The Gaming Den

K wrote:Oh, the system is made for suckers. Crafting a badge out of $4 of cards in order to just get a chance at items that may or may not be bought by some other sucker for $30 is madness. I craft badges out of cards that won't sell, but give you cards that will sell. I also sell cards during the sales when everyone is mad for crafting badges and the prices go up. I also arbitrage for profit sometimes.

I've made a dollar so far this sale. It's a fun mini-game.

That being said, I'm mostly in the market for game suggestions. I play mostly strategy games, so I often need a nudge to get outside my comfort zone.

Wait, what's all this about cards and badges and selling? I'm aware of the collector cards from various games, but don't know anything else about them.

Have you not looked at the steam homepage at all during this sale?

There's a badge for this sale (like the last few sales, if I recall correctly) - you get cards for buying games and voting on the community choice sale. But for this sale, there is also a competition: you get assigned randomly to one of five teams (purple, red, blue, green, pink), and crafting badges (any badge, but the summer sale badge is worth more) gives your team points. Each day, 30 members of the winning team who contributed points to their team get 3 games off their wishlist.

Basically, it's a competition to see who can piss away the most money. If your team collectively pisses away the most money, they get to play a lottery with 30 winners who get less than a 200 dollar payout. It's the most hilarious fucking scam I have ever seen. The first five days were basically rigged by the internet - each team agreed to let each other team have one day. For the sixth day (today), Steam instituted second and third place prizes (2 games for 20 members, and 1 game for 10 members) in order to destroy that collaboration. Because, you know, this competition is pure money for them.

Prak_Anima wrote: Wait, what's all this about cards and badges and selling? I'm aware of the collector cards from various games, but don't know anything else about them.

Games give you cards. Pretty sure no game has a small enough collection of cards that you can get all of them without trading/buying more. Note that you can buy and sell them, and Steam takes a cut. They tend to go from 10-50c each. But if you get the full set, you can then craft them into a Badge, which gives you:
*100XP (enough to gain a level, it seems. Not sure if it scales at higher levels. This increases the number of friends you can have)
*An extra emote you can use in chat (you can sell these for fuck-all)
*A wallpaper (you can sell these, usually for fuck-all)

Honestly, you can just sell all your cards for little amounts, and then one day when you buy a really cheap game you go "Oh huh, thanks to my card-selling, half the price is already in my Steam Wallet". Or you can mostly sell them (particularly from games that have heaps of cards) and use that money to buy the remainder for just a few games (particularly those that have only a few cards), and enjoy the emotes.

That's how I hit level seven. And have a Zzz, a glowing bat and a snowman as extra emotes.

And yeah, crafting badges during a Summer/Winter sale grants you extra bonus cards that can be used for extra crafting nonsense, or you can just sell them as well.

Huh. I don't typically bother with the steam front page, given that i have no money to buy games with. Interesting, though. I might poke at it a bit later.

Yeah, I tend to keep it on Library. I don't impulse-buy like others do, and I also remove games when I've basically finished playing them. I try to keep my "currently installed games that appear on the Library page" at around 10.

I've picked up Skyrim and the Saint's Row Franchise Pack so far. I think I've gotten to the point where I already have everything I'm interested in. This is definitely a better year for my wallet than the last one.

EDIT:
I seemed to have already forgotten I also bought Morrowind, Oblivion, Dishonored, and the Thief remake. So it hasn't been that kind to my wallet. Still better than last year.

I also continue to not care about badges or my level, so I'm keeping with my strategy of selling all of my cards for pocket change.[/i]

Has anyone played Blackguard? It looks kind of cool (and is cheap), but the description (including the focus on all the ways you can die) is a bit iffy.

I have played it.
It gets it's rules from The Dark Eye while thats bad the rules are handled by the computer so its not that bad.

Story wise you arent really playing an Bad guy like the name inplies.
I would declscribe the main PC as lazy type with amnesia.
I like the Story.
While you arent playing an evil guy, you are at least able to play an pragmatic guy and as an example decide to not try to save the girlfriend of the party mage, who got explixlcitly abducted as bait in an trap for you.

Gamplay is mostly small unit figths. You don't wander the map ala Neverwinter Nichts, but.You have an litteral map where you klick on the town you want to visit next, with more destinies clickable as the story unfolds.

Not shure how char generation is for someone without TDE experience.
But compared to the PnP version it's simpler (and compared to the other TDE computer games)
And dont try to do all things at once with your char, you will gimp yourself.

Wasteland 2 is taunting me from the Steam Sale page. Has anyone heard anything good/bad about it? I am a sucker for a good old-school RPG and would very much like for this one to be good too.

Laertes wrote:Wasteland 2 is taunting me from the Steam Sale page. Has anyone heard anything good/bad about it? I am a sucker for a good old-school RPG and would very much like for this one to be good too.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/in ... sts/883385

I've currently made around $3.40 from crafting badges and selling cards from the summer sale alone.

Laertes wrote:Wasteland 2 is taunting me from the Steam Sale page. Has anyone heard anything good/bad about it? I am a sucker for a good old-school RPG and would very much like for this one to be good too.

I will tell you when I get it since I backed it on kickstarter and will be getting the physical copy.

Has anyone found any hidden gems in the current (2017) steam sale so far? I've been weirdly reluctant to pick up anything this time around.

Blicero wrote:Has anyone found any hidden gems in the current (2017) steam sale so far? I've been weirdly reluctant to pick up anything this time around.

The first three Batman Arkham games are five bucks a pop and worth a play if you never have.

Shadow Warrior is about four dollars and it's definitely good fun for the money. Mind you, I'm biased. Our hero's name is Lo Wang, he's introduced while he's rocking out to"You've Got the Touch" in his car. and there's hidden enemies who are black-furred demonic bunny rabbits that blare death metal when they arrive. I've got a soft spot for a game willing to be that goofy and self-aware.

Shadows of Mordor is really cheap--under 5 bucks for the GOTY edition, and it's not bad. Having played it first-hand, I'd say if you took an Assassin's Creed game--a decent one--and gave it the combat and stealth from the Batman: Arkham games, and then slapped a Lord of the Rings skin on it, you'd end up there.

If you don't mind JRPGs, Tales of Symphonia is 5 bucks.

Outlast is 3 bucks if survival horror is your thing.

And from the indie games front, Stardew Valley and Furi are both ten bucks, along with Ori, Hollow Knight, Darkest Dungeon...Sadly, Owlboy didn't get much of a price drop. Guacamelee is six bucks, though.

I haven't bought anything yet either, but have been looking at Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, Furi, Dishonored 2, and Tales of Berseria. My entertainment backlog (videogames and otherwise) is already longer than I have any hope of catching up on, so I'm trying to exercise some restraint. Leaning towards Revengeance and Furi. They're cheap, and easy to drop into for an hour here and there - my problem with JRPG's and other big games at this point is that if I put them down for too long I will never pick them up again.

Even WITH the discount, DOW3 is not looking like i want to buy it ._.
BUT
Some Anime(which i did not know you could buy via steam) has been available for cheap and i bought some of that.
Otherwise basically just really cheap collection fillers.
C&C Series. Southpark collection. Middle Earth shadow of less door.

I finally picked up Tabletop Simulator, which is awesome, but it's going to make it a lot harder for me to justify dropping $35 for a hard copy of Secret Hitler. The game really needs to be played face to face, but my friends don't currently have a board game night, so it's random crap from the workshop online until I scrounge up more motivation.

Also, Prison Architect. I've only played an hour so far, but MAN they just throw you right into the hard hitting stuff. I expected a tutorial with "here's how you build cells, here's how you feed prisoners, here's how you balance staff, etc." The FIRST THING YOU DO is build an execution chamber, and you're rewarded with the condemned's massive pile of regrets. Damn.

Not on sale, but I picked up Elder Scrolls Online. I was starting to run out of stuff I cared about in Skyrim. And with every mod comes a new glitch, you know?

I played in the BETA for that and it pretty much made me decide never to pick it up. I've heard tale that, like SW: KOTOR Online it's a lot better than it used to be but I'm leaning toward picking it up (since I can essentially play through it as if it were a single player game if I can't get friends to do the same) over ESO.

I ended up grabbing the Jedi Knight pack, because nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Dark Forces 2's level design and use of verticality remains a remarkable achievement.