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[Levi]

Steam has been kinda going downhill lately, so I figured I'd describe the perfect gaming client/distributor from my point of view as a gamer.  This doesn't exist, but I wish it did.


Features it will have:

- Accounts.  You can add accounts from multiple vendors(steam, gog, greenman, origin) and it will seamlessly allow you to download/play games by downloading/executing from that account. 

- Game library.  I actually really like how steam organizes things (Categories, favourites) in a nice list, so I'd be perfectly content for this to be the same visually.  If you own the same game from multiple vendors, you can either right-click to choose to install/play from a specific vendor, or you can set your preferred vendor so it does it automatically(So I could tell it to prefer using gog, then origin, then steam, then greenman.

- Wishlist.   This is actually one of my favourite steam features, but we can make it better!  It will show deals for all the major vendors, and you can set it to notify you if a game on your wishlist reaches a certain price point or %off.

- Sales.  There will be a sales page that lets you browse all the current sales for the major vendors.  By default games you already own will not be shown, and the sales are filterable and sortable.

- Store Browser.  No-frills way to browse games you might like from various vendors. 

- Game Overlay.   In steam you can shift-tab to get the overlay.  It has a clock, a web browser, and a bunch of pointless junk.  Get rid of the pointless junk, add a music player & video recorder.  Set up something so you can stream easily(I know/care nothing about streaming, but I assume people would like this).  Have the option to show the current FPS/Time while playing a game.

- Community Features.  Eh... The usual screenshots, reviews, friends(and group chat/voice group chat), profile.


Features it will NEVER have:

- An "Inventory".
- Advertisements
- Recommended/advertised games/sales. 
- Microtransactions.
- Any monetized features at all.  Its just a fricken gaming client.

Editted for clarity a bit.

[Graknorke]

Features it will NEVER have:
- Suggested games/sales.

Why.

[Donuts]

Features it will NEVER have:
- Suggested games/sales.

Why.

Steam is drowning me in reccomendations for awful games I will never play because "I might like them".

[Graknorke]

But why no sales? There is literally no harm in a game you don't like being cheaper.

[Donuts]

But why no sales? There is literally no harm in a game you don't like being cheaper.

Pretty sure he means SUGGESTED sales.

[Levi]

But why no sales? There is literally no harm in a game you don't like being cheaper.

Yeah sorry.  I mean no suggested/advertised sales.  The client has a whole sale section.  I love sales.   

[Graknorke]

But why no sales? There is literally no harm in a game you don't like being cheaper.

Yeah sorry.  I mean no suggested/advertised sales.  The client has a whole sale section.  I love sales.   

Oh, okay. That's not so bad then.
I'm not so against the recommendations thing though, since sometimes Steam does legitimately show me things I'm interested in.

[NullForceOmega]

Steam's suggested titles/sales is the bane of my goddamn existence right now, I do not want to hear about the forty visual novels released this week just because I bought one, I have told the damned program hundreds of times that I don't want to look at anything with 'zombie' as a tag, but there are three more today, and I still hate them.  I could deal with the suggestions if the damned program were capable of actually building a profile based on what I say no to, instead it just keeps spewing garbage at me hoping something will stick.  For crying out loud I have nixed more than a thousand titles at this point, why the hell are you showing me the sequel to something I said no to?

tl:dr, I agree, to hell with suggested titles/sales.

[NullForceOmega]

Can YOU do it better than they did?  If so by all means, go ahead, I'd be willing to use a version of the feature that actually does what its fucking supposed to.

[Mattk50]

Well, GOG 's solution is pretty nice. The main thing they have ahead of steam is the whole the client isnt drm thing, you can just uninstall it and keep your games.

[Ozyton]

I didn't know GoG had a client.

As for steam's suggested items...? Uhm, I never really payed attention to them, nor have I really ever touched the 'discovery queue' or whatever they refer to it as. A majority of the time I know about games without Steam's help, but there have been times where I wouldn't have known about a game if it weren't for it appearing on one of those lists, or have rediscovered something I have forgotten the name of.

The main reasons I use Steam are... well, all my stuff is in one place with no chance of accidentally breaking/damaging physical media, it has integrated chat so I can talk to people while in-game (this replaced X-fire's main functionality for me), and it hasn't really ever broken for me. That last bit seems to be the issue a lot of people have with it, and I have no idea what they are doing that makes it screw up so much. The DRM thing hasn't been an issue for me because I run steam in the background anyways for the aforementioned chat functionality.

Steam's frontpage store thing used to list -every- single new item, including DLCs sometimes released by the dozens (train simulator) and would clutter it up. The 'popular' new releases fixes that but it means some things might slip under the radar. There should really be an option to have either the popular releases or all releases to be displayed by default. There is a button for it, but not many people know about it/can be bothered, to the point where when this version of the store page there was at least a full paragraph on the RPS review about how you could not view 'all' new releases (when the button is right there...)

Steam Inventory... it could be better. It's mainly useful to store extra copies of games you plan on gifting people, but the trading card shenanigans are pretty much nonsense. I also don't understand why in-game items are in this inventory when they should just be in my game "inventory." All I can imagine is playing some RPG of and having every single item you pick up be in your steam inventory. Wouldn't it be great to be able to trade your cheese wheels and forks to other players through Steam? =/

[anzki4]

All I can imagine is playing some RPG of and having every single item you pick up be in your steam inventory. Wouldn't it be great to be able to trade your cheese wheels and forks to other players through Steam? =/

Stop giving them ideas! 

[Shadowlord]

Steam Inventory... it could be better. It's mainly useful to store extra copies of games you plan on gifting people, but the trading card shenanigans are pretty much nonsense. I also don't understand why in-game items are in this inventory when they should just be in my game "inventory." All I can imagine is playing some RPG of and having every single item you pick up be in your steam inventory. Wouldn't it be great to be able to trade your cheese wheels and forks to other players through Steam? =/

It's so you can sell the TF2 items that you got for pre-ordering a game* to other people for real money steam wallet funds.

* Because you were impatient and had to have it on release.

[itisnotlogical]

Really, I don't have a problem with Steam (purely as an application, ignoring the business fuckery). Most of the recommendations are generally for games that I like (RPGs, building sandboxes, simulators, multiplayer shooters). I'll admit that it doesn't always get it right, but it's not like they prevent you from searching manually (and games are categorized pretty extensively, to boot!)

Even though the "recommended games" list isn't all that great, I think of it as being like a brick-and-mortar game store: how would they ever sell anything if they didn't advertise it? I wouldn't have heard of Kerbal Space Program or Star Trek Online if Steam hadn't put them on the front page where I was guaranteed to see them, and now I've sunk plenty of hours into both of them.

The occasional ad popup is a little bit annoying, but it doesn't shatter the experience for me. The overlay is actually pretty useful, since it saves about 90% of the occasions that I'd have to alt-tab out of a game and risk crashing it. The ability to categorize and hide items in your Library is really, really nice. And finally, it has the largest cross-section of games that I enjoy. I don't really use the Inventory or trading cards or hats, so those are "eh". I'm not forced to use them, but they're still around for people who like that sort of thing.

So, my perfect gaming client would be Steam, but it hosts every game that has ever been and ever will be released.

* Because you were impatient and had to have it on release.

Or because it was a better deal, or because you wanted one of the preorder bonuses, or because it gave you a discount or free access to DLC?

[Shadowlord]

So, my perfect gaming client would be Steam, but it hosts every game that has ever been and ever will be released.

It lacks Heroes of the Storm! (Among other things)