Looks rad, I don't get why people are pissing and moaning about it. If you want something more old school then play Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, or one of the dozens of other great games on GOG.
I'm definitely glad I preordered the game, might get a console version too if the price of PS4 or Xbox One goes down.

Yeah, it'd be nice to have some filtering options. Steam added some filtering options some time within the last year that I didn't even notice right away, but it lets you filter out categories such as "Early Access" or "Pre-release" or "DLC" as well as others. They also have the "explore queue" and you can flag individual games as "Wishlist", "Follow", or "Not Interested" where the latter makes the game stop showing up in promos and featured placement. I really like that because it lets me communicate that I'm not interested in certain games showing up, and as a result they show other games that I might actually be interested in. I've noticed a markedly better selection of titles showing up since then.

Hopefully GOG will add some kind of filter mechanism like that to the website at some point as it is a very powerful way to focus what gets shown to you is something you might actually want.
Sure looks that way. What's interesting though is that they originally announced Linux support, and when the pre-order showed up on Steam it very clearly was listed as supporting Linux and SteamOS for some number of days before eventually disappearing. My assumption is that they will probably release a Linux port, but didn't want to cause the global release of the game to be further delayed by dividing their resources more thinly for other platforms.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Linux platform support show up within 12 months, although I expect it'll be after the expansion packs are completed and the developers can concentrate on Linux/Mac.

When I first watched it the framerate was so low that I didn't even want to finish watching it and was in the process of writing a comment about the framerate being terrible. I then tried it in another browser and it turned out to work much better, I got about double the frame rate. I think the first attempt ended up using the HTML5 player which sadly is generally unoptimized and underperforming.

As for video not being as sharp as screenshot stills, that is the case with pretty much every video game ever made because video compression is cranked through the wazoo so the video isn't 10 gigabytes. :) The video compression will always nullify the high resolution to some degree or another, blurrifying any details. I've yet to see a single video game trailer for anything that doesn't do this and it irritates me to no end. :)

I look forward to the day where we have UHD or 4k video trailers standard *without* insane compression that result in digital artifacts. Sadly the year 2040 is 15 years off and I suspect it'll take that long until all game companies feel comfortable doing it by default.

While search function is somewhat improved in Steam, their store page itself is not. I only hope GoG will refrain from falling into same traps Steam did and would provide really useful service.
For example, On Steam I have selected Age of Wonder 3 several times as "not interested". That was before that le blue stuff Steam had, after it, and few days ago again. I'm tired to calculate how many times I put that game into "not interested" list. Yet Steam still shows this game to me.
Moreover, Steam shows and recommends me games I already own. In Steam. No kidding. In some cases Steam acknowledges my ownership when I visit game's page. In some cases it doesn't, and notifies me I own title only when I try to purchase it for myself. There were even couple of titles (one of which was DLC) that gave me no warning. I contacted Steam support regarding this issue years ago, nothing changed - "some glitch in database". Okay, whatever.
What really bugs me is that Steam has no option "I like it, but I own it elsewhere", that means "show me more like it, but not this". Until someone would write some service that would analyse all .game services that are there and compare libraries, we had to do this manually, if service allows. Or we have to browse through tonnes of barely relevant pages, as we are forced to do now. Take that "discovery queue" for example. I haven't seen less relevant recommendations system ever: "You played Fallen Enchantress, so we recommend you Counter-Strike". Eh? How come? I don't know what developers are thinking in "discoverability" of their titles, but for me that new Steam even worse, because I fail to understand system behind decisions. I play TBS, show me more TBS, what the hell Sakura something anime doing there? Or something about pigeons? Several times I wasted more than an hour trying (and succeeding) in scrolling till the very bottom of the "recommended for you" main page. No games were interesting for me. In addition, and that's what I hate the most, Steam recommends games based on games "you recently viewed". Only it counts game it showed me in all those new©™®, improved©™®, more discoverable©™®, “a smarter storefront, personalized just for you” ©™®. Only not.
Instead of offering easy to browse, easy to navigate, easy to use store, they clogged everything with pointless stuff on blue background, that offers little to no new data, making sifting titles quite troublesome and exhaustive task. Point: I stopped searching Steam store at all, because it's like navigating in billiard table-like steppe, in pitch-black darkness, without compass, map, GPS, starless night, when there is no moon, in dense fog. So GoG, if you read this, don't freaking do that, just add "negative" markers searching options, allowing us to remove titles we own, and ignore certain publishers, what would be enough. Thanks.

Shows it to you where though? The "not interested" doesn't block games from ever appearing on the Steam website, but rather it is intended to stop them from showing up in the feature scroller and other major promotional materials on the homepage, and I think also from showing up as "recommended".

I've never seen any games I've flagged as "Not Interested" show up as recommended nor on promo materials to date that I'm aware of at least so it seems to work fairly good for me at least. If someone has something that does make it through I'd bet it is a glitch rather than purposeful. Perhaps there are multiple versions of the game and only one of them is flagged or something, like "Megagame", "Megagame Deluxe", "Megagame Super Holy Shit Everything Edition" and someone has just flagged "Megagame" as "not interested" but the other two product variants still show up. Just a thought anyway.

There are several "Customize" buttons that show up when you hover over certain parts of the homepage, and another one in the screen where you configure your "exploration queue" settings which allow you to remove or add checkboxes on categories of games that you want or don't want to see for the particular site area. One of the items is "Games already in my account", which I've turned off and no longer see games I own in those areas of the website. Again, there might be glitches perhaps, I haven't noticed anything yet though. The feature that lets you configure this stuff only appeared sometime in the last 6 months or so also, so if you were having an issue years ago you might want to have another look if you haven't noticed the configurability that is there now. It was apparently there for many months and I didn't even notice myself until I kind of minor-complained here in the forums and someone told me you could already do what I wanted. Red faced, I went and tweaked Steam and it works much much better now. :)

You can make games you own already, DLC, early releases, pre-releases and several other categories of games vanish. It greatly reduces the sigh-factor and shows me things I might actually care about more often than not now.


Yeah, I wish it had an option like that too however "Not Interested" while semantically not the right thing if you are actually interested but already own something - ends up working from a practical perspective because games flagged "Not Interested" only apply to the one game and they don't read any more into it than that (according to what they claim anyway). So for example, flagging "Mount and Blade" as "not interested" should not have any effect on Warband or future titles, nor should they end up inferring you don't like medieval games or RPGs etc. It's just a single-game one shot. As such, I flag all my GOG games as "Not Interested" on Steam so they don't keep coming up. I do end up seeing games in a series that I don't own though so I know they don't try to infer things such as "why" you flag a game as not being interested.

Yeah, the recommended games stuff is kind of rather loose and appears to be something like "you played Skyrim, it is an RPG game, so any other game that has the tag "RPG" is another game you might be interested in too" and shows up in recommendations. If the game is also flagged "Action" tag, then any game that is "Action" may show up too. It's very broad in scope I find so not terribly useful.

If you play racing games for a few days in a row, say 3-4 racing games then all of a sudden you end up mostly only seeing racing game recommendations and it forgets you ever played an RPG even if you have like 39123712 hours of RPGs and like 6 hours of racing games. :)


Did someone mention pigeons? ;oP

I guess it depends on individual preferences more than anything. Personally I think the current Steam storefront options are a huge improvement from what they had in the past and allow me to filter out tonnes of nonsense although there is a huge room for future improvement too. I wish there was an option for example:

[x] Not interested in ever seeing any 8-bit pixelated retro Indie shovelware
[x] Not interested in ever seeing any Indie "roguelikes"
[x] Not interested in Japanese games that look like a teenage girl's underwear drawer exploded for pedophiles

... just to name a few. :)

Hopefully they'll keep refining it over time though.

EVERYWHERE! They even added that thing into midweek sale! Where is my titan helmet? :D
Jokes aside (no, seriously, it's midweek sale now), said Age of Wonders 3 been offered to me in "exploration queue" several times, even after I marked it as "not interested", I've seen it on main store page in that "infinite scroller" area, and in "recommended".
Gabe, adjust your brain-reading device, I want Portal 3 and Half-life 3, not Age of Wonders 3.

Lucky you. This game turns into that hilarious nemesis I can't get rid of. You know, plot armour and all. :D
As for different versions, they offer me only basic one. Even if it's glitch, it's pretty annoying glitch, as it's the only game that pests my lists.

I'm aware of that and I customized that as soon as those things appear. Problem is, I still don't get algorithms behind "recommendation", plus, there is no option to mark games I own outside of Steam - it recommends me Splinter cell, but I have full collection on disks. But that's the upper bar.
Middle bar, "New On Steam" shows that proverbial shovelware mostly, and I can't remove that bar entirely, one option is hard-locked to be active there. So I had to scroll down, as it's hard to spot something interesting among 3 titles.
Lower bar, "Recently updated" is already customized to show only games I own, so no complains here. Though I'd prefer to move it lower.
And here is things I don't like and want to either remove entirely, or move elsewhere:
- Section on the right from those two mentioned above, "recommended for you". Same complain - how the hell it selects titles, and why can't I mark game I already own elsewhere? In addition, mere presence of this thing, is unnecessary redundancy, as upper bar duplicates it.
- Curators. WTF, WTH, WHY? and all other funny memes and jokes. I don't know those people, I don't care for them, has zero wishes to see them. Let me minimize it.
- Exploration queue. Redundancy with duplicating uppermost bar and more WTF. Oh, hello, Age of Wonders 3, long time no see. Plus, there is no option to split "not interested" into "kill it with fire" and "meh, don't show me that". I'm tired to "not interest" anime games, yet Steam throws them to me like a stoker throws coal into furnace. Stahp! Oh, and my favourite thing - "Oops, sorry, this item is not available in your region". Why the hell you put it into that freaking queue then?

Scrolling below this newly added nonsense, we finally reach our destination - Deals section on the right, and four-tabbed new releases, top sellers, upcoming, and specials. they were working fine before introducing this new "discoverability" thing. And I liked it back then, because now I can't get rid off those new stuff thrown into my face. While I use browser, I can lock certain portions with adblock, true, but that's impossible to do with Steam App itself.

Finally, scrolling below that we've reached "Keep scrolling for more recommendations" area. so, let's see what Steam shows me.
- Tellltale games, Broken Age, and Dreamfall chapters, because I "recently viewed" "Life in Strange" (wrong, Steam showed it to me in that exploration queue, that's the feature I hate).
- Some anime shit, because I "recently viewed" some anime shit (same as above). A lot of it, in fact, 6 rows.
- GTA series, because I recently played GTA V. I have all GTA games on disks, yet I can't tell Steam to cool off.
- Horror games like Penumbra, Outlast, Amnesia, because I "played Stealth games". Eh? I haven't played in Steam in many days, attempt to launch GTA V is the only one recent playtime.
- Counter-Strike: Global offensive and Elite: Dangerous since I wish for Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes - Quest Pack. As Sand said to player's character in Neverwinter Nights 2 - I don't see a family resemblance.
- Life is strange, because I recently viewed... guess what. :D
- A lot of indie stuff, former AAA titles (old ones), games I already own elsewhere, games I don't care for (yet don't want to kill it with fire), mostly the stuff recommended because I recently viewed games, recommended by Steam exploration queue. Infinite loop of bullshit.

It took me around 15 minutes to scroll to very bottom of it to see "We're out of personalized recommendations for you right now We can recommend some different titles once you've played more games."

Steam remembers games I launched while being online (just to check they work or to earn cards), but have no idea which games I played while being offline (and that's how I usually play). And I have no option to turn that shit off entirely, as it clogs my screen with unnecessary data without any relevance.

True. Again, I wrote them (through support/suggestion form) suggesting that long ago. You can see how responsive they are. Just two damn buttons: "Have it and like it", "have it and don't like it". Or three "Have it and meh". :D

Don't let me started. I don't understand their recommendation system at all, any of those, if they have two, just read my wall of text above. If you don't understand how this mechanism works, you cannot "teach" it to help you.

*mimics Grunts from Halo* NOT AGAIN!
Turn off the light, they get to the light!:D Yes, that's the game. Why on Earth it was recommended to me, because I played X-Rebirth? I know, not the best game out there, but pigeon shit?


Of those "improvements" I can name only one - actual search through entire database became easier, as there are more filters right now. Yet the way store page is now clogged with all those new, barely relevant data screens I can't adjust, all this made me less willing to actually visit it. So I either browse news section, or go straight through "Specials".
So if you ask me whether new discoverability helped me to discover new things, I'll say "yes, now I know how many garbage are in there". I don't badmouthing all indie games, some of them are pure fun, but now it's nearly impossible to discover it on your own. If that was the condition they were looking for, well, hope they are happy now.


True, but judging by Steam actions, we won't see anything solid any time soon. So I'd say it's after Half-Life 3 release. :D

Directly, yes... but you could set up a squid proxy or similar on your network and intercept Steam traffic with a filter using Squid. Having said that, that's a propellerhead solution/project of its own most gamers wouldn't likely be too keen to do. :)

LOL!

Ouch!

Yeah that is kind of annoying but when I hit up their pages and choose "Not Interested" it seems to do the job for me or I haven't noticed it not doing it anyway. :)


How many games have you processed through your Exploration Queue? Perhaps that has something to do with it. Here are my exploration queue stats:

Your Queue Activity

VIEWED
340 Titles Viewed In Queue
The titles that you viewed and then hit 'next in queue'

WISHLIST
420 Titles On Your Wishlist
View your wishlist

FOLLOWING
35 Titles You Are Following
View followed titles

NOT INTERESTED
211 Titles You Marked As 'Not Interested'
This also includes titles that you have previously indicated to not recommend to you


I'm growing increasingly skeptical as to whether or not Valve will ever do a Half-life 3 now. I hope they do another HL sequel with both a strong single-player campaign as well as a Portal sequel. I recently listened to a lengthy interview with Gabe and he said some things that strongly implied Valve's future projects would be multiplayer free-to-play in some form or another. He left the door open for other options but it sounded like their default modus operandi is multiplayer F2P now and they'd likely only do something else if there is seriously large demand for it without defining exactly what that is or how they or anyone else might measure it.

Personally I'd like to see Halflife 3 be a massive open world game with 200 hours+ of gameplay single-player, plus some kick ass multiplayer, but I'm not holding my breath they'll ever even release another HL game.

Exactly, this solution is definitely not for casual, "plug and play" era gamers or regular customers. Especially in light of Valve's decision to invade our livingrooms (without pigeons, please, or I'll declare open season). That's what I sincerely do not understand, It's like they have bipolar personality disorder - one of them declares user-friendliness, while another creates obstacle course and quite user-unfriendly experience. This approach is like "go code your own Half-Life 3 if you really want it". :D
Whether this new system is helpful for developers and publishers, is clearly beyond my reach.

Now you understand why I'm not big fan of all this.

There is a trick - we don't know how recommendation system works, and if it removes only this particular title and nothing else - it is one thing, but if it black-mark all similar titles, or titles with similar array of tags or whatever - this is completely different thing. I may not be disliking GTA series, I may merely own the title and don't mind to see something like it, not send everything similar into abyss and stay with pigeons. :D

Okay.
Viewed - 1018
Wishlist - 12. Some are DLCs and few titles from the era when it was difficult to follow titles (impossible in fact). Some titles left only to monitor price fluctuation, I have no interest in those. Keep similar positions in many "e-stores" around web. Quite interesting observation, really. :)
Following - 1 (actually 0, I don't know what Steam is consider "following")
Not interested - 536

Quite an interesting approach: they give us means, and let us create (refer to first reply above - code your own HL3:D). I could be wrong, but I think they will release HL3, or HL2E3, hard to say, but they wait for VR gear to be widespread, as VR experience, even in such unrefined form as Oculus Rift is, it quite interesting experience - presenting HL3 now, with ordinary means (monitor) won't give us decent experience, as we, basically, seen it all and the only thing that would be different, would be setting.
I'm not sure they chose right partner for their Vive, yet I'm no expert on modern phones, as you know:D, but I've read rather questionable opinions on HTC. So we have some time ahead to wait for Valve-tech spread around globe, and from what I've been able to gather, Vive wouldn't be too superior or cheaper than competitors. Plus, there are several models already announced, and we'll have fragmentation of market. Competition is good thing, but not when we'll have different standards to follow, I mean check Nvidia/AMD battles.

Interesting concept. Yet I'm not sure it would be possible to fit an open world into HL universe, Valve is small studio, located in US, and creating game of such scale would require enormous amount of resources. While nobody doubts Valve's treasury, their capability to create something of that scale... Guess our grandchildren will play HL3. :)

Folks, can you please get back on topic of the Witcher 3?

stunning visuals
shitty narration "even racism" bit

Easy. Do you have really high-res video? I think I've seen rather... odd tattoo at one of enemies Geralt was fighting, but it's hard to see it clearly at present resolution.

It seems many folks aren't aware of Gamersyde which specializes in high quality videos for new games. Download the trailer from the following link and then you'll be able to see the tattoo clearly. :)

http://www.gamersyde.com/download_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_gameplay_trailer-34468_en.html

Nice trailer, good for whats intended: generating more and more sales. It's a normal thing.
Hope the game will be really really good and without too many bugs.
I'll buy the game also but only after a complete edition will be available in 2016.
Sincerely I wish you best of luck with this game!

Hey thanks!
Sadly, size is too small (because my monitor isn't huge as well) to look for anything specific.

Yeah, sadly almost nobody that does game reviews, videos, trailers, screenshots etc. have monitors with higher resolution than standard HD 1920x1080p, so people that have larger displays such as UHD or 4k (I've got 2560x1600) end up with video and images that are the size of icons. :) Also in the case of video at least no matter how high the resolution, they try to compensate for the larger file size by increasing the compression which blurs the details and negates any gain from the increase in resolution. I'm almost consistently disappointed by video game advertising quality, and even 3rd party video/images as a result.

Hopefully that'll change in the future though so that things that are impressive actually look impressive without having to sit at the computer that is needed to see it first hand.