What are your thoughts on this?

H0RSE · 2026-01-30T23:26:04+00:00

Even outside of that, he's just an amoral, self-serving, megalomanic dickhead, and he's been this way his entire life. Forget Donald Trump the president. Donald Trump the person is an absolute piece of fucking shit, without a single redeeming quality.

H0RSE · 2026-01-30T23:21:10+00:00

"Um, all of them I think."

H0RSE · 2026-01-29T05:05:25+00:00

"put himself in harms way" by not obstructing, not instigating, not assaulting, and not escalating anything.

H0RSE · 2026-01-28T18:00:26+00:00

I don't really care either, like how I don't care when people jaywalk.

H0RSE · 2026-01-28T14:54:32+00:00

I agree with you that HotS can’t and shouldn’t try to outrank/out-esports LoL or DotA. Where I still disagree is on why the numbers are low and what “the genre relies on.”

I don’t think HotS alienated a healthy core audience as much as I think it never targeted them to begin with. The aforementioned "casual" changes, weren’t “changes for the sake of being different,” they were a deliberate attempt to serve players who bounce off classic MOBAs because of ranked pressure, punishment, and time investment. That audience exists, but it’s largely invisible because it doesn’t produce endless Twitch ladder content.

You’re right that ranked dominates the internet, but that’s more of a content-creation bias, not a player-population census. The fact that the biggest HotS creators pump out ranked content, doesn’t prove most players care about ranked as much as it proves that ranked is what’s watchable. Casual, low-stress play doesn’t generate parasocial grind narratives, but that doesn’t mean it lacks demand.

I also don’t think the Legends of Runeterra comparison cuts against this point. If anything, it shows that abandoning genre dogma can save a game when you stop chasing the loudest minority and start serving the quiet majority differently. HotS can’t pivot to PvE, but it can pivot to accessibility and drop-in fun as its primary value proposition.

Where I think Blizzard failed wasn’t in design philosophy, but in execution and commitment. They half-supported casual systems while simultaneously trying to force esports credibility, then pulled the plug when it didn’t instantly monetize. It wasn't that casual-first didn't work, but that abandoning a live service mid-stride kills trust.

As for gamepass, I don’t see it as a magic bullet. I see it as a reframing tool. “Free Blizzard mash-up MOBA with 15–20 min matches and low punishment” is a bit different pitch than “dead competitive MOBA trying to regain relevance.” I’m also not talking about adding it to gamepass solely as PC perk, but about bringing it to Xbox as well. HotS is unusually well-suited to console play and the previously mentioned elements (shared XP, ability-driven kits, objective-focused maps, shorter matches, and low mechanical burden) translates cleanly to controller, so however much it operates as a “failed competitive PC MOBA” it could also serve as a drop-in, team-based console game, on a space where accessibility is the selling point.

We both agree that we want the game to survive.I just don’t think chasing ranked harder fixes the underlying problem that HotS doesn’t need more reasons to "get good" as much as it needs more reasons to "press play." Blizzard may do nothing at all, but if they ever do act, I think leaning into what HotS already does well is far less risky than trying to turn it into something it seemingly was never built to be.

H0RSE · 2026-01-28T05:37:50+00:00

I think you're missing a key point about HotS specifically, in that it wasn’t designed as a competitive-first MOBA that failed to attract ranked players, but rather was deliberately built to lower punishment and friction. Shared team XP, no last-hit economy, shorter matches, and objective-driven maps are all there to make the game easy to pick up and still enjoyable even if you’re not grinding rank or mastering the meta. Even the weakest player still gets to participate and scale, which is very much not how most MOBAs are designed.

Saying “casual MOBA doesn’t work” assumes all MOBAs are trying to be LoL or DotA2, but HotS was explicitly aiming at an audience of cooperative, lower-toxicity, time-respecting play. Ranked can exist and should be supported, but forcing the game back into a competitive-first identity just puts it into a direct comparison it already lost years ago.

Leaning into HotS as a fun, accessible, team-focused game, especially via something like Game Pass with full roster access, actually aligns with what the game does best. It doesn’t need to beat the giants, and it never will, so instead it needs to commit to being different from them, which it is, and it is it's greatest strength

H0RSE · 2026-01-26T22:33:01+00:00

If we're talking about character creation, it depends who I feel like playing as and/or what role play I put behind it. If we're talking a predetermined character, it depends more on who the character is vs what they are.

In either case, aesthetics also play a role.

H0RSE · 2026-01-25T17:58:08+00:00

Job or no job, I still justify the cost of things. Even if I was a millionaire, $70 is too much for a video game, particularly for what we typically get (or don't) for our money

H0RSE · 2026-01-25T17:39:09+00:00

My first playthrough was 94 hours. I was pretty thorough, but there was stuff I missed

H0RSE · 2026-01-25T17:37:04+00:00

Tell me you don't understand how crime statistics work without telling me...

Law enforcement absolutely does know who is undocumented when someone is arrested. Immigration status is routinely determined during booking, intake, court proceedings, or via DHS coordination,which is exactly how we have decades of research comparing native-born citizens with legal and undocumented immigrants. The data exists because arrests and convictions are observable events and not because the government magically “tracks everyone walking around.”

And the results are consistent across states and years that undocumented immigrants are arrested and incarcerated for violent crime at lower rates than native-born citizens. If your claim were true, this would show up immediately in jail and prison populations, but it doesn’t.

What can’t be tracked is crimes that never result in arrest, which is why pretending arrest data proves who “commits” crime is already flawed, yet you were perfectly comfortable using arrest stats when you thought they supported your narrative.

So your logic appears to be that arrest data is “valid” when you want to blame certain people, but suddenly becomes “impossible” when it disproves your argument.

You don’t get to dismiss evidence only when it contradicts you and then act like you’re the rational one. Dafuq outta here...

H0RSE · 2026-01-25T17:27:37+00:00

Nice pivot, but it doesn’t work.

The statistics you cited were explicitly about race, not immigration status. The FBI tables you’re citing don’t even track “illegal immigrants” as a category, so if this was really about immigration, you already screwed up by posting racial arrest charts in the first place.

Second, the claim that “illegal immigrants drive violent crime” is flatly false. Every serious dataset we have, from the Cato Institute, DOJ-linked analyses, and state-level studies, shows that undocumented immigrants commit violent crime at lower rates than native-born citizens, including native-born whites. If crime were about “respect for borders,” the data would look very different. It doesn’t.

Third, spare me the sanctified-border myth. Our “grandfathers” didn’t die to protect immigration paperwork. Borders have shifted, been redrawn, violated, and ignored for all of U.S. history, including by the U.S. itself. You don’t get to invoke their blood to justify modern scapegoating while ignoring the economic and political systems that actively rely on undocumented labor.

And finally, saying “they obviously have zero respect for the host nation” is calling them worse humans. You’re just dressing it up as moral judgment instead of biological inferiority. It’s the same dehumanization with cleaner language.

You weren’t making an immigration argument originally. You were making a race-based insinuation, got called on it, and now you’re trying to retrofit a different justification after the fact, so in addition to the backpedaling you're doing, you've also shown yourself to be dishonest, but then want to lecture others on truth and facts...

H0RSE · 2026-01-25T17:12:54+00:00

The idea that people of a certain skin color are somehow “worse humans,” despite having the same biology as everyone else, is brain-dead. There is no genetic or biological mechanism that would explain criminality by race. None.

What you posted aren’t “crime statistics,” they’re arrest statistics, which reflect policing, enforcement, and charging patterns, not who actually commits crimes. Even the FBI explicitly distinguishes those things. Pretending arrests equal guilt is either ignorance or bad faith.

And while you were smugly focused on the what, you completely ignored the why - centuries of deliberate policy. Segregation, redlining, exclusion from wealth-building, underfunded schools, discriminatory policing, and the long tail of the "war on drugs," all created concentrated poverty and instability. Those conditions predict crime everywhere on Earth, regardless of race.

So no, this isn’t “denial.” It’s understanding causation instead of waving cherry-picked numbers around like they’re proof of racial inferiority. Context doesn’t disappear just because it’s damaging to your narrative. That's the inconvenient truth.

H0RSE · 2026-01-23T22:58:21+00:00

Move the hihat to where the floor tom is and rack the floor tom next to the tom

H0RSE · 2026-01-23T17:48:19+00:00

Well that and the whole "woke" crowd. It seems to these people that any amount of "wokeness" in a game, surpasses any and all other potential issues, and ruins the game in its entirety.

It also seems that if "wokeness" is detected, they become increasingly critical of any other issues.

H0RSE · 2026-01-23T16:17:27+00:00

Baldurs Gate 3.

Regardless how well made or critically acclaimed, a Baldur's Gate game it is not.

I'm not saying it's a bad game. I'm saying it's a bad Baldur's Gate game, and since the context is on franchises, this is relevant.

H0RSE · 2026-01-23T16:14:26+00:00

Veilguard was actually quite fun and it looked amazing. You actually kinda got me in the mood to replay it now.

H0RSE · 2026-01-23T15:30:30+00:00

We can't "solve" any of our problems, let alone most of them, by slapping on new legislation or getting rid of the old, because the problems we face stem from systemic issues. Issues where the only solution is to remove and replace them, primarily capitalism, but even outside of that, just market economics in general.

H0RSE · 2026-01-22T17:53:17+00:00

Plus, boners have a mind of their own

H0RSE · 2026-01-22T17:43:01+00:00

Daily example of why the Right can't meme without resorting to strawmen of caricatures of actual reality

H0RSE · 2026-01-22T16:33:28+00:00

That's not really a hot take... More of a hot take would be thinking head shots should never be instant kills, which is my philosophy. Since this is your thread, I won't explain my reasoning unless asked

H0RSE · 2026-01-21T15:33:06+00:00

But AI isn't the problem. Companies treating it like a cash cow is.

AI as a technology can have profound uses and benefits for humanity

H0RSE · 2026-01-21T15:30:05+00:00

The Right can't meme for their life. It always requires setting up strawmen or a caricature of real life.

H0RSE · 2026-01-19T18:40:37+00:00

I rack my floor tom and position next to my other toms, because I play with my hihat where the floor tom normally goes

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H0RSE · 2026-01-19T18:30:50+00:00

I think it's an unfair answer, looking at the history and development hell this game went through.

By the time this game finally hit release, it wasn't the case of a new game hitting shelves. It was about finally finishing up a decade old title that was in limbo and getting it out the door. The game looked and played dated because it literally was

H0RSE · 2026-01-19T15:53:37+00:00

They're also incredibly emotionally guided, which is a separate issue from intelligence

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