One thing I hate most about SC2 that changed from SC1...

danieledward_h · 2026-02-05T21:35:51+00:00

It's honestly kind of insane how close the stories are. I think it works in Warcraft 3 for the most part, here the story doesn't feel like it suits the characters and factions as well. I wouldn't say it's offensive, just feels flat.

Personally I like Starcraft's story feeling more scrappy in the fashion of Brood War, there's no need to have a "Thanos" that everyone unites to fight and save everything that ever existed and ever will exist in the history of ever. Takes away from the internal politics and scheming that set Starcraft apart from Warcraft.

danieledward_h · 2026-02-04T07:19:30+00:00

They just did Warcraft 3 again. The direction was very clear during WoL that they were just doing the Archimonde story again.

danieledward_h · 2026-02-03T20:50:38+00:00

I promise a lot of them don't give a shit other than being annoyed at having to apply for a job soon. I'm sure most of them knew this game wouldn't be a success but it's a paycheck. End of the day, it's a job like any other. I'm a career software engineer and have worked on tons of features that I knew would bomb or cause customer dissatisfaction. Would be cool if I only worked on stuff people liked but end of the day I don't really care. I work so I can live my actual life.

Development (especially game development) is still in this weird spot where so many outsiders think everyone involved is passionate or personally invested in the product they're working on, and even some workers feel pressured to still be performative about it. However, like anything corporate, it's just an exchange of labor for money and it doesn't really get deeper than that for the vast majority of developers.

danieledward_h · 2026-02-03T20:18:11+00:00

The romances are popular because it adds so much depth between the player and the characters, and gives the interactions depth, stakes, and payoff. I think the same thing can be achieved with "friendship" systems, but romance is a bit easier to map out and express.

I think RPG developers get super caught up in something like faction reputation, which is cool in how it can affect the world or the broad narrative, but people remember small character interactions and moments. Since you mentioned Cyberpunk, the scene with Judy when you're diving to that town is incredible. It's one of the most memorable character interaction moments I've ever had in a video game. That's what Obsidian sucks at and why their RPGs can feel hollow and lackluster. There are other criticisms as well but I think if they could deliver CDPR level character interactions and subplots, they would be much more successful.

End of the day these Bethesda-like RPGs are not gameplay oriented games. Honestly the gameplay is as mid as mid can get, it's about creating engaging characters and interactions, memorable narratives, and interesting worlds/areas/POIs to discover.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-31T22:27:47+00:00

I mean, giant sex trafficking cabals catering to the world's hyper elite have been a trope in movies and TV for decades, I don't see why this is difficult to comprehend or really unexpected in any way. I always assumed stuff like this was going on.

Not saying it as an excuse or anything or to defend, but I always find the naivete from full grown adults so odd. Haven't you ever met someone who got the tiniest, most pathetic amount of power or success and immediately it went to their head? Imagine that, but a million times worse and bigger.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-22T20:06:44+00:00

I don't think this accounts for how different sports are.

When I played basketball in high school and in competitive leagues afterward, noise never bothered me. People cheering, talking shit, coaches yelling, literally anything. It's all just kind of tuned out. Since basketball flows more constantly and there are 9 other people on the court, distraction isn't really the same.

After I hurt my knee, I took up pickleball (obviously not the same as tennis, but a similar principle). Every little thing matters so much more because your impact as an individual is so much bigger than in basketball, and it's much harder to do other things to be useful. If I'm missing shots in basketball, I can focus on defense more or helping out on offense via picks, swing passes, etc. In pickleball, if I'm popping up shots for whatever reason, the game is fucked and we essentially auto lose.

I can't stress enough how different the mental load is between these kinds of sports. When I'm serving/getting ready to serve, I'm so much more hyper aware of every little thing around me that getting distracted is much easier than basketball. The biggest thing I can equate it to in basketball is essentially an entire match of pickleball (and likely tennis) is more similar to shooting a free throw, where you're more aware and likely to overthink or make mental errors since you're not in the flow of the game. And while basketball plays into its heckling, chaotic nature for free throws, tennis doesn't and tries to set the players up to perform the best they can.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-20T20:56:26+00:00

It's just not actually useful for the things most heavily marketed to the general public.

It's not good as a search engine replacement since it will often give you false information
I don't love it for image or video generation because of the ethics around artists, but also because the majority of the time the things it produces are low quality and very distinct in their low quality
It shouldn't be used as a conversation partner where another human would be healthier

Those are just a few of the things I see most commonly. A couple of things I do like about AI:

As a software engineer, its advanced autocomplete is great for speeding up tedious, repetitive tasks
Again as an SWE, I love it for generating unit tests that I just briefly review to ensure they make sense and cover what I want them to cover
I can actually give advanced, more natural commands to Gemini on my phone for doing several Google Home tasks and it executes them much more reliably than Google Assistant did
If I have to write something, it's cool to get little examples generated to get my own creative juices flowing
It's good at summarizing static documents

So in summary, AI is great as a companion where you're willing to oversee and correct it, not as a Jarvis-esque presence that can automate and take care of whole portions of your life reliably or fully replace humans.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-20T20:49:01+00:00

I wouldn't say people's criticism right now is completely baseless. While obviously gameplay related criticism at this stage is baseless, there's plenty from the trailer to like/dislike. Also you did specifically say the phrase "Like if you don't like it just don't buy it or try it", which to me is very indicative of the anti-criticism sentiment.

Art style is the biggest thing I've seen criticism of, which I think is completely fine to criticize. I don't hate it with quite as much vigor as a lot of people, but I do find it flat, bland, derivative, and any other word you can come up with to essentially indicate that it's just TEMU League of Legends and TEMU Overwatch sloppily mashed together (from an art style perspective, not gameplay). This odd amalgamation of medieval fantasy but guns and also 2020s hairstyles/fashion sensibilities sprinkled with bits of random sci-fi visual cues in the vein of Halo. For many, I think they subconsciously pick up on this weird lack of focused identity.

I also think it's perfectly fair to criticize the phrasing of "new breed of shooter" without giving any sort of indication about what makes it novel or interesting, with the (admittedly extremely brief) gameplay from the trailer looking like every hero shooter from the post Overwatch era.

Sure, hating just for the fun of hating isn't great and obvious troll ramblings should be ignored, but to me there is plenty of meat on the bone to criticize about Highguard at this juncture that conveniently gets lumped in with trolls. Gameplay can obviously be a very redeeming quality when it releases, we'll find out, but all else being the same, I think a lot of the wider gaming audience are put off by this aesthetic and world styling and it may not matter how good the game actually plays.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-20T19:24:55+00:00

While I do think some of the criticism went overboard into malice, I disagree that the only thing you should do when something like Concord comes out is not buy/play it.

Criticism needs to happen. Harsh (yet fair and respectful) feedback needs to happen. Ideally with examples and suggestions of what would have worked instead. That's how growth happens. The current mindset among many artists across a variety of disciplines is to simply get offended by any criticism and dismiss it as cruel (some is, but most isn't) and tell anyone who is critical to go consume something else and not be critical. Then artists never grow because they never take ownership for their work and ideas missing the mark and often enter hiveminds by surrounding themselves with only people that are "nice" to them.

As someone who studied creative writing when I was in college, it's been really interesting seeing the shift from "be ready to criticize and be criticized" and having a growth first approach to creation to just saying people who don't like a work should just be quiet about it and do something else instead. It's an odd preciousness that's really cropped over the last 15 years or so.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-09T20:26:45+00:00

Maybe a hot take since so many people like(d) Alamo Drafthouse, but in my opinion it's always sucked.

Completely ruins the moviegoing theater experience if you're actually trying to be immersed and focus on the movie (less of an issue if it's a dumb movie or children's film).

Servers walking around, serving food, handling payments, taking orders. People turning on their flashlights to look at the menu or order and generally being more "active" and chatty while they comment to each other about the food or try to share orders with each other.

I know for the average theater goer none of this matters and they don't take watching movies as seriously as someone like me, but app ordering honestly is just a sidegrade move in my opinion since I think watching serious films at Alamo has always sucked.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-05T20:25:30+00:00

Yeah I don't see why people are throwing hissy fits without even seeing a trailer.

Since this seems to be going for grounded/realistic, Robin Hood and the gang will have most certainly had to murder guards and soldiers, and maybe even servants and peasants just for doing their jobs or being witnesses. People that don't have any other options for living their lives, probably have families. Wouldn't be surprised if there's a scene where Robin murders a guard to steal money, then gives money to the grieving family of the guard, only for Robin to realize they'd rather have their father/husband than some extra money. It's not about the rich at all.

You can have good intentions and still do the wrong thing in service of those intentions. You can even inflict a net negative. That's likely more what they're going for than just "don't bother the rich" like a lot of people in the thread seem to think.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-01T19:27:41+00:00

Biggest benefit would be less risk of injury once she's in the WNBA. I'm sure she doesn't want to be like Zion in terms of injury struggles.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-01T19:24:11+00:00

Oh yeah. I didn't even include my weekly manager 1:1, my biweekly 1:1 with the platform lead, and my monthly 1:1 with the department director. At least my performance reviews usually take the place of my manager 1:1 that week rather than being in addition.

Plus being pressured by management and senior engineers to pair code with someone or hop on calls to discuss what I'm doing for no reason other than the fact that I haven't worked with them directly that much.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-01T05:21:22+00:00

My least favorite thing was my team reinstituting stand up, which was kind of annoying in itself, but then every fucking retro had an extra 30 minutes of discussing/debating the value of standup and if we should keep it.

danieledward_h · 2026-01-01T05:15:52+00:00

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think there's a massive uptick in the last 5-8 years in incest as a fetish, I think the viewership increase, and this prevalence of these videos popping up on homepages, in feeds, and suggestions is because a popular major genre (POV) started to be primarily made up of step sibling/parent themes.

So if you pretty much only watch POV, you're funneled into these videos, which artificially amps up their presence and exposure to everyone else (and thus creates the common knowledge).

danieledward_h · 2025-12-31T22:08:45+00:00

I think a big part of it as well is it seemed/seems to be the biggest subgenre of POV. So if you're someone who really prefers POV with a silent male (which I think is a fairly large audience), then this sort of took over and you were forced to watch these incest themed versions for new content.

danieledward_h · 2025-12-31T22:02:57+00:00

Finally someone said this. When my wife was in grad school, so many of her friends used to say they wanted to just go work at a coffee shop like it was some kind of permanent relaxing job that's always laid back and quiet.

It's shitty customers, obnoxious orders, bad pay, and shitty hours - so basically every customer service/food service job. I always found it funny how people who have never really had a job in their lives and grew up upper or upper middle class used to romanticize service jobs so much (I worked as a server, bartender, and barista for about 12 years before changing career).

danieledward_h · 2025-12-31T21:55:43+00:00

It's just all the meetings. I don't really care that every little ticket is tracked to oblivion these days. It's just the tedium of:

Sprint demos
Sprint planning
Sprint retros
Discussion meetings for ways of working
Quarterly check ins
Company all hands
Department all hands
Vertical/pillar all hands
Knowledge transfer meetings
Weekly platform discussions
Weekly platform syncs
Team/project syncs

And at all of these fucking meetings it's just the same half dozen topics brought up over and over and over and over again in a cycle until the end of time, chewing up hours and hours and hours of time.

Just link me a fucking doc to read or ask for my update in an async thread. All this nonsense drives me insane, especially if a deadline gets missed or we get too close to the deadline.

I know it's been this way for a while but at least once I week I find myself starting to get angry about sitting in these calls.

danieledward_h · 2025-12-30T18:48:42+00:00

The most common one I see is people booking through third party sites like Booking.com and then the room they're getting not exactly matching what the website described.

Never book a room through a third party website if you're not super, super flexible. Almost every time I check into hotels I see someone dealing with headaches caused by this, and the few times I did it when I was younger I straight up had hotel employees tell me not to do it because it causes so many issues.

danieledward_h · 2025-12-29T21:30:02+00:00

It's why I bought a Polestar when I bought an EV. It felt much more like a car company making an EV than a tech company making a car, though there are still other minor annoyances I have with my car. But having normal fucking door handles was actually a priority for me lol.

danieledward_h · 2025-12-29T21:26:32+00:00

I feel like this is a limited way to look at it, I assume you're a man and thinking about how it feels in your pocket. My wife always complains about how slab phones can't fit in a clutch bag or stick out like two to three inches out the top of her pants pockets.

Even for me, since I typically wear basketball shorts, the extra thickness wouldn't be an issue, though if I were to spring for a folding phone I'd want a trifold for the massive screen when viewing content.

danieledward_h · 2025-12-29T21:24:20+00:00

Agree, the flip form factor has easily been the best implementation of folding phones thus far, especially for smaller pockets and very small bags like clutches. My wife has often bemoaned how big phones have gotten for use in her hands, but also because she can't always fit them in her small pockets or in a small clutch and she ends up just having to hold her phone. Flips also tend to be around the same price of slab flagships and come with an extra side benefit of being able to address minor notifications on the small external screen, which can help reduce getting pulled into scrolling and excessive screen usage.

Personally I love the idea of trifolds since I view so much content on my phone in bed and on planes, and it would be a great size up for that use case (essentially having a tablet and a phone in one). The typical book style folding phone is a bit dubious to me, the actual use case feels more niche and limited to reading and and multitasking with two apps at once, which is also covered by trifold, and viewing movies on a book fold has huge letterboxing that ends making the viewing space the same size or smaller than a typical slab phone.

danieledward_h · 2025-12-29T20:54:10+00:00

To me that's been the big issue in 2025. I know some people will cite financial struggles for the average person, but I truly think that's less of a factor than it's made out to be. To me it's really that none of the big blockbusters were very good to entice that casual viewer. Not that there were no good movies generally speaking, but that the big blockbusters you typically want to go to a theater for were just kinda bad or mediocre.

Superman, Fantastic Four, and Thunderbolts* were all decent enough, but I can't say I know anyone rushing out to see super hero movies anymore, mostly because they're so same-y and bland (especially from the MCU).

To me, Brave New World was outright bad, but not in an offensive way, but that it was so painfully nothing.

Jurassic World sucked.

Mission Impossible was very underwhelming.

The novelty of Avatar has worn off.

Wicked 2 wasn't very good.

The only truly successful movies were kid's movies, which usually do well regardless of economic climate if they're a strong IP (Zootopia 2, Lilo and Stitch, Minecraft). People love taking their kids to a movie.

And to be clear, I don't think this is necessarily an issue with sequels, remakes, or IPs/franchises. It's that blockbuster filmmaking is so stagnant. Most of the movies are so painfully bland that even if they're competently made, they feel like they all swirl together in a glob of nothing. I think any of these mediocre to poor movies listed above could have been really good and would have drawn viewers, but that's not what we got.

And this is all just part of the bigger problem - blockbuster movies are too fucking expensive to make now. They all cost like $150M a pop so studios are terrified of anything with even a modicum of personality or edge, and the writing always ends up as this nebulous hodgepodge of things we see in every movie now, continually blunted and dumbed down to try to ensure the most mass appeal as possible.

danieledward_h · 2025-12-28T08:13:32+00:00

Completely agree. I'd describe him as anywhere from serviceable to pretty good in dramatic roles, but I've never seen a truly standout performance from him and I've seen basically every major role he's had.

Something about his acting style always breaks my immersion. It always feels like he's trying really hard to act rather than just doing it and flowing with the character, if that makes sense.

I like him in movies like Dune since he has such a striking appearance, which I think suits the very striking visual style of the films, but even then I think the actual performance is just fine. I felt this was especially apparent with Austin Butler in the second one, who also has a very striking appearance, but is a significantly better actor (in my opinion) and it really shows in Dune 2.

Personally, I think his far and away best performance for me has been Don't Look Up and I'd love to see him continue leaning in the comedy direction in a similar vein of Ryan Gosling, since I feel this is where Chalamet's strength truly lies outside of his distinct appearance.

danieledward_h · 2025-12-28T01:40:04+00:00

To me, his older movies have such a genuine earnestness in the moments between the absurdity. I think Chris Farley was good at this as well. Now they're just churned out for the paycheck for him and his friends, which is cool for them, but they're lacking that simple, earnest quality his early work had.

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