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You can’t create new ones afaik, but you can add and report tags. If enough users do either and it meets the threshold it will be added/removed. The order tags appear is also relevant, if the first tag is FPS then it’s the most voted tag. I’m sure devs/publishers can set initial tags but after that it’s users that maintain them.
It is a good idea to keep this simple in theory, but it also is exploitable. Especially since you can’t search by tags set by users vs devs/publishers. Or the first 4-5 tags. I see a lot go into safeguarding reviews, but very little in tag abuse. There’s cheep no effort games with a crazy number of tags - most people can identify trash, but if it can be abused, then what about other legitimate games?
Steam also categorizes tags in 4 types: Genres, Visual, Theme, and Features. It would be nice to search, say, games that are primarily one genre. When I search for JRPG, I don’t want a City Builder that has JRPGish elements, but I’d be ok with a JRPG with City Builderish elements. You could really narrow down what you want if you used some advanced logic. But that’s not simple, so I can see why they don’t, I just wish I could if I wanted to.
But I’d have to disagree, if it’s open to abuse, then it is a dumpster fire. The thing is that the alternative is…well they aren’t doing it. It’s one of the few things I think, if a competitor focused on and got right, would really hurt steam. But no one seems interested in doing that, so for now, steam is all we got.
Mr biggest problem with tags is that it’s user curated and you can recommend an unlimited number of them.
Just because a game has a few funny moments, doesn’t mean it gets the comedy tag. Just because it has a brief driving sequence doesn’t mean it gets the racing tag. Just because there’s some reading involved doesn’t mean you get the visual novel tag.
It’s getting to the point I feel like there’s a conspiracy where there’s teams of people intentionally sabotaging the tag system and teams trying to counter it, all so they can control views and sales. It’s really noticeable when a publisher stops marketing and moves to another release.
This is just my opinion, and there are always legitimate use cases for wired or wireless. Losing connection at the worst time is the main reason. I play online, so it’s a complete and absolute, non-negotiable dealbraker to me. Every other benefit wireless gives and every other negative wired gives is trumped by this singular requirement.
I won’t go into every situation, but almost every minor issue in wireless results in disconnects. This ends up with me using wired anyways, which leads to the problem in my previous post: worn out USB ports. Wired by comparison has far less disconnects.
On a side note: I also wanted to add (but didn’t feel it was worth editing at the time), razor is stupid expensive for just that one little feature. I’ve had this controller for years, and back then it was the only one I could find like it. To me, it has been worth - but if I was to buy another I’d definitely look for something similar that is cheaper with possibly more features. It wasn’t meant to be a razor promoting post.
I prefer wired. The problem I have with most is that they are battery. Thus, the wired part is always a USB connection that inevitably wears out with use and disconnects randomly.
It’s not an innovative controller with programmable buttons or anything, but the razor controllers have a keyed recess that all but makes it impossible to disconnect or wear the port. It’s really the only selling point, but one that has kept me from looking for anything else.
You might be interested to know that there are several hardcore modding scenes, where the point is to mod the game for fun. The mod guides are updated every month or so and includes thousands of mods. It takes days to install, and actually playing is optional. In most cases, a new save is required every update, so modders keep an additional playable state if they actually want to play the game.
Lexy’s LOTD is my fav one, it’s only over a thousand mods, has very detailed instructions, and a very friendly community.
I feel like starfield is an experiment in user driven content (mods) to sell a game. The issue with Skyrim is that there is really only one map, and before any map extension mod came out, there were so many mods out there that competed for space on the map. Even today, large world overhaul mods are constantly stepping on the toes of other mods. City redesigns are also a problem unless you’re really good at load orders and merging.
Starfield feels like each world is an open map, ready for people to start designing content: either a colony, a cave, or anything really. The story seems loose and open ended so that it won’t interfere with large collaborative content. It’s not a game they are selling, but a modding storefront. It’s like Skyrim Creations, but putting the horse (armor sold separately) before the cart.
You are exaggerating. You can complete the entire MSQ up to EW in less than 3 days in-game playtime. Source: You can find raiders with alts that have sprout icons, and I’ve done it myself twice.
But I get it, you need to know exactly what to do and skip cutscenes. You also can’t do any side questing and once you leave an area, never look back. Which most would rightly criticize me for suggesting. The story is good.
Honestly, if the concern is anything other than the story, it’s probably not the game for you anyways.
I’d also like to point out that most content is built to be relevant, so you’ll be doing content with the rest of the player base in just a few hours of playtime. We have the opposite queue problem in contrast to other games: You aren’t waiting for other new players to show up to complete content; you are waiting for the servers to fit you into a party that hundreds of other players of various levels want to also do.
The appeal is that these games were made well before Elden Ring and Witcher 3; before ‘open world’ was mainstream. Every single NPCs had daily routines, quests were dynamically generated, and what you do in the game had consequences beyond pissing one character off. This made triggering specific quests or events difficult if you were just going ‘off the hip’, and made replayability a big feature. Because of these systems, there were several interesting “game breaking” issues, but these things were charming in their own right due to how new all these systems were put together with almost nothing like it.
In retrospect, not all the “game breaking” issues were truly understood at the time, and most are a consequence of several factors - the most common being that some quests activate behind the scenes and prevent other quests from starting, even if you haven’t picked them up and added them to your journal. So it is possible to do mostly everything in the game with careful planning. But at the time, it really did seem like each playthrough was unique.
It is/was also highly moddable for its time. While it took a long time to detail every aspect of the game, today there is nothing mods can’t do. Even Witcher 3 mods can’t do a bunch of things that Skyrim mods can. And it’s a good gateway into learning how to mod, and modding can be just as fun as playing. Some mod guides are so long it takes days or weeks to implement. It can get quite insane, with some people maintaining multiple ‘mod versions’: one to play (most playthroughs won’t let you add/remove mods mid-play), one to test new stuff, and one to keep up-to-date with whatever mod guide/group they are following (you know, for fun…and the next playthrough).
But mostly it’s nostalgia, like how some people like older Zelda or Final Fantasy games. Or how you might play that pointless cozy game you played a million times because it connects you to something deeper to what was going on at that time. We know TES games are pretty bad in a lot of regards, but graphics, gameplay, or story isn’t what we are after. Hell, there are now adults booting up Minecraft because it’s just the game they grew up with.