Hi Guys,
Before I elaborate on the inner workings of the loyalty system, allow me to note that before anything - whenever you feel unhappy, uncomfortable or annoyed with anything at 3Dice - please do contact our support department. (Informal on the player chat - via live chat - or via email.). As we try to build an automatic system that makes as few mistakes as possible, and makes the job of the operators easier - they can still always review and correct the results produced by the automatic system. It is by far the most effective way of getting these little annoyances out of the way - and it will attend our technical staff to the problems the automatic system still may have.
Before I elaborate on the new system, let me explain what was wrong with the old one. The biggest problem with it was "winner comping". Especially on the high variance machines we offer, winners tend to generate much more playthrough than less lucky players do. So in the old system we could have one lucky player depositing 100/week, winning, saving lots of points and getting lots of bonus. Another player making the same type of deposits, but less lucky, would generate hardly any points and get hardly any bonuses. I think it is obvious that - although it was directly linked to playthrough - this was not an ideal system. It is this problem of "winner comping" that was the primary motivation to change the system.
In the new system, play is measured in blocks of 10 days. Every 10 days the system looks at your last 3 blocks (so 30 days in total - beginning of month - or end of month doesn't matter). If two of those blocks represent play above your current level, you earn one star. If two of those blocks represent play in the category below your current one you will lose a star.
When you do lose a star, the first block you will still get the promotions from your old level - this way an empty block will indeed show on your status - but wont impact the bonuses you receive. The idea of working with these blocks is that a single win will only 'bump' a single block, and will have no influence on the appreciation of the loyalty of that player. (and so an unlucky and a lucky player that play at the same level are valued equal).
The length of the blocks has been chosen to be 10 so that its possible to move up the loyalty ladder in an acceptable amount of time instead of that taking many months. The downside of such a short period is that the system does indeed move down faster to, and this is one of the aspects we are still working on. Overall, with the same budget being spent on our side we see that indeed more of that is going back to unlucky players and the decrease of "winner comping" is very noticeable. I think in general the new system is definitely a good start, but I'm aware that some players will be 'misjudged' by it, and I can only stress for them to contact support and have an operator make a proper human assessment.
With your help and feedback, I'm sure we can remove some more kinks from the system and arrive at something that provides in a fair and balanced automatic evaluation of an individual player's loyalty.
Kindest Regards,
Enzo
