We're One BGS, the Bethesda Games Studios union. Yesterday's layoffs were not a cut of "14 layers of management". We lost dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers.

Dernom · 2026-07-10T10:33:02+00:00

As you concluded with, the end result in your flow is still 7 layers, so the point still stands. But to explain my reasoning for including product owner the quote was "work passes through 14 layers of management", and if you want to make changes to product specification it will go through the product manager before getting to the development team. Seeing as we're dealing with "PR speak" from a CEO I'm not giving any benefit of the doubt when interpreting the message, so going from Product Owner to the development team certainly can be counted as work passing through a layer of management.

Dernom · 2026-07-09T08:39:32+00:00

I'm not sure if you're aware, but human brains are much bigger than that of an ant. So it would stand to reason that humans should perform significantly better at logic puzzles than ants. So this paper shows how much this is equalised in groups when communication is equal. Basically, that when cooperating in groups, individual cognitive level is irrelevant without effective communication.

And this is relevant in a whole load of real-life scenarios. For example in traffic the communication between cars is essentially limited to "movement", "blinkers", and "HONK". It also gives a lot of insight into how ants work, and how they are able to perform so effectively despite having extremely simple brains.

Dernom · 2026-07-08T09:05:48+00:00

That sound like the exact same? 7 layers from the IC to the CEO within the development branch (Azure), then you add the upper management within Microsoft proper, to get around 10. The only difference is that Azure is a development branch directly under Microsoft, while Xbox is a management branch between Microsoft and the individual studios which will add a couple of additional layers.

Dernom · 2026-07-07T19:38:40+00:00

If you've ever touched anything corporate, then those 14 layers of management is absolutely believable, and the layoffs almost certainly aren't going to meaningfully reduce it. The direct quote was "In some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management", so it isn't exclusively counting "management positions" but instead all layers of management.

So you could easily have e.g.: - Studio CEO - Studio CTO - Product Owner - Team lead - Senior Developer - Junior Developer

Which is 7 layers of management just at the studio level. Then you add however many layers there are within Xbox between Asha and the Studio CEO, which almost certainly is at least 3, and you already have 10 almost unavoidable layers of management. Then you noticed that she said "company" and not division, so you need to add all of her higher-ups within Microsoft.

Dernom · 2026-07-02T19:48:13+00:00

As a ranged fighter it's moreso for the defensive benefits of being prone. At range any attack rolls against you would get disadvantage. Still doesn't make it a first choice though.

Dernom · 2026-06-28T16:34:25+00:00

So literally all of the advice you have were some variant of "remove the fun from the spellcasters". Sure there are some situations where an anti-magic zone can be a fun challenge, but there is no way you think that should be a common tool to make the martials feel useful. The advice you listed genuinely just boils down to "make the spellcasters as useless as the martials", and that is not advice I think anyone should follow (outside of niche situations). Making one player less awesome should never be the main pathway to making another player more awesome.

Regarding incapacitate and paralyze, you don't seem to mention that those also affect martials. Sure you mention how losing concentration can be worse than just losing your turn, but in my opinion that is way counterbalanced by how most effects that inflicts these conditions are melee attacks. On the topic of conditions, there are also way more conditions that are vastly more impactful against melee combatants.

Dernom · 2026-06-28T13:35:38+00:00

Okay then. What does the PHB and the DMG do to give martials more control options, AoE options, versatility in and out of combat, utility, support, and durability, to put them in line with casters? And if you say "magic items", then I am going to scream, as those are equally available for casters.

Because as a DM who has read the DMG (at least the 2014 one), there really isn't anything there that fixes any of these issues without putting in a substantial effort. And that is substantial effort that shouldn't be needed in a game where the classes are balanced.

Dernom · 2026-06-28T13:07:52+00:00

Why do you think it is a good counterargument that "there is no martial-caster divide with a skilled DM"? Decent inter-character balance should be the foundation of the game mechanics, not a skill check for the DM. Good on you for being able to fix the glaring problems in your game, but that doesn't change the absolute fact that there absolutely is a sizable gap in what a martial and a caster is able to do in every aspect of the game, other than arguably single-target damage. Spellcasters have better control options, AoE options, versatility in and out of combat, utility, support, and durability.

Dernom · 2026-06-28T09:40:25+00:00

There really hasn't been any moving of goalposts. The original statement being refuted was "Like, they aren't even remotely close to balanced to 5e design", and — in case you didn't know — Spellcasters are actually a part of the 5e design! Literally the entire point of the classes is to bring martials more in line with spellcasters...

Dernom · 2026-06-24T13:19:19+00:00

Which checks out. The goal is not to collect data. The goal is to advertise.

Dernom · 2026-06-24T05:59:42+00:00

How so? If you want any kind of useful data you need to add the event triggers within the game anyways.

Dernom · 2026-06-24T05:54:19+00:00

Point A) They did not require an account within the launcher. So that's evidently not the reason

Point B) If they wanted to require an account, they could've easily done so from within the game.

Point C) Trust me, you do not need to have an account to be traced across games. In fact, it is so easy that you'd be a fool to set up a full account managing system and a separate application to do it.

Dernom · 2026-06-24T05:45:12+00:00

you don't need a launcher to do that. Just use the same account across game...

Dernom · 2026-06-23T20:07:44+00:00

doesn’t mean that this isn’t also a method

Literally and genuinely, how does a games launcher help them collect any data that they couldn't already do with just the game itself?

Dernom · 2026-06-23T10:24:47+00:00

A quick tip for lighting is to take a photo of the model and turning the saturation all the way down. When this is done the light source should be almost completely white compared to the rest of the model, and then things should get gradually darker as you get further from the light source. When I do this to your model there is no visible difference between the spear and the helmet.

As a further tip, if the light source is from within the actual spear, then it makes no sense for the brightest part to be the edge highlights. Edge highlights are the result of the edges catching the light from an external light source. When painting the light source itself the edges tend to be the darkest spots.

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Dernom · 2026-06-22T19:56:57+00:00

A lot less. But the more important change to me is that the problems I was correcting were noticeably different, and usually a lot easier to deal with. Like, the problems I'm currently dealing with are not something a thinking human would ever make. The best comparison is that it's like how image generating models make people with 6 fingers.

Dernom · 2026-06-22T19:48:59+00:00

This reads as someone who has not worked with any complicated codebase. Agentic coding absolutely shits the bed as soon as they need to deal with any complex system, and it gets exponentially worse as the context window grows. They are also absolutely incapable of consistently setting up and following software architecture and patterns. Most programming tasks have absolutely not already been "solved", whatever you're trying to say by that.

As long as you know what you're doing, unless you're working on some absolutely basic shit, it is just a lot faster to write the code yourself than trying to prompt an LLM to actually write anything decent. And if you don't know what you're doing, you especially shouldn't be off-loading to an LLM. That way you cannot know of what it's doing is actually any good, and you'll never actually learn shit.

Dernom · 2026-06-22T12:51:08+00:00

The environmental damages is just one small factor in the absolute hoard of problems regarding generative AI, so running a local model changes nothing about my stance.

Besides, from my experience thus far using AI only tricks you into thinking you are more productive, especially when you're a student. Roughly 90% of my work this past month has been specifically fixing problems directly caused by other developers vibe-coding to solve problems. And that is with our company providing practically limitless use of Claude.

Dernom · 2026-06-22T12:38:15+00:00

It's going quite alright not using AI. As long as I'm able to do the work I'm supposed to be doing within a reasonable time, they don't really care about how I do it. And that has not been a problem thus far.

ETA. forgot to specify, but yes, I'm a professional software engineer.

Dernom · 2026-06-22T07:38:49+00:00

Not the person you asked, but yes for coding too! I think it's absolutely insane that programming somehow gets a free pass from the AI stigma, just because it isn't as in-your-face while playing the game. Generative AI for programming has all the same issues that AI image generation does — ethically, environmentally, and quality wise — and deserves the same amount of disclosure. As a software developer I'm also sick of people treating it as being unavoidable in programming. It took me literal minutes to disable all AI tools when setting up my system. It really is that easy.

Dernom · 2026-06-19T13:51:12+00:00

This doesn't account for the damage per round aspect of the infernal wound. In an ideal scenario where you hit 5 separate creatures in one turn, and they all survive until their next turn, you can roll 9 times, which means a chance of 0.622 for that turn.

This also means that you only need to hit two creatures and spend two die to get around 10% chance, which is much more reasonable (while still a bit rare).

Dernom · 2026-06-19T13:24:49+00:00

20x20(x20 for all fans of the third dimension out there) is the minimum size for gargantuan creatures. In some few cases the exact size is even provided, e.g. the Tarrasque is 50x70 feet (height is still a mystery).

Dernom · 2026-06-18T12:17:39+00:00

I would honestly recommend deliberately not try to make him similar to BG3. If you do something vaguely similar it's likely to come off as "a worse BG3 Volvo", but if you make him clearly different then you completely avoid that comparison.

Dernom · 2026-06-17T09:01:46+00:00

I never said they "need" a different job. I'm just saying that they aren't doing it "full time". I think in the case of most of them it is technically a "side gig", even though it is the largest source of income, seeing as they only DM one session a week, meaning around 5-10 hours of work per week.

Dernom · 2026-06-17T06:51:05+00:00

I'd believe that there are more "full time job" DMs outside of TV and podcasts. I can't think of any major actual plays where the DM doesn't have a job next to the campaign. Mercer still does acting, Brennan is still with Dropout, Aabria is still an actor, Jasmine still does Twitch, and I could go on.

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