The story had a good plot which I enjoyed reading. Contrary to what one may expect from the title, this isn't a dry analysis discussing how autobalance could happen in real life, it's a story that is barely even related to autobalance at all (I don't think what the story describes is autobalance, really).
However, there are four things that detracted from the overall experience.
1. Respawn is non-existent. For a story about game mechanics, you'd expect one of the most essential mechanics to be present. Now, I haven't read the sequel, which is on autobalance, so maybe it's explained there, but otherwise, it was confusing at first.
EDIT after reading the sequel: So, yeah, as the sequel isn't finished yet, I'm not too sure what it's about, but respawn is apparently gone for a good reason in the first story. So that's that.
2. The author uses hyphens instead of dashes. As in, whenever the author SHOULD be using a dash, he uses a hyphen, and doesn't even leave a space before/after it, which may confuse the reader. An example of what the author would write:
The plot-which is irrelevant to the title-was enjoyable.
3. The author has no idea what transitions are. I read the story on Fanfiction.net, so I can give the author the benefit of doubt and say that maybe it was published on another website first that actually included page breaks as transitions or something. The one I read, though, would transition between two POVs with 0 forewarning at all. You're just expected to go with the flow.
4. The story has 26 chapters. Near the end, on chapter 24, I began noticing the author overusing italics for emphasis. Every 10th word was being italicized or something (not counting the dialogue), which is totally unnecessary.
If you take away those four, the story is pretty good. But because those four exist, I'd say: take a look and see for yourself what you think.
The plot itself is good
The story had a good plot which I enjoyed reading. Contrary to what one may expect from the title, this isn't a dry analysis discussing how autobalance could happen in real life, it's a story that is barely even related to autobalance at all (I don't think what the story describes is autobalance, really).
However, there are four things that detracted from the overall experience.
1. Respawn is non-existent. For a story about game mechanics, you'd expect one of the most essential mechanics to be present. Now, I haven't read the sequel, which is on autobalance, so maybe it's explained there, but otherwise, it was confusing at first.
EDIT after reading the sequel: So, yeah, as the sequel isn't finished yet, I'm not too sure what it's about, but respawn is apparently gone for a good reason in the first story. So that's that.
2. The author uses hyphens instead of dashes. As in, whenever the author SHOULD be using a dash, he uses a hyphen, and doesn't even leave a space before/after it, which may confuse the reader. An example of what the author would write:
The plot-which is irrelevant to the title-was enjoyable.
3. The author has no idea what transitions are. I read the story on Fanfiction.net, so I can give the author the benefit of doubt and say that maybe it was published on another website first that actually included page breaks as transitions or something. The one I read, though, would transition between two POVs with 0 forewarning at all. You're just expected to go with the flow.
4. The story has 26 chapters. Near the end, on chapter 24, I began noticing the author overusing italics for emphasis. Every 10th word was being italicized or something (not counting the dialogue), which is totally unnecessary.
If you take away those four, the story is pretty good. But because those four exist, I'd say: take a look and see for yourself what you think.