Actually, neither system is view-based. We've never used views to determine what goes on front page. The only factors we've ever had are votes and time. We've now added a 3rd "randomness" pseudo-factor.

Saves that get a lot of upvotes in a short time is what the formula looks for. (old and new). The new formula doesn't choose the top 15 saves, it gives each save a certain amount of points and weights them based off that. So lets say there's 3 saves with 100 points, 75 points, and 50 points. It chooses a random number between 1 and 100; 1 and 75, 1 and 50. Maybe the numbers it pulled are 23, 61, 4. So save B comes first, save A second, and save C last. That's how it works, just at a much greater scale.

I think there is still a 3 upvote requirement to get on fp. But there's no view requirement, and I don't want to give any reason to incentivize view farming.