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Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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15 Responses

  1. Marchmaine says:

    So basically a Saruman sim?

    I wonder why Orcs and not, say, Dunlending, Easterlings, Haradrim for castles?… can still fight Orcs, but the goal is to liberate and ally with the hostile factions of men. Just seems weird to enthrall and dominate Orcs.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

      As far as I can tell, the goal seems to be building up to something like “why in the world did you ever think you could defeat evil with evil?”

      I hope it is, anyway.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

        Playing into it further, they’re 100% on top of communicating how everything the protagonist is doing is Wrong.

        Like, Wicked. And not in the “way cool” sense of the term.

        There is a book from 3rd Edition D&D called “The Book of Vile Darkness” that I cannot recommend for young people or even teens but… there are a handful of people who are members of mature audiences that might find the book helpful for hammering out concepts.

        It talks about bad stuff. It gets into concepts of why there aren’t any lawful good Liches and why there aren’t any lawful good torture chambers and why there aren’t any lawful good necromancers.

        Intended to be a resource to help DMs create a real threat in the story for the heroes to fight against someone they care about defeating, rather than merely fighting against “the usual adversaries“.

        The book is really, really interesting… but, goodness gracious, meditating upon evil is not something to be done lightly.

        Which is the tightrope that the video game seems to be walking.Report

  2. Morat20 says:

    I started Factorio. It’s crack to a certain type of person.

    Specifically if you like creative puzzle solving, engineering, optimization, etc.

    I got annoyed in the tutorial because it ended before I’d managed to loop through my ammunition production line past my turrets to so their ammo could be automatically topped off….none of which was required by the tutorial (other than “build a turret”).Report

    • James K in reply to Morat20 says:

      @morat20

      I’ve had a lot of fun with Factorio, I’m planning to get back to it once I play a few games of the new Stellaris patch (just 4 days to go now).Report

      • Morat20 in reply to James K says:

        I picked up the DLC (the non cosmetic ones) in anticipation myself. I’m still learning the game, but very fun. Speaking of the new patch, did you read 2.0 Patch Notes What They Really Mean

        A few highlights:

        DESIGNERS’ NOTE
        Everything you previously learned about the game is wrong now. Good luck.

        Some players were mistakenly selecting options other than “Hyperlane Only” in game set-up, so we removed them.

        Added Mass Relays. The admiralty reports a marked increase in science ship captains banging their crew-mates.

        Added Eternal Vigilance ascension perk for empires that just want all the ravagers, imperialists, and zealots to f*ck off so they can do some science in peace.

        Planets now have a combat width, because apparently it’s possible to have more soldiers than can fit on the surface of an entire planet.

        Armies that have been shot at a lot may now fall back to allow their friends who have not been shot at as much to enjoy an equal share of the horrors of war.

        Citizens of the empire may become less supportive of the war effort if you’re refusing to cede one colony when there are death bots roaming all of the frontier worlds and the navy has bee reduced to one guy named Keith flying a retrofitted cargo ship with some man-portable rocket launchers welded to the side.

        Report

        • James K in reply to Morat20 says:

          @morat20

          I did, it’s very good.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to James K says:

            I’ve been exploring the new machine races. 🙂

            This game is very much a “Several hours in, I realized I did everything all wrong” sort of experience.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Morat20 says:

              “Several hours in, I realized I did everything all wrong”

              Okay fine. I’ll put it on my wishlist.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Jaybird says:

                I’d avoid Factorio if I were you. The way you enjoyed that alchemy game?

                Well, we’d probably never hear from you again.

                Stellaris is, from what I understand, the “simpler” version of games like Crusader Kings. It’s a 4X space game, so there’s a lot of familiar mechanics at first….

                The enemy AI is remarkably stupid (supposedly it’s better in the patch out next week), but right now — they call them “Doomstacks”. Everyone — and you, out of self defense — keeps an entire gigantic fleet in one stack. Every combat ship you have. In one place. Because that’s what you’re gonna get attacked with.

                Anyone attacking you will literally grab every combat ship they have, create one vast fleet, and curb stomp your empire. Unless you have your own doomstack, and then you and him will fight. Luckily, if you win handily, you can proceed to pillage a totally undefended enemy empire.Report

            • James K in reply to Morat20 says:

              @morat20

              I’ve had some fun playing with a Driven Assimilators machine empire. Everyone dislikes you, but the ability to absorb organic populations into your collective is neat.

              If you have an interest in the cosmetic DLC, I recommend the humanoids pack. The ship set is very nice and I like the new adviser voices.Report

  3. James K says:

    I’ve played two games of Civ VI with the Rise and Fall expansion now, its definitely improved things, the new systems are interesting (I like that they’ve made Dark Ages interesting, not just Golden Ages), also religious units are less annoying now than they used to be (barbarians, alas are still extremely annoying).

    But what’s getting em really excited right now is that Stellaris is getting its 2.0 patch later this week, along with the Apocalypse expansion.Report

    • Pinky in reply to James K says:

      I’ve been playing Civ IV: Beyond the Sword a little bit recently. It’s interesting how much tougher they made the AI just by getting rid of some of its small but exploitable missteps. Ragnar looks to be the star of the show. It used to be that you could pace yourself against the strongest guy and then carefully time your move, but Ragnar doesn’t let you keep up.Report

  4. PROFESSOR ESPERANTO says:

    Mi ludas Duolingon sur mia po?fono. Nenio alia.Report

  5. Damon says:

    Ugh…Sat.

    It was supposed to be a regrouping the D&D party, but OMG snow snow, we MUST cancel. Damn nerds.

    So I drank absinthe and ate all the food my self I was going to bring, spiraling down a morass of self guilt and pity. And since I’ve been listening to “calming and relaxing” music of Witcher 3 on Youtube for the last few months, playing Prey and Half Life while waiting for System Shock and Far Cry 5, I loaded up Witcher 3 again, went for New Game + and have been having a blast again. Even though I’ve found better silver swords than Aerondight in terms of damage–the fact that it levels with you….”money”!Report