For something I'm paying for, I want no ads, recommended or otherwise.

For something I get for free, if it's easily skippable/ignorable, I don't really care, I'll skip it or mute the tab or whatever. If I can't, I'd rather have a like sniper level targeted ad (use all the data!), really try to show me something I'll care about (there was some like 10 minutes ad about the science behing glass by one of the guys from MythBusters, I watched the whole ad, it was great). The demographic level targeted ads are my 2nd least favorite, mostly because it feels like I usually need to suffer through what is a targeted ad but if they bothered to exclude some of the audience based on some data points (looking at you luxury car ads, it's just never going to happen), they'd know I'm a bad target, I'd rather some generic add over those. My least favorite ad though, when I get an ad in a language I don't even understand, like at least match my primary language, wasting everyone's time...

The proprietary/cloud based threat bit me already. Installed smart vents in my home several years ago. They weren't perfect, but they did really help even out my 3-bedroom, 2-story, 1-zone home. Now the app fails to login, the site doesn't even attempt password recovery and I'm back to dumb vents... Customer support is a black hole and basically every product is and has been out of stock for years, so I've no hope of any happy resolution.

They apparently used to be supported by SmartThings when it allowed custom stuff, but that's dead now too because Samsung didn't want to allow it. I even tried to use their proprietary hub which said it could connect to them, but that shit didn't work either.

That's all within 100 miles of any airport that lands international flights and any coastal boundaries, regardless of distance from another country's border.

Grocery stores are actually a bit more sinister than that, they reorganize things periodically so people have to spend more time walking around the store and can impulse buy more. They are getting wiser though, they tend to do it more sectionally rather than the whole store so people don't get as fed up.

Stormlight Archive could be turned into such a good Dynasty Warriors style game.

Story-mode is literally just playing differing characters in each of the fights of the story, you could do at least 10-12 fights.

Campaign mode could be picking one of the 10 warcamps, each with different starting strengths, and racing, done via a base building / management interspersed with combat levels, to claim the most wealth.