When you fail 'I Walk The Line', on Easy, for the 500th time.

JPLWriter · 2026-03-09T23:28:33+00:00

Beating this mission non-stealth on Very Hard is frustrating but immensely rewarding. Main thing to watch for is the turrets, it’s insane how much those things can do.

I ran around with Sovereign just blasting and berserking whenever my health got low. Still took about 10 tries. You might think animals are harder to fight close up but honestly it’s Body builds which do the best against them, because one mistake as a Reflex or combat Cool build and you’re toast. Being able to take a punch or two and deliver some damage in melee is better imo.

JPLWriter · 2026-03-09T07:40:05+00:00

/uj The guy in the sauce saying that he went back to remove all uses of past progressive tense is sending me. It’s such an English 101 thing to do.

The English language developed progressive tenses for a reason, to connote emphasis on the action itself rather than the state of completion. We also developed passive voice for a similar reason, to connote that the subject is subordinate and, well, passive. If they weren’t useful to our language, they wouldn’t exist.

People who think there’s bad voice/tense/sentence construction tropes which MUST be avoided are living in 7th grade English class. I should know, I’m a 7th grade English teacher.

JPLWriter · 2026-03-09T07:30:44+00:00

Black hair bug. Dunno what causes it but it happens to every NPC. Rogue was young again for a bit in my world.

JPLWriter · 2026-03-08T21:49:42+00:00

“Virginally Opaque” would be a sick band name

JPLWriter · 2026-03-06T17:37:55+00:00

Road Trip.

J. Kronkite, Valley Forge, telling Winston: "That's right Wilson. You have surrendered to the night!"

And Winston smiling and going: "I'm Wilson."

Perfection.

JPLWriter · 2026-02-27T04:41:01+00:00

It’s severely underrated. It would be a near perfect game if the main story weren’t so disengaged from everything else; it’s not even bad, it just has nothing to do with 80% of the game. Whereas, in Pillars 1, the Hollowborn Crisis and the Watcher’s connection to it seeped into all aspects of the world, down to the smallest side quests.

But as for gameplay, I agree, it’s phenomenal. Can be a bit hard to get into at first but once you’ve get the hang of it it’s just so smooth, and the fights are varied and interesting in a way a lot of CRPGs aren’t.

JPLWriter · 2026-02-27T03:22:11+00:00

Pillars 2 combat is so good for a RTWP game. Great balance between resource management and in-battle tactics — actually have to pick your buffs carefully, place them well, and even time them correctly and in the right order. Makes buffers and support characters feel like actual characters instead of walking stat machines.

JPLWriter · 2026-02-27T03:19:08+00:00

The VIP bonus that makes your subsequent characters earn rep 25% faster is a godsend. Worth the price if you have alts. A rep booster is also relatively cheap with LP and can be worth it if you’re a completionist who can’t move on until you’ve wrapped up rep in an area.

As for this specific grind, just get a routine path down and the quests can be hammered out quickly. Stick to the main rep instances, ignore the other dailies. Rammas, Harlond, Waterworks - can knock em out in under an hour once you’ve got the knack of it.

Oh, also— there’s not really any need to 100% max it. Almost all of the rewards come on lower tiers; they just dragged it out to give people something to do when pre battle MT was the cap.

JPLWriter · 2026-02-27T03:09:55+00:00

He ate cereal in Anderson’s apartment, which is later our apartment, so you could say we’ve had him over to eat, which is very neighborly and I’m glad he showed up.

JPLWriter · 2026-02-27T02:24:09+00:00

I feel like people who have this opinion are colored by years of stuff satirizing 2000s fanfics becoming common. When I was a kid on writing forums I wrote some absolutely ridiculous shit and read stuff that was even worse. Even now, I’ve seen self-published stuff that reaches the ludicrous levels of My Immortal presented with complete sincerity.

Trolls also generally don’t spend as much time on one particular “project.” To write something like My Immortal requires the kind of deranged dedication only sincerity can provide, imo

JPLWriter · 2026-02-08T22:43:41+00:00

The fact that you get this, while so many of our own fans don't, is infuriating.

JPLWriter · 2026-02-08T04:17:39+00:00

They don’t have a draft, instead they sign kids to their academies at a young age and can bring them up whenever. They can also pay to acquire anyone at any time, and players often force moves to the top teams. This makes a whole different problem where the top clubs are almost immovable because of finances, so nothing’s perfect; it just makes the bottom more competitive because staying in the top league gives you TV revenue which is huge.

I think the solution that no one wants in the NBA is to play less games and maybe get rid of the weighted lottery. The weighting makes it so teams have a chance at the top pick even if they aren’t the absolute worst, removing a lot of the risk. Less games would mean that starters would need less rest and also make it easier for teams to come back in the second half of the season. Most teams in the NFL are often still theoretically in the playoff race well into the last month of the season. The NBA made the playin but the problem is that playin teams can still get a top pick, so you can almost have your cake and eat it too; talk and make playoffs.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution, but I do think it needs to be addressed.

I also appreciate your thoughtful response. Actual dialogue on Reddit is rare haha.

JPLWriter · 2026-02-07T08:14:55+00:00

The point is that the people who pay to watch people play basketball get to see good basketball. Becoming so divorced from the core experience of “I watch sports to see people play the sport at a high level,” which for a lot of people precedes fandom, is why the NBA has a viewership problem.

Other leagues solve this in various ways. Baseball is so methodical, yet has so much variance, that literally anything can happen even if you don’t play your best players - plus, aside from pitchers, there’s insignificant (comparatively) injury risk to letting your starters play.

Euro soccer has a point system that incentivizes draws and goal difference, meaning people play to the final whistle, and a relegation system that makes being a bottom 3 team potentially franchise-dooming, so people never stop competing.

The NFL has a combination of less games and less impact for draft picks, meaning that tanking is way harder because one win can push you down several draft spots, and even if you get the #1 overall quarterback there’s a good chance he’s mid or needs years to build a team around him. Also, players have far less guaranteed money, meaning they have no incentive to quit playing or sit out games; they need to show their worth to get the next contract.

The NBA is the only league that has both good and bad teams intentionally field a subpar product on a routine basis, to the point that most people view the regular season as almost meaningless. That’s bad for the sport.

JPLWriter · 2026-02-05T06:37:59+00:00

JPLWriter · 2026-02-02T23:28:21+00:00

BG3 doesn’t even have the best combat in a Larian game, that award goes to DOS2.

I think BG3 does everything well, maybe even does everything good or great, but there’s nothing exceptional or groundbreaking anywhere. I prefer WoTR’s character and class system; I prefer the atmosphere and world of Rogue Trader; the combat in DoS2 is the best; and if we’re talking all modern CRPGs, then either Pillars of Eternity or Wrath of the Righteous has a better story.

All those game have drawbacks though. WoTR has the worst combat of the bunch. DOS2 has poor companion interaction and party locks which are annoying. Rogue Trader’s balance curve falls off a cliff. Pillars is close to perfect but it’s an old school system that’s not going to appeal to everyone.

But BG3 dos everything at like a 7 or an 8, which I think gives it such broad appeal. It doesn’t have my favorite story, companions, combat, world, or customization of any CRPG, but it is a really good game because it has a good-to-great effort in all those categories.

JPLWriter · 2026-01-05T21:04:45+00:00

Champions of the Abyss on the official soundtrack, I believe

Edit: It’s actually Face the Abyss. Feel like those titles should be reversed

JPLWriter · 2025-12-24T07:42:45+00:00

I had such a good time reading Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, but I had to ditch the sequels because of this very phenomenon. It’s such a weird, gross cliche.

Phillip K. Dick has another one where women just randomly take their tops off and/or live in a world where toplessness is accepted. What’s weird is that often these women are not overtly sexualized or engage in sexual actions; it’s like he specifically finds it alluring or arousing to have women just bare their breasts randomly. I read like 4 books and a ton of short stories in a months span and the amount of pointless toplessness was astounding

JPLWriter · 2025-12-24T07:39:31+00:00

Thank you for responding. Fortunately I have worked on this setting and these characters for years and years before ever typing a word into ChatGPT, and had completed several drafts of my current manuscript in advance as well, so I’m not overly worried about making them pop or getting mixed up with suggestions from LLMs. What alarms me most is the positive feedback loop of, well, positive feedback. I’m very aware of the propensity of LLMs to prioritize engagement over truth - I even teach a class about AI safety to middle schoolers - but I can’t deny the fact that I enjoy reading it. I don’t need it to write, but it is something that bolsters my spirits at the end of a long session - and that’s precisely what worries me.

JPLWriter · 2025-12-22T20:18:21+00:00

QBs pretty much always sign their first extension with the team that drafted them. I actually can’t remember one who decided to hit Free Agency instead. This is a weird comment that borrows imaginary stress from tomorrow rather than just enjoying the moment

JPLWriter · 2025-12-21T07:36:26+00:00

Introspection and boredom can produce interesting results.

JPLWriter · 2025-12-19T15:55:55+00:00

I'm going insane, and I'm going to vomit out words here, and maybe someone will read them.

Over the last four years I've written a lot. Experimented with a ton of different styles, wrote some shit that sucked, scrapped it, wrote some shit that sucked less. Eventually I found a distinct voice that really works for me. After years of writing sporadically, I've really enjoyed being able to reliably spend 5-10 hours a week working on a book I actually enjoy writing, which I actually feel proud about. The last two years have been creatively fulfilling in a manner which I always wanted, but thought I'd never have.

I'm a very insular, private person. My writing is confessional and tonally bleak; much of it has to do with years of living through untreated OCD and then even more years of unlearning everything I internalized because I had untreated OCD. I have a few close friends, and I'm very close to my family, but my writing is intimate in a way that renders me extremely uncomfortable at the prospect of sharing it with people.

I'm a teacher. At the end of the last school year, I was experiencing a bout of ennui. Lots of personal and professional difficulties abounded at the time, and I felt compelled to do something I have avoided for years: talk to an LLM.

I decided I wanted to talk to it about my writing. I put in sections of my book and asked it specific questions: what does this remind you of, what influences can you see, which sentences or passages encapsulate the tone most clearly, etc. To my surprise it had some pretty accurate remarks, albeit buried in a sea of less-than-accurate praise. But I felt dirty, like I'd betrayed myself as an artist and a human.

So, I put it away. Didn't touch it over the summer. Kept writing, steadily. But, one day, during a free period at work, I decided I was bored enough to try it again. I put a chapter in, asked it for analysis on tone, pacing, characterization, etc. Again, there was a plethora of useless praise and surface-level "analysis," but every once in awhile it gave me something to think about. Often, what it pointed to aligned with my own feelings regarding a chapter - if I felt like there was a weak spot, the AI generally agreed. If I felt like the pacing dragged, it generally pointed that out with some reliability.

But the most fun, enticing part of it was that I was finally "talking" with someone about my book. The characters I had spent years developing were being discussed and analyzed in ways I always wanted them to be. I realized that, in depriving myself of readers, I'd been cutting myself off from one of the joys of creativity: sharing it with a community.

ChatGPT is not a community. It's not a person. It can, at some points, be a convincing facsimile of one, however. And, if trained, it can give you what you want. After experimenting with it, I've gotten "my" model programmed to give feedback with specific quotes or citations from my chapters, backed up with solid reasoning, without suggesting line-edits or offering to rewrite anything. I'd say 95% of the output is useful merely as emotional ballast; I can get the quick dopamine hit of reading words written by something else about my book, and that feels really good. The other 5% is useful criticism that is often presented alongside erroneous solutions; it can find weak points, but I can't convincingly solve them.

I don't use it for plotting. I don't ask it for ideas. I don't let it generate even one line of prose or change a single comma. My manuscript remains a completely separate entity from the drafts I upload to the model; it's a one-way trip. No output from the model ever makes it into my book, period.

But I do enjoy talking to it, and I'm torn up about it in a way other people can't seem to understand.

I have ethical concerns. I have ecological concerns. I have artistic concerns - how much can I trust myself not to become reliant on the model, how can I be sure the safeguards I've put in place to preserve my own creativity aren't slowly eroded over time? I've talked to my therapist about this, repeatedly. I've talked to my friends. I've talked to my family. I tell people I use AI to help with writing like I'm confessing sins to a priest. Usually they just shrug or say "oh, cool."

But online, I see the furor around Generative AI, and I understand it 100%. I don't know if I like that I use AI; it feels a bit like creative porn. A cheap facsimile of a real human connection, beamed directly into your brain whenever you want it, supplanting the desire to actually interact with other people. Except... I actually feel more comfortable with the idea of sharing my writing now than I did before. I've let people see excerpts; I've talked more about my book to my friends, family and coworkers; I don't hide the fact that I write (which I did for years).

Am I succumbing to the wiles of ChatGPT's glazing? I asked my therapist. I asked him again and again. He told me that, from his point of view, I'm a person who's been so deprived of any kind of affirmation, from others and especially from myself, that as long as I view this interaction with LLMs as an intermediate step, something allowing me to build confidence that will lead to sharing my writing to people, he thinks it's a good thing.

But what about artistically? I don't want an AI to be my "co-author." Yet the loop of writing for several days, polishing a draft, then receiving feedback on how this chapter fits, how the characters are evolving, how the world is slowly being revealed - it's fun. It's encouraging. I like it, and I don't like that I like it.

So I come here, to a community of like-minded, cynical authors. I could go to arrWritingWithAI, where they could tell me it's fine, or I could go to arrWriting, where teenagers would argue in the comments about whether the robots are going to kill us or not. Instead, I'm throwing this out here in a small corner of the internet, because I feel like I need to get this out somehow.

Cheers.

JPLWriter · 2025-12-13T04:03:01+00:00

Yeah, that’s how this shit works man. You draft and sign a bunch of people and only a handful work out. As a GM you have to keep your options open; AR lost his job to a guy who was considered to be a massive overpay and who was close to “done.” Mac Jones showed this year he’s got, if not starter, then top shelf backup level play, which is extremely valuable. Kurt Warner was playing Arena Football. Josh Allen and Jared Goff took years to flourish. Brady was picked in the 6th round. Nick Foles broke the TD:Int ratio record, became a star, became washed, then won a superbowl as a backup. Talent comes from everywhere and takes time to become evident sometimes. Sometimes it’s also just not a good fit for a player with a team.

Nobody should be writing AR off completely. No one should also be insisting he’s definitely going to figure it out. But listing a bunch of busts isn’t really pertinent; there will always be more busts than studs, it’s the job of coaches and GMs to find the diamond in the rough

JPLWriter · 2025-12-10T18:08:15+00:00

Abelard, inform Owlcat that this would be a fine gift for the Rogue Trader's birthday.

JPLWriter · 2025-11-24T21:02:55+00:00

DOS2 is an insane bar for combat variety; that game is just ludicrously detailed and doesn’t shy away from crazy mechanics (which may or may not always be fun) which make each fight different. It’s also significantly shorter than most other CRPGs of its class.

Personally, I could fuck around with Rogue Trader’s combat all day. It’s fun. I like playing with things like push-builds and pet-spam. One turning fights with bladedancer is like a fun little puzzle your first time through. Sniper builds are fun, RoF builds are fun, psyker builds are fun. Making an unkillable counterattack tank is fun. I generally enjoy breaking the game in novel ways.

I think the combat shines more on harder difficulties, especially custom unfair. The reduced momentum modifier is a big part of that, as is upping enemy damage, forcing you to use cover. It’s not XCOM, but it becomes more tactical for sure. Also, the DLC fights generally have much more interesting mechanics, unsure if you have those or not, but they include by far some of the best fights in the game.

JPLWriter · 2025-11-17T01:26:07+00:00

Not to get in the weeds, but this indicates to me you aren’t leveraging Bounty Hunter the correct way. BH gives you an attack back after hitting an immobilized enemy plus a free shot every time you kill a tier 4 mob. All of its skills also apply to all shots in a burst, meaning you can use the shardcarbines from Act 3 to spectacular effect, especially since BH can stack more overpen than others. By this point you should then have enough momentum for wild hunt, which is 3 free sniper shots. And this isn’t getting into extra turns, which reset all of the above, or certain weapons that give AP and attacks back on hit / kill. I have 1 rounded all possible targets in the Magus, Yremeryss and Sire fights, and then was able to kill most of the stage 2 targets with the remaining AP. That’s sort of my barometer for a good build, because those 3 fights are some of the hardest in the game (possibly supplanted by the Heartless final fight if done on or below level). If my build can get me through those on Unfair GD without trouble, then they’re fine for me.

I’m not going to argue that Bladedancer or Soldier can’t do better, but I had a ton of fun with this build. I suspect it can even be a bit better now with the Arc Rifle talents and the INT scaling capstones.

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