It's a good idea. Moreover, 20P+ giveaways will have less entries so more chances for everyone. I never spend all my points because I mostly enter wishlisted GAs, but I understand that people who use bots and try to win all games in the main page will be angry.
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I don't like the idea of getting less points at first, but honestly, it'd be for the best. When there's a new bundle around, usually it peaks 300P all the time for a while. I guess having a fixed number daily would make sense: would scare some leechers away, nullify bot users, and probably promote a more conscious usage of the points for the average joe. I see clearly more advantagens than disadvantagens as a whole.
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Poor, poor users that feel that constant need to spend all their points all the time, oh, how I pity them :( OCD is hard indeed.
On the serious note, it will not exactly help users that actually only enter GAs for games they want: they'll still be at 200-300 points most of the time, but when a bundle with an interesting and not cheap game is released, they would be able to enter considerably fewer GAs. As for that painful state with waking in the middle of the night to check for new GAs, I somehow suspect that it's a temporary condition for many new uses, and it passes pretty quickly.
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i dont think anyone wakes up at night just to enter some giveaway
if they do, they should go see a doctor or something
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I disagree with this proposal since the majority of people dump bundled games the moment a bundle becomes available (especially the Humble Monthly). And they mostly create one hour GA's (the minimum amount of time), simply because they want to get it over with as fast as possible and get their CV. So if there happens to be a game I would want to play I'd actually miss out on a lot more GA's because of this "new" system.
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Stupid idea I ever hear. Right now, on every humble bundle you receive 300 points each 10 minutes now you will get it in 1 minute? Damn -.- I have a life too I dont to want to camp the website O.o
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Then you're lucky because that's not how the site will work as you guessed.
The suggestion is to have a fixed point regeneration, NOT linked to giveaways. Every 15 minutes you will get a fixed number of points
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Ahh then I misunderstand what he wrote. Thank you.
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Decrease the max 300P cap to 250 or less, but do not keep a fixed points per day/month since this will hurt real/casual users when that great bundle costing high P to enter several games drops (meaning just keep the points regeneration as it is right now), or even when giveaways created for games high up on the community wishlist.
I think only the bots/autojoiners lose sleep (technically not possible) over idling at 300P, because they are always trying to keep their P close to zero in order to enter & win anything and everything. Real/casual users will never need to or will worry about points being unused.
Thanks to taking feedback from the community on this issue!
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Decreasing the max points hurt the "normal" users as well and favours bots of people who just camp the site all-day.
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Normal users are getting back the points up to max after a while with the current system but the unused points for us normal users will be extra currency for bots.
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But bots are running always, they always spend the points, never get it to max. By reducing the limit to 300 to 250 will mean that bots will still just keep points under 100 or something, not being affected, while if you arrive home after being at work your max points will be only 250 instead of 300, so you lose points.
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If bots have only 250P to work with instead of 300P, imagine the difference site-wide for all real users. Meanwhile, you can come home, spend all that 250P at once, and if need more, wait a while then join the rest GAs that are ending sooner. If you cannot, then tomorrow.
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I can't find any fault in this, I'm curious though how prevalent bots are on here. In any case I'm sure most people would be happy to see them go.
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I agree with the idea.. but for me it's the solution for the problem - that shouldn't have existed in the first place.
Users would have less points and enter less giveaways, but those giveaways would have higher odds of winning. The change would also encourage users to focus their points on games they would like to play, which hopefully means users are more happy with the gifts they win in the community.
Yes, the problem I am talking about is autojoin scripts and bots. Due to these scripts, people are getting lower probability of winning and thus more and more people looking into scripts for entering giveaways, hence creating the chain reaction of More entries - Lower probability - Encouragement to look into scripts
I know some of you guys here will defend autojoin scripts by saying "I have a job, I don't have time for sitting 24 hrs a day in front of a monitor to join a GA", I also do have a job, but I remember the time when The Witness flooded the site, I set my alarm every 2 hours, woke up, entered and went back to sleep, repeating it. The thing you truly do when you really want something Except if you had money you would buy it :P.
These autojoin and +1 thing is taking chances from users who really want to play and enjoy the games. A simple captcha might solve the problem. I also support talgaby's idea that GA point should not be 5 digit. That way users will enter only GA that they truly want.
Edit: There was post regarding autojoin scripts by cg. I was busy with this thread I didn't notice it.
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Captcha is cancer when it starts to poop out the image verifications. Takes a lot of time from my day on some sites.
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That's why I said Simple Captcha that is showing on the gif I've posted.
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Is it controllable?
Sometimes I get that simple one, but after few uses uses (on the same site) I start getting the image verifications, which suck.
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I'll answer myself, it's not, it will eventually start giving you the image verifications no matter how it's configured:
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Then I guess it will be pain in the ass. I too hate those picture ones. But one thing we can be sure is that by our experience on those picture captcha is that, they were triggered because of the multiple number of captcha we 'answered' in a very short period of time. i.e., 4-5 within 10 min time.
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This.
Ban autojoiners instantly but i don't understand how can people seriously want the captchas. Today the Indiegala login repeated the same street signs and cars and roads like 15 times.
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captcha could be fine, but there are better ways to detect people using scripts. detect and permaban them
no need to bother everyone else. 😁
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Actually I didn't know there was post by cg regarding "auto-join scripts". I realized it 3 hrs later.
So as said above this "Point Distribution", no matter how good it is, is the solution for the Problem which shouldn't have existed in the first place. The problem is the auto-join scripts, which should be looked into and gave my suggestion which isn't much of a use now.
But now that I've seen the post yay for suspensions and ban-hammers
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How about 600P daily or 300P per 12 hours. 480 don't seem enough when you want to enter, for example, Rise of the Tomb Raider which costs 60p.
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but this will not stop bots and script users from being used
yes they will enter less giveaways but they will still be used as much as now
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The issue is that currently, most users can't spend every point they earn. They hit 300 points (while asleep if nothing else), and further points earned are wasted. So a bot has huge benefits - it lets the user enter many more giveaways than they would otherwise, by spending every point they get and never hitting 300! And this is unfair to everyone else.
With fewer points earned, there's no longer as much of a benefit to botting. Some people will still do it, but there won't be as much incentive, and the people who do do it won't do as much damage to everyone else (because they'll only be entering as many giveaways as the person who visits the site daily.)
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but the solution would be to suspend them for like a month first, if after it repeats - permanently
or maybe instantly permanently
with the update maybe a bit less botters, but harder to catch them
and also why should normal users be limited because of autojoiners
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i love the idea about bundles! been wishing for it for all these years!
and what about making something for contributors with levels?
Just a way of thanking for being a part of the giveaway community and therefore showing that sharing is caring (and gives bonuses).
so for example:
lvl 1 gets more points per hour(or point cap) than lvl 0 - like 10 points extra cap
lvl 5 get even more pts per hour/cap.. maybe extra 50-100 point cap
lvl 10 gets like 150-200 extra pts cap.
but all caps are reachable from 0 pts in same 15 hours.
This will encourage people to give out more games!:)
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This is a good idea :D
Though more giveaways is even more points hahaha ;)
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It was said somewhere that SG won't be Pay2Win, so have higher chances after "donating" money to the site.
Besides you don't have to spend much to get to high level, gifting 5 copies of recent Luxor spam bundle could push you from 0 to 4,5 lvl.
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I'm for anything that decreases the advantage of bots and encourages people to be more selective with their GA entries, that is, games they are more willing to play.
I have some minor concerns about not getting five entries in small groups, region-restricted, and/or DLC GAs, but in theory those GAs will have higher odds which should encourage users to spend their points there.
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This is a tough one :).
I'm kind of new so I don't know how it was years ago, aside from the chart.
Personally I like the fluctuation of points. When there are more giveaways posted, you'd need more points to enter a few more. When it is quiet, there are hardly any points to spend. Either way you'd still spend them wisely and you can never enter all the giveaways all the time, so people will still have to make choices.
The fluctuation is what makes this site great and unique.
What if you would lower the % of the increasing rate a little, example: from 5% to 4%?
The points are still dependent on the number of GA's but you get less points of the total posted games so you can enter less giveaways.
At another website you get a steady flow of points, this site is not as busy as SG but still...
This means everyone can enter each and every giveaway, which makes most people enter every giveaway, even those they do not even need or want.
Here (I believe) this hardly every happens and you pick games from a wishlist, or save points etc.
A couple of other things to consider:
- people who use scripts will use them either way and will probably keep on using them
- As a site owner you'd want people to come back often (advertisements + refreshes = $ means more time to improve on the site, yey :) )
- Not a mathematician, but wouldn't the chance be about the same 2:600 / 1:300?
- Set the max cap of certain games/items points to get % at 50p. Even if a game is 100p... set the cap % at 50p
- Can't you block the bots with a .htaccess script?
- Should the chart not also show the number of people? people vs points?
- If you'd first block those scripts, wouldn't we already see a big change in entries?
Wonder if i was making sense, <3 this site :)
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I see this as an issue, because users should not need to invest this much time into entering giveaways.
I hope that most users don't feel like they need to spend all their poiints here and get up in the middle of the night just to spend all their points so that they don't lose any...
If the point of the change is to not have to visit Steamgifts that often (i.e. once a day) why not raise the point limit accordingly to 480 points? I don't actually see an issue with the current system, but I think that a steady point rate 'regeneration' could be better suited indeed.
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I am not liking this idea only cause of one reason.
And that is, sometimes there is a bundle I like and it has a high P game in it, with this new change (if it were to happen) I would be able to enter set amount of GA for that high P game (since I would get set amount of P), regardless of how many GAs for said game are created.
If we look bluntly at that problem the lower the number of GAs for said game that I can enter means I am less likely to win..
I feel like this system now is perfect just cause it means that you can enter more GA, the more active the community is :)
As for the script users I agree with the other post about new rules for auto entering scripts..
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But currently, other people are also entering those GAs in large numbers. If everyone had fewer points, then each of those high-P bundle games flooding the site would have far fewer entries, so you'd have a much higher chance of winning each individual one you enter, even if you enter fewer of them.
On top of this, because people have fewer points, there's less likely to be people who are only mildly interested in the game entering (or even people who don't care about it at all and just want a +1.) That increases your chance of getting games you care a lot about still further - spending absolutely all your points on giveaways for a single game would be more meaningful because most other people are probably skipping some / all of those giveaways to enter giveaways for games they care about more.
Whereas now, people get so many points that they can enter almost everything if they spend them all (not just by botting - which we obviously want to get rid of - but just by visiting the site frequently.)
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Yes and no.
First of all I know of a lot of people who are here only for +1 and not interested in what that game is, or only in games with cards..
Lets take for example Rise of the Tomb Raider™ (which was spammed a lot on the start of the month) it is 60P and I think a lot of people will enter it and fixing the number of points would mean that if we create X GAs then X-Y would have high entries and others wont, so you will have people that exit the GA to enter a lower number and so on, making this would make a lot of people visit the site even more to change in which GA for said game are they in.. So in some GA a higher chance of winning while in others lover, and the entries would fluctuate a lot..
That is how I see it at least.
And changing this wouldn't rly stop people from botting.. If you ask me this would hurt me (a non auto-enterie script use) more then them..
I have just checked
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If we look bluntly at that problem the lower the number of GAs for said game that I can enter means I am less likely to win..
This is not true. Your chance to win in a single-copy giveaway is 1/entry numbers, counted for each entered giveaway. But there's a thing that so many commenters ignore - if you won't have points to enter all 20 giveaways, only 5, every single other user can also just join 5.
While you enter fewer giveaways, the entry numbers also become lower, and your chance to win won't change. You will have less entries, with bigger chance to win each. Or it will even increase, as people will think more about what they will join - 5 giveaways for X game, or 10 for Y, as they can't do both - further decreasing the entry numbers.
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Yes and no.. You don't know if the number of entries for a game you want will lower or not.. Maybe it will stay the same, and some GAs will have almost no entries just because people are saving points for a big tittle..
I just feel this is not the solution since the high P count is cause of more GAs.. Maybe it is just me but I feel like this site did it the best with no ultimate caps or nothing on points, the only way to get P is from an active community..
Auto-enter script users are bad, I even got a few winners who used auto entries and cause of that they didn't read the comment on the GA, but to me it is for the mods and rules to take care of that, not for all of us to get caught in the crossfire..
I still stay with my opinion that I am against this change..
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Don't overcomplicate the thing :) If you have daily 1000 points today, you enter for 1000P of games. If you'll have only 400, then you won't be able to enter all - so what you would have entered anyways will have the same entry from you, while the less-wanted ones - you don't enter those.
And now just expand this to the whole userbase. We have fuckloads of points, so everyone can enter their most wanted games (10/10), and then some ( like down to 8/10, looks fine but not the most wanted)
. With less points they will just only enter the most wanted few,the "10/10" wanted games, they will focus on the most sought-after ones. That they already entered. So why would the entry numbers increase?
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And cause of that you will have a lot of GA with low entry number (just cause you want to save for something big) and a lot with high number of entries the games wanted by most.. That is why I don't like this
You would have to choose what games you want the most and go for them and fluff off other games that you would play if you won them..
I have 204 games on wishlist and a lot I would play are not on there cause I don't want to flood my wishlist so much. So I would possibly have to reduce the number of games on my wishlist so I can enter all those with this new system.. Therefore I am against it
But I see your side of this trust me ;)
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Drastically reducing the number of points makes sense to me. Not only will it avoid rewarding autojoiners (who get to enter more giveaways because they can spend every point they receive when other people cannot), it would also encourage people to only enter giveaways for games they really, truly want, which in turn will make everyone happy by increasing the chance of winning obscure games that you want and few other people do.
(Whereas currently every giveaway receives huge numbers of entries because people are flush with points.)
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Being always short of points is not my idea of a good experience.
Especially when a bundle is released that has games that I want. Being short on points, I would want to maximize the probability of winning the game even more, by always visiting the site to catch those 1h giveaways.
It's frustrating to make a decision, if I should exit that lvl6 2 days long giveaway and enter that lvl2 1h giveaway. Or will the number of entries surpass it at the end?
Now, when we are flooded with bundle giveaways and has games you want, you are also flooded with point you can use to enter. With the new system, most of those giveaways will slip through your fingers.
Maybe the minimum time the giveaway should run should be increased to 24h?
Or the cap should be dynamic, based on points generated in the last 24h, somehow?
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I don't feel this is very well thought through.
You say that since people have less points less people will enter the giveaways, but that's only true on average - when a bundle floods onto the site the first giveaways will have almost everyone entering, and then the amount of entries will drop off as people run out of points. I'm already running out of points constantly when a new bundle has something I want in it, trying to get a chance on the few games I want.
That means you actually disadvantage people who spend more time on the site quite significantly if you put in firm ceilings on points and reduce the amount we get without also reducing the amount of available giveaways. Not only do you make it so that we have to strategize and hold on to points for later (which would be far easier to auomate and make a bot for than to do manually, so contrary to your wish of reducing the bots), but also you make it so that we have a lower chance of winning the games we actually want early on, and perhaps having to make hard choices between entering giveaways for two different games we want since we have to weigh both odds and points and timing into things.
It would be problematic to say the least to have a point system that is not following the pace of the inflowing giveaways - and it would likely turn people to a new kind of automatic join scripts that can enter the giveaways you want only when you have the highest chance of winning - like at whatever time this site is the least busy.
It would basically achieve the opposite of what you seem to want. More time spent having to get back to the site to check for giveaways with good odds.
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But what if people will start to be sneaky and NOT jump on all those 1 hour GAs right after bundle starts tho?
That way they will wait till others run out of points and then enter in GAs with low number of entries. Don't be like a sheep, be sneaky!
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Well yeah, that's kind of my point. Since that becomes the best option the situation once again turns into an advantage for the bots, who can choose times to be active and look for amount of entries and so on before deciding what to enter.
Or as CG put it in the post - people waking up in the middle of the night to check in and see if there are better chance giveaways. Suddenly it isn't the points that is the currency that's running out - it's the available giveaways and your chances to win.
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I wasn't writing about bots, but about NOT spending points immediately. When HB starts it's 19:00 here. Which means I can wait 4 hours and enter in GAs before going to bed. Instead of just throwing them on 1st minute GAs.
And as people live in different time zones "entered points" will distribute evenly through whole day (with spike right after bundle start). With as little points pool as 480 daily bots won't do big difference here. First users will spend their points in 1 - 2 hours after bundle start, and then they will be distributed evenly between users and bots.
I believe people will adjust to system like this. As they will have to decide if they want to spend their points immediately or wait few hours before doing so.
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Except a few hours later might be in the middle of the night - it would be for me since in my timezone Humble Bundles are released at seven or eight in the evening I believe. (And I like actually sleeping at night, so four hours past that is far too late for me - as it would be for people one or two or three timezones over). There's also a noticable lull in activity on this site for the first half of my day, which means that it does not have enough evenly spread global users to be able to "distribute points evenly" over the day in the way you mention.
If the point pool is reduced bots won't matter in entering MORE giveaways, but they can quickly become far better than people at only entering the BETTER ones with the highest win chances. A bot in difference of a human can wait until one minute is left on the timer every time and judge it's chances against rules you give it. A bot can do this in the middle of the night, or at whenever is slow, and so on. You move from a quantity play to a quality play, simply put - and that is far more unfair I would argue.
It might be annoying that bots now can enter more giveaways than me, but frankly I'm not interested in most games so I can enter the majority of giveaways I am actually interested in. If bots on the other hand got a better chance at winning than me by changes that made strategy and timing more important to your chances - that would feel real bad.
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I usually only use about half my points allowance on any given day, except for the odd days when a bundle comes out with a couple of games I really like in it (mumble mumble...humble monthly). Then because there is a sudden upsurge in the 'extra' games being given away I log on repeatedly because every time I max out on points to enter giveaways in a couple of hours they're back again because so many giveaways have been created it refills my points quotient. If this stops happening I (and other members like me) will lose the opportunity to join lots of giveaways for games we actually want. It may be balanced by increased odds in winning due to lower numbers of entrants but this actually increases the likelihood of having to repeatedly log on to the site to check you points are being spent on giveaways with the best odds (or using scripts to GAs with the lowest number of entries)... In conclusion this won't effect me day to day but I'll miss out on GAs for games I really want on new bundle days.
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There will be negative consequences. For example, a giveaway of a game of average quality done in a small group much more often will bring the giver 0 CV (It happens even now sometimes). All those perestroikas have always been risky business.
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Why not simply reduce the point generation to 60% or 80%?
At the same time the cap could be raised a little, so people don't feel like they have to enter giveaways they don't want just to avoid wasting any potential points.
I like the current system better than a fixed rate since the giveaways and their entry costs fluctuate a lot.
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Hi SG,
I'd like to get some community feedback on the point system. I attached a graph illustrating the number of points users have received monthly, since the site started. As expected, it looks very similar to the graph of giveaways per month, since points are currently distributed based on the number of giveaways being created on the site.
I think the downside of the current system is that we have a very high number of giveaways being created in recent years (this month is the highest on record, with over 4,500 daily giveaways), and this causes some adverse affects towards user experience on the site. In 2013 and 2014, users received an average of 7,500 points per month. This month users will receive over 45,000 points. 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.
I see this as an issue, because users should not need to invest this much time into entering giveaways. People should also not need to wake up in the middle of the night to avoid hitting the point cap. It encourages people to look into scripts for entering giveaways, it takes some fun out of the site, and it turns entering giveaways into a part-time job (we have over one million giveaway entries daily). I'm proposing that we set points at a fixed rate of 14,400 per month, which means 480P per day, or 5P distributed every 15 minutes. With the average giveaway being 10P, that means users would still be able to enter roughly 48 giveaways per day. They would also reach the 300P cap after a reasonable 15 hours, so they do not need to consistently check back to avoid idling at 300P.
This would not impact how often a user wins (gifts are not disappearing). Users would have less points and enter less giveaways, but those giveaways would have higher odds of winning. In short, users would win the same number of games, but need to invest less time into joining giveaways. Fixed points would also come with a couple of other advantages. In the past, points would increase out of control when there was a bundle for a high point game, such as Clickteam Fusion (100P). Instead, points would now remain consistent and predictable for users. The change would also encourage users to focus their points on games they would like to play, which hopefully means users are more happy with the gifts they win in the community.
Please share your thoughts. Thanks.
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