I think we don’t actually disagree and I was just not precise enough in my original post.

What I described above applies to abilities that are relevant in combat and any other type of encounter that the respective system mechanically treats as a conflict similar to combat. That absolutely does not mean other abilities should not exist, just that they should not be practically usable during an ongoing combat-like short term conflict.

Also: Abilities that are useful in short term combat-like conflicts and abilities that are not should not compete for mechanical resources of any kind, that is never fun.

It was my impression that we are at this point discussing (rp)game design in general, not specifically D&D. If your context was D&D specifically, that explains a lot of the disagreement between us.

I absolutely do want mechanical homogenization. Interesting variants can be handled with flavor without forcing everyone to learn completely new rules for every ability. The existence of generic rule systems (e.g. Savage Worlds) proves I am not alone with that view.

That sounds nice in theory, but actually charging stuff for several rounds while the encounter is already ongoing practically just means one player is doing nothing for most of the encounter. Not ideal.

I was thinking more along the lines of preparation before the actual encounter even starts, e.g. setting up an ambush or the magical equivalent of building a trebuchet during a siege.

Abilities that are too powerful for that should either not exist or require significant preparation

Most abilities should be either “per round/turn” or “per encounter”.

Abilities that are too powerful for that should either not exist or require significant preparation (enough for the opposition to have a chance to discover and interrupt it).

Abilities that fall in the second category should automatically come with a less powerful variant in the first category.

Maybe as a middle ground some player abilities could use the “roll for recharge” mechanic from powerful monster abilities.

Why do you think it would not be worse without the UN?

Do you think this is the only thing the UN does? Or that everything else it does does not matter?

By joining hands with Activision Blizzard, we hope to achieve our vision of enabling people to connect and play fabulous gambling games anytime, anywhere, and anyhow they like.

(emphasis mine)

So the CEO of Microsoft obviously has no idea about the difference between gaming and gambling. Fair enough, nobody has to care about every possible hobby. But it is a bit wild that they just took that quote and ran with it and nobody said “Hey, is it ok to slightly edit it so it is less obvious you don’t know jack shit about this topic?”.

assertion

That’s a really strange way to spell “blatant lie”.

Judging by the title this is most likely just a hit piece on any kind of activism the author does not personally agree with. I will not put effort into bypassing a paywall for something like that.

“open mouth” as an open container is already a stretch.

“open mouth all the way down the lungs” as an open container is just bullshit. Rule of Cool definitely does not apply. That is not creative or cool in any way.

I agree with the general sentiment that there are limits to what should be possible even with the rule of cool.

In this specific case we don’t even need to go into the territory of undefined stuff that the DM decides on the fly, the rules as written already explicitly say “You create up to 10 gallons of clean water within range in an open container.”

Please don’t mix executables and data created by applications, even if the application happens to be a game. Those are supposed to be separate. That being said, “Documents” is obviously the wrong place for save game files.

Would you mind elaborating on that thought?

it’s really useful to comment functions/methods, because otherwise you never know if something’s a bug or a non-obvious feature. Comments act as a parity check to the code, since they tell you what the dev who wrote the code wanted the code to do.

Unit tests should be the parity check for other code. Those don’t get outdated with the next refactoring where someone didn’t remember to also adjust all the comments.

Also, everone thinks they write good, clean and obvious code. Hardly anyone purpously writes bad, hacky code. Yet if you look at code you wrote a year ago, or code someone else on your team wrote, it’s full of non-obvious hacks. That means, people constantly misjudge the obviousnes of their code. Comments should be put on anything that could maybe be non-obvious.

Why would people be better at judging if something needs a comment than at judging if something needs a better name or refactoring? Asking people to skip that judgement step and comment everything just gives you a bunch of useless boilerplate comments. That trains everyone reading that codebase to ignore comments because they are almost always useless anyway.

putting documentation of the code anywhere else than in a comment (e.g. Confluence) is a total waste of time

At least this we can 100 % agree on. Documentation should be as close as possible to the code. (I just think most of the time that place is in the name of things, not in an actual comment.)

To save you a click:

“No, there are no in-game purchases in our game. We believe in providing a complete and immersive gaming experience without the need for additional purchases. Enjoy the game to its fullest without any additional costs or microtransactions.”

About comments:

Please please please, do not always write comments. Try to write code that does not need comments whenever possible. Proper variable, class and method names go a long way. If you think a block of code needs a comment, turn it into a method and give it a proper name instead.

Comments should be a last resort for cases where making the code self explanatory is not possible, and those should be rare.

About optimization:

Optimal code is code that fulfills it’s purpose without observable issues.

If you try to make something faster without any prior complaints or measurements indicating that it being slow is an actual issue, you are not optimizing, you are just engaging in mental masturbation.

There is nothing unhealthy about being annoyed when someone forces you to always come to them no matter what it is about again and again and again, instead of at least sometimes actively coming to you when they want to interact.

It sure did have a big impact, comparable to what some people expect to happen soon with AI.

However, I think your framing misses the main point of why many artists today are wary about AI: They are not just being replaced, their own work is used as a building block for the tools that will replace them; and they were not asked for permission and don’t even get any compensation for that.