Steam's New Interface Hones In on Game Discovery, Customization

[Baresark]

annoying. That discover queue needs to be gone now.

Optional component is optional... It's at the bottom of the store page, I can't even see mine from the top of the main page so it won't block your precious featured list.

They should give us the ability to customize it

The queue will be customized to you. If you have a game on it that you don't want then just click the "not Interested" button and it will go away...

Steam's needed something like the discover queue for a long time. Time will tell whether their chosen method of implementation will work well but it looks promising to me.

It's not optional, you cannot turn it off. If you scroll down and plan on using any of the "New Releases" or "Top Sellers" Steam lists, then you have to see it. Clicking through it is the most annoying bit. It loads each steam page rather than giving you a list you can just choose an action from. If you read the rest of my comment, I talk about how the algorithm they user to decide what is on that list is screwed up and does not work anyway.

You can easily ignore it.. It's hidden away at the bottom of the page and doesn't take up much space.

On my first queue it gave me some reasonable selections. I'm not going to run out and buy any of them just yet but it allowed me to keep my eye on them and alerted me to some games that I wasn't really aware of.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it needs to go away. Is it really that hard to ignore?

It needs to be actually optional (ie. you can collapse some things, but not that). Having things on the screen that are just taking up space is not useful to me. If you like it, you can keep it. I don't like it, it does little more than clutter up the screen for me, so it being actually optional would benefit everyone. Couple that with there is a section near the top with new releases, so their shouldn't be another section with new releases in your "Queue". The Curators you are following shouldn't be in the middle of the screen, it should be a sidebar, at least that is how I would like.

If they made this actually customizable, it would be very nice. But they aren't, they are just cluttering the screen with more ads for games for you to buy. I have a much larger Steam list than every single person I know, so me buying games shouldn't be an issue and I should have some say in how the store page looks. It was better before because it wasn't inundated with useless information.

 

[misg]

I played around with this for a couple hours today. As a person who has 500+ games on steam, and spends a good deal of time checking out games. I found a number of good titles I had missed and a couple F2P titles that were quite fun. I think the best part of this feature is you can now see the percentage of positive reviews on a game. This greatly aids in seeing if a game has positive reviews or not.

I'm sure many people will complain about bad games, but with the review system and seeing the Percent of positive reviews, you really can't blame steam anymore when you buy a bad game.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

"underrated gem"

a friendly reminder that kotaku's opinion is worthless

the way i see the, broteam and totalbiscuit are the main curators worth following

Jim Sterling is currently the third most popular curator behing Total Biscuit and PC Gamer.

personally i no longer trust jim, if you want to follow him, more power to you

I'll admit, I don't get the hate towards Jim. He just seems indifferent towards the whole thing. Why be angry at him and not, say, Yahtzee, who basically ignored the controversy? Now, moviebob on the other hand...

OT: But yeah, I'm really digging this new layout. I've already found multiple games I never new existed. Certainly an improvement.

the problem is that, it contradicts so much of what he stood for

and the fact his video about literally who might have increased the harassment towards wizardchan? he didnt address it in any of his videos, or his tweetlonger, he only addressed this very important fact in a measly post in the thread about literally who

oh and he accused people back in the day of victim blaming for daring to ask for proof of the harassment

im just so... very disappointed

 

[shirkbot]

But what possible, detrimental effect does the existence of bad games on the Steam platform have on you and your personal gaming experience with the platform, though? I know this topic's been covered ad-nauseam around here but provided you're not being forced to buy them; and now you don't even have to know they exist; what does it matter?

Regardless, I do agree with you insofar as saying Valve's promises are no more inherently meaningful than any other companies; at face value, anyway. However, delivering on a promise is quite meaningful. Especially if it's within a trend of delivering on such promises.

This doesn't make having absolute faith in any future promises any less irrational, of course, but it does set a certain precedent.

until I read your post. Now I've resolved to double-down on my kvetching just to spite you

That hardly seems constructive. I've always preferred bombarding people with Sprite instead of spite. It's so much tastier.

But that's me, I guess.

Oh no, I was being entirely sincere with that post. I'm complaining just to spite our friend Vivi because that kind of attitude just irks me. Petty? Yes. Productive? Probably not. Cathartic? Definitely!

But seriously, I'm actually pretty thrilled about the whole thing since it addresses a lot of the day-to-day over-saturation issues and lets me take out both Early Access games and software. Not to mention little things like a little box on store pages that clearly states if a game uses 3ed Party DRM like UPlay or Origin. It's a wonderful step in the right direction, but I'm still somewhat wary of how well it will turn out. After all they did cull a lot of the more negative tags from the tag system, even useful ones like "mobile port", or even just silly ones like "Nanomachines son!".

 

[SadisticFire]

It's not bad, it's actually pretty good. The reccomended list thing is actually not that bad. I mean it hit most games that I knew I already wanted, but beyond that I haven't found much else. It seems to favor towards sells which is nice and more proffitable for them, so yay?

 

[Vigormortis]

Oh no, I was being entirely sincere with that post. I'm complaining just to spite our friend Vivi because that kind of attitude just irks me. Petty? Yes. Productive? Probably not. Cathartic? Definitely!

I know. I just needed a segue for my Sprite pun. [sub]Dumb as it is.[/sub]

But seriously, I'm actually pretty thrilled about the whole thing since it addresses a lot of the day-to-day over-saturation issues and lets me take out both Early Access games and software. Not to mention little things like a little box on store pages that clearly states if a game uses 3ed Party DRM like UPlay or Origin. It's a wonderful step in the right direction, but I'm still somewhat wary of how well it will turn out. After all they did cull a lot of the more negative tags from the tag system, even useful ones like "mobile port", or even just silly ones like "Nanomachines son!".

I actually agree on this. Notably with the tags.

I would have actually preferred a system that allowed the community to down-vote pointless tags. Granted, it might've been just as fruitless an endeavor as allowing the community to have free reign in making the tags, but still...

I'm also still waiting for Valve to work on their server hosting for some of their titles. Specifically: Left 4 Dead 2. Some of those servers are becoming abysmal.

Though, I'm glad to see they're adding in support for 12 new currencies. That was a nice addition.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Recommended for You? More like "Recommended for You, because there's a game of a series in your collection and we didn't know if you liked it or not".

Get rid of the excessive RFY, remove the queue (seriously?), move curators closer to the bottom, make it an equal-length double column with a full-width (actually) New Releases section on top. Also, get rid of a lot of text here. "Show, don't tell" is a big thing and some of the stuff can be replaced with symbols that have tooltip info or single row section explaining what each symbol is. after New Releases, Deal of the Day and Specials come next because that's what most people come to Steam for - The deals, not the recommendations.

Also make my suggested design modular - If someone cares about RFY and curators more than the deals, let them be able to move the sections around to where they want it in their settings.

 

[Nergui]

For all it's improvements, your standard web browser is still better than the Steam client for browsing available games. Although you don't get to see what Steam thinks you should buy.

 

[American Fox]

HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT

This recommendation thing is stupid, I don't want 10 ads for LEGO games just because I own one. I want to find new and different more often.

 

[Strazdas]

ech, new page layout is ok. but why did they had to change the color sceme/theme so much. i was one of the few that actually loved the default steam skin.

"underrated gem"

a friendly reminder that kotaku's opinion is worthless

the way i see the, broteam and totalbiscuit are the main curators worth following

no, you missed the best part. "obscure". yes, the most known RPG in whole world is definitely "obscure". thorough i heard that todays fashion is to hate skyrim so they probably rolling on that.

My list of curators so far is TB [http://store.steampowered.com/curator/1370293/], Jim [http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6856736/], NorthernLion [http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6857052/], Jesse Cox [http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6863163/],Maya Kramer [http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6856325/], Mike Bithell [http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6859518/] and finally, SavyGamer AKA Lewie Proctor [http://store.steampowered.com/curator/1545612/]

It's provided quite an eclectic list of games.

my list of curators is my own taste but i am one of the original 100 to join Jims curation because i follow everything Jim related. But seriuosly, just use your head for a bit and you can avoid all the shitty games to begin with. not necesssarely bad ports and things like Alan Wake, but things like Air Control just scream "its awful".

the problem is that, it contradicts so much of what he stood for

and the fact his video about literally who might have increased the harassment towards wizardchan? he didnt address it in any of his videos, or his tweetlonger, he only addressed this very important fact in a measly post in the thread about literally who

oh and he accused people back in the day of victim blaming for daring to ask for proof of the harassment

im just so... very disappointed

While we thank God for Jim, Jim is but a man and men make mistakes. I too disagree with Jims stance on this, however i find that overall he has done more good than harm to what i believe in. Something i can no longer say about Bob Chipman.