Even Starfield fans can't fathom why it won most innovative gameplay in 2023's Steam awards - eviltoast
  • quams69@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    RDR2 was nominated for “labor of love”, a five year old sp game with an abandoned online component and no significant updates or dlc since release

    • DarkThoughts@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      I’d vote for Project Zomboid but that wasn’t even nominated. Steam Awards are just a joke / popularity contest.

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Meanwhile Deep Rock Galactic gets multiple new events per year and has a super community focused dev team.

      • dvlsg@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        DRG already won on a previous year, I think. Steam rules are that a game can’t be renominated for a category they already won.

        Kind of an odd rule. I suppose if it didn’t exist, Terraria would just win that category every year.

          • dvlsg@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Ah, I was wrong. DRG has never won. It’s been nominated a number of times, though.

        • verysoft@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          But didn’t Terraria have it’s last ever update 3 years ago?

          All the awards are for games released in the last year, except labor of love, which is any game from anytime. (Unless I forgot about another award)

          • DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml
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            11 months ago

            And Terraria’s upcoming 1.4.5 will be the last definitive final update this time. Until they announce 1.5.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      They flat-out didn’t understand the purpose of the categories.

      There wasn’t an option to not vote on a category and get your participation sticker. Meaning for categories users didn’t care about they just picked something they recognized.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Average steam user is not smart. I mean, they routinely spend money on products they never use just because it’s on sale.

  • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    That’s why it’s stupid to give incentives to people to vote. I hadn’t even heard of 90% of the games up for selection in the awards. But I sure as hell voted on every one, usually just picking a game I’d heard the name of, or one with a cool looking banner.

    • kuoushi@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      This right here is the exact reason Starfield won most innovative, and the same reason Hogwarts Legacy won best on Steam Deck. People who hadn’t played any of the games in the votes only voted on games they had heard of.

      • Broken_Monitor@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        It was weird voting for a best on steam deck without owning a steam deck. Seems like it would have been easy to restrict that one to accounts that have been used on a deck. Same with the VR game vote

        • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Mind as well limit it to only games in your library than.

          Plenty of other ways to play something than for you to physically hold it in you hands. Maybe the played it a vrcade, friends house, rented one, etc.

          • Chobbes@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            This would cause other problems too. People will mostly vote for more popular games because more people own them… Realistically I don’t think there’s a way to do this that would actually be meaningful. In general I’ve started to place an extreme amount of distrust in ratings for games and movies because realistically I don’t care what the average person thinks of a piece of media… I care what I think, and aggregate measures like that don’t really give you a good impression of that. It seems more useful to find good curators and people with similar tastes (or tastes you understand so you can say “oh they liked this, but I don’t like that kind of stuff as much as them” or “oh they didn’t like this, but that stuff is more my jam than theirs”.

        • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          I have a ROG which is effectively a Windows Steam Deck, and I use the Deck compatibility checks to ensure that software will run adequately on the ROG. I actually did play Hogwarts Legacy quite a bit on the ROG during my vacation to the UK.

          I wouldn’t restrict it to just Deck owners, as there are quite a number of us who own beefy handhelds that are not the Deck. At that point I would change the category to “Great on Handhelds”.

      • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        I just assume it’s based on who pays more and votes don’t even matter. Even if the votes matter, then awards never mattered unless I’m getting something out of it

  • verysoft@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Steam awards is just popular vote and memes, why did last of us get best soundtrack? Why did rdr2 get labor of love? Why did hogwarts win best on steam deck? Dont take awards seriously, they are just a bit of fun.

  • RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Honestly, the whole user/community aspect of Steam is garbage. Discussion forums are just back and forth fights between people about random things like game issues without anyone trying to solve the actual issue. The screenshots/art whatever section is just softcore porn of the game characters and the main screenshots/art section that covers all games is just a hub for wallpaper engine crap.

    The guides section is the worst. Its all just stupid meme shit like “How to start the game” or “how to walk forward”.

    The workshop section CAN be decent but posters just select all tags for their items so searching by category is useless and there is no rule enforcement to prevent that.

    I’ve been a steam user since the start and have a steam deck. Their linux support is really good but thats it.

    Oh and trolls and bullies commenting on your profile just don’t seem to ever get banned nomatter what horrific shit they post.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      11 months ago

      Oh and trolls and bullies commenting on your profile just don’t seem to ever get banned nomatter what horrific shit they post.

      They certainly do if you report them. Losing your community privileges, including the right to change your avatar, is something Valve does to people who violate the community rules. But there is no automatic system. You need to report them.

      As for the rest: It’s a video game store. Think about how many of the users are children. It’s why there are curators and ratings for damn near every submission. They used to even have ratings for the forum topics back before they were integrated into Steam directly; they probably should bring that back.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    11 months ago

    Because a significant portion of people like doing things on the internet in the most inappropriate way possible, in this case voting for the choices that make the least sense for any given category.

    • PenguinTD@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      many aren’t old enough to understand “innovative” means simply because they lack the reference material, history of said genre, etc. And yes, trolling is probably a reason like review bombing.

  • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I hate how there’s a pretty glaring typo in the article, and no way to inform the author without setting up an entire account with this website specifically. I get that anonymous comments suck, but I can’t even help point out something without a 12 step process.

    TL;DR - "But, I think we can all agree, it was exactly anything revolutionary. " should be “wasn’t”.

      • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Wasn’t Bethesda individually responding to/disputing negative Steam reviews? Obviously someone’s got a lot of time on their hands over there, wouldn’t put it past them to spend a bunch of time manipulating this vote too.

        • kindenough@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          Yes they where, even to mine.

          Sorry you did not enjoy the game, but there are so many ways to enjoy it.

          Gaslighting the shit out of it.

          • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Sorry you did not enjoy the game, but there are so many ways to enjoy it.

            Yes. For example, not having it in my library and people ripping it apart in reviews or memes.

        • DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          They sure were and I considered that as part of the Todd guess. Whether entirely fake accounts or paid employees, it’s still just desperate vote manipulation by crybabies.

        • axo10tl@sopuli.xyz
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          10 months ago

          The responses read like they were generated with a large language model. Not that training such a model wouldn’t take a bunch of time, but at least then the effort would approach zero over time.

  • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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    11 months ago

    Starfield is innovated in that it took me almost 18 hours of on and off game play over a couple months before I was actually interested in it enough to actually think about it. By that point I would have normally just tossed it over to the mothball drive and never thought about it again

    • Psythik@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Same, but I also I spent an additional week obsessively installing and trying different mods, until I finally came to the conclusion that none of them would actually make the game fun to play.

      • frickineh@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        With no creation kit, the mods are super limited. I’m guessing once that releases, there will be a lot more options that might make it worth a replay. I’d like to see something that makes building outposts worthwhile, and maybe some companions that aren’t all the same personality. That said, if I ever do replay it, it’ll be in a few years. It wasn’t interesting enough to want to jump right back in.

        • Psythik@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Oh I didn’t know that. Explains why most of the current mods do little more than improve the dated graphics. I’ll give the game a second chance once it gets mods like this:

          1. An off-road vehicle mod
          2. A spaceship overhaul mod that eliminates the cutscenes. Actually be able to take off and land the ship yourself, and replace fast travel with a proper warp drive. Owning and maintaining a ship should be more fun overall. There should be a pre-flight checklist and more parts to replace/upgrade/maintain, as a start.
          3. A mod that adds more cities and towns to all these barren planets.
          4. A story overhaul mod. Every single quest and line of dialog should be replaced with something that is actually interesting to play. This will obviously take many years – at least 5 – if not a decade or more. That’s the main issue with this game. The story is the most boring thing to ever come out of a Bethesda product.
          • frickineh@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Yeah I think what you’re looking for is just a different game. The copy and paste buildings are a huge issue that definitely deserves a fix, but the space stuff you want is kind of a different genre.

    • Skua@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      How’d you end up putting 18 hours in in the first place without being interested?

      • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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        11 months ago

        I have played all the bethesda games since Morrowind (I even beat that!) except Fallout 76 or whatever it was called. I figured it had to have something going for it. I would play for an hour here and there and just be like meh. I am still kinda meh on it but at least I have some understanding of the path the main story wants to drive me in now… It’s a shit story but I figured I will do the main story and see how I feel about the game. As it is, the main story is barely enough to keep me coming back. Also my friend spoiled a major plot point for me and I want to see how that comes about (main character death or something haha)

        • Skua@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          That makes sense. Glad you got something out of it in the end. I’ve long been a fan of the Elder Scrolls games and was cautiously optimistic about Starfield, liked the gritty but optimistic aesthetic and the idea of going out to find the little side stories that made me love the Elder Scrolls games. Looks like I might need to keep waiting a bit though

          • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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            11 months ago

            From what I can tell, it’s difficult to actually make a choice in Starfield. It’s like you can do something or choose not to but any shades of choice are very dim.

        • Xanis@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Hey hey whooa now! Don’t go bashing FO76 too hard. It’s actually a proper game now and I legitimately enjoyed it once they updated and fixed issues. Unlike the direction Starfield is going where they seem to be blaming everyone else.

    • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Right? The community reaction will be a riot if Bethesda tries to use the award in advertisements.

      Of course a better question is why it was even nominated in the first place…

    • wunami@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      They are based on user submitted nominations that happened during the prior sale.

      Valve can be pretty lazy about this kind of thing. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they just automatically used the top most nominated in each category without even a tiny bit of vetting.

  • rab@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    It’s just trolling like any other thing where people can vote

  • beebarfbadger@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Dammit, Beth paid for their award, so they’ll get one, even if the category we need to squeeze it in is most innovative gameplay!

  • Nyoka@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    If you can send Pitbull to Kodiak, Alaska…

    People on the Internet will vote for all kinds of stupid nonsense. At least the Alaska visit was funny.