Beamer wrote on Dec 18, 2020, 14:52:
My office is closed the next two weeks, which means I'll probably have 30-90 minutes of work any given day. Seems a good time to start something time consuming. Looking for recommendations.

Right now, I'm considering:
* Disco Elysium
* Morrowind with some modding (never played)
* The Witcher 3 (again)
* The second in the newer Deus Ex
* The far cry with the twins
* Alan Wake or Control
* Dishonored 2
* Dead Island, if there's a mod for weapon repairs
* Shadow run Returns
* Xenonauts
* Crusader Kings 3

Odds are I'll just do a replay of Mount & Blade Warband or Jagged Alliance 2, haha

There's great stuff in that list, hmm...

Disco Elysium was the best game I played last year. You could say it's for "mature audiences" or "adults only" but then everyone would think it's porn. Spoiler: no boobies.

I think the stereotypical teenage boy gamer would quickly get bored with Disco Elysium. I'd say you really need to have lived through some things to connect with it. You know, looking in the mirror, wow I really blew it. This situation is so messed up, and it's all my fault.

I think anyone currently living throug a dumpster fire type situation might want to skip it, but if the pain is safely in the rear-view mirror, go for it!

Prez wrote on Dec 22, 2017, 08:09:
Why do I keep buying games on these sales?

Somehow that question takes all the fun out of Steam sales...

My Steam library is already full enough for several lifetimes, but every big sale I shovel a bunch of crap in the cart, just out of habit at this point I suppose.

Just checked my wishlist in this sale and there are some tempting deals, but if I actually wanted to play any of them, they'd be in my account already. Like Gary Grigsby's War in the East for example. Nice discount, and I'd be happy to see it in the library, but it would just sit there accumulating virtual dust, forever.

Oh, just remembered I did actually play one recently. Anyone who likes the Gone Home style of exploring and thinking about stuff games, Tacoma is a good one. There's no replay value to speak of, and it feels like the sort of game that will end up in a Humble Bundle eventually, but you could do a lot worse for ten bucks.

Yeah, having thousands of Steam games isn't as difficult as it used to be. Once upon a time you had to buy them individually, with actual money, but nowadays there's a bundle or massive key giveaway under every rock.

If you don't care about playing the games, and only want quantity, you could get several hundred crappy ones with $100 or less. Heck, if you buy a lot of bundles you could fill a second account with hundreds of games just from all the repeats.

As hobbies go, it's far from the most expensive one around. Some people restore cars, some people collect stamps, some people buy video games...

PalmDesert (the person mentioned in the article) isn't even in the top 200 for total games "owned" on Steam, but that's obviously by choice as he could have used all that money buying games instead of badges.

I think most of the massive Steam game accumulators have a tiny selection they actually play, while the rest just sit there, waiting for the retirement video game binge to come.

Oh Lord how they play and play
For that happy day, for that happy day

Feels like every sale I tell myself nope, don't waste your money, you already have enough games. But somehow I'll end up with a big pile of new stuff I'll never even remember to install.

Hmm, I assume that steamleft thing counts "idle master" time as actual playing. So it's probably even worse than...

It would take you...
28466 continuous hours
3 years,91 days,2 hours,14 minutes
of gameplay to complete your Steam library.

Dev wrote on Jun 1, 2016, 23:39:
Since no one else bothered, here's a list:

Bit Trip Runner
Braid
Breach & Clear
Breach & Clear: Dead Line
Broken Sword: director's cut
FTL Advanced edition
Galactic Civilization 3
Mount & Blade
Project Zomboid
Saints Row 2
Shadowrun Returns
Sherlock Holes: Secret of the silver earring
Incredible adventures of Van Helsing Final Cut
Witcher: Enhanced edition
The Witness
To the moon
Trine Enchanted edition
Two Worlds
Unreal Gold
Unreal Tournament GOTY
vvvvv
xenonauts

Aha, thank you! Looks like I'm missing Project Zomboid and The Witness...

Hmm, wonder how long this takes to start working. I clicked on the button but it didn't seem to add anything to my GOG account. Suppose it's swamped right now...

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on May 16, 2016, 11:12:
All I need to be on decent sales are XCOM2 and Stellaris. Somehow I expect neither one will get much of a discount though.

After checking emails, it seems I got Stellaris at greenman last week for $30. It's fun so far, but there's bound to be a 75% discount next year. Think most of us already have enough games for several lifetimes...

Hmm, the fact I couldn't remember where I bought Stellaris, or how much I paid, probably says something. Hopefully I didn't buy XCOM 2 as well but forget to add the key in Steam...

Stellaris does feel a bit "version 1.0" in various places, but it's mainly small annoyances and nothing completely broken. Some things don't work quite how I expected, but it's possible I haven't played enough to understand what I'm doing.

Not looking forward to the inevitable Paradox DLC avalanche, though...

BIGtrouble77 wrote on Dec 10, 2015, 13:41:

descender wrote on Dec 10, 2015, 13:22:
Valve reported 77,000 hijacked Steam accounts per month recently... Not using 2-factor authentication for Steam by this point makes zero sense.

These security measures are worth the minor inconveniences they create when so many of us have libraries worth thousands of dollars.

Can anyone explain what you can actually trade that's of any value? I don't get the whole earning badges thing.

If you only use Steam to play games (crazy, right?) you probably won't have much of value in your inventory. Probably just some trading cards or TF2 junk from old game preorders - back when publishers still did that sort of thing. Your account itself is valuable, but mainly to spam other people with messages to try hijacking them, too. Hijackers aren't trying to sell the account itself, since once you notice your password doesn't work you will lock it, message Steam support and eventually get it back.

But many people do have valuable things in their Steam inventories. Gift copies of games, crate/case keys, the odd emoticon or background, rare items obtained by opening crates/cases ("Unusual" TF2 things, CS:GO Knives, etc.) can all be sold for real money. Poke around the Steam Marketplace if you're interested - it's about 99% pocket change and 1% what, seriously?

Also, remember things can be sold outside of Steam, i.e. [H] your loot [W] Paypal. And for the truly expensive stuff it's actually necessary - you can't list an item on the market for greater than $400. So even when the Steam support person restores your account and your inventory the bad guys get to keep the cash.

As for badges, you're probably better off not getting it. But think Veblen's conspicuous consumption - people see this and say wow, level 742, he spent a lot of money...

Raff Arundel wrote on Sep 8, 2015, 13:13:
Thanks for reminding me about Green Man Gaming - forgot about them on my list of PC game vendors.

How long do you have to wait? I completely agree that the console store has a monopoly and PC has some competition, but generally digital downloads tend to follow Steam pricing and I don't see a lot of price wars in that area.

For example, a lot of people are recommending Pillars of Eternity to me. As soon as I have a steady schedule where I can sit down and play something like it, I'm down with it. Looking around all the sites, it is $45 (Steam, Amazon, GMG, GOG, etc) so I am not seeing the pricing competition.

I wouldn't call it a price war, but Steam isn't always the best price for everything.

You might want to try the browser addon "Enhanced Steam" - then check the Steam store page for some games. Among other things, it will show you which authorised store (i.e. not places like G2A) has the best deal right now, what was the historical lowest price, etc.

For example, today I got a Steam key for Serpent in the Staglands from the Humble Bundle Store, since it's currently full-price at Steam itself. Will I remember to play? No. But at least I remembered to save a few dollars.

There's currently a "Build Your Own Double Fine Bundle" thing at http://www.humblebundle.com/store/bundle/doublefineproductions/ - add more games, get a bigger discount.

descender wrote on Aug 27, 2015, 14:48:
I don't know the proper place to post this but Steam is giving away free copies of Portal 2 and Rocket League when you pre-order a Steampad now. Sweet deal.

My 360 controller has been acting up lately, so I took a chance on the Valve controller thing. Looking at the pictures, it probably won't be much good in Dark Souls, assuming I'm still playing that in November. But look, a free game!

SpectralMeat wrote on Aug 12, 2015, 10:56:
By the way whatever happened with the promise of the Steam cd key for those that purchased the game from their website?
I would prefer to have this game on Steam, so I can stream it on my home network.

Steam keys have been available since the end of May. I remember getting mine, playing a few minutes and then forgetting about it. I couldn't remember what I was doing, or how to play, or anything really. Looked cool though. Check https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=148965 for the procedure, assuming it hasn't changed.

Kxmode wrote on Jul 28, 2015, 11:25:
Picked up the full season of Life Is Strange purely based on the Overwhelmingly Positive from 16,650 User reviews. Has anyone played it? Good? Great?

Hmm, think I played about half of the first episode before becoming distracted by some other ga... Oh, shiny! What was the question, again?

In case that makes the game sound bad, don't worry, the part I saw was good enough. I just can't remember to go back to a game after I stop playing for some reason.

My only complaint would have been the dialogue sounding odd - felt like the developers were googling "teenager speak" since they didn't have any real-life teenagers handy.

Since you already bought it, give it a shot. I've definitely paid more for worse games...

Hmm, speaking of sales, anyone near a Best Buy should check this deal on reddit - $100 Steam wallet money for $85. Just in time for the Summer Sale.

Ouch!

I have a pile of games on Desura, and bought a lot of Indie Royale bundles. Like every bundle site, sometimes it's great, and sometimes not so great...

Sounds like a good time to grab every key in sight, and download whatever isn't also on Steam...

It's funny, when Elite: Dangerous suddenly appeared on Steam last month I was hoping we'd get keys so I'd finally remember owning it. But once I did get that precious key, I lasted all of five minutes before going back to the Wild Hunt.

I'll probably end up turning off the ultra-mega-hair eventually as it's a big drain on performance, but it's sure fun to crank the graphics settings up and just wander around looking at stuff.

Oh, I agree many Witcher 3 crashes are probably due to overclocking. I suspect a lot of people had a "stable" overclock that worked for a 10 minute benchmark years ago, but was just a bit too high for whatever this specific game is doing. I'd try going back to stock speeds on your CPU + graphics card and see if the crashing stops. It's a great game, so good luck!

BIGtrouble77 wrote on May 17, 2015, 16:48:
There's already a long standing game series on Steam called Victoria:
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/29109/

I doubt Paradox will care much, but why not check to see if a game of the same name already exists that will ultimately drown out your google search presence?

There's somewhere north of 5,000 games on Steam currently, so I wouldn't fault these guys for being unaware of Paradox's Victoria series. But it does look a bit like they didn't do their homework...

Due to a recent bundle I found there are also two games called Dark Matter, http://store.steampowered.com/app/251410/ and http://store.steampowered.com/app/345130/ - both of mine are patiently waiting to be played, some day...

According to http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2xgvyd/ there are more, namely Reflex, Post Mortem, and Book of Legends. I believe Post Mortem is some sort of adventure game, but couldn't tell you what the other games might be. I wonder who plays all this stuff...

siapnar wrote on Apr 10, 2015, 21:15:
Just out of curiosity, what are the cards some of you guys are running (or going to run)?

GTX 970 here. Xmas buy. No regrets

Hmm, still haven't replaced my ancient 2x 580s, looked at that Titan X card @ Amazon and Newegg, everything was out of stock. Not sure if I should be frustrated or relieved. Hope I can resist long enough to see what AMD is cooking up, but it won't be easy...

xXBatmanXx wrote on Apr 6, 2015, 09:38:
Wow....I didn't not know you could get a PS4 like this, time to pull the trigger.

Apparently http://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-4-Bloodborne-Bundle/dp/B00UZGQ3G4/ was $400 last week, but that seems a bit excessive just to play Bloodborne... Hope I can resist next time it comes around though...

Also looks like http://flash.newegg.com/product/68-110-163 is still going on, $160 plus whatever Demon's Souls costs since I never played that one...

Every Witcher 3 video I see is tempting me for a video card upgrade... But it looks like nothing's going to get cheaper until AMD release their new stuff, whenever that is...

I'd feel pretty stupid splurging on one of those Titan X cards if a couple months later there's something even faster for half the price...

Fantaz wrote on Mar 21, 2015, 11:48:

Wallshadows wrote on Mar 21, 2015, 10:57:
I'm debating whether or not I should find a cheap 7850 to put in to Crossfire or sell my 7850 and put that towards a 280X.

if you waited already this long maybe better to wait for the 380X, as it's just around the corner.

Yeah, this definitely looks like a good time to wait... Don't care who has the fastest card this round, as long as there's competition everyone looking to upgrade wins.

Really hope I have enough sense to ignore that Titan X thing, though...