I decided to go with heatandplumb because the item was advertised as in stock and available for all deliveries, especially next day. The website even pressurised me to purchase it within the next 10 minutes to get next day delivery.
Once the order was placed on Wednesday morning, before 12:00 Noon to take advantage of next day delivery I called them to make sure everything was in order. I was assured that the delivery would arrive on Friday.
Guess what, it is Friday and this afternoon I received an e-mail from heatandplumb informing me that the item I have purchased is discontinued.... whoopty f*****g do... my tap is leaking and I needed it urgently so I can replace it ASAP, even booked the plumber.
I have now made purchased from https://www.wayfair.co.uk/ which were extremely helpful however 4 days later and I am currently still waiting on the refund. It is amazing
how someone can charge you for something they don't even have in stock.
**They have refunded me the following day once I have escalated my issue via PayPal. It is just annoying that I had to nag them to get it sorted.
I understand that there are issues and purchasing systems may be rubbish however don't encourage people to buy stuff "Next Day Delivery Available on *NEXTDAY*. Order in the next 0 days | 4 hrs | 32 mins."
If something is discontinued or out of stock why is it still available and why does it take 3 days for the customer to be informed?
This is extremely bad customer service. Would never order from them again.
I have recently started to play the LawBreakers Multiplayer FPS game developed by Boss Key Productions. It is currently in Open Beta which seems to
be the norm of a "ready to go" game these days.
The game is a great
shooting arena game, amazing graphics, interesting classes... however
this was done 20 years ago with Quake Arena and Unreal Tournament:(
Yes,
it is shiny and looks the part but it is still just a copy of the older
much better games. Since Overwatch and its Blizzard Fans are pretty string I am unsure if LawBreaks will be able to match it. Battleborn was/is an amazing game but they went with a really
bad release date, should have done it months before Overwatch.
LawBreakers is
sooo much late to the table that I honestly don't think it will gain a
big player-base. It is a fun game so if it does gain followers I will be there to enjoy it.
I would just hate to see it die due to low players, however the games does have a card up its sleeve to combat that. It allows for cross server selection. Not many current games offer this ability, using one profile connecting to different regions.
This is a great function in online games as you don't need another
client for a different region. If you have a good enough connection you
could play on the different region servers. I tend to swap between EU and US servers on games that allow it.
The game is action packed and quite frantic. The matchmaking happens fairly quick (We'll see how it is after release).
You select your character and spawn, usually you have a few seconds before the match begins.
In addition, throughout the game you are allowed to change to another character class from the same faction after a death.
Currently there are only two game modes, Overcharge (Capture the Flag) and Turf War (Resource Capture Race).
I have had very satisfying games and some extremely frustrating games as people did not bother to complete the objectives. They were going for kills in the middle of the map like mindless morons.
The game is pretty simple: Overcharge you get the Battery/"Flag" you go to your base and you defend it... that's it. The longer you hold the Battery the faster your points accumulate and you win. There is no need to go solo or fight in the middle for kills. Turf War you go to each Capping point A, B and C and you capture them. The team with most caps wins, simple:)
When your team can't follow these simple rules the games start to become boring and frustrating. All you can do at that point is try to do the objectives, however doing so solo won't work so you might as well embrace the stupidity that is killing each other in the middle whilst the opposing team wins the game as no one is challenging them. After 2 or 3 games like that you just want to turn it off. I have had similar experience playing Star Wars Battlefront, a game which has and amazing easy gameplay and graphics but was a major let-down due to lack of players, hackers and bad team play.
LawBreakers does have tutorials for each class and then some, however I did not bother with it as everything is so basic.
The 14
characters are really just 7 but with different skins. Two factions with
7 classes hence 14 characters. So really all you get is a Shooting
Deathmatch Arena game with 7 classes which is extremely poor. They could
have at least tried to create some kind of variation between the two
faction. Rainbow Six Siege has managed to do that. Even the weapons are identical for each faction.
The LAW Team
The BREAKERS Team
As
I mentioned earlier the game is an identical copy of the old 90's FPS
games even though many people compare it to Overwatch. Yet a lot of what made those games fun has been removed. Then
again I would imagine that %80 of the target audience don't know Quake
or Unreal hence why it is sooo new and completely "never done before".
Even some of the devs and people working on LawBreakers may not remember
those games. The reason the game is compared to Overwatch, I assume is because it is an Arena Shooter and that it does have skills which are
on cooldown. Each class has their own
unique abilities.
I have no idea what the "Innovation" is in this game because I have seen everything done before.
Jedi Knight 2 had all of those features and more. The multiplayer capability, arena matches, gravity, the different powers/abilities, the guns and so forth.
The
weapons are pretty much the same as in Unreal/Quake but the twist is
that you only get to use 1 or 2 as each class only has 1 or 2 weapons. The old games actually allowed you to use any weapon in the
game and you had 100's of character models if you include the ones made
by modders. I would have like more customisation to gear, something similar to Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer, Battlefield 4 or Siege.
This
is indeed correct, "Not just another Hero shooter". Why is this?
Because there aren't many shooters out there that are as fast, look as
good and are as fun yo play as the old FPS games used to be. How would Unreal Tournament look like today with a face lift? Probably the same as LawBreakers:)
Speaking about Unreal, there is a 2015 version still in the making. It doesn't look quite as good as LawBreakers but as you can see from the videos and screenshots there isn't any innovation.
If you mash up 1 or 2 FPS games you will get LawBreakers.
Possible Beta Issue (may not reflect the release version)
I should also add that I have encountered plenty of bugs, most were due to server issues, getting disconnected, getting
kicked out of matches ( kinda frustrating losing the time, credits, xp etc earned during that match).
I have also seen all kind of error throwing "Error:SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE" and "Error:UNKNOWN_ERROR" for all kind of menu access.
This is another good one, the server will tell you it is offline every now and then, when it clearly is not:
I have also ran into huge delays when changing menu options especially waiting about 5 minutes when changing
between any of the character customisation options. The image below shows the loading sequence which comes up between each change.
You would also change the skins and yet they would not set, so you end up going back and forth about 100 times hoping that eventually they would become equipped. This seemed to work.
In regards to skins, I wasn't quite impressed as they are just different variation of the default skins. We need to see some skins that change how the character model looks. As an added minus point the character skins and weapon skins don't even match. You can't have a nice matching character as your character skin may be blue and your weapon may be pink. I hope they are looking into adding a much better selection if they expect people to pay for those with real money.
I do like it as there isn't anything out there right now that matches its design and graphics however I have
no idea how much they will be charging for the game but any amount will
be too much for what you get (if it remains the same on launch). Evolve did the same thing and messed up.
It is worth keeping an eye on it, would be nice if it became the
Overwatch beater but Boss Key Productions has a lot of ground to catch
up to be successful. For starters Overwatch has 24 characters and Lawbreakers just 7 (as they are repeats without any variation of the same classes I will consider that they ONLY have 7 characters, same class each with 2 different skins). Lawbreakers will have to offer a lot more for your buck or for in game micro-transactions.
As far as I am aware the game will be similar to the Overwatch pricing. Pay for the game and in game micro transactions. We'll just have to wait and see.
KEYBINDS for anyone interested:
P.S. Please pardon some of the screenshots but I had some issues getting Steam to make screenshots and I had to use my phone.
Some old Unreal Tournament videos:) See any resemblance?
We have purchased the National Tree Company Bayberry Spruce Tree as an alternative
to the Balsam Hill tree which pretty much destroyed our Christmas with their
unanswered calls, emails and late order processing (over 2 weeks and
counting). Luckily the we have found the Alton Garden Centre on Amazon which was fairly local to us (15
miles). We went in, the staff was extremely helpful in guiding us (tree
and 1000 lights). Hayes Garden World also stock quite a number of excellent Artificial Christmas Trees, they do have a bigger variety than Alton.
The tree is not quite as realistic as the 7.5ft
Weeping Spruce Feel-Real Artificial Christmas Tree which has much more
tips and they go slight downwards, just like a real tree. However we
opted for the Bayberry because it has the more Hollywood look. We only found Hayes Garden World at a later stage and I wish we found them earlier as they have trees with more tips and even full PE, they also provide free gifts and quick delivery times.
Make sure to check the tree properly as ours had some damage to the rings in the middle
supporting the branches and had to be exchanged.
The tree
has a mixture of PE with PVC and has 1867 tips. As the tree is split into three sections,
each section has a different ratio (based on my opinion):
Section 1 (Top) 90% PE and 10% PVC,
Section 2 (Middle) 50% PE and 50%,
Section 3 (Bottom) 60%PE and 40% PVC.
Hays Garden World states that the National Tree Company trees are 40% PE and 60% PVC.
Balsam Hill states that their trees are 70-77% PE and 30-23% PVC.
Best-Artificial and Hays World offers trees which are 100% PE, however these trees may have bigger gaps in between branches. Hard to make a choice without seeing them.
Looking at some of the very few amateurish Balsam Hill reviews on-line
(besides 99% of other blogs), I cannot
see much of a difference to the Bayberry and I surely cannot see 70% PE branches on Balsam trees. This review seems to be more genuine (not that the other reviews are not, they just didn't have help from the product manufacturers and professional photographers taking the photos): http://spillingcoffee.com/balsam-hill-artificial-christmas-tree-review/
Getting back to the National Tree Bayberry tree, the set-up and look is exactly the same as Balsam, even the box it comes in and the information printed on the box is identical.
At the time these photos were taken we have added Section 1 and fluffed it up. I have done so by holding Section 1 on the floor between my legs. If I would have slotted it in I would have not been able to reach it unless I was standing on a step ladder. In the photos below you can see all sections connected, Section 2 and 3 are unfluffed.
Close up of Section 2 unfluffed, red tie is for us to know where Section 3 connects to Section 2. Easier to disassemble.
A video on how to assemble the tree can be seen here, thanks to Hays Garden World:
As
I wasted so much time doing my Xmas Tree research and watching the
Balsam Videos I followed their tree set-up advice. I started with the
top and worked my way down using protective gloves. I opened up each
branch, especially the PVC bits that are supposed to fill the middle, I
did so just like a peacock fluffs up its tail.
Distance from the floor approx 22cm.
The tree is a 7.5
Ft tall tree, so 230CM however the Diameter is about 55 inches/140cm. I
would also suggest getting a minimum of 22 meters light set (we went for
the 1000 fairy lights) and position it at 23cm intervals in a spiral.
I
would also say that you need about 60 baubles, or a minimum of 40
depending if you add some bows, ribbons etc. We used a 27cm Topper purchased from Amazon and it fitted perfectly in our 250cm Room height.
A video of the tree can be seen here:
Baubles were purchased from M&S. Topper and Ribbon from Amazon.
I
love the new tree, it is a huge improvement from our first artificial tree.
The Bayberry might not be Balsam Hill Tree but I still think it looks amazing and at least we have a tree. I would also suggest going to the
nationaltree.com website to register your product too. Use the information
on the Box in which the tree came in.
For better photos and information on the other trees have a look at the nationaltreecompanyuk.co.uk.
If you are in no hurry I would suggest to wait until the last minute 19th 20th Dec, I see the prices for these amazing trees fall each day the closer we get to Christmas. Some prices are even as low as %50 off which is crazy considering we paid twice as much for them.
