Month: June 2019

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Research stage – cheaters patched

It’s been great wondering around the country shooting wildlife and taking OutPost in FarCry New Dawn.  The game has been good to me, I haven’t achieved the Platinum trophy yet but it’s nearly time to return to DC (90+GB download in progress) especially after the patch.

Today’s official basic notes (no engineering details but enough to observe they had to take down the global servers for 3 hours)

  •     Fixed an issue where the Special Field Research stages would not update properly in certain situations.
  •     Fixed an issue where Specialization ammunition could not be picked up in certain situations.
  •     Fixed an issue of missing gun textures in the inventory.
  •     Fixed an issue causing players to be temporarily invulnerable when replacing an armor plate in cover (An exploit/cheat patched)
Far Cry® New Dawn – Great Off-line environment
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Penalties, traps and cancellation exploits

Consumers are overwhelmed with choices nowadays, so companies routinely use penalties, fees and traps to lock you in.  Backed up by long wait times to customer services, hidden addresses and a “you must call us to cancel” approach, the average customer just gives up and pays the ransom.

So how to avoid the traps?

  1. Before signing up for anything ask how
    1. do I cancel?
    2. How much does it cost to cancel?
    3. What is the postal address? Old school letters are still binding and more effectively than 20 mins waiting on the phone or arguing with 1st line customer services.
  2. Use a dedicated email address for subscriptions to you can ghost (delete the email account) them if things get tricky.
    1. Give only mandotory info about yourself.
  3. Ask for a list of penalty charges.  These are probably published in the terms and conditions that you never read.  So, ask them which clause to look for.

Sounds easy but many “busy” consumers never do this and end up paying over 2000 GBP for a mobile phone.

Exploit successfully executed

Next time you sign a contract
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There’re in my head….

Games as a Service (Gaa) is now the dominant content delivery method on PS4 which means you pretty much rent stuff as opposed to owning it. Dammit, another thing you should add to your digital asset list on your Last Will & Testament.

PS4 Plus is mandatory if you want to play online games but comes with lots of free games every month so long as you maintain membership. So for my own little self-Denial of Service I’ve let my service expire for a few weeks, this kills of Division 2 for a while but I’ll plan to be back in August.

Tom Clancy’s The Division® 2 – offline game-play not an option.
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The meaning of Second Life

Games are games, even OpenWorld games have a beginning and End game and most importantly progress, levelling up and LOOT.  It’s been years since I logged into my Second Life, the new Terms of Service are simple and clear enough.

1.3 Your User Content is not confidential; You represent that your Content is original to you (and/or your minor child).

Well, I could not be bothered to install the viewer to see how my Avatar looked after all these year but for the most part my Second Life is dead.  I have little or no impulse to be online all the time and could easily get live on a cruise ship with slow latent satellite internet at sea.

In a few short weeks, I’ll be experiencing a new level that scares the crap out of me – Hong Kong.

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Nice day to be offline

A truly horrendous day IRL but exploring the landscape of FarCry New Dawn is a pleasure.  I found a sniper and happily going hunting for wascally wildlife.

Offline gaming with the right title is awesome and feel clean and focused so I’ll let my PS4 Plus subscription (60 USD) expire in the next few days as a take on new expeditions.

Far Cry® New Dawn – It’s a new Day
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Binary decisions

Sometimes hard decisions are simply a case of On or Off.

After a Division 2 weekend binge of Level 4 Control Points, Invasion missions and a Hunter mask, I decided to just delete the game from my primary PS4 and jump into the FarCry New Dawn World.  I grabbed the financial bait, a whopping 67% off the list price and the offline, story driven nature of the game.

Don’t get me wrong, deleting the 97+GB of Division 2 was rough especially knowing how much time it will take to re-install but the Raids did not justify the potential time investment. Also, one of my long term fellow gamers became totally obsessed with my skin colour breaking the relatively anonymous nature of online multiplayer games.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 – Final mission for now