Redwolf's Journal (continued)

 Fireborne was... not good. I came across it in bouncing around looking for something to read and I initially thought it was written by an author I was familiar with, but after pausing to wonder why the style was so less appealing, I realized it was someone else entirely, go figure. It's urban fantasy centered on a self-proclaimed sociopath main character. Her powers are sort of Rogue-like - being able to steal the magic of others to use herself, possibly to the point of killing them. It's not so unintentional, but the experience is empowering and reasonably addictive for her and she doesn't really value most people's lives, so there is struggle to avoid using it too much more to avoid trouble than to do the right thing. Ultimately, though, I didn't find the story that engrossing and the focus on flirty "romance" encounters with guys that don't really pay off just put me off the book in general. On the other hand, I picked up Child of a Hidden Sea af

It's a little strange to say I've seen this lately in both playing Outriders and Godbound - a disconnect between game mechanics and... messaging, I guess? In Outriders , the game clearly presents multiple ways to play across different classes, abilities, and skill trees. The devs, in one of the first notable patches, nerfed some abilities they saw players gravitating toward in number because "they were so good they felt mandatory and that limits build/play options." Encouraging a breadth of play styles tends to be good, yeah. The problem there is the entire endgame is centered on Expeditions and Expeditions are timed - that means you're rewarded more for speed, favoring a balls-to-the-walls style that requires DPS over everything else. Careful, strategic play? Nope. Support-focused build? Nope. All those are penalized by reduced rewards. So the devs say they want one thing, but the game actively encourages something else. That's a bit of a problem. Honestly, e

 Last night's session was fairly low-involvement for me, as an NPC showed up to contest the claim and recovery of wreckage by enacting divine law-enforcement powers in the area, shutting down most PCs' special abilities. The more law-oriented of the group are engaged in try to talk around the claim to get him to give up, though engaging on his own terms like that feels largely doomed to failure. This experience, however, has further solidified my character's urge to be a bringer of chaos and change. Kara didn't really care much about the wrecked airship - sure, it's big and powerful and worth some ridiculous amount, but it doesn't really help her. Now that this guy shows up and stakes a legal claim, however, she specifically wants him to not have it.

 I finished the campaign in Outriders last night (which leaves several side quests and endgame expeditions). I have thoughts. I'll try to save spoilers for last. The way the game handles scaling and difficulty seems a bit odd to me. Maybe good, but definitely odd and not all that well explained.  Character level is pretty common and thus widely understood. You get XP for kills and missions and level up. Some levels unlock new powers. Some levels give you character points for a skill tree. Strangely, it seemed like some levels were 'dead' while other gave two skill points. I'm still not sure what's up there, but I finished the campaign at level 29 of 30. Then there's World Tiers. These are a difficult adjustment mechanic that was a bit lacking in explanation of some details, but from that I have seen - higher WT means 1) enemies are harder and 2) drops are better. Item drops can range from a couple levels below your character level to several levels above, depend

So with a desire to pick up some game and Outriders in the news of late, I took a closer look. My demo conclusion was largely "interesting in some aspects, but doesn't really click for me." Some of what I heard, however, led me to think 1)it gets better and 2)I was looking at it wrong. Both of these are kind of a shame. This led me to try to convince myself it's not a cover-based shooter like the Division and to go back to the demo and try it again. See, cover is scattered around almost obnoxiously, and it's easy to get the impression it's there to use. And yet once you understand the healing mechanics require classes to play in certain, aggressive ways, and you see boss/beast encounter areas that specifically lack cover, it becomes more clear that's not the point. You're actually "supposed to be" more mobile. Two of the four classes only get health back when they're killing up close. Another has to damage marked (which is fairly incident

I'd seen mention of the "Murderbot Diaries" some time back - they seemed to be fairly well-regarded modern scifi. I finally picked up the first one and I can see why.  The story moves pretty well and the shy-yet-compassionate "Murderbot" makes for an interesting protagonist with a certain charm that's particularly relatable to introverts. As an artificial (though apparently able to pass for human without mounted armor) security guard who has hacked its own governor module, it has free will, a fear of discovery, awkwardness around humans, and an appetite for entertainment media. On the one hand, I like the character and seeing interactions with those around it. On the other hand, I noticed I was going through it pretty fast and saw it was only 155 pages. For $4, though, I think that's in the realm of acceptable. What isn't was finding the sequels jump up to $11 for similar length. That doesn't seem right, especially when we're talking digital