Cloudpunk

Good day, and thank you for taking time to write this! :-)

I believe you are the first one who have written a message like this to me. I appreciate reading this, as I've earlier tried to voice my concerns regarding unappreciative winners. I didn't get much support when I wanted to further restrict entries, by doing things like rising the level or using SGTools to check the amount of wins or the amount of games in the library. I got strong discouragement for this behavior, and that it would effectively kill the site in the long run if everyone did this. But ultimately, it was my choice whether to restrict my giveaways or not, and face the blacklisting.
I was also suggested to use groups, which I have done for a couple of games. Unlucky-7 and PlayingAppreciated are the two I've made GAs for so far, and I have good experiences with them.

I think you are quite right regarding the amount of leeches though. As with most places on the internet, it's full of people who are cynical and just want to exploit everything available so that they can get ahold of things for free... I live with the philosophy that you don't need to be deserving in order to get something for free; you only need to be appreciative. Alas, I believe I should raise the level in order to achieve this. This user statistic you brought up has me convinced!

Again, thank you for the message! :-)

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

i'm in U7 too and working to be a gifter, still missing some GAs for +7
i had a quite lengthy discussion with someone, who is of the same opinion, than your discouraging people and it wasn't fruitful at all.
First of all it would be unrealistic to assume every user on the site uses a level restriction and second, my opinion is that bots and leechers will kill the site, because most people give, because they want something in return, but if you never win, because all giveaways are overcrowded with bots and leechers, then those spendable people will stop doing giveaways and then the site will die for sure, and not from a level 0 who leaves the site, because he doesn't want to pay some bucks to get on a better level
And about blacklisting, for each user i wrote this text to, i got about 1 random blacklisting and not from the person itself, most are really thankful, like you, i only got one negative feedback so far, from the person i had the discussion with and it wasn't even the person, who did the giveaway.
My tip is, don't care about random blacklistings, they usually come from greedy idiots and it won't hurt you and you won't miss out on giveaways, because guess what, greedy idiots don't do giveaways, they even shoot themselves in the foot, because they can't enter your giveaways either

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I agree on all points. My general impression of those who advocate for the GAs to be free for all is indeed greed. Albeit no one is happy to be called greedy, understandably enough, so the opposition is to be expected, I suppose?
I definitely have been whitelisted more than blacklisted, so I take that as a win! Not that I really care much about either, as I rarely enter any GAs anymore. But it's still a relatively nice indicator for whether my behavior is appreciated/unappreciated?

I'm not quite sure how well the site is doing in general, but according to the "new users per month" statistics, I feel like the site is experiencing a downfall? Not sure what the main reason for this is, but I know that I really don't have many reasons to personally leave the platform anytime soon!

I've also considered doing puzzle GAs, as they seem really fun! :-D

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

yes, i like the jigidi puzzles, too
after i started to write the above text to peole, my blacklists exceeded my whitelists, but i don't care, because i think i won't miss out on any GAs, because of stated reasons

2 years ago*

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I think that's true. It's unfortunate that it has become like this, but we need to try and actively keep the community clean and genuine. People have various ideas about how this is done, but I think this is as good effort as any :-)

Regarding puzzles, I felt really inspired by this post, and I want to make something like this:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/TLR8m/zelgh-magic-guide-to-basic-sg-puzzling-update-october-2017

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

oh, you mean this sort of puzzle, these give me headache each time ^^

It's the internet after all and we all know it's a bad place generally speaking

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yeah, they give me headaches too, but it's kind of fun in an annoying way, just like playing Dark Souls! :-D

Very true... I guess the only way to make it a little less bad is by making some efforts here and there every now and then, just like this :-)

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

i always right my "thank you" messages manually :I

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

imagine writing thank you for every GA you enter, that's just insane, plus most receivers find it quite annoying and some even blacklist you for it

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

He/she has entered a couple thousand more entries than you over the course of 6 years, so I don't believe it's that much of a hassle, honestly :-)
But when it comes to people being bitter and blacklisting people for saying thank you, I feel like it's not that big of a loss really? :-)

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

i think it depends how much GAs you do, if you do only one once in a while, those thank you messages aren't bothering much, but if you do GAs regularly, they're getting annoying fast

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I can see how it can be, but personally, I just skim through the unread messages and mark all as read every now and then. If there's anything other than a thank you, I tend to reply :-) It doesn't take very long to do this, and I find it to possibly be community building, so I don't really mind seeing all the messages stream in :-)

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

its just a few seconds typing though?
and maybe thats just me but i only enter GA's for games i want to play so i dont see it as a hassle and while i certainly cant keep up with every response from people entering the GA's i did, i certainly thought it was a nice feeling if more people commented at least something but hey, maybe thats just me :>

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

if you don't enter so much GAs thats okay, but be warned, some people blacklist you for it

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

oh yeah, i think i have been blacklisted by a few people because of that, at least my stats say i am on some blacklists and i assume its due to that.

and i also get your point, leveled GA's do attract proper people instead of bots/scripters as it seems, i always thought though that level 0/1 GA's also give at least a chance to people that absolutely have no money to spare and give them a nice treat too, even if the chances are very slim but yeah, its a sad state :I

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

well, my point is, everyone can spare some Cents to get to level 1 at least
If you can't afford that, i guess free games are your least problem

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

HappierParsley

ctrl+c ctrl+v - basic internet 101

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I appreciate that people are in fact grateful for the GAs, but when they are surrounded by scripters it kind of makes you invisible/unrecognizable, unless you take the time to write a longer and more personal message while at it. It's unfortunate that it has come to this, and I don't know what can be done to help it... :-/
Not that I really use the whitelist much, but I'll add you while I have you here :-)

2 years ago

Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.