points assigned at once. (Easy to visit only once per day and spend all your points at once if you choose to.)
- 500P cap (So you can't build up over multiple days, but it doesn't affect daily users at all.)
This way users would only have to visit once per day to get the full use of their points and they would still be encouraged to visit the site on a daily basis.
There's probably some downside to doing it this way that I haven't thought of, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, but whatever saves me the most time and makes my interaction with the site more easy to schedule is ideal for me.
I do like the thought behind the rest of the changes though. Being able to enter less giveaways per day and having better odds on those I care most about are definitely improvements!
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1+, this is why i think everybody should get less points
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Please forgive the spam, ptsfthfll, but exactly ^^^^^^ that! 8)
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Same. Thankfully using all the points is not obligatory, people who "wake up in the middle of the night to avoid hitting the point cap" may have a bit of a problem with their attitude. A.k.a. greed.
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But if for example a game in a $1 bundle is 40p, yes we get a big increase in points but it's also costing 40 points to enter all of them, so with a cap someone would get like a max of 10 entries for such a game, per day.
Some that might spend alot of time here genuinely do enter for games they want, and the new system would diminish it a bit for those that just want a +1, but not really get totally rid of it either.
Such things only happen occasionaly anyway, and cases like Clickteam are even rarer, and alot of games are more then 10p.
Yes you will say but others will enter less too, but this might set something in motion for certain people to even start using more bots (we all know exist, and maybe are a bigger problem then a few people that just enter for a +1, and usually it are the bots that enter for a +1 to farm their cards).
Not in favor for this and people should think about the potential negative sides then quickly throw their +1's.
Should have been a poll.
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Good point.
If those high value bundle games come out, people wouldn't have the points anymore to join them.
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You can always withdrawn yourself from entering in games you don't really want and bank your points for later. At least for now there is nothing against banking points. Esp when points will be limited so noone will be able to store ridiculous amount of them.
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what is also important to look is the situation that OP only theorethically speaks about daily points and draws conclusions only on theorethical scenarios "users spending all points on same thing" not taking into account specific situations. Yes - if we compare users who spends 480 and 1500 on same GAs they will have the same chance to win them, but just consider situation that active user spent his daily points already before something goods pops out and it's totally different story. Let's assume we have 2 users, 1st one spent all his points 2h ago, cause there was nothing too intresting to join on whatever was ending soon, most of these GAs already ended, user B just came online and has full 300P. Then this good bundle with 40P game goes live. User B will be able to enter 7-8 GAs for it in the first hour, then continue entering 1 GA per hour. User A can only enter 1GA and will continue entering 1 per hour. Boith cannont go more. Objectively User B has higher win chances because he just logged in when deal was already live. User A wasted his points and can do nothing about it, cause point regeneration is not bound to GAs created, he will miss almost all GAs for thing he wants, cause ppl will always love making flash GAs when deal goes live.
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User A wasted his points and can do nothing about it
He can learn to stop wasting his points of stuff he doesn't really want so he will have some left when a game he does want does show up.
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you assume user entered just shovelware crap which does not need to be the case. It may be the case "well it's intresting, nothing from top of my WL but since I don't have enything else to enter it mey be as it's not bad. But then 2h later SG becomes flooded with your top WLed game. Does it mean he didn't really want these previous games? Not necessary, but he wants this new one much much more.
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Sounds entirely reasonable to me but then I only enter giveaways for games I want to play - not to farm cards.
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I always felt the spamming entries are a disease. People keep entering for everything just to get a +1. Anything to make users think about which games to enter giveaways for is a + in my eyes. Users are to fixated on leeches imo, i'd rather have a "leech" win my games and play them than someone who's never gonna play the game anyway.
so yeah, +1 from me
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I like the current system of more points per more games as i would like to win the flood of wishlist/good games when a bundle releases.
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No reply in an hour so I'll bite. Why do you think you wouldn't be able to win "the flood of wishlist/good games when a bundle releases" with this change?
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Thanks for reply spiff!
My understanding is since points are limited per hour, so if a HB releases and many people make a short GA, 2-3 hours then might not be able to enter.
I would like to suggest that GA entry be based on the CV value of the game(instead of the full retail value) if point capping is enforced. What do you think about that?
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I'm going to ignore your suggestion, for now, to point out that even if you were unable to join some of the giveaways for a particular game because of the proposed change it would be the same for everyone else, thus your chance of winning would stay the same :)
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And I will state that your reasoning only takes into account situation when all users have full 300P and start joining the same time - in this situation yes, even if you enter less GAs you have same chances to win. But users log in on different times, If you were to log in 2h b4 deal goess live and spend your points, these GAs ended and then deal goes live you are left with a few points and 20P regenerating per hour, when anyone who just logged in have 300P to spend on the same stuff, thus objectively he has higher chance to win these GAs from let's say new monthly.
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You are right. If someone were to spend all their points prior to a deal going live they would have a lower chance of winning, games from that particular deal, than someone who didn't already spend their points. This is independent of the rate of point distribution.
The purpose of a lower point distribution rate is to encourage people to be more selective about the giveaways they are joining.
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I'm all fopr lower point distribution, just flexible one, not static one. That someone in flexible system will still be able to join quite a few, because more GAs = more points (even with lowered distribution), so he will still be able to start entering stuff. With system cg proposed he will be not, because b4 he gets points on the rate of 5p/15min flash GAs will be already over.
In short my proposition is to get to the average similar to what cg is proposing, but with flexible system. So for example at late night when point generation is usually very low you would be actually getting even lower than these 5p/15min but at times of big influx of GAs (like monthly) you will be getting more points.
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I can see the benefits with both fixed and flexible point generation and don't really have a preference for either. Just overall lower point generation rate should be beneficial for the kind of behaviour most of us would like to encourage on SG imho.
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Just overall lower point generation rate should be beneficial for the kind of behaviour most of us would like to encourage on SG imhoJust as I said - I do agree with this, only I see much more benefits in one system over the other thus have a clear preference.
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+1
-it has really become a chore to finish my points and find the game i want to enter
-the only people who would complain are the ones who are in lots of groups and whitelists who i think is naturally always easy for them to win
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Noone forcing you to make it a chore, then you are entering for games you wouldnt really have a full interest in.
Think about bundles ($1 tiers) with a game that's like say 40p, a game someone might really want, now we get alot of points but they also cost 40p to enter, with a cap you might get like 10 entries max a day.
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I only think about how the system would benefit me on a day to day basis. With limitations to points, i would have no reason to spend my time finding the right GAs and yes i am one of those guys where not finishing my points is a headache.
And i don't see a problem with bad games of 40p having just 10 entries. It only means the game isn't worth my time and i'd rather spend it on a game worthwhile
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it has really become a chore to finish my points and find the game i want to enter
You know, it's okay not to use them all. I spend 90% of my time at 300P and almost never go under 200P. I didn't die from it.
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Easy for someone to say who is at lvl 10 and have hundreds of whitelists and groups and have 8k+ plus games on steam. Most of your won games have entries below 100 so why would you even need to spend points when winning is already easy? :v
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The cost for joining a giveaway is the same no matter your level, group or whitelist status. I still need to spend points to join those giveaways. And I don't only join giveaways with a small number of entries, it's just that statistically there's more chances to win these.
As I said, it's okay if you don't spend all your points. If spending your points feels like a chore, it's probably because you're forcing yourself to spend them. I join giveaways for games I'm genuinely interested in and that's it. Sometimes I win, most of the time I don't. But at least, when I do win, it's always a game I'm really happy about.
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I see this as an issue, because users should not need to invest this much time into entering giveaways. People should also not need to wake up in the middle of the night to avoid hitting the point cap.
Its not just about me. The admin raised the issue himself, I am one of those persons who think the admin is correct. And I know I'm stubborn when it comes to points because for many people including me who can't literally buy all games from steam, at least these points gives us a chance to give us hope of getting games in our library. I am thankful even if I win a bad game from here.
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I'm level 7, have only 450 games on steam and 160 wins, 50 games on WL. And I still sit constantly on 300p. Right now I enter into GAs for only 2 games (Styx and HellBlade).
It's just a matter what you want to do with your points. Like if you have 1 - 2k games on your wishlist you can say that you don't have enough points to enter in all games from WL. Or when you want to spend them all, as otherwise you think they're wasted and it's better to win anything than nothing.
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I'm in favour. Increasing the minimum giveaway duration could probably alleviate some of the concerns people might have about this change.
Edit: You could also stop refunding points for manually leaving giveaways to curb point farming. I find it slightly entertaining that, from what I've seen this far, most of the people voicing their concerns about a change like this have considerably more won games than given.
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You could also stop refunding points for manually leaving giveaways to curb point farming.
That would be frustrating, if you just entered a lvl2 giveaway and then a lvl6 giveaway, that you would rather join, pops up.
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Sometimes life can be frustrating. This, however, is one of the times I could easily live with the minor risk of a minor frustration for the greater good :)
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For me, it's currently mildly frustrating missing those giveaways. If I wouldn't be able to enter that many giveaways, that frustration will be bigger.
Just because you don't find it frustrating, doesn't mean it's fine for other people.
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As I said, I would probably find it frustrating as well. However, the rules wouldn't change only for you so your chances of winning would stay the same over all.
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Autojoin bots will be able to join those short giveaways, with low entries. but I will miss them.
Reducing points is supposed to make autojoin bots obsolete, but it won't. I think the giveaway's minimum open time should be increased to 24h.
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So we're no longer discussing not refunding points for manually leaving giveaways?
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Capping entries would just favour entering higher value games and I don't see any point in doing that since they are already favoured enough :P
Edit: I feel like I've been favouring the use of variants of favour lately...
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@Edit makes things even worse for situation I described in reply to you above. It changes the system from "whoever spends more time on SG has better chances" to "whoever happens to be lucky to log in on the right time to spend his points has best chances". At least current situation (no matter how toxic it is) promotes activity (and bots ;p), 2nd promotes only pure luck or living in a timezone when evening happens when Humbles/StealSales goes live.
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least current situation (no matter how toxic it is) promotes activity
Yes, it's my understanding that we generally want to promote activity a bit less to alleviate some of the problems associated with this promotion. We can also look at the situation from another perspective and ask ourselves how much activity it's reasonable to expect from users for them to have equal opportunities to win giveaways.
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I say logging in at most twice a day for a few minutes to quickly spend points and not promoting any more activity in any even the slightest way is not a great way to create active and healthy community. Current situation is bad (as I said, it is toxic) and it gotta change, but going other extremum is no good as well. What cg proposed basically means no promoting of activity at all at the slightest. I say best solution is to tweak current system - have poit regeneration lowered by 1/2-2/3 for all, no point regen from free GAs, reduced point regen from bundle GAs. This way SG will no longer require being a bot or spending most of day for it to be able to spend all points, people will have to think about what they enter and choose carefully, but still most active users will be slightly rewarded, cause they may happen to be online for example during big point influx (but big point influx will not be sth crazy like now 200P per 15min but rather 20-40P per 15min).
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I support the idea of nudging people in the direction of entering only GAs for games they would actually play. In that, you have my full approval and support.
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interesting change, might be affecting few aspects, like number of giveaways rise, but the points remain still, so we will enter less GAs, so we would have to choose more wisely (which is good IMO). I do not think it will get rid of scripts, ppl using them will probably just adjust to the speed of points generating ;/
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The idea with scripts is:
If I reach 300points every 4 hours, I use a script to enter GAs while I am sleeping. -> demand for scripts high
If I reach 300 points every 15h I can do it after waking up manually. -> demand for scripts low
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hmm, did you mean demand is low? :)
but I think it will be high - many users do not care about the site as social place or choose GAs, just prefer to run script and visit only on win
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Jeha but the people using scripts will use them now as well.
But the current situation encourages people that enter as many GAs as they can but right now manually to use a script, since they loose points while sleeping.
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not sure if I understand second sentence correctly...sorry
Anyway, I dont think that most people using autojoin care now or later about loosing points. Just another way of them getting random games...
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Ok, I try to make an example.
I want games for free, nothing more.
So each day after waking up I check this site manually every few hours and enter as many GAs as I can.
But, oh no. Every morning when I wake up I have 300 points and missed maybe 300-600 because of the cap.
No I want to get a bot, that uses my points when I am asleep.
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thanks for the taking time to explain!
yeah, I get it, but in my opinion, users using bot only for the time during /sleeping/ are marginal (just wild guess).
So this change will not change their behaviour. But still I like this change :)
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It's not that simple. Scripts were present on SG even before crazy points regeneration, when there was no point spending 300P every few hours, cause you were not getting 300P overnight. Because scripts are not created only "not to waste points" but also to snipe flash GAs. Remember that most bots are lvl 0-1. 1h lvl 0 GA will have 300-500 Entries, 1 day will have 3000, so scripts enters these 1h flash GAs for best win chances when script user is asleep and would not notice flash GA otherwise.
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Jeha sure.
There will always be users using scipts/bots.
But with reaching the point cap multiple times when sleeping you make bots even more appealing. So more people will thing about using them.
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But cg already said he will be targetting scripts and banning them (see the other announcement). This makes whole situation sound kinda dull. We are changing the system in order to target bots, but we plan to get rid of most of bots anyway before the new system gets introduced. If we are already about to target the bots in just 2 days there is really no point for drastically changing the system to adress something that may not even be a problem anymore.
I do believe that point regeneration should be changed, but it should not be changed in this way as proposed in OP, because it is huge step backwards. Current regeneration is too fast, but it's at least flexible - aka when a lot of GAs are being made you get points to enter them. We should lower regeneration, but not make it stable 5P per 15min, because with stable no matter if it will be 5 or 20P per 15 min you will still have lazy days with not many GAs being made and nothing to enter and you will have great days with lots of great GAs, but this time you will be able to enter almost none of them.
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Hm...
Thats indeed a good point.
So you suggest something like "same as now, but with factor 0.3" (or something similar)?
I think thats a good idea as well.
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I actually suggest much more complicated solution ;p but general idea is yes - make point regeneration significantly lower, but keep iot flexible, so at times when there's a lot of good nonbundle games popping points will do regenerate more (just not as much as now) to give users chance to enter at least some GAs from this flood instead of just maybe 1-2% of these GAs.
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Steamgift+ for a chance of winning every GA without entering or just plain hacking to simply win everything.
Disclaimer: There is no steamgift+ and you can not hack GAs.
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If set to a fixed rate I would adjust the max point cap as well to 24h. (Or even to 30h).
The only difference is, that people only coming here once a day (at irregular times) have the same points at their disposal than bots.
Personally I am above 250 points basically all the time. Only if a game from my wishlist goes into a bundle or there is a huge event.
To go even further.
Why not set the point cap to i.e. 10.000 (or 5000 or 14000) and reset it once a month. This way everyone knows exactly how many point he/she has.
Bot users are out of points in like a few days, while normal users can determine if it's worth entering this GA or rather wait for another good one.
The difficult thing here is to set the cap in a way that people can enter everything they want (if they are picky) or participate in events, but do NOT have "infinite" points.
Do you have statistics about how many points an average person USES (not theoretically gets)?
i.e. setting it to 1000 per month would be shit, setting it to 100k as well.
The only downside is, that "leechers" could just come once a month, enter everything they can and then leave for 30 days. Dunno how much of a problem that would be. But on the other hand that would mean less way "enter everything"/bot people at the end of the month.
PS: Read your "encourage to visit the site" above. Well aren't the new GAs you want to visit encouraging enough? Of course not for the "enter anything" people, but for the rest it should be fine.
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If set to a fixed rate I would adjust the max point cap as well to 24h.
+1
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The only downside is, that "leechers" could just come once a month, enter everything they can and then leave for 30 days. Dunno how much of a problem that would be. But on the other hand that would mean less way "enter everything"/bot people at the end of the month.
How about if the cap is 14000 per month, if you spend all before 20th-25th day or something like that, you'll get -500P deducted from the cap, i.e. 13500 on next month cap.
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This is super arbitrary. Why should you get penalized for slowly finishing up your points over 3 weeks? There might be a bundle with a game you want that released in this period, and you enter every single GA you find.
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this favors only casual users who only enter the site like once a day
i think the current system is good enough
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No, this also favours actual people entering giveaways over bots.
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yeah bots will enter less giveaways obviously, but they will still be used, i guarantee you not a single person who uses bots will stop doing that with the change
also it just restricts people of freely picking what they want to enter
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also it just restricts people of freely picking what they want to enter
Not at all. People would be as free as they are now to pick what they want to enter. They just couldn't join as many giveaways as they are able to with the current system, which is the point of the change.
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also it just restricts people of freely picking what they want to enter.
I don't think so. This is my 5th of 6th month that I didn't have to spend all my points on GA that I wanted to enter with 1000s of unique games given in the site. Rarely I have gone to 0P (during events) in this timeline. And this comes from the guy who has less than 100 games in his library.
I guess you mean "people who want to have +1", rather than "people who want the game to play" by people freely picking what they want to enter. Yeah I am happy with that if it restricts them, at least there will be better chance for people who will play and enjoy the won game.
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I have 5.5k games in hidden, enter only for games that I'm interested in playing, but I still always use all of my points.
Just letting you know that this change won't affect only the people caring about the +1 ;)
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I know, I was speaking of me.., it won't be the same with others or same for everytime with everyone. But still we(entering for games that we are interested) don't have to worry about it at the end of the day because by then we are able to enter all GA for that day or more.
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but isn't cg hoping to get rid of bots anyway even without point changing system (as stated in separate announcment)
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Yes, I believe so. The changes will work in synergy to alleviate the problem with bots :)
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then argumentation for these changes becomes stupid. We are affecting whole community in order to fight something we hope to get rid off before changes even happen. I agree that point regeneration on SG is total shit right now and gotta be changed - but neither this solution is good nor bot argumentation makes sense if there hopefully will be no bots soon enough.
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You are aware that neither of these two changes separately or in combination will completely get rid of bots/exploits right?
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Yes, but we do not know how big the bot problem will be after new changes. If it happens to bewcome much smaller, minor problem on a small scale there is no need to go with extra extreme actions that in a process gonna affect all non-bot community as well only in order to hurt then already minor bot problem even more. If you already got rid of most of the enemy army you don't go atomic on whole region "just to get rid of remaining few killing all civilians in the process".
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The bot deterring effect is just my own observation and is not the reason behind this purposed change as far as I can tell.
I have to wonder how it's possible to get so emotionally engaged in a purposed change like this as to be labeling it as "extra extreme actions" and comparing it to killing civilians by nuking them :P
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"extra extreme actions" - it's an extreme action, as it's extremelly changing the system, it's also not the main way to fight bots, so it's extra for this purpose. extra in this ixample doiesn't mean big but rather ardditional. Like I'll have a pizza with extra cheese.
As for second - it was rather about "goping atomic" phrase than to saying it's the same as killing cililians. It's a massive "atomic" change in order to fight off something that may as well be just not important minority. Civilians in this example are simply normal users who get hit in the process.
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If you already got rid of most of the enemy army you don't go atomic on whole region
Actually implies nuking civilians but that's not important as the comparison you're making still feels a bit over the top to me. Which, as well, is not important, just an observation.
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The change in the points system is partly to reduce the advantage of using a bot over entering manually. Detecting scripts will not catch everyone using them, but this change will make using them less appealing.
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as I said before - I am all for reducing point generation. I agree that points gotta get reduced, I simply disagree with the way cg wants to achieve that
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Do we really want to benefit too much people who have time to sit here all day?
15 hours means that you need to be here twice a day to get most out of site. Which to me seems rather reasonable engagement.
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'With the average giveaway being 10P, that means users would still be able to enter roughly 48 giveaways per day.'
That's great, if people only want 10p games. But if there's a bundled item that normally goes for a lot - say Clickteam Fusion for 100 points or even War for the Overworld at just 30 points, then the amount of games they can enter for drops drastically.
If the points are increasing faster because more giveaways are being made, or because higher-value giveaways are being made, then WHY would you say 'Ok, let's put a hard limit on the points you can gain'? It screws over people who WANT the higher-value item, or who want a game that's medium-value but with a billion giveaways being added.
Oh, there's 100 giveaways of this expensive game? Well, better enter the 10 I'm allowed to enter and watch the rest of them go down the drain!
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Well if you are sleeping while the billion expensive GAs are made, all bots enter them, while you only have 300pts in the morning.
Besides even if my wishlisted games go into a bundle I do run out of points but recover easily, since not all GAs end in 1hour. Many last a couple of days and you can enter them later.
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What I'm trying to say with this post is that a fixed amount of points per month/day doesn't adjust itself based on the value of giveaways being put into the system - if only cheap games are being given away then it will still be too many points and people will still just enter everything, if expensive games are being given away then there won't be nearly enough points to go around.
Maybe something like just... lowering the points each giveaway provides and raising the cap to 500 or something?
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Oh, there's 100 giveaways of this expensive game? Well, better enter the 10 I'm allowed to enter and watch the rest of them go down the drain!
I mentioned something similar above to Gaffi, but would you rather enter 10 giveaways with 100 entries in each, or 100 giveaways with 1,000 entries in each? In both scenarios you have a 10% chance of winning that expensive game, but if you choose the latter, you need to invest 10x the effort.
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I think I would feel worse watching those other 90 giveaways go by knowing I have 0% chance to win them.
After all, you only need one entry into a raffle to win but you can't win if you don't enter at all.
I'm all for encouraging people to enter only for games they want, but deciding the amount of points regardless of what giveaways are available doesn't seem like the way to do it.
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I think I would feel worse watching those other 90 giveaways go by knowing I have 0% chance to win them.
Possibly but that would be irrational and doesn't sound like a good reason to not change the system for something better.
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I see also other disadvantage. Let's take your numbers. In current system, when the bundle starts, I can visit a site once per hour, enter these 100 giveaways and that's it. But if we have constant points many of us will probably be here for hours checking how many entries has each giveaway choosing those with fewer participants. This may cause that we need to spend MORE time to analyze giveaway entries.
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That's one point of view. The other is: I could enter most/all of the giveaways for a game I really really want.
Or with a fixed point rate I'll have to select which to enter. Will I chose the one that ends earlier or the one with the higher level? Oh, I'll have to come back and check, so that I might leave one in the favor of the other. Again. And again.
It's actually less effort to enter as many as possible.
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you only consider situations that user is sitting on a full 300P cap of points. What if user spent all his points a while ago, then a good deal pops up, but he has no points toi enter at all? And as many GAs for such deals are flash GAs he will not have the same 10% chance to enter because he has no points and only regenerating 20P per hour no matter how many of these games he wants got created. So he will have 0% chance to win and just see all these 10/100 GAs ending before his points regenerates.
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to be fair - if that good game comes up, I tend to go to the games that I have entered and remove my entry - to get the points back to enter the one that is ending soonest - it doesn't take much effort to do that - and I am often out of points, so have to do this quite a bit - perhaps the fact that you have so many games and wins might be colouring the way you view things with regards to points - some of us have a lot more games on offer to enter and so use up our points quickly ? just a thought :)
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that's why in my hyp[othethical scenario you did not spend your points 1h ago (you cliuld still leave some of GAs) but 2h ago. If you focused on 1st pages of GAs (which a lot of users does) it's very likely that many if not most of these GAs ended already in these 2 hours.
And if you are low level, with not many wins and not many games - your chances of this is actually much higher that it is for me ;p Because you will have much more GAs to enter which end upo soon than I do ;)
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I am not low level, but I have not been here for a long time, so there is much more for me to enter - so I run out of points regularly, whatever page I look for them on; my point was that you have been here for a while, with a lot of wins and many games, so you may not use points the same as we do (thus your view of the current points situation and means of use, are significantly different to how we view them; and indeed how we choose to use them)
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I was not stating "you" are low level, "if you are low level" was not referring to you specifically but to any hypothethical low level users - these are majority of the website, so majority of the website may be affected in the way I described because they are low level, not many games thus are much more likely to spend more points on stuff ending sooner ;p
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if you say so, but my point, which you did not appear to acknowledge, stands - you handle you points significantly differently to how many users appear to do, thus your usage of points is not similar to many users on this web site (it might have been at one point). We use our points regularly, quickly, and often run out, you might not - thus our view of the current points system and how you might view it are unlikely to correlate. As such, I consider myself to be similar to those of "low level" in the way I use points, in your hypothetical view
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no, you do not appear to acknowledge, that someone may be looking beyond himself and his situation and look at the situation as the whole. The situation I originally described here would never happen to me, cause I have lot of games and wins thus I usually don't have enough flash GAs to spend all my points on, this is situation that may happen to majority of users with low number of games, not to me. Still as I am cap[able of looking further than tip of my own nose I can see that even if something is not affecting me personally but can affect majority of other users in a negative awy it's not good solution, doesn't matter it is not really hurting me myself.
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my point was that your opinion might be coloured by your current situation and ways of actioning upon the site - if not, then okay :) (but given your comments, I believed they were - as mine clearly do in my own terms) - that is looking beyond my own nose, in acceptance of own fallibility :P
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I like the idea of having a fixed amount per month. People will now think more about which giveaways they should join and it will maybe discourage people to use autojoin scripts.
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no, people should be allowed freely to enter whatever they want, not just a restricted amount
also if a person is only joining site once a day why should he be favored over a user that logs in many times in a day
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Why should people violating the site rules and use bots have an advantage over nice people that participate in the community, take their time to read descriptions and so on?
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Why should you be favored if you log in multiple times a day? This is the thing cg wants to prevent, having to spend too much time entering giveaways.
And like I said people will think twice if they really want to enter a giveaway. Too many games froms giveaways are never played and are just adding +1 to a steam account or are won for idling cards.
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I would think we want users on the site more, not just once per day. The reason for visiting should not be making sure points are used, but still...
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But it would still make visiting the site feel like a job the other way, because if someone sees a giveaway and they don't have enough points, they now go into panic mode hoping that they do accumulate enough points before the giveaway ends. It's the same issue as before. You're supposedly trying to reduce stress, which I think is facetious, but if I accept that explanation, then a once a day allowance is better.
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Lower point generation - yes!
But it would be nice if the cap was extended a little bit (maybe 500), so you could save points for a moment when a wishlisted game, which usually costs many points, gets bundled, but the user can't afford the bundle.
With those both changes users hopefully think more about spending the points.
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I have mixed opinions on the potential change. I think that simply changing the cap to 500-1000 would solve the problem. I don't want to enter less giveaways because I thoroughly enjoy entering as many as I do. I do, however have to come often to help ensure I don't hit the cap. Based on your numbers of 7,500 to 45,000, I don't think you should change this because I use as many of those as I can. If the cap is raised significantly, you would still have high traffic without causing this to be a part time job.
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Anything that lowers the incentive of using bots is welcome. But I would very much welcome a change like this out of selfish reasons. Because I enter only very few giveaways and almost all the time have 250 - 300 P available I probably wouldn't even notice any change in point generation. But I probably would notice the better odds for those giveaways I do enter.
So what you said about there would not be an impact on the number of winning, this only holds true if all people would always use up all their points. I don't know how many people there are visiting regularly but not using up their points, but if this portion of users is significant the people who always use up all their points probably will notice a reduced chance of winning.
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Also, the statistics is not a good reason for this, because yeah it increased from 7500 to 45000, but the number of giveaways also increased those times, and now the number of giveaways wont decrease, but points would be restricted
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Every giveaway gave you points, not just the ones you wanted to enter, so the more selective you are in the current system the more excess points you have. Meanwhile bot users and undecive people just enter every giveaway to hoard the games without ever playing them, making your chances to win your wishlisted game lower. Limiting points so one will enter for what they want, instead of what they can enter actually raises your chance to win wanted games.
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but also reduces the number of giveaways for that game you can enter
so i think you actually have less chance to win that game than now
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No, because everyone else has similarly limited options :P
If you enter 30 giveaways with 1000 people then your chances to win is worse than if you enter 15, but with just 300 people each.
Also, the system would prevent people just to enter giveaways because they are bored and then then just idle their wins for cards. HINT HINT, but people who actually want to play them would win ;)
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but you have higher chance to win if you enter 60/80/100/whatever number for a game with 1000 entries, than 15 with 300 entries.
this new system would limit the entries to 15, meanwhile now you can try to win it way more
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But you have a higher chance to win if you enter 30/45/60/whatever number for a game with 300 entries, than 200 with 5000 entries.
This new system raises your odds of winning a game or 2 that someone actually wants to play, while the old system lets people farm 299+ +1's :)
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it doesnt work like that because you cant enter 1 game as much as you want because you have limited points = limited entries
and now if you want a game you can enter as much as you want
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Not all giveaways last for only an hour, and not all giveaways cost 40+P
So yes, it would work how I said it :v
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no, the point is that doesnt matter in what amount of time, you couldnt enter as many giveaways of 1 particular game with new sistem than with current one. if its given away less, it MAY be possible but then you definitely couldnt enter anything else
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then you definitely couldnt enter anything else
Which means less entries and a higher chance to win for other people :)
So under circumstances that we won't have data for until the new system is used, sometimes you might have an overall better/same/worse chance to win a particular game you want (dependant on the popularity of the game), and you definitely would need to be more selective when it comes to entering giveaways.
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I like the idea of a fixed point regeneration, promoting focus on the wanted games is a good direction of change. Also, as everyone would get soimilarly less points, the relative chance of winning would be actually go up, as person X would only compete with other poeple who really want a game, without ones that just use up all of their points to enter whatever they can.
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I think it will be interesting if some public GAs won't get single entry, as it's gonna be super shitty game and people would need points to enter in games from really nice Humble Bundle :thinking:
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I love this idea. Сonsidering high number of cheap crappy 1$ bundle giveaways current point system doesn't decrease lower 200 per day. And it would be more fair for all member of steamgifts, no matter it's 1 lvl or 10 lvl user.
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Hi SG,
I'd like to get some community feedback on the point system. I attached a graph illustrating the number of points users have received monthly, since the site started. As expected, it looks very similar to the graph of giveaways per month, since points are currently distributed based on the number of giveaways being created on the site.
I think the downside of the current system is that we have a very high number of giveaways being created in recent years (this month is the highest on record, with over 4,500 daily giveaways), and this causes some adverse affects towards user experience on the site. In 2013 and 2014, users received an average of 7,500 points per month. This month users will receive over 45,000 points. That means users need to now enter 6x as many giveaways, and visit the site 6x as often just to use all of their points.
I see this as an issue, because users should not need to invest this much time into entering giveaways. People should also not need to wake up in the middle of the night to avoid hitting the point cap. It encourages people to look into scripts for entering giveaways, it takes some fun out of the site, and it turns entering giveaways into a part-time job (we have over one million giveaway entries daily). I'm proposing that we set points at a fixed rate of 14,400 per month, which means 480P per day, or 5P distributed every 15 minutes. With the average giveaway being 10P, that means users would still be able to enter roughly 48 giveaways per day. They would also reach the 300P cap after a reasonable 15 hours, so they do not need to consistently check back to avoid idling at 300P.
This would not impact how often a user wins (gifts are not disappearing). Users would have less points and enter less giveaways, but those giveaways would have higher odds of winning. In short, users would win the same number of games, but need to invest less time into joining giveaways. Fixed points would also come with a couple of other advantages. In the past, points would increase out of control when there was a bundle for a high point game, such as Clickteam Fusion (100P). Instead, points would now remain consistent and predictable for users. The change would also encourage users to focus their points on games they would like to play, which hopefully means users are more happy with the gifts they win in the community.
Please share your thoughts. Thanks.
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