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[Steam] Questions and Answers about Games


Leonardo

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A few months ago I decided to activate the in-game Steam community feature e.g enable Steam 'Take a screenshot' in every Steam game I've bought over the years and below is what I got so far.

  • Skyrim - Legendary Edition
  • Empire Total War
  • Mount & Blade: Warband
  • Napoleon Total War
  • Sid Meier's Civilization V
  • Total War: ROME II
  • Total War: SHOGUN 2

Games with a green text means that the game is installed and the other games are not installed atm.

 

Also note that there are one more game that I've in my Steam Library and that's Spiral Knights, but since I haven't bought it I don't list it either.

 

 

We all know that you can take a picture in Skyrim by pressing the PrtScn (PrintScreen) key anytime and later you can view your picture in Wrye Bash (Screenshots tab).  In the same tab you can do a lot of things.

 

I've heard some people mention that you shouldn't use the in-game Steam community feature in Skyrim.  Thus I need to ask you guys...  Should I or shouldn't I enable in-game Steam community feature in Skyrim?

 

If you can also present the positive and negative things for using the in-game Steam community feature in Skyrim. :)

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Enabling or disabling is your choice.

 

In my experience...

Pros

-- chat feature for real time communication with other modders

-- screenshot feature for uploading images that could be shared with others (but only for images that do not need to be edited)

-- real time clock and game pause at the press of a single hotkey

 

Cons

-- default hotkey (shift+tab) for accessing the overlay gets in the way of game play and must be redefined

-- may contribute to CTDs and other issues with the game by tying up resources and/or updating while the game is playing

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I have 652 hours on Skyrim, according to Steam, and I always enabled the in-game community feature. Not a single problem or bug with that.

 

I love this community feature, because I can :

  • open the in-game browser and check something on the wiki, or uesp, or Bethesda forum, or here, etc, without having to alt-tab, and we all know that Skyrim doesn't really like alt-tabbing.
  • chat with my friends on Steam
  • last but not least, the screenshot feature using F12 key is really great. When you exit the game there is a pop-up window showing all the screenshots you took during your session, and you can review them and choose to delete some, keep some private, or publish some so they will appear on your public library. The screenshots are in JPG format but you can tell Steam to have also an uncompressed copy in the folder of your choice. Your public library is of course saved in the Steam cloud and you can't loose all your screenshots even if some bad thing happens to your computer.
I use this in-game Steam community feature with all my games and I see only positive aspects. :)

Cons

-- default hotkey (shift+tab) for accessing the overlay gets in the way of game play and must be redefined

I can't see why ?

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Basically what Elgar said.

 

I have about 50 games on Steam, including everything on your list but Rome II, and to the best of my knowledge, the Steam overlay has caused issues with 0% of them.  It's definitely never ever caused issues in Skyrim, and in fact, it's the best way to take screenshots because they're so easily shareable.

 

The only downside to me is that the browser isn't entirely stable.  Nothing that will cause problems with anything but itself, but it is sometimes possible to scroll yourself out of the overlay and back into the game when Flash or script-heavy pages load.  Not a big deal.  On the flip side of that, I use it to hang out in the AFK Mods chat all the time.

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I can't see why ?

 

Simple.

 

Tab is used for accessing the inventory, magic and skill menus

Shift is used for running/walking.   

always run is turned off, shift must be pressed to run rather than to walk

 

Consider this:

In a fight, get low on health, run away, open inventory, use a potion or twenty, return to fight.  

At least that was the plan.

Execute too fast and the shift is still registered while the tab is being pressed.

 

Remapped to F11, no longer a problem.

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Enabling or disabling is your choice.

 

In my experience...

Pros

-- chat feature for real time communication with other modders

-- screenshot feature for uploading images that could be shared with others (but only for images that do not need to be edited)

-- real time clock and game pause at the press of a single hotkey

 

Cons

-- default hotkey (shift+tab) for accessing the overlay gets in the way of game play and must be redefined

-- may contribute to CTDs and other issues with the game by tying up resources and/or updating while the game is playing

First I haven't enable chat, because I never like it I suppose.

 

So that's not a problem for me and yes I do know about the picture feature in Steam, which is an awesome feature because I haven't figure it out yet why I can't take in-game picture in any TW-games.

 

You have a point about Steam when it's using the resources e.g updating, which I really hate and I don't know how many times I've been playing Skyrim then suddenly Steam wants to update with the consequence that Skyrim is immediately shut down.  I hate that a lot.

 

I have 652 hours on Skyrim, according to Steam, and I always enabled the in-game community feature. Not a single problem or bug with that.

 

I love this community feature, because I can :

  • open the in-game browser and check something on the wiki, or uesp, or Bethesda forum, or here, etc, without having to alt-tab, and we all know that Skyrim doesn't really like alt-tabbing.
  • chat with my friends on Steam
  • last but not least, the screenshot feature using F12 key is really great. When you exit the game there is a pop-up window showing all the screenshots you took during your session, and you can review them and choose to delete some, keep some private, or publish some so they will appear on your public library. The screenshots are in JPG format but you can tell Steam to have also an uncompressed copy in the folder of your choice. Your public library is of course saved in the Steam cloud and you can't loose all your screenshots even if some bad thing happens to your computer.
I use this in-game Steam community feature with all my games and I see only positive aspects. :)

I can't see why ?

 

Like I said in the OP I know about the 'take a picture' feature in Steam and I also know how to take a picture manually, but the question is.  Do I need both 'take a picture' feature?

 

In contrast to other players I'm not interested to upload my pictures to Steam and show them in front of the whole world plus I don't like the usage of Steam cloud in games unless it's definitely necessary.

 

Simple.

 

Tab is used for accessing the inventory, magic and skill menus

Shift is used for running/walking.   

always run is turned off, shift must be pressed to run rather than to walk

 

Consider this:

In a fight, get low on health, run away, open inventory, use a potion or twenty, return to fight.  

At least that was the plan.

Execute too fast and the shift is still registered while the tab is being pressed.

 

Remapped to F11, no longer a problem.

Using Shift+Tab when switching to Steam community overlay is not a problem for me, because I don't use the default keys in-game and every time I install/reinstall Skyrim I always remapped my gaming keys in Skyrim.

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You have a point about Steam when it's using the resources e.g updating, which I really hate and I don't know how many times I've been playing Skyrim then suddenly Steam wants to update with the consequence that Skyrim is immediately shut down. I hate that a lot.

So, that's not a thing that should be happening ever and you might want to look into it if you haven't.

As far as the "to use or not to use, that is the question" part:

- You either care about chat, voice chat, and the various other social aspects, or you don't. Not a big deal for Skyrim, but it's amazing if you ever play multiplayer with people.

- The big utility of the Steam's screenshot management, to me, is the ease of use - it only takes me a couple of clicks in Steam to get a screenshot into a shareable form. Awesome dragon? Click. Bug I need to report to the USKP team? Click. Default TES screenshots, by contrast, I have to convert the file format, upload it somewhere, etc. That's either a thing for you or it isn't.

- The biggest thing I actually use the overlay for is the web browser if I need to look stuff up. Just run out to Google and hit up the UESP or whatever. Beats trying to Alt+Tab and having the game go wonky on me.

Either way, it's completely harmless as-is, costs you nothing to keep it sitting there, and it's easier to need it and Shift+Tab than it is to turn it off, then turn it back on again if you change your mind.

FWIW.

Also: there are seriously people who don't leave always run on? Learn something new every day, I guess.

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I've heard some people mention that you shouldn't use the in-game Steam community feature in Skyrim.  Thus I need to ask you guys...  Should I or shouldn't I enable in-game Steam community feature in Skyrim?

 

If you can also present the positive and negative things for using the in-game Steam community feature in Skyrim. :)

Whether to use it or not is up to you. What few times I have it's not been a problem, but I'm one of those people Dwip thinks is crazy... I hate everything there is about Steam. I would be among the happiest gamers on Earth if Valve held a press conference tomorrow announcing the company was folding and Steam was being terminated immediately.

 

Then again, I despise pretty much everything about multiplayer gaming. Probably severely tainted by my time in the MUD community where folks were all jerkwads and it quickly became not fun (save a few glorious exceptions on Shard and Alsherok).

 

Up until Skyrim, I had no games that requires Steam's totally inconvenient required client. I also had every intention to continue that policy until folks began gifting me things using it. If there was a way to sever all that content from the client legally, I'd be all over it in a heartbeat.

 

Valve has wielded Steam like a bludgeon in the same way Microsoft wielded Windows. Neither one is ultimately good for the industries they claim to help.

 

So... uh... yeah... I guess that rant got away from me again :P

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You have a point about Steam when it's using the resources e.g updating, which I really hate and I don't know how many times I've been playing Skyrim then suddenly Steam wants to update with the consequence that Skyrim is immediately shut down.  I hate that a lot.

 

So, that's not a thing that should be happening ever and you might want to look into it if you haven't.

What Dwip said. I have been using Steam daily for five years with a lot of games (I have 160 games today) and I never ever had Steam kicking me out of a game to update something. Also, Steam never ever downloads something in the background when a game is launched, exactly for sparing resources.

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In the short time (two months or so) that I've been using Steam, I haven't had any serious issues with it, however it seems completely unnecessary in my mind for a one-player game like Skyrim. This is coming from a perspective of a person that rarely (if ever) plays multiplayer titles online, uses chat to talk to friends and so on.

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Also, Steam never ever downloads something in the background when a game is launched, exactly for sparing resources.

I wouldn't be so sure on that one. I've exited Skyrim once or twice only to notice the client was in the middle of some download for another game's update. When it happened to me, I didn't notice a performance drain, but there's also no way my internet is fast enough to download 500MB of something the instant the game is closed either.

 

Perhaps it's not SUPPOSED to do this, but it does in fact do it on occasion.

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I seem to recall they changed that very recently.  In days of very recent yore, though, no, it wouldn't download things while playing, to my great annoyance.

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No, they didn't change the global behavior of Steam, they created only ten days ago a new option in the properties of your games, allowing to download while a game is running. Quoted from the changelog :

"Add option to let other games download while a game is running (this is a per-game setting)"

It's still in beta, you have to run the Steam Client beta to have this checkbox appear in your game's properties.

They created this option because this has been exactly a major request (not to say rant) made by thousands of users for years (like Dwip ;) ), and this is proof that it was supposed not to be possible until now. And that's my personal experience too. If you noticed a different behavior, maybe this is related to alt-tabbing a game, something that I never do. I don't know.  :)

EDIT : Another very interesting new option added by the current client beta :

"Add ability to limit what time of day Steam is allowed to automatically update apps"

And another one which, if I understand it correctly, is a BIG change :

"On game launch, if there is an update available but we haven't started downloading it yet, ask the user if they want to launch the existing bits or wait for the update."
 

:blink:   :stare:

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I can only tell you what I've caught happen a couple of times in the past. It's not like it's a super regular thing, and I'm not using the Steam client beta.

 

That said, if they're finally bowing to pressure to block unwanted automatic updates of games, it's about damn time. I know there are many thousands of people who will rejoice upon hearing that.

 

"Add ability to limit what time of day..." I can seriously see myself cutting this to something like "between 4:15am and 4:16am on Sunday" since I'd probably be in bed :P At the very least for Skyrim anyway, just to remove the risks involved in Bethesda possibly surprising us with some kind of update down the road. None of the other games I have right now have any kind of mods in them that could get screwed over.

 

I'm assuming this also means they'll be adding something to say "Ok, you can update this now if possible".

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Wunder if Elder Scrolls Online will be seamlessly integrating "chat" with the Steam UI. Or will everyone be barracking the "Steamless" integration of it all?  :crazy:

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- You either care about chat, voice chat, and the various other social aspects, or you don't. Not a big deal for Skyrim, but it's amazing if you ever play multiplayer with people.

- The big utility of the Steam's screenshot management, to me, is the ease of use - it only takes me a couple of clicks in Steam to get a screenshot into a shareable form. Awesome dragon? Click. Bug I need to report to the USKP team? Click. Default TES screenshots, by contrast, I have to convert the file format, upload it somewhere, etc. That's either a thing for you or it isn't.

Of course Steam overlay (chat) aren't a big deal for Skyrim since it's only for multiplayer games.

 

Besides I never like to play a multiplayer game e.g World of Warcraft except for one game that's bridge, which I've played 2-3 times over the years and the last time I played bridge was about 8-10 years ago.

 

Whether to use it or not is up to you. What few times I have it's not been a problem, but I'm one of those people Dwip thinks is crazy... I hate everything there is about Steam. I would be among the happiest gamers on Earth if Valve held a press conference tomorrow announcing the company was folding and Steam was being terminated immediately.

 

Then again, I despise pretty much everything about multiplayer gaming. Probably severely tainted by my time in the MUD community where folks were all jerkwads and it quickly became not fun (save a few glorious exceptions on Shard and Alsherok).

 

Up until Skyrim, I had no games that requires Steam's totally inconvenient required client. I also had every intention to continue that policy until folks began gifting me things using it. If there was a way to sever all that content from the client legally, I'd be all over it in a heartbeat.

 

Valve has wielded Steam like a bludgeon in the same way Microsoft wielded Windows. Neither one is ultimately good for the industries they claim to help.

 

So... uh... yeah... I guess that rant got away from me again :P

Approved rant! :D

 

Also, if Dwip thinks you're crazy then you're normal as far I'm concerned. ;)

 

 Also, Steam never ever downloads something in the background when a game is launched, exactly for sparing resources.

Steam does that whether you like it or not.

 

I wouldn't be so sure on that one. I've exited Skyrim once or twice only to notice the client was in the middle of some download for another game's update. When it happened to me, I didn't notice a performance drain, but there's also no way my internet is fast enough to download 500MB of something the instant the game is closed either.

 

Perhaps it's not SUPPOSED to do this, but it does in fact do it on occasion.

Same thing happen to me shortly after Skyrim was out 11/11/11.

 

I think Steam is closing your game just prevent corrupt game data e.g gamesaves, pictures for the last session, achievements in a game etc.

 

No, they didn't change the global behavior of Steam

Yes.  Valve have changed the global behavior of Steam in the past, because back in 2009 when Empire TW came out and that game was my first Steam game I had.  Steam didn't act in spring 2009 as it does today, because Empire TW came out just before Valve introduced Steam Guard as a protection for your Steam account and later Steam Cloud became a reality, so Valve have in fact change the global behavior in Steam. :)

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I'm with Arthmoor on this one. If Steam wasn't mandatory it would be uninstalled in a heartbeat. No, I don't "do" clouds, facebook, twitter or any other scams, er, social media.

 

@blackpete - of course it's necessary (for them, not for us) - it's DRM wrapped in a pretty package :(

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Yes.  Valve have changed the global behavior of Steam in the past, because back in 2009 when Empire TW came out and that game was my first Steam game I had.  Steam didn't act in spring 2009 as it does today, because Empire TW came out just before Valve introduced Steam Guard as a protection for your Steam account and later Steam Cloud became a reality, so Valve have in fact change the global behavior in Steam. :)

 

:rolleyes:

 

Uh, I was replying to :

 

I seem to recall they changed that very recently.  In days of very recent yore, though, no, it wouldn't download things while playing, to my great annoyance.

 

The post just above mine...

 

Of course Valve has changed the global behavior of Steam over the years, it's obvious and nobody says the opposite !  :P

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