Topic: Steam players, gather!

Doctacosa
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I'm still spinning through alternatives to expand the board's scope, and I have a few questions for you.

Many of us here happen to use Valve's Steam. Who's using it for multiplayer games? And if so, which games are you mostly playing? I'm not thinking about the "flavor of the month" as much as which games bring you back constantly?

TopHat / Teej / TJ is a well-known worshipper of the entire system, and he made no attempt to hide that fact. I'm also a user of the platform, mostly on Team Fortress 2 with a dose of Portal 2 lately (and I'm supposed to be playing Left 4 Dead 2, but that's another story).

Steam also supports communities, allowing groups of players to stick together, post messages and schedule events (such as game nights) easily from a central location. Do you use them? Or are you wondering what the heck I'm writing about?

Items have also been growing on popularity as of late. Hats on Team Fortress 2 have reached the status of running gag, but other titles such as Portal 2 support them quite well, too. Do you use these items? Do you deeply care about them (gotta catch 'em all)? Or are they nothing more than a distraction that should be tossed aside?

As a reminder, you can now add your Steam username to your board profile using the Networks page!

The admin formerly known as Dr. Cossack.

Looking for me elsewhere? Maybe look at my Fediverse account for some more-or-less random postings! If you're a gamer, check out my Osmium profile. I'm building that tool!

The Helldragon
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Right now my multiplayer game of choice is Team Fortress 2. We'll see how that pans out if I eventually get Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Terraria.

RisingDragon
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I generally play TF2 and L4D1 and 2 for MP, but that hasn't been for a long time; I haven't really been using Steam as I've been waiting to build a new computer.

"Why do you care that I care that you care enough to care that I care for caring?" "Conversation isn't your strong point, is it?"
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SPT Layzner
The Blue Comet

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The only game I play on steam is Supreme Commander 2...lol.

TopHat
Hats n' spirals

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Hats have evolved from "running gag"

I've made 300 dollars on two hats.

300 -real dollars-

On hats.

Doctacosa
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There's something both awesome and very wrong with that!

Team Fortress 2 has a part of it's reputation based on the hats now. Portal 2 shares a similar structure, although it's much less noticeable. Are there other high-profile games like those that integrate items mostly for cosmetic value, or collection purposes? This is something I find curious and would like to understand a bit better.

MMORPGs don't count, as they've been obsessed with items from the start.

The admin formerly known as Dr. Cossack.

Looking for me elsewhere? Maybe look at my Fediverse account for some more-or-less random postings! If you're a gamer, check out my Osmium profile. I'm building that tool!

TopHat
Hats n' spirals

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Monday Night Combat is a hybrid of Dota gameplay and third person shooter. They have different styles for their heroes that serve no purpose other than to look pretty. They aren't as sought out, but they're definitely there.

(Most) holidays Tripwire releases an update to Killing Floor which, in addition to weapons and maps, also includes one really valuable, hard to obtain character skin. People will grind achievements to obtain these for the ENTIRETY OF THE EVENT. The demand is definitely there, but not on a monetary scale.

Dota 2 will, of course, have hats. I believe I had shown you that already.

To a lesser extent (since the collectables serve a purpose) Borderlands (and it's upcoming sequel I imagine) are all about collecting. With randomized states, there are about 1.8 billion (with a guns in the game. You can imagine how that would work out without much explanation.

IT'S WORTH NOTING that hats aren't just about value for trading and self-worth, but also for a way for Valve to reward those who contributed to the game. For example, there was one community-made wrench added during the Engineer update. Naturally, it sold about $2 worth since it's easy to obtain. Regardless, the creator was thrilled to have his work in the game and emailed Gabe to thank him and the TF2 team.

A month later he got his check for $5000. Gabe had bought 2 million of those wrenches from the Mann Co store.

The Helldragon
Inquisitor of Zork

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It's simple. People love to collect shit. The best part about hats is that:

1. If you LOVE collecting hats, there are a ton to get.
2. If you couldn't give a crap about hats, it doesn't affect the rest of the game at all.

There's a few hats I run with, mind you. Pyromancer's Mask for Pyro, Team Captain for Soldier and Heavy. Other than that, I'm good.