Quoting: GuestReleasing a digital card game years after Heartstone filled the market...gee i wonder what could go wrong

Not much, if you do it right.
As MtG Arena has shown, the market is truly big.

However, as has been iterated many times by now, you really have to do it right, and Valve just didn't this time.
If all of this leads to a re-release next year, who knows, it might actually have a chance.

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Now, repeat after me:
I will not buy a Tropico game at launch.
I will not buy a Tropico game at launch.
I will not buy a Tropico game at launch.
I will not buy a Tropico game at launch.
I will not buy a Tropico game at launch.
I will not buy a Tropico game at launch.
I will not buy a Tropico game at launch.

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Quoting: chui2chMaybe you should start streaming dark souls 3. Then you can get good before hellpoint releases.

It's spelled "git gud".

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: ScooptaIn my opinion voting for Linux with your wallet through proton is kinda like sending mixed messages. "I'm here give me games" but also "I'll take non-native games so don't bother porting."

It's voting against Linux support, really, because you're showing them that you're on Linux but will pay them regardless for a Windows game and regardless of the fact they aren't supporting Linux, like you said.

That thought completely ignores the fact that you only pay for the game if it works on Linux.
Nobody would pay for a Windows-only game planning to play it via Steam Play if it doesn't run via Proton. Or they do, notice that it won't run and refund - no money lost in that case.
Either way will show both Valve and the developer that their game is being used (or at least tried) on Linux. Which is an infinite amount more than what would have happened without Wine (or rather Proton), in which case the dev never would have known Linux even existed.

It also ignores that the ONLY way for Linux market share growth (within gaming) is supporting as many titles as possible. And for a user thinking about using Linux for a change, and most already using Linux, it doesn't matter in the end HOW that happens (which is why services like Stadia are an interesting take as well).
Natively, this will simply never happen. There will be the odd natively developed game, as it has always been, and that's cool, but that has never lifted the Linux percentage by any significant amount.

In the end, all that matters is that you get to play the game. Convenience wins, usually.

I'm certain we'll see (hopefully before 2030 in Valve time...) some statistics by Valve showing what effect Steam Play had.
I do not see a single possible negative outcome of it. Even if it resulted in fewer native games, the number would be offset incredibly by the amount supported via Steam Play. The whitelisted games alone would probably already have that effect.

Quoting: GuestPaying for Proton games directly hurts you by not giving you support like normal gamers get, and it sends the exact wrong message and discourages future Linux support because you're decreasing the number of gamers willing to pay for Linux support by paying for Windows support instead.

That is incredibly theoretical to the point of irrelevance.
What support are you talking about? The vast majority of bugs are game logic related or appear on other platforms as well. The other kind of bugs will give the ProtonDB rating a lower score so only very few people are going to "fall for it" anyway.

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Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: TheSHEEEPNot only does that constantly rip you out of the game world by force, it makes you feel like you're sitting in front of the most cheeky DM possible. Imagine a DM who has nothing but a snarky remark for anything you do. ugh.
The game would have been MUCH better if the humor (at least the 4th wall breaking parts, which is the majority of it) would have been left out of the game.

Would you compare it to Quest for Infamy, if you happen to have played that?

I did play it, but I didn't find that it had so many 4th wall breaking jokes, but it's been a while. Besides, the whole game is much more of a comedy adventure to begin with.
In Aeon Of Sands, there is a stark contrast between normal and humorous writing. When it isn't the "DM" speaking to you as the player, the writing is relatively serious most of the time.

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I tried, but two things made me put the game down relatively fast:

For one, the real-time combat really is the worst of its kind. Some crawlers like that with real-time combat at least manage to be a tiny bit more than just "step up, hit, step back, repeat ad nauseum". This one isn't... how anyone can find this ridiculous, unchallenging routine entertaining is beyond me. How Liam can claim that it "can be challenging" is even more of a mystery to me. My only thought during combat was "make it eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeend!" (enemies take quite a few hits).
This also isn't a case of "turn-based would've been better", as the enemies are so one-dimensional in what they do it really wouldn't have done much.

The other big point is the humor, which of course is a problem to begin with (of all entertainment forms, humor is the most subjective), as it makes your liking of the writing pretty much a 50/50 chance. But in addition to that, the humor in this game is of the 4th wall breaking type.
Not only does that constantly rip you out of the game world by force, it makes you feel like you're sitting in front of the most cheeky DM possible. Imagine a DM who has nothing but a snarky remark for anything you do. ugh.
The game would have been MUCH better if the humor (at least the 4th wall breaking parts, which is the majority of it) would have been left out of the game.

The artwork in this game truly is amazing, though. Shame it is wasted on this kind of gameplay and humor...

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"RPG Games"


Other than that, though: Good, it was long overdue. Hopefully, they'll also finally make a WYSIWYG for reviews...

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Quoting: stretch611

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.

That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

Yes, but if things change and you are required to play for one hour to leave a review, it is easy just to leave something running on your computer when you grab some lunch. That takes very little effort and people will do it if it is needed.

You underestimate just how lazy people truly are. As a developer myself who sees a lot of interaction between support and users (and in the gaming business, too): Incredibly lazy. It is a fact one simply has to accept and deal with.
The few people that do leave short-playtime negative reviews are not highly motivated to do so, they are barely above the motivation threshold to do so. Increase the threshold and it is 100% guaranteed to decrease the number of those reviews.
Obviously, a few would do shenanigans like you described, but that will only be a minority among a minority.

Positive and negative reviews are also different to begin with.
A positive review is almost always left after a longer time of playing (for obvious reasons), so the minimum time requirement is a non-issue here.
While a negative review can also be left after a longer time of playing (making it a non-issue), many negative reviews are left after a very short while - and the main reasons for many of these are:
- Players did not inform themselves before their purchase and blame the game for not being something it never tried to be - which is pointless criticism. "I don't like my new blue car because it isn't red"...
- Review bombing because they disagree with the dev on issues not related to the game.
- Bugs or other severe technical issues.
- Design flaws so obvious and numerous that really only such a short time is needed to come to valid conclusions.

Of those four main reasons, only the last two are truly valid in judging a game's quality.
Which does make such a minimal time requirement a bit of a double-edged sword. From what I've seen over the years on Steam reviews, though, the part of the first two reasons is much larger than the last two, so I'd still be in favor of such a requirement.

Alternatively, Valve could do what they do with review bombs themselves, allowing reviews at any playtime, but not making them a part of the (default) score.

Anyway, review bombs come not only from those short playtimes ones, but also from normal players that simply didn't post a review before and now something non-game related cause them to lash out. Nothing other than Valve's measures will stop that. At least I couldn't think of anything right now...

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Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.

That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

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Quoting: eldakingUgh, gaming "as a service". Frankly, this is worse than games not supporting Linux. Games might be developed for Linux (servers)... but then we can't buy the games to run in our Linux systems. This is the antithesis of FOSS - we don't even have the freedom to run the software ourselves. It's like the most intrusive always online DRM ever coupled with the least software freedom technology allows.

Nobody really cares as long as you can run the game.

Besides, this depends heavily on how exactly they do it.
A good model would be: If you own the game, you can run it normally or stream it (like, if you don't have a proper rig).
If it was really only available via streaming, then it would be pretty bad, indeed.
But in that case, I wouldn't see it having much success and fare the same as other streaming services so far.

Obviously, some games will always be excempt from this, as no streaming will ever get you the performance of a good rig.

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