Fantastic change! Thank you so much!
And for the many naysayers who kept finding ridiculous reasons why this would "never be implemented", I think it's lunch time...
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Well good another this for SG. How about ST?? Add at least avoid scammers function at least $100 limit or anything? Blacklist would be good too.
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Just wondering, if their value is reduced to 0, does that mean that the entry value is 0, too?
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Good point. This would favor auto-joiners.
It would probably be good to have a quota for the total number of GAs entered daily (e.g. 300).
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There are suspensions for autojoiners already. It all depends how excessive they are.
Its actually next to impossible to verify if someone is using well done script or joins by hand.
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But, I'd imagine most are using not too well-made scripts that would be easy to detect. I suspect there are other reasons for not doing anything. Honestly, now when I think about it, I'm not even sure if it's against the rules to use autojoiners.
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not really - all it takes is one very simple line of code for script to join in random time intervals, so ytou can have "not too well-made" script with random timers so not automatically detectable. It's harder to write script itself than to write random timer line, so any script, even worst one, can easilly have it ;)
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Yes but I don't think they have, this is my point. I'm sure there are some "clever" people out there creating all sorts of semi intelligent automation but the stuff readily available to the masses, I don't know about those :)
But like I said earlier, I'm not even sure it's against the rules. I just know it's frowned upon by the community and rightfully so imho as it's creating a big advantage to those using them. Increasing the minimum giveaway duration or decreasing point generation would alleviate this advantage a bit. Adding random captchas seem to have been discussed and discarded as a solution though.
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they have ;) script pages got updated with said info right after 1st wave of suspensions ;)
I know it was stated by Support bots are against the rules, but idk what their policy on them is at the current time. Sadly solutions like increasing GA creation and decreasing point regeneration while hurting bots would also hurt normal users as well, and general consensus was that any solution implemented should not be affecting fair users in order to fight with bots (so for example no captcha upon entering GA)
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It's probably been discussed before but how would increased giveaway duration hurt normal users?
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easilly - if we do not count the bots (which are breaking the rules anyway so should not be caounted) the more active you are on SG the better chances to win you have because the more flash GAs you are able to notice and enter. Having 1h long GAs rewards active users - someone who log in only once a day or few times a week will spot much fewer flash GAs, and since flash GAs have less entries someone who joins them will have better chance at winning them. So if for example we will raise minimum timer of GA to 24h we will no longer be rewarding active user, cause even someone who logs in just once a day for few minutes to spend their points will still have overall win the same # of games on avg as comparable user who is very active, spends a lot time on SG (and also is viewing a lot more of ads if he's not adblocking), thus normal active users will be hurt in the process.
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Ah, I see. Some people prefer an unfair system to have a possible edge over others for some giveaways. It's quite obvious now that you're pointing it out.
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Excuse me - I go explaining while OBJECTIVELY for everyone (not just for me) something would be unfair - your response - personal accusation/shaming. What you propose is unfair but that's just a side note - cause when explained to you why, you do what any "#¤ does when presented with argument - ignore it and go with personal attack.
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What? I don't know why you're taking my comment personally but there's no denying it's unfair
Edit: I think I understand where this conversation went wrong now. You consider having an edge over others for being active is fairer than everyone having the same chance. I'm for everyone having the same chance regardless of their ability to scan the giveaway section 24/7
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>>Some people<< prefer an unfair system to have a possible edge over others for some giveaways. It's quite obvious now that >>you're<< pointing it out.I don't know why you're taking my comment personallyIsn't it quite obvious?
Please...
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I still don't get why you're taking it personally but since you are. I'm now telling you that it is not a personal attack at all.
Edit: You have not even been telling me about your personal stance on this during our conversation. I had to infer it through your reaction.
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as for edit - then the people who can only visit SG once every 2 days will be on disadvantage, if GA min duration will be 2-3 days then people who only visit on weekends will have disadvantage. Oh and they also cannot spend all points as they hit 300P in 2 days max, so to give everyone same chances let's make points not limited at all. But hey - people who are on SG only once a month will have disadvantage - so all GAs should be month long. But hey, what about a people who onbly visit SG on Xmas? They are getting screwed - so all GAs should run all year long... See where it's going and why I don't agree with your definition of unfair? Because with your definition of unfair it is impossible to ever be fair to everyone, cause someone will always be getting screwed over. Also no fair user is able to scan GA section 24/7, only bots can, ppl need to sleep/eat/work etc. But I do not see active users having better chances as something unfair. With same principle you could say any forum GA/train/puzzle is unfair, because it gives forum-active users unfair advantage over people who don't visit forums. It is not unfair. Is it advantage? Yes. But advantage does not mean unfair. Advantage based on your activity, visiting forums, level is not unfair, it's rewarding activity. Advantrage based on using bot to hunt flash GAs 24/7 without any actual activity on your part and only visiting SG yourself when you get mail saying you won something is unfair for counterexample.
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To get back to where this conversation started. I would consider normal users to have the ability to visit the giveaway section to check if there are any giveaways they would like to participate in at least once a day under normal circumstances.
This is roughly what I would consider normal usage and I'm not counting myself among these since I'm, at least lately, visiting the site a lot to read and spam the forum. Shorter giveaway durations would probably benefit me because of this but I still think it would be better to give more people a chance to join giveaways. But then again, I feel a bit weird joining giveaways with few entries or whitelist giveaways and I can't bring myself to accept gifts from people I don't know, so I understand why my opinion would be in minority.
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It is not benefiting me either - like I said elsewhere some other time - only 11% of my won GAs are public GAs, excluding mass GAs, excluding high level GA's I'd say maybe 2-3% are all lower-mid level public GAs, flash GAs are even smaller %, so it's not really abouot what profits me (I could easilly stop following forum, stop checking GAs list, stop being active at all, just stick to groups and enter whatever gets posted in group GA thread and I'd still win more than vast majority of this site, so really really it's not about protecting some sacred status quo that's letting me win a lot). It's simply about the fact that I don't see nothing wrong with different users having different approach to the website and because of that getting different results from it (as long as these are these actual users and not bots/scripts pretending to be them). Someone enters only AAA stuff cause they want to win big - they will win much less than someone entering small niche games, is it unfair? No, it's this user choice. Someone dedicates a lot of time to solve a hard puzzle - they get a big chance to win a GA, while other user enters only publics and have much lower chance. Is it unfair? I say no. Someone frequently attends forums so see a lot of private gAs there - does it mean he has unfair advantage over public users? I say no. I could go on and on giving these examples, but I think these 3 say enough - long story short: different users, different approaches, some which require more activity/effort gets rewarded (same as hunting flash GAs) and I don't think having different chances based on your involvement is something unfair. And same as these examples - someone checking website let's say 6 times a day having very slightly better chance to win some flash GA than someone logging in once a day for a short while is not unfair either. At least in my eyes.
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Just to clarify, as I can see I choose an odd way of putting it earlier, I said that the current system is probably more beneficial to me with my current ability to attend giveaways than longer durations would be.
- someone checking website let's say 6 times a day having very slightly better chance to win some flash GA than someone logging in once a day for a short while is not unfair either.
Even if I wouldn't consider this unfair, this very slightly better chance, as you put it, to active users comes at the price of a major benefit for botters, as I see it.
I can agree that there would be both benefits and disadvantages with increasing the minimum duration but I think it would be beneficial for more "normal" users than not.
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and as I put (and not just me but staff as well) fighting rulebreakers cannot come at cost of normal users. Even if you deal major (even if I wouldn't call it major - in comparison I'd call it average advantage over active user - after all points are limited) hit to botters if it comes at cost of also dealing average of even minor hit to fair active users - I say no. To put it into perspective - even beter way to deal with bots - and not just "major" but "total" way aka getting rid of them on SG altogether would be to put captchas on SG. Also this solution would be much less invasive than what you propose - still same GA rules and GA timers, only having to solve captchas every 10 GA's let's say. But still it was denied because it would be dealing with bot problem by introducing system that would be only slightly problematic to normal users. If this was denied I say having system that is imho more disadvatageous to normal active users is a no go, especially as unlike captchas it wouldn't get rid of bot,m only make them less profitable.
I think it would be beneficial for more "normal" users than not.Maybe to overall numbers, as SG at average has more not-so-active users who just comes and join GAs, but it would be less beneficial to core of this community - active users. In general current situation is: Bots have advantage, Active users have advantage, less actiove users don't have advantage. Your solution to this system is making all bots, active users and less active have no advantage, and imho it is not a good solution, because while hitting bots a bit (not getting rid of them) you also hit pesople who least deserve it - the ones who are fair and active, who dedicate their time to this website and community and in return they should be told "you are bad ones! you should be put together with all less-active-ones! it's the only fair way!".
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Point's are limited but I'd wager that normal users don't even spend 10% of all the points accumulated, like bots and to a lesser extent active users.
I'm all for captchas but as I understand that's not likely to happen either because it would be an inconvenience for active users :P
I don't think increasing minimum giveaway duration would "hit" fair and active users as you put it, but that is, of course, my way of seeing things. I'm a wee bit surprised that you consider a more level playing field with regards to the ability to join giveaways as unfair. And even if one would care deeply about one's ability to join more giveaways than another because they are able to spend more time looking for them, there are still levels and groups to give active members this advantage.
- the ones who are fair and active, who dedicate their time to this website and community and in return they should be told "you are bad ones! you should be put together with all less-active-ones! it's the only fair way!".
This is probably hyperbole but it's easy to get the impression that you consider less active people being "bad ones".
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I do not consider less active people "bad ones". Only ones I consider "bad ones" on SG are massive rulebreakers, ultra-leeches, bots and maybe 3 or 4 selected individuals ;) I simply see nothing wrong with rewarding most active people with a few flash GAs they get chance to enter.
To put it into perspective - I wouldn't consider B or C student a "bad student", I would only consider E-F student a bad student. But while not considering B-C students bad students I would still have nothing against for rewarding straight-A student in some small way. Does it mean I think B and C students are bad students? Not at all. Rewarding straight-A student does not indicate that everyone but him are bad students ;) For example in my country best students at the end of the schoolyear get a free book/album/encyclopedia etc. It's not something major, it's not a "big advantage/reward" but it's something nice to get and it does encourage some students to try harder. Does it mean that giving one book once a year to best students is penalizing all other students? In my opinion - nope, it's just a motivation, big enough to be nice, small enough to not be unfair to others ;)
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Isn't being an A student enough reward in and of itself though?
Also, there's a big difference between
I simply see nothing wrong with rewarding most active people with a few flash GAs they get chance to enter.
and
and in return they should be told "you are bad ones! you should be put together with all less-active-ones!
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Where is the "big difference" (beside in putting 2 sentences together, taken out of context, as I explained specifically what I mean). To explain said context - In sentence A I presented current situation - slight and small motivation and small reward for activity, in situation B I presented what you proposed - not only not even small reward, but also no motivation at all for less active ones to become even a little more active. Why is A a bad thing in your eyes while B beigh so much better?
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B is hyperbole used as an argument. No sane person would utter those lines
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maybe 1st part is a hyperbole, but 2nd part, conclusion is not - it is basically what you propose - active users being put on the same level as less active ones, denied whatever small reward they had for their activity - it's neither enouraging activer users to remain active not less active to become more active if they can. (and if they cannot it's not a big deal in the end - like said before, it's small advantage, not massive reward, but it's something and it will always be better than nothing).
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It's true, I don't see much of a problem with having a level playing field in this regard and as I said, there's still levels and groups and whitelists for active members to benefit from.
It's not like you have to do anything particularly beneficial for the community to get this "small reward" either. You just have to sit by your computer and refresh active giveaways once in a while and I wouldn't exactly deem this as worthy of any particular reward :P
But, yes I know, we disagree on this
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Maybe instead of detecting there should be a daily quota for the number of GAs one can enter (in addition to points). Encouraging people to be more selective would only benefit this site.
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I'm against any restriction that would hit actual users as well. If someone wants spend all his points and can, he should be able to.
No point in having two systems doing basically the same job.
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The point is that auto-joiners still abuse this site, and the points system alone is not enough. If you reduce points to 100, for example, would negatively affect many users who don't auto-join.
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Solution is to raise points to around 700 ;-)
1 full day of point accumulation
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Btw, what is exactly so wrong about auto joiners? Except cg probably misses out on adverts from them, but so he does from everyone using ad block and cba to add sg to whitelist.
I don't think they're worth much of cg time.
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The main thing with auto-joiners is that they hurt the chances of those who are more selective about which game enter and are actually interested in playing the game rater than just farm it for cards. It might not matter to you who wins your GAs and what they intend to do with the game, but it does to many GA creators.
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Who says auto joiners join all GA?
Who says manual joiners only join games they intend to play?
Don't think its that simple.
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Who says auto joiners join all GA?
Who says manual joiners only join games they intend to play?
You're attributing to me things that I didn't say. I suggest you re-read what I actually wrote.
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Auto joiners hurt chances of others... - so does manually entering games
Others who are more selective about games which they enter - then there are others who manually enter GAs which they care little for
It might not matter to me who win my GAs, but it might matter to others.. - should method of entering ga matter or intention toward the game?
I really fail to see how auto joining hurts spirit of this community. You want to play games, you enter GA's. You want other to play games (or any other reason) you create GA's.
Again, the issue is with what ppl do with won games, not how they enter them imo.
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Auto joiners hurt chances of others... - so does manually entering games
Are you actually claiming that the odds of those who use auto-join scripts that run 24x7, and those who manually enter giveaways are the same?
Others who are more selective about games which they enter - then there are others who manually enter GAs which they care little for
Are you actually claiming that the intention of playing won games is the same between those who use auto-join scripts and those who enter manually?
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-
No, But does that make autojoiners wrong? Public GA are lying there waiting for ppl to enter them. There are ways to restrict GA for ppl you prefer. Some work better (wl group ga) some less (ga lvl's thanks to cv padding groups - which is my personal biggest pain on this site, but few seems to care)
-
Probably not, but does it matter? It should matter what each user want to do with the game, not which group of users have more ppl with honest intentions so we can block the other.
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noone, still they are able to join more (and on more times) than a fair user, thus have higher chance to win and users who don't do sutojoin have lesser chance.
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Users living in regions with better GA creators also have better changes of winning.
Only way to make this "fair" it to build autojoiner into site itself, so everyone have easy access to it.
The big issue actually are GA creators that cba to check their winners and feed more games to those who don't activate their wins. Cut them off and they will die out eventually.. At least one can hope.
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your argument is invalid - even autojoiner lives in some region, so subjectively autojoiner from better region will have better chances than autojoiner from worse region, same as non-autojoiners from respectable regions. At thge other hand overall autojoiners will have better chances than no-autojoiners, actoss all regions, across all levels etc. You cannot counter overall objective argument with very specific subjective situation. First apply to all, 2nd to small % of population.
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I was more referring to short time GA's not region restricted ones.
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While built in autojoining might sound like an excellent idea there's a pretty obvious reason for why this will never happen which I, as usual, couldn't see at first too until it was pointed out to me. The site wants people to be active to generate traffic and ad revenue.
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Wait, can you actual report them to support and they would get banned? Because I know of at least 2 obvious ones (joins and comments on 3 giveaways in less than 3 seconds kind of people) >.>
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This doesn't have to be "autojoiners" though, just something like ESGST with comment ability. I doubt they would get banned and suspect the only reason they were in the past was that they affected the server in a very negative manner.
Leaving these automated comments behind is infuriating and when pointed out these users are almost alway very rude. I even had one laughing at me because of a spelling error :S
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It is 100% not ESGST (I blacklisted both before ESGST even had this feature), might be something else, but I am pretty sure its autojoin. Not gonna bother reporting them then as I already have 11 users reports open right now.
I don't understand what those people are trying to achieve with those comments other that annoy other people with useless notifications.
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There's a lot of scripts with the same feature as ESGST and I suspect they have been around since long before my time here even. Leaving automated messages seems stupid beyond comprehension to me but there's probably some aspect I'm not aware of, as usual.
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3 years ago people got bashed as ungrateful for not leaving comments ;-)
That made auto reply scripts appear. With SGv2 2 years ago notifications got added and the spam become annoying.
Situation switched to nearly no comments now.
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Ah, this was before my time here. Still, I have to wonder what makes people think that automated commenting is any way of showing gratitude. I'm glad this changed because I'm already a wee bit annoyed at all the, in my mind, useless junk people leave behind everywhere :P
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automated commenting is any way of showing gratitude
it wasn't automated at first and longer for most
still fairly pointless
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CV was never connected to entry point in the first place.
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It always was :) CV is 100% (non-bundled) or 15% (bundled) of the USD price of the game, and the entry points are equal to the USD price of the game.
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How is it connected?
You just contradict yourself. Entry point is connected to store price, whatever CV is set.
Or if you prefer, not directly connected. They are based on same thing but each have ich own "modificators"
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Connection doesn't necessary means to be equal to something, you know :) That's about contradicting myself :P
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Yeah, were getting too deep into philosopy.
CV and Entry Points can change independently.
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Well maybe it's a pointless argument, to begin with, but the fact remains. CV and Entry Points are connected and it's a rather simple connection
It's either CV = Entry Points or CV = 0.15(Entry Points). The fact that there are other variables involved doesn't mean there's no connection.
I'm curious about why you keep insisting that there's no connection and I suspect that you are arguing from a different definition of connected than adam1224 and I. Feel free to ignore this if it's not as interesting to you as it is to me though. :)
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There is no connection in original point because lowering CV does not affect entry points in any way
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Like I said, just because there are other variables involved doesn't mean there's no connection :)
CV not affecting Entry Points, if one chose to view it like that, doesn't mean that there's no connection either. It's just that we think of CV as derived from the Entry Point value, among other things, and not the other way around. So I can kind of see where you're coming from here.
However, your initial statement was "CV was never connected to entry point" and later on "CV and Entry Points can change independently" which is simply not true.
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You're messing with me, right? One citation is your whole post and the other is everything that's pertinent to this discussion. How is this taken out of context?
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No I was not, and now I'm completely not interested as well.
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The no value games would be good to be in a different section on the main page
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Why? CV only matters for GA creators. Those who enter only care about games right?
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I had felt the same last year as NukaColaQuantum (when considering whether they should allow giveaways of once-free games) because I was concerned that I'd see a flood of giveaways, but then I started marking games as hidden if I'm not interested in them. As a result, zero-value games, like all games, will fall into one of three categories for me:
- I have the game, so it's already hidden.
- I want the game and I missed the opportunity to get it for free, so I want to see the giveaway.
- I'm not interested in the game, so either I click the "Hide All Giveaways of..." icon or it's already hidden because I have seen it before and hidden it before. Most games given away for free have been in a bundle before, so I've probably seen giveaways for them and marked them as hidden when I did a check for new giveaways or saw it in a train.
At first, I didn't use this feature and paged through the giveaways list unfiltered. Now, I've got over 5000 games marked as hidden. There was an initial binge of marking games to ignore, but after that, I hide maybe half a dozen a day, depending largely on bundle releases. It takes two clicks (one to ignore, one to confirm - you can set it to one click in ESGST). My "All" view is just two pages long, and when a new giveaway appears in my New view, the odds are fair it's something I'm interested in.
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I'm missing the point. How does that relate to creating new category for CV free games?
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The concern over CV free games (at least as I had felt it, and I assumed why NukaColaQuantum feels it) is that zero CV games would flood the giveaways list, particularly the All and New views. We see that happen when new bundles are released, and I assume we'll see a rush of new giveaways when a game is first available en masse as a freebie. If the don't end up spamming the giveaways list, then is there a need for a separate section for them?
If you adopt the habit of marking as hidden every game you come across that you won't be interested in winning, however, the majority of zero CV games will already be hidden from view even before they fall into that category.
For example, IndieGala is currently giving away "Defend the Highlands" (toward the bottom of the page). It was given away in a bundle months ago, so I had already encountered it and marked it as hidden when it was a reduced value game. As a result, even if there is a flood of giveaways for it that would have previously made me think, "Ugh, these freebies should go into a separate section," I don't because I already don't see it.
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in general I think hiding GAs you don't like is always a better solution than having hidden (aka separated) category for all freebies, because even if most of freebies are shovelware material worth only for cards or +1 to bibrary there are also very good games among them - Dark Souls, SUPERHOT, SpeedRunners, Red Solistice and so on and on - are all great games, if you don't own them you may wish not to skip on them or be forced to dig through endless trash to find a few gems.
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I have my wishlist updated, and i generally enter only in the ga of the games that i have in wishlist.
Few time i see the main page if i try a game that interest me, if yes, i add on my wishlist.
I think is plus fast in this way.
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Nice, there were many good games excluded from GAs.
But this also makes the number of gibs created/won kinda meaningless, I can already see SGtools giveaways restrictions being purelly CV based.
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Dead by Daylight just recently on Alienware but needed user level 10
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And still took like two months for the 10k keys to find anyone who was interested in it.
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It is but it also were 10k keys, so a bit too much
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A few possibly, but trade demand and resell prices are fairly high. I'd expect most keys used up by now.
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Resellers on the trade forums pay 2-4 keys (4-8 USD) for it since it can be sold easily for 12-15 dollars on the grey market.
The irony is that the key drop was obviously trying to find new people to play as the daily player count was around 15k already. And while the key drop helped, only for a week or two, the player base is still stagnating at best.
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terrible idea if they:
+1 creators' sent games
are 0p to enter
btw, i still wonder why sg shows raw instead of real cv...
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Points to enter is based on the steam store price, not the CV, so they should cost a "normal" amount to enter despite being worth nothing to the giver.
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at least autojoiners won't get those games for free.
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Incrementing the creator's sent games count would be fine if the percentage of free games will be shown too.
Apparently these giveaways do cost points to enter.
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that's overcomplicated, no +1 for free games should be the way to go.
with this change ALL info shown by sg in profiles is "fake".
raw cv and won:sent are utterly useless.
besides, it gives free-games farmers even more reasons to leech like crazy to stockpile on keys.
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I agree. I really like to be able to give away free games now, probably have some bundle keys I can upload now, but I don't think they should go in my "sent" games total. Just make it like it never happened from a stat standpoint, but still lets people win some games. If I win a free game it should probably go in my won games total though, imho. No huge deal though.
I've actually been activating some of those non-giveaway keys on my steam account just because I couldn't create giveaways.
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that's overcomplicated, no +1 for free games should be the way to go.
I don't think it's overcomplicated. What's so difficult in showing:
Gifts Sent: 450 (of which 92% were free)Alternatively having a separate count would work too:
Non-free Gifts Sent: 36
Free Gifts Sent: 414with this change ALL info shown by sg in profiles is "fake".
raw cv and won:sent are utterly useless.
Do you know for a fact that free games are counted towards CV or Sent count? I don't think they should, but they should be credited somehow. Many of the games on the "free" games list are much better than some bundle fodder that gives CV.
Since GAs for free games consume points like any other GA, I don't think they change anything with regards to users "stockpiling keys".
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it is overcomplicated, your explanation just confirms it.
no free games counted = remain as it is now
count free games = work on a new system and show even more info that people don't know what it is.
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Everything will be complicated to some people. I'm convinced that for the majority of users, this would not be complicated and will be beneficial.
But at the end of the day, it's up to cg to decide how to deal with it. I'm glad that in the general subject of free games he listened to common sense and not to the endless comments from naysayers every time the subject came up. I trust that he'll to the right thing when it comes to the finer details of such GAs.
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It's not really complicated, it's redundant. Why to have a stat to show something that's weightless and will be ignored as it's from an amorph list of mostly trash?
Also the problem with you saying that many games were better is a brutal minority - people mentioned less than 2-3 dozen of those games, while CG's post mentions more than a thousand of blocked free games - giving recognition for the trash because of the 2-3 percentage of good games is absurd
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It's not redundant, because it displays a different value. Why display both? Because people who give free games still provide a service to the community and should be credited, yet it should not interfere with metrics used by other users and groups.
Yes, I agree that the majority of free games are not great, but the same is true for thousands of games on Steam that were never free. Among the 10000+ games there, probably half are not better than the typical Steam game that was once given free.
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And just to clarify - I don't think free games should count towards the creator's CV. I'm just arguing that they should be counted, because they do provide value.
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an amorph list of mostly trash
certain lists want to have a word with you ;-)
giving recognition for the trash because of the 2-3 percentage of good games is absurd
I have the feeling that applies to bundles as a whole and basically the complete steam catalog too
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What was exactly your goal with this comment, besides taking things out of context and then try to be witty while saying what I also did say?
more than 1000 removed items, and a list of 53 games/dlc (~5%) that's good - that's exactly what I said. Mostly trash. And it is an amorph list because as soon as you start to treat every past-free game as a list of it's own, Dark Souls and Metro 2033 will be exactly in the same category as Woodle Tree Adventures or The Deer.
And by giving recognition you know that I meant. Would you pat everyone's shoulder who gave away 19 kinds of different shit games, improving their stats because Dark Souls was free? Because this is what it means, messing up a system's 100% based on 5 percentage of it. Also, I just don't knwo what to take your second sentence for, how is that relevant, or connecting to anything here?
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try to be witty
huh, I simply tried to converse it in a friendly manner, I don't even know, would it be better to be mean or something? ┐(‘～` )┌
what to take your second sentence for
Would you pat everyone's shoulder who gave away 19 kinds of different shit games, improving their stats
Doesn't that apply to nearly all games given out already? That a whole lot ranges between barely bearable to plain junk but does improve stats just the same?
A game like Talos Principle is in the same (bundle) list like Uncrowded or any other of the many hundreds and thousands of crappy or trashy titles.
All you mentioned is already happening with bundled games too. That was all what I meant.
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Yes, that's why we use number of sent-won, CV, and realCV as different measurements to classify those. But for free games giving 0 CV they are absolutely the same, giving 0 cv and giving (or not) to sent stat. Any other game has a different way to balance the differences between them, even if it's only from their price difference.
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I think free games still give (raw) cv, just no real-cv.
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Anyways, I really wanted to say yesterday that "but free games are free, while others at least cost money" then I rather thought not to post it, thinking about the 3-4 cent games from the russian site... Some people are still bringing up arguements that " costing any money is still infinitely more expensive than 0" but at the same time a 60$ game worth the same +1 as a 4 cents one while costing 1500 times more, and if we don't "support" people who pay a lot to to have more than a +1 given, then we really shouldn't overcomplicate a system to make difference between free and 10-cent games
This is a fairly complicated way to say that I'm not hapyp that you pointed this out because now I feel like we have a bad and a worse system to choose from, and I hate that :D But you were right
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terrible idea if they:
+1 creators' sent games
Agreed.
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I've been wondering when you guys were going to do this since taking games off the list just because they were free for a few days or because they went on some crazy low sale in Russia seemed like too strong of a reaction. With that said, I'll probably have to hide a lot of these games now that they'll be showing up since a lot of the free giveaway games are lower quality.
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Since bundled games are already triggered by the roughly 95% threshold and actual bundles generally go in the 91-97% territory, should some reduction to bundled CV be in order as well? For example, to 12%? Since flooding the site with cheap bundle games is among the usual complaints, at least it would make non-bundled games even more special by, well, being "normal" in terms of contributor value.
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Even better in that regard would be for cv not to drop when price drops. Give Skyrim at release for 60 now nets you measly 20.
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That is natural inflation. The only natural inflation on this site. Natural inflation is actually a good thing. I have been telling to implement an inherent CV drop over time system as well. Even at 0.5–1.0%/year, it would help reducing the almost MLM style dispersion of levels and reward constant activity instead of spurts of CV farming when some DisplayFusion style product pops up.
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help reducing the almost MLM style dispersion of levels.
why would it?
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Right now, the older your account is, as time goes on, the less money per month you needed to spend on average to achieve the same level as a newcomer. Since your CV stays, you only need to reach the top once and sit there indefinitely, whereas newcomers either put a lot of money at once in the system to achieve the same status or they will work for a long time to reach it. Natural CV inflation would ensure that those at the top can only remain at the top if they continue to invest in the system, otherwise they gradually drop among the middle range, and with enough inactivity, tot he lower range.
It is a little bit similar as winning on the lottery. You can choose to keep all the money at home, and each month you would spend some of it, so it will gradually get smaller. It may still be big enough to not care about it if you choose to.
Or you can keep trying to make the money work and keep the overall sum the same or bigger, despite still spending it.
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the less money per month you needed to spend on average to achieve the same level as a newcomer
So what? I don't see any bearing of that part
those at the top can only remain at the top if they continue to invest in the system
Why do you think that would change the dispersion? Only those who gave before will keep giving, so level distribution will stay the same.
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Because not everyone actually keeps giving. When I did my level-climbing experiments, I found quite a few users who ground their way to pretty high levels (usually exploiting regional prices) and just stopped after a while, enjoying the benefits indefinitely. It seems to be somewhat common over level 6. We just tend to forget that even the majority of the high-level user base is not part of the active community, and that the people we interact with here not even remotely present the user base and its generic behaviour.
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It may increase giving but I don't see how lvl distribution would change.
I'd rather suggest making linearly increasing lvl 11-15.
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maybe a new bundle category could be applied to extremely cheap games, like crap bought from steamgrounds for 3 cents and given en-masse to farm sent ratio. like buying 1500 keys for $45... shameless
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Like a 5% category? A much better idea than mine, but I cannot really imagine Shobo managing two bundle lists for it. :/
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it's more work for support, unless they find a way to collect data from those sites and set a threshold to add them to a super-mega-cheap-bundled-farm list™.
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not really possible I think - there is reason these sites advertise themselves so heavilly on SG - they are well aware that people on SG, buying massive numbers of copies are a big portion of their customer base, so even if SG implemented some sort of data gathering (which would be both time consuming to write and use up server bandwitch) it would be extremelly easy for Steamgrounds, DIG, Otaku and such to fight it back - change adress of games list or even better - use image with game name instead of text with game name. So in the end SG would either have to rewrite implementation all the time (again, wasting time) or it would have to be done by hand anyway in the end.
Sorry if this post offended and harassed you, I will see myself out.
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12% is still too much imho. 5% maybe. Old system required you to give 5 times as much non-bundle stuff to get full CV, non-bundle stuff which costs few times more than anything below 95% treshhold. Compared to that current 15% is crazy good (people easilly getting to mid levels on bundles alone), 12% would still be much much better than old system, heck even 5% would be but at least not so much.
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5% means a net loss in USD/CV value for quite some bundles from Bundle Stars, for example. The range where they can still be good enough in terms of CV/dollar is somewhere around 7-9%, probably, but I doubt the community would accept a CV halving. 20% reduction in CV seems to be a spot that may be sufficient and 12 is still a relatively easy-to-remember number. (Of course, my secret hope would be a drop to 10%. Easier to calculate with, still can mean a ~2CV/USD gain for most bundles.)
Or, of course, we could still just throw the entire CV system out as it is. :D
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You gotta remember that in SGv1 days for 99% of users net loss from giving away bundle game was 100% - most of people were not getting any CV at all from bundle GAs (unless you were giving away hundreds of $ woprth of non-bundle games each time you gave away a full bundle). Yet somehow people were still making bundle GAs. I personally think that current system, where you can easilly get to high levels by spending just a few dollars on SteamGrounds is much more flawed and actually discourages from making quality non-bundle GAs while encouraging just finding what cheapest shovelware shite you can find on newer and newer sites popping up.
But I will agree on last point - we could just drop entire CV system, cause as I repeat countless time - any automatic system will be abuseable (and considering # of users and # of games on steam automatic system is the only way), someone will always find an exploit, only way to get rid of exploitation is to get rid of the system itself.
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Good change, probably for the better.
Is there a way one can "report" games that were once free in large quantities but isn't on the bundled nor the coming no value list yet? Like a "check this game, it was given away in 10,000 copies and currently gives full cv"-report? inb4 answer is support ticket and I look like a fool
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I'd stick to the "add game to list" ticket type (whether it's missing in the creating stage or on bundled as of now, plus no value/free from now on).
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Obvious call is obvious, now I feel like a fool.
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Well, maybe not 10k copies (can't remember exact numbers off the top of my head), but there are a few games that have given away 1k copies and still register as full cv even though several of those copies ended up here on SG.
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Oooh. Nice. Gonna look it up right away. Hang on.
telephone hold music
Ok. Seems like I was wrong, they only gave away 500 copies of each game, yet somehow about 10% (that I've seen) of those ended up on here worth 10cv/each and propelling some users from level 1 to level 4.
telephone hold music again
Oh, looks like it is banned now atm, probably since it was free (there was an SG thread talking about 5k copies). However, it still seems to give cv to people who I know got it for free, and it seems to me that the date they marked it as free is too late? I dunno, I'm not very good at this cv stuff.
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Can you tell me the game name please? (in private if needed)
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Didn't think of checking that ^^ At least one free giveaway had massive issues giving dupe keys.
Usually greenlight vote keys get bundle listed, most what didn't got deleted looks like dev-key scenario to me. Overall not too horribly bad.
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Me being poor and working hard to reach level 5 only to see people giving away free games to propel them to level 4, it just makes me really salty and feels like an exploit. I know it's a (it's a, it's a) sin, but can't help it.
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FWIW I think the date is missing quite a few given bundle games as well. At least I think this is the reason why people always seem to be in such a hurry to create a giveaway once a bundle has been released and iirc I've seen examples of this. Don't quote me on this though :P
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Yes, I have the same theory. Explains all those 1-hour giveaways just minutes after the bundle goes live.
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Wow, this is great now I have a use for games from bundles that went free like Saints Row 2, I can give them a good home to someone who missed them while at the same time I don't have to do random drops in hoping someone from the site gets it and not some lurker.
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What about group cv/ratio?
For example, if i make Shadow Warrior SE giveaway (50 points) for small group - i will get +1 and +50$ in group stats? 😓
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So group stats will be useless 👀
i don't like this changes 😢
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Assuming those games find entries.
Doubt small closed group will join woodle tree,
but dark souls is certainly worth its few points.
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keep in mind that multi-groups GAs count to your stats as well ;) so make GA for small group shared with let's say official S.Gifts group, someone from official wins, your stats in small group get increased ;) But it already works like that with any game already ;) That's wyhy any serious group tracks ratios outside of SG and usually not counting shared GAs (or counts only when group member wins them) ;p
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or forbid including public groups, there are enough possibilities. Groups will survive that ;-)
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a lot of implementation would be required (scanning group types - and what if group changes from private to public? you gotta rescan a lot, adding new db entries to check that in SG, rewriuting all parts of SG currently using group data and so on) to fix problem that can be solved much easier - by just not counting freebies anywhere - not just not counting in CV but not counting anywhere. And since freebies are new implementation it's much easier to edit thast than to edit all old implementations of everything that involves groups.
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How so? If a game is worth entering for in a ratio group, maybe, they will be credited but if not you will neither get entries or credit
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ppl will create group+wl giveaways to get 1 entry 😎
For example - i made wl+group giveaway for Particula - free game. No entries from group, but i added u to my wl, u entered this giveaway and won.
Result - no cv for me, but i got +1 sent game and +$0.99 (full game price) in my group stats
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True, it would seem I lack imagination but, at the same time, I'd imagine groups will just add rules that exclude "free" games or that you won't be able to share them with your WL. I don't think you have to worry about group stats becoming useless :)
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I don't worry 😁
There are many groups with "u need to have 2:1 sent:won ratio" rule to get invite in to the group.
I can buy 100 keys of trash free game for $1 or even less, and if i get +100 sent games in my stats - this stats is useless.
Also we don't have page with all free games like this page for bundle games
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I really don't see a problem here, but as I said, I lack imagination. You are already able to get "trash" keys very cheap to boost your stats if that's your inclination.
Edit: However, I can imagine people being berated for giving away "free" keys in the future, just like people are now being berated for not creating the right type of giveaways or even giving away too many games, or too bad games.
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or giving away too many region restricted games - we already have SGT filers checking how many region locked GAs you can create...
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Great changes, but why do you think that the new users will understand what the asterisks mean? xD
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Add an asterisk for new user Grand Theft Auto V giveaways too. ;-)
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Well, I guess they need something that says "You must buy and deliver the gift to the winner".
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they will have to read the faq, but since they never do, this will be another reason to make "i made 5000 giveaways for endorlight and didn't lv up, sg is a scam!" threads.
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Great change. But you really should make it more obvious, when someone is creating a giveaway for 0 CV. Why only an asterisk? Put a big, fat line of red text there to make him aware. No more hard feelings that way. No more threads like "why i get no cv?! i hate u SG!". ;)
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Poor decision.
There must be some free games accidentally can get CV in the furture.
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with same reasoning - "there must be some bundled games accidentally can get full CV in the future" (actually there already are such games). With your reasoning we should ban all bundle games. Because there can be a rare error when they will give full CV.
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How many bundle games a person may have? They have to pay for it.
How many free games a person may have? They only need to make a lot of alt account/email etc.
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considering systems like Otaku, SteamGrounds or DIG? A lot - when you pay 1-3 cents per bundle game. At this level it becomes easier to just pay 3$ for 100 keys than to create 100 FB/twitter/Steam/YT accounts and get a VPN to be able to farm the same number of 100 free games.
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Wow! Thanks a ton, finally we can now have a chance to catch up with mass GAs we missed :)
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Great news. Only downside I can think of is the thousands new threads users will make were they ask why they didnt receive any CV :)
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Thank you, cg, this is wonderful...though I would recommend one enhancement: please show currently-free games in the list when a user goes to create a giveaway, but stop them when they select it. Instead of allowing them to proceed, show a message to the effect of "You cannot create a giveaway for this game at this time, as it's being given away for free on another site. After that giveaway ends, we will allow giveaways again for 0 CV. Please see the Steamgifts FAQ for additional information."
This could prevent many of the giveaways created for a different version, such as when GRID and SUPERHOT mass giveaways were followed by folks making GRID Autosport and SUPERHOT VR giveaways on Steamgifts. Some may not have realized they picked the wrong game while others seemed to think the game being missing was some sort of oversight that they should work around. While everyone should read the FAQ, which would make it clear, it's obvious many won't. Making this information unavoidable when they try to create the giveaway should help reduce the number of incidents significantly. This will not only reduce the number of misleading giveaways and the need for support/moderators to try to correct this, but it should result in fewer bans - not just for creating misleading giveaways, but for calling-out comments in response to suspicious giveaways.
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Currently free is just badly phrased. He means the F2P games not ongoing mass key drops.
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I misunderstood - I thought there was still an embargo period on currently-active giveaways to prevent spamming the site with them. I was confused by the phrase that they'd "add them back to the giveaway list when appropriate" - I took it to mean after some cooldown on mass giveaways.
Reading it again, taking the context of the phrase into account, I think cg just meant they've got a large list of no-value games to re-integrate with the giveaway system. In my first comment to this discussion, I highlighted some of them...which I hope didn't come off as impatient (for what it's worth, however, that list would be my starting point over the thousands of other games having had mass giveaways, many of which were created only to drop cards).
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He means the F2P games
No, in fact:
ongoing mass key drops.
he meant exactly that
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/ToavIB0
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Good suggestion, and no need to retract it, because it's very relevant to how things are going to work.
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Thank you and Tristar for the correction. My original point stands in that case, and having a 'blocking option' for a giveaway of SUPERHOT (for example) would have prevented what may have been dozens of giveaways and an unknown number of bans because people created giveaways for "SUPERHOT VR" and others responded negatively.
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Hi SG, a few changes to the site today related to games and contributor value. In the past, the site had three types of games:
The downside was we needed to block games and remove them from the giveaway list when they were briefly free, or posted in large giveaways outside of our community. We needed to do so to prevent users from obtaining a high number of keys for free, and giving them away for contributor value on SteamGifts. Unfortunately, this meant lots of great games were blocked and users could no longer send or receive them. Today's update allows users to start creating giveaways for these games once again, but simply for no contributor value. However, please be patient as we work through the 1,000+ games that were previously blocked, and add them back to the giveaway list when appropriate. We now have four types of games available:
For assistance, when you're creating a giveaway, the game list will show * next to games that are Reduced Value Games, and ** next to games that are No Value Games. Keep in mind, these icons are just for reference, and similar to before, the value of a giveaway can change if we need to make retroactive changes.
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