In my honest opinion, the faucet is more of a curse than a blessing. The amount of issues it has caused has been substantial, not just on the support email front but in chat too, and over such insignificant amounts. By adding a faucet it effectively brought in a new demographic of people in - not players - people in, and those are the people who spend 5 hours a day scavenging at faucet sites to bring home 0.0001 BTC each day. Why they do that? No idea, but to most of them PD is just another faucet site.
I'm not saying all faucet users are bad, I do use the faucet for some "yolo" bets (I guess) every once in a while and so do some others, but the problem with bringing in that demographic is that 75% of those people will throw a temper tantrum if they don't get their dust successfully. It is one of the peculiar phenomena created by the Bitcoin community.
With that in mind, here are my personal suggestions:
a) You could just remove faucet. There would probably be a loss in users but the vast majority of those users would just leech the faucet anyway;
b) Keep the faucet as a promotion which is activated and deactivated by admins; (Implement an admin command which flicks a Boolean which allows faucet to be claimed)
c) Make it so you unlock 1 faucet use every x amount wagered.
a) has obvious benefits.
b) will still have the same problems as before but it will be MUCH more manageable.
c) will still have some problems of people complaining but it will be more manageable and faucet farming/abusing will basically be eradicated.
Well as I said: I'm pondering the removal of the faucet more seriously now, the cost of it has significantly decreased but the incredible amount of support emails that center around the faucet itself or amounts under 0.0005 from faucet bettors along with a much larger userbase has decreased the quality of the support we can offer severely. Many argue that it must be removed as it lowers the quality of the chat and community as well.
What are the thoughts of everyone and if faucet is removed what should levels be used for?
Thanks
Well tbh removing it all completely would make the site no different from the rest. The level/faucet update was the main attraction for frequent gamblers. I agree it attracted too many free loaders but there could be a system placed to avoid non depositors abusing faucet or accounts that been sold purely for its faucet level.
Few ideas:
1. Make a secondary balance on an account made for faucet plays. Make it only withdraw-able after getting to $x not x btc that way you dont lose a lot of cash if it is reached with a requirement of 1 BTC gambled to withdraw $x amount of faucet wins. Most would bust with greed if you raise it and add that requirement.
2. Another idea I emailed was adding offers to unlock faucet a few items a day as long as you played $x/Xbtc such day through your own deposit. Making the faucet random as well with chance to get higher amounts based on levels + total wagered, every time they win a high amount x LVLs is lost making so that people will
HAVE TO DEPOSIT AND PLAY again to have better chance to obtain higher faucet. Basically like a reset.
3.
Or simply make weekly levels that reset on Sunday. That way to obtain faucet whether random amounts or constant as it currently is is only obtainable if you actually deposit and play frequently.
I do admit incorporating such things might be a pain and a bit of cost but I think something like the last two ideas would benefit everyone.
Completely removing chat messages for XP should've been done already, as well as creating requirements to receive tips. Biggest issues in my eyes
1. Receiving tips have no requirements so when HRs are playing they spam them on chat/PMs also people can easily bank .0005 won from faucet over and over until they wanna cash out
2. People leech and grow faucet without ever depositing.
3. Chat spam for faucet levels or "rain"
If you add requirements to receive tips it gets rid of a lot of the horde of beggars that never really chat and just leech faucet. Or simply spam every now and then to raise XP; usually when HRs are on. The tip requirement would also mean no constant .0005 banking of just faucet wins, its outrageous that non depositors get to do that and have won huge amounts like that.
Hell someone said they earn $1.2 an hour with faucet, bit sad but still thats pretty outrageous since they never actually deposit and play anything.
Compare it to a casino (derp) they have members club points where regular players get bonuses for every X amount of money wagered. They also have an initial free $5 or so for new sign ups.
It's basically the faucet, its meant for new users to test the site and have a small chance to win something out of nothing. Then bring in actual players to play regularly whilst getting a little bonus for being a frequent player.
3 birds with one stone.
Or simply remove tip function, reduce faucet to 250-500 sats fro newbies and 1k faucet for regulars every 10+minutes, osrta reverting back to PD2 style.