HoursBeforeIdle: Ignore unplayed games

[I'm a December guy ;)]

Checklist

• I read and understood ASF's Contributing guidelines
• I also read Setting-up and FAQ, I don't need help, this is an enhancement idea
• This is not a duplicate of an existing issue
• My idea doesn't duplicate existing ASF functionality described on the wiki
• I believe that my idea falls into ASF's scope and should be offered as part of ASF built-in functionality
• My idea doesn't violate the Steam Subscriber Agreement
• My idea doesn't violate the Steam Online Conduct
• This is not ASF-ui suggestion

Enhancement purpose

Some Accounts have a massive amount of games to idle, or the user dont want to automatically farm new added/bought games, because he wants to play the game themselves (and let ASF finish the process later).

Solution

Add a alternative function HoursBeforeIdle, which defines a required playtime, before ASF includes the appID to the IdleQueue (unless it has been added to the Whitelist).
Think of it as a hybrid of Blacklist+Farm.

Why currently available solutions are not sufficient?

It's a hassle to add them all manually to the blacklist manually when only a minor selective appIDs should play/finish for eligible CardDrops.

Can you help us with this enhancement idea?

Somehow, I can test and offer feedback, but can't code

Additional info

No response

[Sebastian Göls]

Just so we're on the same page about terminology: By HoursBeforeIdle do you mean HoursBeforeFarming? Note that in terms of ASF we usually use "farming" to describe the process of running a game in order to get card drops while "idle time"/"idling" is referred to when there are no cards left to earn.

I also see kind of a problem with such setting since many games have different playtimes. While you might be able to finish game A within 5 hours (including all side-quests), it might also take you 40+ hours to finish just the basic storyline of game B.

In my opinion regarding this exact use-case it makes much more sense to enable FarmPriorityQueueOnly and explicitly add the games you're done with.

[I'm a December guy ;)]

By HoursBeforeIdle do you mean HoursBeforeFarming? Note that in terms of ASF we usually use "farming" to describe the process of running a game in order to get card drops while "idle time" is referred to when there are no cards left to earn.

I also see kind of a problem with such setting since many games have different playtimes. While you might be able to finish game A within 5 hours (including all side-quests), it might also take you 40+ hours to finish just the basic storyline of game B.

In my opinion regarding this exact use-case it makes much more sense to enable FarmPriorityQueueOnly and explicitly add the games you're done with.
Yeah, it refers to farming.

I don't see the problem here. It's meant for cases, when you want to play a game for at least 1-2h. That way, your badges could actually better represent the games you've played.
If you've enjoyed the game enough, you'll hit the FarmingMark, where ASF starts anyway — no matter if you've finished the game or not.
Come to think of it, a better name could be SkipUnplayedGames, (easy to remember, because of similar to SkipRefundableGamesalready exists)

If I address your concern to the fullest, whe would have to notify ASF manually (via Chat/Command/IPC), that we've completed a game. An _optional_gimmick could also be a sync with your HLTB-Account.

[Łukasz Domeradzki]

I was about to reject this feature, but SkipUnplayedGames makes far more sense to me and is universal. I don't want any "skip games before 5h mark", that makes no sense, if somebody wants something like that, they can code it themselves in a plugin or whatever, since that's entirely custom logic, even if some people would classify it as generic enough.

SkipUnplayedGames however makes total sense to me. This way ASF wouldn't add playtime to newly acquired games, while still doing its thing for games that we decided to play. I'm only wondering if using ASF makes sense at all for such people, as the amount of games that won't drop all cards until you finish them is such a small fraction, that perhaps what @Abrynos said above makes more sense and you should just use farm priority queue only.

I'll evaluate it a bit more but I'm positive in adding SkipUnplayedGames, it makes sense to me and has a valid use case. Big no however to any advanced complex settings, if somebody wants to farm games starting from A to F, only for 3 hours on Tuesdays during leap years, that's entirely a job for custom plugin, not for the main program.

Question to @LittleFreak if that would address your case at all, since I'm not so sure about it.

[I'm a December guy ;)]

Question to @LittleFreak if that would address your case at all, since I'm not so sure about it.
It is a reasonable proposition and would address the use case that prompted me to formulate this idea.

[I'm a December guy ;)]

Just so we're on the same page about terminology: By HoursBeforeIdle do you mean HoursBeforeFarming? Note that in terms of ASF we usually use "farming" to describe the process of running a game in order to get card drops while "idle time"/"idling" is referred to when there are no cards left to earn.
@Abrynos BTW... I wrote Idle initially Idle, because some strings in the wiki seems to use this as synonym.

Like idle priority queue