Point Distribution

I also like the current system. Maybe the point cap can be set up to 450.

+1

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

View attached image.

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?

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

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

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 :)

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

but isn't cg hoping to get rid of bots anyway even without point changing system (as stated in separate announcment)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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