To Steam or not to Steam?

[Captain Pentium]

After 100 and something hours I have to say, I'm not too impressed with Steam's service. Sometimes the game fails to launch (launching, quits game, then syncs) and considering Steam uses the internet I'm pretty sure it causes lag in the game as well. I was wondering if downloading the game from the website would be better for these problems?

[ab.er.rant]

What's your hardwareand network like? Didn't encounter any performance or network issues at all since getting back into PoE about a month ago.

[Lagwin1980]

TBH, i've had both the standalone (since jan 2012) and steam when it launched in oct 2013
There wasn't a notticable difrence between the two versions gameplay wise
Steams only problem at the time was that the steam login server was going down and you couldn't log into games with it

Steam benefits, an hours played counter, some additional payment methods, slightly less strict security and some of the social features

Standalone benefits, much faster patching

The faster patching kinda swings it for many

Also, if this post is aminly down to "lag" there are problems just not that are not game related, there are 2 underwater fibre cables cut, one in india and one in Singapore
Both of these are causing all the users that were on those lines to be re routed and it is effecting connections prety much globaly due to the working lines being congested.
india is due to be fixed some time next week all going well
SG though is going to be febuary (was march)

[Shion]

Oh, you also get Steam Trading Cards for playing on Steam, which you can sell to get more stash tabs.

[The_Driver]

Originally posted by aria:

Oh, you also get Steam Trading Cards for playing on Steam, which you can sell to get more stash tabs.

You only "collect" them by playing, you "earn" them by paying through steam wallet. You do NOT get those for free. They're the bait to have valve get a 30% cut instead of paypal taking something like only 3.4% or (2.4% + $0.30 USD) per transaction (possibly plus conversion fee?) and hence GGG getting more of the money you pay.

Adding to Lagwins post (and these are more niche reasons):
The Standalone also is often a bit smaller in size (only really relevant a subset users that need those 2-3 GB), requires less space for updates and hence works on more machines (only relevant if you're hording data), the standalone patching doesn't use that much write cycles for updates (only really relevant for SSDs and even there it's debatable).

[FlippyK]

Updates take quite a while on Steam, another consideration to take into account.

[az4a3l]

IF you are a child that need achievements to play a game then steam is your plataform, if you just want to load up the game in a flash and start playing then the stand alone client is for you.
I dont really know if you can still play POE should steam ever go offline

[The_Driver]

Originally posted by az4a3l:

IF you are a child that need achievements to play a game then steam is your plataform, if you just want to load up the game in a flash and start playing then the stand alone client is for you.

You can still get the steam achievements by launching the steam version* from time to time to sync them. The unlock times will be wrong, but that shouldn't hurt.

* well, logging in and opening the achievement window

[watchmeWIF]

Is there still Path of Exile in Steam? Can't seem to find it in the store.

[Captain Pentium]

Originally posted by watchmeWIF:

Is there still Path of Exile in Steam? Can't seem to find it in the store.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/238960/Path_of_Exile/

[jamesc70]

If this was 2000, I'd feel your pain.

I raged against Steam back then, wihen a 100Kb service might disrupt play. But today you are just reaching if you think Steam's footprint is hindering your gameplay, or you are just looking for a scapegoat. Or most-likely; trolling.

I'm still on a 6 year old build (2600k, 980 (original 580, upgraded), 8GB) system and Steam's benefits far outweigh any negative aspects.

Would you rather have Uplay? Or Origin? Or even Battlenet and 1000 other front-ends based on who owned the game?

If you said yes, you are a troll.

[Captain Pentium]

Originally posted by jamesc70:

If this was 2000, I'd feel your pain.

I raged against Steam back then, wihen a 100Kb service might disrupt play. But today you are just reaching if you think Steam's footprint is hindering your gameplay, or you are just looking for a scapegoat. Or most-likely; trolling.

I'm still on a 6 year old build (2600k, 980 (original 580, upgraded), 8GB) system and Steam's benefits far outweigh any negative aspects.

Would you rather have Uplay? Or Origin? Or even Battlenet and 1000 other front-ends based on who owned the game?

If you said yes, you are a troll.

I do have a ♥♥♥♥ internet service, where almost anything running, that connects to the internet, in the background will cause lag spikes in-game. This is relevent with Battle.net and their god forsaken always-online games, which I find useless nowadays since I don't like any games they offer there anymore. And Origin? Well, Origin crashed my PC everytime I ran it. So Steam is the only way to go for gaming services right now. Also, I wasn't aware that asking a question, based on my experience in-game, was considered trolling. I was simply wondering which people prefer based off of performance.
Finally, I have tried the standalone version of Path of Exile and found it to be better slightly but have lost interest in it due to the community a while back. Resigning from discussion.

[Grumpy]

Originally posted by Facepalm Incarnate:

Originally posted by jamesc70:

If this was 2000, I'd feel your pain.

I raged against Steam back then, wihen a 100Kb service might disrupt play. But today you are just reaching if you think Steam's footprint is hindering your gameplay, or you are just looking for a scapegoat. Or most-likely; trolling.

I'm still on a 6 year old build (2600k, 980 (original 580, upgraded), 8GB) system and Steam's benefits far outweigh any negative aspects.

Would you rather have Uplay? Or Origin? Or even Battlenet and 1000 other front-ends based on who owned the game?

If you said yes, you are a troll.

I do have a ♥♥♥♥ internet service, where almost anything running, that connects to the internet, in the background will cause lag spikes in-game. This is relevent with Battle.net and their god forsaken always-online games,

how do you think to play PoE then, where lags can decide between life and dead and is also always online?

[Disabled Velociraptor]

Originally posted by Facepalm Incarnate:

After 100 and something hours I have to say, I'm not too impressed with Steam's service. Sometimes the game fails to launch (launching, quits game, then syncs) and considering Steam uses the internet I'm pretty sure it causes lag in the game as well. I was wondering if downloading the game from the website would be better for these problems?

There is absolutely ZERO noticable different between the Stand Alone and Steam. Other than you get achievements on Steam, which you also get in the stand alone version. Updating on steam takes much longer if you're not using an SSD because of the way steam unpacks files.

[The_Driver]

Originally posted by Lioncash:

Originally posted by Facepalm Incarnate:

After 100 and something hours I have to say, I'm not too impressed with Steam's service. Sometimes the game fails to launch (launching, quits game, then syncs) and considering Steam uses the internet I'm pretty sure it causes lag in the game as well. I was wondering if downloading the game from the website would be better for these problems?

There is absolutely ZERO noticable different between the Stand Alone and Steam. Other than you get achievements on Steam, which you also get in the stand alone version. Updating on steam takes much longer if you're not using an SSD because of the way steam unpacks files.

Why don't you notice the typically smaller updates on the standalone? Why don't you notice the extra point of failure for logins? Why don't you notice the ability to pay through steam wallet? Why don't you notice not being presented the patch notes upon update?

Also: It has nothing to do with unpacking. Steam doesn't understand the pack-format, hence doesn't unpack it. It (re)builds a new file with chunks from the existing file though, instead of exchanging the relevant chunks in the existing file.