YetAnotherName
01-23-2010, 10:37 PM
1) Announce preloads in advance. Not necessarily the exact dates, but the fact there will be a pre-load. I'm impatient, and this may play a role in where I choose to buy a game from. Might be nice to have time until a pre-loaded game can be run displayed in the games list, too.
2) No redundant DirectX installs. It's not that difficult to either keep track of the last version of DirectX that you installed on a system, or check the version currently installed, and not try to reinstall the same or older version on top of it. For whatever reason, Microsoft's installation code can take a non-trivial amount of time to check the installed version. Also, does every game really need its own copy of the directx installation files? Just keep one copy of the latest version (Which every game should work fine with, since it will recursively installs older versions) and use that one. As the vdf files generally explicitly reference DirectX installation files, I assume running redundant installations is on your side of things, rather than 3rd party game companies. Same applies to MSVCRT installs, except that they won't install older versions, unfortunately.
3) Link games directly to forums. If I right click on a game and click "view forum", I shouldn't be taken to a list of 100 forums, only one of which is for that game.
4) Many games have docs subdirectories with documentation. Provide a link to these in a game's right-click menu. This doesn't require going through every game by hand and checking for such a directory and adding some per-game meta data. Instead, the client could just check if it exists and, if so, then check if it or one of its subdirectories has a *.htm/*.html, *.txt, *.chm, *.pdf, *.doc, or *.rtf file. Make the link just open the directory, if there are multiple such files.
5) Use a single login/account. Honestly, I have a Steam account name, a help desk account, and a forum account. And a nickname associated with the first account, of course. Alternatively, could just ditch help desk accounts and use email addresses directly instead.
6) Make an option to sort games by installation (Or purchase) date.
2) No redundant DirectX installs. It's not that difficult to either keep track of the last version of DirectX that you installed on a system, or check the version currently installed, and not try to reinstall the same or older version on top of it. For whatever reason, Microsoft's installation code can take a non-trivial amount of time to check the installed version. Also, does every game really need its own copy of the directx installation files? Just keep one copy of the latest version (Which every game should work fine with, since it will recursively installs older versions) and use that one. As the vdf files generally explicitly reference DirectX installation files, I assume running redundant installations is on your side of things, rather than 3rd party game companies. Same applies to MSVCRT installs, except that they won't install older versions, unfortunately.
3) Link games directly to forums. If I right click on a game and click "view forum", I shouldn't be taken to a list of 100 forums, only one of which is for that game.
4) Many games have docs subdirectories with documentation. Provide a link to these in a game's right-click menu. This doesn't require going through every game by hand and checking for such a directory and adding some per-game meta data. Instead, the client could just check if it exists and, if so, then check if it or one of its subdirectories has a *.htm/*.html, *.txt, *.chm, *.pdf, *.doc, or *.rtf file. Make the link just open the directory, if there are multiple such files.
5) Use a single login/account. Honestly, I have a Steam account name, a help desk account, and a forum account. And a nickname associated with the first account, of course. Alternatively, could just ditch help desk accounts and use email addresses directly instead.
6) Make an option to sort games by installation (Or purchase) date.