No, these are not EQ/WoW like thempark PvE games where you have nothing to do beside combat. So no, you dont know how those games work obviously.
From crafting, assaulting (and all planning involved), building, politics, holding and organizing defenses....
Combat is just PART of the whole game, and you constantly think of themepark PvE games terms where combat is THE game.
How is advantage "given" to anyone in FFA (full loot) game. I certainly didnt get any advantage in L2 (for example, not full loot but very decent loot system). You have to WORK your ass up to have ANY kind of advantage (if advantage is even possible) and keeping it. It takes more decisins and dedication than repeating same rotation every week in exact same raid for months (even a year)
How is advantage GIVEN to anyone in EvE?
Thats also like saying RTSses, for example, are crap gameplay because resurce collection/building is large part of the gameplay and those have "no interesting decisions, depth and skill involved"
Oh yea, many players quit L2 when they dropped items they grinded for months (and due to cirumstances couldnt get them back), but that was one of the flaws of the game, so theres lesson to be learned there also.
Combat may be part of the game, but games are judged based on whether they manage to provide a series of interesting decisions and we can see right away that setting up MMORPGs like that fails to do so:
Crafting typically involves a rare scrap of deep decision-making (what to make, given the current localized economy) followed by copious amounts of shallow tedious repetition (stand in front of a tree (DF) or asteroid (EVE) all day doing nothing.) Then you press a button to combine the ingredients into the recipe.
Building. (See crafting.)
Politics are both an infrequent deep decision, and one that only a small fraction of the playerbase gets to interact with. Same goes for organizing defenses.
So you've taken tactical decisions which are consistently interesting and meaningful and replaced them with shallower activities or activities which offer less frequent deep decisions to a very narrow subset of clan leaders, and so yeah in the end the result is that these games are shallower.
"Given" was badly worded. You got me. But it doesn't change the underlying implication that these games are less about skill (depth) and more about non-skill factors like progression and population. You aren't given these non-skill advantages, but the fact remains that beating someone because you showed up with 50 players and they only had 20 isn't exactly a prime example of skillful competition.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No, these are not EQ/WoW like thempark PvE games where you have nothing to do beside combat. So no, you dont know how those games work obviously.
From crafting, assaulting (and all planning involved), building, politics, holding and organizing defenses....
Combat is just PART of the whole game, and you constantly think of themepark PvE games terms where combat is THE game.
How is advantage "given" to anyone in FFA (full loot) game. I certainly didnt get any advantage in L2 (for example, not full loot but very decent loot system). You have to WORK your ass up to have ANY kind of advantage (if advantage is even possible) and keeping it. It takes more decisins and dedication than repeating same rotation every week in exact same raid for months (even a year)
How is advantage GIVEN to anyone in EvE?
Thats also like saying RTSses, for example, are crap gameplay because resurce collection/building is large part of the gameplay and those have "no interesting decisions, depth and skill involved"
Oh yea, many players quit L2 when they dropped items they grinded for months (and due to cirumstances couldnt get them back), but that was one of the flaws of the game, so theres lesson to be learned there also.
Combat may be part of the game, but games are judged based on whether they manage to provide a series of interesting decisions and we can see right away that setting up MMORPGs like that fails to do so:
Crafting typically involves a rare scrap of deep decision-making (what to make, given the current localized economy) followed by copious amounts of shallow tedious repetition (stand in front of a tree (DF) or asteroid (EVE) all day doing nothing.) Then you press a button to combine the ingredients into the recipe.
Building. (See crafting.)
Politics are both an infrequent deep decision, and one that only a small fraction of the playerbase gets to interact with. Same goes for organizing defenses.
So you've taken tactical decisions which are consistently interesting and meaningful and replaced them with shallower activities or activities which offer less frequent deep decisions to a very narrow subset of clan leaders, and so yeah in the end the result is that these games are shallower.
"Given" was badly worded. You got me. But it doesn't change the underlying implication that these games are less about skill (depth) and more about non-skill factors like progression and population. You aren't given these non-skill advantages, but the fact remains that beating someone because you showed up with 50 players and they only had 20 isn't exactly a prime example of skillful competition.
If i show with 50 and they have 20 that is exactly a prime example of skillfull competition. A competition where that one with 20 lacked the skill to show up with 100 and kick our a$$es.
tell you what. Go play EvE, and when you have piece of space for yourself and at least 1 space station come back and give feedback how low on "meaningfull decisions" that was. Or, if you prefer, how "shallow" it was.
I will now try to describe certain game the same way you describe this: WoW is a game where you make character and faceroll your way as you level. There are no meaninful/interesting decisions and you just steamroll everything on your way.
If anything, EvE owerwhelms new players with decisions so most just drop out before they even learn how to properly pilot/equip starter ship and what to train
And you are absolutely right, EvE requires quite wider array of skills to be successful than muscle memory. In fact, muscle memory plays minor part of it.
And yes, you will make lot of decisions, most of them immediate, short term, mid term and long term, which will all determine how successfull will you be in the end.
Well risk doesnt take away any depth in combat then, just the frequency of encounters, and since progression is mostly horizontal its not a huge effect. You could say it adds depth in other areas, like economy. The competition for resources is the heart of most sandbox games and its not possible with at least inventory loot. If you want a steady demand for items, then you will want equipment loot too with item decay. Then crafters will be needed and you can have a decent economy.
Removing risk just makes open world pvp games giant deathmatch arenas, instead sandboxes need risk vs reward systems, and that makes the gameplay deeper not more shallow.
Frequency of encounters matters though. If game A wastes 0% of your time with shallower activities and game B wastes 80% of it, how could we not consider game B to be a shallower game overall?
The type of depth added by these games is only minor and extremely infrequent. Deciding to instigate a series of raids to keep your opponents off of a key resource is a single decision which might last for weeks or months as a clan/corp policy, whereas the types of depth you find in other games are a continual flow of deep decision-making.
Competition for resources definitely doesn't require risk. Starcraft is very strongly about resource competition and doesn't involve inventory looting. Even games like Battlefield: Hardline have a light resource component (by killing someone else repeatedly and eventually winning, I'm getting more resources than they are, and eventually cashing in on a win bonus to my money too.)
And what type of continual flow of deep decision making is there on your instant action no risk games? Oh kill these guy, kill another guy, oh I dead, respawn, try again. Thats the definition of shallow combat, pvp just for the sake of pvp. Not saying its less skill based but has no meaning and obviously no consquences to your actions so no deep decisions are involved.
Competition for resources doesnt require risk? Wheres the competition then? Starcraft is a RTS game, there is no "individual" to loot from, this is comparing apples and oranges. Battlefield? Come on, now... Go play Rust/H1z1 or any survival game and tell me if they would be the same without full loot.
No, these are not EQ/WoW like thempark PvE games where you have nothing to do beside combat. So no, you dont know how those games work obviously.
From crafting, assaulting (and all planning involved), building, politics, holding and organizing defenses....
Combat is just PART of the whole game, and you constantly think of themepark PvE games terms where combat is THE game.
How is advantage "given" to anyone in FFA (full loot) game. I certainly didnt get any advantage in L2 (for example, not full loot but very decent loot system). You have to WORK your ass up to have ANY kind of advantage (if advantage is even possible) and keeping it. It takes more decisins and dedication than repeating same rotation every week in exact same raid for months (even a year)
How is advantage GIVEN to anyone in EvE?
Thats also like saying RTSses, for example, are crap gameplay because resurce collection/building is large part of the gameplay and those have "no interesting decisions, depth and skill involved"
Oh yea, many players quit L2 when they dropped items they grinded for months (and due to cirumstances couldnt get them back), but that was one of the flaws of the game, so theres lesson to be learned there also.
Combat may be part of the game, but games are judged based on whether they manage to provide a series of interesting decisions and we can see right away that setting up MMORPGs like that fails to do so:
Crafting typically involves a rare scrap of deep decision-making (what to make, given the current localized economy) followed by copious amounts of shallow tedious repetition (stand in front of a tree (DF) or asteroid (EVE) all day doing nothing.) Then you press a button to combine the ingredients into the recipe.
Building. (See crafting.)
Politics are both an infrequent deep decision, and one that only a small fraction of the playerbase gets to interact with. Same goes for organizing defenses.
So you've taken tactical decisions which are consistently interesting and meaningful and replaced them with shallower activities or activities which offer less frequent deep decisions to a very narrow subset of clan leaders, and so yeah in the end the result is that these games are shallower.
"Given" was badly worded. You got me. But it doesn't change the underlying implication that these games are less about skill (depth) and more about non-skill factors like progression and population. You aren't given these non-skill advantages, but the fact remains that beating someone because you showed up with 50 players and they only had 20 isn't exactly a prime example of skillful competition.
These activities are shallow to you, some people enjoy their depth. Crafting, building, gathering these all involve constant decisions if your able to be attacked at all times, you have to make it back home with the loot. Again, what tactical meanginful decisions do you get in the games you talk about? Its just kill kill kill ,respawn, do it all over again.
Risk is the basis for meaningful decisions, if you dont risk anything then your choices dont really matter, if you die then you just respawn and try again.
And what if those 20 guys beat the other 50 using tactics that made their numbers useless (ever watched 300?), isnt that more challenging than a completely fair e sport match? Doesnt that require deeper tactics than if you were fighting even odds? And if they lose their gear on battle that means they wont be able to jump back instantly to the fights until they regear, so zerg play isnt favored so much.
From crafting, assaulting (and all planning involved), building, politics, holding and organizing defenses....
Combat is just PART of the whole game, and you constantly think of themepark PvE games terms where combat is THE game.
Depends on the game.
Combat is the main game for most. crafting is an after thought. And what politics, and organizing defenses? In games with instanced pvp, there is no such things.
Please don't count guild/loot drama as politics.
Read the thread title please, it says OPEN WORLD PVP, not instanced. And guild drama isnt politics? lol?
and I question the title .. there is no reason I cannot discuss why open world pvp is a "bad" design, and should be replaced by instanced gameplay.
well .. if you think guild drama is gameplay .. let me just say ... we have very different taste of what good gameplay is.
Thats basically derrailing the thread, the OP choose having open world as a given and only discussing what type of loot system would be ideal IN THIS CIRCUMSTANCES. So yeah this is not the place to discuss this, if you want to talk about how this is bad design you can start your own thread.
I think the player should never drop loot, however, when you kill someone loot their body to get loot from a pool of stuff a monster their level would drop instead, maybe some pvp currency medals and such too. I don't get why people think they are h3r4c0r3 cuz they can drop all gear on death. If anything that system causes the game to just die, we've seen it happen to so many pvp mmo's they just usually die within a month, 2 tops usually.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
If i show with 50 and they have 20 that is exactly a prime example of skillfull competition. A competition where that one with 20 lacked the skill to show up with 100 and kick our a$$es.
tell you what. Go play EvE, and when you have piece of space for yourself and at least 1 space station come back and give feedback how low on "meaningfull decisions" that was. Or, if you prefer, how "shallow" it was.
I will now try to describe certain game the same way you describe this: WoW is a game where you make character and faceroll your way as you level. There are no meaninful/interesting decisions and you just steamroll everything on your way.
If anything, EvE owerwhelms new players with decisions so most just drop out before they even learn how to properly pilot/equip starter ship and what to train
And you are absolutely right, EvE requires quite wider array of skills to be successful than muscle memory. In fact, muscle memory plays minor part of it.
And yes, you will make lot of decisions, most of them immediate, short term, mid term and long term, which will all determine how successfull will you be in the end.
The problem is you're taking a wide range of difficult-to-master decisions and replacing them with a popularity contest. So even if we agreed there was some skill to being popular (to bringing more players to a fight), the losses aren't worth the gains and the game will be shallower overall.
The decisions in WOW determine how fast you advance. 1-button derpers might be able to beat mobs, but they're going to take more damage and kill more slowly than someone who uses movement abilities to zip between mobs and quests, and uses their abilities more effectively. I've sat right behind mediocre WOW players IRL and watched them die to things which wouldn't have even threatened me, and I've grouped with thousands of others who were obviously way less effective with their characters than they could be. Certainly WOW would be better with a COH style difficulty slider while leveling, but the fact remains that you reach a point in dungeons or raids where skillful play is demanded of players and that's why the system is interesting, not the short tutorial (leveling) that precedes it.
The decisions in EVE are completely trivial for a lot of things, they're just very time-consuming and many players somehow mistake time consumption for difficulty. The risk factor means you avoid doing challenging PVE or PVP activities, which eliminates situations where decisions would actually be the difference between victory and defeat. So the claim that EVE has a lot of important short and mid term decisions is wrong.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Open World PvP: Out of the following, which loot system sounds more appealing?
None of the above, I vote that everything the player was carrying is removed from him on death, and that 50% or more of it is destroyed, then the other half or so is lootable.
An economy where nothing is removed, only transferred is not a working economy.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
If i show with 50 and they have 20 that is exactly a prime example of skillfull competition. A competition where that one with 20 lacked the skill to show up with 100 and kick our a$$es.
tell you what. Go play EvE, and when you have piece of space for yourself and at least 1 space station come back and give feedback how low on "meaningfull decisions" that was. Or, if you prefer, how "shallow" it was.
I will now try to describe certain game the same way you describe this: WoW is a game where you make character and faceroll your way as you level. There are no meaninful/interesting decisions and you just steamroll everything on your way.
If anything, EvE owerwhelms new players with decisions so most just drop out before they even learn how to properly pilot/equip starter ship and what to train
And you are absolutely right, EvE requires quite wider array of skills to be successful than muscle memory. In fact, muscle memory plays minor part of it.
And yes, you will make lot of decisions, most of them immediate, short term, mid term and long term, which will all determine how successfull will you be in the end.
The problem is you're taking a wide range of difficult-to-master decisions and replacing them with a popularity contest. So even if we agreed there was some skill to being popular (to bringing more players to a fight), the losses aren't worth the gains and the game will be shallower overall.
The decisions in WOW determine how fast you advance. 1-button derpers might be able to beat mobs, but they're going to take more damage and kill more slowly than someone who uses movement abilities to zip between mobs and quests, and uses their abilities more effectively. I've sat right behind mediocre WOW players IRL and watched them die to things which wouldn't have even threatened me, and I've grouped with thousands of others who were obviously way less effective with their characters than they could be. Certainly WOW would be better with a COH style difficulty slider while leveling, but the fact remains that you reach a point in dungeons or raids where skillful play is demanded of players and that's why the system is interesting, not the short tutorial (leveling) that precedes it.
The decisions in EVE are completely trivial for a lot of things, they're just very time-consuming and many players somehow mistake time consumption for difficulty. The risk factor means you avoid doing challenging PVE or PVP activities, which eliminates situations where decisions would actually be the difference between victory and defeat. So the claim that EVE has a lot of important short and mid term decisions is wrong.
nah, you just faceroll everything in wow. All you decisions are meaningless an trivial, push 1 or 2, mob dead....bleh
We can play that game all day long.
Decisions in EvE are several orders of magnitude more meaningful than anything WoW has, wow has nothing but meaningless decisions. Thats why EvE isnt as popular as WoW, in WoW people play because theres no depth to the game, its easy, accessible and doesnt require much time investement or thought, in other words it is shallow. As shallow as games get.
From crafting, assaulting (and all planning involved), building, politics, holding and organizing defenses....
Combat is just PART of the whole game, and you constantly think of themepark PvE games terms where combat is THE game.
Depends on the game.
Combat is the main game for most. crafting is an after thought. And what politics, and organizing defenses? In games with instanced pvp, there is no such things.
Please don't count guild/loot drama as politics.
Read the thread title please, it says OPEN WORLD PVP, not instanced. And guild drama isnt politics? lol?
and I question the title .. there is no reason I cannot discuss why open world pvp is a "bad" design, and should be replaced by instanced gameplay.
well .. if you think guild drama is gameplay .. let me just say ... we have very different taste of what good gameplay is.
Thats basically derrailing the thread, the OP choose having open world as a given and only discussing what type of loot system would be ideal IN THIS CIRCUMSTANCES. So yeah this is not the place to discuss this, if you want to talk about how this is bad design you can start your own thread.
.. and why can't we question why that should be a given? People question about all sort of things in topics.
Heck, if i make a thread and say "let's put it as a given that MMOs are now instanced games like WoT" ... you think no one is going to question that?
I say everything connected to the title (like why should be care about open world pvp in the first place) should be fair game.
These activities are shallow to you, some people enjoy their depth. Crafting, building, gathering these all involve constant decisions if your able to be attacked at all times, you have to make it back home with the loot. Again, what tactical meanginful decisions do you get in the games you talk about? Its just kill kill kill ,respawn, do it all over again.
Risk is the basis for meaningful decisions, if you dont risk anything then your choices dont really matter, if you die then you just respawn and try again.
And what if those 20 guys beat the other 50 using tactics that made their numbers useless (ever watched 300?), isnt that more challenging than a completely fair e sport match? Doesnt that require deeper tactics than if you were fighting even odds? And if they lose their gear on battle that means they wont be able to jump back instantly to the fights until they regear, so zerg play isnt favored so much.
You're essentially saying "Tic-tac-toe may be shallow to you but some people enjoy its depth." Depth isn't really a subjective thing, and while someone can subjectively enjoy a shallower game that doesn't mean that game is deep.
As I've said before depth isn't required to enjoy something. People enjoy shallow systems all the time. But most want games where they can continually learn and grow as players, not a Tic-tac-toe where things are easily mastered to perfection.
If you want to lean heavily on the "risk makes decisions matter" angle, then we have to broaden the discussion to all forms of risk that exist in games.
Every piece you move in chess involves some amount of risk. Risk both in terms of the piece's physical location on the board, and also in the form of opportunity costs (by moving the unit you moved, you aren't moving any other unit, and that frequently means one of those other units gets captured.)
The same is true in other games. Bad decisions create a worse outcome than what would have otherwise happened -- and that's the risk. The thing you lost was the better outcome.
Being unable to see that risk -- or unwilling to admit it exists because it's bad for your argument -- doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It still exists, and is why many (often most) decisions in games matter.
We've already covered that 20 players beating 50 involves more challenge, and we've already covered how that doesn't make the game deeper, because we know that in reality the side with more players simply has a massive advantage and most of the time wins. We've also covered how it isn't unique to open world PVP in any event, and that you can win a 20v50 in Planetside 2 (but even if you lose you know that if you lose slower than the 50v20 fight on the other side of the continent that you've come out ahead in spite of losing the fight -- your skill actually mattered there, unlike in an open PVP game.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
These activities are shallow to you, some people enjoy their depth. Crafting, building, gathering these all involve constant decisions if your able to be attacked at all times, you have to make it back home with the loot. Again, what tactical meanginful decisions do you get in the games you talk about? Its just kill kill kill ,respawn, do it all over again.
Risk is the basis for meaningful decisions, if you dont risk anything then your choices dont really matter, if you die then you just respawn and try again.
And what if those 20 guys beat the other 50 using tactics that made their numbers useless (ever watched 300?), isnt that more challenging than a completely fair e sport match? Doesnt that require deeper tactics than if you were fighting even odds? And if they lose their gear on battle that means they wont be able to jump back instantly to the fights until they regear, so zerg play isnt favored so much.
You're essentially saying "Tic-tac-toe may be shallow to you but some people enjoy its depth." Depth isn't really a subjective thing, and while someone can subjectively enjoy a shallower game that doesn't mean that game is deep.
As I've said before depth isn't required to enjoy something. People enjoy shallow systems all the time. But most want games where they can continually learn and grow as players, not a Tic-tac-toe where things are easily mastered to perfection.
If you want to lean heavily on the "risk makes decisions matter" angle, then we have to broaden the discussion to all forms of risk that exist in games.
Every piece you move in chess involves some amount of risk. Risk both in terms of the piece's physical location on the board, and also in the form of opportunity costs (by moving the unit you moved, you aren't moving any other unit, and that frequently means one of those other units gets captured.)
The same is true in other games. Bad decisions create a worse outcome than what would have otherwise happened -- and that's the risk. The thing you lost was the better outcome.
Being unable to see that risk -- or unwilling to admit it exists because it's bad for your argument -- doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It still exists, and is why many (often most) decisions in games matter.
We've already covered that 20 players beating 50 involves more challenge, and we've already covered how that doesn't make the game deeper, because we know that in reality the side with more players simply has a massive advantage and most of the time wins. We've also covered how it isn't unique to open world PVP in any event, and that you can win a 20v50 in Planetside 2 (but even if you lose you know that if you lose slower than the 50v20 fight on the other side of the continent that you've come out ahead in spite of losing the fight -- your skill actually mattered there, unlike in an open PVP game.)
Why would it be different in an open pvp game? Maybe you slowed the enemy enough so your reinforcements can arrive, or your hired mercenaries, its just not setup by the computer in a fair 33%/33%/33% way.
The risk your talking about is almost meaningless since the downtime between trying again is so small. You can see this in smaller scale on FPS game modes. On deathmatch mode you respawn instantly, your death doesnt matter so you can keep jumping recklessly into combat without choosing any strategy for getting out alive. Now on round based modes where if you die you have to wait until the next round, there is now a risk involving a time sink, so you see players being more strategical and thinking about the consquences of their actions, should I just run in guns blazing or try to flank them from behind, etc.? Which one is shallower?
Honestly I dont know in which bizarro world you live in where instant action lobby games have more depth than sandboxes, which are "shallow"...
As I've said before depth isn't required to enjoy something. People enjoy shallow systems all the time.
Exactly, thats why people love WoW. theres no meaningful decisions to make. Nothing really matters, if you screw up you just get up and have grand decision of pushing 3 instead 2 this time around.
Its definition of shallow. And as you said, theres no sahme in liking shallow things. And i like to think most people are aware that vast majority prefer shallow things. No MMO with meaningful decisions will be as popular as WoW.
Why would it be different in an open pvp game? Maybe you slowed the enemy enough so your reinforcements can arrive, or your hired mercenaries, its just not setup by the computer in a fair 33%/33%/33% way.
The risk your talking about is almost meaningless since the downtime between trying again is so small. You can see this in smaller scale on FPS game modes. On deathmatch mode you respawn instantly, your death doesnt matter so you can keep jumping recklessly into combat without choosing any strategy for getting out alive. Now on round based modes where if you die you have to wait until the next round, there is now a risk involving a time sink, so you see players being more strategical and thinking about the consquences of their actions, should I just run in guns blazing or try to flank them from behind, etc.? Which one is shallower?
Honestly I dont know in which bizarro world you live in where instant action lobby games have more depth than sandboxes, which are "shallow"...
Again it has to do with the realities of how these games work. The majority of the time in Planetside the overall equation is balanced and so "dying slowly" really does matter. Whereas in open world PVP games the overall equation is almost never balanced, so dying slowly is almost always irrelevant.
Obviously the type of risk I'm describing matters. Are you trying to tell me you just zip your chess queen across the board and let her die recklessly because "she'll respawn next game"? These risks are the things which decide the victor. They are incredibly important.
Games aren't always contests of pure survival of course, but that's part of the depth of figuring out what they are about. For example a sniper might camp on a hillside and get 10 K/D, but he might only achieve 5 KPH (kills per hour) which is a very low rate and won't tend to overcome the enemy's rate of respawning -- which means they're going to push out and control the capture points. Whereas I was a very aggressive player getting ~39 KPH which tended to help a lot more, even though my K/D was only ~3.5. And while PS2 had some fun sniping, the risk to the playstyle was that you couldn't effectively kill fast enough to be a worthwhile contributor to the battle, and your side would lose the battle as a result.
I don't live in a bizarro world, I live in real life. In real life risk-heavy open-world PVP games are shallower in practice than a well-made balanced PVP game. The reasons why have been clearly explained:
A wide range of meaningful tactical decisions exist in a balance game, in addition to strategic decisions.
In open world PVP games, a handful of easy-to-master strategic decisions like "bring more players" are allowed to trump those tactical decisions, reducing depth as a result.
By adding risk, players are even less likely to engage in balanced PVP where the wide range of tactical depth is its deepest.
Again, it's fine if you don't enjoy deep games. The games of each genre I enjoy most aren't always the deepest either. We can easily think of ways of making games incredibly more deep and complicated than they currently are which clearly aren't fun (like a FPS where instead of pressing W to walk forward you have to manipulate each major leg muscle like QWOP -- it would be much deeper to master such a FPS, but it wouldn't be fun...apart from the 30 seconds of hilarity that QWOP is always good for, of course.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I enjoyed the old Lineage 2 system where if someone had been flagged as a ganker, the more ganks they had committed the more likely their weapon or something equipped would drop. I remember going and hunting reds to get weapons and such back in the day it was really nice.
Why would it be different in an open pvp game? Maybe you slowed the enemy enough so your reinforcements can arrive, or your hired mercenaries, its just not setup by the computer in a fair 33%/33%/33% way.
The risk your talking about is almost meaningless since the downtime between trying again is so small. You can see this in smaller scale on FPS game modes. On deathmatch mode you respawn instantly, your death doesnt matter so you can keep jumping recklessly into combat without choosing any strategy for getting out alive. Now on round based modes where if you die you have to wait until the next round, there is now a risk involving a time sink, so you see players being more strategical and thinking about the consquences of their actions, should I just run in guns blazing or try to flank them from behind, etc.? Which one is shallower?
Honestly I dont know in which bizarro world you live in where instant action lobby games have more depth than sandboxes, which are "shallow"...
Again it has to do with the realities of how these games work. The majority of the time in Planetside the overall equation is balanced and so "dying slowly" really does matter. Whereas in open world PVP games the overall equation is almost never balanced, so dying slowly is almost always irrelevant.
Obviously the type of risk I'm describing matters. Are you trying to tell me you just zip your chess queen across the board and let her die recklessly because "she'll respawn next game"? These risks are the things which decide the victor. They are incredibly important.
Games aren't always contests of pure survival of course, but that's part of the depth of figuring out what they are about. For example a sniper might camp on a hillside and get 10 K/D, but he might only achieve 5 KPH (kills per hour) which is a very low rate and won't tend to overcome the enemy's rate of respawning -- which means they're going to push out and control the capture points. Whereas I was a very aggressive player getting ~39 KPH which tended to help a lot more, even though my K/D was only ~3.5. And while PS2 had some fun sniping, the risk to the playstyle was that you couldn't effectively kill fast enough to be a worthwhile contributor to the battle, and your side would lose the battle as a result.
I don't live in a bizarro world, I live in real life. In real life risk-heavy open-world PVP games are shallower in practice than a well-made balanced PVP game. The reasons why have been clearly explained:
A wide range of meaningful tactical decisions exist in a balance game, in addition to strategic decisions.
In open world PVP games, a handful of easy-to-master strategic decisions like "bring more players" are allowed to trump those tactical decisions, reducing depth as a result.
By adding risk, players are even less likely to engage in balanced PVP where the wide range of tactical depth is its deepest.
Again, it's fine if you don't enjoy deep games. The games of each genre I enjoy most aren't always the deepest either. We can easily think of ways of making games incredibly more deep and complicated than they currently are which clearly aren't fun (like a FPS where instead of pressing W to walk forward you have to manipulate each major leg muscle like QWOP -- it would be much deeper to master such a FPS, but it wouldn't be fun...apart from the 30 seconds of hilarity that QWOP is always good for, of course.)
So combat depth is present in risk based OW pvp games, theres just more downtime between balanced encounters that have that tactical depth. Take into account, that pvp is only one facet of sandboxes, they have pve, crafting, building, etc. so they have indeed more depth than games with only pvp, or anything that isnt pvp is shallow??? Flipping bases and KD ratio are meaningless aside from e peen, in sandbox games you fight for your territory and your guild, for resources not artificial "control points". With risk your actions have consequences not tied to if you win/lose the fight itself, as you may win but doing so you might have angered your neighbours for example, which on the long run is a bad decision since you need them to defend your house/village.
Following your chess analogy, I wouldnt just let her die but I could try all sorts of crazy strategies if she just respawns again next time. What happens if you make a bet so whoever wins gets xx amount of cash, now all of a sudden, theres a risk for losing and reward for winning. Does the game of chess suddenly turns shallower? Its the same game, right?
The only way i can see item dropping from players in open world pvp as a good thing is with a good/bad mechanic in the game. If you want to take the risk and be a ganker and earn negative reputation then you also take the risk of losing items if killed by players who have positive reputation.
None of the options in that poll are appealing, not to me anyway.
You know these things where good reputation players kill bad reputation players will inevitably be hacked and cheated or manipulated so that it is the players that are suppose to get bad reputation get good reputation. These systems simply do not work well unless may be a voting system but even that will get manipulated. In every case and only case loot should drop is from the criminal not the good citizen but this like I said is subject to so much abuse so I voted no.
So combat depth is present in risk based OW pvp games, theres just more downtime between balanced encounters that have that tactical depth. Take into account, that pvp is only one facet of sandboxes, they have pve, crafting, building, etc. so they have indeed more depth than games with only pvp, or anything that isnt pvp is shallow??? Flipping bases and KD ratio are meaningless aside from e peen, in sandbox games you fight for your territory and your guild, for resources not artificial "control points". With risk your actions have consequences not tied to if you win/lose the fight itself, as you may win but doing so you might have angered your neighbours for example, which on the long run is a bad decision since you need them to defend your house/village.
Following your chess analogy, I wouldnt just let her die but I could try all sorts of crazy strategies if she just respawns again next time. What happens if you make a bet so whoever wins gets xx amount of cash, now all of a sudden, theres a risk for losing and reward for winning. Does the game of chess suddenly turns shallower? Its the same game, right?
Right, and the downtime is spent doing shallower things which is why I call OW PVP shallower.
PVP is merely the easiest way to achieve depth. Singleplayer Tetris requires a good amount of time to master, so it's deep because of the nonstop flood of short term ("tactical") decisions which fit into a simple but important long term strategy. With MMORPG crafting, some strategy is involved but the short term decisions are "press this button" simplistic. The more straightforward way to make the point is: you've never heard someone go "Wow you're really good at crafting!" (without being sarcastic.)
Whatever meaning you apply to games is just as meaningless as flipping bases and K/D ratio. Meanwhile in the context of each game, whatever goals are actually important are objectively meaningful, even if you subjectively pretend they aren't.
Being able to experiment ("try crazy strategies") in a safe environment is the most common way games are fun to players (Koster, 2003). Species who evolved to enjoy learning have an evolutionary advantage over those that don't (they tend to learn more.) We're one such species. Practice allows a much faster development of skills than infrequent use, and that's the underlying reason that games where you can rapidly practice skills (like try crazy queen strategies each game) are much more popular than ones which force (or strongly encourage, through threat of punishment) players not to practice as often.
Chess wouldn't be too much different with money on the table, except that you might avoid playing against the toughest opponents where your decisions matter most, and open world PVP games are more than just isolated battles -- and in those games money on the table means you're going to engage in PVP less frequently (spending more time in the shallower activities) and stack the odds when you do (which creates shallower fights.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
So combat depth is present in risk based OW pvp games, theres just more downtime between balanced encounters that have that tactical depth. Take into account, that pvp is only one facet of sandboxes, they have pve, crafting, building, etc. so they have indeed more depth than games with only pvp, or anything that isnt pvp is shallow??? Flipping bases and KD ratio are meaningless aside from e peen, in sandbox games you fight for your territory and your guild, for resources not artificial "control points". With risk your actions have consequences not tied to if you win/lose the fight itself, as you may win but doing so you might have angered your neighbours for example, which on the long run is a bad decision since you need them to defend your house/village.
Following your chess analogy, I wouldnt just let her die but I could try all sorts of crazy strategies if she just respawns again next time. What happens if you make a bet so whoever wins gets xx amount of cash, now all of a sudden, theres a risk for losing and reward for winning. Does the game of chess suddenly turns shallower? Its the same game, right?
Right, and the downtime is spent doing shallower things which is why I call OW PVP shallower.
PVP is merely the easiest way to achieve depth. Singleplayer Tetris requires a good amount of time to master, so it's deep because of the nonstop flood of short term ("tactical") decisions which fit into a simple but important long term strategy. With MMORPG crafting, some strategy is involved but the short term decisions are "press this button" simplistic. The more straightforward way to make the point is: you've never heard someone go "Wow you're really good at crafting!" (without being sarcastic.)
Whatever meaning you apply to games is just as meaningless as flipping bases and K/D ratio. Meanwhile in the context of each game, whatever goals are actually important are objectively meaningful, even if you subjectively pretend they aren't.
Being able to experiment ("try crazy strategies") in a safe environment is the most common way games are fun to players (Koster, 2003). Species who evolved to enjoy learning have an evolutionary advantage over those that don't (they tend to learn more.) We're one such species. Practice allows a much faster development of skills than infrequent use, and that's the underlying reason that games where you can rapidly practice skills (like try crazy queen strategies each game) are much more popular than ones which force (or strongly encourage, through threat of punishment) players not to practice as often.
Chess wouldn't be too much different with money on the table, except that you might avoid playing against the toughest opponents where your decisions matter most, and open world PVP games are more than just isolated battles -- and in those games money on the table means you're going to engage in PVP less frequently (spending more time in the shallower activities) and stack the odds when you do (which creates shallower fights.)
Really? So, when you play WoW every moment you spend ingame is top tier riding in progression phase? (lets call that "deep" just for sake of argument)
So combat depth is present in risk based OW pvp games, theres just more downtime between balanced encounters that have that tactical depth. Take into account, that pvp is only one facet of sandboxes, they have pve, crafting, building, etc. so they have indeed more depth than games with only pvp, or anything that isnt pvp is shallow??? Flipping bases and KD ratio are meaningless aside from e peen, in sandbox games you fight for your territory and your guild, for resources not artificial "control points". With risk your actions have consequences not tied to if you win/lose the fight itself, as you may win but doing so you might have angered your neighbours for example, which on the long run is a bad decision since you need them to defend your house/village.
Following your chess analogy, I wouldnt just let her die but I could try all sorts of crazy strategies if she just respawns again next time. What happens if you make a bet so whoever wins gets xx amount of cash, now all of a sudden, theres a risk for losing and reward for winning. Does the game of chess suddenly turns shallower? Its the same game, right?
Right, and the downtime is spent doing shallower things which is why I call OW PVP shallower.
PVP is merely the easiest way to achieve depth. Singleplayer Tetris requires a good amount of time to master, so it's deep because of the nonstop flood of short term ("tactical") decisions which fit into a simple but important long term strategy. With MMORPG crafting, some strategy is involved but the short term decisions are "press this button" simplistic. The more straightforward way to make the point is: you've never heard someone go "Wow you're really good at crafting!" (without being sarcastic.)
Whatever meaning you apply to games is just as meaningless as flipping bases and K/D ratio. Meanwhile in the context of each game, whatever goals are actually important are objectively meaningful, even if you subjectively pretend they aren't.
Being able to experiment ("try crazy strategies") in a safe environment is the most common way games are fun to players (Koster, 2003). Species who evolved to enjoy learning have an evolutionary advantage over those that don't (they tend to learn more.) We're one such species. Practice allows a much faster development of skills than infrequent use, and that's the underlying reason that games where you can rapidly practice skills (like try crazy queen strategies each game) are much more popular than ones which force (or strongly encourage, through threat of punishment) players not to practice as often.
Chess wouldn't be too much different with money on the table, except that you might avoid playing against the toughest opponents where your decisions matter most, and open world PVP games are more than just isolated battles -- and in those games money on the table means you're going to engage in PVP less frequently (spending more time in the shallower activities) and stack the odds when you do (which creates shallower fights.)
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.
Really? So, when you play WoW every moment you spend ingame is top tier riding in progression phase? (lets call that "deep" just for sake of argument)
Why would you bring this up? It's crippling to the open world PVP side of the argument. Everyone who's played both games knows that while yes some time isn't spent in the deepest activities in WOW that much more time (as a percentage of your total playtime) is wasted in shallow activities in open world PVP games.
It's made worse by the fact that you could feasibly log into WOW for just raiding (and the ~30 mins a week you'd have to farm to get consumables I suppose) and if you raid 3 hours a day 3 days a week you're spending 94.5% of your time in the game's deepest systems. And certainly if you want to bring up wipes between bosses then yeah I've always been in favor of instant resets that let players get immediately back into the gameplay on another attempt.
Meanwhile open world PVP games often involve risk which discourages good fights in the first place (causing the overwhelming majority of your gameplay to be shallow even if you're in battles) and then the risk itself means that if you happen to fail you're stuck doing some even shallower thing for a while as penance.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Really? So, when you play WoW every moment you spend ingame is top tier riding in progression phase? (lets call that "deep" just for sake of argument)
Why would you bring this up? It's crippling to the open world PVP side of the argument. Everyone who's played both games knows that while yes some time isn't spent in the deepest activities in WOW that much more time (as a percentage of your total playtime) is wasted in shallow activities in open world PVP games.
It's made worse by the fact that you could feasibly log into WOW for just raiding (and the ~30 mins a week you'd have to farm to get consumables I suppose) and if you raid 3 hours a day 3 days a week you're spending 94.5% of your time in the game's deepest systems. And certainly if you want to bring up wipes between bosses then yeah I've always been in favor of instant resets that let players get immediately back into the gameplay on another attempt.
Meanwhile open world PVP games often involve risk which discourages good fights in the first place (causing the overwhelming majority of your gameplay to be shallow even if you're in battles) and then the risk itself means that if you happen to fail you're stuck doing some even shallower thing for a while as penance.
Reaaaaly.
Ill just leave it at that.
Its really funny, in EvE even decision what ship youre going to fly out of the station is more meaningful than "94,5%" of your time in WoW
If 95% of your playtime is shallow (involving few decisions and almost no meaningful ones) then the game overall is shallow. How is that nonsensical? If you've played EVE you understand the huge chunks of its gameplay are devoid of decisions, and other parts involve decisions from a narrow handful of players, and other narrow chunks are a simple combat system, and then you're left with this tiny scrap of truly deep decisions.
Deep down all the EVE players understand this if they're not trying to pretend the game is different to support an argument. Or in some cases completely overvaluing that tiny scrap of deep decisions (largely due to its scarcity.)
A game's depth relies on how difficult the decisions are, but it also relies on how many decisions there are -- how much of your game time is spent making decisions which are deep vs. those which are shallow.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You have made the most nonsensical argument I've seen on these forums in months, congrats.
If 95% of your playtime is shallow (involving few decisions and almost no meaningful ones) then the game overall is shallow. How is that nonsensical? If you've played EVE you understand the huge chunks of its gameplay are devoid of decisions, and other parts involve decisions from a narrow handful of players, and other narrow chunks are a simple combat system, and then you're left with this tiny scrap of truly deep decisions.
Deep down all the EVE players understand this if they're not trying to pretend the game is different to support an argument. Or in some cases completely overvaluing that tiny scrap of deep decisions (largely due to its scarcity.)
A game's depth relies on how difficult the decisions are, but it also relies on how many decisions there are -- how much of your game time is spent making decisions which are deep vs. those which are shallow.
Being part of a living virtual world sometimes means you're going to have to look for your content. You're trying to paint this picture that people who have played both types of games know that ow pvp games are shallow and games like WoW are more deep but I feel like it's COMPLETELY the opposite. To me it seems like the vast majority of people who have played both kinds of games simply cannot enjoy themeparks anymore because of how shallow they are.
Comments
Combat may be part of the game, but games are judged based on whether they manage to provide a series of interesting decisions and we can see right away that setting up MMORPGs like that fails to do so:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If i show with 50 and they have 20 that is exactly a prime example of skillfull competition. A competition where that one with 20 lacked the skill to show up with 100 and kick our a$$es.
tell you what. Go play EvE, and when you have piece of space for yourself and at least 1 space station come back and give feedback how low on "meaningfull decisions" that was. Or, if you prefer, how "shallow" it was.
I will now try to describe certain game the same way you describe this: WoW is a game where you make character and faceroll your way as you level. There are no meaninful/interesting decisions and you just steamroll everything on your way.
If anything, EvE owerwhelms new players with decisions so most just drop out before they even learn how to properly pilot/equip starter ship and what to train
And you are absolutely right, EvE requires quite wider array of skills to be successful than muscle memory. In fact, muscle memory plays minor part of it.
And yes, you will make lot of decisions, most of them immediate, short term, mid term and long term, which will all determine how successfull will you be in the end.
And what type of continual flow of deep decision making is there on your instant action no risk games? Oh kill these guy, kill another guy, oh I dead, respawn, try again. Thats the definition of shallow combat, pvp just for the sake of pvp. Not saying its less skill based but has no meaning and obviously no consquences to your actions so no deep decisions are involved.
Competition for resources doesnt require risk? Wheres the competition then? Starcraft is a RTS game, there is no "individual" to loot from, this is comparing apples and oranges. Battlefield? Come on, now... Go play Rust/H1z1 or any survival game and tell me if they would be the same without full loot.
These activities are shallow to you, some people enjoy their depth. Crafting, building, gathering these all involve constant decisions if your able to be attacked at all times, you have to make it back home with the loot. Again, what tactical meanginful decisions do you get in the games you talk about? Its just kill kill kill ,respawn, do it all over again.
Risk is the basis for meaningful decisions, if you dont risk anything then your choices dont really matter, if you die then you just respawn and try again.
And what if those 20 guys beat the other 50 using tactics that made their numbers useless (ever watched 300?), isnt that more challenging than a completely fair e sport match? Doesnt that require deeper tactics than if you were fighting even odds? And if they lose their gear on battle that means they wont be able to jump back instantly to the fights until they regear, so zerg play isnt favored so much.
Thats basically derrailing the thread, the OP choose having open world as a given and only discussing what type of loot system would be ideal IN THIS CIRCUMSTANCES. So yeah this is not the place to discuss this, if you want to talk about how this is bad design you can start your own thread.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
The problem is you're taking a wide range of difficult-to-master decisions and replacing them with a popularity contest. So even if we agreed there was some skill to being popular (to bringing more players to a fight), the losses aren't worth the gains and the game will be shallower overall.
The decisions in WOW determine how fast you advance. 1-button derpers might be able to beat mobs, but they're going to take more damage and kill more slowly than someone who uses movement abilities to zip between mobs and quests, and uses their abilities more effectively. I've sat right behind mediocre WOW players IRL and watched them die to things which wouldn't have even threatened me, and I've grouped with thousands of others who were obviously way less effective with their characters than they could be. Certainly WOW would be better with a COH style difficulty slider while leveling, but the fact remains that you reach a point in dungeons or raids where skillful play is demanded of players and that's why the system is interesting, not the short tutorial (leveling) that precedes it.
The decisions in EVE are completely trivial for a lot of things, they're just very time-consuming and many players somehow mistake time consumption for difficulty. The risk factor means you avoid doing challenging PVE or PVP activities, which eliminates situations where decisions would actually be the difference between victory and defeat. So the claim that EVE has a lot of important short and mid term decisions is wrong.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
None of the above, I vote that everything the player was carrying is removed from him on death, and that 50% or more of it is destroyed, then the other half or so is lootable.
An economy where nothing is removed, only transferred is not a working economy.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
nah, you just faceroll everything in wow. All you decisions are meaningless an trivial, push 1 or 2, mob dead....bleh
We can play that game all day long.
Decisions in EvE are several orders of magnitude more meaningful than anything WoW has, wow has nothing but meaningless decisions. Thats why EvE isnt as popular as WoW, in WoW people play because theres no depth to the game, its easy, accessible and doesnt require much time investement or thought, in other words it is shallow. As shallow as games get.
.. and why can't we question why that should be a given? People question about all sort of things in topics.
Heck, if i make a thread and say "let's put it as a given that MMOs are now instanced games like WoT" ... you think no one is going to question that?
I say everything connected to the title (like why should be care about open world pvp in the first place) should be fair game.
You're essentially saying "Tic-tac-toe may be shallow to you but some people enjoy its depth." Depth isn't really a subjective thing, and while someone can subjectively enjoy a shallower game that doesn't mean that game is deep.
As I've said before depth isn't required to enjoy something. People enjoy shallow systems all the time. But most want games where they can continually learn and grow as players, not a Tic-tac-toe where things are easily mastered to perfection.
If you want to lean heavily on the "risk makes decisions matter" angle, then we have to broaden the discussion to all forms of risk that exist in games.
Every piece you move in chess involves some amount of risk. Risk both in terms of the piece's physical location on the board, and also in the form of opportunity costs (by moving the unit you moved, you aren't moving any other unit, and that frequently means one of those other units gets captured.)
The same is true in other games. Bad decisions create a worse outcome than what would have otherwise happened -- and that's the risk. The thing you lost was the better outcome.
Being unable to see that risk -- or unwilling to admit it exists because it's bad for your argument -- doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It still exists, and is why many (often most) decisions in games matter.
We've already covered that 20 players beating 50 involves more challenge, and we've already covered how that doesn't make the game deeper, because we know that in reality the side with more players simply has a massive advantage and most of the time wins. We've also covered how it isn't unique to open world PVP in any event, and that you can win a 20v50 in Planetside 2 (but even if you lose you know that if you lose slower than the 50v20 fight on the other side of the continent that you've come out ahead in spite of losing the fight -- your skill actually mattered there, unlike in an open PVP game.)
"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 it be different in an open pvp game? Maybe you slowed the enemy enough so your reinforcements can arrive, or your hired mercenaries, its just not setup by the computer in a fair 33%/33%/33% way.
The risk your talking about is almost meaningless since the downtime between trying again is so small. You can see this in smaller scale on FPS game modes. On deathmatch mode you respawn instantly, your death doesnt matter so you can keep jumping recklessly into combat without choosing any strategy for getting out alive. Now on round based modes where if you die you have to wait until the next round, there is now a risk involving a time sink, so you see players being more strategical and thinking about the consquences of their actions, should I just run in guns blazing or try to flank them from behind, etc.? Which one is shallower?
Honestly I dont know in which bizarro world you live in where instant action lobby games have more depth than sandboxes, which are "shallow"...
Exactly, thats why people love WoW. theres no meaningful decisions to make. Nothing really matters, if you screw up you just get up and have grand decision of pushing 3 instead 2 this time around.
Its definition of shallow. And as you said, theres no sahme in liking shallow things. And i like to think most people are aware that vast majority prefer shallow things. No MMO with meaningful decisions will be as popular as WoW.
Again it has to do with the realities of how these games work. The majority of the time in Planetside the overall equation is balanced and so "dying slowly" really does matter. Whereas in open world PVP games the overall equation is almost never balanced, so dying slowly is almost always irrelevant.
Obviously the type of risk I'm describing matters. Are you trying to tell me you just zip your chess queen across the board and let her die recklessly because "she'll respawn next game"? These risks are the things which decide the victor. They are incredibly important.
Games aren't always contests of pure survival of course, but that's part of the depth of figuring out what they are about. For example a sniper might camp on a hillside and get 10 K/D, but he might only achieve 5 KPH (kills per hour) which is a very low rate and won't tend to overcome the enemy's rate of respawning -- which means they're going to push out and control the capture points. Whereas I was a very aggressive player getting ~39 KPH which tended to help a lot more, even though my K/D was only ~3.5. And while PS2 had some fun sniping, the risk to the playstyle was that you couldn't effectively kill fast enough to be a worthwhile contributor to the battle, and your side would lose the battle as a result.
I don't live in a bizarro world, I live in real life. In real life risk-heavy open-world PVP games are shallower in practice than a well-made balanced PVP game. The reasons why have been clearly explained:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
So combat depth is present in risk based OW pvp games, theres just more downtime between balanced encounters that have that tactical depth. Take into account, that pvp is only one facet of sandboxes, they have pve, crafting, building, etc. so they have indeed more depth than games with only pvp, or anything that isnt pvp is shallow??? Flipping bases and KD ratio are meaningless aside from e peen, in sandbox games you fight for your territory and your guild, for resources not artificial "control points". With risk your actions have consequences not tied to if you win/lose the fight itself, as you may win but doing so you might have angered your neighbours for example, which on the long run is a bad decision since you need them to defend your house/village.
Following your chess analogy, I wouldnt just let her die but I could try all sorts of crazy strategies if she just respawns again next time. What happens if you make a bet so whoever wins gets xx amount of cash, now all of a sudden, theres a risk for losing and reward for winning. Does the game of chess suddenly turns shallower? Its the same game, right?
The only way i can see item dropping from players in open world pvp as a good thing is with a good/bad mechanic in the game. If you want to take the risk and be a ganker and earn negative reputation then you also take the risk of losing items if killed by players who have positive reputation.
None of the options in that poll are appealing, not to me anyway.
Right, and the downtime is spent doing shallower things which is why I call OW PVP shallower.
PVP is merely the easiest way to achieve depth. Singleplayer Tetris requires a good amount of time to master, so it's deep because of the nonstop flood of short term ("tactical") decisions which fit into a simple but important long term strategy. With MMORPG crafting, some strategy is involved but the short term decisions are "press this button" simplistic. The more straightforward way to make the point is: you've never heard someone go "Wow you're really good at crafting!" (without being sarcastic.)
Whatever meaning you apply to games is just as meaningless as flipping bases and K/D ratio. Meanwhile in the context of each game, whatever goals are actually important are objectively meaningful, even if you subjectively pretend they aren't.
Being able to experiment ("try crazy strategies") in a safe environment is the most common way games are fun to players (Koster, 2003). Species who evolved to enjoy learning have an evolutionary advantage over those that don't (they tend to learn more.) We're one such species. Practice allows a much faster development of skills than infrequent use, and that's the underlying reason that games where you can rapidly practice skills (like try crazy queen strategies each game) are much more popular than ones which force (or strongly encourage, through threat of punishment) players not to practice as often.
Chess wouldn't be too much different with money on the table, except that you might avoid playing against the toughest opponents where your decisions matter most, and open world PVP games are more than just isolated battles -- and in those games money on the table means you're going to engage in PVP less frequently (spending more time in the shallower activities) and stack the odds when you do (which creates shallower fights.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Really? So, when you play WoW every moment you spend ingame is top tier riding in progression phase? (lets call that "deep" just for sake of argument)
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.
Why would you bring this up? It's crippling to the open world PVP side of the argument. Everyone who's played both games knows that while yes some time isn't spent in the deepest activities in WOW that much more time (as a percentage of your total playtime) is wasted in shallow activities in open world PVP games.
It's made worse by the fact that you could feasibly log into WOW for just raiding (and the ~30 mins a week you'd have to farm to get consumables I suppose) and if you raid 3 hours a day 3 days a week you're spending 94.5% of your time in the game's deepest systems. And certainly if you want to bring up wipes between bosses then yeah I've always been in favor of instant resets that let players get immediately back into the gameplay on another attempt.
Meanwhile open world PVP games often involve risk which discourages good fights in the first place (causing the overwhelming majority of your gameplay to be shallow even if you're in battles) and then the risk itself means that if you happen to fail you're stuck doing some even shallower thing for a while as penance.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Reaaaaly.
Ill just leave it at that.
Its really funny, in EvE even decision what ship youre going to fly out of the station is more meaningful than "94,5%" of your time in WoW
If 95% of your playtime is shallow (involving few decisions and almost no meaningful ones) then the game overall is shallow. How is that nonsensical? If you've played EVE you understand the huge chunks of its gameplay are devoid of decisions, and other parts involve decisions from a narrow handful of players, and other narrow chunks are a simple combat system, and then you're left with this tiny scrap of truly deep decisions.
Deep down all the EVE players understand this if they're not trying to pretend the game is different to support an argument. Or in some cases completely overvaluing that tiny scrap of deep decisions (largely due to its scarcity.)
A game's depth relies on how difficult the decisions are, but it also relies on how many decisions there are -- how much of your game time is spent making decisions which are deep vs. those which are shallow.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Being part of a living virtual world sometimes means you're going to have to look for your content. You're trying to paint this picture that people who have played both types of games know that ow pvp games are shallow and games like WoW are more deep but I feel like it's COMPLETELY the opposite. To me it seems like the vast majority of people who have played both kinds of games simply cannot enjoy themeparks anymore because of how shallow they are.