238 replies to this topic

[Ironstrom]

I've mentioned in one of my for posts about the increase of user base but I also mention why this playerbase increase of people that didn't for know about this game is not exactly a good thing, I've never said it was greedy either I just said this is the common value for buisness's of this nature it is not below average this is normal. when games say they don't want to be on steam they say why and its normally because its not good value for money, and al-thou companies may want more money sometimes you'd prefer it to spread by word of mouth and be directed to your own game website. In the end you'l find they're a upper value you may acheive for people playing your game, would you rather get it all to the guys that worked hard earnestly on the game for the past few years or so or for a chunk of it to go to the guys that just provide download support.
If you so desire read http://www.gamesindustry.biz/ website commentry for a more in depth depiction of steam its a common topic(Note you must be a member to read comments)

[Ultraviper]

Valorcalls, on 06 July 2012 - 08:33 AM, said:

There is a setting to turn off the auto updating... if you learned more about steam and the setting you would have known this. My Skyrim is set to notify me for updates, but to not auto update. While I have STO (another F2P MMO) set to automatically launch and update when an update is released. Not to mention Nuclear Dawn (which i have a gift copy I still haven't used), which like most 1st person shooters requires the latest update to play online. So try steam again, and actually pay attention to the settings.

There is a setting to not automatically update but all that does is prevent updates from downloading when they are detected. The updates are still required to play the game. The option should be renamed to "don't update until I try to play the game" because that's really what it is. The only way to prevent the mandatory updating is to keep steam offline so it can't check for updates.

[Roguewolf]

NeonKnight, on 06 July 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

Sadly, Fusion (and Fission) reactors work by boiling water to produce STEAM which then drives turbines to create electricity.




And a Fusion Reactor:


[/list]

http://en.wikipedia....electric_effect

Get educated before you spout off quotes and diagrams about technology you barely understand. Direct Thermoelectric conversion is not very far off. This takes the radiant and neutron energy coming from a fission or fusion source (or any heat source) and directly converts this energy into electricity. Also, since there are no moving parts, they are compact and work outside of a gravity well. Fission batteries have been used to power Space Probes for decades. In another 100 years (probably a lot less) steam turbine technology will be completely obsolete.

Moral to this story? Steam is obsolete.

[grimzod]

ultraviper, on 06 July 2012 - 10:59 AM, said:

There is a setting to not automatically update but all that does is prevent updates from downloading when they are detected. The updates are still required to play the game. The option should be renamed to "don't update until I try to play the game" because that's really what it is. The only way to prevent the mandatory updating is to keep steam offline so it can't check for updates.

BINGO!

[LogicalTightRope]

NeonKnight, on 06 July 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

Sadly, Fusion (and Fission) reactors work by boiling water to produce STEAM which then drives turbines to create electricity.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was lead to believe that the fusion reactors in 'Mechs use magneto-hydrodynamics with a magnetic fluid, being pushed around the generator. Magnetically.

No steam here, sorry fella.

[Gallowglas]

grimzod, on 06 July 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

Not if theyre leeches. 75% of WOTs userbase pay NOTHING.

Okay, fair enough, but my example can be scoped to account for that. I simply don't know the actual numbers. It's still a monetary decision. You can't simply look at the raw number and exclaim how "greedy" it is. For a whole lot of game developers it's a very good deal. Without knowing all the facts about the ACTUAL cut Valve takes, what numbers of paying players Steam would bring in, etc., any reaction about whether it's the "right" decision for this game is nothing more than a knee-jerk, anecdote-based opinion.

And, again, who says is has to be all or nothing? There are plenty of games that have a Steam and non-Steam release.

[MaxFool]

Gallowglas, on 06 July 2012 - 10:44 AM, said:

You can talk all you like about how greedy 30% is (if that's even accurate), but if a company ends up with 35% more players as a result, then the math says it's still a good investment. It's as simple as that.

Assuming that 35% more players would mean 35% more income, then the math says 0.7*1.35=0.945, bad investment with 5.5% less income.

[Gallowglas]

TGxMaxFool, on 06 July 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

Assuming that 35% more players would mean 35% more income, then the math says 0.7*1.35=0.945, bad investment with 5.5% less income.

You are correct about my math error. Still, plug in other values that work (45%, for instance) and my point stands. We're just nit-picking here.

Edited by Gallowglas, 06 July 2012 - 11:11 AM.

[Adm Awesome]

Woska, on 06 July 2012 - 10:39 AM, said:

Do not want Steam to be involved in this project.

They don't provide any useful service in my experience. And having them involved in games just makes things more complicated. I had to get a steam account in order to play an off line game. How stupid is that? And then my Steam account got hacked and I got to spend a couple of days trying to jump through all the hoops to reclaim an account for a service that I didn't want or need.

So, if Steam is involved, I don't want it to be required.

I don't know what you're talking about... I accidently fell for a phishing site, gave someone username, password and even credit card info (yeah I used to be an *****) and I was desperate, cancelled my card, and contacted them ASAP, and I had my account returned to me with everything fixed in about an hour or two. Why do you have a problem with launching Steam? Why do you even have it off? I have it auto turn on with my computer and keep it on as long as my computer is on, It won't kill you to launch steam when you want to play a game, and you get the benefits of the steam GUI when in game so you can look stuff online or chat with your friends, no matter the game.

grimzod, on 06 July 2012 - 10:48 AM, said:

It is also a money sucking vampire from the devs point of view....

Go read my post, Go ask any indie developer, look at all the packs, and the huge list of indie Games, you people keep spewwing this cost nonsense, but no one has provided an arguement to my point. If Steam was expensive, small Indie groups with a tiny budget would NEVER be able to afford to put their games on there, yet for some strange, unasnwerable reason, almost every Indie developer puts their game on there... must be aliens.

[Gallowglas]

Adm Awesome, on 06 July 2012 - 11:12 AM, said:

Go ask any indie developer, look at all the packs, and the huge list of indie Games, you people keep spewwing this cost nonsense, but no one has provided an arguement to my point. If Steam was expensive, small Indie groups with a tiny budget would NEVER be able to afford to put their games on there, yet for some strange, unasnwerable reason, almost every Indie developer puts their game on there... must be aliens.

Exactly my point too. I agree 100%.

[LogicalTightRope]

TGxMaxFool, on 06 July 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

Assuming that 35% more players would mean 35% more income, then the math says 0.7*1.35=0.945, bad investment with 5.5% less income.

My personal thought is that there will be far more than 35% more players. At the peak time of day, there are usually more than 4 million players on at the same time. If a tiny portion of that playerbase joins MW:O, this community will probably double, or get close to it. But who knows, I'm not a statistics genius.

[Turbo]

I have Steam and have had it since it was created. It has gotten much better than it as years ago, and I do understand the benefits of Steam, (eg: Increased exposure, common friends list between games, etc.). However, I also still see several big cons to Steam as well.

Steam eats up system resources (RAM, CPU processes). I see a lot of people on the forums that are worried about playability in the game. Well guess what, Steam will make the game require better hardware to get the same performance.

The auto update feature is as much of a curse as blessing. Yes i do know you can toggle it on or off but Steam doesnt always listen to what you want. I love Skyrim, however half the time a new patch comes out and the game updates itself some of the mods i have nolonger work. Plus, installing mods to a Steam game is a huge pain in the a**. Anybody play/mod Arma II without Steam and with it? Huge difference in ease of use.

You can only control where the Steam program itself installs. You cannot choose where individual games install. So if you want to run games off of your SSD, the whole Steam program has to be installed there and all of the games you get thru Steam. Only want a couple games to on the SSD? Tough steam does what it wants.

You also cannot play one game while updating or downloading another. Quite annoying when a 2-3 Gb patch comes out for 1 game, and you cant play anything on steam until that finishes its update, or buy a big game thats 40Gb with all the DLC (Arma II) now you cant play anything on steam for several hours.

Lastly as other people have mentioned is the cost to the developers. If PGI releases this game and its as great as all of us think/hope it will be, why on Earth would we want anyone else to get a cut after all the hardwork PGI put into it. I'm not even talking percentage, I guess this is more mentality to me, since i would rather buy a cd or music d/l strait from the band and not with iTunes. Why should the advertising side get paid for what someone else spent years developing.

Those are my reasons why i don't like Steam and hope MWO stays away from them.

[Barrin]

LordDread, on 06 July 2012 - 06:14 AM, said:

I hope not, im not a fan of steam, dont hate it either, if it was both free standing and on steam however , that would be good

Exactly, if seperate & on Steam would be good.

Personally I've been using Steam for years and the only problems I've had is when my internet decided to fall over and play dead for a few hours.

[Gallowglas]

Turbo, on 06 July 2012 - 11:16 AM, said:

Lastly as other people have mentioned is the cost to the developers. If PGI releases this game and its as great as all of us think/hope it will be, why on Earth would we want anyone else to get a cut after all the hardwork PGI put into it. I'm not even talking percentage, I guess this is more mentality to me, since i would rather buy a cd or music d/l strait from the band and not with iTunes. Why should the advertising side get paid for what someone else spent years developing.

So they shouldn't pay for advertising?

[Adm Awesome]

Though all the arguements against Steam are just unlogical and baseless, the most rediculous is the whole DRM problem. Why is it such a problem that you need steam launched? I honestly cannot understand the feeling behind peoples concerns. I have Steam auto start up with my computer, and if my computer is on you can bet 100% that Steam will be on as well. I love to have it open, all my friends are on steam, so it's my instant messenger, I can browse the store whenever I'm bored, and even get gaming news right on steam. Even for my offline game, just plain having steam is a plus. If you just always keep steam open, then you won't notice it, and it won't feel like a DRM. The best part is having the Shift+Tab GUI on offline, or even Non-Steam Games. It allows you to open their personal browser, check out either news, walkthroughs, or just minor information on the game, chat with your steam friends, and manage achievements, and screen shots without ever having to alt tab out of the game and dealing with lots of different windows. I really don't understand what people feel that having the program open is like taboo or something. Maybe you lost internet, or torrenting so you don't want steam taking up network bandwidth? Then just put in offline mode, it does everything it can do online, just without online games and being able to chat with friends for obvious reasons. You can play all your games, and everything without a problem. Honestly, I just don't understand.

Edited by Adm Awesome, 06 July 2012 - 11:23 AM.

[Ultraviper]

Turbo, on 06 July 2012 - 11:16 AM, said:

You can only control where the Steam program itself installs. You cannot choose where individual games install. So if you want to run games off of your SSD, the whole Steam program has to be installed there and all of the games you get thru Steam. Only want a couple games to on the SSD? Tough steam does what it wants.

You also cannot play one game while updating or downloading another. Quite annoying when a 2-3 Gb patch comes out for 1 game, and you cant play anything on steam until that finishes its update, or buy a big game thats 40Gb with all the DLC (Arma II) now you cant play anything on steam for several hours.

There are workarounds to these. For the installation folder issue you can use symbolic links. As for the other thing there's... alt+tab and resume the download.

[Baracuda]

i definatly vote for the option of steam

[Vechs]

In my humble opinion, I'm pretty sure Steam saved modern PC gaming.

<3 Valve

[Adm Awesome]

Turbo, on 06 July 2012 - 11:16 AM, said:

Lastly as other people have mentioned is the cost to the developers. If PGI releases this game and its as great as all of us think/hope it will be, why on Earth would we want anyone else to get a cut after all the hardwork PGI put into it. I'm not even talking percentage, I guess this is more mentality to me, since i would rather buy a cd or music d/l strait from the band and not with iTunes. Why should the advertising side get paid for what someone else spent years developing.

Those are my reasons why i don't like Steam and hope MWO stays away from them.

You have a very narrow way of looking at this. That's IF this game is awesome and gets a huge fanbase on it's own. I forgot which thread it was, but it had a pole asking how long have you played MechWarrior. About 60-70, if not more of the votes were Veterans that played the game for like at least 15 years. I will tell you now that this game will not survive if it's only fanbase are those people alone. This game needs fresh people; people who've never even heard of MechWarrior before, or just never really paid much attention to it, and to do that you need Advertising, in this case Steam.

Edited by Adm Awesome, 06 July 2012 - 11:29 AM.

[Freric]

I want for steam to be an option.
Also, from reviews of other games, the only thing that seems to make players more angry than needing steam is not using steam.