It used to be easy to build a PC that was double the performance of a console for the same price. And it was even easier if you sourced slightly used current hardware. Now you’re lucky to get last gen hardware for a decent price used. The market is garbage.

Back in 2014 you could get brand new motherboards for ~$50, where it’s difficult to find any under $150 that provide decent features. I think the most expensive thing at the time was NAND due to flooded factories but everything else was super cheap.

It was removable, but used Dells weird connection. I just had to solder the connections of the new battery on instead of paying Dell $20 for a watch battery haha.

I had one of the Alienware Alphas with the 860m and desktop haswell 4130t. You could swap in a 4160 but your big enemy would be heat.

I swapped the steam OS for windows and threw in some cheap 240gb adata ssd. Ran it for years.

Only problem was the cmos battery would fail every now and again and I’d have to solder a new one in because Dell……

Anyways, I was in it ~$400 and it was a great htpc. Only real problem was haswell couldn’t decode 4k YouTube.

The steam controller I still have, and it’s quirky. But I like it for the mouse function.

I thought the steam deck already had this. Admittedly, I’ve only had mine for about a month, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it charge to 100%. I think 95% was the highest I’ve seen. It seemed like it had something similar to smart charge like Windows has.

It’ll be like Virginia where they just add on a character.

They’re features, not bugs in Bethesda games.

I’ve worked at a couple of Mom & Pop places in the south during my youth, and generally they were terrible with money, racist, and tried avoiding taxes any way they could.

Small sample size with a sprinkle of confirmation bias on my end, but there are usually signs.

Always need help? Discount on cash purchases? Making the customer pay the credit card transaction fee?

There are many others, but those are generally the biggest ones where management is just interested in customer sympathy and the bottom line.

That’s disheartening to hear. At least Tesla has to sell cars to even stick around and it doesn’t look good for them in Europe so far.

I was about to say, this seems pretty slam dunk for them.

I’ll take it if that means companies start optimizing their games better.

It’s wild, I don’t remember the Witcher 3 being anywhere near this bad. I had my own issues in that game regarding the combat and some bs moments that made me reload and lose an hour because I was dumb and didn’t quick save, but cyberpunk doesn’t even feel like a cdpr game. Which is good in some ways I guess that they were able to break their own mold.

Idk, there’s just a bunch of little issues still. But if this is what it’s like 4 years later I can’t even imagine what it was like at launch.

I picked up cyberpunk last summer (finally) and while it’s visually stunning and fairly immersive, I had some game breaking bugs where I had to reload several hours beforehand and redo certain missions until they triggered properly. Not once, but several times. And I didn’t even mod anything.

I think my favorite was fast traveling with Claire, ending up in the sky and falling out of the truck. Reloaded, did the mission again only to splatter myself and die because I got shot out of the truck. Third time she wouldn’t stop driving around the block. I let it go for a good half hour just to see if it would end but it never did. Eventually the AI just kept driving into the wall of a building. Reloaded….again.

There were a lot of others but that took me all afternoon just to finish that one race. I had probably a dozen similar issues throughout my playthrough and it really tanked my enthusiasm for the game. I’ll finish it eventually.

Having just replayed DA2, Anders is a poor example. It’s written (or at least the player choice tree) was so light that just including him in the party meant you had to grapple with acceptance or rejection to just move the story along. With the other characters there are at least two separate flirt checks that need to be met beforehand.

I will say, moving into Inquisition, I am disappointed they ratcheted back so much on player choice. They did so well with DA2 it almost feels like they just listened to the loudest feedback.

They did give out actual Gwent decks when you preordered the expansions. Idk who made them, Warner Bros I think, but they’re pretty good.

The middle number 555 is used in fake adverts in the US. It’s not used anywhere.

The trilogy with Bale certainly made that clear haha.

The combat is just generally unintuitive. Which early in the game is frustrating. And if you’re like me and spend weeks between sessions you can forget all the timing and buttons you need to press.

If the combat is frustrating, turn the difficulty down. There will still be a learning curve, but it’ll be the difference between surviving and having to do an hour of work again because you forgot to quick save and get slapped by a foglet.

I’ve used them for a while too. Sometimes they’ll have weird keys super cheap. Like I was able to grab Dark Souls 3 + both DLC’s for like $16 or something way back when.

Virginia, so a bit of a wildcard.