Wow Steam may very well be the dumbest application related to pc gaming ever....

[niko86]

Sounds just like you are overly fussy with your system lighten up lol, unless steam being in the wrong area is a matter of life or death i wouldnt worry.

 

[Thegreatoz]

while installing the game dont yiou just have to select what drive it goes on D to E or something like that.

 

[hickwarrior]

Greatoz, did you even read what he said? I suggest you do that, cause he said that valve games only go to where steam is installed and the OP didn't want it.

 

[daemonire]

So the solution to all of this is just a message appearing when Steam is installed mentioning that Steam games are installed into the Steam folder, ya?

Adding one line of text to the installer is so minor, they might actually bother to do it in a new version if you email thier tech support politely. I mean, the issue is that you'd like to spare others the need to reinstall steam should they be bothered by this 'issue', correct? It's more likely that you'll get a response about that then suggesting they totally restructure Steam's 'easy install' philosophy. So take the step towards improving steam and move on~ la de daa de daaa

I PC game, so I get where you're coming from- but personally as long as an installer is telling me what it's doing, I'm satisfied. Just my thought.

 

[AnGeL.SLayer]

I always hear about everyone having all these issues with steam but ive never had any major problems with it. yeah it sometimes crashes and i have to restart it. but what program has never done that? yeah sometimes it likes to test my patience but i will not let a computer program get to me. its just stupid to let something so simple get to you like this. espically to this scale. Steam is meant to help you. you shouldnt attack something that is there for your benifit to start with. if you dont like it then dont use it. if you have a problem dont be an ass about it. everything is going to have bugs and problems will always arise. even if steam has been around for a while now. like daemonire said if your nice to the tech guys they will be nice to you. youd be suprised how many auctally get competely involved in your problem. most of them are well..us.

take a deep breath and start thinking about finding the solution not dragging out the problem. it will make your life a lot easier..and prob lower your blood pressure.

^_^

 

[REDPill357]

I think you are getting at something much larger; namely, steam, acts in a way akin to it's valve-counterpart's "combine." It stands as a central for all games alike the citadel, scraping it's way slowly through the city until it has control over the entire pc gaming industry. after enough time, it will be the sole provider of video game ingenuity. They will have enough resources and manpower to produce the top games at the fastest rate. they will become a monopoly in the industry, as the combine hopes to have complete contol of earth and its inhabitants.

The reason your post interested me enough to respond is because in addressing their control over the installation of their game, shows their true motives of gaining control. they want everything under one folder, named steam. Games with installation options have been produced from the very beginning of pc gaming. Ironically, half-life was one of those first games to have the option of directory installation.

Through the steam platform's "portal" they will have every pc game available. the term "pc games" will change into "steam games." As valve points out, the only way to stop the ever-growing is with something that has ever more ingenuity and strength;

A Gordon Freeman.

There is a big flaw in your "theory." Steam isn't buying other companies' talents. They are just providing the game through their service. They aren't going to monopolize the industry. They are just selling the games over Steam. They are not the Combine. They are a gaming company that makes great games and markets them over Steam. They pay other companies to market their games over Steam. Valve gets the money you pay for their games. Stop trying to look cool. You're embarrassing yourself.

 

[werepossum]

I love Steam (specifically not having to hunt out a disc to play a game) but I too wish I had more control over install locations. I habitually place my games a second, larger (though newer and slightly faster) hard drive from my AutoCAD, lighting calculation programs, etc. Also, at least in the past there was a small speed advantage to having OS files on one drive and application files on a second for simultaneous access - not sure if that's still true.

 

[runtheplacered]

I never would have that problem on a console. Not trying to sound like a fuck-wit console fanboy that everyone has come to hate, but I can't understand why PC users think they're the greatest cause they can fork out enouth $$$ for a super-over-the-top PC and then complain about problems like this and still think they're superiour to consoletards. (not pointing my fingure at anyone in general, just saying is all)

PC users don't think they're the greatest.. they are. We get to play with mods, you don't. We get patches to bugs.. you don't. We get a mouse and keyboard to comfortably play our games.. you don't. Pc gamers have less regulation on video games, you do. We get to play certain video games for free, you don't. We get to upgrade our video game capabilities (video cards, memory, cpu speeds, etc), you don't. You're even missing out on entire genres of video games, I am not.

You simply do not understand how a computer functions, thus you're confused about which of the two is actually superior. Which is fine, I'm not going to put down people just out of ignorance, since there's an amazing amount of things that I'm ignorant about. But, for instance, I'm fairly ignorant about cars.. but I'm not going to go onto a car forum and start pretending like I know which car is better then another. Just seems kind of strange to me that you would do that.

 

[Weimdog]

You simply do not understand how a computer functions, thus you're confused about which of the two is actually superior. Which is fine, I'm not going to put down people just out of ignorance, since there's an amazing amount of things that I'm ignorant about. But, for instance, I'm fairly ignorant about cars.. but I'm not going to go onto a car forum and start pretending like I know which car is better then another. Just seems kind of strange to me that you would do that.

Eh... Trolling? I'm not sure if that's intentional misunderstanding or not.

Anyway, Personally I love how simple steam makes installing games, and keeping track of them too. I have all my games (valve-made or not) in my steam games list, so I don't have to have 20 desktop or start menu shortcuts. And as a bonus, the friends chat works now! So good for finding the servers my friends are in.
I have my complaints about steam, but it's mostly about needing to be online to play any games (that gets a little silly).

 

[REDPill357]

We get patches to bugs.. you don't.

They do now.

We get a mouse and keyboard to comfortably play our games.. you don't.

Some people prefer controllers.

You're even missing out on entire genres of video games, I am not.

What genre? Strategy? If so, Halo Wars.

I'm a computer fanboy, but I found some of your arguments slightly unintelligent.

 

[werepossum]

I don't necessarily assume PCs are superior for gaming; it is my preferred gaming platform mainly because I don't like the console controllers, but I also find console games to be generally dumbed down and less to my taste. Whether a given platform is superior to some other given platform depends totally on the game and the preferences of the player, and on the PC side, the state of the computer; there's a huge difference in Halflife 2 on a $319 512MB integrated graphics econobox versus Halflife 2 on a $6,000 Voodoo rig or a homebuilt quad Core 2 Extreme with twin 8800GTs and 4GB of RAM. Graphics on a PC may be better or worse than a given console depending upon the PC and the game in question, but it boils down to personal preferences. I also like having the horsepower; a good gaming rig has no problems running any PC programs short of really advanced FEA, advanced graphics, protein folding, etc. AutoCAD is a pussy compared to Crysis!

That being said, it would be stupid to pretend you like everything about your preferred game platform just to prove it's somehow superior to all others. Don't ever stake your self-image on your game platform!

 

[shadow skill]

Did they forget that people in real life have more than one hard drive, not to mention multiple partitions, their own preferred directory naming conventions?

No, they didn't forget - they just don't care. The amount of time they'd have to spend building the functionality, interfaces, and testing user-defined installation locations, not to mention the inevitable support calls, is simply not worth the trouble these days. I think you'd find that very few people actually change, or even care, where their programs are stored.

One of the biggest benefits of Steam is removing all these decisions from the user and providing a 'one-click install' process, including the download. It's a remarkable step in making PC gaming more friendly to normal computer users, and by far the best system for handling digital distribution currently deployed.

Its not their job to pretend that they can guess at every possible configuration such that they can take a chance like that in the first place. One of the marks of good software is flexibility. Think about what you are saying, it would be like suggesting that all your music files should be stored in the same folder as the program you use to play the files because that makes it "easier." Interesting thing is that it does not make things easier if you wanted to stream your music across your local network; that just became harder because you would have to duplicate the install for at least one more machine rather than installing the play back program once and just pointing it to the network share.

Here is another example of how truncating features really just makes things more difficult in the long run:Opera has a built in irc-chat client, but said client (last time I checked) does not support automatically creating a history for the chatrooms. This ends up making the client useless for anyone who:asks for help with a problem and perhaps goes to bed hoping that someone may have answered the question when they return the following day, anyone who happens to be an administrator of a channel and may therefore need logs of the channel activities to take care of abusive users and any number of other things I can't even think of right this moment. Opera seems to expect the user to go ahead and manually save a copy of the channel text to a file rather than do what just about every other instant messaging program ever made has the option of doing automatically! It would be like asking people to manually save a history of the websites they visit and not give them the option of doing so automatically...Tell me how would removing the history functionality of a web browser help the end user more than it would potentially hurt said user? I wouldn't be suprised if most people did not even use the history function that is present in every browser that doesn't mean that I should just omit the automatic history mechanism if I decide to make a browser that I intend to be used by people other than myself. (I was able to find example code for a tree picker dialog in less than five minutes, so that whole save development time thing just does not fly.)

Oh and Count you really should learn to think before you talk about someone having OCD. Steam is simply not a game, saying there is no reason it shouldn't be in the same folder/partition as the games it provides shortcuts to is like suggesting that all programs should installed in the Windows folder because that is where the add and remove programs wizard resides.

Why should I want the "help" of a program that does more to get in my way than it does to actually help me? Windows defaulted people to administrator access in order to make things more convinient for them and in the final analysis that alone has done more to hurt the users rather than help them. If anything Steam helps the content provider alot more than it does me. It's a shame too since the concept itself is a great one.

 

[Anarchemitis]

All this fear, frustraition and the theory behind PC cancer is making me beleive I should avoid Steam at all costs although I would LOVE to play Team Fortress 2 or especially Gmod.
Ooohh, Gmod (Inexplicable Joy noises)

 

[PurpleRain]

PC users don't think they're the greatest.. they are.

I don't reall know what I did to bring this on. It seems as if you're flaming me because I don't own a PC that can run Crysis.

We get to play with mods, you don't. We get patches to bugs.. you don't.

Firstly, I wouldn't care to tinker with my system. I don't need any mods as I find my gaming experience just dandy without them. As for the bugs? I've yet to play a bug filled game that requires a patch or two.

We get a mouse and keyboard to comfortably play our games.. you don't.

I find that a controller is more comfortable then a keyboard. I'm sure there are (or will be) keyboard attachments out there for the 360 if you want to complain so much.

We get to upgrade our video game capabilities (video cards, memory, cpu speeds, etc), you don't.

I think that the 360's graphics are just fine thankyou. I don't think they need upgradeing.

You're even missing out on entire genres of video games, I am not..

What games? Crysis?! World of Warcraft? I wouldn't go near those even if they were on the 360. I think the 360 has a great line up of titles that are only for the 360: Mass Effect, Dead Rising, GoW, etc, etc.

You simply do not understand how a computer functions, thus you're confused about which of the two is actually superior.

What? When did I state, "I have no idea what this white box thingy does. I'm confused and slightly dazed." I know how a computer works, but I just don't care to make it powerful enough to run the top of the range games.

Which is fine, I'm not going to put down people just out of ignorance, since there's an amazing amount of things that I'm ignorant about. But, for instance, I'm fairly ignorant about cars.. but I'm not going to go onto a car forum and start pretending like I know which car is better then another. Just seems kind of strange to me that you would do that.

When did this forum become 'computer only'?

Like REDPill357 said, your statement seems unintelligent. All I said was that I hate it how people think that PC's are the best and that's all there is; everything else is crap. And then get a problem and complain about it like it was the end of the world (that wasn't aimed at the OP).

 

[Anniko]

More reasons to hate Steam:

- You're giving control of something you've bought to complete strangers (Do you know the guys at Steam control?)
Analogy: You've just bought a nice shiny new car, you can drive it all you want, but theres someone who can work on it whenever he wants and confiscates your keys if you imported it or if you try to sell it.

 

[TheHound]

I never would have that problem on a console. Not trying to sound like a fuck-wit console fanboy that everyone has come to hate, but I can't understand why PC users think they're the greatest cause they can fork out enouth $$$ for a super-over-the-top PC and then complain about problems like this and still think they're superiour to consoletards. (not pointing my fingure at anyone in general, just saying is all)

Who says they think they are the greatest? Maybe its the 'console tards' that think they are the greatest cos they dont have to tweak? PC only gamers think their format is better than consoles cos of flexibility multitasking and the controll system. Console players think there system is better cos at the time of release hardware wise its cheaper, they too prefer their controll system and arent interested in tweaking or other apps. People disagree dude, whats your point.


As for Steam at first I thought it was a steaming pile of sh*t, and now I think its the best thing ever. Orange Box came out. I downloaded and played it the same day. LEGALLY. Brilliant huh. Not Direct to Drive patch problems crap. I backed it up onto a Dual Layer DVD everything sorted. Steam keeps all my games in one place and yes I like the fact they get information out their games and the technology they are running on. Games that are designed to run on the pcs of the gamers. Games that have the piss easy sections made harder and the stupidly difficult bits made easier. The steam survey information, which note they share with the user, is of benefit in the long run.

The steam server window for all my games so i can choose what to play based on the most populated server and lowest ping rather than by game if i want. The now working Friends system is great too. You see when they come on and just click to join their game. All in all I think a few flaws here and there can be easily overlooked.

 

[c0ntinuity]

If you must have the steam client installed on your "C" drive and your games installed on another drive, say "D" Drive. There is a kinda bodge way of doing it using NTFS reparse points.

Close steam
mova all of your game data to the drive you want. for example "C:\program files\steam\steamapps" move to "D:\Games\Steam Games\"

The easiest way of settin up a reparse point is to get a programme called junction linkmagic (google it).

set C:\program files\steam\steamapps as the host folder and D:\Games\Steam Games\ as the target.

what this does is even thou all the game data is physically on the D drive, windows can also access this data through the reparse point on the c drive, in other words windows thinks that the data is contained in the c drive.

 

[shadow skill]

If you must have the steam client installed on your "C" drive and your games installed on another drive, say "D" Drive. There is a kinda bodge way of doing it using NTFS reparse points.

Close steam
mova all of your game data to the drive you want. for example "C:\program files\steam\steamapps" move to "D:\Games\Steam Games\"

The easiest way of settin up a reparse point is to get a programme called junction linkmagic (google it).

set C:\program files\steam\steamapps as the host folder and D:\Games\Steam Games\ as the target.

what this does is even thou all the game data is physically on the D drive, windows can also access this data through the reparse point on the c drive, in other words windows thinks that the data is contained in the c drive.

Thanks for the suggestion I thought of trying something like that with Windows own builtin mountpoint utility but have not got around to it. Been too busy playing HL2. (great game if a bit dated by now.)

 

[PurpleRain]

I never would have that problem on a console. Not trying to sound like a fuck-wit console fanboy that everyone has come to hate, but I can't understand why PC users think they're the greatest cause they can fork out enouth $$$ for a super-over-the-top PC and then complain about problems like this and still think they're superiour to consoletards. (not pointing my fingure at anyone in general, just saying is all)

Who says they think they are the greatest?

runtheplacered? Don't worry, I've met a few that look down on people who own a console. I'm just saying why is it so bad?