Community MetaSteam | December 2018 - We got 99 problems, but 76 ain't one

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Alexandros

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Nov 4, 2018
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I don't mind seeing some RPG-ass RPG Maker games, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to see horny games just because they're classified as having the same artstyle.
How would you filter that stuff out though? You have anime, VN and adult content enabled, right?
 
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「Echo」

Reaper on Station。
Nov 1, 2018
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Mt. Whatever
I wrote down my last 5 discovery queues to get a better idea of what kinds of games I get (note: I have nothing hidden in the store and no ignored tags):



There were 8 or so games in the list that looked at least somewhat intriguing and which I hadn't heard about before.

More interestingly, there were only 2 dating sims, and of those 2 one is gay and the other furry. The only traditional "hentai" thing I can see is Lucy Got Problems, and that looks rather tame.

I guess I still have to go through more lists to get to the hentai puzzles.
Just out of curiosity how many discovery queues have you done before this point? I try to do one a day, sometimes two. My queues used to look a lot more normal, like yours. But with over 3k ignored titles now, it's basically just flinging shit my way lol.

I think I wishlist maybe one game every 5 queues if I'm lucky these days. Not sure if I'm extremely picky or have too high standards or what. At times I do feel the discovery queue issues are my fault, cuz I do buy a lot of anime stuff, but other times it just seems so out of tune with me I'm not sure what's up.
 

Wok

Wok
Oct 30, 2018
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France
Just wait till this game appears in your queue. It did not appear in my queue, I read about it in a magazine.




If devs provide descriptions of their games, it should be possible for Valve to allow us to filter out games based on the words in the review.
For instance, exclude any game which is described using the word "inflatable".
 

Digoman

Lurking in the Shadows
Dec 21, 2018
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Okay, today I got some of those famous Hentai Puzzles in my third discovery queue. The biggest culprit appear to be Nights of Azure (played in february) ... I suppose that's fair. I filter out Free to Play, Hidden Object and Massively Multiplayer.

Here is a list of the "mature" games I got:
  • First Queue:
    • Deep Space Waifu: FANTASY. Because of similar game: Nights of Azure
  • Second Queue:
    • Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars. Also similar to Nights of Azure.
    • Moero Chronicle. Similar to Nights of Azure and Atelier Sophie.
  • Third Queue:
    • Hentai Square Puzzle. Similar to Nights of Azure
    • Hentai Cute Puzzles. Because you've played games tagged: Action Indie
    • Maidens of a Hollow Dream. Because you've played games tagged: Action Indie Female Protagonist
So it's not dominating my queues (yet?) but I think that's the first Hentai Puzzles that appeared since I started paying more attention. Hard to make to many assumptions but it appears that one game (plus maybe popular games) can have a huge impact in what appears.

The rest of suggestions did have some interesting games so I'm still far from "steam only points me to hentai".
 
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SpectrumWarrior

Mods'R'us
Nov 1, 2018
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I don't care about hentai in my queues but why does a game I played 2 hours in april is used as reference (for the tags nudity and adult content) at least twice per queue since the beginning of the sales is baffling me when most of the games I play nowadays or games that have played times in the 3 digits never appear.
 

suiko

saviour of worlds
Nov 12, 2018
307
650
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why so many people are worked up by those discovery queues is beyond me, tbh. Unless you have store for yourself alone, there will never be possible to attune it to one person's tastes perfectly. I still find some interesting games in my dq, not often, but not like it is so totally useless as people make it sound.
 

Knurek

OG old coot
Oct 16, 2018
2,515
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why so many people are worked up by those discovery queues is beyond me, tbh. Unless you have store for yourself alone, there will never be possible to attune it to one person's tastes perfectly. I still find some interesting games in my dq, not often, but not like it is so totally useless as people make it sound.
We care because some devs are causing shitstorms on Twitter, claiming those games steal ALL views from their own games.
 
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suiko

saviour of worlds
Nov 12, 2018
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It seems that when you accept to see "adult content" for one game on the store, it checks every mature content category on your account (Login) and your queues are more "adult" oriented, taking views from other games.
It could be, but like 4 sales back I got only survival games in my queue and was really unhappy about it, cuz I don't play them, that's RNG for you, if it hates you, it can make your life hell without any help from outside.
 

Digoman

Lurking in the Shadows
Dec 21, 2018
854
2,390
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Yeah... I did notice before that sometimes the algorithm really goes in into one genre. I remember putting "Hidden Object" on my filters because of one time (in one of sales) that a lot of them appeared at the same time.

Maybe one or two really popular games are enough to make the tags associated with them have way to much weight on what appears to users. Either way it's strange, one game I played 10 months on a very active account ago shouldn't be influencing almost 10% of the discovery queues now. I can only imagine what happens for people that idle cards.
 
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suiko

saviour of worlds
Nov 12, 2018
307
650
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I'm only surprised by Vermintide in platinum games, there was nearly not enough noise about it for me suspect this.

also looking at gold, ARK? really? did something happened I'm not aware with it?

war thunder is another surprise in silver
 
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Ex-User (307)

MetaMember
Dec 11, 2018
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So you are saying the filtering is not granular enough for you? You want to see nudity, sexuality, violence and gore BUT you don't want to see hentai, anime nudity and furry stuff? Maybe you could ask Valve to implement a Furry and Hentai filter? No sarcasm, maybe email them and ask.

Still, apart from your preference to not see Hentai and furry stuff, I think the DQ does what it should; present you things that are on the store, not something you are currently playing, not on your filters, just to see if you may be interested in it. To discover something out of your comfort zone.
I think the purpose of the content in the game matters somewhat too.

These hentai-furry-whatever games seems to exist for the purpose of being sex games. Which is fine, some people want games that are basically porn, and that’s their prerogative. The Witcher by way of comparison has some sex in it, but it’s not a sex game. Rust has a metric truckload of nudity, but it’s clearly not a sex game.

So again, there’s a fair chasm to me between not minding the sex/nudity/gore of an RPG or survival game, and the sex/nudity of a hentai puzzler or a Ren’Py VN that exists solely for pornographic purposes.

Like I said, there’s probably no way to actually fix this algorithm short of them creating some kind of massive machine learning overhaul. Because otherwise, I have no idea how you deal with the granularity in personal preferences towards amount of sex/violence/gore, types and functions.
 
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Anteater

Hentai Specialist
Sep 20, 2018
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last gen I was already complaining having to pay $60 usd here for dynasty warriors on top of having to buy a second controller, just so I could have something to play with my brother, fuck them now
 
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Deleted member 113

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Today, it's been pretty much all about Early Access releases for me in the Steam Winter Sale.

I bought:




And, through my Discovery Queue, I discovered Soldak Entertainment is making a sequel to Din's Curse called Din's Legacy, and it's already on Steam Early Access (how did I miss this?):

 
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Echoes

"My destiny is to continue fighting"
Oct 31, 2018
551
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Castelló, Spain
Finished SteamWorld Dig 2, amazing game. Only took me 10 hours while getting all secrets (except for the challenge dungeon, I suck at stuff like that).


I wrote a Steam review in case anyone's interested Steam Community :: Gevin K. :: Review for SteamWorld Dig 2
It's a must have for any exploration/metroidvania fan, I enjoyed every hour.

About Vermintide 2 it's one of the finest coop games ever, in my opinion. Playing with friends is a blast and the randoms are usually decent. Another easy recommendation ;)
 
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Dinjoralo

None shall remember those who do not fight.
Dec 6, 2018
937
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Got three games with some credit I got for christmas. Didn't realize afterwards that they all have a theme; Celeste, Crosscode, and Cosmic Star Heroine.

Crosscode immediately feels insanely well made and polished. And it's apparently in HTML5? You can gamedev in that? Humph, webdev. Either way, game seems good from the outset.
 
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lashman

lashman

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Sweeney Tim said:
It’s up to you guys to decide what’s anti-consumer, but our aim with the Epic Games store is to be very pro-competitive. In other words, to compete as a store and encourage healthy competition between stores.
When lots of stores compete, the result is a combination of better prices for you, better deals for developers, and more investment in new content and innovation. These exclusives don’t come to stores for free; they’re a result of some combination of marketing commitments, development funding, or revenue guarantees. This all helps developers.
For comparison, much of the investment in new TV content is the result of Netflix and Amazon competing with new stores.
The proliferation of launchers is an annoying side effect of this, but the problem could eventually be solved through federated or decentralized software update tools. There are ongoing conversations about this.
But multiple stores are necessary for the health of an ecosystem. When there’s only one, their natural tendency is to siphon off more and more of the revenue, which then go to monopoly profits rather than CREATORS!
All developers recognize this because their business are being crushed under the weight of these increasing store taxes. This is why devs have been super enthusiastic about the Epic store. For users, I get that it’s yet another launcher and if you have Steam installed you’d prefer to just use it. But if you want way better games to be built in the future, then please recognize what good this store can do. Steam takes 30% and Epic takes 12%. That’s an 18% difference, and most devs make WAY less than an 18% profit margin - so this can be the difference between being able to fund a new game and going bankrupt!
 
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Digoman

Lurking in the Shadows
Dec 21, 2018
854
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Oh if there is a thread on Era it's going to get ugly... ouch.

"In other words, to compete as a store and encourage healthy competition between stores"
or
"All developers recognize this because their business are being crushed under the weight of these increasing store taxes."

Has there been any evidence of Valve increasing the 30% cut?
 

Digoman

Lurking in the Shadows
Dec 21, 2018
854
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nope ... it's been 30% since forever (and effectively lower than that if you take into account free key generation, i guess)
Thought so, but I don't have any "contacts" to really know. I can't think of any other service Valve charges from developers so I'm going to assume it's just bs from him.

With all that money Epic could have done this whole "enter the market" so much better and without being this off putting.... oh well....
 
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Ex-User (307)

MetaMember
Dec 11, 2018
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Sweeney is the worst.

For comparison, much of the investment in new TV content is the result of Netflix and Amazon competing with new stores.
This is also a fairly bad comparison. The investment in new TV content is partially due to streaming services competing with one another and wanting more "exclusive" content to sell their service.

It's also partially a result of major rights' holders taking their content back from the services (e.g., Disney planning to take their stuff back, and WB trying to take back Friends recently), forcing Amazon and Netflix to invest in content creation to fill their libraries back up.

That sounds good in theory though right? The actual rights holders get to profit off their content, and the streaming services invest in brand new content, giving us more stuff all around. Except we know that all these new services have created a verifiable return of and rise in piracy.

Obviously a free launcher doesn't have quite the same barrier to entry that a subscription streaming service has. But this whole droning on about monopolies is idiotic when Epic is monopolizing content into their own launcher in a way that Steam never did.
 
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lashman

lashman

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Thought so, but I don't have any "contacts" to really know. I can't think of any other service Valve charges from developers so I'm going to assume it's just bs from him.

With all that money Epic could have done this whole "enter the market" so much better and without being this off putting.... oh well....
afaik volvo doesn't charge devs for anything beyond the $100 direct fee (which the devs eventually get back anyway) and the 30%

Obviously a free launcher doesn't have quite the same barrier to entry that a subscription streaming service has. But this whole droning on about monopolies is idiotic when Epic is monopolizing content into their own launcher in a way that Steam never did.
ahh, but you see - they need to do this ... i mean - steam took 14 years to be decent ... you can't expect a multi-billion dollar corporation to be able to replicate that in years (that they spent working on the store)
 
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Ex-User (307)

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Dec 11, 2018
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This is probably a stupid question, but what's the main difference between Two Point Hospital and Project Hospital? Is Project Hospital just primarily less like Theme Hospital and more focused on the minutiae of management?
 
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Lain

serial experiments
Sep 20, 2018
104
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I don't understand the complaints about hentai games.
Isn't the point of the discovery qeue to find amazing under the radar indie games?
The problem (for me) is that these games aren't the porn games I'd want to be shown in my queue. The queue isn't showing me the Meltys Quests of the store I don't know about, it shows me these cheap games that of porn only have the hentai in the title.
I keep putting them on ignore but the queue keeps offering them to me. Me buying HRPGs or Porn VNs doesn't mean I want these hentai puzzle games. Obviously the algorithm can't know right off the bat, but showing me 4 hentai puzzle games back to back? Fine, the queue was already made, but I put these games on ignore and the next 2 queue still shows me a couple of them, so what gives? And why these same games I put on ignore show up on the right corner of the cart (complete with the faded look to imply ignored content) when I add indie anime looking game to my cart?

Now, I don't care too much. Sure, I'll come here or I'll go on discord to comment about how the queue feels weird at times, but I don't get offended by it, I just click ignore and next for my queue run and be done. Still, I would love for these games to stop showing up on my list, replaced by the HRPGs and porn VNs that I might have missed, since those are among the (naughty) content I buy and wishlist.

I'm also going to say that games with hentai in the title, 9 times out of ten should be rejected as troll games, because that's really what most of those games truly are.
 

MegaApple

Just another Video Game Enthusiast
Sep 20, 2018
1,627
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Okay, today I got some of those famous Hentai Puzzles in my third discovery queue. The biggest culprit appear to be Nights of Azure (played in february) ... I suppose that's fair. I filter out Free to Play, Hidden Object and Massively Multiplayer.

Here is a list of the "mature" games I got:
  • First Queue:
    • Deep Space Waifu: FANTASY. Because of similar game: Nights of Azure
  • Second Queue:
    • Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars. Also similar to Nights of Azure.
    • Moero Chronicle. Similar to Nights of Azure and Atelier Sophie.
  • Third Queue:
    • Hentai Square Puzzle. Similar to Nights of Azure
    • Hentai Cute Puzzles. Because you've played games tagged: Action Indie
    • Maidens of a Hollow Dream. Because you've played games tagged: Action Indie Female Protagonist
So it's not dominating my queues (yet?) but I think that's the first Hentai Puzzles that appeared since I started paying more attention. Hard to make to many assumptions but it appears that one game (plus maybe popular games) can have a huge impact in what appears.

The rest of suggestions did have some interesting games so I'm still far from "steam only points me to hentai".
To be fair Conception II and Moero Chronicles are legit Japanese mid tier JRPGs. Rest don't instill much confidence.
 
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