Discovery Queues are almost entirely useless for me.

[starship]

It's real possible to code this kind of thing so when you click "ignore", the system tries to learn your preferences. Basically a genetic system that is "learning", like pandora or netflix.

This is not happening according to a FAQ or something official that I just read. What I actually see in discovery queues is a ton of really bad games that I would never ever buy. Maybe 1 out of the queue is something I *might* buy, but often a majority of the games in there look awful to me and I leave the steam store in disgust after a few queues. Usually, a few queues yields zero positive results for me. It's obviously not a good way to discover games for me. It also seems to be gamed by devs making trash just to have new releases.

Today, I saw one that was recommended to me because it was tagged with "single player", and that was the only tag! I mean.. who hasn't played a single player game? :) A host of games tagged "horror" that are unlike the one or two games I've played that are tagged horror. I've seen like a dozen different FPS horror games that I would never play and yet Steam is now sure I want to play this stuff. And then loads of stuff in genres I never ever wishlist or buy. And really, just a ton of games that are new and look to be quite bad. The focus really seems to be on brand-spanking-new games, no matter the quality or relevance.

Looking at my stats for discovery queues, I've wishlisted some games, almost all of which I never bought, and I ignored more. I usually click past nearly all games and don't bother to click "ignore" even though I'd prefer to never see the title ever again. So the real stats might be something like 75% or more or all games shown to me in these discovery queues are crap from my POV. It's a joke of an algorithm that just wastes my time whenever I do it.

Why do I do it? Because I'd honestly like to "discover" some new games! :) And I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.

So this is just a complaint that I wish the steam devs would read. Fixing this would probably increase sales, which is obviously the goal of the company. Thank you.

[Mailer]

There are other discovery experiments other than the queue that you can try. have you tried the Steam Game Recommender experimental feature?: https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/

[starship]

Originally posted by Mailer:

There are other discovery experiments other than the queue that you can try. have you tried the Steam Game Recommender experimental feature?: https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/

Yeah, I actually did come across that during the recent winter sale. That is far more useful. Why can't that get turned into a "discovery queue"? Or is that the eventual goal? I'm not even sure how I found it last time I used it.

I also saw a 3rd party site during this sale, via a friend, that was a much better way of figuring out what to buy based on sale price and various tags.

Just scanning the "recommender", I could buy half of these games. I mean that is quite useful. Discovery queues? Quite useless. :) Thanks!

[Mailer]

Originally posted by starship:

Originally posted by Mailer:

There are other discovery experiments other than the queue that you can try. have you tried the Steam Game Recommender experimental feature?: https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/

Yeah, I actually did come across that during the recent winter sale. That is far more useful. Why can't that get turned into a "discovery queue"? Or is that the eventual goal? I'm not even sure how I found it last time I used it.

I also saw a 3rd party site during this sale, via a friend, that was a much better way of figuring out what to buy based on sale price and various tags.

Just scanning the "recommender", I could buy half of these games. I mean that is quite useful. Discovery queues? Quite useless. :) Thanks!

Glad it helped. Not sure what Valve's plan was with this Interactive Recommender since it is essentially an even earlier experiment that's been "shipped" since 2019. I came across it while looking over here, but since it predates the current queue maybe initially the intention was that it would get replaced.
Anyway, I'm glad it still exists.

[starship]

Yeah! I just found these under the "Your Store" tab once one clicks on "Store". I guess I typically go to the discovery queue because I'm scrolling down on the store page till it pops up. Thanks!

Though I also hope Steam devs see this and put something more useful than the discovery queue in that spot. To be honest, just the name, "Your Store" is a turnoff. I know why I rarely mouse over that menu! :)

[Tito Shivan]

Question: How many titles have you ignored?

[starship]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Question: How many titles have you ignored?

167 were explicitly ignored, 12 made it onto the wishlist, out of about 1.7k titles. So about 1/10, though I usually don't bother to hit it. Depends on how salty my mood is. :)

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by starship:

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Question: How many titles have you ignored?

167 were explicitly ignored, 12 made it onto the wishlist, out of about 1.7k titles. So about 1/10, though I usually don't bother to hit it. Depends on how salty my mood is. :)

Sounds about normal values. Often people go berserk ignoring titles and the system doesn't seem to like it.

I'd advice to check why steam recommends you the titles on the queue for hints on its behaviour

[starship]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by starship:

167 were explicitly ignored, 12 made it onto the wishlist, out of about 1.7k titles. So about 1/10, though I usually don't bother to hit it. Depends on how salty my mood is. :)

Sounds about normal values. Often people go berserk ignoring titles and the system doesn't seem to like it.

I'd advice to check why steam recommends you the titles on the queue for hints on its behaviour

I already talked about that. It finds a single tag in common sometimes, or not, randomly. As I implied, if I were actually clicking ignore on all the titles I thought were dumb games I'd never play, I'd have like 800-1500 ignored. Part of the reason I don't do this is I noticed games "disappearing" from the normal store views because I "ignored" 'em.

The explanation of how the discovery queue works (I forget where I saw this) says that it pays no attention to what you ignore in future discovery queues. AFAIK, that just means the titles won't be recommended in the normal steam store.

If it were actually using the ignored as a guideline via genetic algs, ... I mean.. my best pandora stations actually work because of what I *don't like*, and I've found that if I like the wrong songs that I genuinely like, it tends to throw in a bunch of trash. That's just Pandora's algorithm, but also there's a reason why genetic algs work better with a rating system, not like or dislike or just ignore or not. Fidelity helps.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by starship:

The explanation of how the discovery queue works (I forget where I saw this) says that it pays no attention to what you ignore in future discovery queues. AFAIK, that just means the titles won't be recommended in the normal steam store.

Mind the fact that games on the discovery queue only are shown once. So regardless of you clocking 'ignore' on that game it was bound to not recommend it again to you.

[starship]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by starship:

The explanation of how the discovery queue works (I forget where I saw this) says that it pays no attention to what you ignore in future discovery queues. AFAIK, that just means the titles won't be recommended in the normal steam store.

Mind the fact that games on the discovery queue only are shown once. So regardless of you clocking 'ignore' on that game it was bound to not recommend it again to you.

Yup. I read the blurb on how the discovery queue works, but thanks! :)

[HereIsPlenty]

Even when you have a fairly large library of games, the queue is almost always useless.