Interesting Times

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I am Canadian, no secrets there. While it’s been rocky times this past year+, the last month has been like no other. I am finding it difficult to sleep with the seemingly non-stop news of things that were inconceivable a few months ago. And well, a lack of sleep has all sorts of other impacts. And now we’re in election mode, with one month to go for some sense of ‘stability’. I tend to avoid writing anything that leans towards a political position, that will continue. What I will state is that these processes seem mechanical, but are social agreements. Trust takes years to build, and seconds to lose. So regardless of the outcomes of the process, the people will remain, and positive relationships are the fundamental key to long term prosperity.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Interesting crossroads here. A recent patch causes the game to randomly crash with any bluetooth controller. Not fun. Especially when I’m resting trying to get a decent investigation to pop up. Feels like a giant waste of time when farming 1-2% power increments. And honestly, at this point I’m really trying to farm level 3 decorations, which is better done through Pollen farms.

With title 1 update just around the corner, I’m going to put this game on pause. I enjoy it, but the time/reward math just isn’t there right now.

Hockey

Kids hockey is nearing the end. I’ve got 2, and one finished this weekend. Another in less than a month. Going to be weird having an extra 20-30 hours of free time a week. Knowing me and my family, we are for sure going to fill it with something. Likely a lot of time at the cottage.

Other Games

While I have a back catalogue of games to play through, I am finding it really hard to find one that sticks. My value of time is so out of whack right now, that I need to find comfort rather than exploration, and in bite size chunks. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to learn new mechanics, but I do have enough to optimize existing ones.

  • I’ve tried a few cozy games (similar to Stardew Valley) and none have stuck. Bunch of reasons, though most is due to their balance of time & progress.
  • Metroidvanias are everywhere, but the good ones are still the good ones! Animal Well is honestly too mentally taxing.
  • Base builder / survival games are not scratching the itch. I gave Enshrouded another pass, it has a ton of new content but there are still friction points that annoy me. I may give Nightengale a shot, the mechanics seem to have greatly shifted.
  • Logistic simulators are interesting. Techtonica is done. Foundry has a roadmap but no actual content for a while. Dyson Sphere hasn’t had a content patch in a year, and the last one (Dark Fog) really, really sucks. Satisfactory supports mods (yay!) and has yet to improve trains (boo!). 1.1 is coming with mostly QoL things. 1.0 was great and everyone should play it, but building for “beauty” is not what I play those games for.

Factorio

Ever since I put away my MMOs, no game has taken up as much attention as Factorio. There’s always some problem that is present, one with an evident math solution. The challenge in all logistics games is related to concepts. Your fundamental beliefs and design principles are challenged every minute, and sometimes pushed into very uncomfortable spaces. More than once I realized I made a design call a dozen hours ago that was so wrong that I had to rebuild it all to fit a larger need. The good news it that after you unlock robots (~4hrs or so in), these rebuilds are relatively easy to do. This is not the case in Satisfactory, which is a major friction point for me.

My first playthrough in Factorio was a spaghetti fest. I barely got to rockets and then put it to rest. My second playthrough was organized around city blocks (from Nilaus), which dedicated space and blueprints to focus on specific items. A block for smelting, a block for science, a block for rockets and so on. I played 2.0 in that mindset and got to the end game, RNG and all.

City blocks are a great design principle. The challenge is that aside from Nauvis (the first planet), you don’t actually have that much space to build when you land. So I am starting a new game, and using a smaller design principle that is based on the minimal roboport distance – 50×50 blocks. I will have much less space to use, requiring more creative use of belts, but also much less sprawl as a result. Should be fun to optimize.

Oh, and I turned off enemies and cliffs. I can get PvE in another game.

2 thoughts on “Interesting Times”

  1. As a fellow Canuck, I do believe most of us like to stay away from the politics discussion as it’s not polite. I said, “most”. Still, I used to be a card carrying member of a certain party (which will not be named) and worked closely with MPs and leadership candidates, and sorted out pretty quickly that the issue isn’t the people in politics in Canada, it’s the party system itself. But that’s another discussion, on a non-political discussion space.

    The one small comfort with what is happening these days is that its a reminder that we have a very strong bureaucracy in Canada which limits what “damage” any political party can do quickly. So i don’t panic if so and so gets in, or the other guy, because outside of talking points and some small swings here or there, it’s hard to “ruin” a country with a strong backbone. That same backbone makes big or meaningful positive change more difficult, as well, with the political cycle being reduced to four years.

    All that being said – some good will come out of the pressure cooker down south – if we knock down intra-provincial trade barriers, support fellow Canadians better, and push through long lagging infrastructure projects while investing in our ability to defend ourselves, that is all a step in the right direction of being a stronger nation.

    Hopefully chatter like this isn’t considered political in absence of a supported party, but there are always silver linings even when there is fear and uncertainty. Especially so.

    My game cycles these days are bite sized, as mentioned elsewhere, I love roguelike/lights for the 30 minute gameplay progression loop, stuff like that. PVE co-op over PVP is preferred, although I still Fortnite a little – I just don’t really count that as PVP 😛

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