The problem is the more time that passes, the more we fill in the gaps of what games we still want, and there are less and less games left to buy. I bought everything I wanted within the first 2-3 Steam sales a few years ago and now it's mostly slim pickings ever since.
How I generally feel about it, as the years have gone on the sales have gotten weaker to me, but that's often because I own most of the stuff, with a small amount of games I'm interested in (and I've gotten some decent deals on them, just tend to forget that).
Trying to look at it not from a "I own it all" perspective, it still seems pretty meh so far at best. Can't, off hand, think of any great deals even if you owned few to no games on Steam. It's early though, so have to wait to see what happens. Oh and agree with other(s) that the lack of a game or gimmick for the sale, besides the auction before it, doesn't help much.
The Winter card market being near worthless makes it easier to not buy on Steam too, I'll admit in the past I'd sometimes wait for a deal on Steam so I could get more cards to sell, where other retailers I got nothing. Now? Sure I still get a few cents but who cares. Hell I'll admit a couple times I spent a couple bucks extra near the end of the sale just to get a winter/summer card to sell for a bit of Steam bucks.
Anyways, to continue going away from my original point, from a long time Steam user point this sale has started off pretty terrible. No games, the card market is awful because Valve couldn't put the effort in to give some trinkets away for crafting, and the excitement of new deals is squashed from 12 hour "flash" sales and 1 community vote a day. Hell even urgency to buy has been removed with 12 hours deals really being 24 hour deals. At least with the 8 hour flash deals, there was urgency created of only having those 8 hours to decide if you wait or buy. Now? Pfft, I was semi-worried on Door Kickers but it being 24 hours, I'm pretty much waiting til later tonight to possibly buy it because I don't have to rush into making a decision.
For a new perspective (well as much as I can try to look at it from, very hard to do), it doesn't seem like much great in the way of deals so far, State of Decay probably being the best. Again no game, so probably confused why everyone finds the Steam Sales so awesome (the combination of the lack of both). Imagine they get on once or twice a day at most to see what's new and otherwise barely bother (why would anyone?).
