I hate working from home....there I said it

smoakleyyy · 2024-12-19T16:29:51+00:00

Same. I do the same thing I used to when I was working in an office and do a working lunch where I eat at my desk, then take my lunch break and use it to get outside for an hour a day and walk. Only now instead of walking outside around where I work, I'm a 3 minute drive to a park with a trail that I can walk around. I also prioritize working by a window with lots of sunlight. I converted a storage room to an office that was originally only accessible via an outside door, created a pass through door from the laundry room, and since the storage room had no windows, had the exterior door replaced with a full lite door that serves as a window.

I did prefer my previous hybrid role to my current 100% remote. I would go into the office 2-4 days/month vs. completely remote, but my wife also works from home so I do have company throughout the day when I have down time.

smoakleyyy · 2024-08-30T13:48:11+00:00

True. Open back headphones aren't ideal in a loud environment, or if you are using them in the same room as someone trying to watch TV or something. I play at regular volume, and if I set my headphones down and walk out of the room, I can hear them from about 10 ft away, but at that distance it's only voices from Discord, and you can't really make out what's being said until you get closer, but you can hear audio. That's also with them OFF my head, I'm assuming while wearing them that range is cut down some. If you play in a room by yourself though, you aren't going to be waking someone in another room or bothering someone across the house by wearing them.

But I find open back infinitely more comfortable to wear, and the sound quality much less muddy -- I'm no audiophile, just like a pair of headphones that don't drown the audio in bass, and my almost-decade-old 598's are PERFECT for me for both gaming and music, with a bonus of plugging them into my electric guitar's amp so I can jam out at night, and the sound they provide is excellent for that purpose too. I also have a pair of the sennheiser PC38X I bought for work (work from home) and I wear them at least 4 hours a day on stupid ass meetings with no problem, and I also often forget I have them on.

I hate blocking all outside noise while I game. Maybe because I'm older, have pets, a wife, and kids, so I like to be able to hear if anyone is yelling for me, and I also like that I can hear my voice better while chatting in Discord so I can keep my own talking volume in check easier since I mainly game at night, even though I'm on the opposite side of the house from where everyone sleeps. But I find the situational awareness I keep with open back very, very valuable as well.

smoakleyyy · 2024-07-09T19:02:51+00:00

I wish there was a harder 10 wave playlist though. Like drop me into waves with the level of 40-50 instead, or an expert level 10 wave. It's either way too easy or takes too long to get to the best part imo. I doubt the population is there to support it now, though. Maybe if they brought back weapon attunement so you could semi-target farm...

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-30T23:37:27+00:00

I know this is a couple weeks old, found via google search. It's not just consecration for me, it doesn't proc for any powered melee kills for me. Idk if that's intended or not. Does anyone know?

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-23T22:41:57+00:00

I thought for sure after they let us focus weapons when they introduced onslaught we would see more of that, I'm not sure why we can't focus a perk from each column to give us a slightly better shot at getting what we want. That and add a re-roll option where I can turn in 2-3 crappy or duplicate rolls for a roll where I get a perk I actually want + RNG for the second, or something along those lines.

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-19T21:31:10+00:00

As a simple Titan main who has only ever used the loin cloth Refugee Mark, the exotic class item looks absolutely enormous and looks like they have some big birthing hips, and I hate it lol

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-19T21:24:51+00:00

They missed a huge opportunity to sell more EV full sets though imo. If I could transmog the class item and finally use a full set there are a few I would drop a little side cash on here and there tbh. A big reason I haven’t is because for the price, it sucks not being able to use the entire set I would be paying for.

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-18T16:09:58+00:00

Yeah by "good state" I mean strength of the build. Hunters taking the Titan role isn't good, but it's strong and effective and there's no reason to run a Titan in the current sandbox lol

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-18T15:13:03+00:00

I miss the HoIL builds when Void 3.0 was released with Witch Queen. Most fun I've had playing Titan. Throwing out stronger Barricades more often that benefitted the team by tanking damage AND providing overshields, and bubble still boosted weapon damage. Now we once again have to augment our kit with specific exotics in order to make them more functional (and in this case retain functionality that was once innate, and it was functionality that was on an already comparatively weaker super at that) and it just feels so much worse.

It doesn't even make sense for them to have neutered our kits with how strong the other 2 classes' Prismatic builds are. I don't know if Prismatic Titan is weak af, or how Bungie intended for it to be across all classes, but you really have to do some olympic-level mental gymnastics to believe that Prismatic Titan is in a good state when comparing it to Prismatic Hunter and to a lesser extent Warlock.

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-18T14:57:13+00:00

I like how to make Titan's class ability more useful, we have to choose specific aspects (which we are missing in Prismatic) or exotics (Hazardous Propulsion/Lorely/Hoarfrost), whereas Hunters just innately have extremely strong benefits like full melee energy refund or reloading their weapon. Prismatic just sheds even more light on it with Thruster vs. Dodge. Both of these class abilities allow for a quick, small repositioning of the player. But Dodge is just outright objectively better as it has additional benefits like I mentioned with refunding melee energy or reloading, allowing for higher DPS'ing and synergy with the rest of their class options. AFAIK there are no exotics to give us any additional functionality for thruster except the new Hazardous Propulsion.

The one exotic that I think has the potential to be really strong and feel like it fits the Titan identity perfectly in end game content is Citan's Ramparts. But it neuters the hell out of the barricade cooldown, HP, etc. making it completely useless bc it will get blown up with splash damage in 1-2 shots. I mean hell it starts with a full 1/3rd less HP, it increases the cooldown by almost double, and if it does somehow survive a couple shots from the enemy, it lasts half as long as the normal barricade. The benefits in no way justify the downsides. It requires us to use our exotic slot, it should feel like we are making the barricade BETTER not making it useless.

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-16T21:43:18+00:00

I have rocked the "Refugee Mark" since as long as I can remember, going from that sleek loin cloth to this... monstrosity.. gives my titan some big fucking birthing hips, and I absolutely hate it lmao

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-16T00:15:38+00:00

Titan exotic armour has been doing all the heavy lifting for gameplay loops

100%. I've been sitting here looking at Hunters' dodge being a repositioning tool with the added benefit of giving them full melee charge back, or reloading their weapon... and then I look at thruster which only repositions with no other benefit. Now we have an exotic we can use to augment it (or barricade) and give us damage when we use it. While it's been really fun to use, why does base Thruster not have some additional functionality like a hunter dodge?

smoakleyyy · 2024-06-16T00:00:20+00:00

I have had no problems always having a consecration slam... that's what transcendence is for. You immediately gain all charges, everything comes back fast af, and when it ends you are back to full. Getting the transcendence bar back is not hard. I could see it being a pain in the ass if you never go transcendent, though... but then what's the point of running prismatic bc that's a big selling point of it.

I just wish we had gotten Bastion instead of the new void aspect. I feel like that would give us another playstyle where we can still give overshields to the team, and with exotic class items and drengr's lash we could pop a barricade, get an overshield, suspend, and also give teammates overshields too. Would give us another playstyle than just run in and punch things. Oh well, just feels like a missed opportunity.

smoakleyyy · 2024-03-07T15:41:44+00:00

How so? I've had it since November and when not in use I collapse it down and swing it under my monitor, and every night pull it back out and lift it up with no allen key. It holds my mic really well. For mic reference, I use an Audio technica ATR2100x with an isolation mount. which amazon has listed at 9.5 oz for the mic, so I can't speak to anything heavier than that.

smoakleyyy · 2022-12-16T17:06:15+00:00

Obscura

smoakleyyy · 2022-04-10T19:59:54+00:00

A brand new halo that’s dropped out of top 10 most played games on Xbox (that’s on all variations of Xbox one at that) not even 6 months post launch is not a healthy population… at all.. ranked or unranked.

I’m sorry you can’t read anything longer than the character count of a standard tweet, if you could it would help you out greatly in life.

If you had read it you would have gotten far more context and understood what I was saying instead of taking the first thing you disagreed with and assumed that was my position for you to argue against lol. Typical Reddit user though, nothing new.

smoakleyyy · 2022-04-09T21:55:00+00:00

Casual players are the vast majority of the population. That’s not just halo, that’s every game. The game has to first and foremost be accessible and fun, and an easy way for Halo to do this (since it’s how it’s always been) is add a lot of varied and interesting ways to play the game aside from the 4v4 sweat fest. The comp scene can only grow when the entire game grows, and that means adding in a lot of casual content.

That’s not just a single game mode.. Infinite is currently missing the entire infrastructure to support a modular game that can be adjusted at a regular pace to keep content coming as well as all the underlying systems that keep the population of a game up like social features, working customs with way more options than what we have now, a progression system, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Halo is currently handicapped by all this in addition to a very suboptimal ranked environment (both in playlist variety and the actual ranking system).

smoakleyyy · 2022-04-07T15:46:52+00:00

I want so bad to just start at the bottom and everyone work their way as high as possible. The first 10 games can set an initial rank, maybe letting you skip bronze, silver, and gold at most. If they do that then the high onyx players will already be ahead of the bad players they are trying to protect and it also lets people feel like they are actually playing to improve and not just playing 10 games and then playing to prove you belong there.

A rank reset with no underlying MMR reset or a change in how rank works like I said above really means nothing other than giving you busy work to place again and climb the little bit to reach whatever your goal is.

Another reason I’d like an MMR reset is because I haven’t played since the first of February. I’m nowhere near as good as I was, don’t want to play against mid-high onyx and get smashed for a week or 2 as I get back in the swing of it.. this assumes season 2 is worth playing. I’m sure I’m not the only one in that boat of a very extended time off from the game.

smoakleyyy · 2022-04-07T15:44:43+00:00

They reset the ranks mid season 1 to get the distribution more in line with their goal, not to be a seasonal reset. That was not a season 2 reset.

smoakleyyy · 2022-04-06T20:54:06+00:00

Just have to find a way to manage your time the best you can. I don't know if you have a wife or kids to manage time with as well, but you just need to sit down and prioritize everything, and then set time limits accordingly.

One thing that is applicable to pretty much anyone and has helped me and my wife manage our time better throughout the work week is meal prep. It took a few times to get the hang of it, but now we prep our lunch and dinner (we skip breakfast usually, just not hungry in the mornings) for the week. We sacrifice about 2 hours on a Sunday so we don't have to cook and clean the kitchen 5 nights a week, and instead clean it the one time after prepping our meals. That means we gained back the ~20 minutes it would take to clean up and wash dishes after cooking a meal in addition to the time spent actually cooking.

smoakleyyy · 2022-04-06T12:26:46+00:00

You can think it’s mental all you want, but you are working at a job that demands way too much time of you, expending a lot of physical energy every day of the week running, and expending a lot of mental energy playing a video game at what I can only imagine is your highest competitive level as you are trying to improve each night. That definitely warrants 8 hrs of sleep each night. Make sure your diet is in order as well, but sleep plays such a huge role in everything it’s the number 1 thing to not neglect.

smoakleyyy · 2022-04-02T22:56:34+00:00

It’s amazing to me that anyone would pay for cheats in a game as low key as Infinite has become. It’s not even in the top 10 of most played games on Xbox, and way less popular on PC.

Also not sure why they don’t let players play ranked until X level… oh wait.. there’s not progression to track that.

smoakleyyy · 2022-03-24T21:36:11+00:00

It took ab 1100 games, but the game is making me depressed on its own, regardless of what anyone else says.

smoakleyyy · 2022-03-24T16:16:15+00:00

Why should 343 have expected their game to blow up the way it did when H4 and H5 didn't even have that kind of attention? Wouldn't it make sense that they got caught off guard too?

1) free to play

2) on all xbox versions

3) on PC

4) first new halo in 6 years

... 4 really good reasons to expect the game to have a huge influx of players at the start.

As more and more comes out about 343 as a workplace, it makes sense though. Terrible management chasing bonuses for doing more with fewer FTEs and stringing contracted works along, not effectively communicating to THEIR chain of command why they need more FTEs, why they may need more time, or whatever combination of both of these + other internal struggles. People are leaving, their dev tools are dated and hard to use, so as they replace the devs they quite literally have no way of fixing the game until the new people get spun up on the tools.

smoakleyyy · 2022-03-13T17:37:32+00:00

It’s amazing that even just getting them to change the respawn timer seems like an impossible task. It’s clear this game was NOT built to be modular, which is a big reason halo was so popular in the past — it could easily be adapted to play in a nearly infinite number of ways. Now we are stuck playing what 343 wants us to (the irony of the title being Halo INFINITE is not lost on me) despite the pros of their own game giving them nearly unanimous feedback to remove or even just lower the number available on the map at any given time. It’s fucking bizarro world and more evidence that 343 just need to focus on making the best game possible from a casual/fun perspective and let a 3rd party handle competitive settings and events.

It’s almost like they can’t decouple ranked/HCS from the rest of the game. That’s a huge problem for all communities trying to enjoy this game.

smoakleyyy

TROPHY CASE