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The Steam Storefront has become terrible.

I don't necessarely think they're incompetent about it. They're kinda treading new ground and introducing a lot of features at once.

some of this however does seem kinda baffling, in my opinion. Wether it's on purpose or just their algorhythms being shit.

my only hope is that the bit of clusterfuck that it is now will be temporary cause they're trying to highlight their new systems (curators and such) and once they find their place it'll get better.

but valve time
 
It really has, one of the reasons I've started to move away from computer gaming honestly (there are other reasons as well, but it's not the time or place for them)
 
lensoftruth said:
Why should Valkyrie and Alien be prominent in your opinion? What information have you given to the queue wishlist that makes you think these should be highlighted for you?
Click to expand...

they were both in my wishlist for one


Alien is a big game. It's the biggest/newest game on this SEGA week for sure.
 
Honestly, it's fine for me, because I actually use it regularly. I go through their discovery queue until there's nothing left, if I'm not interested, i'll mark it so, if it's something I really want, I put it on my wishlist, if i'm not sure, i just click next and it will still show up on my front page.

Aside from sales it rotates through maybe 25 games that aren't on my wishlist that I haven't marked not interested. There's still the new releases and specials and things, but I am mostly there to go through the queue so I can sort through the store. To me, they did a great job of making it feel like my steam store is tailored to me, so much so that when I am not logged in I think "where did all this come from?".

My only problem with it is it still shows me things I'm not interested in or already own when they're specials like this, but it's pretty much unavoidable, they have to put something there, and not everything i vaguely want will be on sale.

The recommendations are bad, I'll agree, they don't actually take anything into account but tags, and it's only based on games you actually play, so if you're playing the same thing a lot, you'll see the same recommendations down there.
 
I hate it since they did the redesign.

It bugs me every single day that I have to scroll down just to see the daily deal. So dumb.
 
Valve obviously wanted to design a storefront in which content creators and "curators" were more easily able to push products at the user, much as the PS4 and X1 interfaces are designed heavily push products at passively consuming users.

Which is completely wrongheaded. Users should be given tools to easily and quickly find what they want, with some light advertising along the way and the option to engage in heavier "push" style advertising SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE THE MAIN STOREFRONT. Excuse my caps.

The UI was fine as it was, with its lists of "newly released, top sellers, on sale", a banner that didn't dominate the entire front page advertising newest hottest releases, and a window for highlighted sale items. All they had to do was fiddle with that a bit, improve some functionality, maybe do up a new art style for windows and such. Heck, maybe even a customizable UI.

Instead we have content creator queues and discovery queues and even bigger pictures. It's no surprise that the content creators most likely to be found on a major new release are large media outlets such as PC Gamer and Eurogamer.

In short, Valve made the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.
 
SalsaShark said:
you might not remember the old Steam storefront, where everything that was on sale that day was easily highlighted, and big

this is now the big advertisement for sales, where every game on sale used to be (except a daily, which was right below)

nmknJJK.png



that only scrolls through 2 games, for some reason. And neither are the ones I want.
Click to expand...

Flight Simulator? Great timing Valve.
 
SalsaShark said:
Alien is a big game. It's the biggest/newest game on this SEGA week for sure.
Click to expand...

No, Football Manager is by a longshot. Not to mention the Total War games.

Also, the Alien example is terrible. Why would a game you already own be in a huge square? I'm surprised it's on the front page at all.
 
It was always terrible. I don't remember a time when I didn't rely on third party sites to know what was on sale or available except during steam sales of course.
 
i never really use the store interface. mainly i add games to my wishlist after hearing about them somewhere else and getting the store page from a google search
then buy them from the humble store/green man gaming lol

the sooner steam opens itself up completely with custom storefronts and an open API anyone can use, the better
 
onimonkii said:
My only problem with it is it still shows me things I'm not interested in or already own when they're specials like this, but it's pretty much unavoidable, they have to put something there, and not everything i vaguely want will be on sale.
Click to expand...

One option would be to give priority to items that are on the user's wishlist, then items not owned and leaving owned items for last. Seeing the specials dominated by owned games while there's wishlisted and unowned items buried below is kinda... silly.
 
SalsaShark said:
they were both in my wishlist for one


Alien is a big game. It's the biggest/newest game on this SEGA week for sure.
Click to expand...

I'm confused. Don't you already own it? Why do you want Steam to show you a game you already own (unless you mean you bought it on another platform)?

About the rest of it, not that you're wrong, but this feels less like a layout issue and more like a recommendation engine issue. Like, would you be fine with the small boxes for other games if Alien and Valkyria were just in more prominent spots?
 
SalsaShark said:
im literally speaking out of experience with someone who hadnt ever used the storefront before
Click to expand...

Okay let's use your example from the Alien post.

You know you liked Alien movies, and you know people talk about the game. Why would you search the front page for it when there's a dedicated bar for that? Your whole example is ridiculous when you're trying to use the whole front page to search for a game you don't know is on sale or not.
 
SalsaShark said:
they were both in my wishlist for one


Alien is a big game. It's the biggest/newest game on this SEGA week for sure.
Click to expand...

That's not even close to true :P Football Manager and Total War are SEGA's biggest franchises.

Tenck said:
Okay let's use your example from the Alien post.

You know you liked Alien movies, and you know people talk about the game. Why would you search the front page for it when there's a dedicated bar for that? Your whole example is ridiculous when you're trying to use the whole front page to search for a game you don't know is on sale or not.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. If anything, if you already own the game, it taking a small space is a good thing...
 
I think the steam client is pretty efficient when it comes to promoting games that are in sales and the hot new games. There are tons of low profile games that go under the radar, but there are so many games being released consistantly. I'm not sure how Valve can imrpove the Steam client that much. I really like the wishlist feature, it's really usefull to keep track of the games I intend to buy and to see if they are on sale. I won't complain, my list of purchased games that I need to play is already big enough as it is.
 
SalsaShark said:
like what is this

vvALhAo.png


why is an 8 year old game not on sale occupying so much screen space and the games I actually want to buy and ARE on sale are not highlighted till I scroll to the bottom and look at small ass banners

why.
Click to expand...

It's their new and terrible "recommendation" system they introduced with the latest store overhaul.

They make some braindead recommendations of what games you might like based on what you have in your library. I mean if you never owned consoles and you're just getting started on Steam you might find value in Steam recommending old games based on what you have, but most of us know about 8 year old AAA titles. It provides no value.

What makes no sense is that they populate your store with crap like this "because of such-and-such in your library", but then they still show a bunch of other items you already have on sale. They're already altering your storefront based on your library, but they still show shit already in your library? How does that even begin to make sense?
 
Lain said:
One option would be to give priority to items that are on the user's wishlist, then items not owned and leaving owned items for last. Seeing the specials dominated by owned games while there's wishlisted and unowned items buried below is kinda... silly.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this is what the top big rotator does as far as I can tell, it's priority is games you haven't marked not interested, that might not be on your wishlist yet. As your pool of games gets smaller it will show wishlisted items that are newer or are on special, but it will always prioritize things that haven't been sorted yet in my experience.
 
I love it. It's made me add countless games to my wishlist the way it's setup now. Up over 150 games now just on my wishlist! So many great PC games these days.
 
I current storefront is a mess. I've gotten used to just immediately scrolling down to the Specials section near the bottom right. I don't even look at anything featured on the main page anymore.
 
I actually like the discovery cue, I have added more games to wishlist form there than anything the old store had. I am sitting around 443 games. It e-mailed me to tell me Agarest was on sale today.


I do wish I could prevent them from telling me about free-to-play games. I hate almost all of them.
 
SalsaShark said:
so, I already bought Alien Isolation a few weeks ago, but it was one of the games I wanted to go on sale the most

another of those? Valkyria Chronicles

this is my main steam page:



oh, what's that? super small, on the corner, highlighted way smaller than a $3 indie game that I already own?

YHNnTQ0.png


oh, and below, highlighted under "games for less than X"

odNjoZV.png




this is fucking terrible design

I used to be instantly aware of what was on sale

this "customize your store page" system is terribad, go back.
Click to expand...

Apparently revenues have jumped up dramatically since the store page update, especially for lesser known games.

Curators are an utter failure, users don't care and developers aren't getting traffic from curator pages either.
 
Steam has been sucking for a good few years now, and every change they do seems to be for the worst. The fact that it's 2015 and the client still doesn't support tabs (like a browser), and has to download everything again after moving away from a single page, makes you wonder.
 
Grief.exe said:
Apparently revenues have jumped up dramatically since the store page update, especially for lesser known games.
Click to expand...

People want to overlook this. The update did what they set out to accomplish. The front page is digital shelf space and has all the problems that traditional retailers do. Valve have done a better job managing it as of late.

I'd like to see mockups of something better.
 
It's a little messy, but I find it totally functional.
Homepages shouldn't be the end all, be all of a store, it's just where you start.

Homepages can't be 100% personalized without providing a LOT of information to Valve, and even then you get companies that are paying for premium placement on the homepage to advertise their games.

As much as Steam may have ingrained the idea of "wait for that sale" in so many people's minds, companies would of course prefer that you DO pay full price for them, which is why the Recommendations are there based on the games you own, play, or have in your wishlist.

Do you only want to see what games are on sale? Just go directly to the "Specials" page and skip the homepage entirely.
 
All of the things you are complaining about can be pretty easily explained. It's all done by robots.

The head banner is pushing Football Manager and advertising the mega sale. Leading with FM is way better than Alien because FM is huge on Steam and likely to draw more eyes and interest initially. That pic will likely rotate throughout the weekend.

The weekend sale is always the weekend sale and consistently holds that spot, ditto for the daily sale. There are a shit ton of games on sale every week on Steam and Valve is making a concerted effort to push lesser known games similarly to big AAA games. That is good.

Them recommending Mass Effect to you is based on what you have been playing recently. Your recently played games are Life is Strange, Alien Isolation, and LA Noire. So it finds games that use branching narratives, dialogue selection, and SPACE and smashes them into what it can find. Ergo, Mass Effect. Why should it matter that it is 8 years old? Or if it's indie? If it fits, it fits.

To be honest, the only thing I wish the new store still had was the ability to scroll through the top 10 lists without jumping to a new page.

And less clutter.
 
The wishlist is the new Steam storefront for me. Has been since before the redesign, but since the change I have all but exclusively relied upon it.

Valve needs help.
 
Seems fine to me, if valve followed people suggestions it would probably look like a 90's webpage and the client like a cyber punk interface. I like it simple and smooth.
 
I just have an wishlist with all my needs for 2015/2016 so ... ¯ _(ツ)_/¯

I still find all interesting titles in my recommended lists and on Gaf^^
 
My favorite is when I play Saints Row IV for a bit and then the GOTY edition that literally offers nothing to me since I already have all the DLC keeps showing up in my recommendations.

Honestly all I want is a screen that shows me the newest releases (and not the "popular" latest releases like the front page has now) and maybe a few notable sales because thats literally all I check.
 
Yeah it's bad.

It's kind of funny because they try SO HARD to get you to buy more games (recommendations! queue! similar to games you play according to our bad algorithm!) that it becomes bloated and a pain to actually find games that you do want to buy.

I just stuffed everything I wanted into my wishlist and stopped browsing the store altogether. Whenever I start Steam, I just check through the wishlist and see if there are any interesting offers.

It's still slow as fuck though.
 
I barely use the store itself anymore, I just type in the name of the game, hit add to wishlist and then wait for an email from isthereanydeal.

The frontpage is a real disaster, but I like everything else they've done with the store, like the individual game pages.
 
This seems to be less of "Steam doesn't advertise sales well" and more "Why isn't the one game I want plastered all over the front page?"
 
in which SalsaShark discovers that publisher sales get their special page which is linked to a massive banner right at the top of the Steam front page, and that said sale also counts as a special offer for purposes of the Special Offer box.
 
I hate that it keeps on telling me to buy Fallout 3. I own Fallout 3. Why are goty versions and regualar versions seen as seperate games?
 
It's fine for me, I've not had any problems or missed anything on sale that I might have been interested in. The only thing I'm not keen on is the curators bit, like I really do not care what games youtube guys are telling me to buy. I've been using Steam since 2003, it's only gotten better over time IMO.
 
I got yo back Salsa. Shit has been a mess since the switch. Daily and weeklies should be the first thing I see on store - no scrolling.
 
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