When thinking about what’s impacted me most though, that’s a different territory, I first looked at games, video games are by far probably the media I ingest and enjoy most, but after a lot of self reflection I decided there was only one honest answer and it surprised me.  The Harry Potter series.

That will likely be unsurprising to many, Harry Potter touched, shaped, and sparked the imagination of millions.  Across all walks of life and all ages.  Even in high security prisons they had Harry Potter.

The reason I think it’s so universally loved is it covers a wide range of topics, from people who love you being unable to show their love healthily, to what the demons of depression feel like and how difficult facing them can be, to the questions of loyalty despite all appearances contrary, to being an outcast among outcast, or loved for reasons you can’t comprehend or don’t understand.  It covers growing up, maturing, it covers the shift from friend to lover.  The flowering of beauty, the depths of frustration and anger, it covers what burying your tensions and selfishness can do.  Losing a loved one that was part of your family, or losing someone that had basically become family.  Unrequited love.  These books are filled with the heart of Rowling, and it shows.

What I find myself returning to most though are the quotes.  It seems there’s a good quote for just about anything, and when I’m feeling particularly down or lost these are generally one of the first places I turn.  I own an iphone 7 and my current phone case even has one printed on it.

“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.  If only one remembers to turn on the light.”  – Albus Dumbledore.

He was not the perfect headmaster, or mentor, or even friend, but he clearly tried to do the right thing, and often saw the world differently than those around him.  That’s what I’ve always strived to do with my life.  Offering different perspective, or perhaps seeing a thought or joy or comparison that someone else doesn’t, or hasn’t and introducing them to it is one of the greatest feelings to me.

Perhaps the best message in all of Harry Potter though is that our choices, our decisions, define who we are far more than our abilities, or nature, or background.  And that it’s never too late to make the choice to be better, or to change.

Anyway, welcome to 2018, let’s all try to be the best people we can be, alright?

-Digit

So what is New Century?  That’s the hard part to answer and part of what I’m writing this review for.  New Century is what you get when you mix a podcast, an audio drama, a book series, and the marvel/dc universes together.  It’s a long running series that starts as an alternate history apocalypse scenario, the apocalypse?  A zombie-like virus that produces feral werewolf-like humans, who can spread the disease through bodily fluids, most notably saliva and blood.  That’s what the first title ‘the cartographer’s handbook’ explains.

This title feels more like a standard audio-book, a crisp reading of text with various actors.  It sets up the world, explains the time period, the catastrophe, and how the united states is starting to come back after being completely decimated by this phenomena.  They band together in rural less populated areas and form the cartographers, who after the breakdown of most of civilization have to even redraw maps, and indicate safe and dangerous paths, reach out to the people who survived in isolation and try to bring them back into the cause of taking back the United States from these beasts, and chronicling this time.

Book 2 in the series is titled ‘secret rooms’ and here is where you start to the see the shift of how this is performed, it sounds less like a book read allowed, and more like an audio drama, focusing on character interactions and performance, rather than the words and descriptions.  Unlike the more cut and dry first book, that serves as a reference and a world building book, this one has a horror tone to it, as these lost cartographers discover a mansion that makes little sense, and holds deep and dark secrets.  The audio design in this is great, and this title is best enjoyed in the dark with headphones on, particularly the later you get.

The third title in the series?  Tiger’s Eye, this really is where we jump the shark so to speak, and find out our protagonist isn’t human, isn’t from our world, and is in fact a giant cat lady.  Though in short order she does meet a human, and they have to face dangers and tensions and drama, while trying to deal with the cultural and language barriers that separate them.   This is an interesting story of character growth, of cooperation between very different peoples, between maturity, and dealing with loss.  Overall a great and very emotional title.

Book 4 returns us back to the world we knew from books one and two, and follows a single African-American family, the Arlingtons, as they deal with navigating the political waters that Game of Thrones would be proud of, as well as racism, rivaling political factions, and R&D and logistical planning for all of the cartographers.  We see the strain it puts on this family, the splits that are beginning to form from differing political ideology even inside the family, eventually leading to one of the biggest and most impacting climaxes I’ve ever …heard?   in the book….drama….title?   You can see where this gets difficult.

Book 5 drops the seriousness, and the lasting melancholy of a broken world, the more serious tones, for a lighthearted and comical tale called the Princess Thieves, with obvious inspiration from the Princess Bride, this lighthearted and comical take on a fantastical London with dwarf and ogre like creatures cooperating with humans is something even my cynical, analytical heart can’t bring myself to tear apart.  Only 3 episodes in and I adore this series already, the timing and performances are just wonderful.

So, a wide-reaching program that started as a book, has e-book versions, has audio-drama versions, and is released weekly as a podcast?  I don’t know what to classify it as, or even who it appeals to.  When you jump settings and tones and even genres.  When the overarching narrative and cohesive plot that binds all these books together is only hinted at, I can certainly say I’m not sure who this truly appeals to, but in that same breathe, who it can’t appeal to with such a variety of stories to choose from.

This series is perhaps one of the most well planned and well constructed worlds I’ve seen since Lord of the Rings, with timelines, travel distances, characters, plots all worked on well in advance, with more detail behind the scenes than we could hope to get.  With more backstory to each character and actions than will ever see the light of day.  This series is a novelty, a precious gem, and something wholly undefinable in it’s execution.  The only thing I can say?  I recommend it wholeheartedly, links below, and the podcast form which is available both to ios in the podcast section, and android through various podcasting services.  You can also purchase titles on bandcamp, and as e-books through amazon/kindle.  Links below:

Amazon(US):  http://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Shaw/e/B00O6WYQ0S/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1467939501&sr=8-1-fkmr0
Bandcamp:  https://newcentury.bandcamp.com/
Podbean:  http://newcenturyshow.podbean.com/
New Century Forums: http://schoolofmovies.com/forum/index.php

I will eventually be doing in depth reviews and analysis for each title in the series, but I felt I had to make this overall review first, to explain the difficulties and uniqueness this series brings.

Undertale, a game where you’re a small child who falls into ‘the underground,’  get immediately attacked by a flower, saved by a goat, and set out on your adventure.  This game is everywhere, this game gets ridiculous reviews, this game managed to beat some of the best games of all time on Gamefaq’s ‘Best Game Ever’ poll, getting into the same hollowed ground as games such Final Fantasy 7, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario Bros 3, and many more such classic games, and I’ve seen a lot of people criticize getting this score, and in some ways, I have to agree.

First, let’s go over what Undertale doesn’t do very well, explain it’s mechanics.  The game is purposefully misleading with many mechanics at the start, to encourage people to get a certain experience.  The downside?  The full experience requires multiple playthroughs, and if you -don’t- experience it in the right order (someone spoiling it for you, or telling you how to play) you get a lesser experience.  Not playing through multiple times?  Lesser experience, and there’s some good reasons for that.

The plot isn’t particularly strong, and the characters while cute and varied, aren’t particularly deep.  Repeat encounters detract from the game in general, since very little if anything changes the first time you spare or kill something, till the 7th time you spare or kill something.  The repeat encounters exist to make it difficult to go the more difficult ‘genocide’ route on a first playthrough.  Toby wanted it to be something you had to work for and his solution was to make it so you had to exhaust the random encounters, it works, but it means for the other playthroughs you get repeat encounters that don’t add very much to the game.

The beginning of the game is -slow-.  For someone looking to get into the meat of the game, the fact puzzles are solved for you or simple, that monster battles are denied you till the appropriate ‘tutorial’ time later, etc. . . While this adds to the character of Toriel, it’s at the expense of pacing and enjoyment.  First impressions of a game are very important, and Undertale gets a solid ‘nyeh’ out of me.

While the text is very well written, there’s a lot of it, and a lot of the story is told through large exposition dumps.  One point being so blatant in exposition dumping, you’re watching video tapes with a ‘black screen’ that is explained by leaving the cap on the camera, or being too dark to see, cute, but a bad way to dump important story knowledge.

A lot of story and lore exposition is optional, this is interesting because it encourages multiple playthroughs to find it all, but can leave the whole game feeling more shallow than it is at first playthrough/glance.

That’s a lot of negatives, especially for a game that’s so completely loved by fans, so what does Undertale get right?  First off, it’s fairly well written, something not many games can claim, it’s not fantastically written, but it’s decent, and decent is ‘awfully good’ for video games.  The characters have unique personalities, and the writing is genuinely touching.  It’s rare to find a game that really tries to make a positive connection with you, and that earnest positivity, when presented well, can garner a lot of support.

I remember once reading about Fable stats that Peter Molyneux was genuinely surprised that the majority of Americans went for the ‘good’ side of good and evil, that we really do strive to be heroes.  That’s what Undertale presents us with, the chance to be a real hero, and not kill a single person, or in this case monster.

Undertale mixes it’s game mechanics up, it’s very diverse, while not being so different you feel like you’re learning a new game every time.  It’s difficult, but forgiving, and generally a few failed attempts on more difficult fights will offer you some way out, especially early on when you’re less comfortable with the controls.  Overall, incorporating the real time, stressful bullet hell genre in your turn based RPG was really original and very enjoyable mix-up of what we’ve come to expect.

Diverse and lovely characters, I touched on this, but there are a lot of diverse characters, some of which we can identify with, are silly, or interesting jokes (tsunderplane comes to mind.)  This game, again works to make connections with you, and, it’s easy to let it.

In the end though, those positives still don’t garner enough to classify it into ‘best game ever’ category, so what is it that truly brings Undertale it’s appeal?  After pondering quite a while, reading responses, and watching different Let’s Plays of it, and watching community reactions, I think what Undertale best does is, reward you for investing time in it.

There’s literally an absurd amount of depth to Undertale, there’s so many possible interactions and Toby seemed to really work to make each rewarding.  Here are some examples:  when you go to Papyrus’ house after agreeing to date him, he runs from the left side of the living room area, to the kitchen every time you enter the kitchen.  Make him do this run multiple times, and he’ll comment on how being a good host is exhausting.  When you first learn about Echo Flowers, the guy on the left says something along the lines of ‘This is an echo flower, it repeats the first thing it hears forever”  but if you go back and talk the flower first it says something like “My only real value in life is explaining echo flowers.”  And then the guy acts embarrassed when you talk to him after.

There are a lot of examples how so many interactions are different when done in different order, many monsters are ready to be mercy’d when there’s more you can do (moldsmal is the first example of this, you can mercy it right away, but you get more reward if you do certain action commands first.)  There’s also the hidden ‘fun’ system, that makes random events happen based on a random number generator with a butt-ton of possible variables, meaning even after 7 or 8 playthroughs you can still see something new.  There’s even a hidden character and subplot that was added for dataminers, and easter eggs, just look up Bepis.

This game rewards you so much for spending more time with it, for revisiting it, it really works to make connections with a myriad of different kind of people, despite knowing it’ll never please anyone.  It’s an earnest game that a lot of love was put into, and the deeper you delve the more you can see how much care and attention was put into really trying to make sure you were rewarded for whatever you try to do in some way, even if it’s just a small piece of dialogue, and that’s what really sets Undertale apart.

Or it’s just got a million meme-worthy dialogue quotes and good music.

Up to you,

Digit Out.

This article fills you with..DETERMINATION.

This is my first early bird review, one where I look at an early access title. I’ll probably revisit this on full release, but be warned all this information is time sensitive, please note the date of posting, many things may have changed by the time your wonderful eyeballs are laid upon this page.

With that in mind, let’s dive into this one scrumptious bite at a time.

Preconceptions.

I come into this as someone who enjoys the show. I do not consider myself a fan of the show, though I do enjoy it. I have spent a little time in the community, and enjoyed my time there, but nothing too major, but I’m familiarized enough with the show to recognize the characters, settings, and story of the show.

As for early thoughts of the game, I’m always extremely wary of early access. Paying to beta test is the opposite of how the business should work in my opinion, and while potentially impacting development is a positive, I’m not entirely sold on the business model of buying influence in this way.

Things I enjoyed before I even owned the game were the screenshots, they looked well done. I wish the devs included more of their plans in the description, but it does an adequate job describing where they wish to take it. What they do not do well is describe the current state of the game in detail. I was actually unsure how functional the multiplayer was when I was first gifted the title, how many characters were in it currently, etc. . . I do wish this information was readily more available for those wishing to purchase the title, but again, not a deal breaker.

It’s also a spectacle fighter, on the PC, created by a very small (the page describes them as 4 people) dev team. That’s…worrying, there aren’t many spectacle fighters on PC, but indie developers aren’t generally known for having the budgets to make a spectacle fighter. On the other hand this is made and published by the creators of the show, so if anybody can make animations that match the show, it’s them, right? From the quality of the 3D models, I assume they’re actually the models from the show, perhaps modified to be a little less intensive.

Technicals:

A small side note, I’m technically not supposed to be able to run this game. I meet all of the criteria for minimum requirements aside from processor, they say an i7 2.8ghz, and I have an i5 2.4 ghz. On potato quality I ran pretty much flawlessly, I had a couple of frame dips during particularly gruesome kills when 20 or so creatures died in an explosion of gore, but those were rare, and I ran this game flawlessly. I have heard others complain about frame drops, but given the early state of the game, and my own near flawless experience graphically, I can say this runs great.

Story:

I don’t recall much of the story of the game, but there are only a handful of levels, and it’s given in small audio bursts over what I can only assume is a radio. While a few of these lines are memorable “That…is a bomb.” And all the lines fit with the characters and theme of the show, there’s just not a lot to sink my teeth into, but, who plays a spectacle-kill-all-the-things game for it’s story?

Gameplay:

There is a lot to love here, and a lot to hate. The 3 basic buttons on an x-box controller (controller is recommended for this game.) are jump, shoot, and melee attack. Mashing melee attack does a combo. You can usually combo shooting, but aside from one character (Ruby) the animation is usually just simple stand there and shoot. Every character but Blake ends up moving backwards when shooting, and you can combo in shots with your melee combo (for Yang, I believe it’s melee melee melee shoot.)

There are also 2 other special buttons. L is the ‘dodge’ usually a short range teleport/roll/dive sort of move, and holding it is sprint. The ‘special’ button (Right trigger on X-box) brings up a menu, and holding it and using any of the 3 buttons does a special move that’s vaguely associated with the skill (special-melee, does a melee attack, special-shoot does a special shoot move, etc. . ) The special-jump is usually an AoE of some kind. You have 4 special points to start with (that can be upgraded through talents on level up.) And you gain combo points by getting combos.

Overall, the melee combat mostly feels really good. Combos execute and chain well, there’s some good depth mixing in ranged attack or switching targets, the auto-targetting that helps you combo into guys is usually pretty good. Blake’s melee combo in particular is one of my favorites, you continuously whip an enemy, knock them in the air, and whip them some more.

Ranged combat on the other hand is…very lacking. It’s difficult to aim without some kind of guide, though auto-targeting usually makes that not as terrible. It’s difficult to tell where your shots are going or how much damage they’re doing, and when you do figure it out, you realize how very pitiful ranged damage is. In a series where every weapon is a gun (even the nunchucks are guns!) ranged combat is very…subdued. In the current game there’s only one point in the series where ranged combat is necessary and that feels very forced by the developers to give you a reason to shoot your gun.

There’s some decent progression in the game (currently you can raise to level 10) every level earns you 1 skill point, and you can invest that in the trees to upgrade abilities, or to upgrade the character. There are usually 2 character-specific upgrades, one locked behind ‘reach level 10 with the character’ and the other locked as a challenge of some kind (Ruby’s is kill 200 enemies with ranged attacks.) You keep unlocks in future playthroughs, though not the points. I don’t mind the unlocking, though some of the unlocks (kill 2000 enemies) feel a bit excessive, and anything that makes me ranged attack is generally a negative feeling.

There is a unique problem in the progression, and that comes with what’s been called the ‘third tier’ talent point. It costs 2 points to unlock, and is most notable on your AoE. Taking it gives a small benefit, or at least a small -noticiable- benefit, but makes the skill now cost -2- special points. And this leads me to one of the bugbears I have with the combat system in it’s current state.

AoE feels like the optimal way to go. 2 out of 4 characters have an excellent AoE (Ruby/Weiss) and Yang has an alright AoE. Blakes is…much to be desired. This would be fine, if it just wasn’t so easy to AoE. You become invulnerable, and it does a rather large amount of damage, 1 upgrade point in Weiss’ or Ruby’s AoE kills most small grim, and heavily damages many large grimm. I find myself just gathering up a death ball (pretty easy in the game) then AoE’ing once or twice to kill many enemies, get the bonus for killing most enemies in the wave (rewarded for heavy aoe/wave clear) and going about my day. By sinking in that third point, I don’t gain enough benefit to justify halving how many times I can use it, it’s more economical to be able to do it -more- than it doing slightly more in most cases. It keeps me from wasting damage if I can do it more often for less than once with extra damage on an ability that one shots most things I want it to anyway. It’s a very strange design choice, usually upgrading shouldn’t limit an ability, but unarguably improving it.

Death is handled as you’d expect, if you die, a teammate has to run up, hit and hold the prerequisite button for long enough, and you instantly revive with a few special points, ready to kick-butt all over again. The way this system works in single player is also a bit of a bugbear, if you’re knocked out, you fail the mission, and have to restart at the last checkpoint, and these can be pretty few and far between and a few of the sections can be very difficult alone.

The net code seems superb, and multiplayer play ran pretty flawlessly in all the games I’ve tried. It seems to support drop-in drop-out play pretty well, unless it’s the host. Then you restart the mission. But I never had too many issues with phantom hits or lag, though once or twice I saw enemies take damage that weren’t near anyone, it’s very good, very accurate, and very smooth. Overall the gameplay has a few quirks, but is very wonderful as a melee gore factory, but don’t worry, you’re killing things without souls, at least so far.

Sound:

Sound is an interesting one, I don’t recall the music being anything fantastic, but nothing bad either. The sound effects generally sound good, though at first were waay too loud. This was addressed in a patch that actually went out very recently that added a sound effects slider. With voices from the cast, good sound effects, alright music, sound direction is generally good, though ranged combat still doesn’t sound great. Lacks a lot of impact and force, feeling very neutered.

Level Design:

Overall it’s alright, it’s varied and fits the aesthetic well, but I did spend more time running than I care about, the large, mostly linear levels follow an almost zen formulae to it. Run….fight a few enemies..run…reach an objective…do waves…run…reach an objective…do waves…win!’ The fighting is good, the arenas are varied, the enemies are varied enough to enjoy, usually adding a type per level. The running is, less interesting though, and there are few interesting things in the running sections, there are some breakable boxes that sometimes have XP rewards, and a few offshoots that lead to ‘artifacts’ collectables that give a fair amount of XP, but they’re not very interesting. After my first playthrough, where I explored a lot to find the artifacts, I find myself just dashing as hard as I can to the next fight arena where the gameplay really carries the game.

Overall:

Overall RWBY: Grimm Eclipse is a very enjoyable romp of destruction through the world of the show, but not following the events of the show. For it’s early state it’s well done, plays well, has few bugs I’ve noticed and no game-breaking ones I’ve come across. There’s not much there for it’s current price but it holds a lot of promise with more content and a combat system that could be flushed out to be much more.

I give it 9 out of 13 yogstars. ********* ****

Final recommendation: If you’re a fan of the show you’ll really enjoy this nice addition, and if you’re not a fan of the show it’s still a very enjoyable beat-em up/spectacle fighter, though you may want to wait for more content for the price.

Feedback:

In case the developers read this, I’m going to offer my personal suggestions on how to improve the game. I am not a game-developer, I do not claim to understand ‘the mechanics of fun,’ or the technical skills required to implement these changes. I am just a person who loves games and has analyzed/played enough to think I have some reasonable suggestions on what can be improved and small ways to improve them.

First, a better death system for single player. I feel perhaps a revive on a cooldown, or a set number of lives per stage if you’re playing solo is reasonable, losing all progress because you died when this isn’t an issue in multiplayer is a bit of a heartache.

Make AoE’s less valuable, or other abilities more valuable, both of these are viable options. Personally I’d prefer the latter, I like the philosophy of buffing everything else than nerfing one thing, but that’s my own personal belief. On Weiss I sadly feel her only real ability/use is to just nova everything. And spam nova, and spam nova, and take talents that let you spam nova more, and do melee combos only when there’s only one creature or when I need combo points to nova.

Ranged combat also feels like it needs a lot of love, I feel since it’s less interesting than melee combo it should be stronger than melee combo. Perhaps make it’s damage better, perhaps spruce it up visually, tracer shots, cooler explosions, better indication of who you’re hitting. Or perhaps just remove it entirely, or let it only be only combo filler and don’t require it game. I find in the one place it’s necessary (where the bomb is.) There are too many exploding creatures to actually enjoyable take down with range shots, particularly since ranged is just very dull. The only characters I half enjoy it are Ruby (aoe death ball ranged attack) or Blake (Beams of Boom!) even on Ruby though my general way to enjoy it is to deathball everything and AoE and just take the death. Kill 30 creatures and take one death is a lot more worth it than shooting for 25 seconds and not feeling any satisfaction.

Finally Blake’s abilities, while not bad, feel like they pale in comparison of enjoyment and spectacle compared to the others. Other than just improving them visually, I’m not sure how to improve this, though her melee combo is my favorite.

Finally, running is less interesting than it sounds, perhaps small waves of creatures continously spawning through most of the runs, or more exploration or more crates or powerups or something to fill the boring run time.

The first thing to get out quickly that is the most important, no matter how much rage or angry comments get thrown, it’s Vazkii’s mod, and he gets the final say.  Best case scenario, you put out a well, thought out explanation for why you feel a change is good or bad, and Vazkii reads it, sees logic in it, and implements it.  Worst case scenarios are we drive Vazkii from modding, or Vazkii annoyed from all the comments makes Botania nigh unplayable out of spite.

Here’s Vazkii’s interesting conundrum, he wants to make a mod that isn’t about grind but is more engaging at every level, with lots of progression and automation puzzles etc. . .  Passive generation is good for starting, or for new players to learn the basic mana mechanics without a headache.  Does wilting solve that?  I’m not sure,if I’m entirely new to modded Minecraft, the flowers suddenly dying might put me off to the mod if it happens before I can do anything with the mana, an hour is not a very long time, especially for someone who’s new and only makes one or two dayblooms, hoping that’ll be enough.

The second part of Vazkii’s argument is by spamming passive generation (ridiculously large daybloom farms, hydroangea farms, etc. . ) are bad for servers, they complain to Vazkii, Vazkii says not to spam flowers, that gets ignored, and Vazkii is complained to again, but in almost every scenario I can think of most automation tasks of ‘better’ flowers tend to be harder on the server than the farms.  Imagine all the redstone clocks and timers that go into a decent sized endoflame farm.

But why have farms?  Why the need for so much mana?  I think this is the root of the problem that everyone forgets to ask in this discussion.

Since I can’t answer that question for everyone, I’ll describe my experiences with Botania, right before the decay went in.

For me personally, it’s when I do something engaging with Botania, particularly at any point right past the beginning, it’s -very- mana intensive.
I recently learned 48 hydroangeas, 3 gourmaryllis, 4 kekimirus, and 8 thermalily’s do not keep up with 1 loonium, when limited by elven mana spreaders.  (I was trying to get iridium.)

So the recent times I’ve played, where I’m making a bunch of Botania items, fighting a gaia guardian, and running a loonium, I need a big backlog of mana, or just a lot of mana generation.  As stated, all the flowers I had wasn’t enough to keep up with the 1 flower alone.  So my hour doing botania was always stopped short due to lack of mana.

How to fix this problem?  generate more mana.  How to fix that problem?  2 ways, store more mana generated while I’m offline, or generate -more- mana while I’m online.  The former I can do, the latter is harder since I’m already using many end game mana production plants, I could make larger farms of end game plants, but this is getting back to the first problem, but more-so, so when I’m online, I’m generating a lot more tile entities, effects.

It’s a tough problem to fix.  I also understand Vazkii’s desire to have an engaging mod, but I know I already dread some of the set-ups I’ve already created,  I think my 3 gourmaryllis already cause more lag for the server than my 48 hydroangeas, just due to the nature of the automation surrounding them.

This is my experience though, and perhaps I’m just playing/doing it wrong.  Trying to enjoy Botania in bursts, particularly expensive bursts now that I’m in the end game.

Maybe there’s a middle ground, decent passive generation you can upgrade in some way?  Combining 9 hydroangeas creates a bouquet or something, same effect as 9, but easier on the server?  It’s hard to say, people will generally always fluctuate to the path of least resistance, so I expect the next common choice is going to be endoflame automation or thermalily, after those start getting spammed, will they get decay too?

I know the fallacy of the slippery slope, and while I’m invoking it a little, I think the bigger question isn’t how do i stop players from spamming flowers like this, but the deeper question of, why do they want to spam flowers like this, and can I implement a method/goal that achieves that?  Where do players feel they have ‘enough mana’ and where does Vazkii rate that?  Is generation just too low that these methods are required for enjoyable play, or the cost of things too high?  Or is there some poorly conceived/understood idea that ‘this’ is enough mana when it’s clearly too much?

For me it’s to have enough mana on hand the once a day or once every 2 days I play, and want to create some terrasteel, or use a functional flower that is really expensive, since I can burn up 9 pools in about 30 minutes if I just turn a couple of things on, and my generation just isn’t strong enough to keep up with that.

Either way I still enjoy Botania, and I hope Vazkii and the community can come together to make decisions that makes everyone happy.  Just some food for thought, and the two cents of a random blogger who finds this design problem interesting.

Digit out.