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Steam Holiday Sale 2011 | Valve Has Run Out Of 3rd Party Coupons/Games (Dec 19-Jan 2)

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Kabouter

Member
Some more impressions:
Tropico 4 - Lots of fun, getting a save game for the achievement is doing yourself a disservice on this one. It's a lot like Tropico 3, but with certain improvements. The reworked interface takes a little getting used to, but in the end it's much better. They've also solved certain issues with Tropico 3. It doesn't quite feel like a proper sequel, but more like a very robust add-on. Advice: Buy at current sale price.

Dead Island - Think I talked about this before, but at any rate, I've played a little more now. Having lots of fun with the game. It feels a lot like a Bethesda game. Exploring, questing, is really fun. I also like the fact that for once, we seem to have an open world game with a functioning economy. You can't just waste money, you really have to make decisions on what to use your money on. The only real downside so far for me is that it's zombies, which I don't like. Advice: Buy the next time it goes on sale

How are Splinter Cell Conviction and Dirt 3 graphically?

DiRT 3 is a terrible game with rather excellent graphics. Splinter Cell: Conviction looks good, but is not anything amazing.
 

spk

Member
Bunch of Heroes is ridiculously hard even on easy what the hell were they thinking? It's an awful game even for 1.87
 

TGMIII

Member
Bunch of Heroes is ridiculously hard even on easy what the hell were they thinking? It's an awful game even for 1.87

It took me 2 tries but it's easy enough, the trick is to just kite everything round in a circle and eventually they'll all clump up making it easy to take out a lot at once with a rocket launcher or grenade. Only real issue I had was the zombies that shot single bullets because they were so hard to see sometimes.
 

mrgone

Member
Is that Bunch of Heroes achievement working properly now?
edit: Seems it is, time to buy some trucker speed.

Okay I got the patch to work, but does anyone know why light from my double jump is doing this?

http://www.abload.de/img/psychonautsmmw6o.jpg

It's that thing Skyrim does sometimes...

I was wondering the same thing! Here's what one of the Double Fine guys had to say about it:

Originally Posted by DFNathan
Hey, folks. Just wanted to make sure that everyone knows we have not forgotten about the remaining Pnauts bugs, especially the obnoxious jump point light bug.

To give you some insight, some of the shader code in Pnauts is now, if you can believe it, 7 or 8 years old, written in Xbox 1 assembly and then ported to PC. Suffice to say that tracking down graphics errors can be a difficult thing indeed. With the launch of Costume Quest on PC (and OUAM on 360!), we’ve had a lot on our programming plates lately, but will get to these bugs as soon as humanly possible.

Thanks everyone for your patience and for taking the time to report these issues!
 

TGMIII

Member
Start the game, alt+tab out then pause updating of the game and then resume it. It'll keep downloading while you're playing.
 

Darryl

Banned
i thought you don't get anymore coal after you craft a gift?

or does every account get at least 7 coal before they stop getting it?
 

Dynoro

Member
what does this mean then?

The images of people with over seven coal must have come just from trading then, but does this mean that you can fix the system by trading for seven coal and then not crafting it until the final day - to ensure you will definitely get coupons/games?
 
@Darryl. I read it as meaning that by crafting 7 pieces you will not be given 1 piece of coal for your efforts.

I don't think there is any limit to the coal you get - you could get 20 in a row if you were really
un
lucky
Assuming valve were telling the truth with the 75% of it is coal (I've not personally seen that but I could be the lucky 1% to not get coal):
Chance of 20 lots of coal in a row: 0.75^20=0.003 (0.3%).

Did I do the stats right? Now to really get them wrong. 10,000 players get 20 presents that means 30 of them will have coal.
 

Dynoro

Member
After re-reading some of the T&Cs and information; it implies that you will not get coal from crafting 7 coal together but you could get coal as a prize for future achievements. Starwolf is right in that the chance of getting 20 coal is very low (0.3%).
 

spk

Member
Oh my god I have 5 lumps of coal and a 50% off DNF. Am I able to get the BIT TRIP RUNNER achievement by loading up a completed save? Does anyone want to upload one for me :I I'm really bad at this game (stuck on 1-11)
 

Prophane33

Member
I've received 3 pieces of coal in a row. Why can't I receive stuff like Two Worlds 2 or Sengoku? Looks like I'm going to end up buying those at this rate, come on Daily Deals!
 

TGMIII

Member
I've received 3 pieces of coal in a row. Why can't I receive stuff like Two Worlds 2 or Sengoku? Looks like I'm going to end up buying those at this rate, come on Daily Deals!

It could be worse, this is what I've gotten so far:

50% off a valve game
75% off Napoleon Total War
50% off TellTale Games title
50% off Hydrophobia: Prophecy

I had 7 coal and decided, hey why not do this once and see how it goes, and I was rewarded with:

25% off id Software title

Coal is better than getting a shitty coupon that NO ONE wants. Like seriously who wants 25% off an id title, the only thing people will want is rage and it's going to be a daily deal for sure.
 
Wow, after crafting my 7 lumps of coal I now have a 50% off Valve titles, 33% off Kalypso Media titles, 50% off VVVVVV, 33% off id Superpack and 50% off Swords and Soldiers HD. What a complete waste of time lol
 

gogogow

Member
Those coupons are seriously useless. I got a 50% off Edge coupon valid after 2nd Jan 2012. The game is 50% off right now. So in the end the price is the same whether you buy it now or are using the coupon next year...
 

Garou

Member
Wait a second, now everyone is bitching about the coupons, but what about the following scenario:

Xmas-Sale ends and we go back to normal dailies, Midweek Madness and Weekend-Deals.
So if for example RAGE is off 50% as a Weekend-Special you could use the ID-coupon to make the price go even lower?? Maybe even lower than the current Xmas-Sale?

That is actually quite nice.
 
Note to self: Trade coal for games :p
Who would trade games for coal?

Wait a second, now everyone is bitching about the coupons, but what about the following scenario:

Xmas-Sale ends and we go back to normal dailies, Midweek Madness and Weekend-Deals.
So if for example RAGE is off 50% as a Weekend-Special you could use the ID-coupon to make the price go even lower?? Maybe even lower than the current Xmas-Sale?

That is actually quite nice.
That's great...if they happen before March.
 

DOA

Member
can someone please tell me which games are in the Warner Bros. Complete pack?

it's not available in my region, and i want to know if it's worth it.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Anyone still considering DoD? ;) Just woke up, so for the Gaffers that havent read it before I went to bed :p

Dungeons of Dredmor
Gaf Thread
WTF video review
E8eVN.png


What is it?
Its a roguelike. So, basically you go down a dungeon, kill monsters, get loot and use the loot to kill more monsters. If you never played such a game before, I'd like to mention that these kind of games often have a straight forward highscoring feeling to it. "How many points on my last run?", "Lets try the same char build to see who manages to kill better monsters!" and the likes. Due to that they also belong to the "Losing is Fun" game category since you are motivated to try and try again, next time with better knowledge how to play and other skills to use if you so fancy.

But arent Roguelikes supposedly all hard?
Yes, as mentioned above you wont finish it in your first sitting. But thats the whole POINT! See it as a metagame to improve your skills before actually beating the boss. All the while, the DoD developers made a pretty darn great job to include customization options to cater to different people. If you dont want to get beaten too hard, just go easy and non permanent deaths and you'll get along quite nicely if you want. And if you want it hard... well.. just look at this:
BILCB.png

Believe me, you wont like seeing those so called Monster Zoos on Hard.


So lets get to the AWESOME!
This game shows you the necessities of using every inch of possibility you have to survive. You can chose one of 7 skill trees, which all differ greatly and each contain at least 5 skills. Here is a picture of all the skills:
hPbv1.png

The blurry skills are expansion skills, and it will be more than your moneys worth to try them all out. I guess it might take you about 15-20 hours to try all of them. Good value for one buck spent, eh? I'll tell you about the Expansion in a second. But coming back to the skills: How about playing a vegan emo Axe-using Viking Pirate Vampire? Its amazing to see how the skills affect playing style. My first 20 hours of playing this game was basically almost only with random skills to try every single one of them. The game makes you WANT to try all of them since discovering them or even synergies between skills can be extremely rewarding. Its just fun trying out everything.
And then, in the level, you are scraping for every advantage. May it be the mushrooms you can grow or the health you get from enemies as vampire, its amazing how the game, or better your approach to the game, changes depending on which style you choose.


Other than that, its filled with gaming jokes, and lots (and I mean LOTS) of loot to be found. It just doesnt get boring.

DLC? Worth buying?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeees

Seriously though, it just adds more to the base game. An option to play with 5 levels more of the dungeon (15 instead of 10), more level variety, more skills, more loot, basically just more fun.

Verdict:
Don't know what else to say, if these...:

- Fun & Funny
- Lots of Loot
- Playable in short bursts, or devote more attention if you like it
- Doesn't get boring
- Itching the "just one more try" part of our brains
- Still cared about by the devs, just adding a quite substantial patch and even DLC
- Super cheap with one buck
- Support a very promising Indie Dev

...don't convince you, then not much will.
 

TGMIII

Member
Wait a second, now everyone is bitching about the coupons, but what about the following scenario:

Xmas-Sale ends and we go back to normal dailies, Midweek Madness and Weekend-Deals.
So if for example RAGE is off 50% as a Weekend-Special you could use the ID-coupon to make the price go even lower?? Maybe even lower than the current Xmas-Sale?

That is actually quite nice.

I'd say it's a safe bet that the coupons won't stack with deals.
 
Wait a second, now everyone is bitching about the coupons, but what about the following scenario:

Xmas-Sale ends and we go back to normal dailies, Midweek Madness and Weekend-Deals.
So if for example RAGE is off 50% as a Weekend-Special you could use the ID-coupon to make the price go even lower?? Maybe even lower than the current Xmas-Sale?

That is actually quite nice.
If RAGE goes to 75% off this sale or even 66% off its better than 1-(0.5*0.75)=62.5% off that the 25% off coupon would give. Now 50% is where you're talking possible gains or neutral.

Given the SEGA one is 10% off I'm guessing there will be a SEGA deals week of sorts. I can't think of any reason SEGA would make the coupon so bad.

The fact is a game is a game right there, right now, easy to trade (unless its Portal 1) or give away. Coal is a currency gambling. Coupons are "the only way this will be good is if this game is on sale and even then it might not be as good as the current deal" which makes them seem like a publishment rather than the reward they are suposed to be.

Valve did have to experiment en masse with the coupons some time or other to see how they change buying behaviour but I think this won't make people buy things (but does giving users free games either which is the other test*; e.g. if Toma were to be given something for free and he likes it and writes a post dsoes that sell more copies) but yje coupons cost nothing then.

*-Also the carrot to make people want to complete the objectives.
 

Kabouter

Member
Played some Psychonauts, really cool game so far. Will definitely go back to this after the holidays. I love the whole style and look of the thing, and it just plays really well.
 
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