Wolfe's Den

2026/03/26

AoW4 Factions, 11

AoW4 has managed the odd feat, unequaled since City of Heroes, of inspiring me to not just write up a character bio but constantly create new factions and give them all more or less whimsical flavor text. So here they are, one by one:

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When the fairies came into play it prodded me to revisit elvishness, more from the edgy, haughty Feanor-grade immortal angle. This "trader at the gates" setup, for its neutrality, actually works quite well for showing a faction's default attitude, much as in #5, the goblin example. Another unfocused faction in terms of affinity, but I remember it working better than others. With the resource bonus from talented collectors and nature expansion bonuses they grow better, and can go offensive or defensive with shadow or materium. The extra naga mobility just doubled(trebled?) down on their adaptability. I can't remember whether this or the other elvish description using the word "eschatologic" came first. I tend to fixate on elvish immortality too much over their other traits, but the poetic weight of endings and beginnings is hard to ignore.

2026/03/24

The Truest Lie

So many insist that it doesn't matter if something is not true, believing in it still has value. The topic might be the validity of a political platform or the inherent goodness of plains-apes, or romantic love, but most often it's that other prehistoric millstone around society's neck: religion. You want to "believe in belief" but never admit the self-defeating contradiction of such a stance. That if wishing is not enough, if only pretending it to be true can satisfy, then you have conceded that veracity is indispensible. Faith invalidates itself.

2026/03/22

This is a Cooper's hawk as far as I can tell.

They're common enough, but don't make a habit of sitting around posing for pictures.

At -10 or -15 centigrade, though, this one seemed far more willing to tolerate proximity for the heat our buildings give off.

2026/03/20

Genealogy of The Royal "They"

"My bum is on your lips

My bum is on your lips

And if I'm lucky you might just give it a little kiss

And that's the message that we deliver to little kids

And expect them not to know what a woman's clitoris is"

Eminem - The Real Slim Shady

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"Listen closely, LotA: You need to step off the third-person high-horse. [...] If you want to be treated like a person, then don't correct people when they treat you like they treat each other."

Schlock Mercenary 2008/11/21

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Though largely lost in our wider media circus (what with the nonsensical warring and the surrender of all society to robber barons and the primitive superstitious backsliding and suchlike) a court case popped up on the news here in the states as redundant proof that men should avoid women as much as possible. (At least they caught this one before she moved on to killing her children as well; just a man dead, no harm done.) Granted, the age-old 'bitch bites man' headline of a wife poisoning her husband for the cash would have raised no eyebrows if not for the very modern twist of her then going on to publish a (ghostwritten) children's book about suffering through the grief of his death. Now that's the 21st century we know and love! (And you're still whining about the Brothers Grimm being too gruesome for modern audiences? Let mommy soothe you with the tale of murdering daddy if he's not useful enough to her, then playing the victim.)

It's all about the sympathy.

On a completely unrelated topic I've been revisiting the webcomic Questionable Content, which instead of regaining some perspective seems to be doubling and trebling down on its woke idiocy with not one but two storylines in the past year pushing, of all things, personalized pronouns. In the latest morality play, two teens start throwing stuff and putting another in a choke hold - for what offense, you ask? 'Misgendering' one of them, it being a 'they' of the male persuasion. We then proceed with a soulful heart-to-heart on the moral imperative to support and coddle tha pwecious fee-fees of the retarded trash physically beating their peers for nonexistent insults. Then the boy they choked out is made to return to beg forgiveness and voice admiration of his assured betters, only to be mocked with an eye-rolling "ugh, boys!" chorus behind his back. Ta-dah. The (apparently happy) end.

How do you deal with an entire 'left' wing turned self-justifying petty tyrants and champions of schoolyard bullies? It's been fifteen or so years since the politics of those posturing as progressive ceased resembling anything like equality and dove headlong into a mad gambit to fabricate a new aristocracy pervading our entire society, with its own hagiography and honorifics, entitled to claim offense at a whim and mete out arbitrary punishments. There's a difference between calling yourself a 'they' freely, without retribution, and forcing everyone else to play along with your delusion. There's a difference between getting called a 'faggot' by others as an insult and demanding to be called one as a mark of respect. It's the same insanity we were supposed to be combating by no longer forcing children to pledge allegiance to some magic sky-daddy in the clouds. (Which, oddly enough, we never got around to rectifying before new pledges to new allegiances were tacked on.) A right to live your own life is not the same as a right to dictate others'.

Of course, in QC's case, it hopped that crazy-train thirteen or more years ago, when it paired up its old main protagonist with a transsexual. One of their relationship upgrades, for instance, consisted of them sharing a hotel room, and the self-appointed female crawling into the theretofore straight male's bed during the night. Though the tranny was the one breaking social norms, when the other tells the story to his own friends, he's the one reflexively put on trial as a possible sexual predator. Well, that's how you market to an entire generation raised on the likes of Nimona. This is Dick Cheney shooting another man in the face then making him publicly apologize for getting shot. This is Saddam Hussein charging his victims' families for the bullets used in executions. This is every nobleman over the centuries caning a servant then docking his wages for breaking his cane. And it's now the official stance of every right-thinking leftist.

Best of all, you need no special qualities to join the ranks of such a superior breed. No analytical skill, intellectual integrity or creativity, no virtues except adherence to a quasi-articulated creed. But it's worth remembering where all this snowflakery started, the reason it has consistently fallen back on ginned up sympathy for the cute, for the easily offended, for the mentally infirm, for men claiming to be women, for those claiming intrinsic protections beyond those available to their fellow apes. Where does, where has rested the stronghold of weaponized, unquestioned victimhood all throughout history? Based on which social divide do we inherit a mentality splitting us innately into those who must provide and protect and those entitled to benefit from those efforts? Did not the damsel wail for violence to be committed on her behalf in every children's tale? Scratch just a few slogans beneath the mob's pentimentod placards and you will find this modern insanity hearkens back to women's primordial entitlement to exploit men, and to dispose of them if profit dictates, all while playing the victim.

2026/03/18

Hey, what do you call Sanrio's North-American market share?

Trickle-Dow Nekonomics.

2026/03/15

Game as Service Outage

"She takes a litle time

In making up her mind

She doesn't want to fight against the tide"

Garbage - The Trick Is to Keep Breathing

Let's see, where were we? Night City?

Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. I've been jumping in every so often this past year, as one does in these big open world games, but find myself unmotivated to advance in any way. At least in Skyrim, despite putting the main quests off for... almost forever, I could get momentarily jazzed by exploring a new dungeon, crafting new weapons, potions and enchantments, building up my homestead. Cyberpunk 2077's level scaling sours both the combat and crafting, its apartments can't be customized (and once I found the delightfully shabby Northside one I lost interest in others) plus I already got the only car I want.

Quit snickering, it gets three million pixels to the gallon!

The high point so far have been the side-quests, which not only display some nice, professional level design but contain just enough flavor text to each paint an entertaining vignette of life in the city. But as I've been clearing those off board after board, I've been gradually losing interest in mercenary work altogether and launching the game for ten or twenty minutes at a time to just wander around and take in the numerous slices of Night City life, like kids playing virtual hopscotch.

Oh come on, a piece of chalk must cost, like, a fraction of an implant, economize ya lil' shits! Anyway, overall, a modern setting offers less room for the more involved delving of a single, unitary "dungeon" so there's no real feeling of escalation to any of it. Escalation takes more planning.

I never did get around to trying Vagrus' new zone. When I left off, I'd just finished a massive inspiraling sweep of the map, polishing off Finndurarth, Nedir and Harvek's companion quests at the same time as cashing in a lot of smaller contracts, battles and investments.

Excess livestock: the best problem.

Gotta appreciate those 400 silver wallet bumps. But knowing I'll need to devote a fair bit of focus to my next twenty-step plan to avoid forgetting crucial details, I parked my comitatus back at newbietown with an empty inventory and clear ledger, and there it's been awaiting my triumphant scheming return for half a year. I'll be saddlin' up some giant ant mounts next time! If there is a next time...

There are many issues with the DLC-spam business model as a subset of the game-as-service, microtransaction mentality writ large. Its popularity spread with multiplayer games which ensured almost universal playerbase buy-in. Everyone else is buying the new expansion. Do or get left behind. But single-player lacks that social network addiction as a crutch, leaving only the game's quality as incentive for the next buy-in. How sure are you of your appeal?

Then of course there's the issue of demanding your customers pay full price for the bare skeleton of a product, which is why I bought Europa Universalis 4 a decade after its release.

Then there's the diminishing returns angle, as latter DLCs get more and more sparse to keep bleeding a supposedly addicted audience with the least effort, which is why I haven't bought the last few years' worth of Stellaris DLCs.

At the conjunction of the previous two points you find the limitation of tacking extra features onto a basic system not made for them. I've addressed at some length D&D's problem trying to sell extra classes, modules and settings, when what it so obviously needs is to break down the primitive min-maxing, over-randomized fighter/wizard/thief setup from half a century ago - but the fanboys would never stand for it. Age of Wonders 4 has been scraping that limit with its latter expansions, deftly interspersing yet not touching the core limitations of its six magic affinities.

Worse (here we reach my eventual point) you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, because in electronic-land, a full revamp will probably not be playable with older content. These days, that's a problem. Last year when I joked about needing spreadsheets to keep track of various options I've used (or not) as I jump between games every few months, I started by complaining Frostpunk 2 had killed my last city with its heat management patch. Now that seems to be ramping up into a trend. Low Magic Age (one of those perpetually "in beta" types) has barred my level 13-ish party from continuing. Darkest Dungeon 2 wiped my existing "confession" (a.k.a. campaign) at some point. Worst of all, my excitement at a new Mount&Blade expansion (Bannerlord's got vikings now - on boats!) was severely dampened when it forced me to retire the Marquis of Baltakhand, aged though he now be. Even porn games are starting to nuke old saves, and if you think an RPG party wipe is anti-climactic, try getting caught mid-thrust!

While I don't deny the financial necessity for start-ups or fringe developers to literally buy themselves more development time with piecemeal content, add nuking players' saves as further evidence of post-launch content's limited tenability, no matter how well it worked for No Man's Sky. This is especially true as strategy/RPG campaigns have stretched longer and longer. A Frostpunk city represents a couple days' worth of gameplay. Bad enough. But the likes of Rogue Trader or Baldur's Gate 3 boast 200-hour campaigns. Not an option for them. If the basic idea is that such expansions will come after players have had a year or three to get bored of their existing characters, I refer you to my Vagrus example. Some concepts are playable only by extended, devoted effort, after which you might let the experience marinate for a bit before jumping in again. Not because you're bored, but because you're savoring it... or maybe precisely because you tell yourself you'll play once the next DLC comes out, not realizing it'll murderize yer marquis.

So, two or three main issues:

1) Micro-doses of content can much more easily be added to dumbed-down gamplay where you just end up wandering aimlessly about, as in Cyberpunk. I don't know if those hopscotch brats were there from launch, and I don't have to care. Even if they did anything it wouldn't affect my trade run... because there is no trade run. No planning. Just mindless twitch-FPS dust-ups. But if I saw a DLC drop for Vagrus when my character was mid-circuit, I would deliberately delay buying it, possibly by months (and it went on sale) until I was safe in town with no outstanding warrants and able to accommodate any landscape changes.

2) One of the big problems with post-launch content has been training your customers to refuse buying anything at launch pricing on the assumption they'd only be missing out on later stuff 'n junk anyway. Now pile that on with conditioning them to actively dread expansions killing their characters. Bad enough to market a pig in a poke, but when the revealed cat claws your face off...

("Lately, I'm not the only one

I say never trust anyone")

3) As the entire industry is presumably re-tooling to fill games with spammed, dirt-cheap AI slop as content, the artsier fringe must at long last bite the bullet and start marketing itself not as low-budget small-time indie side-show attractions, but as more expensive, artisanal interactive media. Go organic. Advertise your Amish hand-crafting. Charge more. Take more time to develop. Put out singular, coherently-crafted campaigns from start to finish. Move on to the next and hope your work was good enough to earn you name brand trust. Low prices and DLC spam will soon be synonymous with The Slop.

2026/03/13

AoW4 Factions, 10