My buddies and I have been on Battlebit a whole lot. It is the first fps I have played since Halo Reach and BFBC2 that has really grabbed my interest. It is just so good. The proximity and squad speak has been so good it has actually led to me making friends via an online game, which I haven't done simce I was in middle school playing Halo 3
My buddies and I have been on Battlebit a whole lot. It is the first fps I have played since Halo Reach and BFBC2 that has really grabbed my interest. It is just so good. The proximity and squad speak has been so good it has actually led to me making friends via an online game, which I haven't done simce I was in middle school playing Halo 3
It’s a perfect digitization of D&D 5th edition - it’s like having an automatic dungeon master using the rules and regulations we’ve been playing with on paper for ages.
It has a massive plot that can vary wildly on playthroughs depending on how rolls go, just like the real version.
It’s four-player co-op with PVE in an age where cooperation is increasingly rare outside of competitive team games.
It’s a well designed, properly built, finished product that can be expanded on with DLC, rather than using them to address core gameplay issues. (looking at you Paradox)
Mmmm good point! I'm imagine some of the bigger 5e 3rd parties straight porting their magic items, spells and monsters into the game (monsters would be for custom campaign eventually).
Sure, but people were really mad earlier this year because Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns D&D tried to pull some licencing related shenanigans that would have massively fucked over the community. People were boycotting the movie a couple of months ago over that. It’s interesting, that Baldurs Gate seems to not be affected by this at all.
Yeah because Twitter is not a real place. The actual D&D community spoke with their wallets and they said “we like a good, finished product without stupid terms of use” and all bought BG3. People who don’t even play D&D bought BS3 to play with folks who do play D&D.
Well, I had already bought BG3 in Early Access before the OGL debacle, and before Hasbro (WotC’s parent company) sent the Pinkertons to intimidate some small time Youtuber into giving back some unreleased Magic: the Gathering cards that he had been erroneously sold early by a distributor. So I couldn’t very well boycott it when I had already purchased it and played like 30 hours of it.
You don’t need to justify your purchasing decision to me. I am not even calling for a boycott of the game. I know people at Larian and I wish them all the success they can get.
I am just surprised that this whole thing seems to be completely absent from the larger discussion about this game. I would have assumed, that it would have been at least a footnote.
Thank you all. This discussion is really helping me making a decision. I even thought that YouTubers are being paid for well advertising all these Chinese alternatives and put the Steam Deck in bad light.
I'd like to second what Veraxus said. I have a steam deck and the ease of use factors are off the chart. At this point my gaming PC sits nearly entirely unused, I do everything on my steam deck, even playing Caves of Qud lol
You should not just assumed a large community is telling the truth about their products. Steam Deck is still just a machine that requires Proton to work. You are at the mercy of Valve corp and the community. If a game doesn't work than the game will not work. Steam Deck is not amazing in what people here have told you, it's a machine that runs limited Steam games, nothing else mattered.
This is not true though, it’s a full PC which you can install whatever you want on, which just happens to have a very convenient way to run most steam games on
I bought a Onexplayer mini. I massively regret having done this instead of spending less money on a steam deck. the batery life stinks. I wish I had touchpads.
I had a deck for a while and have sold it in favor of the ROG Ally. It requires a lot of work to get its software out of your way but after tearing all of thw asus crap out, including the trash services who's only purpose is to put their broken ass software back on against the end users' wishes I've got a matching software experience on it.
I just could not give up the vrr screen, it makes the Ally beat out the deck for my uses and none of the $1200+ devices really come close either.
I recently picked up a Steam Deck and I can also vouch for it; the device is far more than the sum of its parts and is clearly something Valve was only able to pull off after a decade plus of various software/hardware integration experiments.
SteamOS is the star of the show, and it is both fluid and easy to use while also putting more customization and flexibility at your fingertips than any other game interface I’ve seen. The integration of custom operating system, custom game wrapper tech, and their standardized hardware has produced a device that offers the power and flexibility of PC gaming with a user experience that is getting closer and closer to the “never think about it” ease of use that consoles provide.
It’s not the most powerful; it’s really a 720/800P gaming machine, but games look great at that resolution and you can run a lot of games at comfortably playable frame rates.
I had some doubts after I bought mine when I saw the ROG Ally come out alongside hundreds of “OMG THE STEAM DECK KILLER HAS ARRIVED” videos; but it didn’t take long until I saw a lot of those same content creators return their Ally and come back to the steam deck because although the hardware is slightly more powerful, the user experience end is so much worse than it just wasn’t worth it. Not to mention some serious QC issues with it.
I’ve been a PC gamer for a long time; I think I’ve been active on Steam for 18 years now. The Steam Deck is the best PC Gaming experience I’ve ever had. The hardware is great, the controls (and mapping ability of those controls) are great, the interface is great…everything is just top notch about it. Do I wish it was more powerful? Well that’d be great, and one day it will be. But everything about the experience is so good, I don’t mind some of the drawbacks. It’s encouraged me to get into my backlog of games and genuinely enjoy exploring them again. The Steam Deck just makes it so seamless and easy to play your games.
In fact, I’m getting close to time to build a new PC, and the Steam Deck has really changed my thoughts on it. Seeing how far Proton and SteamOS have come…I just really want Valve to take another shot at the Steam Box. A lot of its shortcomings aren’t issues now, and add in some good Steam Deck integration and have it target 1440P/4K Upscaling, you could create an affordable box that taps into a successful and growing ecosystem. I’d buy one in an instant and just not bother with a new PC build in the years ahead.
That’s how much I genuinely believe that the Steam Deck/SteamOS experience is that good these days!
My understanding is that it is a complete game with no microtransactions to shove along with it. After that I believe it is because it is really really good and not a common genre to get the spot light. Mainly the first part.
There’s also the reaction from other developers claiming that the game “sets an unrealistic standard for what to expect out of a game” despite it being exactly what people want from a triple A studio. Just a complete, well made, functional game with no microtransactions
The OS is built for the hardware and is optimised accordingly. It’s like the other handhelds have performance leaks everywhere while the Steam Deck doesn’t. I blame win11. So even if the others are better on paper, actual performance is way better on the Deck. There are so many tools you can download to make it even better, personalise whatever you want. Linux really shines on this thing. And I’ve never used Linux before in my life. You can emulate everything up to the newest Nintendo games. It handles God of War, it handles Elden Ring and Diablo 4. Controls are awesome. Somehow even my Switch is more tiring to hold even tho the Deck is way bigger. For me it just clicks. I know I sound like I’m on their payroll but I just feel it’s that good. And I would swap the Deck in a heartbeat if anything else would be better. But it isn’t.
Not OP but I can take a crack at it. For starters, the build quality is fantastic. As someone who’s used quite a few mainstream handhelds (Gameboy up through Switch light, PSP/Vita, and most recently the GDP XD) The deck feels sturdy, and although it is quite bulky, it fits with case and charger in a backpack that’s flown cross country several times. I’ve had to replace other devices that just couldn’t stand up to that kind of abuse.
It’s also quite powerful - enough to run Elden Ring at a very consistent 30 FPS. More lightweight titles have zero issues. The same is also true of emulated hardware up to 6th gen, including KH1/2, Metroid Prime, etc. Which is quite a feat for a portable computer like this.
The backend/desktop mode is easy to access and makes setting up those emus quite simple, and with a little command line work you can get applications running that aren’t available via Discover.
Really, the only thing lacking here is battery life, but even then, 2-3 hours is on par with most laptops.
But I definitely wouldn't swap it straight up for any of the rest.
The Deck is big and heavy compared to the field, but it uses the size for a couple of purposes:
It has full controller sized everything (this is without measuring; it feels extremely comparable to the Xbox controller, though), plus the touchpads that are IMO an absolute requirement for interacting with the OS at all. Using any joystick to move a mouse cursor is terrible, and you will have to interact with the OS. You can work around this by only managing stuff at home with a mouse and keyboard plugged in and launching everything through a controller friendly launcher, but it's a headache.
The Ally has the same 40WH battery the Steam Deck does (per a 30 second search), but if you go smaller you almost definitely have to go smaller. On a similar note, much of the rest of the space is cooling. If something is advertising comparable specs in a meaningfully smaller package, they're sacrificing one or the other. It's just physics. The Ally can kick up the power to higher top end performance, but it's at a higher power draw and you can get down to ~2 hours battery life on the deck. Again, the basic limitations of physics say that's going to make a dent in the already tight battery life constraints if you use the power. (Yes, having it while plugged in is still nice.)
The shape is really comfortable. It does take some awareness to avoid resting the weight on your elbows, but once you recognize that you can comfortably play long sessions (compared to the switch, but a lot of the slightly smaller ones have very comparable designs because they're the only way to make a real dent without shrinking the screen).
You can also install Windows without major issue if that's your preference, though if you don't play games that choose to block you out for anticheat you probably don't need to.
Ultimately, all of these devices have to make compromises. It's a handheld and there's only one real supplier for chips to make it with (unless you go the basically Android only ARM route). Steam chose an extremely balanced approach such that you don't really feel any of them. Others chose to push harder to one metric or another, but because of the bottom line constraints of the form factor, they had to sacrifice something else to do it. It's possible you prefer the other approaches better, and that's fine. Valve will be perfectly happy if enough good options become available that there's no need for a second deck. Their goal was to make handheld PC gaming a thing (and cut down their reliance on windows), and they were extremely successful at both.
It runs linux <3 But seriously the user experience is so good, i thought they would stop refining it after a year or so but no, it keeps going like a smash mouth song stuck in a loop.
Also i had blast tinkering with it in desktop mode and discovering how the whole gadget runs after docking it and plugging a key board, mouse and monitor.
The emulation options are fantastic if not a bit tricky to set up, but there are some tools that you can familiarize yourself with in just a 10 min youtube vid.
Of course it sucks that it cant run the latest AAA, but it is amazing for casual games without micro transactions, indies and ps3 level games. I mean get a real pc if you want to play thoses for sure, but imo satisfying graphics fidelity was reached by the ps3 era, and only gameplay really matters now.
Honestly my fav games atm are steep, stray, and witcher 3 which i would consider the max amount of graphics it can handle (without maxing, but without setting everything to low).
On the indies side I had a blast with carrion, donut county and vampire survivor, games that I thought I would never play sitting in front of my PC.
The idea of a 720 p screen kinda sucks at first, but you dont really feel a difference in game. Personally when I dock it with a screen i set the res higher and on some small indie games i game at 4k since it can take it.
Steam Deck still holds its own on new releases if you’re happy to downgrade them a bit. I’m getting a decent 30 FPS experience on BG3 right now at mid settings. As someone who’s primarily a console gamer used to not having the ultra settings on games, it works for me.
The Nintendo effect. Not only is Steam a “brand” that people know and recognise and very well have a collection of games already on, they’ve designed their software to be very functional for people who don’t know how to go digging for all the hidden options in windows. I can muck about with things like the thermal power limit, frame rate and refresh rate locks, half rate shading, scaler options, from one button access to eh side menu on my deck.
I have a Steam Deck and was considering “upgrading” to something that has more power.
But then I wanted to play Torchlight 2, an action-rpg designed for mouse and keyboard that does not have controller support. I wasn’t even going to try it, but saw that Runic Games had an input profile for it. The left stick controls your character like it supporter controllers, but it’s all using the mouse. The touchpads work for precise targeting. And I’m able to use all 10 skill buttons using modifier keys and adding the back buttons. Plus I was able to easily adapt this to Diablo 3, a non-steam game without controller support.
If you want to be limited to games designed with controllers in mind, go for one of the alternatives. But if you want to be able to play mouse and keyboard games, there’s nothing that competes with the Steam Deck.
How do I find input profiles and how do I install them? Only way I am doing it right now is first to install the game and then looking in the controller settings if there is a community profile.
To be honest I’m not sure how to browse if you haven’t installed the game. If you want to copy from another game you can save the configuration as a template and then import it to the other game.
I feel like windows would seriously hamper the experience, it’s terrible on small screens and when you don’t have a normal mouse and keyboard to use. It also has a ton of overhead that’s going to eat into the more limited CPU and GPU.
I’m also pretty sure you can just dual boot windows on the steam deck if you want to have windows available.
This whole quest scene was so unexpected, disturbing, hilarious and made me fall in love with the game. The timer for this choice makes the situation feel like a real intense JESUS FUCK WHAT DO I DO moment
I have a ROG Ally and a Steam Deck. The Steam Deck experience is miles ahead. Windows is such a limitation on these handheld devices (and dare I say PC gaming in general). SteamOS is the real MVP behind the Steam Deck, it makes everything feel seamless.
The Ally feels like a crappy ASUS launcher stapled on top of an unoptimized Windows desktop, since that’s exactly what it is.
Also, the ASUS ROG Ally controls are nowhere near as nice as the Deck’s. The Deck sticks feel better. The touchpads allow for mouse control.
I haven’t used other handhelds, but what you say is what I’ve seen from other discussions and reviews. Yes, there are more powerful systems with better screens, but the SD’s OS is miles ahead (but not without a lot of quirks as well). The touchpads are incredible - I couldn’t imagine trying to use a handheld PC without those touchpads. Also, the custom control configuration abilities built in to steam OS are incredibly versatile and detailed.
Hopefully Microsoft releases a handheld mode instead of just experimenting with it. Besides the interface, they also really need to optimize for performance. Even though, with the steam deck, proton is converting draw calls it still outperforms the same deck running windows with native driver support. This really shows how the mountains of extra crap running on windows hurts gaming performance on these low power devices.
Hopefully Microsoft fades into irrelevance. I’m glad the Steam Deck is doing something about Microsoft’s control over the PC gaming market. I’m also glad Microsoft is losing in the handheld gaming PC experience. Let Windows die already, it’s long overdue (especially given the continued and intensifying enshittification of the OS every release cycle).
Hopefully this “you will own nothing and be happy” BS also fades into irrelevance. I hate how everything has to be a subscription these days. No. Just NO.
I refuse to move to subscription based platforms. It’s anti-consumer lock-in. Unfortunately, right now, gamepass is cheap because they’re still in the growth phase and need a compelling product to get people to switch from buying their games to subscribing. However, believe me, in time the enshittification will come. What subscription-based platform hasn’t once it captured the market?
I mean, they’ll have to make some big changes to Gamepass before it becomes worse value than buying all those games outright. Most subs are still pretty good value now for the level of content, available, they’re just not as cheap as they were when they were driving users.
That’s exactly the point though. Until they corner the market and start “deprecating” actual game sales entirely, they have to keep gamepass appealing. If they get to the point where enough people have adopted gamepass that they can stop selling games outright, then they’re free to raise the prices all they want. What are you going to do about it, buy the games instead? Not an option anymore. Buy the games, keep your rights as a consumer.
Fuck no, moving to a console is the opposite of consumer freedom lol. Steam seems to be the levelest of heads in the gaming space, making an open platform OS and “console” and not tying people into nasty subscriptions to be able to play their games. Plus, regular sales with usually quite good discounts. While they still offer DRM and allow it on their store, they have plenty of DRM-free offerings and don’t discourage you from running third party games/launchers on their machine.
Although I would love to see it, as long as DirectX is the de facto graphics API, I don’t see Microsoft fading into irrelevance when it comes to the PC gaming market.
Both are great options! Just to counterbalance arguments against:
I can’t buy a Steam Deck in Australia, but I can buy the ROG Ally.
Windows can be clunky, but that less-than-stellar experience is limited to navigating and launching games. The stock launcher works fine, it’s just bare-bones. You can set Steam to launch into big picture on boot at which point it’s the same experience as the Steam Deck anyway.
All games install and run, there’s absolutely no dicking around required compared to some experiences on Steam Deck.
Touch controls are nice. 120hz VRR 1080p screen is a better draw imo as it’s universally applicable to all games. That screen makes sub-60fps experiences much nicer and has better colours and contrast and uniformity (not to mention resolution).
ROG Ally cooling system is really great, and really quiet. I don’t feel like there’s a desktop machine wedged between my hands.
The ROG Ally performance isn’t what ASUS sold, but it’s still a good bit faster than Steam Deck, and most games I’ve tried I can hit a visual and performance fidelity roughly on par with an Xbox Series S. Which ain’t bad at all.
Both are convenent and versitile systems, I think probably Steam Deck is more convenient whereas ROG Ally is more versatile.
I really bought the ROG Ally to experiment with Linux on it. I think it is getting there. I have Arch Linux with chimera kernel on mine as well as gamescope-session which allows it to function very similarly to the Steam Deck, but at the moment it seems TDP control isn’t working so games don’t run as well as they should. I also can’t get the ROG button to work as a Steam button even though that should be working according to ChimeraOS. I wanted Arch because it allows for dual booting vs. Chimera which does not, as well as for development purposes. I think the hardware of the Ally is solid, though I still hold that the Deck’s controls are much better. Once the Ally is better supported on Linux I think it would be a better option, as I refuse to use Windows anymore except for testing/reverse engineering purposes.
Handheld Companion are doing good work implementing better controller options (including gyro) and power management (including autoTDP) and I believe will have napping to the OEM keys sorted out eventually. If that sort of stuff could go into a distro I could see Arch or ChimeraOS being really interesting options. Hopefully the ROG Ally sells well and there’s a community to support it in this way, it could be great!
The Deck’s power management features are a solid selling point. There’s no reason they couldn’t be implemented elsewhere, and it would be a boon for other portable devices for sure.
I haven’t used the Ally, but the Deck’s touchpads are just intuitive and functional, it seems so obvious in hindsight that it’s actually shocking that nobody had thought to put them on a portable until now. They work great for replacing a mouse in mouse-focused games, and for navigating desktop mode. Much more effective than navigating with a joystick.
I would have loved to see something like that on the Ally. It’s very situational, but I can imagine in those situations it feels great (I own a Steam Controller, so I’ve used something very similar).
I think if you had a chance to see the Ally screen in person you might have a similar feeling. It changes the experience a lot.
For example, Diablo 4 with upscaling and the right settings is a 1080p experience, so text is crisp and UI elements are clear. At those settings in 15w I get mostly 60fps in dungeons, when things get hectic and the frames drop to 45 or 50 the VRR makes it hard to notice. Fan noise and heat aren’t really notable either, I just wish there was a little more battery to round that all out.
I feel like the Deck’s 800p screen is plenty for the size, and it helps it perform better. But maybe that’s just my boomer eyes that can’t tell the difference. Though a bigger screen would have been amazing.
1080p is a more flexible choice though. You can always just set it to 720p for better performance. Or upscale to 1080p or drop the internal render resolution so the UI remains 1080 while the game itself renders 720. You gain many options and lose none (other than just battery).
All of those are visually worse than rendering at native resolution though.
I think battery life is an important factor since these are high-drain portable devices. Any additional battery life you can squeeze out of it is a big plus.
Not really. A screen of that size is really forgiving. I’m not sure if you have seen the Ally in person? In a lot of games you can turn some GPU intensive settings down or upscaling on and it’s not nearly as noticeable. The sharpness really stands out though.
Anyway, you seem pretty thrilled with the Steam Deck, which is great. I’m just pointing out that there are some pretty sweet perks with the Ally (there’s plenty of downsides too). All the best!
I wouldn’t say I’m thrilled, I still use my PC a lot more. I’d say the dual touchpads are probably the best feature for the form factor. And I think the power management features are great, but that’s just software, and I think the other platforms should implement similar systems.
Fair enough. I can’t even buy a Steam Deck in Australia so I’m pretty happy the ROG Ally exists and is what it is. Maybe we get the Steam Deck 2 done day, I would be keen to check it out.
Ive used the Ally and I would agree. The hardware is great and feels good in hand, but Valve is going to have much more to gain by supporting the software of the deck as much as possible.
The steam deck definitely shipped undercooked, but Valve has made amazing strides to make it my a reliable and versatile experience.
I use a steam deck dock to hook it to my TV, but A LOT of the time im using it in desktop mode in this setup. I get crisp 1080p out and its a fantastic experience for playing youtube and twitch from the couch.
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