Point Distribution

That would be move in good direction. I'd go a bit further with the idea and got rid of points tied to retail prices. System would be as follows:

• Entry cost would be 1P for freebies, 2P for bundled games and 5P for non-bundled - to reflect desirability (or rarity) of a game. Bundle list update imo is not problematic. Everyone sees the cost and decides for himself whether it's worth entering or not. Also fixed entry cost doesnt' limit one to only 3 entries/day for 100P items (whether legit or Deponia-bugged)
• Points would be generated at the rate 1P/15min. Thats 96/day meaning no less than 20 entries/day, likely averaging higher.
• Point cap should be removed to allow "official banking" of points for a time when wanted games will flood the site (HB monthly, sales, SimGives, etc) instead of using month-long giveaways (and most likely scripts to do that).
• To keep users coming back regularly, points should stop regenerating after 28 hours since last activity. It's set that long, to allow human regular users to spend the same amount of points as always-online bots

Numbers are taken out of thin air, and should be tweaked to find middle ground between average number of GAs entries needed for a first win (too high, and new users would be leaving) and how many GAs one can enter daily (which too can't be too low so that there are entries not only for newest AAA titles)

I like the idea, but as others already suggested as well, I fear (well, fear may be the wrong word) it could generate a new kind of "point banking" bots, using giveaways to store points for later.

I can see a couple of possible solutions for it though:

• Don't return points, except if it's cancelled within 15 minutes (for the misclicks). This rule could be combined with any of the following.
• Only a fixed amount of cancelled giveaways each day will return points
• Each day, a maximum of 50 points will be returned.
• Each day, each cancelled giveaway will return less points: the first cancelled one gets refunded 100%, the second cancelled one 50%, the third one 25% and so on. This counter is reset every day.

Maybe a minimum of points should always be returned, so someone who wants to cancel doesn't change his mind because points aren't returned.

I would suggest a similar system to how additional Steam levels get you a higher chance of receiving booster packs. Meritocracy and stuff!!1

i.e.:
level 0: base point generation as detailed above (100%)
level 1: 110%
level 2: 120%
...
level 10: 200%

Perhaps it would also be nice to clamp the entry costs a little bit, more like a logarithm function. The difference between a 1P and a 60P entry is way too big.

I have no problem visiting the site multiple times a day as I only enter giveaways for WL games or ones that I really want to play. There are some days I use all my points and others where I don't because there is nothing I want to enter. I have no problem with this.

I only use the site when I am at home awake. I don't check it while at work, I don't wake up in the middle of the night or day to check it. I mainly check SG when I wake up, before I go to bed, and a couple of times in between. Its great to win free games once in awhile, but I am not one who feels I have to use my points on a daily basis.

The only problem I have is the 300 point cap. There are certain games on my WL that are in the 30 to 60 point range and if they finally hit a bundle of some sort, then there are a ton of giveaways for it. Of course with it being a WL game I want to enter them all to increase my chance of possibly winning the game, but because of the cap and how the points regenerate on accounts there are some weeks or days that I am visiting even more so I can try and enter those giveaways. Maybe I am naive or just really didn't care to look into it, but I never even knew an autojoin script existed until these threads were made or until people started posting about it in their giveaways.

English is not my native language, so - sorry 4 stupid mistakes. And I'm slowpoke, I know. Now my 5 cents:
Yes, using scripts to autojoin giveaways in background (while offline) - is bad (I use chrome extention AutoJoin only for "Join/Leave" button and "approximate odds of winning" statistic, other options - off). I agree that admins should punish users with background autojoin offline scripts (my purpose: 1st- week ban, 2nd- month ban, 3rd- half year ban, 4th- permaban, if person don't understand after 3rd time - it's clinic).
But my opinion about new "lower points distribution" - that's worst decision you can ever make.
I think you've got a wrong motives to change the rules by lowering points distribution. Somehow you all overreacted too much and it's a premature decision.
I'll try to explain my point of view. Maybe I will be too roughf, sorry a priori XD
1st of all - what for this site was made to? To share and win games 4FREE.
Share - gain exp, participate - spend points. It's not a real money and you can't just buy exp or points tho. You can't pay money to admins and instantly gain max SG lvl, I don't see such feature. But there's "nothing free". To get something you have to pay with something, in this case - with your time!
In 2013-14 users received 7500 points per month --- 247 points per day. To spent all points you could visit site once a day!
This month users receive over 45000 points --- 1500 per day with same old 300 points cap. To spent all points you have to visit site minimum 5 times a day (enemys levelup while you sleep, tho).
In "points per month" (PPM FFS) graph we can see first 4 years was not very productive. Only since 2015 till now this site becomes popular. More generous users -> more giveaways -> more points.
In the same graph we can see that 3 month ago "PPM" was more than 2.5x lower than now! Almost like 2 years ago. Сlearly this is because of huge bundles sale. Users wanna boost there SG levels and giveaway games they wont play in. And, as we know, it's a limited time offer! Bundles sales will ends, PPM curve will go down, it happens every few month! Average PPM since 2016 is barely over 25000! ~ 833 per day and it's 2-3 site visits per day. Not a "part-time job" as you mentioned. You don,t need to "wake up in the middle of the night to avoid hitting the point cap"! If you do that - you should go to the psychiatrist right now, you'r not normal! It's not SG fault, SG shouldn't change rules because of couple complaining whacko's! Before bed I check SG, then in the morning after I came to work I check SG - there's 200-250 points, 2-3 times per MONTH there will be 300! 4real! (you still playing with your phone before sleep, spend 2 mins to check SG, is it so hard to do?)
And you offer to lower PPM almost twice?! Why?!
Cos few users complaining they can't find 10 mins per day to visit SG? They can find time to "like" cats photos on facebook, or that booty chick on instagram, for sure. There is internet browser in there iPhones! Why they can't spent 3 mins in the morning while waiting your unicorn frappuccino in starbucks to enter 10-15 giveaways? I can. While waiting your order in burgerking? While brushing your teeth? Is't not too much big of a sacrifice for chance to win a GTA5! Don't you think?
At start I told - you win FREE games and pay with your time. Spending time in instagram spying on your ex' won't give you a DOOM III Steam key lol!
I can't find 3 extra mins while refuel a car? That's an excuse. Don't believe you. I can check site with 7 month baby on hands. I can't cos I work all day? You got cash - buy games! )) And if you work all day - you don't have time to play games ;Р
We've got portable computers in our pockets, we stick with them all our day and still can't find 5-10 mins per day to enter SG? Bulls**t! I don't buy it! It means you don't wanna waste your time fore just a "chance" this much. And if it's "waste your time" why everyone should listen your complains?
Well, maybe I'm overreacted now, sry 4 that, biy it's true! ;Р Bunch of people hipped, and you in panick looking fore the answeres, thats why I told before - it's a premature decision.
If admins sooooo worried about this kind of users - increase points cap! To 480P! Why so? "14,400 per month, which means 480 per day" - your offer by "lower point distribution". I think that's fair. If admins think that 480 per day is enough for each user - make 480 points cap. And "users need to now enter 6x as many giveaways" means there is 6x giveaways more than was before. I think 1.6x increase points cap is fair enough. More fair than reducing points distributed twice or even more. And there will be less sleepy crazy users "to avoid hitting the point cap".
I hope admins will read this comment and won't get me wrong. Insulting people wasn't my goal. No offends. If you read till end - thank you 4 your time!

Here is my issue, not everyone visits every hr or so just to use all their points. The person that is only around for an hr or two a day now has less to spend. Also one of the benefits when a bundle comes out or something, is while there is more to enter, there are also more points available because there are so many new GA's being made. Having a purely fixed system means you can't enter nearly as many GA's. Rather than a fixed point system I'd rather either just a simple reduction in how many points we get per GA created, or at the very least, a larger reserve of points to have stockpiled.

That actually gives me an idea atm, why not increase available points by level (total you can have at once, not points per GA)? There's another incentive to raise your level, GA's with higher odds, AND more points to enter more GA's.

I'm starting to think if it wouldn't be better to also increase the minimum giveaway time.
To a day or so, less reason to constantly check the site that way.

I do not this idea, because as I understood it, we will get less points per day etc. As a user who clicks on "Wishlist" and enters just the games on my wishlist (and not all of them) I am happy with the current system. Although sometimes I don't manage to enter all GAs that I want, I consider where to spend the points and although sometimes I reach the 300p cap, but there are more GAs that are created I cannot enter those GAs. I think that just by increasing the cap (to let's say 360) it will be a far better idea. I have spent more time on the site than before, but that isn't the only site I check every few hours and I've got used to it and ENJOY it!

TL:DR > I don't like this and prefer the cap to be increased, IF there is gonna be a change to the point distribution.

If you truly want to help us (users) for not making this site a part-time job, why not make subscription (donors of SG) to make them automatically add all games on wishlist. That way we can have big wishlists & get automatic adding of the game -> which will also get us games from our wishlists. I'd gladly donate $1-5 / monthly for that option.

& you, can also get a donors for the site maintenance. ;)

I like the current system.

I believe the current system works well.

Now that there's a flood of 70p RPG maker giveaways I'm soooo ready to have my points reduced.

There is a flood of point now, and this is soooooooooooooo good!

Autojoin scripts should be banned and maybe points limit should be raised to ~500p. Current system also have advantages.

From my point of view current system not really works as it should, in my case there are some days that I enter at the morning and I see I have cap - OK, time for some luck. Sometimes during the day I have some time, I am entering to check if there are some cool discussions or maybe I won something and what I see - I hit cap again. From my point of view I don't like it cause it is like chance I don't get to win something (it is nice feeling winning something ;) ). If I have time I enter. Last few weeks when I woke up in middle of night I checked giveaways and entered cause of frustration of wasted points due to cap.
I'm very happy for idea to get cap for 480p or maybe even roud 512p - I would have one more thing of my head during day.
About refunding points from leaved giveaways I think you should be able to leave like 10% giveaways you entered (still active), rest could reduced by 20% or even 50%. Reset at some specific time everyday.
Today I entered giveaways after I get back from job about 5 hours ago but few minutes ago I have reached cap again so on average you need to visit page now every 4 hours to enter to have like ~90% chance that you are not hitting cap and wasting points.

Another idea is to have some "bank" - as it fills it give out points up to some limit per 15min. If there is not enough it is giving less or nothing but never more than that limit, we can say it is some kind of bottleneck ;) - that way we could have more "stable" points.

I think we should use both methods. 5p/20mins and bonus point base on GAs number (very low rate)

Well, 300P is enough on Level 0, when you start. But after clearing those games you don't want, then you have 5-10 pages of games you might join in giveaway.

But, after you Level up, then you can open some more games. Frequently when you level up, there's problem that you can't get in all giveaway you want, as 300P has been distributed. So why not make an increase when you level up? From Level 0 you start on 300P, but on Level 10 you get to increase to 480P - just an example, numbers would have to different for sure. That way you're going to motivate people to giveaway, not only receive games here!

How else you motivate people to give more? Only with few more giveaways on higher Levels, but you still got 300P cap. :/

well there are much more giveaways than before too... so it would make more sense to increase the points cap than to limit it even more

I think that there will soon be a new system

I say you should reduce the number of points generated, but not put a fixed generation rate. As other stated, when valuable bundles (I mean with good games in it) come out, there are already too few points for too many GAs, fixing the regeneration rate will only make the situation worse.

So my vote goes to: lower the rate and increase the cap.

Dont touch what isnt broken.

I don't know how I feel about this... but let's give it few weeks and see how it goes.

On a somewhat-related note, now that the site has more than a million users would it be possible to increase the cap on blacklists? Iirc it only allows up to 1000 people, which is now less than 1 in a 1000 members. Maybe an increase to 10,000 would work well? (So we could blacklist ~1% of members, tbf there are way more assholes and leechers than that, but still.)

if there are
•the same number of users &
•the same number of giveaways

on the site before & after the Change that means:
•the number of winners on the site in a given timeframe is the same.

if a single Person only is able to enter less giveaways than before he/she has to choose more carefully that means:
•the Chance, that the winner will actually enjoy their won game maybe is a Little bit higher.

so.... the new System should be a bit better, shouldn´t it?

the ony difference: before the update, more active users (or bots) would be able to enter moregiveaways than less active People (that would constantly hit the Point Limit)

Is cap still 500? I can see just 400