Did any one of guys guys actually read my post? Sorry if I didn't make myself clear, English isn't my native language. But it really seems like you missed the point entirely.
I know, that the chance of winning each entry is number of copies divided by number of entries at the time the entry closes.
I'm talking about displaying the average somewhere!
Right now we have a lot of whining if people entered a couple hundred competitions without winning and it's already considered "unlucky" to not win anything after 200-300 competitions ... at the same time the average chance of winning anything appears to be somewhere less than one in onethousand. That's a rather huge discrepancy.
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Judging by just the forum threads of the last couple days ... yeah, you certainly do:
http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/OErKY/155-raffles-and-none-won
http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/8eygm/i-have-never-won-anything-in-my-entire-life (after 56 entries)
http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/QZljK/luckiest-guy-here (talking about the "unluckiest" members with 300 entries and no wins - there even appears to be a Steam self help group for those "unlucky" people)
My point is, tell the people something like: "You entered 56 raffles with a total average chance of winning of 1:1378" ... maybe that stops at least some people from whining after not winning after entering 50 raffles.
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There's no "self-help" group, as you call it. It's a group for people with high numbers of entries and 0 wins + $5 contributed to the site to have a better chance at winning through private giveaways held by site members.
"Self-help" just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth :P
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Yes, I was teasing a bit. I was just trying to show that "300" really isn't that high of a number considering the actual, somewhat realistic public giveaway odds.
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I understand. This site is incredibly well executed and I can only imagine the amount of work it took.
That's why my suggestion - and it's little more than that, not even a request or anything, just spit-balling ideas here - should take little more than a single SQL query and just a couple lines of simple code. Just about all the data necessary is already present and even mostly presented to the user. Really, not much work at all.
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I posted these numbers earlier, and it was around 1/300 for public giveaways, and 1/20 for private giveaways from what I recall. I'll try to get more numbers on the statistics page with real-time information, how the odds are changing over time, etc.
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I just looked at the statistics and, yeah, the number for public odds appears to be stagnating between 1/300 (.3%) and 1/400 (.25%).
However, those are rather skewed numbers as it also reflects take the massive amounts of "COGS" and "Portal" giveaways into account ... often with less than 10 entries per raffle since by now it is an achievement to not have one of those games. The odds per individual should be much, much different an probably closer to .01% for most.
Ob a little side note: Does anyone know why Portal and Cogs are handed out like candy?
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Everybody who preordered portal 2 got portal for free, and since everybody already had it from when it was free for a few weeks (march 2010, launch of steam for mac) a lot of people had a lot of pointless extra copies lying around. It is quite an accomplishment to not have portal by now since recently it was free again for two weeks or so.
Many people bought cogs as a part of the potato pack, a pack of indie games that was released shortly before portal 2 launched. then the humble bundle 3 (i guess) came along and with it came cogs, usually you don't get extra copies but for some weird reason some people received extra copies of cogs. i for example just gave mine away here because there is no point keeping it imo
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Ah, thanks for the explanation. But you're right, it's "quite an accomplishment to not have portal" or cogs for that matter by now ... that's why every giveaway of each skews the numbers for public giveaways. Actual chances of winning something worthwhile are much slimmer.
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well if you enter giveaways with only a couple hundred entries all the time, you'll have to enter less giveaways on average before winning than if you enter giveaways with a couple thousands entries all the time.
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I'm rather surprised to see that people consider themselves unlucky if they haven't won anything after entering a couple hundred contests (there even seems to be Steam group that currently considers the magic number 300, other reply with "some people haven't won anything after entering 500 times"). The real number of entries to wins should actually be much higher and is constantly increasing with the amount of active users on the site. Just a very rough look at the number of entries on recent closed contests suggests, that the chances of actually winning one is very roughly 1‰, probably even much less - I couldn't find any useful numbers on this site but a lot contests close in the four digits.
That means less than 1 in 1000 entries wins anything. So if you entered 1000 contests and "only" won a single time, then you're just about average. For every lucky bastard who wins on his or her first attempt, someone else enters 1999 times without winning anything. These numbers will also only increase the more users are active on this site.
However, the more people are active on this site, the more offers there are. At the same time this also decreases the chances per entry even further. If the ratio of users to contests created stays the same, with an increasing number of users the chances for the individual also stay the same, but it becomes more time consuming - or more fun (I actually rather enjoy it) - to enter contests.
Either way, it would be neat have some statistics about the individual chances on the accounts page (considering that chances vastly differ if one only spends points on 3 week Call of Duty 7: Modern Battlefield Ops 3 giveaways or only on 1 hour "Dr. Daisy Pet Vet" contests).
This should be really easy to do, simply display the average of the entries of all closed contests per user on the "account" page (not sure if the database tracks how many copies are given away, but "one" seems to be by far the most common anyways, so it shouldn't affect the number too much).
Well, maybe, just maybe a little info like: "Your current chance of winning is about 1 in 1378" will discourage users to whine about their terrible luck after not winning after entering 50 contests ... statistically speaking they won't win anything for the next 1328 entries either.
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