this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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That's great, but to be fair some of them are "technically playable" but a real pain in the ass to play on the steam deck. The definition of "playable" is really not what you'd expect.
EDIT: I don't understand why I'm getting downvoted so much.. I own a steam deck and love it, and my comment is on topic.. I'm literally the only top comment on the thread, are you guys trying to incentivize people not to engage on lemmy's post ?
But also there are a lot of games that work perfectly and are not tested. Can you give an example of game that is marked as playable but it's not?
Factorio for exemple is marked "great on deck" I tried to play it, it's honestly unplayable, I love the game, I love the steam deck, but that game is not "great on the steam deck". And it is not the only game in this category.
Factorio runs great on the deck, it's not a game I want to play with a controller though, but the game does support controller input and you can always plug in a mouse and keyboard. Saying that Factorio doesn't work on the deck it's like saying it doesn't work on th switch because you don't like the control scheme.
We agree. That's exactly what I said in my first comment, factorio is "technically playable". I never said anything about games not "working".
You can plug kb, mouse and also plug-in a bigger screen on the deck, but that's not what people instinctively think about when they hear "great on deck"
But then you get into a subjective realm, everyone has opinions and preferences, some people are used to controllers and prefer playing games like that. To try to illustrate let's do it the other way around: should we say that dead cells shouldn't be marked as playable on PC because controller is so much better for it? Or do you agree that 1. Even though it's not great you can play it on KB/M so it should be listed as playable and 2. You can plug a controller on the PC so saying it's not great on PC because you need to plug a peripheral is a moot point.
Scratching my head on this one -- I actually prefer Factorio on the Deck vs the desktop. What about it makes it bad on the Deck? You know there's a UI slider, right?
For controls, simply set right trackpad to mouse.
Really?? that's interesting (and surprising for me), I guess I must be really bad with the trackpad as a mouse or something, also it says to click on "y" instead of "r2" to click which I thought was really impractical. Then I didn't try the hardest to make it usable for me, after a couple minutes I just said "fuck it, I can't play like that" and played something else.
It sounds like you're using the controller scheme that Factorio added. It's really designed for a standalone controller.
It works alright, but if you switch (in Steam controller configurator) to standard Deck KBM layout, then R2 is click and right trackpad is mouse. Set Factorio to KBM as well and it won't say Y anymore.
New world
That's true, I played many games that were great on the deck but marked as unverified. But that's exactly my point you can't really know how many games are actualy playable. When on the deck there is a tab called "great on deck" with games suposedly great to be played on the deck, but in reality these are games that theoretically works.. They don't test for the quality of the experience of playing them on the deck as oposed to another platform.
They do test for quality of the experience, that's the whole point of the stamp. They manually review each game across a spectrum of areas and that stamp says whether the out of box experience is confirmed good.
Yeah they don't compare against other platforms, but why would they? They only care if the experience on the Deck is good, not whether it's better or worse than another platform.
I didn't mean they should compare it with other platform, I'm saying some games that are great on other platform are difficult to play on the deck, often when the mouse is required for the game it's very hard to play it on the deck. For exemple: Papers please is an awesome game that is marked "great on deck" I encourage you to try playing it on the deck, I tried and it was very hard to play, maybe you can play it putting the deck on a table and using the touchscreen, but I don't think people are happy playing on the deck using only the touchscreen, and even then I'm not sure that particular game (which again I love on pc) is particularly good on the deck.
I'd like to add that Iown a deck, I play daily on it, and I love it, I feel like people are gatekeeping because I dared say something not 100% positive about steam.
Good example. I actually tried that game on my Deck and bailed.
However, I played through Human Resource Machine on my Deck and loved it. Both have a similar control scheme, but I think the difference is the amount of interactivity vs thinking. But maybe the next person will have the opposite experience.
However, the verified stamp doesn't mean playing it with the built in controller is the best UX, it just means it works well enough to access all content. Whether using the controller is ideal for you is up to you. I still watch the gameplay videos to get a feel for whether it'll be a good experience on the Deck.
That said, there are certainly things I don't like about my Deck. For example, I wish the screen was OLED, the charging port doesn't feel solid, I randomly get the performance overlay stuck and need to reboot, and the charging cable should be detachable. The Switch is still a way better overall experience, but the Deck isn't competing directly against the Switch, it's competing with other PC handhelds, and I think it holds up pretty well in those comparisons, warts and all.
I also get the perf overlay showing getting stuck there sometimes, it is really annoying.
Don't understand what you mean about the charging cable that should be detachable ? I charge my deck via usb-c so the cable is detachable, is it not what you use ? Or did you mean something else ?
The main reason I love the steam deck, is that it can theoretically run almost any games, I hate platform exclusives, with the deck I can emulate most console, including the switch
I mean I can't separate the USBC cable from the brick, which means I can't just replace one or the other. Also, the USB port is kinda loose, though it still works.
Ho right, got it
I could never play Papers please on PC because dragging things with the mouse was horrible, and always felt that a touchscreen was the way of playing it. Now that you mentioned it I remember that I never installed it on the deck, thanks for reminding me of it. Btw this also illustrates my point in the other thread that usability is subjective, for me touch screen is the ideal way to play Papers please, and the deck gives me that.
i use it as a rough guide.
but always check some reviews and comments from deck users too.
no three point scale can reflect all the ins and outs, of techical and playability and preferences.
If i had to guess at why the downvotes, I'd say there's a failure of comprehension here.
"Great on Deck" means you can play them well on the Steam Deck with few hiccups (damn near what you get if you ran it on Windows, basically). No more, no less. Doesn't indicate that the game would feel good to play with a controller, but you CAN play it regardless. I don't have a Deck, but yeah there's a couple of games in my library that I look at the Community Controller Layouts and go "nah, that looks like a nightmare to use. I'm just gonna not be lazy and KB&M it". I'm gonna assume doing the opposite on The Deck is...not impossible, but very impractical. Also gonna assume this is your gripe VS what people are likely taking from your sentence ("it says they're playable, but they're not")
I think you are right. I guess I should have been clearer to convey what I meant.