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I'm a huge fan of GOG and have bought over 100 games on the platform. I try to buy all my games here now. There are some suggestions I would like to give. First, I think games need a space where the latest official news can be posted for them. Not like the forum, but an announcements page for the publisher/developer. The news should maybe automatically create a forum thread where players can comment on it.

Second, game reviews should tell you what version of the game was being used at the time of review and whether or not the person actually owns the game. There should also be many more filters for reviews.

Third, the store page for games should tell you what the current version of the game is and how many official patches have been released. Also, I think the OpenCritic score should be linked on the store page for a game.

I also think that GOG should host official servers for modders to store their mods. Many mods are at risk of being lost due to websites going down or the creators abandoning them.

I also think that GOG should host a weekly or monthly podcast. It could be funded through Patreon too.

I also think that you should be able to comment on reviews. And you should be able to undo your helpful or not helpful rating. Sometimes I change my mind about a review, but I can't change my rating of it.

I also think the forum software which GOG uses is very limited and needs to be improved. Maybe it should be transferred to an entirely different software program.

When I think of more things I'll try to post them here in my thread. Thanks for reading and please share your ideas!
We have been saying this and much more for many years. My pet complaint is how some games cannot be searched for by their name in the shop, like Eye of the Beholder (sold here but not found by that name).
Here we are praying that one day our games will all get regular updates and devs might finally consider GOG to be important as well and GOG will finally fix the broken forum and several other things.

Your wishlist is really nice but do you really expect GOG to add so many (useful) features while they did not even fix those things that are broken for months now? Unfortunately I would say that your wishlist - even though I would sign it again and again - is unfortunately pretty utopic - at least here on GOG. But as they say ... hope dies last. :)
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Riekopo: Also, I think the OpenCritic score should be linked on the store page for a game.
Their website refuses to even acknowledge older games before 2015. I don't think that's going to work for here.

Also please do realize that their website is open in name only and you have to license their data to use it.

https://opencritic.com/terms

The "Intellectual Property" section.
Post edited March 15, 2018 by drmike
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Riekopo: I'm a huge fan of GOG and have bought over 100 games on the platform. I try to buy all my games here now. There are some suggestions I would like to give. First, I think games need a space where the latest official news can be posted for them. Not like the forum, but an announcements page for the publisher/developer. The news should maybe automatically create a forum thread where players can comment on it.

Second, game reviews should tell you what version of the game was being used at the time of review and whether or not the person actually owns the game. There should also be many more filters for reviews.

Third, the store page for games should tell you what the current version of the game is and how many official patches have been released. Also, I think the OpenCritic score should be linked on the store page for a game.

I also think that GOG should host official servers for modders to store their mods. Many mods are at risk of being lost due to websites going down or the creators abandoning them.

I also think that GOG should host a weekly or monthly podcast. It could be funded through Patreon too.

I also think that you should be able to comment on reviews. And you should be able to undo your helpful or not helpful rating. Sometimes I change my mind about a review, but I can't change my rating of it.

I also think the forum software which GOG uses is very limited and needs to be improved. Maybe it should be transferred to an entirely different software program.

When I think of more things I'll try to post them here in my thread. Thanks for reading and please share your ideas!
- The news section should be there, containing updates and such.
-Review section is a mess and needs to be repaired.
-GOG used to do a podcast called GOGCAST on their Youtube channel.
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bhrigu: -GOG used to do a podcast called GOGCAST on their Youtube channel.
Linkie:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_OsMXj7Zay2DKugT9pdGFt1Uv1rMd6nd
Whilst I can see your reasoning for those, and some would be nice, the one that jumps out at me is the mod workshop which you are talking about. It costs money, and wouldn't add anything. Moddb and nexus are fine. Last thing we want is some half baked steam wannabe mod workshop.
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Riekopo: Also, I think the OpenCritic score should be linked on the store page for a game.
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drmike: Their website refuses to even acknowledge older games before 2015. I don't think that's going to work for here.

Also please do realize that their website is open in name only and you have to license their data to use it.

https://opencritic.com/terms

The "Intellectual Property" section.
Hi, OpenCritic co-founder here.

Between 3 people, we don't have the bandwidth to aggregate older games. Additionally, we found that many reviews for older titles are no longer available. As an example, Ocarina of Time for the N64 has less than 50% of the reviews available from when it launched; more than half link to 404s.

We're working to open up the CMS to the community to start building out that older catalog, similar to Wikipedia or IMDB. We hope to make that switch next quarter.

The Intellectual Property section of our terms is solely to protect us from theft. Dozens of websites use our API, and for most, we only ask that they credit us. Email us for the full API agreement.

We have worked with plenty of retailers, including Humble Bundle, Enhanced Steam, and Gamesplanet. We'd love to work with GOG, too, and should have their affiliate links on OpenCritic soon.
Post edited March 15, 2018 by maenthoven
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nightcraw1er.488: Whilst I can see your reasoning for those, and some would be nice, the one that jumps out at me is the mod workshop which you are talking about. It costs money, and wouldn't add anything. Moddb and nexus are fine. Last thing we want is some half baked steam wannabe mod workshop.
And as GOG often partners with Nexus, I guess GOG won't be opening their own Mod Workshop.
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Riekopo: , game reviews should tell you...whether or not the person actually owns the game.
I strongly disagree. There is no way for GOG to know whether or not a person actually owns a game, because someone can own the game in many possible ways that do not include buying it from GOG.

To implement the quoted suggestion would amount to GOG adding bias to the reviews based on an unsound basis, namely asserting that the reviewer does not own the game even though they have no way to prove that assertion, and it may be false.

Similarly, someone can be extremely familiar with a game without actually owning it. But to implement the quoted suggestion would be to imply incorrectly to readers of the reviews that that is not the case.
Post edited March 16, 2018 by Ancient-Red-Dragon
My primary complaint about gog user game reviews is that they don't tell whether they've played the game recently or are simply talking about a game they played 20-30 years ago as a kid. Sooooo many reviews start with, "I loved this game as a kid and..." Well, is your review based on current (adult) gameplay on modern systems, or is your review misty, water-colored memories of childhood nostalgia when you had the immaturity and ignorance of a child?

I agree with ARD, people can own games from non-gog sources. What reviews should discuss is how the games handle now, mention patches and mods, and possibly other games that are similar for comparison.
Some good points made , many of these are long overdue i think gog is focusing on gog galaxy to have those features instead of here, steam ditched their old forums fully (rip spuf) and moved it to work in client . So probably all of these will be in gog galaxy.
Good suggestions I guess (some from Steam I believe, like the developer news section in the game card), but:
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Riekopo: Second, game reviews should tell you what version of the game was being used at the time of revieware your ideas!
How does that work? Should the reviewer enter the version number themselves, or would GOG.com auto-fetch it from its own database when the review was written?

Remember that the reviewer might still be playing e.g. an older version of the game than what was the newest one on the time of his review. Not all people use Galaxy, nor auto-update.

And if the reviewer was supposed to enter the version number themselves... Many probably wouldn't be even arsed to find the version number, also because it is not so easy to see from e.g. GOG installers, with its various methods of versioning at the moment.
Post edited March 16, 2018 by timppu
They should at least eventually start with some simpler things. Even improving the store with more genre variations "(strategy" covers everything, from RTS over city builders to tactical RPGs) would be a good first step.