• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

STEAM | December 2015 - _ Diretide Greetings and Happy Holidailies

Status
Not open for further replies.

MUnited83

For you.
All I can ask is that those people who feel so strongly against the idea don't purposefully try to sabotage anything, Insome ill-mannered attempt to prove a point.

I know right? They should be campaigning for people to go to PSN sales threads to invite people over to PSNGAF and locking the PSNGAF thread.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
There's no more converting so it might as well be left as is at this point. You either don't care where we go, like the idea of this getting locked, or think it's the worst thing to ever grace SteamGAF. Doesn't really matter since it'll be locked regardless.

All I can ask is that those people who feel so strongly against the idea don't purposefully try to sabotage anything, Insome ill-mannered attempt to prove a point.

I think Stump (and other mods) could and probably should be a bit more heavy handed with the totally off-topic posts when we go gaming-side. Yian's idea to post nothing but anime gifs there, for example, is worthy of moderation.
 

BinaryPork2737

Unconfirmed Member

Uzzy

Member
Personally, as I lack money until I get paid next week, I'm rather glad that there's no dailies and flash sales encouraging me to buy with money I don't have.
 

Arthea

Member
as for "it'll force people to post in the sales thread", why you are so sure? If the sale will be boring one, and so far it kinda looks like it, there won't be much to talk about, will it?

not for the sake of being negative or something, I know we need new people and I know reasons behind closing this thread: our ambassadors derExperte fails us every single time, it still in many ways depends on how good a sale will be, you know it's true. You can't recruit people in the half dead thread.

Anyway, let's get back and wreak some havoc on the gaming side.


Yeah, I know. I've been lurking around these parts for quite a while =)

welcome, I hope you'll like your stay
 

Hektor

Member
Dudes, Dudettes and those who don't identify as either, CHILL! It's christmas and we shouldn't fight. How about just trying it? In the worst case it fails and this thread can get unlocked again.
 
Don't think I'll be picking up much this seal. Really only if it's suuper cheap and can run on my lappy. I have too much on my plate with finishing up Witcher 3 & MGSV and starting Fallout 4, and maybe Elite because I heard a rumor someone's getting a HOTAS for xmas? Eitherway, just in for a few
Sakura
games.
 
Heh, visiting the gaming quote of 2015 thread reminded me why I actually did like Witcher 3 a ton despite it having tons of crappy things: the dialogue was pretty wonderful at points.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
You can't recruit people in the half dead thread.

The idea here is that we move our discussion to the sale thread, so it doesn't become half dead in the first place.

The sale is going through Jan 2 I believe, so the new community thread will be up before it even ends.
 

Messiah

Member
Don't think I'll be picking up much this seal. Really only if it's suuper cheap and can run on my lappy. I have too much on my plate with finishing up Witcher 3 & MGSV and starting Fallout 4, and maybe Elite because I heard a rumor someone's getting a HOTAS for xmas? Eitherway, just in for a few
Sakura
games.

Flawless execution.
slow_clap_citizen_kane.gif
 
You shouldn't take everything I say seriously, I'm not going to spam the thread with anime gifs. But someone sent me a PM with a link to an album, so I could. But I won't.

Anyway, enjoy the sale, even though it'll probably suck.

9rbDQzG.gif
 

MUnited83

For you.
I think Stump (and other mods) could and probably should be a bit more heavy handed with the totally off-topic posts when we go gaming-side. Yian's idea to post nothing but anime gifs there, for example, is worthy of moderation.

Not off-topic if the gifs are from a Steam game though. Didn't think of that loophole, did ya? :p
 

MUnited83

For you.
Does the "No cross region trading and gifting" tag in steamdb always accurate?
Is there any ways to circumvent it?

Well, it's not accurate, but that's because every single game is affected by cross region trading and gifting anyways. That tag is basically redundant nowadays. Every game on the store has a lock that works like it, even if it's not listed on steamdb
 

BinaryPork2737

Unconfirmed Member
The idea here is that we move our discussion to the sale thread, so it doesn't become half dead in the first place.

The sale is going through Jan 2 I believe, so the new community thread will be up before it even ends.

The sale is supposed to end on January 4th at 10 AM PST.
 

Popstar

Member
So much naval gazing and no-one addressing the real issue: what is the best way to tell people not to freak out and that it takes a couple minutes for the store to update.

Also, someone send a PM to ModBot to take this off my hands (includes two DLC codes)
Vanguard Princess -- MB-CFBF32E2AD137435 - Taken by Sarcasm. 1 entrants total.
 

Arthea

Member
Does the "No cross region trading and gifting" tag in steamdb always accurate?
Is there any ways to circumvent it?

as far as I know it's accurate and no, there isn't

but you always can buy a game outside steam, if that's what worries you


Well, it's not accurate, but that's because every single game is affected by cross region trading and gifting anyways. That tag is basically redundant nowadays. Every game on the store has a lock that works like it, even if it's not listed on steamdb

I'll be frank, I don't understand this post
you saying it's not accurate but everything is locked?
isn't that mutual exclusive? and also not every game on store has a lock, what are you talking about?
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Does the "No cross region trading and gifting" tag in steamdb always accurate?

Not exactly. While last September Valve updated Steam's backend to apply the flag to all newly-generated store subs (previously publishers had to opt-in), it was rendered redundant a few months later by Valve imposing restrictions on all gifts purchased in trade-restricted regions, regardless of whether or not it had been applied to the sub/s being purchased -- this hasn't changed.

Is there any ways to circumvent it?

No, but to be clear, it doesn't prevent cross-region trading across the board. See "Speaking of gifts, what are the regions wherein such purchases have restrictions?" for details.
 

MUnited83

For you.
as far as I know it's accurate and no, there isn't

but you always can buy a game outside steam, if that's what worries you




I'll be frank, I don't understand this post
you saying it's not accurate but everything is locked?
isn't that mutual exclusive? and also not every game on store has a lock, what are you talking about?

It's not accurate because it being on a game or not has no bearing on it being actually locked. And yes, every single game, dlc, movie and software has a cross-region restriction. It quite literally affects everything on the store. This is not news.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
A recap of my thought process: In the new year we're going to try a few initiatives to help figure out ways to improve the process of users discovering community threads so that there's more new blood. There are still a lot of underutilized community threads. The Steam thread is one of the largest so here it's not a lack of users, but still it'd be nice to have more people filtering in. We're going to try things like encouraging cross-promotion of threads (i.e. if there's an OT for a PC exclusive, for it to link to the Steam thread or whatever), things like temporarily moving community threads back for a "spotlight" tour in the main forums, and I suspect our next batch of moderators will include recruitment from some of the community threads that we currently don't have coverage in. This might ultimately involve not locking this thread when Steam related events are going on going forward. I think for the holiday season this year the thread will be locked, but I'll see about unlocking it a few days early to encourage the cross-pollination more. Or if the sale runs until January 3, having the January thread go up on Jan 1 and begin encouraging people to filter over.

One of the great things about GAF is not having thousands of categories dividing discussion, and one of the terrible things about GAF is that when you don't have categories to divide discussion, people's discoverability options and the ability to find a niche are negatively impacted. Moreover, there are no other venues of this size on the internet that have this problem, so there's no examples we can meaningfully copy from. We spend a lot of time thinking about growing pains issues.

If Steam sale threads ultimately end up not serving any separate purpose or audience, then there will probably be less ado about sale threads going forward and we'll probably keep this open and just not have a sale thread or just have an ad hoc "hey guys there's a steam sale" thread with none of the effort or info that goes into the ones we've done historically. If there's some kind of metagame, then it might be appropriate to have a thread for the metagame like we did this summer. I do still think there's value in our standard suite of sale threads--hidden gem recommendations are one I like a lot. This is something we're still working out. We can't react to what Valve is doing if we don't know what Valve is doing.

The main reasons for locking the threads, as we have always done, is a) to avoid diluting the conversation by having two separate places for it, and b) to avoid the segregation of keeping out the riff-raff, because we want to encourage rather than discourage new users.

But it's also not a big deal. Right, you all have each other on Steam, you can start an IRC room, you can take part in the sale thread. There's lots of spaces to have conversations in the mean time. I'm reading all the feedback that doesn't seem to be just teeth-gnashing. :)
 

kurahador

Member
Not exactly. While last September Valve updated Steam's backend to apply the flag to all newly-generated store subs, the flag was rendered redundant last year by Valve imposing restrictions on all gifts purchased in trade-restricted regions, regardless of whether or not the flag had been applied to the sub/s being purchased.

No, but to be clear, it doesn't prevent cross-region trading across the board. See "Speaking of gifts, what are the regions wherein such purchases have restrictions?" for details.

I see. So the vpn trick still works right? Say that the gift is sent through email.
 

Arthea

Member
It's not accurate because it being on a game or not has no bearing on it being actually locked. And yes, every single game, dlc, movie and software has a cross-region restriction.

OK, but you said every game on store is locked, what would mean that games in my region are locked too, what's not true.
so it was unfortunate wording yet again, carry on
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
I see. So the vpn trick still works right? Say that the gift is sent through email.

No, not any more. Unless your account's home region matches that of the gift, activating it with a VPN will impose a runtime restriction:

altacctgiftl9ugg.jpg
 

MUnited83

For you.
OK, but you said every game on store is locked, what would mean that games in my region are locked too, what's not true.
so it was unfortunate wording yet again, carry on

It wasn't unfortunate wording at all. Every game in the store is affected by the cross-region block. Simple as that. Let's read again, shall we?

but that's because every single game is affected by cross region trading and gifting anyways. That tag is basically redundant nowadays. Every game on the store has a lock that works like it,

I didn't say "every region is locked", which is what you are seemingly implying.
 
A recap of my thought process: In the new year we're going to try a few initiatives to help figure out ways to improve the process of users discovering community threads so that there's more new blood. There are still a lot of underutilized community threads.

The issue has been there since Communities were introduced and I have always issues with it. It's just really, really hard to get a community thread going when it isn't spontaneous, and "forcing" people in or out of said threads never works. There are things like Steam thread that are obvious exceptions, but mostly Community is still the pit of doom. Then there were (luckily shortlived) initiatives like forbidding off-topic discussion on community threads (was it after some Foosball thread catastrophe?), which pretty meant taking out the "community" part from the "community" thread.

I'd love if communities succeeded (and I am trying to encourage people to visit threads like the vinyl GAF and Web Design GAF threads) but I still think that the community part was much much more healthy when it there were just in Gaming or in OT. Both sides move so fast anyway so few OT's here and there don't hurt anyone.

My suggestion (as a web developer and a community thread member)? Dump community threads back to the main list and create a filter for them which by default is off. Don't want to see the community threads? Click the filter and they are gone.

TL;DR: Want to increase discoverability? Move threads to a place where people can discover them.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
AssCreed Syndicate's Jack the Ripper DLC has unlocked. 8.5GB download.

It's pretty good too. Not too long but adds some interesting mechanics (fear meter) to the genre that are a welcome change. I finished it with 100% sync / all trophies in about 9 hours.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
My suggestion (as a web developer and a community thread member)? Dump community threads back to the main list and create a filter for them which by default is on. Don't want to see the community threads? Click the filter and they are gone.

The information cost to learn about turning off the filter is the same as the information cost to learn about clicking Gaming Community once in a while, no?
 

kurahador

Member
No, not any more. Unless your account's home region matches that of the gift, activating it with a VPN will impose a runtime restriction:

altacctgiftl9ugg.jpg

Well...fuck.

Does this applies to DLC as well? And is it possible to have multiple region access on 1 steam account?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom