Enhanced Steam is a must have browser plugin for any steam user (technically also the stand-alone client, but we’ll let that one mature a bit first). If you are not using it yet, then you should be because the default store is lacking in a number of areas.
Check out the great work from JShackles at:
http://www.enhancedsteam.com/index.php
and alternatively contribute:
https://github.com/jshackles/Enhanced_Steam
The plugin itself contains a number of great features such as store price comparisons, regional price information and warnings about DRM. However while these are great for consumers, you can see why Valve would never make them official features because of the conflict of interest they create (or they could remove the terrible practices like regional price gouging…but that is another story).
There are however a few features that Valve should steal today and make part of the official store. Without further ado, here are my top 5 Enhanced Steam features Valve should implement:
- Highlight the content on steam you already own
A real no brainer given how big the store now is and how big our libraries are getting. 500 games are on sale? Great. But you really have no idea which ones you own or which ones are on your wishlist in the default steam interface. The simple green and blue highlighting (for wishlist) adds so much for so little effort and even might encourage people to buy more and fill in the blanks. - Enhance the wishlist
Let’s face it, the default wishlist sucks. Not only does it have limited functionality, but games don’t even drop off it half the time when you buy them. Enhanced steam incorporates such features as a direct add to cart and even functionality to remove games you already own. Once again the whole point of a wishlist is to encourage purchases, so Valve would only benefit from putting some effort into it the interface. - Transaction summary on the steam marketplace
While this may not be the most stable of features, to my mind it could be one of the most important ones moving forward. Market transactions might be small, but even little amounts add up fast and I believe Valve will one day get into trouble with people spending too much in what could be considered forms of gambling. It’ll only take one person spending their savings opening e-crates for the media to blow up about the features. Hence it wouldn’t hurt them to get ahead of any potential harm, by highlighting how much people have spent and even adding voluntary pre-commitment levels. - Badge filtering options
Cards and badges are pretty great for gamers. Even if you don’t care about collecting them, it gives you something to sell to those who do to offset the cost of some games. However like a lot of Valve ideas the screens just sort of “appeared” and little thought seems to have been given to integrating them naturally into the interface. Simply things like sorting options, showing drop availability and so on, are simple ideas that Enhanced Steam does so much better. - howlongtobeat integration
A bit more of a personal choice here, but I always like to know how much “game” there is before a purchase. While this is only one example, in general Valve could do a lot better integrating with sites in the wider Steam ecosystem. Obviously isthereanydeal is a stretch too far, but letting us know how many hours are ahead of us isn’t too much to ask.
So there are just a few of the features that Valve should be adding today. What features of Enhanced Steam would you like to see realistically ported over?
Bonus from @0mikr0n
- Add all DLC to cart
DLC on steam is a bit of a mess. Do you have the content in the complete set or just the season pass? Often you have no way to tell, but Enhanced Steam can at least make this a bit easier to deal with. Especially when a game has a million pieces of DLC (Agarest I’m looking at you) the add all to cart button is a must have.
The Toddhunter Report 