The sad state of Steam 2: A new kind of lies
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I would say that Steam should have some kind of indicator as to how crappy those games are, but I'm not sure how I would get that point across.
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Since they added reviews, it's not as big a deal as it used to be. Still, online reviews means "paid-for-good-review" type scams, so it's not completely solved.
Now that I think about it, they started removing all the quality filters the instant the reviews feature was added, so that might have been a purposeful strategy.
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Games that are known to be bad are less likely to be purchased, and that would be bad for business, after all.
The most trustworthy source is the list of curators, and even then only if you know the curators themselves. I know that, for instance, some of the curators started a '60 FPS locked' (or something) curator, since Valve won't allow that as a tag (As it might make people reconsider their purchase!).
Note that I don't care that Valve is like this. It makes sense to me.
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It really is hard to judge a game by its steam page. Take Car Mechanic Simulator 2014/2015. At first glance you might think they are just stupid "sim" games. But I thoroughly enjoy both of them, then again, I don't exactly have normal tastes in entertainment
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I really loved the 50s alternate future timeline post-apocalyptic simulator.
Who could have known, with that kind of description...
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How Steam looks for me since installing Windows 10:
This next one is what the top couple of screens worth of the Store page look like (I hadn't actually been on this since getting 10)
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Odd… it works fine on my Surface, which is running Windows 10
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The last screenshot is amazing.
The top one I'd be more likely to blame on DPI scaling than anything specific to Windows 10-- did you happen to turn on/off DPI scaling at the same time you upgraded?
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It really is hard to judge a game by its steam page. Take Car Mechanic Simulator 2014/2015. At first glance you might think they are just stupid "sim" games.
Sim games are really hard to judge. Sometimes you get stuff like Warehouse and Logistics Sim which is utter garbage, and sometimes you get a sim that sounds/looks like garbage but it's shockingly fun anyway. (Ship Simulator, for example. Or Farm Simulator which was so fun it actually became a really BIG DEAL in its next release, ported to Xbox and everything.)
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id you happen to turn on/off DPI scaling at the same time you upgraded?
Not that I know of, but it's possible I allowed some default settings to go through in the install process or while upgrading graphics drivers. Normal text in Steam looks blurry, like it's been blown up and not sharpened
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Did you upgrade from 7?
8+ have a lovely DPI setting thing that belguims up the display for... I don't know, I guess someone thought it was a good idea?If you upgraded from 7 that's probably what you're encountering
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I've never really encountered problems with Early Access but I'm pretty careful about purchases... I've gotten several good games on Early Access (Planetary Annihilation, Space Engineers, a few others) but I only got them on a recommendation from someone I know. Also I'd never buy a game before there was at least a reasonably complete game to play.....
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The best advice I've heard is the same advice spouted by the good early access games. Only buy it if you are willing to spend that money on what it is today. Never buy early access for tomorrow's game.
Odd, since that is exactly the point of early access, but now that every idiot and his mother is making early access shit to get a quick buck, we have to be wary.
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Ironically, Kerbal Space Program was a significantly better game during Early Access. The patch that brought it to 1.0 also turned a large number of its game mechanics into "not fun at all" mode. Not to mention making all the work they did on adding spaceplanes basically worthless.
Still mad about that.
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I'm sure you are not alone there. Somebody on the forums has been archiving old copies of the game for history purposes. I enjoy all the new features and changes, but there is no doubting it is less "Kerbaly" now.
Though I do not lament the demise of spaghetti joints. Seriously, fuck you squad for claiming it was "by design".
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I know that early access isn't a good deal, and that pre-orders are worse, and that therefore the new Deus Ex is downright awful, but I may still preorder it. I enjoyed the previous one, and even if it's not better, I'll enjoy it.
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I think it will be fun, but I will not preorder it. Mostly because I refuse to give a publisher/developer my money until they have earned it. If they don't deliver, they don't get my money.
Also because I never buy games at full price anymore
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The best advice I've heard is the same advice spouted by the good early access games. Only buy it if you are willing to spend that money on what it is today. Never buy early access for tomorrow's game.
Odd, since that is exactly the point of early access, but now that every idiot and his mother is making early access shit to get a quick buck, we have to be wary.
I agree entirely. The games I bought Early Access were all games that I wanted to play in their form right then.
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Yes, you really need to be careful about games in Early Access.
The only Early Access game that I remember buying was Monstrum.
It's a pretty fun game, although it doesn't have anywhere near the depth of Alien: Isolation which is a game with a similar premise. (Seriously, if Alien: Isolation is on sale, buy that instead).
Edit: Sorry, I also bought Armello when it was Early Access. It was OK, but I sucked at it and also ran into a few bugs. Also, the only other friend who had it would only play it after I went to bed, meaning that we never played together after the first 1-2 times.
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One thing I have to say about space engineers early access is that they're very consistent. The last couple of weeks, they've been under feature freeze and have just been doing fixes, but every thursday they release something. And some time very soon, that will be planets.
