Steam Client Improvement Suggestions.

[Mono]

I am a very avid user of Steam. I'm on it almost everyday, have been a member for 8 years, own 1,088 games via Steam, and use it on all platforms (windows, osx, linux, mobile). I'm a heavy user that uses the purchase mechanisms, friend features and game installations heavily on a regular basis. With this usage, I have found a few things that could be improved:

Friendslist improvements

Include the friendslist and chat as part of the website interaction.
Justification: I buy/browse at work, and would also like the ability to chat without requiring software install.
Update: This seems to be implemented in Steam Beta: http://steamcommunity.com/chat

Create an invisible status (not offline)
Justitification: Depending on the game I am playing, I would like to appear invisible -- being online but not appearing to be. This would allow me to invite specific friends to Steam games without everyone joining, as well as being able to play with a group or single player without being interrupted by others who want to join / play.

Provide a way to import friends from other services, game platforms as well as email services (mainly: uplay, psn, origin, live, etc.) and vice versa (importing steam friendslist to these services)
Justification: Too many other services 'jumping onboard' to the gaming service sector. It's a pain to continually re-add friends across every platform.

Shopping

Provide a way to show ALL DLC, add ons, sequels, purchasable content for a given game.
I'm thinking something like: right click on game -> show unpurchased content.
Justification: It's extremely hard to find new content for games I own, except via advertising flashes. Given the quantity of games, it's unrealistic for me to individually search for content.

Provide a way to easily show ALL DLC, add ons, sequels, purchasable content for all games in your *library*, or for a *selection* of games in your library.
Justification: It's extremely hard to find new content for games I own, except via advertising flashes. Given the quantity of games, it's unrealistic for me to individually search for content.

Provide a mechanism for content to be hidden or marked as already owned.
This prevents the need from digging into individual games to see if I own it already, or the expansion content.
Justification: The flow in general in terms of finding new content is hard. I have to go into the game details from the overview to figure out if I own it or not. This is really slow, and slower when there is an event going on.

Provide a way to empty the cart
Justification:Currently to check to see if you have items already, you need to add it to your cart. When you add all, and there are a large number of items; removing them becomes a hassle. i.e. Saints Row 3 DLC or Sleeping Dogs.

Game Installation

Provide a way to select a number of games, and batch download / install them.
You can currently do this at purchase time if you want, but there is no way to do so after the purchase screen.
Justification: Installing a number of games takes a long time, in terms of each individual setup and clicking through each installation dialog. It would be much faster to select X number of games, set the installation directory, and go, obviously accepting any individual game agreements. This could even be the same dialog, just all done at once.

Provide the ability to install a game, but queue in a paused state.
Essentially, setting a game to install, but adding it to the download queue without auto starting it.
Justification: Installing multiple games means you have to consistently switch back and forth between installation screens, library and the download screen. Without pausing the queue, the disk is thrashed and prep for long night of downloading takes a long time.
Update: This is mostly implemented in the latest steam client Beta!

Provide the ability to select the method for downloading.
I was initially thinking this could use the following standard methods:

• Prioritize by amount of data left (smallest and greatest). Always download {smallest,greatest} size games first.
  
• Prioritize by ordered queue. Ability to drag and drop in the queue for the order you'd like to install (think wish-list behavior here)
  
• Set parallel or serial downloads of games
  
• Prioritize by {preload,add-on content, updates, installs, release date, game publisher}

Justification: Depending on what I am doing, I'd rather have certain games finish first or just specifically install updates or DLC, and download the rest of the data while I'm not playing.
Update: This is mostly implemented in the latest steam client Beta!

Enable the ability to share a downloaded game with any other steam user on the local network (for purposes of installations).
They can see what you have installed, and copy it locally to their machine instead of re-downloading from the internet (or manually doing a local copy). This is easily around a 100-1000x faster depending on whether you are running 100MbE or GbE.
Justification: Games are now regularly 20-30GB's in size, and there are multiple steam accounts in use at my house. Even with a 40mbit/s connection (realistically maxes at 4.2 MB/s down), when there is more than one steam account trying to download a game (and in most cases, the same game for co-op play), it leads to a saturated pipe with slow downloads for everyone, serially downloading the game from steam to each computer, or downloading the game to a single machine, then copying the files locally to the others and validating them (this is what we do, but is the most time consuming). Since everyone has already purchased the game content / licensing, and really just needs the files to play the game, I don't think this should be a problem. Include an automatic file verification check as well :)

Game Save Backup

Provide notification or icon to show that save game data for a given game is synchronized to the cloud and OK to remove the game without fear of losing the saves.
Justification: Currently, I'm never confident that uninstalling a game won't remove the save data. Even a dialog box here saying the save data will or will not be removed would be an improvement.


Offer a method to automatically organize game saves to a specific directory. Allow users to select a directory, and all game saves will be save within.
Justification: This is plaguing PC games now, in that save locations are almost seemingly random in their placement: my documents, my games, saved games, program files, appdata/local; just to name a few. This would make backing up the saves for a reinstall / machine transfer much easier as well.
Implementation suggestions: Knowing that alot of the games here are no longer being worked on, super simple, yet easy way to do this would be to use junctions(windows) or symlinks (linux,osx) to link the save directory to a specified directory. Since you potentially have the knowledge of every game on Steam, and their save locations, this can simple turned into a post-install action on the game; either linking the contents, or moving them to the specified directory and creating a link back to the original location for the game.

[dirrtymartini]

I just wanted to commend you for expressing your suggestions in a clear and well thought out manner. Your suggestions are very reasonable and sorely needed. I hope Valve implements your ideas.

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

This is one of the best formatting I have ever seen in the suggestions forum. Your use of bolding and proper paragraph structure makes it very easy to read. Also very good ideas.

Extra: How did you make some of the words blue O.o? I checked "formatting help" but it doesn't show any information regarding headers.

[Mono]

Originally posted by The Rolling Cheese:

This is one of the best formatting I have ever seen in the suggestions forum. Your use of bolding and proper paragraph structure makes it very easy to read. Also very good ideas.

Extra: How did you make some of the words blue O.o? I checked "formatting help" but it doesn't show any information regarding headers.

Thanks for the comments guys. Per your question, that is just the Header tag [h1][/h1]

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

Originally posted by Cohobin:

Originally posted by The Rolling Cheese:

This is one of the best formatting I have ever seen in the suggestions forum. Your use of bolding and proper paragraph structure makes it very easy to read. Also very good ideas.

Extra: How did you make some of the words blue O.o? I checked "formatting help" but it doesn't show any information regarding headers.

Thanks for the comments guys. Per your question, that is just the Header tag [h1][/h1]

Didn't even see that, thanks for the information!

[Seven7]

+1 Although most of the problems on the conscience of third party developers
possible after completion of the migration to the new system of content delivery, some functions will be implemented

[ KARR™]

As for the chat and friends on the web: http://steamcommunity.com/chat/
It's in beta still, but seems to suit what you want.

Save game locations would be hard to implement. Yes, steam knows what games are on Steam, but they don't necessarily know where the save files are going to be located. Even if they did... what happens when a patch moves the save file location and you end up with two save files, one of which is in the cloud, one on the pc and another that is out of date, etc.

[Mono]

Originally posted by KARR:

As for the chat and friends on the web: http://steamcommunity.com/chat/
It's in beta still, but seems to suit what you want.

This is great - thanks for the link. I hope they integrate this into the main page (and use gmail like webpage chat windows) when it's done :)

Save game locations would be hard to implement. Yes, steam knows what games are on Steam, but they don't necessarily know where the save files are going to be located. Even if they did... what happens when a patch moves the save file location and you end up with two save files, one of which is in the cloud, one on the pc and another that is out of date, etc.

Agreed. Essentially it becomes a synchronization and backup problem, which gets very hard very quickly. It's not an easy problem to solve, but a definite need exists. I'd welcome an honest attempt at it.

what happens when a patch moves the save file location

Do you have any games in mind that have done this? I can't think of any off hand that have moved save locations (I definitely don't have a complete picture here either); the only examples I could find were games that stored saves in wonky locations.

[Relysis]

Completely agree with the shopping section. For games like Crusader King's II, Magicka with 20+ DLC, the only way to find what you need is to add all to cart, or go back and forth between the store and library cross referencing. In the end, I'm usually too lazy so nobody gets my money. Would love an "already purchased" filter or color highlight for owned DLC in the store.

[Tito Shivan]

First of all, kudos on the formatiing and structure of your post. Wish there were more like you ;)
(shameless suggestion for Valve to add proper formatting tools to the post form on these discussions...please?)
About the friendlist improvement. Importing friends from other services can be a tricky one to achieve. First one cannot always set a 1:1 relation between two systems, and some of those networks actively discourage their info from being 'exported' to other services.
Being so dependent on external factors make that a tricky one to achieve.

DLC purchase totally needs an overhaul. It worked relatively well when DLC was a rare occurence. But nowadays is common and abundant. Games no longer have 1-2 DLC released. Keeping count and buying it can be a real PITA.

[verballert]

It would be great that not any game will install DirectX, DotNet and so on multiple times.
steam should know what already had been installed?

[Mono]

First of all, kudos on the formatiing and structure of your post. Wish there were more like you ;)
(shameless suggestion for Valve to add proper formatting tools to the post form on these discussions...please?)

Thanks.

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

About the friendlist improvement. Importing friends from other services can be a tricky one to achieve. First one cannot always set a 1:1 relation between two systems, and some of those networks actively discourage their info from being 'exported' to other services.
Being so dependent on external factors make that a tricky one to achieve.

Totally agree. Reminds me of the IM wars around 00's before integrated clients. You had to have multiple IM clients installed to chat with all of your friends (AIM, ICQ, MSN, YAHOO, Jabber, etc.) The game distribution platforms feel like they are heading in the same direction. I'm not sure unifying all of the game distribution platforms is possible; but I think the mentally shift of a walled garden versus open pastures is easy to do. A superior platform will always keep people coming back, open or not (obviously Steam here).

[Mono]

Originally posted by jessy:

It would be great that not any game will install DirectX, DotNet and so on multiple times.
steam should know what already had been installed?

I think it could be a little more intelligent on the installs it does e.g. Payday and old PhysX installs; but generally I feel pretty ok with this. Steam has removed the pain from PC gaming 5-10 years ago. I remember having to ensure to have all the right drivers, patches, updates, hot fixes, etc. to play games. I also remember having to upgrade and downgrade them to make specific games work. Steam does this all for you now, and does a pretty good job at it. I think there is some room for improvement of course; but I literally haven't needed to futz around with a lot of this stuff since Steam.

[(SOGA) SouthernBoy]

Excellent layout and formatting of this thread, and should be commemded (tho whether or not properly layout and or formated, this should not diminish the thoughts given by any individual(s), and their abilities in proper formatting and layout is important in relaying and understanding their thoughts; but the thoughts of the subject(s) is most important).

I must say that the suggestions are excellent and should be considered. Good Job

[Calendyn]

Great suggestions! Valve should pay you for them. :P

[Mono]

Thanks for adding in the download management stuff steam! It's great!