To go along with the Steam Summer Sale, we're giving away some Steam games! Each giveaway has its own thread with a simple question / challenge for you to complete. Really all you need to do is post in the thread and then I'll randomly select someone. In order to participate, you need to post by 11:59PM EST on 7/2/16. That gives you one more sale day, just in case you want to buy the game if you don't win it ;) I'll post in the thread once a winner has been randomly chosen and the gifts will be sent directly through Steam (unless you prefer email).

This game had been on my Steam Wish List for a while and I finally picked it up in the current sale. Although I haven't played it yet, it certainly seems like it's a nice hidden gem for PC RPG fans. Nobody here on Completionator even owns this game yet...in fact, I haven't even added it to the database! It will be on here soon though :P So if you want more info, check it out here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/428880/

Anyways, RPGs in this style generally have multiple ways to complete quests or at the very least, quests are presented in a non-linear fashion. So in that spirit, you have MULTIPLE ways to enter this giveaway!

Option 1: Have you seen the bounty system yet on the Home page? If not, you should check it out real quick. I'll wait here.......Okay, ready? Simply provide one piece of feedback for how we can improve this feature and encourage more participation! Only one is required here, but you can provide as many as you want :)

Option 2: What about the Mercenary Guild, have you seen that? I'll wait again.....Okay, same drill, provide one piece of feedback on how we can improve it and encourage more participation!

Option 3: Alright, fine, here's one that requires less work :P When you play a game that lets you do good or evil things, what do you generally choose and why?

Holy crap there is a main page. I must have bookmarked my overview page when I created an account so all I ever see when I come here is my profile. I'm such a narcissist. I was wondering how the Bounties worked. Now I know. But I don't own any of those games.... yet.....

I just added Quest to my wishlist yesterday I think. Stumbled across it doing the discovery queue thingy.

I like the concept of the Mercenary Guild, but I feel it should be more challenged based. Otherwise it is very similar to the Bounty system. Let's use Dishonored as an example. Right now you just assign a mission to complete a playthrough of the game. No big hurdle because it is an excellent game. But it would be fun to assign a mission with specific details like "Mission: Escape the Prison with no kills. Bonus Mission: Ghost (no detections or kills)." That example is an easy mission of course, but they could be whatever the community dreams up of various difficulty. I'd imagine it would have to be free form with just a text box for the details of the mission when creating the mission.

But you also have to answer the "Why?" Why would I bother doing what some internet strange told me to do? I would like to see mission completion on our profile somewhere where the details of the mission are available for all to see. Maybe a response text box that lets recount our tales of glory or defeat or post a link to a steam screenshot or whatever. Make it more of a shared experience. You want me to do something? No thanks, you ain't da boss of me! Oh wait you'll give me internet bling for my profile. Ah hells ya.

As for my evil gaming... Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines is an excellent game and I've played quite a bit of it. I haven't beaten it yet. Not because I don't want to, but because my friend really, really wants me to. He has played through it over and over and over. One of his favorite games. And since I am a great friend I now pretend that I don't remember the game even exists. When it comes up I say I'm going to buy it on Steam someday even though I own it which drives him nuts. I occasionally see it on sale and encourage him to buy it because it is a great game. I run it when he is online so he sees me start then I switch to another game so he'll get both excited and angry at me. Good times.

I usually follow the good options. If there's good and snarky, I might alternate between those, although that caused me to have a very unusual complaint about Dragon Age 2 in that the snarky male PC voice is TOTALLY "Ooh, look how snarky I am!" The best snark is deadpan.

Ooh, I've been eyeing The Quest for years on iOS. It's really too bad that GOG turned down the HD PC remake.

...I'm taking the easy way out, sorry. :)

When I play games that offer good/bad options, I usually play the good route. (Mind you, I think the "bad" routes are often badly written, but then, I spent years playing White Wolf games, where "good" and "evil" really lose their meaning. lol ) I've tried to play through evil routes and my own conscience starts kicking me at certain points. I've managed it occasionally, but it's actually difficult for me to do.

The main reason I chose to use Completionator over the other backlog-tracking sites was because of the Bounty system and Mercenary Guild here. Both features are awesome. And since this is as good a time as any, here's my feedback on both.

The Bounty System: One of the easiest suggestions is just to have more bounties available at a given time. I've only been able to take one since I joined because I only owned one (and no I don't have a small collection of games, lol)
The other bounty system suggestion is more difficult to implement I'm sure, but it would be awesome if there was a system in place to vote on upcoming bounties. I haven't really scoured the forums or anything though, so if this is in place I just don't know where it is.

Mercenary Guild: I agree with ralsar that some sort of profile note of missions completed would be great.

I really like the bounty system idea. It seems fun. The only issue is just making sure that participation is frequent and items are fun and challenging

Mercenary Guild: I'm having trouble really distinguishing the difference between Bounties and Missions and why these are all separate things. Seems to me to maybe be doing too many similar things in too many places.

I mostly choose good, but I'll definitely alternate to give it some variance, particularly if the game doesn't punish you one way or the other. I'm not a big replayer, so I normally don't rehit up the same game, but I do try to look ahead and see what the advantages and disadvantages are.

Bounty System: Is great! It's a really fun idea that other backlog sites/tools lack, and it's a good way to develop incentive and a social aspect around multiple people taking on a particular game. The themes are a good idea too. One thing I do wonder about is how are the games chosen? Is there any input from users or is it just kind of random? I noticed some more obscure titles, which is fine, those titles need attention too, but if a lot of people don't have the game in their backlog then they won't participate.

Merc Guild: Also a fun idea. It seems to serve the same function as a bounty at the moment, but it is peer assigned rather than something that is universally posted on the site. I kind of like the addition ralsar made about adding challenges to make it a little more interactive than just assigning another user to play game X. I think it might make sense to say, if user is playing game X, other users can assign missions/challenges related to game X, which would translate to points.

Good vs Evil: I'm terrible at being evil. I always go the good route, which makes me feel like I'm missing out on being the snarky asshole and potential funny dialogue/situations. My conscience always gets the best of me, even though I can have a dark sense of humor sometimes. That and I always pull for the "good ending."

I've randomly selected a winner and it is........

@boffo97 !!!

Thanks to everyone that participated! I've been reading all of the feedback that's been posted and will try to post a follow-up soon :)

Congrats boffo!

Congratulations! Enjoy the game. :)

Thanks again for all the bounty / mission feedback everyone, here are my thoughts on what's been posted:

Having a text field to provide additional "objectives / requirements" is definitely something that will be added to the missions feature. While there's no way to validate that the user adhered to these requirements, it's all based on the honor system anyways, so that shouldn't be a huge deal. Just thinking out loud here, but if users become realy interested in doing things like speed runs and whatnot, there's the potentil for recording your playthrough and when you complete the mission, you could link to a YouTube video to "prove" you did it properly or something.

I think showcasing mission progress and completions is a critical piece to version 2.0 of the missions feature. Unfortunately, as @ralsar alluded to, this would make the most sense on the Overview page, which is waaaay out of date. I've been meaning to completely overhaul that page for months now and other priorities seem to get in the way. It's going to happen though, I swear. The main thing I want to fix on that page is really showcasing the social side of things, specifically with your friends and their activity. But not at the expense of YOUR activity, of which missions (and bounties) are included. This is also tightly integrated with the Feed, which is still in its infancy....so it's a matter of figuring out how all of this stuff fits together.

Now, let's switch over to bounties for a minute. First off, the process for selecting games up for bounty is actually quite simple: I just pick some games and hope people feel like playing them ;) Okay, so it's a little more complicated than that, but that's the gist. Here are some of the things I try to follow when selecting games:

• Try to find games that active bounty participants actually own
• Try to find games that don't have completion times (or have very few)
• Try to keep a new release or two up at all times
• Try to have a nice mix of indie / bundle games, as well as retro games (preferably those that have had official digital releases)
• Try to avoid adding a game that's already been a bounty

I think adding a voting system to determine bounties is something that will be added in the future, but I don't think we have enough participants to realy justify the development effort at this point. Hopefully someday :)

All that being said, I often pull requests from the community, so definitely let me know what you're interested in seeing up for bounty. The bounty community is small, so this this is a nice way to keep everyone engaged and ensure games that will actually be played are chosen! Here's a thread that's been used in the past for making requests.

Your points about bounties and missions being (too) similar are certainly valid. That was one of my main concerns when I built the missions stuff a while back. I think they're very similar right now, but over time I'd like to separate them a bit more. Bounties are meant to be more of a "game club" kinda thing and missions are meant for you to createa subset of games in your backlog that you need / would like motivation to complete. Most people aren't using the "mercenary guild list" option, but for example, I have mine only include games that are short :P

Let me know if you have any additional feedback!