Adding Friends should be more easy. (Need a unique code to search!)

[Huh?]

Everytime I add my friend's steam as friend, the process is just too complicated (especially for those who just get start to using steam).

1.You can't search people by their accountID (but most people think ID is unique, so they give you their ID first).
2.Although we can search by name or nickname, but starter usally didn't set these things up yet.
3.It is not quite simple to get your profile link (give other people profile link is one of efficient way)
4.Even you get profile link, if you didn't use the Browser in steam(and this is a little tricky), you have to log in again, sure the security code things too.

Should have a unique code in profile, like "battle.net" do.
(using SteamID directly is fine)

[Browen]

To the account ID, that's for good reasons, it's private and keeping it private helps security which is very important to Steam. The entire point of the changeable usernames would be defeated by that. It's not meant to be present whatsoever on Steam aside from for security reasons (logging in).

When someone creates an account, their nickname is by default their account ID, is it not? And if it's not, they must have set it and therefore should know it. So I don't really get your second point.

You literally just go to the profile and copy paste the link. They're also very simple, and could be copied over by hand or even just figured out without looking at the profile at all.

I'm not really sure what you mean by the fourth one, honestly. Are you talking about if you tried to friend someone over a normal internet browser? Don't use a normal internet browser to use steam. Use steam to use steam.

Seeing as you can use pretty much any of a user's nicknames to find them, steam actually makes it really easy. They keep the history public (which is horrible and stupid, and users should absolutely have the option to delete it, or it should dissappear after a while) which for once almost slightly lends itself to something, since even if they've changed their name you can still find them. Other than your suggestion of using account IDs, which is absurd and not happening, how would you improve the system?

[gogar]

since there is no restricion on people having the same name, whenever i search someone's name, i get hundreds of thousands of reults of people who happen to have a similar letter in their name.

[Browen]

Originally posted by The Bungulo:

since there is no restricion on people having the same name, whenever i search someone's name, i get hundreds of thousands of reults of people who happen to have a similar letter in their name.

Really? Huh, my friends must all have strangely unique names then I guess. *looks at friends list*. Yeah, okay so I can see the correlation here.

But still, I can't think of any way to improve the system. And no, you can't give everyone a public ID or code or something that doesn't change and is public. It would completely nullify many things that took a lot of work for valve to integrate.

[Huh?]

Originally posted by Xystem4:

To the account ID, that's for good reasons, it's private and keeping it private helps security which is very important to Steam. The entire point of the changeable usernames would be defeated by that. It's not meant to be present whatsoever on Steam aside from for security reasons (logging in).

When someone creates an account, their nickname is by default their account ID, is it not? And if it's not, they must have set it and therefore should know it. So I don't really get your second point.

You literally just go to the profile and copy paste the link. They're also very simple, and could be copied over by hand or even just figured out without looking at the profile at all.

I'm not really sure what you mean by the fourth one, honestly. Are you talking about if you tried to friend someone over a normal internet browser? Don't use a normal internet browser to use steam. Use steam to use steam.

Seeing as you can use pretty much any of a user's nicknames to find them, steam actually makes it really easy. They keep the history public (which is horrible and stupid, and users should absolutely have the option to delete it, or it should dissappear after a while) which for once almost slightly lends itself to something, since even if they've changed their name you can still find them. Other than your suggestion of using account IDs, which is absurd and not happening, how would you improve the system?

to second point: for my experience, if somebody "just" create account, and leave their nickname by default(which is their account ID), you can't find them by their account still, you need to wait like a week or less. I guess it's becasue the system did not import these "Idle account" to database yet?

third point: I remember that "Display link" is default to be uncheck, but it's set to be check on latest client? but still, if there's a code just like BATTLE.NET, it would be super EZ and improve UX.

by the way, steam already have every account's unique code, called "SteamID"

I totally know how to use browser in steam, but the problem is how to let starter know easily.

[Browen]

Originally posted by :real::

by the way, steam already have every account's unique code, called "SteamID"

I know, I already talked about this in my last post.

SteamID is private, and only known to you and Valve. If anyone else knows, it's because the user told someone, no Valve. Its only use is for security purposes (logging into your account) and its secrecy is integral to the anonymity of Steam. The entire point of being able to change nicknames would be nullified by making SteamID visible, since there would always be something to check. It used to be visible, and isn't now, so I'm assuming they don't plan on making it visible again.

[Zefar]

Originally posted by :real::

3.It is not quite simple to get your profile link (give other people profile link is one of efficient way)

What?

Ways you can get to your profile.

On the community here, click your avatar or over hover the mouse over the account name at the top and select profile.

On the Steam client click your avatar in the bottom right corner or once again hover the mouse over the Account name and select profile.

It is literally the easiest thing to find. Then you either need to give this link to your friends or your friend give him his link.

There is no excuse for not doing this.

[Huh?]

Originally posted by Xystem4:

Originally posted by :real::

by the way, steam already have every account's unique code, called "SteamID"

I know, I already talked about this in my last post.

SteamID is private, and only known to you and Valve. If anyone else knows, it's because the user told someone, no Valve. Its only use is for security purposes (logging into your account) and its secrecy is integral to the anonymity of Steam. The entire point of being able to change nicknames would be nullified by making SteamID visible, since there would always be something to check. It used to be visible, and isn't now, so I'm assuming they don't plan on making it visible again.

actually there's a website "SteamID finder", all you need is profile link, and you can get all the information. so it's not that private.

[Huh?]

Originally posted by Zefar:

Originally posted by :real::

3.It is not quite simple to get your profile link (give other people profile link is one of efficient way)

What?

Ways you can get to your profile.

On the community here, click your avatar or over hover the mouse over the account name at the top and select profile.

On the Steam client click your avatar in the bottom right corner or once again hover the mouse over the Account name and select profile.

It is literally the easiest thing to find. Then you either need to give this link to your friends or your friend give him his link.

There is no excuse for not doing this.

for users like me or you, it is very easy clearly.
have you ever asked 2 starter to add each other? it would be a disaster

Although there's so many option to search, but only "profile link" method work for starter
the point that really troubled me is:
If you give your link to your friend, they still need to login AGAIN in regular browser, and receive verification code AGAIN.

not a doubt, telling them how to use browser in steam is definetly waste of time...

I suggest that you imagine you're new, and have no clue about Steam, then you can see what I'm pointing out here.

("User Experience is bad" doesn't mean bad for old users, but it is bad for starter.)

[JPMcMillen]

Every account does have a unique public id, it's the last part of a users profile page url. The problem is that there isn't a way to just enter that into the Steam client to pull up a specific user. Maybe what the "Search for friends" page needs is a way to enter that public id and pull up the corresponding profile page.

[shanqs]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

Every account does have a unique public id, it's the last part of a users profile page url. The problem is that there isn't a way to just enter that into the Steam client to pull up a specific user. Maybe what the "Search for friends" page needs is a way to enter that public id and pull up the corresponding profile page.

With Steam running, enter into address bar of windows explorer, web browser (firefox), or run prompt:

steam://url/SteamIDPage/<id>

This will open the user’s profile on the client. If Valve allowed for addresses to be manually entered into the client’s address bar, support and the forums would be flooded with complaints of it not working when they input the wrong url or try to use it as a standard web browser.