It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussion (archive)Site Update: Game Series Discounts, DLC Sorting & More!(260 posts)(260 posts)
(260 posts)
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
10
15
18
This is my favourite topic
Posted August 05, 2013
GOG.com is getting an update today! Learn about the new features and improvements.

Today some new features and improvement are coming your way on GOG.com. Our web dev team did their best to improve your experience with our store and implement some of the requested changes. The update also facilitates a new kind of bundle deals, allowing you to save money when completing game series in your collection. All of the new features and improvements will be rolled out today. If you don't see something mentioned here working for you yet, just wait a bit and check again in a couple of hours. Let's go into some detail and sum up all the changes, shall we?

Let's start with the new sweet deals we've prepared for you. A while back we did a test run of game series bundles that allowed for purchase of full series of games at a reduced price. This will now be a permanent feature on GOG.com. We've prepared over 80 such offers, so those of you who like to see a complete set of your favorite games series in their virtual shelves, can achieve that goal up to 57.89% cheaper (that would be the case of Telltale's Sam & Max series). If you already have a game, or some games, featured in the bundle, you can always complete the collection and get the remaining ones with a discount.

Sam & Max game series discount

The gamecard pages are getting an overhaul. The new version brings more focus to the game's trailer, as we have those available in most cases nowadays. As they say, an image is worth a thousand words, and a trailer is a set of images displayed at ~29 frames per second. Then, we've altered the way that screenshot thumbnails are presented, just to make watching all the visual content for the game easier and more intuitive. All this doesn't mean we're giving up on text! The "what's cool about it" bullet points, as well as the description are still a prominent feature of the design, now displayed side-by-side with the frame informing you about other associated titles and deals.

Ever since we introduced DLCs to GOG.com, the most popular comment from you guys was: "make them display relative to their main game, not as a separate product". That was our intention from the start, but it took some time to whip-up such a system. Today, we're happy to say it's ready. The DLCs will no longer display as separate boxes in your collections. They'll be merged and folded out from the main game box. Similarly, in the catalog, if a game offers DLC it will be all linked together, and the downloadable content will be also enumerated in the appropriate gamecard. All downloadable content items will be listed with a "DLC:" prefix in GOG.com catalog, to avoid any confusion. Entering a game's title in the search engine will display all the available expansions as well. This mechanics doesn't only focus on DLCs, but will also allow us to support new types of gaming content, like episodic titles.

Sword of the Stars: The Pit + DLC in the catalog

We're almost there, just two more things we'd like to point out. The catalog search and sorting has been updated to work faster, so browsing our offer should go a lot more smoothly now for you. And finally, a new system of check-out notifications has been implemented, to inform you about the system requirements of the games in your order. It will also warn you, if you try to buy a DLC or an episode that requires a title you don't have in your collection.

We hope you'll find that our newest update improves your experience with GOG.com! Be on the lookout for a special contest we'll be launching very soon, that will involve you taking an in-depth tour of the new gamecard layout.
Post edited August 05, 2013 by G-Doc
Posted August 05, 2013
Love the bundle buys, just clicked on Fallout and that's a nice package deal. Much ta on adding this feature, it's appreciated.

Of two minds about the game card layout, but I can see the logic in implementing it the new way. Time will tell whether either is superior, and what the community prefers once they've had a chance to weigh both.

Thanks for continually improving!
Posted August 05, 2013
avatar
TurnipSlayerr: Yes, unfortunately this is the only way we were able to work the series discounts and so if there are games in a series which aren't included in the discount then we can't have them linked in the same series.
Maybe add a separate box underneath the one that holds the games included in the discount agreement?

Going with the Police Quest series - add a box titled "Complete the experience on GOG.com" (or something along this line) right underneath the one labled "Police Quest games on GOG.com"?

A solution like this might raise some questions (why is there no discount... etc.) but maybe it's worth in order to at least provide a complete picture of the whole serries (and lead to purchases)?
Posted August 05, 2013
One thing I clearly don't like is the change to screenshots. Why reduce the number of thumbnails you can take in at a glance from 6 to 3? I say put them all up on one screen, not even less than before! And still on the gamecard, very poor use of screen width, with the actual game info on one column and other things that aren't exactly relevant to the game on the other.

And about the catalog, still say it'd be nice to have a sort by release date option. And what happened with the price filter? Instead of putting in either a list of all price points or, better yet, 2 boxes for the person to input price range, you just have 2 options left now (and to think that there was a time when all games in the catalog would fit under the first one...). 2 boxes for range should be for release year too, and I'm sure the developer/publisher thing could be done way better (first separate them, then let people see the whole list at once and select more than one, including all but a few they want to avoid)... So, overall, how about an advanced search option? :)

The rest sound nice, but still entirely irrelevant for me as they deal with actually purchasing games and that just gets us back to my #1 request ever since before actually making an account here: Payment methods for those without cards (possibly without bank accounts too), and from countries that PayPal doesn't offer other options for either. So, ya know, still waiting for that before anything else can mean much...
Posted August 05, 2013
Nice, thanks for the hard work TurnipSlayerr :)
Posted August 05, 2013
I appreciate this update, aside from part of the gamecard changes, namely the new way that screenshots are displayed. It's great that you can clearly see a corresponding trailer on the page but one could get a better overlook of the images through the old display on the right side. In fact, most gamecards just seem to have an empty space on the right now when you scroll to read the reviews... real state that could be used for a better exposition of that game's screenshots rather than the extra small size that you have changed to, for example.
Posted August 05, 2013
The six, soft-cornered images where nicer to look at than the three, hard-cornered ones. Don't fix want's not broken.

But good work with the DLC. Thanks.
Posted August 05, 2013
avatar
Fever_Discordia: \o/ to all that

There's still more to do though - only today I noticed that if you go
Browse Games > Developer / Publisher

they appear in the most random order - could it be that hard to auto sort to make them alphabetical? It would be a lot easier to find what you were looking for
(I couldn't remember the name of Jade Empire but I remembered it was by EA because of the whole TuEAsday thing!)
They're listed by best selling by default (it's a marketing thing) and you have to switch the list order to "by title" manually.
Posted August 05, 2013
avatar
TurnipSlayerr: I agree it's not ideal but I believe it only applies to a couple series: the Police Quest series and Leisure Suit Larry (Reloaded is not included)
avatar
yyahoo: Understood, I guess I'm also thinking of future additions to the catalog, not that I'm doubting your negotiating ability. ;)

Edit: The exception also appears to apply to the two Rise Of The Triad games.

Hmm, there's no bundle discount for the Wizardry games either, even though they *are* listed together as a series.

Another interesting note, the Might & Magic games and the Heroes of Might & Magic games are all listed together as one bundle (called the Heroes of Might & Magic bundle) rather than two. It comes off as a rather large group to have to purchase in order to receive the bundle discount. I don't know how much the discount is since I already own them all. I guess if the discount is notably high it might make sense (although naming it the "Might & Magic" bundle would be more accurate, as the RPGs came first), but it still would seem to be better constructed as two bundles.
Series discounts are not applied to all series, only ones which we have negotiated with the rights holders.

My bad, I forgot about RotT. You're right that it could cause some problems with future releases but hopefully it won't be too big of an issue.

If we were to apply a discount to the Might and Magic and HoMM series we would definitely do them separately. Currently there is no discount though.
Posted August 05, 2013
Nice, love the series discount and the new game layout ! Next step should be movies for all games, even if it's a barebones trailer or something.
It's nice to have a trailer for a old game. I think Leisure Suit Larry had one, more should follow, imho. Think of all the 7 or 8 (maybe even 10!), more sales they'll achieve!

Anyway, I think I'll buy something to celebrate the All new, All Different GOG. Hmm, decisions, decisions.
Posted August 05, 2013
avatar
Fever_Discordia: \o/ to all that

There's still more to do though - only today I noticed that if you go
Browse Games > Developer / Publisher

they appear in the most random order - could it be that hard to auto sort to make them alphabetical? It would be a lot easier to find what you were looking for
(I couldn't remember the name of Jade Empire but I remembered it was by EA because of the whole TuEAsday thing!)
avatar
HypersomniacLive: They're listed by best selling by default (it's a marketing thing) and you have to switch the list order to "by title" manually.
No, I mean, if you click on 'Browse Games' on the top bar then try to filter by Developer / Publisher the list of Devs and Pubs is in a totally random order no matter if the actual games are ordered by title or bestseller or whatever
Posted August 05, 2013
avatar
Cavalary: The rest sound nice, but still entirely irrelevant for me as they deal with actually purchasing games and that just gets us back to my #1 request ever since before actually making an account here: Payment methods for those without cards (possibly without bank accounts too), and from countries that PayPal doesn't offer other options for either. So, ya know, still waiting for that before anything else can mean much...
This is slightly off topic, but how do you buy something online without even a bank account? Sure, I'm old enough to remember when you would buy something by mail order without a credit card, but even that involved physically mailing a check (which obviously required a bank account). Mailing cash is before my time, and I'm pretty sure that just isn't done anymore. What other options are there? Just curious.
Posted August 05, 2013
avatar
TurnipSlayerr: Yes, unfortunately this is the only way we were able to work the series discounts and so if there are games in a series which aren't included in the discount then we can't have them linked in the same series.
avatar
HypersomniacLive: Maybe add a separate box underneath the one that holds the games included in the discount agreement?

Going with the Police Quest series - add a box titled "Complete the experience on GOG.com" (or something along this line) right underneath the one labled "Police Quest games on GOG.com"?

A solution like this might raise some questions (why is there no discount... etc.) but maybe it's worth in order to at least provide a complete picture of the whole serries (and lead to purchases)?
I generally agree with you but I'm not sure what kind of difficulties there might be for our web dev guys with this.
Posted August 05, 2013
avatar
Zoidberg: Uh, the video overlays above the screenshots to me (Firefox), what gives?
I've tried several gamecards on two different machines and can't see any problem in Firefox. Could you be a little bit more specific. Some information that can help us pinpoint the issue:
1. Firefox version and os.
2. What gamecard exactly does the issue occur? (screenshot if possible)
3. Any addons for Firefox you might have installed.
Posted August 05, 2013
Looks like some nice changes, guys!
Posted August 05, 2013
avatar
yyahoo: What other options are there? Just curious.
Paysafe card. More or less a prepaid visa you can buy at supermarkets and/or kiosks. There are quite a few of those, some work with a one-time code, others work like Starbucks cards (load X amount of money in them, use that amount only).
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
10
15
18
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Site Update: Game Series Discounts, DLC Sorting & More!(260 posts)(260 posts)
(260 posts)