Chp 821. Game Achievements

As I mentioned in my blog update yesterday, I've finally set up my computer here at home, six months after packing it up in Pune. I even forgot my login password, and thanks to Sanga and Hiren BootCD, we managed to solve that problem [read my previous post on how to reset Windows 10 password].

And so, for the past three weeks, I've been doing almost nothing but play games the whole day. With over 1000+ games in my Steam library collection, there were soooo many games I haven't played even once, and so, this lockdown was the perfect time to catch up on those games.

I installed a lot of games since then, like Borderlands 2 and Borderlands Pre-Sequel, Epistory, Gaucameleel, Mass Effect, Terraria, L4D, Metal Slug, Human: Fall Flat, OneShot, etc., along with "small games" like minimalistic puzzle games and brain teasers (my favourite casual gaming time-pass).

It was only around four days ago that I happened to look at my Steam profile and saw that my Average Game Completion Rate had drastically fallen to 48%!!!

Oh nooooss!

I mean there is no written rule or law that says one must maintain a certain % completion rate, nor does it affect one's profile physically in any way, but I've always maintained a completion rate of above 50% because that is a nice number, and it also shows other gamers that you're serious about the games you play.

Of course it's not possible to know how much a player has actually progressed in each game because most games do not have a linear progression or even a definitive ending. It's not like the good old days of Super Mario Bros where you move from world 1-1 to 1-2 to 1-3 and so on until you reach the last stage, world 8-4, and defeat Bowser, only for the ungrateful princess to send you on the same linear quest all over again, albeit a bit more difficult.

No, games have evolved so much since then. There are many games with countless different endings and multiple outcomes, games with NO endings, sandbox games that don't even have beginnings, arena battle games that may be short but replayed infinite number of times, and even games that have missions which can be played only at a specific date & time of a year! Hence it is impossible to know what % of a game a player has actually completed.

To counter that, Valve Corporation, the company that owns Steam, had decided to use the in-game achievements of different games as a metric to measure game completion rate. It's definitely not perfect, but it is the closest method of measuring one's progress as most games have achievement unlock criteria based on different milestones within the game.

Here's a comprehensive thread on how Achievement Rate is calculated by Valve.

To put it plainly, suppose Game 1 has 500 achievements and Game 2 has only 5 achievements, and you have played for many hours and managed to unlock 300 of the 500 achievements in Game 1, while you got 4 of the 5 achievements in Game 2. Then your completion rate in Game 1 (300/500) is 60%, whereas in Game 2, your completion rate (4/5) is 80%.

You actually get a higher percentage from Game 2 even though the number of achievements unlocked from Game 1 is more. This is quite fair because, like I said before, not all games are the same or follow a linear progression, so they definitely cannot have the same uniform number of achievements. (This also discourages developers from spamming a game with multiple useless achievements).

And the Average Completion Rate of the two games above, that is, 60% and 80%, is (60+80)/2 which is 70%.

Thadaaa, 70%, this is your current Average Game Completion Rate. This amount is re-calculated every time you play a new game and unlock the first achievement of that game. In a way, having a high rate kinda fills you with a small sense of accomplishment and pride :)

So how did my completion rate reduce so much? It was because, like I mentioned above, I started playing a lot of new games recently, which increased the denominator value in the above equation. Hence, 48%.

Now let's be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong in having a low completion rate, this is just how I personally feel about gaming. It's like... how women always say they are dressing up for a party not because they want to make their man feel good but rather because they want to make themselves feel good. Well, this is my ladies make-up moment. I want to have at least a 50% Average Game Completion Rate because it makes me feel good. :)

How do I bring this value up again? Simple mathematics. I must stop playing new games so that the denominator does not increase further, and keep playing a lot of my old games that I have already played before and try to get 100% achievement in those games (also known as "Perfect Games") so as to increase the numerator value.

And that's what I've been doing for the past four days now :D. Those of you who are my "friends" on Steam will notice your daily activity feed like this...

Lolz, yeah, sorry for spamming you all, but my aim is to bring my completion rate to 50% before the Steam Summer Sale starts, which is this coming June 25th, so I'm just playing all my previously installed games until I 100% them, or at least come as close as possible to 100 percenting them.

So until then, cheers everyone, and happy gaming to you all.

Chp 820. Hiren to the rescue!

I wrote my last blog update from Pune on November 27th, 2019, and then packed up my computer for the Movers & Packers to send to Mizoram.

I left Pune two days later, and my belongings reached Mizoram two weeks later.

We unpacked all my stuff slowly, box by box, but the one thing that remained unopened was my computer set. Since I was finally moving back to Mizoram permanently, my family was of the opinion that I shouldn't unpack my computer stuff in my bedroom upstairs, as I spend most of my time in front of my computer. Instead, they said I should unpack my computer downstairs because I was the "man of the house" now and I should be ready to welcome any visitors etc.

Our tiny office room by the main door was a good place to unpack my system, as it even has our CCTV monitor. Perfect place to spend time on the computer while at the same time vigilantly checking the CCTV feed for intruders & shenanigans, you know, the role of a "man of the house" :P The only problem was, my sister's stuff were still in that room. Long story short, with all the CoVid-19 lockdown and stuff going on, I didn't unpack my computer for a very long time as I was anyway using my sister's laptop to update my blog.

Finally on 23rd May, 2020, almost exactly 6 months after I packed up my computer in Pune, I decided to set it up. My fingers trembled as I ripped apart the multiple layers of packaging material and bubble wrappings. Nothing was broken. Like a hyperactive 6 years old opening his Christmas present from Santa Claus excitedly, I unpacked everything and assembled my computer. Finally, everything was ready, all my hard disks and RAMs and VGA cards etc., all properly attached, as well as my 43" Panasonic TV that I use as my monitor.

With one anticipated push of a button, my machine came back to life. Six months of slumber, now ready to function as it has been designed to. The wonder of mankind's creation whirred for a few seconds, spluttered out a few bits and bytes, and finally threw open the Windows login screen!

Yayyy!

Except... there was one problem.

I could no longer remember my password!

Lolz. Yeah, that was such an anti-climax build-up.

So the thing is, I used to use my office workstation password for my home PC password as well, so that I won't forget my workstation password. And in an ironic twist of fate, I could no longer remember that password :D

The thing about office workstation passwords is that, you should never use any of your regular passwords like personal email password, bank password, social media account password, etc etc., because your office IT department has total access to that password. Yes, in case you didn't know that, now you do. Never use your regular passwords for any of your office related passwords.

I used the default password format given to me by our IT department, as I didn't have anything to hide from my colleagues or bosses. I only changed the last few numerical values whenever our IT server prompted me to change the password due to expiration, and every time I changed it, I would also immediately change my home PC password upon reaching home, so that I will remember that new password.

But it had been 6 months since I last typed that password!

After trying more than 100 different password combinations that were all incorrect, I asked my former colleagues for help, and they too sent me all the different possible password formats used in office and I tried all sorts of different permutations, but to no avail. I even called up Irfan and Sidhi from our IT department, asking them if they could retrieve the last password I had used on my workstation. They tried their best, but unfortunately, it had been six months since my system was formatted, so that data was no longer in their records. Drats!

Eventually, there was no other option but to hard reset it. To do that from command prompt, I needed a Win10 boot-up drive, which I didn't have, so one of my friends Thanpuia came to my house and gave me his. Together, we tried all sort of methods, from replacing utilman.exe with cmd.exe to editing system32 and using PCUnlocker, but nothing worked.

We looked at every different solution online, but of course, the main problem we faced was that most of these solutions which might have worked in the past before, were no longer valid because of continuous firmware and software updates. We gave up that night.

The next day, Sanga came over to my place to help me out.

His process was super simple! All that you require, is a pen-drive and a working computer with an internet connection. Here are the steps:

Step 1. Format the pen-drive. A 2 GB pen-drive is more than enough.

Step 2. Using a different computer, download Hiren OS.

Step 3. Burn the ISO onto the pen-drive.

Step 4. Plug in that pen-drive to the computer with forgotten password.

Step 5. Start the computer and boot-up from pen-drive.

Step 6. Thadaaa, your computer is now alive, running on Hiren BootCD.

Step 7. Go to Windows, Start Menu, Security, Passwords, NT Password, and reset it. Done!

Step 8. Restart system, remove Hiren drive and let the computer boot-up normally using the existing Windows 10 OS.

And that was it. The Windows password prompt was no longer there and everything loaded properly, nothing was changed or deleted, my system was just as it was back in Pune.

So simple!

Just eight steps, and if you already have a Hiren boot-up drive, then you can skip the first few steps and start directly from Step 5. In less than 10 minutes, my problem was solved. Thanks a lot, Sanga. And thank you too, Thanpuia, for at least attempting :D

For the love of God, I have no idea why such a simple solution does not come up on Google search. Try looking it up yourself, search for "Windows 10 password reset", this Hiren OS solution will not appear in the first few pages (unless of course you directly include "Hiren" in the search query, duh).

Maybe the moral of the story is, you can't google everything :) That the best things in life can only be learnt from work experience and not through short-cut searches. So deep, much wow. :P

And that was it. I got to gaming immediately once my system was set up. Hope you find this post useful in case one day you too forget your password.

Cheers for now.