Steam - new 'stuff' coming

Well, well, well, that sounds somewhat promising - Valve trying to improve some aspects.

The headline feature is one-click matchmaking, both for new games and existing ones such as Counter-Strike. You'll be able to jump straight into a game with players of your skill level, with no history of griefing, by pressing a single button. It also lets you form a party with your friends, and automatically find a game that you can all jump into and play together. There are parallels to Microsoft's Live service, obviously, but the differences are heavily in Steam's favour. You need the £50-a-year Gold subscription to get Live's matchmaking, whereas Steam's is free, and it'll be supported by masses of our favourite games from day one.

The 'Community' part comes in when you form or join groups, like the PC Gamer UK Group we'll be setting up. Members can see when others are playing a game, join them, or schedule a match for a specific date and time. They'll also have a dedicated chat channel to talk to each other on regardless of what game they're playing, even between rounds.

Lastly, but perhaps most visibly, Steam Community gives you a personal gamer page that's accessible via the web, with embarrassingly detailed stats about what you play, how much you play it, and what kind of player you are. It even highlights noteworthy trends - the example we saw told the user "You like playing as a Boomer. Sometimes you (accidentally?) shoot your fellow Survivors."

A few more bits to be unveiled next week, supposedly.

Sounds really nice.

Especially the almost Halo 2 party style system they're talking about for joining games. That's awesome.

Never mind.

I'm pretty excited about this. The server-centric method of finding a good game was always terrible for me.

This sounds great. The friends-list system thingie never worked for me, and reciting IP's on teamspeak is a hassle. So bring it on.

I've only a handful of GWJers on my friends list. The ability to make a GWJ group should help eliminate this Teamspeak chatter:

McChuck has joined the channel.
rabbit: Dammit, lupus.
McChuck: So, what server are we on?
MightyMooQuack: Lupus!
McChuck: Hello?

I should record TeamSpeak one night during Toilet Toss and see how much is just people cursing Lupus and his crowbar.

*bonk*

Update will be available in July.

Features that will be added to Steam include the ability for users to create personal pages and profiles, create and join groups, schedule online matches, review who they've played with and how they performed, chat with groups, voice chat and other features.

The community features will be compatible with all Steam games, both old and new, according to Valve.

Yep, global voice chat.

I'd be happy if they just fixed their GD friends list. I STILL run into problems where I'm playing a game of CS with 4 of my friends and only 2 of them actually show up as "online" in steam. Ridiculous.

Dysplastic wrote:

I'd be happy if they just fixed their GD friends list. I STILL run into problems where I'm playing a game of CS with 4 of my friends and only 2 of them actually show up as "online" in steam. Ridiculous.

Yeah, that does suck.

But it sounds like if they pull it off it will basically be what Live for Windows should be. And it will run in XP.

This is exciting.

Promising indeed. I only hope that developers besides Valve that use Steam start integrating it into their games on some level so this actually becomes useful for more than a handful of games from Valve.

Does this mean a Steam profile field will be added to our GWJ profiles?

id Super pack: http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?... - I just noticed this today and I wasn't sure where to put it but that's a really cool pack for the price, I am tempted.

Lothar wrote:

id Super pack: http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?... - I just noticed this today and I wasn't sure where to put it but that's a really cool pack for the price, I am tempted.

Hey, that looks pretty cool for the Commander Keen games.. I think I'll buy those.

$20 for Return to Castle Wolfenstein? Are they serious? $10 for Doom2? I got it for <$5 at wal-mart a couple of years ago.

Uhm.

Am I alone in getting a bit of a "price grab" feel from the prices on the id stuff?

Man I'm tempted to get that super pack.

All 5 Commander Keens
Wolf 3d + expansions
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Doom + expansion
Doom 2 + expansion
Doom 3 + expansion
Heretic + expansion
Hexen + expansion
Hexen 2 + expansion
Quake + expansions
Quake 2 + expansions
Quake 3 + expansions

That's a god damn ton of gaming for $60. Plus it'd be nice to have all those classics in XP functioning form.

Sinatar wrote:

All 5 Commander Keens

Only five? I distinctly remember seven Commander Keens...

MightyMooquack wrote:
Sinatar wrote:

All 5 Commander Keens

Only five? I distinctly remember seven Commander Keens...

Hmm I don't know than, It looks like their were seven commander Keens, very strange why they only include 5 in the pack.

I am tempted in this pack though, I wouldn't mind to have all these on Steam.