Steam's "Discovery Update"
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Official website about it
Steam decided to ruin their store front page by filling with things they think you might like (in my case, all sort of badly made over-animefied indie crap that I wouldn't even waste my time with by looking at it) and they added an infiniscroll list of "recommended games".
WHY.
Oh, and Steam curators are the *dumbest* idea ever.
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I noticed the infiniscroll yesterday. Makes me want to throttle the one person I know who works at Valve.
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Yeah, looks pretty terrible now. Guess I'm glad I'm not much into buying games on Steam anymore, at least for right now, since I'm out of a PC gaming kick.
Oh, and Steam curators are the *dumbest* idea ever.
Yeah...
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I saw that--very briefly--at lunch, and managed to develop a hate for it in just the minute or so I was looking at it.
I see it's "customizable." Can I customize it back to the way it used to act?
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You're supposed to tell it which ones you don't like so that it learns. It actually convinced me to buy two games immediately, though. I marked 7/10 as "not interested".
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But how will obnoxious Let's Players recommend games to their thousands of 13-year-old fans!?
Note you still can't change the font size in Steam IM windows.
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Valve has always been a bit fuzzy on the concept of internationalization. Steam Workshop, for example, has no way to indicate what language the mod's in. Gee, you think that's maybe a tiny bit important?
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Games I want? Puhlease... I don't see HL3 ANYWHERE on there.
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Have you played any of Valve's recent games?
Believe me, you don't want HL3.
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Which game specifically? HL2EP2? Left 4 Dead 2? Portal 2? Dota 2? CS:GO?
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Portal 2 and DOTA 2, they're basically thin shells around hat stores.
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Portal 2 doesn't even have a hat store anymore.
Dota 2 has a huge competitive scene. And it's free.
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The only think I didn't like from Portal 2 is that it wasn't as experimental as Portal 1 was and that the puzzles were less ... openish?
But never having played Co-Op, I have no idea what those hats are you're talking about~
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If you had specific TF2 hats when a certain update was released, you got a matching Portal 2 hat:
Not sure how that magically removes the rest of the game, but apparently for @blakeyrat, anything is possible.
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Steam is basically the ultimate expression of developers working on the little bits and pieces that interest them (Curation, Streaming, Community) and not caring about the UI. Steam's UI is plain bad and no-one at Valve cares enough about it to fix it.
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Actually, they worsified the UI with this update. Its ugly and the text is less readable now, especially in the search field.
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Yes Valve, what I want from your recommendation service is *games I already fucking own*.
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I dislike that TotalBiscuit is one of their top curators. The dude is an ass and I trust his opinion on 0 of the things.
TotalBiscuit's thought process is that the way he does stuff is the only viable way to do stuff, and anything else is completely wrong.
"Catering to Casuals". Need I say more?
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He would probably fit in quite well on this site.
But I would leave, and then you would be bereft of cock sucking/amputation stories.
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He would probably fit in quite well on
this site.meta.dFTFY.
Also, I don't think the new changes to Steam's store are that bad. Maybe the blue's a bit strong, but the layout it generally neat and tidy. The recommendations? They'll get better as you mark stuff you don't want. Infinistroll? Meh... Could be worse. Curators? Not a terrible idea. However, still no updates to the core Steam application UI? Very disappointing.
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I dislike that TotalBiscuit is one of their top curators. The dude is an ass and I trust his opinion on 0 of the things.
Well, you see, it's not like, y'know, you have to, like, follow him or whatever...
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Curators? Not a terrible idea.
I can agree, however I think the inability (based on my cursory investigation) to obliterate all references to curators from my store is a terrible idea. I don't trust random people (and they are random people, anyone can be a curator) to tell me what I will like, but steam is applying a significant focus on them all the same.
Well, you see, it's not like, y'know, you have to, like, follow him or whatever...
true, but I don't follow any curators (I checked), and steam still tells me I should get these games because these curators tell me to. I don't want that, and I don't seem to be able to stop it.
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also it seems to tell me that these curators want me to buy this game, even when the quoted actual recommendation says "don't buy this game"
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@blakeyrat I haven't spent much time on "recent" games, although the time I have spent was enjoyable enough. I know the "focus" has shifted to free-to-play'ish with hats, but I haven't been in that scene for years now so all I have left is a desire to see something I consider great actually continued... Rapid episodic releases my ass lol
Otherwise, I haven't wrapped my head around the store update much, although generally I'd say I have a positive feel about it.
I DO like the fact that games in your library are marked now. Something I've wanted since I have a huge library and it's hard to remember exactly what I own at a glance.
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I don't mind it much, don't group me in with the bitchers.
I just hate that they're working on shit like this when they have so many more fundamental problems to fix. And plain broken stuff that's never been un-broken. (They seem to finally have just given up entirely on getting the "Categories" feature in the Library working.)
The font size thing is just my main indicator of "what the fuck are they NOT working on?" since:
- It's been broken ever since they switched to Chromium-based rendering in like 2009 or whenever,
- It's such a fucking basic accessibility rule,
- Hypocritical Valve is a master of accessibility in games-- they even go back and patch old games to work with controllers for the disabled, they have captions for sound effects, not just dialog, etc.,
- It's impossible for me to use Steam IM on my 1080p 13" laptop screen until I can up the font size. My laptop is not new. It's not even in the first generation of 1080p 13" screens.
Of course Valve works like a bunch of open source developers, meaning the "boring" accessibility shit never gets done. Except in their games, those are accessible as possible. But fuck desktop software users! Apparently.
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Gee, you think that's maybe a tiny bit important?
no.
http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001583837/3749645566_DoYouSpeakEnglish_answer_4_xlarge.gif
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I think windows 8's font scaling finally works on steam since a couple client updates ago. Of course, they have it disabled by default, so if I use the default settings, I get the wonderful experience of an 8px font on a 3200x1800 screen... But with the scaling applied, it's readable. You've always been able to modify some steam configuration files to increase font sizes and even change fonts, but knowing which values to change is difficult, the UI does not always fare well, and it gets wiped in client updates. But really, now that the DPI scaling isn't broken, it's usable.
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I think windows 8's font scaling finally works on steam since a couple client updates ago
Microsoft definitely improved that in Win8. I've got an app that I work with that is totally borked on older versions of Windows if you turn on font scaling, but works fine in 8.
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This is actually an important item. Have you ever tried to gift a game to your friend, but you can't because you already own the game, and the only option is to play it from the store tab? Yeah.
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No because the mod should be internationalized anyway.
Even shitty google translate would work to start.
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I can buy games I own as gifts for friends.
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Is that in the steam application, or steam website? (I haven't seen the new steam store yet, been busy)
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Uhh ...
They're the exact same thing, more or less.
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No, they very much aren't.
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Bullshit. I even got a login screen when accessing my activity page inside the fscking windows steam client. Because it literally is a webbrowser accessing minimally altered versions of the pages you can also open in your webbrowser of choice. And yes, it sometimes forgets that I'm myself.
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You do know the in-client storefront is just https://www.steampowered.com/ in an embedded Chrome instance?
Obviously with some super-secret secret that means you don't (normally) have to log in.
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Is that new? Because that hasn't been my experience between mobile stores, steam client store, and online store. Each has different information presented in slightly different ways.
Then again, maybe it's like discourse viewport magic and they're just doing fuckery.
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Steam has a mobile store?
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yes, the steam mobile app
It's pretty terrible too.
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(They seem to finally have just given up entirely on getting the "Categories" feature in the Library working.)
Did you try out out the update they pushed about a month ago? The one that lets you assign games to multiple categories, and also hide games entirely?
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You do know the in-client storefront is just https://www.steampowered.com/ in an embedded Chrome instance?
Entertainingly, your link borked the site.
It's "post screenshots like Ben" day.
Which has just been renamed to "post screenshots like Ben" minute.
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I was impressed. I had to retype the URL in the browser bar--afterwards I realized that turned it from https to http. ... Ah. "www.steampowered.com" doesn't like https. https://steampowered.com (no www) makes Chrome unhappy due to the cert being for "store.steampowered.com" Good job, Valve.
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I bought music creator touch, and I literally cannot find it anywhere on steam - it's not under games, library, or tools.
I had to make a desktop shortcut by going in to the steam folder/common apps things.
How do you even fuck that up? (It shows as purchased when I look at the store page)
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Hm. I admittedly haven't tried on my laptop for a few weeks, but it used to just ignore DPI scaling and always display at 100% regardless. (My laptop is set to 150%.)
I guess I'll have to give it another try.
However, working correctly with DPI scaling is not a replacement for being able to change the font size.
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I can buy games I own as gifts for friends.
Right but only one at a time, despite them now having an inventory system that allows owning 50 copies of the game.
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Uhh ...They're the exact same thing, more or less.
No; you can't redeem codes on the website, only in the Steam client. Why? Who knows. Valve sucks ass.
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Did you try out out the update they pushed about a month ago? The one that lets you assign games to multiple categories, and also hide games entirely?
No, I stopped trying because for literally years I would put games in categories and then they would "gradually" leak back out for literally no reason. So I mentally filed the system under, "utterly unreliable" and haven't been using it for awhile. You know, the whole "trick me once, shame on you, trick me twice, shame on me" thing.
I need to revisit that, also, it seems.
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It should be under Apps. That's where it is on my copy, along with the other two apps I have.
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Well, I'm fairly sure valve turns off the scaling by default on the executable, but it used to scale any game of you turned it on. That's what's been fixed. But yeah, manually changing don't sizes in steam is a pain. Very glad I don't have to anymore.