This time around I'm getting: Diplomacy is Not An Option ATLYSS Mind Over Magic Terra Nil Diceomancer Obviously I have not played these, but they caught my interest this round. It's annoying to...
Yeah, maybe I'm not great at the Steam UI or maybe it's junk, but I feel like they're missing out on word-of-mouth opportunities by giving us a spot to easily see sales on games we already own....
It's annoying to check games I already own
Yeah, maybe I'm not great at the Steam UI or maybe it's junk, but I feel like they're missing out on word-of-mouth opportunities by giving us a spot to easily see sales on games we already own. "Hey, friend, I enjoy playing games with you and also talking about games with you. I own RimWorld and have dumped hundreds of hours into it, and with Steam's interface, I can quickly and easily see that it's on sale. You might consider purchasing it. Heck, I will purchase it for you."
I know social media is the bane of all existence, but Steam could definitely be doing a better job of being the social media of games.
I feel like they do pretty good at that, overall. The particular feature you mention is lacking, but I feel the rest of the social features of the client are just about exactly what I want them to...
I know social media is the bane of all existence, but Steam could definitely be doing a better job of being the social media of games.
I feel like they do pretty good at that, overall. The particular feature you mention is lacking, but I feel the rest of the social features of the client are just about exactly what I want them to be. Here's a list of friends who want to be visible as being online, here's where the player-made walkthroughs are, here's the forums if you still have a shred of faith in humanity you want to destroy.
They don't hound you to engage with anything because they don't really care about engagement. They don't even advertise super heavily at you either, just one window that pops up whenever you start the client and actually goes away when you tell it to. I mostly leave my client running anyway, so I only see that at most twice or thrice a week, which is about the perfect amount.
I'm actually curious what else you'd choose to improve.
You can turn that popup window off at Settings->Interface->"Notify me about changes to my games...". Now if they would just let us turn off the unneeded and poorly implemented news item line at...
You can turn that popup window off at Settings->Interface->"Notify me about changes to my games...".
Now if they would just let us turn off the unneeded and poorly implemented news item line at the top of the library.
Agreed, and/or allow me to choose which games turn up there, because some games post wayyyy more than others. This small indie game that I love has had an update? Yes, tell me about it! I’m still...
Now if they would just let us turn off the unneeded and poorly implemented news item line at the top of the librar
Agreed, and/or allow me to choose which games turn up there, because some games post wayyyy more than others.
This small indie game that I love has had an update? Yes, tell me about it! I’m still playing this game regularly, so I’d love to try out the new features as soon as they’re available!
That multiplayer behemoth of a game that I decided I’ve quit playing forever because Australia no longer has the population to sustain queue times has released yet more cosmetics and skins that cost the price of that beloved indie game I’ve been playing? No thanks, I am still not interested in it as I’ve ever been.
I think you can manage your news a bit from right clicking the news items in your library and selecting "show less". You can also click the gear by What's New and tell it to only show updates and...
I think you can manage your news a bit from right clicking the news items in your library and selecting "show less". You can also click the gear by What's New and tell it to only show updates and not other stuff there.
I look over the Steam news page somewhat obsessively since I follow a lot of games, so the same things broadcast in my library is just a nuisance to click away every startup to remove the clutter from my games view.
Thanks. Pointed compliment, too, given I coined it from the historical source of royal purple dye: grinding up snail shells in Tyr. Sadly, I later started playing Guild Wars 2, which is set in the...
Very regal.
Thanks. Pointed compliment, too, given I coined it from the historical source of royal purple dye: grinding up snail shells in Tyr.
Sadly, I later started playing Guild Wars 2, which is set in the continent of Tyr, and around there I just look like some bozo fansnail :/
I love when I find a somewhat obscure classical reference in the wild. I want to say that Tyrian purple isn't that obscure, but then, I bet if you asked 100 people on the street if they thought...
I love when I find a somewhat obscure classical reference in the wild.
I want to say that Tyrian purple isn't that obscure, but then, I bet if you asked 100 people on the street if they thought there had ever been a time when you could be jailed for wearing clothes dyed in snail goo, 99 of them would look at you like you were insane. You and I are that one left over.
The steam forums are really bad. They're honestly a cesspool, I've never seen a forum that bad. I feel like they should really clean it up, or just cut it off from steam. Other than that, Steam is...
The steam forums are really bad. They're honestly a cesspool, I've never seen a forum that bad. I feel like they should really clean it up, or just cut it off from steam.
Other than that, Steam is pretty much perfect IMO.
I find that how usable a Steam forum is directly relates to how large of a community the related product has. Assuming that the community is large enough to exist, small enough to not attract much...
I find that how usable a Steam forum is directly relates to how large of a community the related product has. Assuming that the community is large enough to exist, small enough to not attract much mainstream attention, and isn't too insular (Discord centered, etc)...there's a lot of times where I've found and/or gave useful information, tech support/bug fixes, and so on. Its even led to learning a lot about the developers at times, or helping steer their Early Access plans in meaningful ways.
As someone who frequents smaller scale indie projects and avoids most AAA/AA level games, this happens more often than you might think, and I'd hate to see yet another useful resource disappear from search engines for getting games/software working properly.
Of course, it would be nice if the more densely populated and toxic forums were functional without having to add in pages worth of ignored users, but that would require better moderation, and that can come with its own set of problems - assuming Steam isn't interested in greatly expanding their paid moderation team.
The moderation is pretty important. Steam has a weird moderation policy. The devs can have mods and do anything they want, zero rules enforced by Steam whatever the mods do. Alternatively, the...
I find that how usable a Steam forum is directly relates to how large of a community the related product has.
The moderation is pretty important. Steam has a weird moderation policy. The devs can have mods and do anything they want, zero rules enforced by Steam whatever the mods do. Alternatively, the devs can not provide mods, and the forum defaults to Valve's mods, who will only check reported posts (eventually) and only for clear, obvious community violations. So a few people can troll endlessly and completely destroy a forum as long as they stay in the rules enough. You get a big game that goes that way, or devs with bad mods, and you really get the worst of Steam.
Not all the forums are bad, but Steam does seem to attract a lot of toxicity that no one does anything about, and so many people are absolutely hateful in so many ways.
I understand that. But as someone who only plays a few indie games, everytime I open up the steam discussions (usually accidentally tbh), I just see attacks, shit-slinging and nothing else. It's...
I understand that. But as someone who only plays a few indie games, everytime I open up the steam discussions (usually accidentally tbh), I just see attacks, shit-slinging and nothing else. It's upsetting, but I know the solution is to just not open it up haha.
Yeah, it's weird how difficult it is to get anything set up to just look over sales on games you care about for the purposes of suggesting. Especially when we have such advanced tracking sites...
Yeah, it's weird how difficult it is to get anything set up to just look over sales on games you care about for the purposes of suggesting. Especially when we have such advanced tracking sites like isthereanydeal and steamdb. There's a bunch of games I like to check up on and see where prices are or who's passing the sale, and it really ought to just be a list I could open somewhere.
I wish I could re-add games to my wishlist even after I’ve bought them! The wishlist already has the functionality I want — I can choose to have email updates when they go on sale, I can see them...
I wish I could re-add games to my wishlist even after I’ve bought them! The wishlist already has the functionality I want — I can choose to have email updates when they go on sale, I can see them all in a single list with prices and discounts shown, and I can rearrange the list to whatever custom order I want!
Valve is stingy on the weirdest things. Like, why do we only have a total of only 100 slots to follow or ignore curators, but they'll track our helpfulness thumb for every review and game on the...
Valve is stingy on the weirdest things. Like, why do we only have a total of only 100 slots to follow or ignore curators, but they'll track our helpfulness thumb for every review and game on the site? Let us make shopping lists instead of just the one wishlist. Or make shopping guides we can post places. Something. Anything to bring more curation to the store.
Mind over Magic is one that I've been thinking about picking up. I really liked the demo, but I wasn't sure how well that would translate to a whole playthrough - how much depth the game has,...
Mind over Magic is one that I've been thinking about picking up. I really liked the demo, but I wasn't sure how well that would translate to a whole playthrough - how much depth the game has, content, etc... Anyone here tried it and can vouch for it? If it helps, I'm a newcomer to the genre too (colony management / base sim / etc.)
In case anyone here isn't familiar with Is There Any Deal, I've found their filters to be super helpful in finding great games on the cheap. Here's a list of games that redeem on steam that are on...
In case anyone here isn't familiar with Is There Any Deal, I've found their filters to be super helpful in finding great games on the cheap.
Here's a list of games that redeem on steam that are on sale for at least 50% off, sorted by popularity.
And here's one of games that are at their historic low prices, sorted by how many people have added it to their waitlist.
And there are tons more useful filters, like drm-free, under 5/10/20 dollars, at least 75% off, as well as sorting options like review scores and player counts.
I've been using Is There Any Deal for a while now and it's gotten to the point where if I see a game on Steam that I want, I'll go to ITAD first to see if it's cheaper. It almost always is.
I've been using Is There Any Deal for a while now and it's gotten to the point where if I see a game on Steam that I want, I'll go to ITAD first to see if it's cheaper. It almost always is.
Then you must not be using Augmented Steam, because it puts the isthereanydeal lowest current and historical prices right on the Steam store page, so you don't need to go to ITAD unless you want...
Then you must not be using Augmented Steam, because it puts the isthereanydeal lowest current and historical prices right on the Steam store page, so you don't need to go to ITAD unless you want to see the history graph or all the shop prices.
Same here. I've slowly grown my waitlist to the point were every week or so I get an email from ITAD basically saying "Hey remember that game you saw 6 months ago that you thought was interesting...
Same here. I've slowly grown my waitlist to the point were every week or so I get an email from ITAD basically saying "Hey remember that game you saw 6 months ago that you thought was interesting but wasn't willing to pay 30 bucks for? well it's now $5 if you still want to check it out". Then I either get it, or realize that I didn't actually want that game all that much.
Especially useful for AAA titles, which follow a fairly consistent pattern of sales. A new 60-70 dollar game will drop and I'll go "neat, message me in a few years when you're on sale for like $15 and we'll talk".
I'd like to think that I'm saving tons of money by getting all these cheap games, but the reality is that I'm probably spending as much as I'd normally spend, just getting way more bang for my buck. Like instead of spending $100 on 3 games, I'm spending $100 on like fifteen different games lol.
I rarely tend to buy games and enjoy them, but I bought Cult of the Lamb and I am having a blast, I’m not typically an indie fan but this game is so good. Highly recommended.
I rarely tend to buy games and enjoy them, but I bought Cult of the Lamb and I am having a blast, I’m not typically an indie fan but this game is so good. Highly recommended.
I too was checking this out last night. It was giving me major Don't Starve vibes (so much so that I originally thought it was made by the same studio). The reviews on it are pretty unanimous in...
I too was checking this out last night. It was giving me major Don't Starve vibes (so much so that I originally thought it was made by the same studio). The reviews on it are pretty unanimous in praise.
Proverbs is 40% off. It’s like minesweeper but simpler. It’s one big board with 50,000+ squares. It’s the perfect game to distract yourself from something. It’s the perfect game to play while...
I like Proverbs. I bought it the last time someone recommended it here. I have one minor issue with it. It requires a lot of right-clicking. This is a little awkward on a laptop with a touchpad...
I like Proverbs. I bought it the last time someone recommended it here.
I have one minor issue with it. It requires a lot of right-clicking. This is a little awkward on a laptop with a touchpad that needs a two-finger click to do right clicks. I wish that Proverbs let you customize a keypress or something for right click, but the only controller customization allowed is to swap the mouse buttons.
I got Horizon Forbidden West. I had it in my wishlist, I loved Zero Dawn and I have checked if it will run on Steam Deck. Now I'm waiting for those 100GB to download... I also got ARMA 3 DLC. I...
I got Horizon Forbidden West. I had it in my wishlist, I loved Zero Dawn and I have checked if it will run on Steam Deck. Now I'm waiting for those 100GB to download...
I also got ARMA 3 DLC.
I don't want to buy anything else, as I already have too many games. Even the HFW I bought only because I want to have this edition (before anyone realizes they can do some definitive or enhanced edition and pull this original one down - enahanced wouldn't probably run on Steam Deck, so I'm better safe than sorry).
In the historical Turn-Based Strategy genre, I've hugely enjoyed Old World. I've been frustrated with many of the choices that the Civilization series has made since Civ IV, and Old World neatly...
In the historical Turn-Based Strategy genre, I've hugely enjoyed Old World.
I've been frustrated with many of the choices that the Civilization series has made since Civ IV, and Old World neatly avoids just about all of my complaints while still being a unique and clearly modern game. It's also from a small studio, still under active development despite releasing in 2022, and the developers are very responsive to questions and suggestions on Reddit.
I'm trying not to buy anything--though I suspect I will fail--as I have tons of stuff already and things I've bought recently that I haven't touched, though I've been better about that as of late....
I'm trying not to buy anything--though I suspect I will fail--as I have tons of stuff already and things I've bought recently that I haven't touched, though I've been better about that as of late.
Anyway, just wanted to recommend Call to Arms: Gates of Hell - Ostfront for less than $4. Especially if you like World War 2 games. If you like Company of Heroes, it's not really like that at all and I prefer this series (that being Men of War) over CoH.
This time around I'm getting:
Obviously I have not played these, but they caught my interest this round.
It's annoying to check games I already own, but a non-exhaustive list of favorites that I've manually verified to be on sale:
Yeah, maybe I'm not great at the Steam UI or maybe it's junk, but I feel like they're missing out on word-of-mouth opportunities by giving us a spot to easily see sales on games we already own. "Hey, friend, I enjoy playing games with you and also talking about games with you. I own RimWorld and have dumped hundreds of hours into it, and with Steam's interface, I can quickly and easily see that it's on sale. You might consider purchasing it. Heck, I will purchase it for you."
I know social media is the bane of all existence, but Steam could definitely be doing a better job of being the social media of games.
I feel like they do pretty good at that, overall. The particular feature you mention is lacking, but I feel the rest of the social features of the client are just about exactly what I want them to be. Here's a list of friends who want to be visible as being online, here's where the player-made walkthroughs are, here's the forums if you still have a shred of faith in humanity you want to destroy.
They don't hound you to engage with anything because they don't really care about engagement. They don't even advertise super heavily at you either, just one window that pops up whenever you start the client and actually goes away when you tell it to. I mostly leave my client running anyway, so I only see that at most twice or thrice a week, which is about the perfect amount.
I'm actually curious what else you'd choose to improve.
You can turn that popup window off at Settings->Interface->"Notify me about changes to my games...".
Now if they would just let us turn off the unneeded and poorly implemented news item line at the top of the library.
Agreed, and/or allow me to choose which games turn up there, because some games post wayyyy more than others.
This small indie game that I love has had an update? Yes, tell me about it! I’m still playing this game regularly, so I’d love to try out the new features as soon as they’re available!
That multiplayer behemoth of a game that I decided I’ve quit playing forever because Australia no longer has the population to sustain queue times has released yet more cosmetics and skins that cost the price of that beloved indie game I’ve been playing? No thanks, I am still not interested in it as I’ve ever been.
I think you can manage your news a bit from right clicking the news items in your library and selecting "show less". You can also click the gear by What's New and tell it to only show updates and not other stuff there.
I look over the Steam news page somewhat obsessively since I follow a lot of games, so the same things broadcast in my library is just a nuisance to click away every startup to remove the clutter from my games view.
Thanks for the tip.
I like your username, by the way. Very regal.
Thanks. Pointed compliment, too, given I coined it from the historical source of royal purple dye: grinding up snail shells in Tyr.
Sadly, I later started playing Guild Wars 2, which is set in the continent of Tyr, and around there I just look like some bozo fansnail :/
I love when I find a somewhat obscure classical reference in the wild.
I want to say that Tyrian purple isn't that obscure, but then, I bet if you asked 100 people on the street if they thought there had ever been a time when you could be jailed for wearing clothes dyed in snail goo, 99 of them would look at you like you were insane. You and I are that one left over.
The steam forums are really bad. They're honestly a cesspool, I've never seen a forum that bad. I feel like they should really clean it up, or just cut it off from steam.
Other than that, Steam is pretty much perfect IMO.
I find that how usable a Steam forum is directly relates to how large of a community the related product has. Assuming that the community is large enough to exist, small enough to not attract much mainstream attention, and isn't too insular (Discord centered, etc)...there's a lot of times where I've found and/or gave useful information, tech support/bug fixes, and so on. Its even led to learning a lot about the developers at times, or helping steer their Early Access plans in meaningful ways.
As someone who frequents smaller scale indie projects and avoids most AAA/AA level games, this happens more often than you might think, and I'd hate to see yet another useful resource disappear from search engines for getting games/software working properly.
Of course, it would be nice if the more densely populated and toxic forums were functional without having to add in pages worth of ignored users, but that would require better moderation, and that can come with its own set of problems - assuming Steam isn't interested in greatly expanding their paid moderation team.
The moderation is pretty important. Steam has a weird moderation policy. The devs can have mods and do anything they want, zero rules enforced by Steam whatever the mods do. Alternatively, the devs can not provide mods, and the forum defaults to Valve's mods, who will only check reported posts (eventually) and only for clear, obvious community violations. So a few people can troll endlessly and completely destroy a forum as long as they stay in the rules enough. You get a big game that goes that way, or devs with bad mods, and you really get the worst of Steam.
Not all the forums are bad, but Steam does seem to attract a lot of toxicity that no one does anything about, and so many people are absolutely hateful in so many ways.
I understand that. But as someone who only plays a few indie games, everytime I open up the steam discussions (usually accidentally tbh), I just see attacks, shit-slinging and nothing else. It's upsetting, but I know the solution is to just not open it up haha.
Yeah, it's weird how difficult it is to get anything set up to just look over sales on games you care about for the purposes of suggesting. Especially when we have such advanced tracking sites like isthereanydeal and steamdb. There's a bunch of games I like to check up on and see where prices are or who's passing the sale, and it really ought to just be a list I could open somewhere.
I wish I could re-add games to my wishlist even after I’ve bought them! The wishlist already has the functionality I want — I can choose to have email updates when they go on sale, I can see them all in a single list with prices and discounts shown, and I can rearrange the list to whatever custom order I want!
Valve is stingy on the weirdest things. Like, why do we only have a total of only 100 slots to follow or ignore curators, but they'll track our helpfulness thumb for every review and game on the site? Let us make shopping lists instead of just the one wishlist. Or make shopping guides we can post places. Something. Anything to bring more curation to the store.
Mind over Magic is one that I've been thinking about picking up. I really liked the demo, but I wasn't sure how well that would translate to a whole playthrough - how much depth the game has, content, etc... Anyone here tried it and can vouch for it? If it helps, I'm a newcomer to the genre too (colony management / base sim / etc.)
In case anyone here isn't familiar with Is There Any Deal, I've found their filters to be super helpful in finding great games on the cheap.
Here's a list of games that redeem on steam that are on sale for at least 50% off, sorted by popularity.
And here's one of games that are at their historic low prices, sorted by how many people have added it to their waitlist.
And there are tons more useful filters, like drm-free, under 5/10/20 dollars, at least 75% off, as well as sorting options like review scores and player counts.
I've been using Is There Any Deal for a while now and it's gotten to the point where if I see a game on Steam that I want, I'll go to ITAD first to see if it's cheaper. It almost always is.
Then you must not be using Augmented Steam, because it puts the isthereanydeal lowest current and historical prices right on the Steam store page, so you don't need to go to ITAD unless you want to see the history graph or all the shop prices.
Hey that's pretty neat. Thanks for linking!
That is a correct assumption and thank you for the suggestion! I'll definitely look into that.
Same here. I've slowly grown my waitlist to the point were every week or so I get an email from ITAD basically saying "Hey remember that game you saw 6 months ago that you thought was interesting but wasn't willing to pay 30 bucks for? well it's now $5 if you still want to check it out". Then I either get it, or realize that I didn't actually want that game all that much.
Especially useful for AAA titles, which follow a fairly consistent pattern of sales. A new 60-70 dollar game will drop and I'll go "neat, message me in a few years when you're on sale for like $15 and we'll talk".
I'd like to think that I'm saving tons of money by getting all these cheap games, but the reality is that I'm probably spending as much as I'd normally spend, just getting way more bang for my buck. Like instead of spending $100 on 3 games, I'm spending $100 on like fifteen different games lol.
I rarely tend to buy games and enjoy them, but I bought Cult of the Lamb and I am having a blast, I’m not typically an indie fan but this game is so good. Highly recommended.
I too was checking this out last night. It was giving me major Don't Starve vibes (so much so that I originally thought it was made by the same studio). The reviews on it are pretty unanimous in praise.
The game even has actual Don't Starve content due to a crossover. :-)
Ha, they mesh together perfectly!
Proverbs is 40% off.
It’s like minesweeper but simpler.
It’s one big board with 50,000+ squares.
It’s the perfect game to distract yourself from something.
It’s the perfect game to play while listening to audiobooks or podcasts.
I have 20 hours in it and am about 70% of the way done.
It plays really well after a long, stressful day at work.
It plays really well if you’re trying to get your brain away from thinking about, you know, everything.
It’s very rote.
It’s very calm.
Looks like the perfect game to rotate out with dragonsweeper while watching tv after a long day of work. Thanks!
I like Proverbs. I bought it the last time someone recommended it here.
I have one minor issue with it. It requires a lot of right-clicking. This is a little awkward on a laptop with a touchpad that needs a two-finger click to do right clicks. I wish that Proverbs let you customize a keypress or something for right click, but the only controller customization allowed is to swap the mouse buttons.
Just yesterday the dev mentioned that they're working on control remapping, so it might be possible soon.
Sale time! Wanting to get any suggestions of great games to buy or unearth any gems.
I got Horizon Forbidden West. I had it in my wishlist, I loved Zero Dawn and I have checked if it will run on Steam Deck. Now I'm waiting for those 100GB to download...
I also got ARMA 3 DLC.
I don't want to buy anything else, as I already have too many games. Even the HFW I bought only because I want to have this edition (before anyone realizes they can do some definitive or enhanced edition and pull this original one down - enahanced wouldn't probably run on Steam Deck, so I'm better safe than sorry).
In the historical Turn-Based Strategy genre, I've hugely enjoyed Old World.
I've been frustrated with many of the choices that the Civilization series has made since Civ IV, and Old World neatly avoids just about all of my complaints while still being a unique and clearly modern game. It's also from a small studio, still under active development despite releasing in 2022, and the developers are very responsive to questions and suggestions on Reddit.
I'm trying not to buy anything--though I suspect I will fail--as I have tons of stuff already and things I've bought recently that I haven't touched, though I've been better about that as of late.
Anyway, just wanted to recommend Call to Arms: Gates of Hell - Ostfront for less than $4. Especially if you like World War 2 games. If you like Company of Heroes, it's not really like that at all and I prefer this series (that being Men of War) over CoH.
I just got every thief game for $6 :)