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DisclaimerI want to thank everyone for the gilds, replies and suggestions. I just do not have time to reply to everyone, but I am reading everything. I am not sure how much bigger the thread can be, I already typed this but it vanished so I think I'm at the limit. I will try to keep updating, but I don't expect the thread to be up top for much longer and will likely vanish soon, so if you need anything save it. Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it. Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions: For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month! For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k. I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device. Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers
Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder
If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system. Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section. Completely free TV
If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox. Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like. Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird. Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device. For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV. Anime If you are into Anime there is
The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two. PC Centric software If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design
Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12. Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development. The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals. Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap. Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam. **BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however. IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff. Game Store Fronts
Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
Games with GoldBleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.
Gaming Subscriptions Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months
Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.
There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that. Audiobooks & Ebooks
Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
Sign LanguageBSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
BBC's Bitesizehere is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.
If you need some spare change Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change
If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the detailsAccording to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."
That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment. Hope it helps someone at least PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75! tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books Learning Language Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments: TogtogtogGives a lot of links for Spanish
Board & Tabletop games Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games ilyemco suggested these HEALTH I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix. Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7. If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery. HELP & ADVICE The lockdown Rules. Reasons to leave home include:
Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
Communal religious worship
Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house
I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)
FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THEROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though) _riotingpacifist wanted these links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:
Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.
You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen. Office suit software A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.
LibreOfficeThis has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.
Music Making I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software. Games development D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here
https://www.ioi.dk/hitman-3-pre-launch-guide/ --- Welcome to the HITMAN 3 Pre-launch guide. This blog post will be our place to share in-depth details about HITMAN 3, including how to carryover your progression, our new Access Pass system, what to expect on launch day and more. We are excited to see all of our players embark on Agent 47’s next journey and experience the dramatic conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy. Before you start reading, this is how the game begins.
Release Details
HITMAN 3 will be available on 20 January 2021 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Stadia, Nintendo Switch and PC. We’re happy to confirm that the Nintendo Switch version of HITMAN 3 will also launch on 20 January. The Switch version of HITMAN 3 is playable via cloud streaming technology. A stable and permanent internet connection is required to play. Release Time HITMAN 3 will release simultaneously on all platforms at 13:00 UTC on 20 January 2021. To see the exact release time in your timezone, follow this link. This release time will ensure that the IOI teams in Copenhagen and Malmö are best-placed to ensure a smooth launch. At that time, digital copies will be available to play and the games servers will be online. 📷 Pre-load It will be possible to pre-load HITMAN 3 on PlayStation and Xbox platforms. Make sure that you’ve configured your console to do that and the downloads will begin when they have been prepared and certified. On PC, there won’t be a pre-load option for HITMAN 3 and downloads will begin at the above release time. (For PS4 and PS5 owners in Asia, please note that HITMAN 3 will not be available for pre-order or pre-load. This is due to recent changes in the age ratings systems in those regions. HITMAN 3 will be available for purchase at the above time.) Day One Patch HITMAN 3 will require a day one patch for all disc users. The day one patch will be automatically applied to digital players. This patch will include access to the VR mode for PlayStation users and will include the remaining locations that are not included on the disc. Game Size HITMAN 3 will take up approximately 60-70 GB of storage space on all platforms, with the obvious exceptions of Stadia and Switch. The data that you download will also include all the content required to access HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 2 – but you are still required to own/purchase access to those games. To underline that; purchasing HITMAN 3 does not grant access to the previous two games by default. Using this method allows us to reduce the file size for all players to 60-70 GB and has the benefit of making the process of redeeming or purchase access to HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 2 as simple as possible. (We talk about that more later). Also, we want to clarify that reducing the file size doesn’t mean that we’ve made any compromises on the visual/audio quality of the game. If you’re curious about the technical aspects that made this possible, we recently talked to PC Gamer about it.
HITMAN 3 - Editions
There are two editions of HITMAN 3; The Standard Edition and the Deluxe Edition. – The Standard Edition includes the HITMAN 3 base game. Nice and simple. – The Deluxe Edition includes the HITMAN 3 base game and the Deluxe Pack. Again, nice and simple. The only difference between the two editions is the Deluxe Pack, which includes 6 Deluxe Escalations, in-game suits, items and weapons, a digital soundtrack for each game in the World of Assassination trilogy, an introduction to each HITMAN 3 campaign mission by the Game Director and a digital artbook that highlights the characters, targets and missions included in the trilogy. A free IOI Account is required to download the digital soundtracks and World of HITMAN Art Book. Here’s a visual look at everything that’s packed into the HITMAN 3 Deluxe Edition: 📷 Next-gen Upgrade Console players who pre-order or purchase a physical or digital copy of HITMAN 3 (either Standard or Deluxe) on the current generation of consoles (PS4/Xbox One), will receive a free upgrade to the next-gen version of the game for no additional cost. Note that you won’t be able to receive the next-gen upgrade if you purchase HITMAN 3 on disc and you own a disc-free next gen console. When making a digital purchase, you will automatically be entitled to download the next-gen version when you access the game on that console. When making a physical disc purchase, you’ll need to insert the current gen disc into your next gen console and you’ll be able to download the next-gen version for no additional cost. Simply keep the disc in your machine whenever you want to play and you’ll be good to go. Pre-order Bonus The HITMAN 3 pre-order bonus celebrates all three games in the World of Assassination trilogy. Introducing the Trinity Pack. You’ll get it just by pre-ordering the game, no matter what platform or edition. The Trinity Pack includes a total of 9 items, with 3 distinct sets that represent a different game from the trilogy. Each set includes a suit, briefcase and weapon. From the White of HITMAN 1, the Red of HITMAN 2 or the Black of HITMAN 3, you’ll have all 9 items in your inventory to mix and match as you like. The classic Hitman insignia is etched onto the items in gold to add an elegant flourish. Note: The Trinity Pack will not be included with either the Standard Edition or Deluxe Edition after January 20. 📷 At selected retailers, pre-ordering a physical edition of HITMAN 3 will also include an exclusive physical passport. This unique item is filled with details and references from Agent 47’s career and commemorates 20 years of Hitman. See the list of retailers in our previous pre-order blog post.
Progression Carryover
All current HITMAN 2 players will be able to carryover their hard-earned progression into HITMAN 3. After completing the carryover process, HITMAN 2 players will be able to start HITMAN 3 with their existing player profile, XP rank, location mastery levels, location mastery unlocks, challenge progress, challenge unlocks and Elusive Target suits/unlocks. All of those things are what we call ‘progression’. It’s not possible to pick and choose elements to carryover. It’s all or nothing. The carryover process requires an IOI Account and can only be done through a web browser, it’s not possible to do it in-game. We will have the website ready to go before launch, but it is not live yet. Once it is ready, we will share the news via ioi.dk and update this post. 📷 Here’s more about how it will work: – Progression can only be carried over from HITMAN 2, including progression you have from the Legacy Pack (HITMAN 1 locations within HITMAN 2). – Progression can only be carried over from within the same platform. There are only three options: HITMAN 2 (PlayStation) → HITMAN 3 (PlayStation) HITMAN 2 (Xbox) → HITMAN 3 (Xbox) HITMAN 2 (PC/Steam) → HITMAN 3 (PC/Epic) Note: “PlayStation” = PS4, PS4 Pro and PS5. “Xbox” = Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X. Essentially, it doesn’t matter what specific console you have earned progression on. It only matters that progression can only move forward and within the same console ‘family’. – Progression carryover is a one-time process, meaning once you have performed a carryover for a particular platform, you will not be able to do so again at a later time. – If you have played HITMAN 2 on multiple platforms, you CAN perform a carryover for EACH of those profiles, but only within the same platform, as listed above. For example, if you play H2 on Xbox and PlayStation, you can carryover your H2 Xbox progression into H3 Xbox and independently carryover your H2 PlayStation progress into H3 PlayStation. – When you complete the carryover process, your existing HITMAN 2 progress will remain as it is (i.e it will not be removed/deleted). However, your progression in H2 and H3 will NOT be synchronised. – If you have already started playing HITMAN 3 and THEN choose to perform the progression carryover process, you will lose all progression earned within HITMAN 3 up to that point. We recommend you carryover progress before starting HITMAN 3. 📷 What exactly will be carried over? When you start the process, you will need to select an account that you have linked to your IOI Account. You will then be able to review the HITMAN 2 progress earned on that account and confirm that you want to perform the carryover process into HITMAN 3. The following progression will be included in the carryover process: player profile, XP rank, location mastery levels, location mastery unlocks, challenge progress, challenge unlocks and Elusive Target suits/unlocks. Savegame files are not carried over. Note that there are a small amount of items/unlocks that are not carried over through this process, such as the rewards unlocked through the HITMAN 1 GOTY Escalations, becuase they are linked to a purchase. Those items will be available in HITMAN 3 when you redeem access to the associated content. In addition, the ICA Electrocution Phone has been retired and will not be available in HITMAN 3. HITMAN 3 on Stadia On Stadia, all progression that players have earned in Hitman: World of Assassination (from both H1 and H2) will automatically ‘carryover’ to HITMAN 3. For additional clarity, Stadia and PC are two different platforms and progress cannot be shared or carried over between them. HITMAN 3 on Nintendo Switch Progression carryover is not possible on Nintendo Switch because HITMAN 2 is not available on that platform as a standalone game.
Access Pass FAQ
HITMAN 3 allows players to access locations from the previous games in the trilogy (H1 and H2) and play them all under one roof. Essentially, we have setup H1 and H2 as DLC for HITMAN 3. You can buy or redeem/download an Access Pass and get access to its content within H3. For example, if you buy the HITMAN 2 Standard Access Pass DLC for HITMAN 3, you’ll get access to the locations and missions included in the HITMAN 2 Standard Edition within HITMAN 3. 📷 In addition to the option of purchasing an Access Pass, it is also possible to redeem/download an Access Pass for no additional cost, if you have already purchased that content from the same store that you have pre-ordered or purchased HITMAN 3. To make this happen, we detect what you already have installed for HITMAN 2 and can make the corresponding Access Pass available for no additional cost on the same store. Note: If you only own HITMAN 1, you will need to import that content into HITMAN 2 first, via the instructions in our Legacy Pack FAQ. This process will work between console generations. For example, if you own HITMAN 2 on PS4, you’ll be able to download the HITMAN 2 Access Pass DLC in HITMAN 3 for both PS4 and PS5. The same applies for the Xbox family of consoles as well. We know that’s a lot of information, but once you’ve seen all of the Access Pass options, and there are five in total, it will make more sense. 📷 HITMAN 1 GOTY Access PassIncludes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 1 GOTY Edition: ICA Facility, Paris, Sapienza, Marrakesh, Bangkok, Colorado, Hokkaido, 3x GOTY Escalations and rewards and 4x Patient Zero campaign missions How to get it– Consoles: If you have previously downloaded the HITMAN 1 Legacy Pack, HITMAN 1 GOTY Legacy Pack or HITMAN 1 GOTY Upgrade for HITMAN 2, you will be able to download it for no additional cost. (Yes, that’s a free upgrade to the GOTY Edition if you only own the Standard Edition of H1!). The price for this Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. – Disc: If you own a version of H1 on disc, you must follow the process in the Legacy Pack FAQ to access that content in HITMAN 2 – and then redeem this Access Pass. – PC (Epic): If you pre-purchase or purchase HITMAN 3 on EGS within the first 10 days of launch, you will be granted the HITMAN 1 GOTY Access Pass for no additional charge. In addition, if you own or redeemed a free copy of HITMAN – The Complete First Season on EGS when it was available for free, you will be able to download this Access Pass at any time after purchasing HITMAN 3. 📷 HITMAN 2 Standard Access PassIncludes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 2 Standard Edition: Hawke’s Bay, Miami, Santa Fortuna, Mumbai, Whittleton Creek, Isle of Sgail, plus 1x Sniper Assassin map: Himmelstein How to get it– Consoles: If you own a digital copy of HITMAN 2 Standard Edition or HITMAN 2 SilveGold, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost. The price for this Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. – Disc: [See below] – PC (Epic): As HITMAN 2 is not available on EGS, we have set up an 80% discount for this Access Pass for the first 14 days after HITMAN 3’s launch. HITMAN 2 Standard Access Pass [DISC]Includes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 2 Standard Edition: Hawke’s Bay, Miami, Santa Fortuna, Mumbai, Whittleton Creek, Isle of Sgail, plus 1x Sniper Assassin map: Himmelstein How to get it– Consoles: If you own a physical disc copy of HITMAN 2 Standard Edition, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost through the HITMAN 2 in-game store. (You will see the full listing price if you look for the Access Pass in the PS/Xbox store as a disc owner.) On Xbox, you also need to own a digital copy of either HITMAN 3 or the HITMAN 2 Free Starter Pack before navigating to the in-game store. 📷 HITMAN 2 Gold Access PassIncludes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 2 Gold Edition: Hawke’s Bay, Miami, Santa Fortuna, Mumbai, Whittleton Creek, Isle of Sgail, New York, Haven Island, plus 3x Sniper Assassin maps: Himmelstein, Hantu Port, Siberia and 4x Special Assignments. How to get it– Consoles: If you own a digital copy of HITMAN 2 Gold Edition, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost. The price for this Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. – Disc: If you bought HITMAN 2 Gold Edition on Disc, it will have included a download code for the HITMAN 2 Expansion Pass; you need to use that to get access to the content from the Gold Edition. See below. – PC (Epic): As HITMAN 2 is not available on EGS, we have set up an 80% discount for this Access Pass for the first 14 days after HITMAN 3’s launch. It will also grant access to the HITMAN 2 Expansion Access Pass. 📷 HITMAN 2 Expansion Access PassIncludes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 2 Expansion Pass: New York, Haven Island, plus 3x Sniper Assassin maps: Himmelstein, Hantu Port, Siberia and 4x Special Assignments. How to get it– Consoles: If you own a digital copy of HITMAN 2 Gold Edition, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost. The price for the Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. – Disc: If you own a physical copy of HITMAN 2 Gold Edition, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost because a download code for the HITMAN 2 Expansion Pass was included in the box. If you have redeemed that code, the price for this Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. HITMAN 3 Access Pass on PC We’ve done everything possible to make this process smooth and player-friendly. However, due to various circumstances out of our control, we want to acknowledge that the process is different to our initial plans for PC players. We also want to share some of the initiatives we’ve set-up to make sure that PC players the chance to keep enjoying the benefits of the World of Assassination.
The HITMAN 1 GOTY Access Pass will be available to claim in the first 10 days after launch for anyone who purchases (or has pre-ordered) any edition of HITMAN 3 on Epic Games Store.
Owners of HITMAN 1 on EGS (including all players who claimed it when it was available for free in August) will get a free upgrade to the HITMAN 1 GOTY Access Pass at any time after purchasing HITMAN 3.
The HITMAN 2 Standard Access Pass and HITMAN 2 Gold Access Pass will be 80% off for 14 days after the launch of HITMAN 3 on Epic Games Store and will continue to be discounted regularly.
Our hope is that these initiatives help to ensure all HITMAN 3 PC players can able to enjoy the new game with full access to HITMAN 1 and their progression carried over as a minimum. HITMAN 3 Access Pass on Stadia Due to the convenient set-up of HITMAN 1-3 on Stadia, the Access Pass system is not required. Players will continue to have access to the locations they already own through Hitman: World of Assassination, or can purchase the games that they don’t own through the Stadia Store. HITMAN 3 Access Pass on Switch HITMAN 3 is the first game in the trilogy to be available on Switch. As such, each relevant Access Pass is available for purchase through the HITMAN 3 in-game store.
HITMAN VR
At launch, HITMAN 3 will support PS VR and all locations in the World of Assassination trilogy can be experienced in a new first-person perspective. Yes, that means you can traverse the outside of the tallest building in the (Hitman) world in PS VR! If you own the previous games from the trilogy on PS4, you can also access locations from them within HITMAN 3. That’s more than 20 Hitman locations from the World of Assassination trilogy to enjoy in PS VR. 📷 You can either play HITMAN 3 in PS VR natively on your PS4 or via backward compatibility on PS5. To make sure all PS VR owners can experience the game in VR, we’re including a free digital copy of the PS4 version of HITMAN 3 with all PS5 copies, whether you choose to buy it via disc or digital. If you are playing on PS5, your progress between the PS4 (VR) and PS5 (non-VR) versions is shared between the two versions. You’ll be able to play the non-VR version of HITMAN 3 on PS5 with the next-gen improvements that we support (including Dual Sense support!) and then switch to the PS4 version for VR and all of your items and unlocks will be right there waiting for you. You will need to have both versions of the game installed on your PS5 to make that happen. 📷 Whether you play on PS4 or PS5, a DUALSHOCK®4 wireless controller is required to play HITMAN 3 in VR. Playing HITMAN 3 in VR on PS5 also requires a PlayStation Camera adaptor. For full details on the requirements for playing PS VR on your PS5, including how to order a free PlayStation Camera adaptor, see the official PlayStation PS VR site.
More to come
📷 We have got our sights firmly set on January 20 and our entire team is doing everything in our power to make the launch of HITMAN 3 as successful as possible. It’s an incredibly exciting time for us to be so close to releasing our next game, as well as deliver the dramatic conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy. Please keep the conversation going on Twitter, Discord, Reddit and in HitmanForum and be excellent to each other. The World of Assassination awaits…
[Mobile Gaming] How the Nyan Cat led to the death knell for a popular mobile game- the downfall of RWBY Amity Arena.
Note: Many of the links are to the Amity Arena Library, a website devoted to the game which includes tracking the history of it through patchnotes and a running history of what cards entered and left the meta. Their website was a valuable resource for this post.
Mobile gaming has taken off like a wildfire since the advent of the smartphone boosted the average processing power a phone could carry. Initially it took the form of crossing over older, more easily runnable games onto the mobile market to... mixed success, but in recent years we've seen both the West and East use mobile gaming to replace the old fashioned movie tie in game. It's easily accessable, has a much wider reach than consoles or PC, you can take it on the go and standards are inherently lower for mobile games than they are a full 60 dollar game. Since the 2010s, mobile gaming has shifted to what's called the "Freemium" module. The game itself is free to download and start playing, but is insideously designed with obnoxious paywalls or artificial limiters put in place to limit how much you can play each day. If the game is part of a pre-existing franchise, additional money can be made through a premium currency or a chance to obtain high-powered units by rolling a slot machine random chance mechanic. And thus, gacha gaming was born. This sub has had several threads in the past on high profile gacha games, such as the monolithic Fate Grand/Order, Pokemon Go or Genshin Impact. One of the more popular things to roll for in gachas as a consequence is wallpapers for your homescreen, especially for high-grade units as they're usually animated to move a little bit on the homescreen. Today we're looking a low to mid-tier gacha game that rose and fell with the advent of one catgirl. Let's talk RWBY. RWBY is an online web anime made by Rooster Teeth focusing on four prospective monster hunters who get embroiled in a world-spanning shadow war. It's of debatable quality in matters of animation, combat, voice acting, story, worldbuilding, romance, and it's kind of a little racist if I'm being honest, but one of the major positives of RWBY is that the series tends to have good character design. Series creator Monty Oum set in the guidelines for the show while making it that most if not every design should be made to be cosplay friendly, hence why most of the outfits have things most costume designers haven't heard of like... pockets. And Rooster Teeth, above all else, likes making money. So they know people like RWBY's character designs, enough so that in 2017 plans were made to release a gacha game themed around RWBY called Amity Arena, which would be developed by Korean company NHN Entertainment. Amity Arena is a PvP tower defense game. Each player controls two turrets and a tower and has three minutes to use units themed from the show to destroy the other player's structures. Whoever took out more wins, destroying a tower is an instant victory. When the game launched, it had three tiers for units- Common (generally held for mooks or low-tier characters in the show), Rare (roughly protagonist-level or elite mooks go here) and Epic (High tier characters usually with an active ability that did lots of damage or stopped enemies in their tracks). The game launched in October 2018 to generally positive reviews from both mobile game players and RWBY fans alike. Fans were happy to get a lot of new official art for the characters in the game and the base gameplay loop was fun. Criticism at the time was largely themed around the lack of content besides PVP matches and some issues with the meta but overall, the launch went well. Each month, the developers would add new units, including popular characters like Neopolitian, Cinder Fall, Zwei the dog, and more. But everything changed with February 20th 2019, which introduced Neon Katt, the titular catgirl (RWBY characters are themed around fairytales, except for Neon, who is themed around Nyan Cat, and her partner Flynt Coal, who is themed off a potentially racist joke made by Rooster Teeth). Neon is a character from RWBY Volume 3 who's part of a team that RWBY face during a tournament arc. Her partner, Flynt Coal, was part of the game at launch, and Neon would join him a few months later. Neon in the show is a cocky fighter who taunts the heroes and zips around on rollarskates, which in-game is represented by Neon skating towards the nearest enemy structure to her and hitting it, while all units within a radius of Neon are taunted and provoked into attacking her above all other targets unless they-selves are coded to hit structures. On its own, not a bad idea for a unit, but Neon came with four big caveats:
Neon was the fourth corner of the square that became known as the Artillery Arena meta, which saw Neon, Cinder (who had an AOE ability she could use which was wide enough to hit a turret and tower and single-handedly killed the entire launch meta of using fragile swarm units), Zwei (an on-summon high damage AOE on any part of the map) and Penny (another AOE ability that instead did chip damage and locked a location down) turn the game's meta into a chip game. Every player ran at least one of the above cards, if only to counter the others. Neon was the universal counter in being anti-swarm and the hardest to stop, especially at launch where her taunt range was so large, it could grab units from the other lane.
Neon launched with a unit weight of "Heavy", which meant that if she was behind a unit she could push it on her way to the turret. This launched a sub-meta where Neon was placed behind a larger unit such as the Ursa (which like Neon was a unit that focused on structures but was made slow to cover its tankiness), to push them towards the turret faster. This was called Disco Bear. They eventually patched this so Neon phased through units by making her a lightweight.
Neon couldn't die. She was invincible until she hit a structure, which combined with her taunt meant that Neon was very annoying to fight and could lock down an entire lane of the battlefield by being placed well and taunting enemies to let you prepare a counter.
Neon was a very cheap unit to summon. Amity Arena uses a mechanic called "Aura" where all units cost a certain amount and it recharges over the match- for instance, protagonist Ruby Rose has a Rare card that costs four Aura to summon, while Weiss Schnee has two rares that cost three and five. Neo only cost two Aura, which made her one of the cheapest units of the game and thus disproportionately powerful for her cost and easy to cycle through your deck so you could spam her.
From the word go, Neon is an unpopular unit; she's clearly overbalanced and elements such as the Disco Bear glitch have players thinking she'll have to get knocked down in a nerf- she'll either be made slower, more expensive, or able to die pre-hitting a structure, right? Neon doesn't show up in the next patch. Instead, before she's fixed, an entire new class of units called Legendaries are introduced, and this is where the game goes full gacha. Legendaries were meant to represent the highest tier characters in the game, the ones who were either the most popular characters or the highest-tier fighters in the show. Or in some cases, the popular ships such as combo cards for White Rose (Ruby/Weiss), Bumblebee (Blake/Yang) and Flower Power (Ren/Nora). Legendaries, representing their value, were impossibly rare and had an infinitely small chance of actually appearing (The most reliable method was to buy the premium chests and hope you'd roll a Legendary, which often cost tons of money), and if you did get one, there was no way to guess which Legendary you'd actually get. Some such as White Rose and Adam were high tier units, others like Hazel or Checkmate were... kinda broken at launch. The playerbase isn't happy at this, especially as free to play players are left out in the cold and reliant on the game giving them high tier units effectively out of pity. Neon would get a small nerf in the April patch which lessened her taunt range and killed the Disco Bear meta, but her invincibility would be left untouched, even as players submitted feedback regarding how to make it more efficient. The official Amity Arena discord has a weekly feedback section on Tuesdays where players could submit up to four suggestions on how to nerf/buff units and general requests for quality of life such as "Can this character get a new skin from this part of the show," or "Can we have an option to lower music volume that's not just muting all music?" (they never did add that second request) Neon would then remain in this state until the November patch, despite constant weekly requests for a Neon rework, and all it would do is make Neon functionally mortal, in that she had a flat shield bar of 20 that would be lowered by one for each attack before the next hit would kill her. Neon could now die... but your chances of actually doing enough damage to stop her were slim, and regardless, you were now at a serious Aura defecit. It took seven months for this one unit to get a substantial nerf, all while the game added new units every week and the number of units being affected by patches each month began to gradually sink. To round up some of the major issues people had with Amity that developed throughout 2019 alongside Neon's general existance making life hell:
Common units were meant to be chump fodder, but could level up the most amount of times with a level cap at 13. This meant longer-term units that had a long time to level such as the Xiong Family card, the AK-130s the Beowolf Pack, or the White Fang gunners, could become shockingly strong if players grinded the money up to reach max level.
A pre-existing divide between free players and players willing to burn money IRL to get access to premium currencies led to a huge disparity in play. Free players have long complained about how hard it is to scrounge money together to level up units at higher costs as even the basic currency of Lien is hard to get large quantities of (you get a certain amount every match win but otherwise you need to burn the Schnee Premium Dust currency for the highest payouts, but SPD is also needed for shop resets, buying crates or unlocking cosmetics). The developers used to do frequent double weekends where all gains were doubled for a weekend, but these became less and less frequent as time went on. Legendaries only added to the divide, as their rarity was bad enough for players willing to spend money (one player, known as one of the largest whales in the community, in trying to get Sienna Khan, reported burning nearly nine hundred dollars on her, while taking nearly six hundred to get the Ice Flower card).
One actual counter was born to fight Neon in the Argus Shield, a stationary unit that existed solely to stall units and take damage. At 2 Aura, it was the first structure to counter Neon, which allevated one of the primary problems with Neon in that no way to counter her was cost-efficient for an enemy player. They buffed the Wall to 3 Aura eventually which killed that hope, and all this happened before Neon's November nerf.
The Summer of 2019 saw a large number of defensive units released; alongside the Argus Shield, several different units were released themed around turrets for the technological kingdom of Atlas, such as the Beam Turret. The Atlesian Burrow Gun was the straw that broke the camel's back and made for a miserable meta as the Burrow Gun would only appear (and be available to take damage) when a unit entered its range. These three units together were all very overpowered on launch and led to a large exodus of players sick of defensive and chip-based metas, especially as what few offensive units that were good enough to counter these metas (such as Professor Port and Adam Taurus) were often nerfed into the ground within a month of release.
Also around this time it became apparent that the developers were unable to meet the quotas that Rooster Teeth was forcing on them. The social media team admitted that a certain number of units needed to be in the game in time for Winter 2019 when Volume 7 was set to start, and as the year went on more and more game-breaking bugs were being found in units, or they were at best horrifically undertuned or overpowered. The Apathy was perhaps the largest case of this, as an unfound bug pre-release meant that the Apathy (who have a passive ability that let them self-duplicate) had no cap on their power, meaning that they could immediately overwhelm defenses and in the case of some phones, be such a resource hog the phone would crash. Many Legendary units were especially guilty of being under-tuned due to low Legendary availability meaning they were simply weren't powerful enough to compare with high-levelled units. Checkmate's ability simply didn't work at launch, and Neon made several more such as Hazel Rainart a joke. May Marigold's invisibility bubble would have been an interesting game changer... were it not for a bug that made it that units placed in the bubble still played their sound lines, meaning players knew what to expect. Things were so bad that when Flower Power launched and wasn't broken or needed an emergency patch, the playerbase were shocked.
Unfortunately, the Novemember patch did little to stop the problems with Neon, and a new problem would rear its head for Christmas: Jinn. This unit embodied many of the problems players had: She was a Legendary so it would be hard for free players to get her, and only added to the sheer number of Legendaries that were out there. She was another structure card, and she was horrifically broken. Stopping time for seven seconds in an area around any friendly units, Jinn broke the game overnight, with players horrified at how little playtesting she'd clearly had. Most chip units now couldn't damage structures as Jinn simply could stop time and freeze the turret for the duration of the attack. And to make matters worse? She cost two Aura, meaning it was very easy to cycle a deck and start Jinn spamming. And yet at two aura she was still one of the only cost-efficient Neon counters... until they patched her to be worth three Aura instead. Talking of the feline menace, January saw Neon get a HP nerf that set her shield at 14. Finally, Neon could be realistically be taken out, still at an Aura defecit but at least it can be countered and now they just have to raise her Aura- why are you buffing her game? Less than a month later, Neon got, of all things, a buff. Her HP shield was set at 20, and her attacks now did double damage. This is around the point where a lot of players begin to suspect the developers aren't listening to feedback and more long-term players dip out or drop the game. Neon got touched one more time in April, which slowed her down (which itself was a problem as Neon's lessened speed on spawn simply made her better at generating aggro), she dealt 10% less damage and made it somewhat easier to hit her enough to kill her, but a new problem was on the horizon. Because Neon was now no longer the game's White Whale for patches. Meet the White Fang Gunner Barracks. Added in September 2019, the Barracks fell under many player's radar simply because they were horrifically undertuned. Their gimmick was that every few seconds, a White Fang Gunner would spawn, with three spawning on death. In April, as Neon got her last appearance in the patches, the Barracks got a huge buff and became the centerpiece of the meta; they now spawned two Gunners, which made them immensely valuable for just five Aura. You could overwhelm many anti-swarm units before they had a chance, and shred your way through turrets. The Barracks would then go six months before this overtuning was rectified, barring one nerf in August that lowered their health to try and stem the tide of units. To sum up every other thing that went wrong during the year meta-wise:
The playercount was getting so low that players were able to make lists of the AI bots the developers had in place so lower-level players had a challenge (Amity breaks up players by a trophy system where you gain trophies with every win, and by this point most of the active players were in the 2500 to 3500 range. This also meant new players steamrolled through the lower levels only to hit a brick wall in the 3000 range, with the only reliable solution being to willingly lose matches until you were in your optimal range and grind victories until you reached a certain level.
The patches became more and more threadbare, going from 8+ units getting changed each month in early 2019 to three units at most getting changed in 2020 patches outside of the anniversary patch going back to the golden days of eight. The only area where they didn't get more threadbare was in the cosmetics and emotes that the developers were cranking out, all of which were only available through hours of grinding or premium currencies. This was despite the fact that the units were being released slower, going from once a week to once a fortnite.
The majority of units added in 2020 were Epic or Legendary tier, which were the hardest to get for free players unless they got lucky and they were added to the store (and if they had the lien as a Legendary in the store costs a flat 40,000 Lien). One Common and four Epics were released compared to twelve Epics and seven Legendaries. The release of Moonslice Adam especially was annoying for this regard, as Adam already had a Legendary released (at least for Team RWBY, each of them headlined a Legendary when it came to the team attack cards), and this was clearly done to pander to Adam's fans again as his first unit saw a spike in interest in the game. The math was done and showed how artifically scarce Legendaries were made.
The undeovertuning was still in play. Colossus is seen as one of the worst cards in the entire game because of its gimmick. I have literally never seen anyone play it. Flynt became overtuned and now he's a staple thanks to his trumpet's AOE attack being able to hurt turrets and shred most units. Launcher Nora was an especially overtuned unit thanks to her high-damage constant AOE barrage and long range meaning she could annhilate most anything if given enough cover. Even after patches she's still dangerous. September saw the White Fang Dropship Formation added, which was widely seen as a terrible unit and done as an emergency addition because the planned unit for September in the Grimm Seer had to be cut last minute for technical reasons.
The game has barely had significant content added since launch, with the primary gameplay still just being PVP. Barring Battle of Beacon (a mode where you can play as Ruby and Weiss and fend off Grimm which most players just use to grind chests, and no, they still haven't added Blake or Yang) and Plaza (a lobby where you can dress up as a character and run around Beacon), the game has added no new features and quality of life content players have requested since launch (rerolling in the shop, Superior Crates having guaranteed Legendary spawn rates) have been released at a snail's pace (you still can't reroll Legendaries if you're looking for a specific unit). Academies where players can unite to trade units and chat still lacks features that have been requested for years such as the ability to delete messages. And Plaza immediately went to hell because players were doing erotic role play in the chats and after people came forward with proof that minors were being sexually harassed in the Plaza or being coerced into side-channels, the dev response was to... just turn off the chat entirely instead of banning the accounts or implementing moderation. This also removed the chatlog which deleted a lot of the evidence of said harassment.
As OctobeNovember comes in, the players are getting more and more furious. The weekly feedback includes a near constant demand for an acknowledgement from the developers given how often it feels like the feedback is being ignored. The social media team get caught several times hyping up how the coming patch would address player concerns, only for said patch to lack those units. The meta has been locked down to the Xiong Family, Flynt, Launcher Nora, Spider-Mines and the hell-cat herself in Neon. Everyone runs at least one of these, people run meta decks not because they want to, but because it's the only way to have a chance of victory. And then in December, things implode. The patch for the month was set to launch on December 10th with the monthly event missions. But when the clock rolls around, the event missions (which usually take about two weeks to do if you're doing as many as you can a day)... has a six day timer. And the update doesn't come out. The art team doesn't release new unit art. The shop has no special timed bundles. There's no patch notes. And then the Twitter team who've been hard carrying the game through... actually talking to the players and acknowledging the grievances they have... admitted that they don't know what's going on either. The best guess is that the devs have come down with Covid, but no statements to confirm or deny this leave it as guesswork. The timer eventually got reset and people could do the event, but then on Christmas itself, another issue. Ruby has appeared in the plaza on Halloween (her canonical birthday) and Christmas, and if you go talk to her you get free stuff. But on Christmas people, people discovered that Ruby was talking as if you'd already talked to her. Because they hadn't updated Ruby yet for 2020. She still thought it was 2019 so if you'd talked to her then for goodies, she had none now. They patched it eventually but a lot of people didn't see this fix before the timer ran out to get the free stuff. Some have resorted to memes to cope with the fact that the game just seems to have died out of the blue. Others have been trying to desperately rally the players and find a way to save it. Some resorted to friendly mockery of the whales who'd spent thousands on a game that seems to be dying (seriously though gacha games need to curb this shit but they won't because whales are godsends for their bank balances). If the game doesn't get an update in January then two months without new content will mark the end, and the already significant playercount drops will only increase. And it's hard to say if any one thing could have turned Amity Arena's fate around beyond just "Have a better balancing team who can respond better to feedback." Neon began the time of death, but by the time December rolled around the meta was in a horrifically toxic place where if you wanted to make any progession, you had to get down and dirty with the pigs. The team just constantly failed to balance problem units outside of their emergency hotfixes of Jinn, and more often then not they went after units and buffed or nerfed them at random going off playcounts to determine what needed fixing instead of the actual written feedback they were getting. It's clear from the references to the show and some of the attempts to reach out to the community that at least one person in the team genuinely wanted to make the good appealing to RWBY fans, but somewhere during the game's lifespan, they lost their way. Less focus needed to be put on how to milk the players, and instead focusing on making a game sustainable and enjoyable enough to warrant the cosmetics and emotes. The game's failure ultimately isn't on the playerbase. It's on the people who were actually making the game who chose to slack off because they thought it acceptable to do so. Thanks for reading. EDIT: HOT OFF THE PRESSES, I JUMPED THE GUN Had I waited one more day, my story would have had a far more sudden ending, as the game just announced its shutdown for January. RIP.
Greetings and good day! As a 22 year old graduating nursing student, I lacked the requisite knowledge, the necessary budget and the required amount of time to learn how to build and set up my own PC. However, despite the horrors and adversity the pandemic has given to all of us worldwide; A positive thing about being locked down and isolated is the enormous amount of spare time we can use to learn and improve on things we are passionate about. For the past few months, I've been deep into this rabbit hole stemming from curiosity; It started with LTT Build Guides then to reading various forums on information. Still I was bottlenecked, The time constraints and information deficit was alleviated but the budget was no where to be found but my tinkering spirit needed to be indulged. Desperate, especially since I needed another PC separate from the laptop I currently use for school works which is almost full due to saved recordings of class proceedings. I searched through the basement of my grandmother's ancestral home and found the Acer Aspire 4315 laptop she bought in the mid to late 2000s and a Sega Victor V-Saturn Console [And before you flame me out because this is PCMR, read ahead as it may get better, and for those unfamiliar; the Sega Victor V-Saturn is a JVC branded variant of the Sega Saturn] which was given to me by my uncle. Initial boot up of the laptop, which due to the lack of an LCD panel and a very short VGA Cable, had to be ziptied to the back of a monitor. Upon initial assessment, the laptop only had the bottom half of the shell; thankfully, the motherboard, I/O and plastic shell (Although full of cracks) was still intact although it lacked SODIMM Memory, a storage drive, a battery, a monitor, a speaker, Mini PCIe Wifi Card and had a broken audio I/O port and a broken keyboard. I was able to procure the various parts needed to make it boot from my inventory of harvested parts from previous laptops I've owned such as the 512 mb of DDR2 SODIMM Memory, a 256 gb Western Digital 5400 2.5" HDD and a USB Wifi Card.The Saturn was in much better shape. When I took both home and booted them up it was surprising seeing the Laptop successfully boot (A fact exemplified by the photo above, which I took and sent directly to my brother in surprise) while the Saturn was beyond the grave and dead AF. To put context into both these machines; On November 2013, our province was devastated by the Super Typhoon Haiyan or Typhoon Yolanda as we called it. Thankfully for us, no one from our family was hurt or lost during the event but most of our material things including hardware were presumed to be damage to the point of no repair or dead included in those hardware were these two machines. It was incredibly surprising to see the Acer Laptop survive the tragedy and time being on the shelf. Upon cleaning up the fans and changing the thermal paste which had been there for more than a decade, I noticed that it was a Socket P processor which was up-gradable. Mulling over it the next days, I finally decided to do something about the casing, since it was really irritating seeing it behind the monitor. Initially, I wanted to transplant the motherboard into a broken sub woofer's wooden box and integrate a bluetooth speaker into it but seeing as how my tools only included a pair of screw drivers, box cutters, a hack saw, electrical tape and a hot glue, it was not meant to be. Ultimately, since the motherboard's PCB and the dimensions of the Saturn were all too similar, I just had to pull the trigger.Once I removed the electrical and hardware components of the Saturn and gave it to a local electronics recycler, removed the plastic standoffs for the internals; giving me a flat surface to work and painted it (Further reading..) it was ready for work. Unfortunately, I was unable to take photos of the build process because at the time I considered it insignificant and had a success rate of 0%. The laptop casing was sawed in half and literally placed on top of the Saturn's Shell. Casing - since the PCB was slightly larger due to the protruding fans than the Saturn's Shell. I cut a hole in the rear left side of the Saturn; while it already had an access door, had to be expanded due to the size of the PCB. Another opening had to be cut for the video output. Another concern to consider was mounting the motherboard into the casing, initially, I had planned on super gluing mother board standoffs in order to slightly elevate the motherboard but was unable to procure the necessary standoffs locally. So, in defiance of proper PC building, I literally sawed off the plastic shell of the laptop to the point in which it fit into the Saturn's shell and used the plastic standoffs in the laptop's shell to mount the PCB. Holding both casings were a pair of zip ties. The underside of the Saturn, showing the two zip-ties which joined the Saturn's casing and the laptop's sawed off casing. Paint- - A cousin of mine wanted to try hydro-dipping and the top portion of the shell was a viable test candidate. And you might say I violated the art of this machine and it may have looked perfect physical but its paint was yellow as a jaundice. It needed to go and frankly, good riddance. Still kept the bottom portion though in order to retain some of the Saturn's design The top portion of the shell. Cooling -The laptop's processor heat sink and fan still worked but to increase the lifespan of the system I wanted to add a secondary fan but since there are no fan headers, I salvaged an old PC 3 pin fan and wired up the 5V and ground wires to a USB 2.0 Male, cut a hole on the disc tray portion of the casing and mounted it blowing towards the mother board.. It works while it may be slower than if powered by a 12V source, it's still very effective as it keeps the processor at 23-25 degrees Celsius at idle and 40-50 degrees Celsius at a full load. I'm still hoping to source a fan filter. Inputs and Outputs - The laptop has 3 USB 2.0 ports and No USB 3.0 Ports, which is not enough considering I had to insert a USB Mouse, USB keyboard, 5V USB Fan and USB Audio Port. With this in mind, I bought a cheap USB 2.0 Hub for the equivalent of $ 3.34 at a local mall and a sourced a USB Audio Port online for the equivalent of $ 3.95 with shipping. Granted they were cheap, made of plastic and its quality was alright at best, I was still satisfied with their performance especially the USB 2.0 Hub. Hoping to find a PCMCIA USB 3.0 Card although drivers might be my enemy when I pursue that route. Audio was fine, could be better but couldn't complain; better something than nothing at all. Rear view, exposing the VGA Port and Fan exhaust cut out. Connectivity - At first, I had a TP-Link USB Wifi Card but upon digging my storage further, I was able to find a Wireless-N Mini PCIe Wifi Card but noted the lack of antennas. I was able to salvage antennas from a broken router left behind by our previous ISP (It has been 4 years since and they still haven't taken back the router) luckily, antennas were an IPEX wire which was the ones that connected to the wifi card.Since the card could not be physically screwed into place due to its diminutive size; I took a jank solution as you can see below. mini PCIe Wifi Card mounting mechanism (and yes, further cleaning is needed on those fans) - USB Ports are screwed into the other as space is limited. CPU - since it was a Socket P processor (it was a Celeron 540; single core). The laptop sports a GL960 Chipset which supports upto a 533mhz FSB but upon reading some forums, I've learned that it may be able to support C2Ds with a bus speed of upto 800mhz. Seeing as the Core 2 Duo T9500 but seeing as it was close to $50.00 with shipping; I was bottlenecked yet again and settled with the Core 2 Duo T8100 which I bought online for the equivalent of $ 7.78 as of posting including shipping. Still a very competent upgrade selection especially for the price. Storage - One of my cousins offered to give me their 1TB External HDD if I could recover their files such as vacation images and work files; turns out it was a physical connection damage and was easily able to recover the files. Of course, I offered to give back the 1 TB Drive but they insisted I use it since they already moved on the another external drive. Thanks. Immediately cloned my installation of Windows 7 from the 256 GB into the 1 TB 2.5" SATA Drive in the external HDD. RAM - While I was able to procure another 512gb of memory, it was not enough. Luckily, another uncle of mine (Yes, we have plenty of relatives) had a broken HP Laptop that had 2 sticks of 1GB DDR2 SODIMM. Thanks again! Now, I'm able to run dual channel and benefit from the increase in memory bandwidth. Power - Since it had no battery and the battery was unreasonably expensive, I settled on using an old laptop power brick which needed to be adapted to fit the laptop's barrel port. Luckily, I was able to use a port adapter from a universal laptop charger I used years ago. Additional Changes - Changed the original CMOS battery since it was resetting the BIOS settings when disconnected, was able to buy a CR 2032 battery for less than the equivalent of $ 1.00.Change the stock thermal paste with a Cooler Master IC Value V1 Thermal compound which costs free since I only used a friend's tube. Future Upgrades: (by priority and likelyhood)(1) Hoping to use the disc drive's SATA port with a 13 pin SATA to 22 pin SATA adapter for another drive possibly an SSD for faster boot times and increased responsiveness.(2) Still gunning for that Intel Core 2 Duo T9500**(3)**Looking for a PCIe Wifi Card that supports Wifi AC and also has bluetooth**(4)** Adding a PCMCIA USB 3.0 Port**(5)** Going with Wireless peripherals.(6) Hoping to add some RGB**(7)** Turning the original Saturn Controller into a retro USB controller. (highly unlikely) Internals (Yikes) Runs windows 7 professional rather well, video playback is smooth even at 1080p especially considering the integrated GMA X3100 graphics adapter and youtube playback is almost smooth upto 720p when using the H.264 chrome plug-in (1080p video have slight stuttering, I reckon a memory limitation.) Runs GTA : San Andreas at 900p low settings consistently at 35-45 fps, Runs Half-Life 2 at 900p lowest settings at 45-60 fps but frame drops are very pronounced. I didn't do synthetic benchmarks as I didn't think it was relevant for the purpose of the machine. Front view Time well spent, I'm typing this post using this machine. I've transferred all of my school recordings to the drive and have not experienced any problems so far. Although, transfer speeds were pretty dismal but I'll be downloading the recordings from cloud directly to the machine so it will be alleviated. For a machine that basically costs me less than $15 in my equivalent currency, a few errands and bargaining skills, it's a respectable albeit old machine that is surprising capable of basic tasks such as surfing the internet, watching movies and file storage. Internal view with the fan And some of you may ask. Why? Because I wanted to and that's the thing; If you want to do something or learn something then what's your excuse? Don't be afraid to think that you're doing it blindly or doing it wrong because everyone is and everyone is scared of doing something they are unfamiliar with. Eventually, if you take the leap and just do it then you'll soon find it comforting and somewhat enjoyable. Curiosity, Creativity and Courage. I forgot where I read the "3Cs of life" but living by that mantra and incorporating it to all aspects of live generally promote fine results. Hot glue and electrical tape combo. and Yes, it may not be a Ryzen 9 5900X with a Nvidia 3080 or other FICTIONAL HARDWARE, but it works and it's enough. PC Hardware is everywhere. It's understandable to have the necessary hardware for gaming or work but if you're a beginner like me and want to do things just for the sake of doing it then a little bit of lucky and hard work at scavenging and searching for parts is well worth your while. If you have recommendations or want to talk, PM away! This is truly the case of the journey being the best part rather than the destination. I've shared my first "Build" story, I hope you've enjoying it and have a nice day.
Disclaimer I am posting this here because I got a message from the mods asking me to. I'm not from London so links aren't London centric (but hopefully still of help) and the main post is here so any updates will likely be there (I will try here but it's hard to keep up with the amount of suggestions) Thanks. Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it. Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions: For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month! For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k. I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device. Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers
Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder
If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system. Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section. Completely free TV
If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox. Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like. Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird. Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device. For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV. Anime If you are into Anime there is
The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two. PC Centric software If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design
Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12. Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development. The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals. Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap. Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam. **BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however. IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff. Game Store Fronts
Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
Games with GoldBleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.
Gaming Subscriptions Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months
Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.
There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that. Audiobooks & Ebooks
Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
Sign LanguageBSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
BBC's Bitesizehere is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.
If you need some spare change Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change
If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the detailsAccording to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."
That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment. Hope it helps someone at least PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75! tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books Learning Language Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments: TogtogtogGives a lot of links for Spanish
Board & Tabletop games Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games ilyemco suggested these HEALTH I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix. Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7. If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery. HELP & ADVICE The lockdown Rules. Reasons to leave home include:
Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
Communal religious worship
Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house
I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)
FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THEROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though) _riotingpacifist wanted this links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:
Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.
You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen. Office suit software A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.
LibreOfficeThis has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.
Music Making I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software. Games development D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here
Greetings and good day! As a 22 year old graduating nursing student, I lacked the requisite knowledge, the necessary budget and the required amount of time to learn how to build and set up my own PC. However, despite the horrors and adversity the pandemic has given to all of us worldwide; A positive thing about being locked down and isolated is the enormous amount of spare time we can use to learn and improve on things we are passionate about. For the past few months, I've been deep into this rabbit hole stemming from curiosity; It started with LTT Build Guides then to reading various forums on information. Still I was bottlenecked, The time constraints and information deficit was alleviated but the budget was no where to be found but my tinkering spirit needed to be indulged. Desperate, especially since I needed another PC separate from the laptop I currently use for school works which is almost full due to saved recordings of class proceedings. I searched through the basement of my grandmother's ancestral home and found the Acer Aspire 4315 laptop she bought in the mid to late 2000s and a Sega Victor V-Saturn Console [And before you flame me out because this is PCMR, read ahead as it may get better, and for those unfamiliar; the Sega Victor V-Saturn is a JVC branded variant of the Sega Saturn] which was given to me by my uncle. Initial boot up of the laptop, which due to the lack of an LCD panel and a very short VGA Cable, had to be ziptied to the back of a monitor. Upon initial assessment, the laptop only had the bottom half of the shell; thankfully, the motherboard, I/O and plastic shell (Although full of cracks) was still intact although it lacked SODIMM Memory, a storage drive, a battery, a monitor, a speaker, Mini PCIe Wifi Card and had a broken audio I/O port and a broken keyboard. I was able to procure the various parts needed to make it boot from my inventory of harvested parts from previous laptops I've owned such as the 512 mb of DDR2 SODIMM Memory, a 256 gb Western Digital 5400 2.5" HDD and a USB Wifi Card.The Saturn was in much better shape. When I took both home and booted them up it was surprising seeing the Laptop successfully boot (A fact exemplified by the photo above, which I took and sent directly to my brother in surprise) while the Saturn was beyond the grave and dead AF. To put context into both these machines; On November 2013, our province was devastated by the Super Typhoon Haiyan or Typhoon Yolanda as we called it. Thankfully for us, no one from our family was hurt or lost during the event but most of our material things including hardware were presumed to be damage to the point of no repair or dead included in those hardware were these two machines. It was incredibly surprising to see the Acer Laptop survive the tragedy and time being on the shelf. Upon cleaning up the fans and changing the thermal paste which had been there for more than a decade, I noticed that it was a Socket P processor which was up-gradable. Mulling over it the next days, I finally decided to do something about the casing, since it was really irritating seeing it behind the monitor. Initially, I wanted to transplant the motherboard into a broken sub woofer's wooden box and integrate a bluetooth speaker into it but seeing as how my tools only included a pair of screw drivers, box cutters, a hack saw, electrical tape and a hot glue, it was not meant to be. Ultimately, since the motherboard's PCB and the dimensions of the Saturn were all too similar, I just had to pull the trigger.Once I removed the electrical and hardware components of the Saturn and gave it to a local electronics recycler, removed the plastic standoffs for the internals; giving me a flat surface to work and painted it (Further reading..) it was ready for work. Unfortunately, I was unable to take photos of the build process because at the time I considered it insignificant and had a success rate of 0%. The laptop casing was sawed in half and literally placed on top of the Saturn's Shell. Casing - since the PCB was slightly larger due to the protruding fans than the Saturn's Shell. I cut a hole in the rear left side of the Saturn; while it already had an access door, had to be expanded due to the size of the PCB. Another opening had to be cut for the video output. Another concern to consider was mounting the motherboard into the casing, initially, I had planned on super gluing mother board standoffs in order to slightly elevate the motherboard but was unable to procure the necessary standoffs locally. So, in defiance of proper PC building, I literally sawed off the plastic shell of the laptop to the point in which it fit into the Saturn's shell and used the plastic standoffs in the laptop's shell to mount the PCB. Holding both casings were a pair of zip ties. The underside of the Saturn, showing the two zip-ties which joined the Saturn's casing and the laptop's sawed off casing. Paint- - A cousin of mine wanted to try hydro-dipping and the top portion of the shell was a viable test candidate. And you might say I violated the art of this machine and it may have looked perfect physical but its paint was yellow as a jaundice. It needed to go and frankly, good riddance. Still kept the bottom portion though in order to retain some of the Saturn's design The top portion of the shell. Cooling -The laptop's processor heat sink and fan still worked but to increase the lifespan of the system I wanted to add a secondary fan but since there are no fan headers, I salvaged an old PC 3 pin fan and wired up the 5V and ground wires to a USB 2.0 Male, cut a hole on the disc tray portion of the casing and mounted it blowing towards the mother board.. It works while it may be slower than if powered by a 12V source, it's still very effective as it keeps the processor at 23-25 degrees Celsius at idle and 40-50 degrees Celsius at a full load. I'm still hoping to source a fan filter. Inputs and Outputs - The laptop has 3 USB 2.0 ports and No USB 3.0 Ports, which is not enough considering I had to insert a USB Mouse, USB keyboard, 5V USB Fan and USB Audio Port. With this in mind, I bought a cheap USB 2.0 Hub for the equivalent of $ 3.34 at a local mall and a sourced a USB Audio Port online for the equivalent of $ 3.95 with shipping. Granted they were cheap, made of plastic and its quality was alright at best, I was still satisfied with their performance especially the USB 2.0 Hub. Hoping to find a PCMCIA USB 3.0 Card although drivers might be my enemy when I pursue that route. Audio was fine, could be better but couldn't complain; better something than nothing at all. Rear view, exposing the VGA Port and Fan exhaust cut out. Connectivity - At first, I had a TP-Link USB Wifi Card but upon digging my storage further, I was able to find a Wireless-N Mini PCIe Wifi Card but noted the lack of antennas. I was able to salvage antennas from a broken router left behind by our previous ISP (It has been 4 years since and they still haven't taken back the router) luckily, antennas were an IPEX wire which was the ones that connected to the wifi card.Since the card could not be physically screwed into place due to its diminutive size; I took a jank solution as you can see below. mini PCIe Wifi Card mounting mechanism (and yes, further cleaning is needed on those fans) - USB Ports are screwed into the other as space is limited. CPU - since it was a Socket P processor (it was a Celeron 540; single core). The laptop sports a GL960 Chipset which supports upto a 533mhz FSB but upon reading some forums, I've learned that it may be able to support C2Ds with a bus speed of upto 800mhz. Seeing as the Core 2 Duo T9500 but seeing as it was close to $50.00 with shipping; I was bottlenecked yet again and settled with the Core 2 Duo T8100 which I bought online for the equivalent of $ 7.78 as of posting including shipping. Still a very competent upgrade selection especially for the price. Storage - One of my cousins offered to give me their 1TB External HDD if I could recover their files such as vacation images and work files; turns out it was a physical connection damage and was easily able to recover the files. Of course, I offered to give back the 1 TB Drive but they insisted I use it since they already moved on the another external drive. Thanks. Immediately cloned my installation of Windows 7 from the 256 GB into the 1 TB 2.5" SATA Drive in the external HDD. RAM - While I was able to procure another 512gb of memory, it was not enough. Luckily, another uncle of mine (Yes, we have plenty of relatives) had a broken HP Laptop that had 2 sticks of 1GB DDR2 SODIMM. Thanks again! Now, I'm able to run dual channel and benefit from the increase in memory bandwidth. Power - Since it had no battery and the battery was unreasonably expensive, I settled on using an old laptop power brick which needed to be adapted to fit the laptop's barrel port. Luckily, I was able to use a port adapter from a universal laptop charger I used years ago. Additional Changes - Changed the original CMOS battery since it was resetting the BIOS settings when disconnected, was able to buy a CR 2032 battery for less than the equivalent of $ 1.00.Change the stock thermal paste with a Cooler Master IC Value V1 Thermal compound which costs free since I only used a friend's tube. Future Upgrades:
Hoping to use the disc drive's SATA port with a 13 pin to 22 pin SATA adapter for use with another drive; possibly a 2.5" SATA SSD for faster boot times and increased responsiveness.
Still gunning for that Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 though
Still looking fro a PCIe Wifi Card that supports AC Wifi and also has bluetooth functionality.
Adding a PCMCIA USB 3.0 Port
Changing peripherals to wireless peripherals.
Hoping to add some RGB, however, should it be out of my budget then maybe christmas lights or LED lights.
Convert the original Saturn controller to a USB one for retro gaming (highly unlikely)
Internals (Yikes) Runs windows 7 professional rather well, video playback is smooth even at 1080p especially considering the integrated GMA X3100 graphics adapter and youtube playback is almost smooth upto 720p when using the H.264 chrome plug-in (1080p video have slight stuttering, I reckon a memory limitation.) Runs GTA : San Andreas at 900p low settings consistently at 35-45 fps, Runs Half-Life 2 at 900p lowest settings at 45-60 fps but frame drops are very pronounced. I didn't do synthetic benchmarks as I didn't think it was relevant for the purpose of the machine. Front view Time well spent, I'm typing this post using this machine. I've transferred all of my school recordings to the drive and have not experienced any problems so far. Although, transfer speeds were pretty dismal but I'll be downloading the recordings from cloud directly to the machine so it will be alleviated. For a machine that basically costs me less than $15 in my equivalent currency, a few errands and bargaining skills, it's a respectable albeit old machine that is surprising capable of basic tasks such as surfing the internet, watching movies and file storage. Internal view with the fan And some of you may ask. Why? Because I wanted to and that's the thing; If you want to do something or learn something then what's your excuse? Don't be afraid to think that you're doing it blindly or doing it wrong because everyone is and everyone is scared of doing something they are unfamiliar with. Eventually, if you take the leap and just do it then you'll soon find it comforting and somewhat enjoyable. Curiosity, Creativity and Courage. I forgot where I read the "3Cs of life" but living by that mantra and incorporating it to all aspects of live generally promote fine results. Hot glue and electrical tape combo. and Yes, it may not be a Ryzen 9 5900X with a Nvidia 3080 or other FICTIONAL HARDWARE, but it works and it's enough. PC Hardware is everywhere. It's understandable to have the necessary hardware for gaming or work but if you're a beginner like me and want to do things just for the sake of doing it then a little bit of lucky and hard work at scavenging and searching for parts is well worth your while. If you have recommendations or want to talk, PM away! This is truly the case of the journey being the best part rather than the destination. I've shared my first "Build" story, I hope you've enjoying it and have a nice day.
In-depth look At Mihoyo's History, misconception about Gacha gaming industry, and Genshin Impact's future
You Are The Real MVP - Why Genshin Impact Is The Real Game of the Year in 2020:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLxgyp0pnMQ Hi all, I see there is a lot of anger and anxiety toward Genshin Impact due to the wide audience it brought to the table, as well as a lot of misconceptions about the gacha gaming industry. I am 40 years old and have been gaming for over 30 years. I have 300+ DAYS /played in World of Warcraft and recently, over 1000 hours in Path of Exile with popular build guides with hundreds of replies. I also have played just about every major hit of every era on every platform. I really want to tell you who Mihoyo really is, how the gacha gaming industry works, and what Genshin Impact's future looks like. Mihoyo's History In 2011, three college students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (comparable to Cornell in America) released their first game, FlyMe2TheMoon. When they graduated in 2013, they used their own money to make the first Honkai game (released as Zombiegal Kawaii overseas). This game allowed players to farm gold coins to buy all weapons and gear, only spend real money to speed up progress and came with glorious two players co-op way ahead of other mobile games at the time. At end of the day, players just didn't pay money for it. When they took it to investors, they were laughed at and ridiculed by everyone. Nobody is going to pay money for this silly anime stuff! You guys don't know how to monetize a game! Both of these games are still available on App Store, feel free to download them to check them out! In 2014, on the verge of bankruptcy, the team learned monetization model from Puzzles & Dragons, the first-ever mobile game to break a billion dollars, and released Honkai 2 with the same art style and gameplay. The biggest change was moving to the gacha model. The game became a top-10 grossing title in China, released to overseas market as Guns GirlZ - Mirage Cabin and Guns Girl - Honkai Gakuen. Mihoyo the company was born. Today, Mihoyo has over 1000 employees and pays them more money than titans like Tencent and Netease, and runs their office in the ultra-expensive heart of Shanghai business district. Despite Genshin Impact's smashing global success and player's thirst for more content, they gave many of their employees a full 8 days break, standard with the 10/01 Chinese national holiday, for the historic job they did with the global launch. They understand it is a marathon, not a sprint. For Mihoyo, the most important metric for their title will always be LIFETIME REVENUE, and they do not abandon their titles. All of them are still available. Honkai 2 is still getting content updates six years after release, even if the game itself is nothing more than a piece of history for them at this point. Honkai Impact 3 hit an all-time high revenue month this year, still makes a few hundred million dollars a year in China/Japan, three years after release, and Mihoyo took every dollar they made and spent an unprecedented 100 million dollars on a mobile game we know as Genshin Impact. You can count on Mihoyo to treat its most ambitious title ever with love and care, but you must remember they will always prioritize LIFETIME REVENUE over any other metric, which is what successful companies do because it is the only way to make the product best in class. Fate Grand Order - Genshin Impact's TRUE inspiration In 2015, Fate Grand Order was released as a turn-based mobile JRPG, the first six months it scored just $100 million dollars, and was on the verge of sinking into irrelevance. Five years later, the game grossed 4 billion dollars and became the most successful PVE game on any platform since GTA 5. How did it happen? Many say it is the fate IP, but the truth is fate's IP is nothing special in a sea of big IPs trying to make a splash in mobile and failed miserably, just ask Nintendo how their two Mario games performed, or Square about their countless Final Fantasy mobile games. 80% of the billion-dollar games on mobile are actually brand new IP's. The biggest challenge for every PVE game-as-a-service is monetization. PVP games like League of Legends and Fortnite do not need huge content updates to stay fresh and can maintain much higher daily active user counts to sell cosmetics, make $5 per player, and still hit a monster year. Monetizing PVE games is much harder. Players simply run out of things to do and quit the game, no matter how quickly you can produce content. Games like Path of Exile and Warframe struggle to break 100 million a year in revenue. PVP gacha games like Summoners War and AFK Arena can rely on whales dueling each other to force meta changes, and they grew into billion-dollar franchises in their own right. But Fate Grand Order had a different idea in mind, what if you design amazing characters that are truly desirable, and price them at a low gacha rate so it takes thousands of dollars for rich players to max out their box by pulling multiple copies? You are never going to have the player base of a Candy Crush, let's try to maximize our revenue ceiling from whales instead, and make players emotionally attach to their characters because they are so well designed. The rest was history. While there are indeed many generous gacha games like Granblue Fantasy, Azur Lane, Dragalia Lost, etc, none of them are in Fate Grand Order's tier if you look at their annual numbers, not even in the same ballpark. Other multi-billion dollar franchises like Puzzles and Dragons, Monster Strike also follow the same concept of greatly increasing the limit of what a whale can spend on a PVE game to max out a character. And yes, we are talking about providing strong benefits for getting multiple copies of the same character. The numbers have proved time and time again, that maximizing whale spending in a PVE game is far more revenue than maximizing the number of monthly card players. Genshin Impact's Target Audience Any product that tries to be everything for everyone is doomed to fail. Mihoyo has very clear audiences in mind:
Players who love anime graphic and ARPG, there is simply no AAA game out there in this genre. Tales series, Xenoblade, etc. are all low budget, low sales games. Granblue Relink is single platform and dead on arrival. There is no dominant franchise at all.
Players who love Zelda's open-world exploration and environment interaction, but hate the difficult puzzles and survival/weapon durability/ammo aspect, and want constant content updates. Hey, a co-op mode with a real RPG system sounds amazing!
Mobile players who want more than a simple game like Fate Grand Order. They want to do dailies during commute and don't mind doing harder content on PC/console. The game needs to look good on a big screen at home. They don't want to learn/maintain two different PVE games given how time-consuming these games are.
Players who retired from MMORPG/ARPG's due to real-life commitments. Many of us who played World of Warcraft have kids now, and the outdated graphics, 20 buttons skill bar, the social requirements for raids . . . it is just too much to keep up. We want a simpler game that looks good and takes far less time to learn and play.
And let's just say they hit it out of the park with the greatest launch in gaming history. Never before a game hit PC/PS4/iOS/Android with cross-play on day one in 100 countries, 13 text language and 4 fully voiced languages, never before a game hit top 5 grossing in China/Japan/US/Korea at the same time, I don't even recall a marketing campaign did so well across so many drastically different regions and cultures. The AAA graphics, sound, incredible polish, you don't need me to tell you why this game is amazing. But from the competition's standpoint, the launch itself was like watching a bronze player climb to grandmaster overnight, and the game's biggest strength. Far bigger companies, franchises, do not dare to even think about launching a game at this scale. Mihoyo released the failed Honkai 1 overseas when the company was on the verge of collapsing, they always punched way above their weight when it comes to global releases. Make no mistakes about it, this was never meant to be a single-player AAA game or a direct Diablo 3 / Path of Exile / Warframe competitor. It was meant to be a game that converts PC/console players to gacha gamers, by casting a wider net than any mobile game ever. They only need a small percentage of PC and console players to change their behaviors. The rest of them can play for free or leave and it won't hurt them at all. The monthly card is designed as a super good deal (look, WAY cheaper than World of Warcraft $15 per month) to get PC/console players to spend for the first time ever, breaks down their "why pay for a free game" defense. Once they pay once, the pity 5 star is always just a few dozen more pulls away, let me buy another pack! Before you know it, monthly cards are converted to dolphins, dolphins are converted to whales. It is by far the strongest business model for a PVE game today, and people who are new to the genre won't know what hit them. Genshin Impact has an excellent chance to end Fate Grand Order's reign as the #1 most successful PVE game on any platform since 2016, by the virtue of being on every platform, and the same version across all regions. LIFETIME REVENUE = Active Player Base * Spend Per Player * Longevity For every game as a service, balancing these three variables is an incredibly difficult task. Can Mihoyo increase the rate on an event (like Cy Games gala events), put up a Diluc banner, and greatly increase spend per player? Yes, but they will provide less reason for people to pull on other days and lose out on long term revenue. Likewise, the resin limitation is to prevent even whales from maxing out their characters and moving onto other games, that is why they have a hard limit on resin refill. Player progression is meticulously controlled to ensure content can keep up. A huge part of internal testing is to test how quickly a player of each spending level can go through content. Two-day, three-day, seven-day, and thirty-day player retention are critical metrics to F2P mobile games, you will always lose a huge number of players during these transitional phases. These are tried and true methods in gacha gaming to preserve the maximum number of players over the long haul. It is basically a much more advanced progression control than say, World of Warcraft's weekly raid lock outs. You have to FORCE your players to take breaks, or you will lose them way faster than you can churn out new content. All four dailies, spend resins, and open-world exploration for crafting/ascension materials, a couple of chests/quest you missed, that is a health 60 minutes of gameplay. Gacha games provide resources for the next pull on every daily, every quest, every event. Getting a five star is a better feeling than getting any item drop in MMORPG/ARPG. Gacha games have a much stronger hold on its players because of this addiction, you are always very close to the next pull! Genshin Impact takes it a step further to actually encourage you to do single pulls over ten pulls. Over time resources will inevitably be loosened up as more contents are released, and daily quests and slowed down progression is there to keep you playing. Behind the scenes, there is an ultra-complex data model that works tirelessly to balance all three variables. Looking at Mihoyo's track record with Honkai Impact 3, they know what they are doing to maximize LIFETIME REVENUE. With every gacha game like this, the developer has a price point they need to hit on a five star, then based on the competition they usually adjust the price significantly higher than what they consider to be acceptable. Whether it is gacha rate or stamina, once you reduce the price, you can never, ever increase it again. Start high and drop it when you need to is a much better strategy, and players think you listened to their feedback, win-win! If the daily active user doesn't drop while you keep the price high, why lower the price? The developer and player are always in a tug of war, with the developer testing player's limit on what is acceptable. It is just like how Apple kept iPhone with 2GB of memory and tiny screen size for a very long time because they are looking at the overall LIFETIME REVENUE, not because they didn't know their product needed these features. Genshin Impact is priced at a premium because it has no competition, just like how Apple iPhones were priced at an ultra-premium when it first came out. Over time, prices will drop, resources will come easier, but until there is a real competitor, they do not need to care what lesser gacha games do. Do you think KeQing should be priced the same as a gacha character with PS1 graphics? Genshin Impact's Future 100 million dollars estimate from Sensor Tower in two weeks does not include PC, PS4 and Chinese Android. Chinese Android revenue has been 1.8 times of China iOS for Honkai 3, many in the Chinese gaming industry speculate the true global revenue number of Genshin Impact is easily double of what Sensor Tower shows. Mihoyo is a private company and it fired one of the employees who bragged about the 09/15 China PC numbers, which was 10 million dollars, so we will never know the exact figures unless they go public. Don't expect Mihoyo to ever share revenue/player base numbers, that is just not how they operate. There is no way the game can continue the 100 million dollars a week pace, that is 5 billion dollars a year, so for haters out there, you will see a massive decline in the player base between content updates, you will see the game falling out of top 10 grossing, you will get your "I told you so" moments when the weekly revenue drops by 50-70%. It is perfectly normal for gacha games between banners, and what Gensin Impact is doing is completely unsustainable. This is called filtering out users and building a stable player base. However, even with the inevitable massive decline, this is a game destined to be a multi-billion dollar franchise. I personally give it a very conservative estimate of two billion dollars in three years. It will easily outperform the likes of BOTW, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. by the end of the first year in terms of the player base, hours played, and revenue. It will take money away from all other gacha games and force other developers to step up their game. It will take money away from long-standing multi-billion dollar PC PVE franchises like Dungeon Fighter Online, and to a lesser degree, MMORPG's like FF14. It will encourage companies to play with bigger budgets and provide PC/console releases for bigger mobile releases like Diablo Immortal, instead of relying on emulators. It will even change the monetization model for western F2P games. Iksar, lead designer of Hearthstone has been playing Genshin Impact since release. Imagine if Hearthstone didn't allow you to craft cards, and provided benefits to getting multiple copies of the same card. It is way too late for Hearthstone to change now, maybe there is still time to change Diablo Immortal's monetization model, I believe they will need either gacha or real-money auction house to be competitive. But will Genshin Impact shake up the AAA industry? My personal opinion is no. Japanese developers do not have the technology to make mobile games at this level, you just need to look at the top 20 grossing Japanse mobile games. Western developers do not have the artwork to make characters so attractive, I mean just look at Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 characters, will whales spend $1000 on them? Whales spend enough money in gacha to pick up girls in real life many times over, many of them are ultra-rich and live a lavish lifestyle, just showing anime assets is not enough to win them over. In all of my years playing Western games I have never been attached to a female character as I did with Artoria aka King Arthur of Fate Grand Order, I played the game for six months even if I don't really like turn-based JRPGs, and always enjoyed listening to her "Excalibur". Mihoyo is coming very close with some of Genshin Impact's character designs. I am not sure if Western culture is capable of creating the type of characters that can connect with players on an emotional level. Lara Croft is definitely not it. I believe Western gaming's general pursuit of realism and grittiness hurts them when it comes to creating an idealistic world and dreamy characters. Top western games tend to expose the harshness of real-world to players, instead of offering an escape. In many ways, Mihoyo's mastery of anime is closer to a Japanese company than Chinese company, it is not something you can just hire a couple of artists for. Likewise, the western market will always be 15-20% of the overall revenue for gacha games at best, it is difficult for western companies to justify making them with a AAA budget. It is also incredibly hard to make a cross-platform PVE game on PC, Console, and Mobile look this good. It is not something you get from just licensing Unity. There are maybe a handful of companies out there capable of dropping 100 million dollars on a game like this, but until their main cash cow die, which studio dares to take this kind of risk? The tier 2-3 companies are simply not capable of spending 100 million dollars even if they went all in. I don't see a real competitor in two years, not even from Tencent and Netease, the bar is that high. How You Should Approach It As A Player If you are not a fan of gacha games, no problem! The best way is to play it like a free AAA game with unlimited free DLC's. With the amount of money this game makes, in a few years it will have more content than any other open-world game, and the developer will also be more generous over time as end game contents become more abundant. As their tools mature, the amount of time it takes to release contents across all platforms at the same time will shrink significantly, there will also be more events they can queue up. Every F2P player can get at least one five star character without rerolling if they complete most of the quests and use up their gifted currencies. I expect 100% F2P players will get at least 4 five-stars per year, 3 from pity, 1 from luck. I believe F2P with limited resources is a lot more fun and only spend money to support the developer. I am still 100% F2P on Genshin Impact as of today, because getting 20 pulls from the monthly card is not that exciting. I will wait for a one-time-only deal later in the game's life cycle. For players who want to be a bit more involved, you can buy a monthly card, do your dailies, enjoy new content, enjoy the thrills of pulls, and pity 5 stars. Once Mihoyo gets a stable end game loop out there, they will definitely loosen up on resins. Just don't expect to play it like a Path of Exile season start. Save currencies and pity timer for a banner you want. Take it slow! Gacha games are designed to be played over many years, alongside other games. Take your Cyberpunk 2077 break, take your Call of Duty break, but in the end, there is simply no anime ARPG competition on any platform, and if you are into this kind of game, you will be back.
Stupidly long and detailed XPS 17 9700 post (lemon checklist, 1h/1d/1w/1m reviews, full teardown w/thoughts, benchmarks, battery life tests, clean W10 install driver ‘kit’, AMA).
Part 1 of 6
Hi everyone, This is my first post so bear with me. I’ve been stalking this sub since the release of the 9x00 series and it has helped me so I figured I’d return the favour. As the title says, this will be a pretty in-depth post of my experience with my XPS 17 9700 (hopefully it doesn’t get detected as spam or something). I’ll try to condense my findings as best I can. If anyone wants the full-fat version, check out the thread I have on my site. I’m happy to try and answer any questions. https://robert-m-personal-projects.shivtr.com/forum_threads/3269521?post=14450772#forum_post_14450772 I came from an XPS 15 9560 (i5 7300HQ / 1050 / 32GB RAM / 2x 960GB SSDs / Intel AC 9260/ FHD / 56Wh), so I will be drawing comparisons to it throughout the post. ____________________
Post contents:
Specs
Lemon Checklist
1 hour, 1 day, 1 week and 1 month reviews
Benchmarking, gaming, battery testing and repate results [In parts 2, 3 and 4]
Teardown with thoughts and trackpad rant [In part 5]
Driver ‘kit’ for doing a clean W10 install [In part 5]
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB (x2) [Originally Kioxia KXG60ZNV1T02 1TB]
Sharp SHP14D6 3840 x 2400, 60Hz, 35ms, UHD+ touchscreen
Killer AX500 DBS
97Wh battery
130W charger
Windows 10 Pro
I went for the cheapest config I could with an i9 and 2060. Got in touch with Dell to see if they can sell me one without SSDs, RAM or an OS, they said no. Ordered it from their enterprise site when they had it on discount. The stock setup with 3 years of premium support (they had it on discount and it was only about £50 more than 1 year) cost me about £2954. A stupid amount, I know, but compared to other machines close to this (of which there are maybe 3), this looks like a bargain. I’d also like to say that I don’t know why reviewers keep saying that the WiFi card is Intel-based. The AX500 is a Qualcomm heap of junk, device manager detects it as Qualcomm, command prompt detects it as Qualcomm, all the drivers are Qualcomm and it even has Qualcomm LASER ETCHED into the physical component! Yes, the Precision 5750 (which is nearly identical to the XPS 17 9700) uses an Intel AX201 and is branded as such, but the XPS doesn’t. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take a pic of it without the antenna bracket, so you’ll have to take my word for it. ____________________
Lemon checklist:
I’ve compiled this from my stalking of the internet and reading about the blood bath of XPS issues. The bits in the square brackets are how mine fared with each issue.
Trackpad wobble / pre-click - [Semi-Pass]
Can't click trackpad while holding laptop in the air by its corner / Trackpad clicks itself when held in the same way - [Pass]
Weird dead zone on edges of trackpad (not palm rejection), that Dell claim is normal - [Pass]
Early units would not draw the full 130W from their chargers under full load - [Pass]
Backlight bleed - [Pass]
Dead pixels - [Pass]
Lid not closing properly and opening slightly when laptop is being carried sideways - [Pass]
Bent screen / not flush with the body when closed (along the short side) - [Pass]
Inductor / coil whine - [Semi-Pass]
Missing or stripped external screws - [Pass]
Missing or stripped internal screws - [Pass]
Scratches and dents on the panels, especially the bottom - [Pass]
Speaker / TRRS crackle - [Pass]
Dead ports - [Pass]
Overheating - [Pass]
DPC latency - [Pass]
Hot while sleeping / draining battery while sleeping - [Fail]
The trackpad came fine but it developed the issue after some time. See my teardown and subsequent rant further down. The trackpad design is utterly abysmal, and it is only a matter of time before it develops a wobble. The laptop came with a little bit of coil whine that would be drowned out in a room with normal ambient noise, but weirdly, swapping the RAM seemed to eliminate it completely. I don’t know if the sleep heat is a Dell or Windows issue, but it is unacceptable. My 9560 suffered from battery drain during sleep, but not heat. I use hibernate on the 17 to get around this. ____________________
Reviews:
This section might read a little weirdly compared to the rest of the post because I’ve lifted most of it straight from my site.
1-hour review:
The moment I took it out of the box I was surprised at the size of it, it's not much bigger than my XPS 15 9560. All the reviewers keep saying it's super heavy and it puts them off from using it. It's only about 500g heavier than any of the XPS 15s since the 9550 from 2015, that's a small bottle of water. Picking it up for the first time, it was definitely heavier than I thought it'd be, but it's also nowhere near as bad as the reviewers made it out to be. You feel the weight difference in your hand, but when it's in your bag, you really won't feel the difference, especially if you have a good bag or are used to having a reasonably heavy one any way. On the topic of bags, my Wenger easily swallowed this thing. While I was looking it over for any defects, I couldn't help but notice just how well it's built. This thing is like a brick, you could probably kill someone with it. I mean, I'm used to the top notch build of my 9560, but this seems even more sturdy. Opening the lid of my 9560 required the jaws of life, which I loved, because it meant that the screen would not wobble about when it's open. The 17 is really perplexing in that respect. You still need to be the Hulk to open it, but you can now open it with 1 hand as well. I think that's some pretty clever hinge design. The screen is still very sturdy when open. Not quite as good as my 9560, but that's because that has a much smaller and lighter screen. A quick word on the I/O: it's atrocious, completely unacceptable. Dell have followed Apple's nonsense and turned this into another dongle-book. Considering this laptop is a couple of mm thicker than the 9560 (not counting the rubber feet on both), Dell have no excuse to not put in a couple of USB-As and an HDMI. At least the SD reader is still there. You do get given a small USB-C to A and HDMI adapter, but it shouldn't be necessary. RIP I/O, you will be dearly missed. Now, upon powering up my old 9560, the first thing to greet me was a BSOD, not even a POST screen, just a straight blue screen error. Luckily this wasn't the case this time. As an XPS owner of 3 years, I wasn't really as blown away by the crazy bezels on the display as others (I was still impressed), but I am very happy to see that they ditched the chin and moved the camera up top. What did blow me away was the tiny (regardless of how mediocre it actually is) web cam they managed to cram in the top bezel. I also didn't realise just how bright 500 Nits is on a display like this, it's eye searing. I'm used to the supposedly-400 nits of my 9560 and the 250 nits of my external displays (they seem a lot brighter). In terms of colour accuracy, I'm yet to test it with real photos from my dad's DSLR, but I did change the profile from Dell's 'full vivid' one to Adobe RGB. Also, the W10 HDR feature appears to be partially bricked and drops the panel brightness significantly while also enabling adaptive brightness which I can't find a way to turn off, so I'm running it in non-HDR mode, which isn't really a problem for me. While I was doing the initial Windows setup, I noticed the fans spiking to quite a high RPM for a couple of mins and then they died down and turned off altogether. While they were blasting, they weren't that annoying. The fans didn't scrape anything, the bearings sounded fine (no whining or squeaking) and the overall rush of air was very low frequency so it wasn't as disturbing as a high pitch fan system. Compared to the 9560 (which wasn't that disturbing either), the overall frequency is lower and slightly less disturbing. The amplitude is actually lower from what I can make out unless the fans really spin up. The last things I want to touch on in this section are the trackpad and keyboard. The trackpad is massive, and on my unit, all good. No wobble or pre-click or air click. Compared to my 9560, the click is more subtle and muted. It's not as harsh or loud a click noise. I think they've done something to damp the sound or used a better-quality button, but I like it a lot. The keyboard is excellent. I really liked the 9560, this is even better. The keys are slightly bigger, so that's something to get used to, but I got used to it very quickly. The caps also have a satin or matte finish to them which makes them feel better to the skin in my opinion, but I don't see that having a performance impact. As for the switches, they still have 1.3mm travel. Compared to the 9560, they have a lower actuation force (which I really like) and appear to be snappier in their response. Like the 9560, this is also a very quiet keyboard. The only thing I don't like is that Dell removed the Next and Previous media keys, there's only a Play button now. Not too big an issue for me as I have those functions mapped to mouse macros.
1-day review:
About a day later and everything is still good, apart from the wretched audio drivers that Dell keeps using. Realtek audio drivers and Waves audio are a steaming heap of garbage. I spent a large majority of my day trying to get around Waves with EqualiserAPO like I did on the 9560, but I had no luck, the current audio quality is awful. I'm hoping things will be better when I do a clean install of W10 after the SSD swap in the next couple of days. Another thing I noticed was with my multi-display setup. The BIOS on this has the option to bypass the integrated graphics and run all the displays straight off the 2060 which is great. The problem is, that although my 2060 clearly shows the ability to support 4 displays in the Nvidia control panel (and Nvidia told me as much when I contracted them a few months ago), it will only detect 2 of my 3 external displays. The spec sheet of my thunderbolt dock clearly states that it can support 3 displays (top of P22 https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_electronics/esuprt_docking_stations/dell-thunderbolt-dock-tb16_concept_guide_en-us.pdf ). I suspect that my HDMI to mini DP cable is dead though. I tried plugging one of the displays in over Thunderbolt instead, but it doesn't get detected unless I unplug one of the other ones. Though with that being said the TB16 spec sheet says nothing about running a display off the TB3 port. [Retroactive insert for Reddit: It ended up being a dead cable, all is good.] Other than the above, the laptop has been great so far. I'm really loving the keyboard, I've typed this entire post on it. Temps have really been behaving themselves, idle and light use temps are sitting in the 39-42 range for both the CPU and GPU on max power settings both in in Dell's software and in W10. I've also told it to only use the 2060 as opposed to switching between the iGPU and dGPU. The fans barely run at these temps. I'm also really not used to seeing 2% CPU utilisation. I'm used to seeing my old i5 7300HQ constantly sweating at 20% and over for even the most menial tasks. Opening a single new Chrome tab would spike it to 100% for a few seconds, now it reaches 20% for less than a second on the i9. The only odd thing I'm noticing is that in task manager, the boost clock is all over the place, the i5 would hold a steady 3.2 GHz, this is going anywhere from 2.8 to 4.5 GHz in a matter of a few readout refreshes, despite temps being fine and no load being applied. I'll keep an eye on this, but it doesn't seem to be impacting performance...for now.
Developments between 1d and 1w reviews:
I noticed some odd banding of colours in a couple of youtube videos. Did some digging and found that you have to uninstall Dell's colour software and restore the original colours in Intel's software. I did that and my screen turned black. My external screens were working and showed that the content was still there on the laptop screen, but it was stuck on black. So I updated the graphics drivers and nothing happened. Tried disabling and then enabling the screen in device manager, nothing. Uninstalling and reinstalling it in device manager, nothing. The screen itself is perfectly fine because I can see the POST screen just fine and fiddle around in the BIOS all on the native screen, so it's not a dead panel. I ended up having to reinstall W10 and then nuke all the Dell and Intel display nonsense until I was running the stock W10 profile. It was just fine after that. I also ran DPC latency tests and they all came back good, it was in the low end of the green on LatencyMon apart from one very short and high spike I saw (but didn’t hear as a distortion). I ran the test twice for about 3 mins (one song) both on the Thunderbolt channel and on the native speakers. There was also no speaker crackling or TRRS crackling. I managed to get the audio to work, but I could not circumvent the Waves Maxxaudio spam. I managed to get a flat response, but EqualiserAPO does not work. In my case, a flat response is what I was looking for, because I have a real external EQ as part of my Hi-Fi, but for normal people, they have no choice but to stick to the Waves nonsense. I’ll keep trying to chip away at the issue when I move to the Samsung SSDs, but for now I’ve got it useable on the Thunderbolt channel which is what I need. While upgrading the SSDs I managed to somehow bring out the trackpad wobble. See the teardown lower down for an explanation. At this point I botched it with 4 layers of Kapton tape beneath the ‘hooks’ at the front of the trackpad. I ended up losing the war with Waves. I turned it off as much as I could, but it is leeched into everything. I noticed is that the battery drained with the sustained load despite drawing the full 130W from the charger (one of the big issues with some 17s was that they didn't draw full power from the charger). This is a deliberate design choice. I blame Apple for it. I blame Apple, because they went all TB3 / USB-C and everyone started to follow. That means that the 17 can only have a USB-C charger. The official USB-C spec says that the max power delivery it supports is 100W. Dell have managed to push it to 130W. 130 is still not enough to feed all the components when they are on full blast, so it has to tap into the battery to make up for it. If they had a traditional barrel jack charger, they could have spec'd any wattage they wanted. They could have gone for 180 or even 240. An observation my friends made was that the mics are trash. It was to be expected, but they said they were much worse than the 9560. I don't use a dedicated mic, because I don't really need one, nor do I own one. The mics on the 9560 are on the leading edge of the laptop, under the trackpad. On the 9700 they are on the top of the screen pointing up (so the same leading edge, but when the laptop is closed). The added distance between the mics and my head apparently makes a huge difference. Windows adaptive brightness is a plague. My old HP suffered from it, my 9560 suffered from it and now so does the 9700. I never managed to solve it on the HP, I solved it on the 9560, but can’t remember how. I think I solved it on the 9700, but I’ll see if it stays that way over the next couple of days. I used the below Github page and files to work around it. Apparently all the fixes online are for older version of W10 that don’t apply to the new one on the 9700...oh, joy. I suspect it was one of those that allowed me to fix it on the 9560. https://github.com/orev/dpst-control Other than that, the only thing I wanted to mention was the for some reason when Geekbench finishes a test run and auto-opens Chrome, 3 and 4 finger touchpad gestures get disabled for some reason. Closing and opening Chrome fixes it. I thought it might be a trackpad driver issue, but the 9560 does the same. I don’t know if it’s a Windows, Chrome or Geekbench issue (or a bit of all), but I can’t seem to replicate it with anything else.
1-week review:
I know I’ve had the laptop for way more than a week, but I’ve been able to properly use it for a week at this point. This review won’t be a traditional review as I got through most of that sort of content in the first-look and in subsequent update posts. This will instead be looking at how the laptop is in general, if any of the initial issues I had are still there or have gotten worse and if anything else has come up. I’m still very happy with it. I don’t think I gave a full update on the multi-screen setup. I said that the new cable worked but didn’t say if all was well past that. All is indeed well, all three external displays are now comfortably running off the 2060. On the topic of the display, the native one has broken me. The quality is miles beyond that of the external ones and the one on the 9560, every time I look away from it and at the external ones, I feel like they’re either broken or something has gone wrong with their settings. Going from the 9560 to the 9700 doesn’t seem like that big a change. But after having spent a week on the 9700 and then having to go back to the 9560 last night, the difference is definitely noticeable. I’m now used to seeing the taskbar looking like it’s sitting on the keyboard deck. On the 9560 I look down and where I expect to see the taskbar, I see the chin bezel. I know it’s a first world problem, but I’m just bringing it up to make a point. Swapping between the machines in one direction is definitely more apparent than in the other. Quickly going back to the GPU, now that the 2060 is being used at all times, the laptop does idle a little warmer than it did initially. Temps have gone from the low to mid 40s to the mid 40s to low 50s. I suspect the undoubtedly terrible thermal paste Dell use is also partly to blame. I’ve also started to notice the fans spooling up more often, especially during YouTube videos. Temps don’t actually rise that much, but the fans come on. That might be a side effect of me running it on the maximum power profile that Dell have in the BIOS. I’m yet to experiment with other profiles like the optimised and quiet ones. I mentioned that during gaming, surface temps got warm, but not uncomfortable. I found that during really long sessions (3h+) with intensive games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the area around the exhaust reached the high 50s at points. The very centre of the keyboard got into the high 40s which is where it starts to get uncomfortable. The area around WASD where your hand usually stays was mostly fine though. To be honest, I expected it to get much hotter and much sooner too. So I’m not disappointed in it, it’s just a point I felt needed bringing up. And of course, the laptop still taps into the battery despite drawing full power from the charger. Again, this is a stupid design choice by Dell and not a defect. One thing that kept bothering me consistently that I didn’t think would was the lack of next and previous media keys. I have macros bound to my mouse, but I found myself going for the keyboard buttons more often. I eventually got fed up and remapped F8 and F9 as the next and prev keys. F8 comes natively mapped as Windows + P (Project screen), so I just remapped Win + P to be previous. F9 was a blank key and didn’t have anything assigned to it. It also meant that when I went to remap it as a shortcut, it remapped F9 both with and without Fn Lock. I did a bit of digging and couldn’t find F9 serving any major purpose in W10 or commonly used software, so I don’t think it’ll impact my usage. The latest build of W10 seems to have copied MacOS in that now Alt + Space brings up a search bar (no idea what was wrong with Win + S, which still works). This can be very annoying in games where I have to use Alt + Space only to have it kick me and bring up the search. So I remapped that shortcut such that left Alt + Space = right Alt + Space. Directly disabling left Alt + Space disables all functionality of the press combination, not just the search shortcut, but right Alt doesn’t seem to trigger the shortcut. I used Microsoft PowerToys to remap the keys. It has a bunch of other features as well and is free. For some reason the 0.27.0 release kept crashing when I tried to remap shortcuts, so I installed the 0.25.0 release and it worked. It ended up asking to be updated to 0.27.0 a couple of days after, but it still works just fine. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.25.0 I managed to get some very basic video editing done, I can’t fully speak to the laptop’s performance in editing as I want to give it a real load, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s much better than the 9560. What I will say though, is that I’m currently limited by RAM. Adobe Premiere Pro was easily eating through 13-16GB RAM on the 9560. I’ve still only got 16GB on this and I saw it limiting itself to no more than 9GB. So I want to see how it’ll perform when it has more RAM. I wanted to pick up some RAM, but for some reason, the kit I wanted went from about £230 to £490 overnight and it’s suddenly out of stock everywhere. My hope is that the price drops as more stock eventually comes in. I’ll wait as long as it takes, because I’m not paying that stupid amount for it. It’s the only CL17 kit I could find, all the other kits are CL22 hence why I don’t just buy something else. I haven’t done any CAD work on it yet, but I have high hopes for it. I did however run some MATLAB simulations earlier today. I won’t get into the details of the sim because they’re long and boring, but it’s a model of a fibre-optic transmitter and receiver system. It was part of an assignment I did for comms in my MSc. I distinctly remember the PC in uni taking 10-15 mins to complete the stock sim before any parameter changes. If I remember off the top of my head, the PCs had 4th gen i7s, 16GB DDR3 RAM if you were lucky (8GB if you weren’t), some old dinky AMD GPU and HDDs. I remember my 9560 getting through the same simulations in a fraction of the time. Of course, anecdotal evidence is useless, so I re-ran the sim on the 9560, unfortunately I didn’t time the uni PCs at the time because I was busy doing my assignment and I’m not about to travel back to campus to run an experiment, so you’ll have take my word on the uni PCs. Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent. Below are the results for the 9560 and 9700. The 9700 was significantly faster than the 9560, especially in the latter tests. Something to note in the results is the ‘run time’ value and the ‘run’ value. The run time is how long the test would last for if there was a physical system to be tested. The times for runs 1, 2 and 3 are how long the laptop took to complete the simulation. The 50μs run is stock. https://preview.redd.it/9es710xaxoe61.png?width=517&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf76a81972da405a7303121397a7fff9144a6ac2 https://preview.redd.it/dgs6dkjfxoe61.png?width=443&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae592a46c0cc3094c8c30a0f5d4fef5c55d511fc
1-month review:
Here it is, the 1-month review, I don’t expect this one to be that long as not much has changed. In the 1 week-review, I said that I hadn’t given it a proper video editing load. Well, if you’ve followed the thread, you’d know that I gave it one the other day. In case you missed it, it’s good news. The 9700 shreds the 9560. The 9560 was heavily CPU bottlenecked. The RAM upgrade also made a difference during editing. During rendering, the larger amount of RAM made a difference at higher render resolution (and more complicated projects I’m guessing). I’m still yet to give it a CAD load, but given that it was fine with video editing, I’m expecting it to go through CAD like it’s nothing. The RAM swap also somehow managed to eliminate the coil whine, so that’s also a plus. I’m still loving typing on this keyboard. I’ve been setting up the 9560 as the new family computer and I’ve had to use the keyboard, going between the 9700 and the 9560 is very noticeable. I loved the 9560 keyboard but compared to the 9700 it feels totally mushy. The keyboard deck also doesn’t pick up skin oil and other junk as easily as it did on the 9560. Otherwise, in general, nothing has really changed, and no significant problems have arisen. Now, the bad stuff. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting weird Bluetooth freezes. I’d be using my mouse and then the cursor would freeze for 3-5 secs. This happens randomly and I can’t predict it. It’s kind of annoying, but it’s not frequent enough (maybe a couple of times a day every other day or so) to make me want to smash the laptop to pieces. I suspect it’s the infamously terrible Killer WiFi card. I’ve tried fiddling with the settings and drivers, but nothing has changed. It’s not the mouse because it works just fine on the 9560. The other thing I can’t get over is the apocalyptically abysmal trackpad design. I’ve botched it on mine, but I can’t help but feel that over time it’ll start again as the pads start to get compressed. I’m seriously considering locking the cantilever completely with a pair of thermal pads and eliminating the physical button click. ____________________
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