Not to dismiss your issues mate, but I don’t know if a gaming sub is the best place to ask. Most of us in here probably put a few hours a day into games ourselves without considering it an issue.
I actually agree with you but the mental health communities on Lemmy haven’t caught up yet, and I figured one could find more people here that could relate.
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.
Steam Deck is shaping up to be the “Nintendo” of handheld PCs. Not the most powerful thing on the market, but cleverly put together with its own bespoke software that allows users to customise and tweak games at the system level via quick access to its features. Having windows on the other machines makes your access to games better but means you have to dig harder or install extra software to do what the deck does. To paraphrase Sega’s 90s marketing, It Does what Windon’t.
Second, you’re absolutely right. Steam did a great job with the whole Steam Deck Verified thing. It ensures that the game “just works”, which is someone that can’t always be said of PC games. It makes sense, given the near uniform hardware of the Deck, of course, but it’s still important for reaching the console and/or casual gamer markets.
And let’s face it, the Deck is just convenient as hell. It’s the mobile gaming solution I’ve wanted for decades.
…but I totally get what he means. Some people just aren’t excited about fiddling with settings, hardware, software or otherwise. It’s just a pain. Even myself, I’ve noticed I’ve lost most of my appetite for twiddling with drivers and such so I get it. When I play a game, I want to play the game, not set up the game, tweak the game, etc.
This has always been one of the key advantages of consoles over PC gaming. You can go to Gamestop, buy the game, plug it into your console, and then play. Or at least you used to.
Consoles have gotten more fiddly over the years, and the Steam Deck meets them halfway. If you are okay with online game stores, managing storage space for your games, you are already good to go with your Steam Deck. If you want to, you can tweak your settings for more battery life or performance, or venture outside the Steam Deck Verified games.
Eh, it’s not always great, Baldurs Gate 3 is “Varifed”, but it took some fiddling with the settings to get it toba stable 30 with decent lod on my deck.
I’m a long time pc gamer and linux gamer. I do not care to play games unless it is in a handheld mode. I have been playing my switch a lot more recently, but am really looking forward to the steamdeck.
I sold my Steam Deck because the hardware really isn’t good enough. Poor quality screen and no anti friction rings for the analogue sticks, plus the whole thing is just too large.
If you can’t afford a good VPN, you can’t afford to torrent.
If you don’t pay for something, you are the merchandise. And the last thing you want is a VPN that sells you out, when your primary use case is to do something illegal with it.
Yeesh, I’m a “Baldurs Gate Oldhead” XD man I’m getting old.
I could just cry at the fact that BG3 is download only. If they never release it hardcopy I will never be able to play it. Being out in the boonies. Even if they could just put what they can on a disc ya know?
Been looking for a good split screen to play with my gal, and yet what I’m sure is a masterpiece is out of reach.
There’s also the Dark Alliance Oldheads, they don’t need to be quite as old as me to have played those. Just replayed Dark Alliance II with my gal and it was well worth the heavy price tag for such an old title. Unlike the new Dark Alliance garbage. Which I bought to play split screen and it is not.
Yeesh, I’m a “Baldurs Gate Oldhead” XD man I’m getting old.
Sorry pal 😂 for what it’s worth, I’m old enough that I played part of BG2 on PC as a kid. But I was too young to understand THAC0 back then. Lol
I could just cry at the fact that BG3 is download only. If they never release it hardcopy I will never be able to play it. Being out in the boonies. Even if they could just put what they can on a disc ya know?
This is my first hearing this. Damn this seems like a big deal for a game of this scale?
Yeah I was teenager playing Baldurs Gate and 2 on PC. I only knew THAC0 because I was a D&D enthusiast and read my uncle’s old books.
I’m still new to Beehaw not sure how y’all are clipping pieces of the conversation, and replying.
It seems like a big deal to me, but everyone has been saying the industry is moving to online only anyways. Like the new Diablo.
<span style="color:#323232;">I read that BG3 is upwards of 150gigs and plenty of reasons and excuses for digital only. They can't fit it on one disc is the main one but still.
</span>
Most great games never get anywhere near this much buzz.
I think it’s a product of the genre. BG3 is in the CRPG category, which had a bit of a resurgence lately between Pillars 1+2, Pathfinder 1+2, and (perhaps most relevantly) DOS 1+2. Good games in an existing category of game helps build up buzz in that category and more players. More players creates more demand… but there hasn’t been that much being made in the CRPG bucket lately.
Then, on comes BG3. It fits in that bucket. It has much higher production values than the other recent games in that bucket. It’s got one of the most valuable CRPG IPs attached to it with Baldur’s Gate. And it’s reportedly amazing as a game on top. The last part wouldn’t get it anywhere near this much attention on its own, but in conjunction with the others it’s gotten lots of buzz.
I also feel like Larian handled the early access part really well for keeping the game in discussion without making the game oversaturated in gaming circles. They got a lot of “free” (not actually free, but you know what I mean) marketing out of that.
Still I’m not convinced of Steam OS compared to Windows 11, since I would like to play also Epic games and maybe some emulators
You can actually play games from Epic Games and other stores on Steam Deck with Lutris or Heroic Games Launcher (or a few other options) and you can install emulators on it too, it has a desktop mode, so you’re not locked into only Steam stuff. Also, you can put Windows on the Steam Deck too as an option if you prefer, I don’t know many people who have but the option is there.
Thank you. And do most of Epic games run well? I’m not interested into latest triple A games and the best of the best performance and resolution, but I would like to some of them being at least playable. What do you think of the Chinese alternatives of the Steam Deck?
I don’t have a steam deck, but I use Linux and often play games from the epic store through the heroic launcher. I haven’t had an issue with a game not working. Worst case scenario, I just had to switch proton versions, which heroic makes really easy.
They should for most. If the games are on both Epic and Steam you can check protondb.com to get a general idea of how well it will run, for any games that are only on Epic, I’d recommend doing some quick searches to see how much luck people have had getting them to run on steam deck/linux. Most games for me have worked perfectly fine with similar performance as Windows, and installing Windows on the Deck is still an option for the games that don’t.
As for the alternatives to the Steam Deck, I wouldn’t go for them over the Deck personally, but I have never used them. I would think the games that have been optimized for the deck would run better on the deck than the alternatives due to its popularity. I might consider them if they were a good bit cheaper than the Deck though and it was a good deal.
Edit: I should also note that I play on a Linux Desktop, not the Deck, but aside from the specs difference the games actually working or not would be almost exactly the same between the two because of how Proton and Wine work.
I’ve played the Divinity games, which are very good CRPGs, but in my opinion, Baldur’s Gate 3 is in another league compared to those. The amount of choices and possibilities the game offers and its sheer vastness are amazing. Add to that the many fully voiced and well directed cutscenes and you have an awesome game that manages to appeal not only to hardcore CRPG fans.
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