Can we get some negative filters on the listings?

[Dannystaples]

I have quite select tastes in games, I like RPG, Action, Adventure. But I'm totally illergic to strategy games. And Indies are becoming a problem to Steam as far as I can see. Same goes for stupid Early Access games.

Indies can be cute and fun sometimes, Binding of Isaac is hardly a push over and Super Meat Boy is epically good fun. But I don't like most of the Indies on Steam.

If I want to play an Indie I'll search for them but when I'm looking for a tooth and nail RPG that isn't an indie I don't want to have to trawl though endless Indie titles to find the things!

It would be SOO much easier if I could search for the categories I want but remove the ones I know I don't.

Like if I want to find a RPG, I want to put it to search RPG, NOT Indie, NOT Stategy.

That way only RPG, RPG/Action, RPG/Adventure or RPG/Action/Adventure or any other combinations come up not RPG/Indie/Early Access like 99% of all titles currently.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

I think the real problem is that "RPG" and "indie" are both kinda overused terms.

Furthermore, Steam's genre listing isn't really comprehensive. It neither features subtypes (e.g. FPS - military vs. FPS - space) nor some relatively niche but still notable genres (such as visual novel).

That said, I've never had an occasion to go searching for games myself. I keep on finding out about too many games from bundles and word-of-mouth anyway.

[bvguthrie]

QuintSakugarne is correct--Steam really needs a better set of genre listings. Right now it is not only too small, but it is also horribly inconsistent. There are even genre listings like "Platformer" that cannot be used to narrow down your search, even though they created a tag for those games on their game page.
Steam also needs to allow searches for multiple genres at once, so that people can search for hybrid genres such as strategy RPG, as well excluding genres to find RPGs that are not strategy.

[The Tired Jedi]

I think a negative filter is an awesome idea.

Too many games try to be all things to everyone.
I may play adventure games on occasion but I would never play a hidden object game.
The option to add +adventure -hidden object would speed up searches.

The ability to edit the recommended titles would be great too.

[midgard30]

+1 on a negative filter, I'm also tired that Indies game take so much place on their store section. I'm not even sure if it's that good for Steam, as I often ask myself if they are becoming mainly an indie reseller.

[the fake Dish0ut]

+1 to having a Genre blacklist.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Originally posted by Quint Monster Ate Yer Ice Cream:

Furthermore, Steam's genre listing isn't really comprehensive. It neither features subtypes (e.g. FPS - military vs. FPS - space) nor some relatively niche but still notable genres (such as visual novel).

That said, I've never had an occasion to go searching for games myself. I keep on finding out about too many games from bundles and word-of-mouth anyway.

If you'd tried searching for games yourself you'd find that there are tags for all of FPS, space, military and visual novel, which means you can search for any of those, or combinations thereof, using the "narrow by tag" feature on the search page.

Exclusions are definitely needed too though, yes.

[Daggoth]

Originally posted by Hard_Vacuum:

I think a negative filter is an awesome idea.

Too many games try to be all things to everyone.
I may play adventure games on occasion but I would never play a hidden object game.
The option to add +adventure -hidden object would speed up searches.

Good thing a negative filter already exists and you can do exactly what you want.
Where it says "search the store" under the link to your wishlist, you can search for:

Adventure -"hidden object" 

and you'll get adventure games which don't have the tag "hidden object"

[Romek]

oh yeah a negative filter would be nice. could hide all this anime and visual novel nonsense^^

would be good to hide bought games and wishlist too

[The Tired Jedi]

Good to know. Thanks!

[Dannystaples]

Originally posted by Daggoth:

Originally posted by Hard_Vacuum:

I think a negative filter is an awesome idea.

Too many games try to be all things to everyone.
I may play adventure games on occasion but I would never play a hidden object game.
The option to add +adventure -hidden object would speed up searches.

Good thing a negative filter already exists and you can do exactly what you want.
Where it says "search the store" under the link to your wishlist, you can search for:

Adventure -"hidden object" 

and you'll get adventure games which don't have the tag "hidden object"

What the hell! They should at least put that somewhere for people to read how to do it!

[Daggoth]

Meh, it's just SearchTerm -UnwantedTerm. Just stick a minus sign at the start of words you don't want.
The quotes around "hidden object" in the previous example is to make the search parse it as a single word and not "adventure -hidden +object"
Unfortunately it's not a fully customisable search (can't do nesting or anything neat like that), but yeah, if you've used Google and excluded terms in there (eg: "product -review"), you can do it here too.

Note that this appears to search the entire store page description and not just title/tags, so beware that if a game proudly says "No Hidden Object Hunting!", you'll exclude it due to it containing "hidden object".
-Actually, not sure if it does search tags.

adventure -"hidden object" robin

shows http://store.steampowered.com/app/292880/ - which is tagged hidden object but doesn't contain it in it's description.

[Dannystaples]

Originally posted by Daggoth:

Meh, it's just SearchTerm -UnwantedTerm. Just stick a minus sign at the start of words you don't want.
The quotes around "hidden object" in the previous example is to make the search parse it as a single word and not "adventure -hidden +object"
Unfortunately it's not a fully customisable search (can't do nesting or anything neat like that), but yeah, if you've used Google and excluded terms in there (eg: "product -review"), you can do it here too.

Note that this appears to search the entire store page description and not just title/tags, so beware that if a game proudly says "No Hidden Object Hunting!", you'll exclude it due to it containing "hidden object".
-Actually, not sure if it does search tags.

adventure -"hidden object" robin

shows http://store.steampowered.com/app/292880/ - which is tagged hidden object but doesn't contain it in it's description.

Well yeah but if you didn't know that to start with it isn't exactly something you can just do. I have never done that on Google. I never knew it was a common thing to do in searches.

When I use Google I either search for the thing I want directly in which case 9/10 it is in the top three links or type in a simple phrase in which case 9/10 it is on the first page. It rarely fails me doing that. The only time it does fail me is if I'm searching for a really specific technical subject but there are better engines for that job anyway, so resorting to adding filter phrases to the search is redundant anyway.

They either need to show us how it is done or build it into their filters directly without us having to type it out. I'll likely be using these from now on on Steam but it would still be a hell of a lot easier if the feature was built in properly.