f13.net

It's that time of year again, where we complain about the deals and lament the fact that we already have most of the games on sale.

Edit: And of course Steam is not functioning properly.  It really must be sale time again.

So are they still doing the 'no more dailies' thing?

Coming soon from Ubi, Steam Simulator 1015!

Stave off the barbarian hordes!
Form a civilization!
Discover Electricity!
Invent the Computer!
Sell computer games on physical media!
Invent the Internet!
Wait for the telecoms to install broadband!
Devise a digital distro system!

Put on your Money Hat!

I was disappointed to see that Horse Lords DLC for CK2 wasn't on sale but within 30 minutes of noticing it Paradox newsletter informed me that they are having a sale (which thankfully had it for -50%)  :awesome_for_real:

Wait, as in, its a mistake and they'll be updating it?  Or Paradox is doing their own special sale on the side while leaving the steam version at full?

Well this is disappointing. 

The few things I was looking to buy are either not on sale at all (Helldivers) or not on sale at an impulse price (DLC for Dishonored only 50% off).

I'm in the same boat. Football Manager 2016 isn't even 25% off? ... the fuck?

Capitalists always want to fuck up my Christmas.

Thread begins to look like an addiction meeting.

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cb/14/5d/cb145d466f1958ec101f4dadfb231242.jpg)

Steam got us hooked on those sweet, sweet daily deals and flash sales, and now daddy needs his medicine.

It's too much of a pain in the ass to look through everything that's on sale. When all that mattered were the Flash Sales and Daily Deals it was easier; then you just kinda glanced at it on the last day to see if you missed anything.

Of course, that could be my massive backlog and reduced gaming time talking.

With so many sales on all sorts of gaming sites its no wonder that the only games left for me to buy with a 50% discount are all early access games. I'm not poor enough to wait 12-24 months for games to reach a 75% discount anymore and there are no sweet games that just dropped down to 50% discount.

Thoughts on Vermintide outside of the couple posts in the actual thread?  Anyone play it for more than a couple matches?  Debating if I'd get $25 out of it, it sort of reminds me of Dawn of War Last Stand mode which I really loved.

Is that the coop one? Couldn't get into a match, ppl would see my noob rank and instantly leave lobby.

Cities Skylines is 60% off to 11.99. See a number of ppl in the GOTY thread gave it votes.

Witcher 3 half off is tempting.

Since people might be struggling for things to look at here's my super early top-8 pool for things I might be buying:
-Leviathan: Last Day of the Decade
-Legends of Eisenwald
-Lisa
-Naruto 3 Full Burst
-Alan Wake (never gotten around to buying or playing this one, might be time?)
-Kaiju a gogo
-SW Empire At War
-LOTR War in the North

I haven't doubled checked if the steam 75% offs are legit good prices on these. I also haven't double checked that they are games worth playing since I haven't played almost any of them. But the thread was depressing me a little.

Here's some no brainers at 75% off if you haven't played them that I have zero doubt recommending at these prices.

-Wolf Among Us. This is crazy worth it at $7, by far my favorite of the TellTale games. So good.

-Banner Saga. Again this is 100% worth the $5. Yes its short. But is wonderful and the gameplay is not bad and the story/setting is fantastic. I love text based choice making that matters btw. If you hate that shit and always want the perfect good end ignore this and Wolf Among Us.

-X-Com. I really really really shouldn't have to tell anyone this at this point. But if you don't think you'll hate X-Com but you haven't bought it. Buy it already.

-EYE Divine Cybermancy. I'm going to plug this because its always worth supporting legitmately crazy jank that is actually fun and a mindfuck. Also 2 fifty. What's to lose?

-TW: Shogun 2 and all its DLC and whatnot are on sale. Its great. I am sorta a weeb. But I'm pretty sure its legit great fun.

Our dota stack played the extensively for 1 day and we all enjoyed it, but then noone ever logged in again. In my opinion not worth $25.

I bought Grim Dawn since apparently it will be content complete by the end of the month.  Pretty good ARPG so far but I'm not sure if there is a crafting system.  I haven't seen anything like a forge or something telling me I can craft.

I just turned my PC on, determined to buy Witcher 3 and I find it's on the Winter sale for $30.  So cool!

I didn't buy anything, but updated my wishlist to see if I still feel like it when I get back after the holidays.

Witcher 3 @ $30
Legend of Heroes @ $10
Divinity: Original Sin @ $27
Endless Space @ $6

All seem like decent fun to me.

I can safely tell you it's not time now and probably never will be. It's a game with great production values, a slightly interesting story and depressingly mediocre gameplay.

I didn't care much for Endless Space but for $6 it's worth a look.

Had no idea it would be content complete this year. Grim dawn together with darkest dungeon are the early access titles I have considered the most.

I really enjoyed Alan Wake.

*shrug*

Just bought like $130 in games that I don't actually need right this second, because...#steamsales  :oh_i_see:

Finally got around to buying Papers, Please. $4 seems a pretty good price.

I too, liked Alan Wake.

I liked the atmosphere and story in Alan Wake, but the absolutely abysmal combat and controls made me quit about halfway through.  It's a game I somewhat regret purchasing, despite warnings, and I say this despite having beaten Deadly Premonitions which in theory has even worse combat, albeit less of it.

The combat and gameplay of Alan Wake is just fine.  The issue is that after about half way through, nothing new happens and its just the same sort of fights over and over again, so it gets stale before the finish.  I certainly felt the game was worth a play through though.

Yeah, It would be if I weren't still only about 50% of the way through FO4, PoE and Divinity. Fucking A I never get to finish a game these days.

Oh well, means I'll get it 50% off from $20 sometime in the future.

Yup, that's exactly how I feel.  I wish I had time to play all this shit.

Yup.

I was drunk and bought it.

It's hilarious that you had to put the caveat of being drunk in there. Don't be ashamed! It's ok to love your games!  :why_so_serious:

I wouldn't have bought it sober because I know I have zero time for it.

Telltale's Game of Thrones (complete series) is discounted at 66%, € 9.51   :awesome_for_real:

Life is Strange complete is more expensive; discounted at 33%, €13.39  :heartbreak:

I did semi-impulsively buy Ryse, but I also have a slew of gladiator minis I bought this year and like to have games that inspire me to paint certain things.

Considering a few smaller titles like Sunless Sea, Spintires, Dex, etc.

I bought Undertale for my kid; she seems to enjoy it. I'm thinking of the Long Dark and Satellite Reign for myself. I'm in the same boat as a lot of others; too many games and not enough time to play them.

I have $100 worth of games in my cart and I'm trying not to buy them.

Anyone play Distant Worlds? This game almost never goes on sale and is 50% off.

Buy it, it's essentially a spiritual successor to MO2

Was the single player of 2010 version of Aliens vs Predator good (for $4)?  The game seems to have a good rating on steam but I can't tell if that's due to multiplayer or not.

So far my steam winter sale purchases accounts to zero, instead I headed to origin and bought dragon age inquisition.

There's a demo? tbh I think I only played the original thinking back

I'd say it was worth $4.  I don't think it's as good as Monolith's 2001 AvP 2, but it wasn't total garbage.  The space marine campaign was pretty much a waste of time, but the Alien and Predator campaigns were decently fun, if I remember right.  They were shortened, though, to put the emphasis on the space marine campaign because that's the one with the compelling (*cough choke*) story so it's not like it's the perfect game, but it plays all right.  I don't know if I'd buy it at full price but I apparently liked it enough to put 12 hours in to it.

I think I'd grab the Witcher over DA. I logged onto Origin just to check the price, so FYI Jade Empire is free today and is a fun game if somehow folks haven't checked it out yet.

So no flash sales or daily sales? What we see now is what we get?

Then there's nothing that I want, cheap enough. If deep discounts for games I actually want are done with then my purchasing is going to drop to effectively zero I suspect.

Ended up refunding the game, after playing through the tutorial and into the world I realized exactly why I didn't buy it in the first place. Already got witcher 3 and it was cheaper through gog a week ago, at least for us europeans (might be gone now though but sales always come back).

I think I need to broaden my gaming search or lower my standards, reached a point where there are very few games I consider buying.

I picked up Undertale and Flamebreak, both of which are turning out to be 100% worth it. Also Puzzle Strike, which is an amateur implementation of a great board game - but I knew that going in.

Several other things on my wish list are calling my name, but they'll still be there this summer.

Bought Rebel Galaxy for 13.99 and have already gotten my money's worth.  Simple, fun space navy stuff with a bit of RPG.  Wish there were more games like this, and I REALLY wish someone would put a Star Wars skin on this.  Or just make a Star Wars game exactly like this.

Someone said Game of Thrones is up for 10?  Is it worth it?

I'll have to check Rebel Galaxy. I picked up the Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Sunless Sea so far.

Picked up a few things but the stand outs so far are Guild of Dungeoneering and GALAK-Z.  Both seem pretty good from the first few hours.   Also grabbed Undertale but I haven't played that one yet.

Paper Sorcerer is $0.99 for anyone looking for a super bare bones very old style jRPG.  Which is probably not too many people but I thought it had a cool aesthetic and a fairly interesting (albeit thin) story.

This is what I bought this year. Pretty happy about it. I don't feel the disappointment other people feel with these sales. Sure, even bigger discounts would be awesome, but I feel that there's so many things being marked down that if you took the time to build a proper wishlist over the years you are inevitably gonna walk away happy. I do.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/Steam%20Winter%20Sale%202015%20shopping%20cart.jpg)

Game of thrones was a huge disappointment, the telltale way of storytelling fell flat when they tried to do game of thrones. They nailed tales from the borderlands, so if that kind of humor is your thing you should buy it instead. If you dislike borderlands get the wolf among us.

I liked their take on GoT but TWD, Tales from the Borderlands and Wolf Among Us were all better products. If it's $10 for the entire GoT season then I'd grab it.

Civilisation Beyond Earth -  I wanted to get it but $35 including the xpac just seems too much.

Things that I'm deliberating over:
Grim Dawn
Ori and the blind forest
Sniper Elite III
The Long Dark
Submerged
Shelter 2

I thought about the Planetary Annihilation expansion but I still feel that the devs didn't deliver with the original game.

I bougt little DLC bits and pieces this year - mostly for Talisman but I either have the games I want, know I'll be dead before I play every game in my library or just don't care about a lot of the junk flooding Steam

(http://img.lum.dolimg.com/v1/images/databank_ackbar_01_169_55137220.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C1560%2C878&width=768)

Going through the queue to get my free trading cards (I want my free 30 cents per day) and I'm amazed at the type of games people make.  There's some truly random stuff out there like http://store.steampowered.com/app/246900

I bought Grim Dawn and that's it.  It's fun! 

Its 25% off now

I bought it too. This game is pretty awesome because I love character building. I ended up playing until 4am.

Yep and I got it as soon as the Steam store unfucked itself. Kind of weird that it only showed up on sale on Christmas but I'll take what I can get.

The crazy thing about Rebel Galaxy was that it was made by two guys. I haven't played near enough of it as I would like.

I bought Ryse, Wolf Among Us and Abyss Odyssey. I keep eyeballing Grim Dawn.

OK just bought Rebel Galaxy.  If it sucks you guys owe me $13.99.  :grin:

Grim Dawn is pretty fun, but very unpolished. Looting lags me for a half second or so, and I've had a couple crashes in the 3 hours I've played.

So far I've only bought Mini Metro @ $9.  Solid metro/subway building game.

My cart is still sitting with:
Witcher 3 @ $30
Legend of Heroes @ $10
Divinity: Original Sin @ $27
Endless Space @ $6
Shadowrun: Hong Kong @ $10
Grim Dawn @ $15
Life is Strange @ $2.50
Talos Principle @ $10
Renowned Explores @ $12

Contradiction also looks fun for a bit, but it's not on sale at $10.

I got a Steam gift card for Christmas. So I'm trying to decide which of these gets the plug.

I'll probably buy none since the new D3 patch drops in two weeks.

Is infinifactory worth 13 bucks?

After several days of going through the discovery queue (cause I can't turn down an easy 30 cents per day) I have come to realize that this sale isn't that bad price wise.  The problem just comes back to Steam still sucks at getting games you might want to play in front of you with minimal effort.  Sure, my wishlist has grown from 40 to 70 games but that's over the course of a week going through the discovery queue one at a time, spending more patience than I usually have.

I bought Witcher 3, because apparently my family is afraid of getting me download codes.

Bought:
Fallout 4 (from gmg since it was 34% instead of 17% off)
Grim dawn
Darkest dungeon
Beginner's guide
Her Story

Gah, fuck you guys.  I purchased and installed Grim Dawn yesterday, and managed to spend the entire day (and hours into the following) playing the damn thing.  Going to say best Diablo-like since....diablo.  Like it a lot better than PoE at least.

After a quick glimpse about a year ago, I'm finally doing a "serious" playthrough of Paper Sorcerer, and here I am recommending it again, especially at the current sale price ( € 0,99). For that sum, and looking at some game completion averages, you're getting about 9 to 15 hrs of enjoyment on your first playthrough, plus it has potential for more because the classes are quite varied (and unique: you play baddies like vampire, ghost, werewolf, skeleton and more).

It's a wizardry clone made by a single developer, challenging at high difficulties (especially the hardest, the "1980s" mode) with a very charming atmosphere and music you'll learn to love or hat,e also because there is no sound/music volume setting  :grin:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/263560/

I've looked at that a few times but a lot of Steam reviews mention it crashes/freezes a lot and that the dev doesn't seem interested in fixing it.

I played Paper Sorcerer quite a bit ~2 years or so ago, never had any problems -- of course that doesn't invalidate the experience of others. OTOH considering that it's a one-man project with the dude having moved on from game dev (afaik?) and the game never having cost more than $4 ever since it was released in 2013 (you could pick it up for even cheaper than $1 in random bundles), my reaction to that is well... /shrug.

It's quite enjoyable for a Wizardry 4-esque game, too, and gets pretty tough on harder difficulties. Protip: don't try 1980s difficulty unless you are a masochist.

While there are still some issues, he actually released another patch a few months ago (May) :

http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=263560

I got a Steam gift card for christmas, so I ended up with a pretty solid take.

• Audiosurf 2  -  Played a lot of Audiosurf, but most of my music is on my other computer, so not sure if I'll play this one much.
• Civilization: Beyond Earth + DLC  -  seems like it could be fun.  I always liked sci-fi 4x games, but most of them are more Master of Orion than Alpha Centauri, so hopefully this will be fun.
• Downwell  -  Seems more like a mobile game than a desktop game to me, but I heard a lot of good things about it, so figured I'd give it a shot.
• Final Fantasy Type-0  -  I generally like Final Fantasy but hate the turn based battle system, so this looks like it might be fun.  A lot of the criticism I'm hearing about it (30 fps lock etc.) isn't stuff I really care about.  Figured it was worth gambling on.
• Ikaruga  -  One of the games I always used to hear people talk about but never played on account of not owning the system. 
• Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Menace Pain  -  Honestly kind of torn on this one.  Heard it was great, but not crazy about supporting Konami.  I love Metal Gear, but I've heard the story for this one is garbage.  With Kojima gone it's not like I can even pretend that I'm trying to show that there's a market for a better sequel or something.  But at the very least it should be a fun game, right?
• Orion Trail  -  Not sure if it's a direct clone of Oregon Trail the way Organ Trail is, but it looks neat at first glance.
• Puzzle Agent, Puzzle Agent 2  -  Saw a video singing the praises for this game, so I grabbed it.  Played through it already (the first one is only about three hours long) and it's not super great, but meh.
• Red Goddess  -  I've been watching this one for a while, but never really had it at the top of my list.  Looks like a decent metroidvania.
• Solar War  -  Been on my wishlist for ages but it looked a bit rough.  It looks like they finally added sound, so I'm out of excuses to avoid buying it.
• Transformers: Devastation  -  This game looked pretty cool, but I was waiting for a deeper discount until someone pointed out that this was done by Platinum, at which point my wallet exploded and all my money flew in to my computer.
• Undertale  -  Same as Red Goddess, I've been waiting for this one for a while.  Internet won't shut up about how good it is so I picked it up even though it wasn't on super deep discount.
• X Rebirth  -  Been waiting for this one for a while.  I've heard it's pretty shallow, but since I was never able to really figure out the previous X games maybe that's what I need.  Not expecting great things but it was cheap enough to gamble on (I seem to be saying that a lot this year).

Apparently the new format for the winter sale was a huge success (https://steamdb.info/forum/790/)

That's interesting. I was far more conservative than any other sale. I only purchased games I was really watching and waiting for instead of impluse buys.

I wish Crusader Kings 2 would go on sale.

Note that they just talk about views and hits and wishlists and user activation and marketing bullshit bla.

At no point do they even begin to discuss how much stuff sold or how much money they made. I'm guessing the sale bombed hard and they're desperate to not actually state that since they seem sold on whatever changes they're trying to implement.

From the linked article:

And from this analysis of Steam Spy data (https://medium.com/steam-spy/about-steam-winter-sale-76a75abe152a#.tu2tec8a0):

It would be better to compare to last winter's sale than summer, though. Summertime finds a lot of people doing other things with both their time and disposable income. Winter is the traditional stay inside time of year, and it's also when people are looking to spend money.

Quoting this here because I do not yet run a f13.txt.    :awesome_for_real:

I find it pretty hard to believe that this sale did any worst than previous winter sales, and most of the data so far really seems to support that it did even better.  Hopefully some solid stat comparisons come out soon.

Steam is likely still growing as a platform, becoming basically the defacto distribution method for PC games.   So yah, revenue of this winter sale v. last winter stale with the platform grown taken into consideration while also factoring in the huge releases that were discounted this year, etc etc. 

Personally, while skeptical at first, I like this better for me.  I don't want to game the sale and make decisions on the fly.  I don't want to care about the cards.  I just want to take stock after Christmas and buy something to make up for all of the non-gaming gifts I receive every year.

The article LITERALLY spoke about revenue growth over previous sales. What the fuck were you reading?

Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, I didn't see a direct comparison in the overall performance of this sale v. the last winter sale.  I just saw winter v summer and the growth trend over a particular section of games.

Yeah. This was the first Steam Sale in years that I literally bought nothing at all from. I don't have time to browse through 4 billion titles, and I have so many that a 40% or 50% off doesn't tempt me. Shit, I barely bother with Humble Bundles anymore.

Unfortunately the same, although reading the Elite thread is making me wish I'd picked it up on sale.

I doubt I will ever buy as much as I used to in Steam sales, simply because I own so much stuff now. Still, I like the format better when I can browse at leisure in the holidays.

Same here. The discovery queues were worth it. Getting a free shiny made me page through them, and I added 20 or so "Hey, that looks interesting" games to my wishlist. I've bought a handful of them on sale since. I have a ton of "One day I might play these games" that I will probably never actually play.

I just keep getting sucked into something like Banished, or deciding Tropico 4 sounds fun again.

Chaos Reborn just came on sale ;  did it manage to be good ?

Anyone else playing ?