No, you're still wrong. First of all, how many decisions you're making doesn't dictate the depth of a game. A game is not more shallow because you're making fewer decisions. That's not what depth is. You're assuming that the decisions in WoW are of the same "caliber" (whatever that means) as the decisions made in a sandbox.
Another thing that isn't depth is "the challenge of mastering a game." As I've already pointed out, you can have a difficult game that isn't deep. SC2 isn't a deep game compared to most MMOs, but it will take you considerably longer to master it. Difficulty isn't depth.
You're quite literally just making up your own definition of what depth means. You're also now trying to quantify decisions. How are you determining how important a decision is?
You're also simply asserting that the decisions in ow pvp or sandbox games aren't more important, which is ludicrous. If an officer in an EVE corp makes a decision that ends up starting a server war that destroys tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear, what's the WoW analog of a decision like that?
If you're making as few decisions as you make in a open world PVP game, and if some of those decisions ('bring lots of friends') completely trump the importance of most of the other decisions you could make (instead of being additive,) then yes, the resulting game is shallower. I'm not just assuming WOW's decisions are of the same caliber. They are. They're just as critical to beating the game's toughest challenges as anything in an open world PVP game.
SC2 is deep because it takes a long time to master. The skill cap is extremely high and nearly impossible to reach -- that's exactly what depth is.
How are you quantifying these decisions? If you say the decisions in a game like EVE are the same as the decisions in a game like WoW, then surely you must have some way of measuring them. You're being annoyingly vague I think because you don't have any sort of substantive point. You're arbitrarily declaring that the decisions in a sandbox game are of the same caliber as any other game (or just WoW?), so that you can point that the downtime inherent in sandbox games means the games are therefore more shallow. In reality the situations WoW inorganically drops you into are not particularly deep or difficult. There are precise, pre-determined ways to complete every raid, min/max your character, etc. Not to mention the notoriously mind-numbing questing/endgame grinding that the game is known for. How is WoW deep exactly?
SC2 is not deep because it's hard to master. Again, depth is not difficulty. You can have difficulty in simplicity and simplicity by definition is not deep. Difficulty != depth.
No, I'm quite literally using another game designer's established, straightforward, and logical definition of what depth means. Did you miss the post where I quoted Sirlin? ("A multiplayer game is deep if it is still strategically interesting to play after expert players have studied and practiced it for years, decades, or centuries" -Sirlin, 2002)
I didn't miss the post, I just don't care. Not only is he wrong, he's also just one dude. So a dude agrees with you.... great. Do you think there are any game developers that would agree that EVE has more depth than WoW?
The reason he's wrong is, first of all, because look at what the fuck he's saying. It's so amazingly subjective and vague it's not even worth talking about. Interesting? How do you quantify that exactly? When defining terms like these, you don't express it in binary terms. There is no game that has 100% depth or 0% depth. Similarly, there are no games that are pure sandbox or pure themepark. You define these terms in limits. For example, you could say sandbox means player-driven content and freedom. As you increase those things, you're increasing the sandbox nature of that game.
That guy is quite simply flat out wrong to define depth the way he's doing so. Not only that, is he even talking about MMOs? If I'm not mistaken, he's more of a fighting game or maybe FPS guy, right? If so, not exactly applicable.
So to reiterate, you're committing the fallacy of appealing to authority, you're doing so by relying on the opinion of ONE DUDE, that dude is almost verifiably wrong, and he's not even talking about the same genre.
I didn't say the decisions in a OW PVP game weren't important. In fact I explicitly pointed out that the decisions are more important because there are fewer, but that fewer decisions means less types of skill which means less depth.
Mmmm I think you're confused. I'm not asking whether or not the decisions in EVE are "important." I'm asking why they aren't more important than in WoW. What decision in WoW is as important as the decision I laid out in EVE?
Your definition seems to be change every time you post. Before you were talking about the emptiness of sandbox games, contrasting that with the ability to jump right into a raid in WoW. You've also said that the amount of decisions at any given time is depth. If your definition of depth is now "difficulty in mastering a game" I'd still totally disagree. That's not what depth is. You can have a game that is very mechanically difficult without being particularly deep.
Depth means there's "more" to the game as you go... deeper. You look at a system or a feature in a game and it has a certain amount of complexity to it at face value. As you delve into that system or feature, you notice that there's more and more to it as you learn. That's depth. Depth is not:
"If 95% of your playtime is shallow (involving few decisions and almost no meaningful ones) then the game overall is shallow."
The amount of time it takes to uncover the game has nothing to do with its depth. A game doesn't need constant action all the time in order to be deep.
It's all the same meaning of depth, but we're digging into the details of why these games are or aren't deep.
If only 10% of your time in a game involves meaningful decisions, that's shallower than a game where you're making decisions of the same caliber 90% of the time (as long as the 90% decisions are just as difficult to master.) A lot of players here seem tricked by the fact that those 10% decisions are fewer in number and so they are more important on a per-decision basis. But depth is about the challenge of mastering a game, so as long as those 90% decisions are of equal challenge then that game is simply 9x as hard to learn because you have to worry about playing well 9x as much.
You seem to want to disagree with my definition of depth, and then you go on to describe depth as there being "more" to the game. The fact that you keep learning new things because there's more to the game is exactly what sirlin's definition is saying! Difficult to master doesn't mean it's hard to become an average player. Mastery isn't mediocrity. Mastery is mastery. It means you are literally the best player in the game and you never make mistakes no matter how many curveballs the game throws at you. So the "more" you're describing is the process of skill progression towards mastery!
Games don't need to be constant action all the time to be deep, but the decisions in open world PVP games aren't of a higher caliber than those found in other games. So if you take a game with 10 important decisions per hour and eliminate all but 1 of those decisions then you've made the game shallower, and that's effectively what these games have done. In that 1-decision game, you might mistake it for being a deep game because holy crap is that 1 decision important (it's the one deciding factor in whether you win or lose!) But the reality is that mastering that game requires the mastery of fewer skills.
I)f you go play WoW and wait 2 hours for raid to assemble, that means that you have made 0 decisions/hour and that means that WoW isnt even a game because you made 0 decisions.
Yeah, thats right.
Your "theory" along with your quoted random internet stuff has been shot down in such hard ways thats its quite amusing by now.
I)f you go play WoW and wait 2 hours for raid to assemble, that means that you have made 0 decisions/hour and that means that WoW isnt even a game because you made 0 decisions.
Not to mention if you try to leave, people will get unhappy (unless you go LFR). That is simply too much commitment to play a mere game.
If my wife want 15 min of my time, or my son wants me to help with a homework problem, games can wait.
I didn't miss the post, I just don't care. Not only is he wrong, he's also just one dude. So a dude agrees with you.... great. Do you think there are any game developers that would agree that EVE has more depth than WoW?
The reason he's wrong is, first of all, because look at what the fuck he's saying. It's so amazingly subjective and vague it's not even worth talking about. Interesting? How do you quantify that exactly? When defining terms like these, you don't express it in binary terms. There is no game that has 100% depth or 0% depth. Similarly, there are no games that are pure sandbox or pure themepark. You define these terms in limits. For example, you could say sandbox means player-driven content and freedom. As you increase those things, you're increasing the sandbox nature of that game.
That guy is quite simply flat out wrong to define depth the way he's doing so. Not only that, is he even talking about MMOs? If I'm not mistaken, he's more of a fighting game or maybe FPS guy, right? If so, not exactly applicable.
So to reiterate, you're committing the fallacy of appealing to authority, you're doing so by relying on the opinion of ONE DUDE, that dude is almost verifiably wrong, and he's not even talking about the same genre.
Mmmm I think you're confused. I'm not asking whether or not the decisions in EVE are "important." I'm asking why they aren't more important than in WoW. What decision in WoW is as important as the decision I laid out in EVE?
You bothered to accuse me of making up my definition for this thread, so you obviously do care. The fact that the only developer spending time defining the word has a definition which agrees with my own (another developer) means a lot more than the flimsy opinions of people who've put a lot less thought into the subject.
Stating a few unrelated facts that don't conflict with his definition and then claiming his definition is wrong is baseless. Game depth is a spectrum, just like sandbox vs. themepark. But in that other spectrum surely you can look at the magnitude of player authorship to call one game more sandbox than another, just as we've seen the same thing can be done for depth.
So nothing you've said here comes remotely close to "verifiably wrong". You've stated a couple unrelated truths and then claimed he was wrong with no basis for that claim.
I'm not confused, you are (you're the one thinking I claimed EVE's decisions weren't important when I said they were, remember?) We're talking about depth, and that's not the measure of the importance of any decision in isolation, but of the magnitude of skill the entire game requires. So on a per-decision basis EVE's are clearly more important because there are fewer of them (so obviously each one is a greater percentage of what creates success.) Again the thing that matters is that huge portions of EVE's gameplay involve virtually no skill, and even though those portions are necessary to execute the game's strategy (which does require skill) that huge portion of your time spent doing shallow things is why the game is shallow overall.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I)f you go play WoW and wait 2 hours for raid to assemble, that means that you have made 0 decisions/hour and that means that WoW isnt even a game because you made 0 decisions.
Yeah, thats right.
Your "theory" along with your quoted random internet stuff has been shot down in such hard ways thats its quite amusing by now.
Why would you bring this topic up?
0-decision portions of WOW's gameplay are completely avoidable. A smart player won't wait 2 hours for a raid. He'll sign up for the raid, login 5 mins before, and raid.
Some 0-decision portions of EVE's gameplay are unavoidable. Doesn't matter how skilled or smart you are, you're forced into things like travel where no gameplay occurs.
You have a strange tendency to bring up topics that you think decisively end a debate, when in fact you're pointing to something which further strengthens my own argument.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I)f you go play WoW and wait 2 hours for raid to assemble, that means that you have made 0 decisions/hour and that means that WoW isnt even a game because you made 0 decisions.
Yeah, thats right.
Your "theory" along with your quoted random internet stuff has been shot down in such hard ways thats its quite amusing by now.
Why would you bring this topic up?
0-decision portions of WOW's gameplay are completely avoidable. A smart player won't wait 2 hours for a raid. He'll sign up for the raid, login 5 mins before, and raid.
Some 0-decision portions of EVE's gameplay are unavoidable. Doesn't matter how skilled or smart you are, you're forced into things like travel where no gameplay occurs.
You have a strange tendency to bring up topics that you think decisively end a debate, when in fact you're pointing to something which further strengthens my own argument.
Nope, i proved you WoW isnt even a game since 100% of your time has 0 decisions.
Unfortunately, thats quality of YOUR arguments (i dont even call them arguments, just some made up stuff to try and keep dead theory above the water)
I guess you never heard of minigames for crafting? Again I ask you if anything not pvp related is shallow for you? All pve games are shallow? You obviously havent played UO, SWG, etc. where some crafters where famous and sought by on a daily basis, theres also traders that do nothing but play with the market and try to undermine other traders, theres lots of tactical decisions not related to pvp. And what long term strategy? Winning the game? Then repeat all over again... thats not really long term. In sandbox games theres years of long term politics that define the reasons for some wars, guilds that have hated each other for years.
But you said fun isnt the same as depth, so trying crazy strategies might be fun to you but it doesnt mean the game is deep.
Also, if depth is not subjective you "might" avoid playing against the toughest opponent? Wouldnt this depend on how risk adverse the player is? Sandbox games can be played shallowly (zerging everyone for easier kills) but so can FPS (camping, etc.), but fighting outnumbered even has deeper and harder strategies that would impossible to replicate on balanced pvp games, thus giving these games more complexity.
Well I've been commenting on how these games actually are, not how they could be. Crafting systems typically are quite shallow, and you might have strategic decisions related to what to craft (and sometimes where to sell it), but then the act of creating those products typically involves a bunch of really shallow gameplay (sitting in front of ore nodes all day harvesting the raw resources to be able to combine them with a simple action.)
I didn't play UO or SWG, but crafters being important doesn't necessarily mean that crafting is a deep skill-driven activity. EVE's crafting doesn't require much skill (it's the same handful of important strategic decisions (skill) resulting in hundreds of hours of shallow activities (travel, gathering, and crafting)) and yet crafting is absolutely critical to the game.
You're right that being able to try a lot of strategies doesn't make a game deep. It's just the more common way players have fun.
Playing a risk-heavy game and then completely ignoring risk won't work except in the imaginary game I described earlier (where only lateral progression existed) But again, that game wouldn't be considered risk-heavy in the first place; players typically measure risk in terms of time lost or vertical progression lost. So in terms of how games are (not how they could be), a risk-heavy game reduces the number of balanced fights even for a suicidally risky player by penalizing that player with reduced vertical progression (and therefore creating more imbalanced matches for that player.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I didn't miss the post, I just don't care. Not only is he wrong, he's also just one dude. So a dude agrees with you.... great. Do you think there are any game developers that would agree that EVE has more depth than WoW?
The reason he's wrong is, first of all, because look at what the fuck he's saying. It's so amazingly subjective and vague it's not even worth talking about. Interesting? How do you quantify that exactly? When defining terms like these, you don't express it in binary terms. There is no game that has 100% depth or 0% depth. Similarly, there are no games that are pure sandbox or pure themepark. You define these terms in limits. For example, you could say sandbox means player-driven content and freedom. As you increase those things, you're increasing the sandbox nature of that game.
That guy is quite simply flat out wrong to define depth the way he's doing so. Not only that, is he even talking about MMOs? If I'm not mistaken, he's more of a fighting game or maybe FPS guy, right? If so, not exactly applicable.
So to reiterate, you're committing the fallacy of appealing to authority, you're doing so by relying on the opinion of ONE DUDE, that dude is almost verifiably wrong, and he's not even talking about the same genre.
Mmmm I think you're confused. I'm not asking whether or not the decisions in EVE are "important." I'm asking why they aren't more important than in WoW. What decision in WoW is as important as the decision I laid out in EVE?
You bothered to accuse me of making up my definition for this thread, so you obviously do care. The fact that the only developer spending time defining the word has a definition which agrees with my own (another developer) means a lot more than the flimsy opinions of people who've put a lot less thought into the subject.
Stating a few unrelated facts that don't conflict with his definition and then claiming his definition is wrong is baseless. Game depth is a spectrum, just like sandbox vs. themepark. But in that other spectrum surely you can look at the magnitude of player authorship to call one game more sandbox than another, just as we've seen the same thing can be done for depth.
So nothing you've said here comes remotely close to "verifiably wrong". You've stated a couple unrelated truths and then claimed he was wrong with no basis for that claim.
He is verifiably wrong. The quote that YOU used is wrong. You cannot say that depth is binary. There is no such thing as a game that is objectively deep or not deep. He is wrong. I'll say again, since you didn't actually deal with anything I said: You're appealing to authority, using the opinion of a guy who is WRONG, and is also talking about a different genre.
I'm not confused, you are (you're the one thinking I claimed EVE's decisions weren't important when I said they were, remember?)
Dear lord, are you joking? I NEVER thought that you claimed EVE's decisions weren't important. The post that you're responding to literally had me saying this:
"I'm not asking whether or not the decisions in EVE are "important." I'm asking why they aren't more important than in WoW."
This has always been about you claiming that EVE is not more deep than WoW, so for the 3rd time: what is the WoW equivalent of the EVE decision I laid out? You're claiming that the decisions in EVE are just as important as the decisions in WoW.
We're talking about depth, and that's not the measure of the importance of any decision in isolation, but of the magnitude of skill the entire game requires. So on a per-decision basis EVE's are clearly more important because there are fewer of them (so obviously each one is a greater percentage of what creates success.) Again the thing that matters is that huge portions of EVE's gameplay involve virtually no skill, and even though those portions are necessary to execute the game's strategy (which does require skill) that huge portion of your time spent doing shallow things is why the game is shallow overall.
Depth is not the magnitude of the skill the entire game requires. Depth doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skill.
Also, you seem to have forgotten this part of my post:
"How are you quantifying these decisions? If you say the decisions in a game like EVE are the same as the decisions in a game like WoW, then surely you must have some way of measuring them. You're being annoyingly vague I think because you don't have any sort of substantive point. You're arbitrarily declaring that the decisions in a sandbox game are of the same caliber as any other game (or just WoW?), so that you can point that the downtime inherent in sandbox games means the games are therefore more shallow. In reality the situations WoW inorganically drops you into are not particularly deep or difficult. There are precise, pre-determined ways to complete every raid, min/max your character, etc. Not to mention the notoriously mind-numbing questing/endgame grinding that the game is known for. How is WoW deep exactly?
SC2 is not deep because it's hard to master. Again, depth is not difficulty. You can have difficulty in simplicity and simplicity by definition is not deep. Difficulty != depth."
I wonder if you ignored it because you don't have an answer. I wonder if this is going to turn into another pointless internet debate where the guy has no defense for his baseless opinion, but still plays ring around the damn rosie for multiple posts before just giving up entirely and disappearing into the wind, without admitting he was wrong. Hmmmmm.
I would have voted for "dead outlaw/PK drop everything, Dead lawful players only drop 1-2 things."
I voted for the "a few things drop" choice as mine wasnt an option....
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
He is verifiably wrong. The quote that YOU used is wrong. You cannot say that depth is binary. There is no such thing as a game that is objectively deep or not deep. He is wrong. I'll say again, since you didn't actually deal with anything I said: You're appealing to authority, using the opinion of a guy who is WRONG, and is also talking about a different genre.
This has always been about you claiming that EVE is not more deep than WoW, so for the 3rd time: what is the WoW equivalent of the EVE decision I laid out? You're claiming that the decisions in EVE are just as important as the decisions in WoW.
Depth is not the magnitude of the skill the entire game requires. Depth doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skill.
Also, you seem to have forgotten this part of my post:
"How are you quantifying these decisions? If you say the decisions in a game like EVE are the same as the decisions in a game like WoW, then surely you must have some way of measuring them. You're being annoyingly vague I think because you don't have any sort of substantive point. You're arbitrarily declaring that the decisions in a sandbox game are of the same caliber as any other game (or just WoW?), so that you can point that the downtime inherent in sandbox games means the games are therefore more shallow. In reality the situations WoW inorganically drops you into are not particularly deep or difficult. There are precise, pre-determined ways to complete every raid, min/max your character, etc. Not to mention the notoriously mind-numbing questing/endgame grinding that the game is known for. How is WoW deep exactly?
SC2 is not deep because it's hard to master. Again, depth is not difficulty. You can have difficulty in simplicity and simplicity by definition is not deep. Difficulty != depth."
I wonder if you ignored it because you don't have an answer. I wonder if this is going to turn into another pointless internet debate where the guy has no defense for his baseless opinion, but still plays ring around the damn rosie for multiple posts before just giving up entirely and disappearing into the wind, without admitting he was wrong. Hmmmmm.
Your claim that his definition is "verifiably wrong" hinges on his definition being supposedly binary, even though the context clearly implying it isn't binary (years, decades, centuries) and the word itself implies it isn't binary (the fact that it's being repurposed to a slightly different definition as it relates to gaming doesn't change that particular property of the word.)
We could certainly agree that "is deeper" would've been better instead of "is deep", since the former is more evocative of a non-binary concept than the latter. But it's clear either way, given the context and the word itself.
Chess doesn't involve any of the decisions in Tic-tac-toe, yet we are able to make statements comparing the depth of the two games. That's the reason your question about WOW's analog to an EVE officer starting a war is ultimately irrelevant. (Which is also an example where one player is making a single decision for lots of players, which is another way the depth experienced by the average player is lower.)
The rules of chess are simple. It's also the most commonly cited example of game depth, and few would dispute its depth. Yet you claim simplicity by definition is not deep.
I imagine that's the core of your disagreement. Everyone else is using the word to imply a depth of mastery that gives games longevity, whereas whatever your definition is would apparently call chess shallow just because its rules fit on a single sheet of paper.
It is difficult to quantify decision depth. We understand chess is deeper than tic-tac-toe, and if you dig deeper you realize it has to do with the possibilities and dynamics within each game's decision tree, which generate a wide separation between newbie and expert, and that same separation exists to a large degree in WOW and your "Well just do everything perfectly and win" summary of WOW sort of misses the nuances in the same way that "Just do everything perfectly in EVE and win" misses that game's nuances. But there aren't any convenient metrics for measuring the depth.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Nope, i proved you WoW isnt even a game since 100% of your time has 0 decisions.
Unfortunately, thats quality of YOUR arguments (i dont even call them arguments, just some made up stuff to try and keep dead theory above the water)
Fact is WoW is a shallow game.
If you ever decide to post something of merit, I'll still be here. Making unrelated statements which are clearly false doesn't really threaten any of the points I've made so far.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
He is verifiably wrong. The quote that YOU used is wrong. You cannot say that depth is binary. There is no such thing as a game that is objectively deep or not deep. He is wrong. I'll say again, since you didn't actually deal with anything I said: You're appealing to authority, using the opinion of a guy who is WRONG, and is also talking about a different genre.
This has always been about you claiming that EVE is not more deep than WoW, so for the 3rd time: what is the WoW equivalent of the EVE decision I laid out? You're claiming that the decisions in EVE are just as important as the decisions in WoW.
Depth is not the magnitude of the skill the entire game requires. Depth doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skill.
Also, you seem to have forgotten this part of my post:
"How are you quantifying these decisions? If you say the decisions in a game like EVE are the same as the decisions in a game like WoW, then surely you must have some way of measuring them. You're being annoyingly vague I think because you don't have any sort of substantive point. You're arbitrarily declaring that the decisions in a sandbox game are of the same caliber as any other game (or just WoW?), so that you can point that the downtime inherent in sandbox games means the games are therefore more shallow. In reality the situations WoW inorganically drops you into are not particularly deep or difficult. There are precise, pre-determined ways to complete every raid, min/max your character, etc. Not to mention the notoriously mind-numbing questing/endgame grinding that the game is known for. How is WoW deep exactly?
SC2 is not deep because it's hard to master. Again, depth is not difficulty. You can have difficulty in simplicity and simplicity by definition is not deep. Difficulty != depth."
I wonder if you ignored it because you don't have an answer. I wonder if this is going to turn into another pointless internet debate where the guy has no defense for his baseless opinion, but still plays ring around the damn rosie for multiple posts before just giving up entirely and disappearing into the wind, without admitting he was wrong. Hmmmmm.
Your claim that his definition is "verifiably wrong" hinges on his definition being supposedly binary, even though the context clearly implying it isn't binary (years, decades, centuries) and the word itself implies it isn't binary (the fact that it's being repurposed to a slightly different definition as it relates to gaming doesn't change that particular property of the word.)
We could certainly agree that "is deeper" would've been better instead of "is deep", since the former is more evocative of a non-binary concept than the latter. But it's clear either way, given the context and the word itself.
He says "a game is deep when..." You're right that he should have said "is deeper...." If he did, then he wouldn't have been wrong.
Regardless of the fact that he's wrong, he's still just one guy and he's talking about a different genre. I promise there are "developers" who would disagree with much of what you're saying. That's why appeals to authority don't really fly in formal debate.
Chess doesn't involve any of the decisions in Tic-tac-toe, yet we are able to make statements comparing the depth of the two games. That's the reason your question about WOW's analog to an EVE officer starting a war is ultimately irrelevant. (Which is also an example where one player is making a single decision for lots of players, which is another way the depth experienced by the average player is lower.)
Wait what.... how is what you said anything more than a non sequitur? How does your chess-checkers analogy make my question irrelevant?
Just because the corp officer is making decisions for other players doesn't change anything. If you prefer I modify the question to say that somebody decides to take their own personal titan out for a spin and lose thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that's fine too. The bottom line is, these are much more important decisions than anything you'll see in WoW.
The rules of chess are simple. It's also the most commonly cited example of game depth, and few would dispute its depth. Yet you claim simplicity by definition is not deep.
Here's the problem: chess is not simple. The rules of chess are simple. Chess itself is anything but. Chess absolutely is deep because there are an almost infinite amount of meaningful possibilities, not to mention the fact that you can take into account the mindset of your human opponent.
I imagine that's the core of your disagreement. Everyone else is using the word to imply a depth of mastery that gives games longevity, whereas whatever your definition is would apparently call chess shallow just because its rules fit on a single sheet of paper.
Mastery has nothing to do with depth, for the millionth time. You can have depth in a game that takes almost 0 skill, and you can have a lot of difficulty in a game that isn't very deep.
It is difficult to quantify decision depth. We understand chess is deeper than tic-tac-toe, and if you dig deeper you realize it has to do with the possibilities and dynamics within each game's decision tree, which generate a wide separation between newbie and expert, and that same separation exists to a large degree in WOW and your "Well just do everything perfectly and win" summary of WOW sort of misses the nuances in the same way that "Just do everything perfectly in EVE and win" misses that game's nuances. But there aren't any convenient metrics for measuring the depth.
Well if you can't quantify the decisions in EVE vs WoW, why should anybody take your word for it when you say they are of the same caliber?
The problem with your definition of depth and how it relates to WoW is that using that definition would mean any game where you just pile on independent systems would add depth to the game, and I don't think that's right. That's just content. WoW seems to me like a game with a lot of CONTENT since it's been around for so long and has been very popular. That doesn't make it deep, it makes it broad. The way I like to think of it is a very large but shallow puddle, compared to a smaller but deeper puddle. One has depth, the other has width.
And the problem with your comparison of the min/maxing in WoW compared to min/maxing in EVE is that one game is more suited to it than the other. Because WoW is so shallow, it's much more susceptible to being "figured out." You can't "figure out" EVE, because of its depth. You're competing against other players in extremely well crafted game mechanics. On the other hand, you very much can figure out almost all of the content in WoW. People have figured out the best ways to quest, they've figured out the ideal ways to do each raid, they've figured out the best builds, etc. It's all figured out because it's so shallow.
Nope, i proved you WoW isnt even a game since 100% of your time has 0 decisions.
Unfortunately, thats quality of YOUR arguments (i dont even call them arguments, just some made up stuff to try and keep dead theory above the water)
Fact is WoW is a shallow game.
If you ever decide to post something of merit, I'll still be here. Making unrelated statements which are clearly false doesn't really threaten any of the points I've made so far.
You see, thats the comment on your own arguments. becasue i did make same exact argumet you use and base your theory on.
Thank you for realizing that your own arguments are clearly false.
He says "a game is deep when..." You're right that he should have said "is deeper...." If he did, then he wouldn't have been wrong.
Regardless of the fact that he's wrong, he's still just one guy and he's talking about a different genre. I promise there are "developers" who would disagree with much of what you're saying. That's why appeals to authority don't really fly in formal debate.
Wait what.... how is what you said anything more than a non sequitur? How does your chess-checkers analogy make my question irrelevant?
Just because the corp officer is making decisions for other players doesn't change anything. If you prefer I modify the question to say that somebody decides to take their own personal titan out for a spin and lose thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that's fine too. The bottom line is, these are much more important decisions than anything you'll see in WoW.
Here's the problem: chess is not simple. The rules of chess are simple. Chess itself is anything but. Chess absolutely is deep because there are an almost infinite amount of meaningful possibilities, not to mention the fact that you can take into account the mindset of your human opponent.
Mastery has nothing to do with depth, for the millionth time. You can have depth in a game that takes almost 0 skill, and you can have a lot of difficulty in a game that isn't very deep.
The problem with your definition of depth and how it relates to WoW is that using that definition would mean any game where you just pile on independent systems would add depth to the game, and I don't think that's right. That's just content. WoW seems to me like a game with a lot of CONTENT since it's been around for so long and has been very popular. That doesn't make it deep, it makes it broad. The way I like to think of it is a very large but shallow puddle, compared to a smaller but deeper puddle. One has depth, the other has width.
And the problem with your comparison of the min/maxing in WoW compared to min/maxing in EVE is that one game is more suited to it than the other. Because WoW is so shallow, it's much more susceptible to being "figured out." You can't "figure out" EVE, because of its depth. You're competing against other players in extremely well crafted game mechanics. On the other hand, you very much can figure out almost all of the content in WoW. People have figured out the best ways to quest, they've figured out the ideal ways to do each raid, they've figured out the best builds, etc. It's all figured out because it's so shallow.
Well while you're fighting over this very minor semantic victory, the problem is his definition's intent is clear (due to the context and the word being defined) and so it remains a valid and accurate definition of depth as it relates to gaming.
Different genres doesn't change the meaning of game depth. Game depth is the same regardless of genre. The idea that it varies is preposterous.
You asked for WOW's analog to an EVE officer's decision. I pointed out how that's an irrelevant question, because there are no analogs between the decisions being made in chess vs. tic-tac-toe, yet we're still able to clearly identify chess as being deeper.
Maybe I could provide you personal motivation in the argument to find the analog yourself, by pointing out that those decisions indirectly reduce a game's depth because they're only made by officers (a minority) not members (the majority). So that's even less game depth experienced by the average player. Which provides some incentive for you to go "oh yeah well WOW does that in the same way by..." at which point you'll have your analog.
Calling the decision of whether to go out alone in an EVE Titan "important" isn't a measure of the decision's depth, it's a measure of the decision's risk. Nobody's saying WOW has the same risk as EVE, but if that's the best
Everything you said about chess not being simple applies to SC2, and both games are deep in the same way.
Name a game which requires almost zero skill which you believe to be deep.
My definition of depth wouldn't necessarily benefit from piling independent systems onto the game. We've seen how exclusivity and requirement are major factors shaping a game's actual experienced depth, in systems like EVE's travel (you're required to engage in this shallow system, at the exclusion of other decision-filled systems which you could have engaged in had the game been designed differently.) While EVE travel isn't independent, that trait isn't too relevant -- only the depth resulting of the decisions (or lack thereof) is what's important. An example of an independent system which doesn't decrease experienced depth would be WOW's fishing -- because it's not required at all, its existence doesn't detract from the game's depth (except in an extremely indirect way: the devs worked on fishing when they could've been working on features which made their combat deeper.)
Content provides breadth, but breadth and depth are not on a sliding scale. They're independent concepts, so you can have more of both.
I'm sure players have figured out how to min/max the damage and survivability of EVE fittings in exactly the same way as the min/maxing in WOW. It's not like there are that many options to sift through to figure that stuff out, despite the game's spammed complexity.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Eve is complicated and takes time to learn but not very hard or deep in the end. There are many things you can do but most of them are less than ideal or not worth doing.
People think that they can customize their ships as they want and stay competitive... no they can't. There's definitely is a set of best builds for every ship/role and if you do not adhere to them, you will hear about it when people see your killmail.
In this regard Eve is like any other game. It also has FOTM builds.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
He says "a game is deep when..." You're right that he should have said "is deeper...." If he did, then he wouldn't have been wrong.
Regardless of the fact that he's wrong, he's still just one guy and he's talking about a different genre. I promise there are "developers" who would disagree with much of what you're saying. That's why appeals to authority don't really fly in formal debate.
Wait what.... how is what you said anything more than a non sequitur? How does your chess-checkers analogy make my question irrelevant?
Just because the corp officer is making decisions for other players doesn't change anything. If you prefer I modify the question to say that somebody decides to take their own personal titan out for a spin and lose thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that's fine too. The bottom line is, these are much more important decisions than anything you'll see in WoW.
Here's the problem: chess is not simple. The rules of chess are simple. Chess itself is anything but. Chess absolutely is deep because there are an almost infinite amount of meaningful possibilities, not to mention the fact that you can take into account the mindset of your human opponent.
Mastery has nothing to do with depth, for the millionth time. You can have depth in a game that takes almost 0 skill, and you can have a lot of difficulty in a game that isn't very deep.
The problem with your definition of depth and how it relates to WoW is that using that definition would mean any game where you just pile on independent systems would add depth to the game, and I don't think that's right. That's just content. WoW seems to me like a game with a lot of CONTENT since it's been around for so long and has been very popular. That doesn't make it deep, it makes it broad. The way I like to think of it is a very large but shallow puddle, compared to a smaller but deeper puddle. One has depth, the other has width.
And the problem with your comparison of the min/maxing in WoW compared to min/maxing in EVE is that one game is more suited to it than the other. Because WoW is so shallow, it's much more susceptible to being "figured out." You can't "figure out" EVE, because of its depth. You're competing against other players in extremely well crafted game mechanics. On the other hand, you very much can figure out almost all of the content in WoW. People have figured out the best ways to quest, they've figured out the ideal ways to do each raid, they've figured out the best builds, etc. It's all figured out because it's so shallow.
Well while you're fighting over this very minor semantic victory, the problem is his definition's intent is clear (due to the context and the word being defined) and so it remains a valid and accurate definition of depth as it relates to gaming.
You're fighting just as much over a very minor semantic defeat.
Different genres doesn't change the meaning of game depth. Game depth is the same regardless of genre. The idea that it varies is preposterous.
No, this is very obviously wrong. He's talking about competition. Game depth doesn't simply come from competition, so obviously his narrow definition doesn't work. The reason his definition is so narrow is BECAUSE he's talking about multiplayer competitive games, like fighting games. He's not talking about games that have non-combat mechanics.
You asked for WOW's analog to an EVE officer's decision. I pointed out how that's an irrelevant question, because there are no analogs between the decisions being made in chess vs. tic-tac-toe, yet we're still able to clearly identify chess as being deeper.
But you're the one claiming they're the same. If you can claim they're the same, why can't I claim one is better than the other? If they're not comparable, how are you able to compare them? By the way, they are comparable.
Maybe I could provide you personal motivation in the argument to find the analog yourself, by pointing out that those decisions indirectly reduce a game's depth because they're only made by officers (a minority) not members (the majority). So that's even less game depth experienced by the average player. Which provides some incentive for you to go "oh yeah well WOW does that in the same way by..." at which point you'll have your analog.
Not true. You're assuming that because an officer is making a decision for many people, that somehow means those many people aren't making decisions on their own. That's obviously not the case. First of all, they may be doing something entirely unrelated when this decision is made. Second, the player has to make the decision to be in that corp, they have to make the decision to follow the order, they have to make combat decisions when following that order, etc.
Calling the decision of whether to go out alone in an EVE Titan "important" isn't a measure of the decision's depth, it's a measure of the decision's risk. Nobody's saying WOW has the same risk as EVE, but if that's the best
Having consequences to your actions is an example of depth.
Everything you said about chess not being simple applies to SC2, and both games are deep in the same way.
Again, not true. Many SC2 games are somewhat straightforward. There is some depth to SC2, of course. But the point I was making about SC2 is that its difficulty is not relative to its depth. It's much more difficult than it is deep, so your assertion that depth is how long it takes you to master a game is not true. For instance, I can know exactly what I'm *supposed* to do in SC2 and still not be able to physically do it perfectly or quickly. That's mechanical difficulty with almost no depth.
Name a game which requires almost zero skill which you believe to be deep.
Europa Universalis 4. An incredibly deep game that takes almost no skill.
My definition of depth wouldn't necessarily benefit from piling independent systems onto the game. We've seen how exclusivity and requirement are major factors shaping a game's actual experienced depth, in systems like EVE's travel (you're required to engage in this shallow system, at the exclusion of other decision-filled systems which you could have engaged in had the game been designed differently.) While EVE travel isn't independent, that trait isn't too relevant -- only the depth resulting of the decisions (or lack thereof) is what's important. An example of an independent system which doesn't decrease experienced depth would be WOW's fishing -- because it's not required at all, its existence doesn't detract from the game's depth (except in an extremely indirect way: the devs worked on fishing when they could've been working on features which made their combat deeper.)
Once and for all, just please provide your definition of depth, because it's changed many times. I think at one point you said it's simply how long it takes to master a game. If that's the case, then yes piling on independent systems would make the game deeper, according to your definition. That's one of the reasons I don't agree with your definition.
And you're still hung up on the amount of decisions per unit of time in a game, and I have no idea why. You can make fewer decisions and have a deeper game, depending on the decisions you're making. That's always been the complaint about WoW. Sure there's a bunch of shit going on all over the place, but all of it is shallow. You're conveniently (and inaccurately) referring to depth as the number of decisions you make.
Content provides breadth, but breadth and depth are not on a sliding scale. They're independent concepts, so you can have more of both.
I'm sure players have figured out how to min/max the damage and survivability of EVE fittings in exactly the same way as the min/maxing in WOW. It's not like there are that many options to sift through to figure that stuff out, despite the game's spammed complexity.
So you don't think WoW is more conducive to min/maxing than EVE? Just want to clarify.
Eve is complicated and takes time to learn but not very hard or deep in the end. There are many things you can do but most of them are less than ideal or not worth doing.
People think that they can customize their ships as they want and stay competitive... no they can't. There's definitely is a set of best builds for every ship/role and if you do not adhere to them, you will hear about it when people see your killmail.
In this regard Eve is like any other game. It also has FOTM builds.
No, they can't fit their ships HOWEVER they want, but there is a lot more viability than in WoW, especially when considering fleet compositions.
You guys are going back and forth but to me both of you seem to have valid points and I do not think there is a wrong and right here just differing opinions and you should agree to disagree .
Eve is complicated and takes time to learn but not very hard or deep in the end. There are many things you can do but most of them are less than ideal or not worth doing.
People think that they can customize their ships as they want and stay competitive... no they can't. There's definitely is a set of best builds for every ship/role and if you do not adhere to them, you will hear about it when people see your killmail.
In this regard Eve is like any other game. It also has FOTM builds.
No, they can't fit their ships HOWEVER they want, but there is a lot more viability than in WoW, especially when considering fleet compositions.
You don't get many chances to test your builds in Eve in an environment where it matters. You beat someone with a smaller fleet - you don't know how good your ships really are. Prey on PvE players - don't need a good PvP ship to do that.
You think Eve has more viable builds but you don't know.
I've played in a number of alliances where some fleet doctrines hung around for months, even years, before someone with enough expertise and authority said enough is enough, and scrapped the shit-builds.
Although you can design a doctrine to fight either overpowered or underpowered. Most people don't even notice that their fleet doctrine's win rate is ZERO whenever they've engaged a fleet that's been roughly equal in size and power.
See there's a lot of excuses to throw around in Eve: "They had a bigger fleet", "we were out of position", "target calling choked up" etc. There's a lot less in e-sports type of PvP. And the amount of repeats you can do in e-sports... That is why viable builds are easier to spot there. It doesn't mean Eve has more viable builds though.
In the alliance tournament, the number of viable team comps (first tier, competitive builds) is not that high. In the end it all boils down to just a handful. Like in any other game.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Eve is complicated and takes time to learn but not very hard or deep in the end. There are many things you can do but most of them are less than ideal or not worth doing.
People think that they can customize their ships as they want and stay competitive... no they can't. There's definitely is a set of best builds for every ship/role and if you do not adhere to them, you will hear about it when people see your killmail.
In this regard Eve is like any other game. It also has FOTM builds.
No, they can't fit their ships HOWEVER they want, but there is a lot more viability than in WoW, especially when considering fleet compositions.
You don't get many chances to test your builds in Eve in an environment where it matters. You beat someone with a smaller fleet - you don't know how good your ships really are. Prey on PvE players - don't need a good PvP ship to do that.
You think Eve has more viable builds but you don't know.
I've played in a number of alliances where some fleet doctrines hung around for months, even years, before someone with enough expertise and authority said enough is enough, and scrapped the shit-builds.
Although you can design a doctrine to fight either overpowered or underpowered. Most people don't even notice that their fleet doctrine's win rate is ZERO whenever they've engaged a fleet that's been roughly equal in size and power.
See there's a lot of excuses to throw around in Eve: "They had a bigger fleet", "we were out of position", "target calling choked up" etc. There's a lot less in e-sports type of PvP. And the amount of repeats you can do in e-sports... That is why viable builds are easier to spot there. It doesn't mean Eve has more viable builds though.
In the alliance tournament, the number of viable team comps (first tier, competitive builds) is not that high. In the end it all boils down to just a handful. Like in any other game.
Firstly, there is a way of testing builds at no cost, and it is used a lot, its called the test server, often used by players to test ideas and also to practice fleet tactics, there isn't a best build either, thats one fable that is repeated often and yet nobody has been able to put forward what these best builds are, simply put, there isn't one, its very much a rock paper scissors thing, you cannot fit a ship to be good at everything, one of the reasons the test server was used so much is so that fleets can practice using various fits.
I think your wrong though, if there is one thing that the alliance tournaments proved, its that tactics can help win battles, bad tactics can also lose them faster than anything, its not enough to have a well fit fleet if the pilots can't work together and/or the FC does not have the ability to control or use them to effect, which means they have to also understand their own force compositions, strengths and weaknesses, it is not about which builds are viable so much as which combinations work well against other set combinations, which in the Tournaments means they have to plan their own fits and tactics against a 'best guess' of the enemy fleet compositiion/fits, with the FC's being the wildcard, if there is one thing it is not, it is simple nor does it boil down to just a handful of viable fits, that kind of oversimplification will get you into trouble in Eve faster than a freighter travelling through null sec.
1. I am aware of testnthe test server, but you can do only so much there. Live testing gives you much more valuable results.
2. No one has said there's a best build that can do anything. There are best builds for specific roles though like for a probing dictor for example. And whichever dictor build you are going for Sabre is usually the best hull for the job (coincidentally not for a probing dictor though).
3. I have made no arguments regarding tactics or the skill of the players. I've only made an observation where I noted that Eve is much like any other game when builds are concerned. However everything you said abaout skill, tactics and taking metagame into account applies to every PvP game out there. Eve is no different.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Eve is complicated and takes time to learn but not very hard or deep in the end. There are many things you can do but most of them are less than ideal or not worth doing.
People think that they can customize their ships as they want and stay competitive... no they can't. There's definitely is a set of best builds for every ship/role and if you do not adhere to them, you will hear about it when people see your killmail.
In this regard Eve is like any other game. It also has FOTM builds.
No, they can't fit their ships HOWEVER they want, but there is a lot more viability than in WoW, especially when considering fleet compositions.
You don't get many chances to test your builds in Eve in an environment where it matters. You beat someone with a smaller fleet - you don't know how good your ships really are. Prey on PvE players - don't need a good PvP ship to do that.
You think Eve has more viable builds but you don't know.
I've played in a number of alliances where some fleet doctrines hung around for months, even years, before someone with enough expertise and authority said enough is enough, and scrapped the shit-builds.
Although you can design a doctrine to fight either overpowered or underpowered. Most people don't even notice that their fleet doctrine's win rate is ZERO whenever they've engaged a fleet that's been roughly equal in size and power.
See there's a lot of excuses to throw around in Eve: "They had a bigger fleet", "we were out of position", "target calling choked up" etc. There's a lot less in e-sports type of PvP. And the amount of repeats you can do in e-sports... That is why viable builds are easier to spot there. It doesn't mean Eve has more viable builds though.
In the alliance tournament, the number of viable team comps (first tier, competitive builds) is not that high. In the end it all boils down to just a handful. Like in any other game.
I'm not sure why you discredit situations like "preying on pve players" or outnumbering your opponent. The fact that those things exist add to the depth of the game. You're arbitrarily narrowing the scope to "fair, competitive pvp."
Comments
How are you quantifying these decisions? If you say the decisions in a game like EVE are the same as the decisions in a game like WoW, then surely you must have some way of measuring them. You're being annoyingly vague I think because you don't have any sort of substantive point. You're arbitrarily declaring that the decisions in a sandbox game are of the same caliber as any other game (or just WoW?), so that you can point that the downtime inherent in sandbox games means the games are therefore more shallow. In reality the situations WoW inorganically drops you into are not particularly deep or difficult. There are precise, pre-determined ways to complete every raid, min/max your character, etc. Not to mention the notoriously mind-numbing questing/endgame grinding that the game is known for. How is WoW deep exactly?
SC2 is not deep because it's hard to master. Again, depth is not difficulty. You can have difficulty in simplicity and simplicity by definition is not deep. Difficulty != depth.
I didn't miss the post, I just don't care. Not only is he wrong, he's also just one dude. So a dude agrees with you.... great. Do you think there are any game developers that would agree that EVE has more depth than WoW?
The reason he's wrong is, first of all, because look at what the fuck he's saying. It's so amazingly subjective and vague it's not even worth talking about. Interesting? How do you quantify that exactly? When defining terms like these, you don't express it in binary terms. There is no game that has 100% depth or 0% depth. Similarly, there are no games that are pure sandbox or pure themepark. You define these terms in limits. For example, you could say sandbox means player-driven content and freedom. As you increase those things, you're increasing the sandbox nature of that game.
That guy is quite simply flat out wrong to define depth the way he's doing so. Not only that, is he even talking about MMOs? If I'm not mistaken, he's more of a fighting game or maybe FPS guy, right? If so, not exactly applicable.
So to reiterate, you're committing the fallacy of appealing to authority, you're doing so by relying on the opinion of ONE DUDE, that dude is almost verifiably wrong, and he's not even talking about the same genre.
Mmmm I think you're confused. I'm not asking whether or not the decisions in EVE are "important." I'm asking why they aren't more important than in WoW. What decision in WoW is as important as the decision I laid out in EVE?
I)f you go play WoW and wait 2 hours for raid to assemble, that means that you have made 0 decisions/hour and that means that WoW isnt even a game because you made 0 decisions.
Yeah, thats right.
Your "theory" along with your quoted random internet stuff has been shot down in such hard ways thats its quite amusing by now.
Not to mention if you try to leave, people will get unhappy (unless you go LFR). That is simply too much commitment to play a mere game.
If my wife want 15 min of my time, or my son wants me to help with a homework problem, games can wait.
You bothered to accuse me of making up my definition for this thread, so you obviously do care. The fact that the only developer spending time defining the word has a definition which agrees with my own (another developer) means a lot more than the flimsy opinions of people who've put a lot less thought into the subject.
Stating a few unrelated facts that don't conflict with his definition and then claiming his definition is wrong is baseless. Game depth is a spectrum, just like sandbox vs. themepark. But in that other spectrum surely you can look at the magnitude of player authorship to call one game more sandbox than another, just as we've seen the same thing can be done for depth.
So nothing you've said here comes remotely close to "verifiably wrong". You've stated a couple unrelated truths and then claimed he was wrong with no basis for that claim.
I'm not confused, you are (you're the one thinking I claimed EVE's decisions weren't important when I said they were, remember?) We're talking about depth, and that's not the measure of the importance of any decision in isolation, but of the magnitude of skill the entire game requires. So on a per-decision basis EVE's are clearly more important because there are fewer of them (so obviously each one is a greater percentage of what creates success.) Again the thing that matters is that huge portions of EVE's gameplay involve virtually no skill, and even though those portions are necessary to execute the game's strategy (which does require skill) that huge portion of your time spent doing shallow things is why the game is shallow overall.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Why would you bring this topic up?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Nope, i proved you WoW isnt even a game since 100% of your time has 0 decisions.
Unfortunately, thats quality of YOUR arguments (i dont even call them arguments, just some made up stuff to try and keep dead theory above the water)
Fact is WoW is a shallow game.
Well I've been commenting on how these games actually are, not how they could be. Crafting systems typically are quite shallow, and you might have strategic decisions related to what to craft (and sometimes where to sell it), but then the act of creating those products typically involves a bunch of really shallow gameplay (sitting in front of ore nodes all day harvesting the raw resources to be able to combine them with a simple action.)
I didn't play UO or SWG, but crafters being important doesn't necessarily mean that crafting is a deep skill-driven activity. EVE's crafting doesn't require much skill (it's the same handful of important strategic decisions (skill) resulting in hundreds of hours of shallow activities (travel, gathering, and crafting)) and yet crafting is absolutely critical to the game.
You're right that being able to try a lot of strategies doesn't make a game deep. It's just the more common way players have fun.
Playing a risk-heavy game and then completely ignoring risk won't work except in the imaginary game I described earlier (where only lateral progression existed) But again, that game wouldn't be considered risk-heavy in the first place; players typically measure risk in terms of time lost or vertical progression lost. So in terms of how games are (not how they could be), a risk-heavy game reduces the number of balanced fights even for a suicidally risky player by penalizing that player with reduced vertical progression (and therefore creating more imbalanced matches for that player.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
He is verifiably wrong. The quote that YOU used is wrong. You cannot say that depth is binary. There is no such thing as a game that is objectively deep or not deep. He is wrong. I'll say again, since you didn't actually deal with anything I said: You're appealing to authority, using the opinion of a guy who is WRONG, and is also talking about a different genre.
Dear lord, are you joking? I NEVER thought that you claimed EVE's decisions weren't important. The post that you're responding to literally had me saying this:
"I'm not asking whether or not the decisions in EVE are "important." I'm asking why they aren't more important than in WoW."
This has always been about you claiming that EVE is not more deep than WoW, so for the 3rd time: what is the WoW equivalent of the EVE decision I laid out? You're claiming that the decisions in EVE are just as important as the decisions in WoW.
Depth is not the magnitude of the skill the entire game requires. Depth doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skill.
Also, you seem to have forgotten this part of my post:
"How are you quantifying these decisions? If you say the decisions in a game like EVE are the same as the decisions in a game like WoW, then surely you must have some way of measuring them. You're being annoyingly vague I think because you don't have any sort of substantive point. You're arbitrarily declaring that the decisions in a sandbox game are of the same caliber as any other game (or just WoW?), so that you can point that the downtime inherent in sandbox games means the games are therefore more shallow. In reality the situations WoW inorganically drops you into are not particularly deep or difficult. There are precise, pre-determined ways to complete every raid, min/max your character, etc. Not to mention the notoriously mind-numbing questing/endgame grinding that the game is known for. How is WoW deep exactly?
SC2 is not deep because it's hard to master. Again, depth is not difficulty. You can have difficulty in simplicity and simplicity by definition is not deep. Difficulty != depth."
I wonder if you ignored it because you don't have an answer. I wonder if this is going to turn into another pointless internet debate where the guy has no defense for his baseless opinion, but still plays ring around the damn rosie for multiple posts before just giving up entirely and disappearing into the wind, without admitting he was wrong. Hmmmmm.
I would have voted for "dead outlaw/PK drop everything, Dead lawful players only drop 1-2 things."
I voted for the "a few things drop" choice as mine wasnt an option....
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
Your claim that his definition is "verifiably wrong" hinges on his definition being supposedly binary, even though the context clearly implying it isn't binary (years, decades, centuries) and the word itself implies it isn't binary (the fact that it's being repurposed to a slightly different definition as it relates to gaming doesn't change that particular property of the word.)
We could certainly agree that "is deeper" would've been better instead of "is deep", since the former is more evocative of a non-binary concept than the latter. But it's clear either way, given the context and the word itself.
Chess doesn't involve any of the decisions in Tic-tac-toe, yet we are able to make statements comparing the depth of the two games. That's the reason your question about WOW's analog to an EVE officer starting a war is ultimately irrelevant. (Which is also an example where one player is making a single decision for lots of players, which is another way the depth experienced by the average player is lower.)
The rules of chess are simple. It's also the most commonly cited example of game depth, and few would dispute its depth. Yet you claim simplicity by definition is not deep.
I imagine that's the core of your disagreement. Everyone else is using the word to imply a depth of mastery that gives games longevity, whereas whatever your definition is would apparently call chess shallow just because its rules fit on a single sheet of paper.
It is difficult to quantify decision depth. We understand chess is deeper than tic-tac-toe, and if you dig deeper you realize it has to do with the possibilities and dynamics within each game's decision tree, which generate a wide separation between newbie and expert, and that same separation exists to a large degree in WOW and your "Well just do everything perfectly and win" summary of WOW sort of misses the nuances in the same way that "Just do everything perfectly in EVE and win" misses that game's nuances. But there aren't any convenient metrics for measuring the depth.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If you ever decide to post something of merit, I'll still be here. Making unrelated statements which are clearly false doesn't really threaten any of the points I've made so far.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
He says "a game is deep when..." You're right that he should have said "is deeper...." If he did, then he wouldn't have been wrong.
Regardless of the fact that he's wrong, he's still just one guy and he's talking about a different genre. I promise there are "developers" who would disagree with much of what you're saying. That's why appeals to authority don't really fly in formal debate.
Wait what.... how is what you said anything more than a non sequitur? How does your chess-checkers analogy make my question irrelevant?
Just because the corp officer is making decisions for other players doesn't change anything. If you prefer I modify the question to say that somebody decides to take their own personal titan out for a spin and lose thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that's fine too. The bottom line is, these are much more important decisions than anything you'll see in WoW.
Here's the problem: chess is not simple. The rules of chess are simple. Chess itself is anything but. Chess absolutely is deep because there are an almost infinite amount of meaningful possibilities, not to mention the fact that you can take into account the mindset of your human opponent.
Mastery has nothing to do with depth, for the millionth time. You can have depth in a game that takes almost 0 skill, and you can have a lot of difficulty in a game that isn't very deep.
Well if you can't quantify the decisions in EVE vs WoW, why should anybody take your word for it when you say they are of the same caliber?
The problem with your definition of depth and how it relates to WoW is that using that definition would mean any game where you just pile on independent systems would add depth to the game, and I don't think that's right. That's just content. WoW seems to me like a game with a lot of CONTENT since it's been around for so long and has been very popular. That doesn't make it deep, it makes it broad. The way I like to think of it is a very large but shallow puddle, compared to a smaller but deeper puddle. One has depth, the other has width.
And the problem with your comparison of the min/maxing in WoW compared to min/maxing in EVE is that one game is more suited to it than the other. Because WoW is so shallow, it's much more susceptible to being "figured out." You can't "figure out" EVE, because of its depth. You're competing against other players in extremely well crafted game mechanics. On the other hand, you very much can figure out almost all of the content in WoW. People have figured out the best ways to quest, they've figured out the ideal ways to do each raid, they've figured out the best builds, etc. It's all figured out because it's so shallow.
You see, thats the comment on your own arguments. becasue i did make same exact argumet you use and base your theory on.
Thank you for realizing that your own arguments are clearly false.
Well while you're fighting over this very minor semantic victory, the problem is his definition's intent is clear (due to the context and the word being defined) and so it remains a valid and accurate definition of depth as it relates to gaming.
Different genres doesn't change the meaning of game depth. Game depth is the same regardless of genre. The idea that it varies is preposterous.
You asked for WOW's analog to an EVE officer's decision. I pointed out how that's an irrelevant question, because there are no analogs between the decisions being made in chess vs. tic-tac-toe, yet we're still able to clearly identify chess as being deeper.
Maybe I could provide you personal motivation in the argument to find the analog yourself, by pointing out that those decisions indirectly reduce a game's depth because they're only made by officers (a minority) not members (the majority). So that's even less game depth experienced by the average player. Which provides some incentive for you to go "oh yeah well WOW does that in the same way by..." at which point you'll have your analog.
Calling the decision of whether to go out alone in an EVE Titan "important" isn't a measure of the decision's depth, it's a measure of the decision's risk. Nobody's saying WOW has the same risk as EVE, but if that's the best
Everything you said about chess not being simple applies to SC2, and both games are deep in the same way.
Name a game which requires almost zero skill which you believe to be deep.
My definition of depth wouldn't necessarily benefit from piling independent systems onto the game. We've seen how exclusivity and requirement are major factors shaping a game's actual experienced depth, in systems like EVE's travel (you're required to engage in this shallow system, at the exclusion of other decision-filled systems which you could have engaged in had the game been designed differently.) While EVE travel isn't independent, that trait isn't too relevant -- only the depth resulting of the decisions (or lack thereof) is what's important. An example of an independent system which doesn't decrease experienced depth would be WOW's fishing -- because it's not required at all, its existence doesn't detract from the game's depth (except in an extremely indirect way: the devs worked on fishing when they could've been working on features which made their combat deeper.)
Content provides breadth, but breadth and depth are not on a sliding scale. They're independent concepts, so you can have more of both.
I'm sure players have figured out how to min/max the damage and survivability of EVE fittings in exactly the same way as the min/maxing in WOW. It's not like there are that many options to sift through to figure that stuff out, despite the game's spammed complexity.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
An argument based on a premise which is observably false isn't "the same exact argument" as one based on truth and logic.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Eve is complicated and takes time to learn but not very hard or deep in the end. There are many things you can do but most of them are less than ideal or not worth doing.
People think that they can customize their ships as they want and stay competitive... no they can't. There's definitely is a set of best builds for every ship/role and if you do not adhere to them, you will hear about it when people see your killmail.
In this regard Eve is like any other game. It also has FOTM builds.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
You're fighting just as much over a very minor semantic defeat.
No, this is very obviously wrong. He's talking about competition. Game depth doesn't simply come from competition, so obviously his narrow definition doesn't work. The reason his definition is so narrow is BECAUSE he's talking about multiplayer competitive games, like fighting games. He's not talking about games that have non-combat mechanics.
But you're the one claiming they're the same. If you can claim they're the same, why can't I claim one is better than the other? If they're not comparable, how are you able to compare them? By the way, they are comparable.
Not true. You're assuming that because an officer is making a decision for many people, that somehow means those many people aren't making decisions on their own. That's obviously not the case. First of all, they may be doing something entirely unrelated when this decision is made. Second, the player has to make the decision to be in that corp, they have to make the decision to follow the order, they have to make combat decisions when following that order, etc.
Having consequences to your actions is an example of depth.
Again, not true. Many SC2 games are somewhat straightforward. There is some depth to SC2, of course. But the point I was making about SC2 is that its difficulty is not relative to its depth. It's much more difficult than it is deep, so your assertion that depth is how long it takes you to master a game is not true. For instance, I can know exactly what I'm *supposed* to do in SC2 and still not be able to physically do it perfectly or quickly. That's mechanical difficulty with almost no depth.
Europa Universalis 4. An incredibly deep game that takes almost no skill.
Once and for all, just please provide your definition of depth, because it's changed many times. I think at one point you said it's simply how long it takes to master a game. If that's the case, then yes piling on independent systems would make the game deeper, according to your definition. That's one of the reasons I don't agree with your definition.
And you're still hung up on the amount of decisions per unit of time in a game, and I have no idea why. You can make fewer decisions and have a deeper game, depending on the decisions you're making. That's always been the complaint about WoW. Sure there's a bunch of shit going on all over the place, but all of it is shallow. You're conveniently (and inaccurately) referring to depth as the number of decisions you make.
So you don't think WoW is more conducive to min/maxing than EVE? Just want to clarify.
No, they can't fit their ships HOWEVER they want, but there is a lot more viability than in WoW, especially when considering fleet compositions.
You don't get many chances to test your builds in Eve in an environment where it matters. You beat someone with a smaller fleet - you don't know how good your ships really are. Prey on PvE players - don't need a good PvP ship to do that.
You think Eve has more viable builds but you don't know.
I've played in a number of alliances where some fleet doctrines hung around for months, even years, before someone with enough expertise and authority said enough is enough, and scrapped the shit-builds.
Although you can design a doctrine to fight either overpowered or underpowered. Most people don't even notice that their fleet doctrine's win rate is ZERO whenever they've engaged a fleet that's been roughly equal in size and power.
See there's a lot of excuses to throw around in Eve: "They had a bigger fleet", "we were out of position", "target calling choked up" etc. There's a lot less in e-sports type of PvP. And the amount of repeats you can do in e-sports... That is why viable builds are easier to spot there. It doesn't mean Eve has more viable builds though.
In the alliance tournament, the number of viable team comps (first tier, competitive builds) is not that high. In the end it all boils down to just a handful. Like in any other game.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Firstly, there is a way of testing builds at no cost, and it is used a lot, its called the test server, often used by players to test ideas and also to practice fleet tactics, there isn't a best build either, thats one fable that is repeated often and yet nobody has been able to put forward what these best builds are, simply put, there isn't one, its very much a rock paper scissors thing, you cannot fit a ship to be good at everything, one of the reasons the test server was used so much is so that fleets can practice using various fits.
I think your wrong though, if there is one thing that the alliance tournaments proved, its that tactics can help win battles, bad tactics can also lose them faster than anything, its not enough to have a well fit fleet if the pilots can't work together and/or the FC does not have the ability to control or use them to effect, which means they have to also understand their own force compositions, strengths and weaknesses, it is not about which builds are viable so much as which combinations work well against other set combinations, which in the Tournaments means they have to plan their own fits and tactics against a 'best guess' of the enemy fleet compositiion/fits, with the FC's being the wildcard, if there is one thing it is not, it is simple nor does it boil down to just a handful of viable fits, that kind of oversimplification will get you into trouble in Eve faster than a freighter travelling through null sec.
2. No one has said there's a best build that can do anything. There are best builds for specific roles though like for a probing dictor for example. And whichever dictor build you are going for Sabre is usually the best hull for the job (coincidentally not for a probing dictor though).
3. I have made no arguments regarding tactics or the skill of the players. I've only made an observation where I noted that Eve is much like any other game when builds are concerned. However everything you said abaout skill, tactics and taking metagame into account applies to every PvP game out there. Eve is no different.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
By sinple method of elimination, since you dont have one based on truth and logic, you have one thats false. Its that simple.
But it isnt even that much matter of nonsensical arguments, since, they all come from false premise.
I'm not sure why you discredit situations like "preying on pve players" or outnumbering your opponent. The fact that those things exist add to the depth of the game. You're arbitrarily narrowing the scope to "fair, competitive pvp."