I could show evidence but you have shown not to accept evidence outside of your viewpoint anyways. Even people you quoted have countered your very statements you turned around and attempted to discredit them.
But there is a post above here that links all of the systems you full and know well that exist. It's still subjective but I think a majority would agree about depth or complexity . The crafting in SWG is likely more deep than all of WoW.
Nope I have played lots of games. Depth is complexity. I think you're confusing depth with playability. Chess is complex and also easily playable. It's complexity is why it's deep because it's the same thing.
You can't show evidence. You haven't shown evidence.
For example: show evidence of my rejecting evidence. You can't, because it never occurred.
I posted a ton of links on the previous page (10) that showed that SWG had more depth than WoW.
The only area where WoW exceeded the depth of SWG is in combat, but SWG beats WoW's depth in all other areas of the game. So, overall, SWG is deeper than WoW.
Of course, this doesn't matter much because most people (myself included) enjoy combat as our main focus and so I'd rather take a game with deep combat that is shallow everywhere else instead of shallow combat and deep systems everywhere else. Not that SWG had shallow combat, rather the opposite, it just wasn't as deep as WoW.
It is very hard to achieve depth without complexity, so most deep games / systems are also complex, however, complexity doesn't automatically mean the game / system is deep. For example, sw:tor is a complex game (it has tons of skills, levels, mechanics etc) but it is not a deep game because of the lack of emergent gameplay or meaningful choices.
On the flipside, chess is a simple game, lacking in complexity (only takes 30seconds to explain the rules to someone) but it is a deep game because there is a crazy amount of options, strategies, playstyles etc resulting in very different experiences.
Of course but it's all subjective that's kind of the point. Depth is more of a nuanced term that goes around a in certain ciricles. If you ask most people about chess if it was simple or complex they would say complex and depth wouldn't come to mind.
It's even subjective how easy it is to learn because it's not that easy when you're not an advanced gamer. I have seen causal players struggle to learn all of the rules of moving, when the king is in check, why a pawn can move 2 spaces instead of one and only attack diagonal.
Your link is only evidence that combat rotations in WoW are deep and I doubt you'll find anyone who actually played SWG who'll say that combat itself was deeper (because it wasn't).
However, the game as a whole was far deeper
Character Building: Link If you download the template builder (I can't find an online version, sorry) and have a play, you'll see that actually developing and building a character is far deeper than anything WoW has.
These are only some examples of the depth offered. SWG didn't offer depth through the buttons you press during combat, WoW and most modern MMORPGs do indeed offer greater depth in that area. But SWG offered more depth in just about every other aspect of the game.
Depth is essentially skill cap. It's where you can honestly say of someone "wow, they're skilled!" (Obviously referring to their player skill, not their character's skill levels.) Sirlin provides a lengthier definition of depth, but it amounts to the same thing (a game "remaining strategically interesting after experts have studied it for years" means the same as having a high skill cap.)
So the crafting guide isn't really showing much in the way of depth because no decisions are being shown. (WOW rotation guides usually aren't rigid, they're typically a set of logical conditions where you have to react certain ways in certain conditions, and learning how to act in each condition is what causes a player to be known as more skilled than another.) Quality level certainly makes things more interesting because it provides a reason to seek out higher quality ingredients (although I'm basing this on an assumption that SWG crafting worked like H&H crafting, as that SWG guide didn't actually delve into these details very much) But it isn't adding all that much additional choice to the process. It's only by adding decisions to a system that you can (if they're the right decisions) increase the amount of skill involved in the activity, creating a bigger gap between skilled and unskilled players, which is game depth.
Overall depth comes from the overall experience of playing the game. Activities you're doing 60% of the time (like combat in WOW) will have vastly more influence over the overall depth feel of a game than what you're doing 0.5% of the time (like character build choices.) So even if I assume SWG's character builder shows a system of Asheron's Call-like depth (on my work Mac so can't verify it), it still wouldn't move the needle much. Overall depth comes predominantly from a game's most common activities.
The same applies to the PVP prep guide, except in that case the gameplay shown is actually shallow ("press all these buttons" essentially. Get all these buffs.)
Player Cities also don't seem particularly deep (based on this guide I don't see how you would've described a mayor in SWG as being "really skilled at running the city".) The baseline social skills required to amass players is some skill, but it appears no different from maintaining a functional guild in any other MMORPG. (And anything present in both SWG and WOW is obviously factored out of a comparative discussion on the depth of both games.) Which leaves us with a complicated system which I'm sure felt fun and rewarding to play around with, but it wasn't really a significant source of depth because it wasn't a significant source of decision-making.
So while it's great to see some evidence being offered, the topic at hand is game depth, which revolves around whether a game's decisions are hard to master. So only evidence that actually shows that to be the case is relevant.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
so it depends...do you want to play Happy Home Maker Online or WARcraft Online.....cause that is what will determine depth to you.
Not at all. Depth is depth.
I imagine the better sports videogames are deep games. My disinterest in sports games is irrelevant: they'd be deep if the skill involved (created by the decisions involved) was difficult to master.
Sim City has been offered as an example of a reasonably deep non-combat game.
Maybe the best example would be Panel De Pon (aka Tetris Attack (SNES), Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)) as a game which isn't about combat (though you do send 'attacks' to your opponent's board just like in Tetris) and yet which is a phenomenally deep game.
Depth only depends on depth, not personal preference.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No, you've proven that evidence doesn't matter. This is all subjective stuff outside of your mind where you're ideals are the bible. And someone bothered to do what I wasn't but you as I said clearly ignored it or didn't see it. Shouldn't have be hard to find a page back.
My claim "You can't show evidence. You haven't shown evidence."
Your counter, 'Here's somebody else's evidence'.
Way to continue to not present any evidence yourself, proving my point!
And I did respond to his post, but was busy with work until just now. His list of guides portrayed only one element (slightly deeper crafting) which was deeper than any WOW element, but it's unlikely most players crafted in SWG as much as they fight in WOW (and fighting likely had a bigger gap in depth than the difference in depth with crafting.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No, you've proven that evidence doesn't matter. This is all subjective stuff outside of your mind where you're ideals are the bible. And someone bothered to do what I wasn't but you as I said clearly ignored it or didn't see it. Shouldn't have be hard to find a page back.
My claim "You can't show evidence. You haven't shown evidence."
Your counter, 'Here's somebody else's evidence'.
Way to continue to not present any evidence yourself, proving my point!
And I did respond to his post, but was busy with work until just now. His list of guides portrayed only one element (slightly deeper crafting) which was deeper than any WOW element, but it's unlikely most players crafted in SWG as much as they fight in WOW (and fighting likely had a bigger gap in depth than the difference in depth with crafting.)
I went though pages of showing you evidence that you largely ignore. That benefit of the doubt has now past regarding showing you something that's basically common knowledge to anyone who follows the genre.
There is no bringing proof of what's deeper or more complex because its opinion. I could show tons of evidence why SWG was deeper than WoW. You could wave it away with a hand because you don't agree which you will.
Again, why go through pages of lack of acknowledgement and strawman to get to a point that essentially can't be proven? You're view is that your view is opinion, fact and law.
I went though pages of showing you evidence that you largely ignore. That benefit of the doubt has now past regarding showing you something that's basically common knowledge to anyone who follows the genre.
There is no bringing proof of what's deeper or more complex because its opinion. I could show tons of evidence why SWG was deeper than WoW. You could wave it away with a hand because you don't agree which you will.
Again, why go through pages of lack of acknowledgement and strawman to get to a point that essentially can't be proven? You're view is that your view is opinion, fact and law.
If "pages" of evidence existed that hadn't already been addressed, you'd have no trouble quoting one single piece of evidence. But here we are, and you've got nothing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I went though pages of showing you evidence that you largely ignore. That benefit of the doubt has now past regarding showing you something that's basically common knowledge to anyone who follows the genre.
There is no bringing proof of what's deeper or more complex because its opinion. I could show tons of evidence why SWG was deeper than WoW. You could wave it away with a hand because you don't agree which you will.
Again, why go through pages of lack of acknowledgement and strawman to get to a point that essentially can't be proven? You're view is that your view is opinion, fact and law.
If "pages" of evidence existed that hadn't already been addressed, you'd have no trouble quoting one single piece of evidence. But here we are, and you've got nothing.
Oh look another thread where Axehilt refuses anyone's evidence if it isn't his own, to the point that he is again flat out denying anyone other then himself has actually provided evidence.
It doesn't matter what you say, what evidence you provide, what arguments you supply against his points....he is a game designer so he MUST be right, everyone else just has opinions that are wrong becuase, you know, only a game designer knows!
I went though pages of showing you evidence that you largely ignore. That benefit of the doubt has now past regarding showing you something that's basically common knowledge to anyone who follows the genre.
There is no bringing proof of what's deeper or more complex because its opinion. I could show tons of evidence why SWG was deeper than WoW. You could wave it away with a hand because you don't agree which you will.
Again, why go through pages of lack of acknowledgement and strawman to get to a point that essentially can't be proven? You're view is that your view is opinion, fact and law.
If "pages" of evidence existed that hadn't already been addressed, you'd have no trouble quoting one single piece of evidence. But here we are, and you've got nothing.
Just look through you're history lol.
You act like you have self appointed omniscient knowledge of the genre and what's opinions are right or wrong... you either A.) know about SWG and wasting my time asking for information on it.
or B.) you don't know and wasting everyone's time by your lack of knowledge that you pretend to have.
You can't claim you're point of view is right or evidence is greater without knowing the other half right?
Oh look another thread where Axehilt refuses anyone's evidence if it isn't his own, to the point that he is again flat out denying anyone other then himself has actually provided evidence.
It doesn't matter what you say, what evidence you provide, what arguments you supply against his points....he is a game designer so he MUST be right, everyone else just has opinions that are wrong becuase, you know, only a game designer knows!
The difference between a rational poster and irrational ones is that legitimate evidence will actually convince a rational poster of a point.
Naturally only evidence which actually proves a point is legitimate. For example if the question is "did EQ have 1 million subscribers?" then it would be ridiculous for someone to show this evidence of EQ having 420k subscribers, and claim that "proves" EQ had a million subscribers when it fails to meet the bar. 420k subscribers was an accurate fact of EQ, but it failed to prove the point of having more than a million.
Similarly, accurate facts describing SWG's gameplay were posted, and they were accurate, but they failed to actually prove that the game was deeper than WOW because depth is about how difficult a game is to master, and that requires difficult decisions, and the articles posted about SWG didn't involve very many conditional decisions to learn and master, so they weren't actually showing depth.
So the evidence was accepted as being accurate of SWG's gameplay, but obviously it failed to prove any point that SWG was deeper than WOW.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You do understand that your argument can literally be boiled down to "this isn't skill because it's a set of mechanical optimal choices" just to turn around and claim "WoW's combat rotations are skilled because they are a set of optimal choices".
You very fundamentally do not understand the flaw of your logic, do you.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Oh look another thread where Axehilt refuses anyone's evidence if it isn't his own, to the point that he is again flat out denying anyone other then himself has actually provided evidence.
It doesn't matter what you say, what evidence you provide, what arguments you supply against his points....he is a game designer so he MUST be right, everyone else just has opinions that are wrong becuase, you know, only a game designer knows!
The difference between a rational poster and irrational ones is that legitimate evidence will actually convince a rational poster of a point.
Naturally only evidence which actually proves a point is legitimate. For example if the question is "did EQ have 1 million subscribers?" then it would be ridiculous for someone to show this evidence of EQ having 420k subscribers, and claim that "proves" EQ had a million subscribers when it fails to meet the bar. 420k subscribers was an accurate fact of EQ, but it failed to prove the point of having more than a million.
Similarly, accurate facts describing SWG's gameplay were posted, and they were accurate, but they failed to actually prove that the game was deeper than WOW because depth is about how difficult a game is to master, and that requires difficult decisions, and the articles posted about SWG didn't involve very many conditional decisions to learn and master, so they weren't actually showing depth.
So the evidence was accepted as being accurate of SWG's gameplay, but obviously it failed to prove any point that SWG was deeper than WOW.
You have attempted to discredit Koster's work in this very post which includes largely SWG. That was because he largely disagrees with your ideals after you attempted use him to promote your own. How can you discredit his work but need explanation or proof of his work? So either you know and understand what SWG is about or you don't and discredit everything you said before due to lack of knowledge on what your against. I don't need evidence of WoW because I experienced it first hand and even more so than SWG.
So either you know and understand what SWG is about or you don't and discredit everything you said before due to lack of knowledge on what your against. I don't need evidence of WoW because I experienced it first hand and even more so than SWG.
I didn't play SWG so I freely admit I have little knowledge of that game. But i know two fact:
1) It was changed drastically.
2) it was no where close to the success of WoW, in terms of sub numbers, and money made. In fact, it was closed down after 8 years (2003 - 2011) of running.
So either you know and understand what SWG is about or you don't and discredit everything you said before due to lack of knowledge on what your against. I don't need evidence of WoW because I experienced it first hand and even more so than SWG.
I didn't play SWG so I freely admit I have little knowledge of that game. But i know two fact:
1) It was changed drastically.
2) it was no where close to the success of WoW, in terms of sub numbers, and money made. In fact, it was closed down after 8 years (2003 - 2011) of running.
No MMORPG came close to WoW not even games that were near exact clones. It was closed because of the IP.
So either you know and understand what SWG is about or you don't and discredit everything you said before due to lack of knowledge on what your against. I don't need evidence of WoW because I experienced it first hand and even more so than SWG.
I didn't play SWG so I freely admit I have little knowledge of that game. But i know two fact:
1) It was changed drastically.
2) it was no where close to the success of WoW, in terms of sub numbers, and money made. In fact, it was closed down after 8 years (2003 - 2011) of running.
No MMORPG came close to WoW not even games that were near exact clones. It was closed because of the IP.
Whatever the reasons (which are just speculation, unless you have good cites), facts are facts. Do you dispute the two facts that I posted?
So either you know and understand what SWG is about or you don't and discredit everything you said before due to lack of knowledge on what your against. I don't need evidence of WoW because I experienced it first hand and even more so than SWG.
I didn't play SWG so I freely admit I have little knowledge of that game. But i know two fact:
1) It was changed drastically.
2) it was no where close to the success of WoW, in terms of sub numbers, and money made. In fact, it was closed down after 8 years (2003 - 2011) of running.
No MMORPG came close to WoW not even games that were near exact clones. It was closed because of the IP.
Whatever the reasons (which are just speculation, unless you have good cites), facts are facts. Do you dispute the two facts that I posted?
SWG was closed because of the IP license and the new SW MMORPG. And you can't dispute the facts that no MMORPG has sold more than WoW in the west which I am not sure has anything to do with the subject at hand.
SWG was closed because of the IP license and the new SW MMORPG. And you can't dispute the facts that no MMORPG has sold more than WoW in the west which I am not sure has anything to do with the subject at hand.
so i guess you are not disputing the facts i posted, except again speculate again of why SWG is closed. Well, you can repeat your opinion 1000 times. Without actual evidence, i will just chalk it up (again, my opinion .. i am not going to represent my opinion as facts, like someone else) to that SWG simply failed.
SWG was closed because of the IP license and the new SW MMORPG. And you can't dispute the facts that no MMORPG has sold more than WoW in the west which I am not sure has anything to do with the subject at hand.
so i guess you are not disputing the facts i posted, except again speculate again of why SWG is closed. Well, you can repeat your opinion 1000 times. Without actual evidence, i will just chalk it up (again, my opinion .. i am not going to represent my opinion as facts, like someone else) to that SWG simply failed.
Google is there. You could also search on this forums.
How can you claim both to represent facts but not research facts to know? How can you say you aren't speculating and then imply speculation as to why it failed?
Think anyone who played SWG knows the flaws of the game. But I'll leave the speculation to you lol.
Oh look another thread where Axehilt refuses anyone's evidence if it isn't his own, to the point that he is again flat out denying anyone other then himself has actually provided evidence.
It doesn't matter what you say, what evidence you provide, what arguments you supply against his points....he is a game designer so he MUST be right, everyone else just has opinions that are wrong becuase, you know, only a game designer knows!
The difference between a rational poster and irrational ones is that legitimate evidence will actually convince a rational poster of a point.
Naturally only evidence which actually proves a point is legitimate. For example if the question is "did EQ have 1 million subscribers?" then it would be ridiculous for someone to show this evidence of EQ having 420k subscribers, and claim that "proves" EQ had a million subscribers when it fails to meet the bar. 420k subscribers was an accurate fact of EQ, but it failed to prove the point of having more than a million.
Similarly, accurate facts describing SWG's gameplay were posted, and they were accurate, but they failed to actually prove that the game was deeper than WOW because depth is about how difficult a game is to master, and that requires difficult decisions, and the articles posted about SWG didn't involve very many conditional decisions to learn and master, so they weren't actually showing depth.
So the evidence was accepted as being accurate of SWG's gameplay, but obviously it failed to prove any point that SWG was deeper than WOW.
And yet there is nothing more irrational to anyone with common sense than saying WOW has the depth of SWG......WOW is the definition of shallow gameplay. Little to no immersion mechanics, the most basic crafting in the industry, the most basic combat in the industry and one of the most over priced games in the industry for what you get for your monthly sub.
Sorry, but you really have no defense, no "alternate perspective", if you are going to open up with such ABSURD claims. Really you just set the tone for how it was going to go....and I suspect you knew that when you said it.
Some people just thrive off that negative attention. Who needs to be right when people still pay attention to you, right?
You have attempted to discredit Koster's work in this very post which includes largely SWG. That was because he largely disagrees with your ideals after you attempted use him to promote your own. How can you discredit his work but need explanation or proof of his work? So either you know and understand what SWG is about or you don't and discredit everything you said before due to lack of knowledge on what your against. I don't need evidence of WoW because I experienced it first hand and even more so than SWG.
Attempted? I don't have to attempt anything, as the objective truth can be laid bare before you:
SWG only sold around 1M boxes, and only achieved an estimated 300k subscribers.
You're either a rational person who understands he lives in the real world and accepts evidence of that objective truth, or you're irrational.
So the truth is
what Koster says (A Theory of Fun, Koster 2004) is the model used by nearly all of the most successful games of all time.
what Koster did (SWG, UO) wasn't as close to that model as it could've been, and resulted in lukewarm success.
Bashing your head against that truth without any shred of evidence supporting your disagreement will result in failure. The only thing that disputes evidence is stronger evidence, or at least very strong logic. You have neither.
Asking for the details (where depth lies) is very different from not knowing anything about SWG. Those guides (and the admittance that SWG's combat, probably its most common player activity, was shallower than WOW's) certainly reinforced my assumptions that it lacked the steady flow of interesting decisions required to create a deep game though.
Of course the main reason behind its lackluster success was it was a Star Wars game about Uncle Owen. But shallow gameplay would've simply been a secondary failure if they'd picked a more compelling aesthetic.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No MMORPG came close to WoW not even games that were near exact clones. It was closed because of the IP.
None of those "near exact clones" offered WOW's depth. Most attempts (WAR, Allods, Alganon, Runes of Magic, etc) were MUCH shallower. And even the better attempts (SWTOR, where the rotations were nearly as deep as WOW) made obvious mistakes (a complete lack of mob variety, so that rotations were completely static fight to fight instead of dynamically shifting.)
Nobody even achieved WOW's rotation depth, let alone created challenging decisions in all the other ways that are possible.
So is anyone truly surprised when all these objectively shallower games fail to achieve the success of a game whose long-term success rested squarely on its depth? Apparently some are, but well...you shouldn't be.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No MMORPG came close to WoW not even games that were near exact clones. It was closed because of the IP.
None of those "near exact clones" offered WOW's depth. Most attempts (WAR, Allods, Alganon, Runes of Magic, etc) were MUCH shallower. And even the better attempts (SWTOR, where the rotations were nearly as deep as WOW) made obvious mistakes (a complete lack of mob variety, so that rotations were completely static fight to fight instead of dynamically shifting.)
Nobody even achieved WOW's rotation depth, let alone created challenging decisions in all the other ways that are possible.
So is anyone truly surprised when all these objectively shallower games fail to achieve the success of a game whose long-term success rested squarely on its depth? Apparently some are, but well...you shouldn't be.
Looking at purely combat, seeing as that is the only depth that you care about, LotRO seemed to equal / surpass WoWs combat depth on many of its classes.
I can't attest to it personally though as I never got into WoW. Game was too childish for my liking and having played SWG, it seemed too shallow. However, I played LotRO extensively and my captain's combat was deeper than the class guide / rotation guide you've posted up in the past, as was my loremaster and burglar.
Sadly, I can't post you written evidence without taking a few hours to write a guide myself. My old class guides were on the codemasters forums (old EU hosts) but those have now been deleted, and the guide I wrote for my guild is also gone as our guild stopped playing LotRO when SW:TOR came out.
In terms of anecdotal evidence, every ex-wow player I ever spoke to who raided in both WoW and LotRO said LotRO was harder and deeper, though not necessarily as complex. It did really depend on class though, as the two DPS classes (hunter + champion) were less complex but marginally deeper.
As for SW:TOR - that game has one of the shallowest combat systems out of any MMO I've played, so if you think that is close to WoW then WoW must also be shallow. SW:TOR is a classic example of people mistaking complexity with depth.
SW:TOR had complexity - each class had 20-30 skills of varying cooldowns, plus other usable items on your toolbars. However, the game completely lacked depth! There were very few inter-class skills and not that many "big" skills (emergency skills, short term buffs etc). Even the optimal rotations themselves were crazy easy to work out and execute. Sure, your optimal rotation might be 20 skills long, but that is complex, not deep.
As to WoW's long term success resting on it's depth......LOL! You're constantly asking for proof from other posters, please could you prove this claim?! In my opinion, WoWs success has absolutely nothing to do with perceived depth of combat and I've never seen a single bit of evidence to support your claim (because there is none....).
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Looking at purely combat, seeing as that is the only depth that you care about, LotRO seemed to equal / surpass WoWs combat depth on many of its classes.
I can't attest to it personally though as I never got into WoW. Game was too childish for my liking and having played SWG, it seemed too shallow. However, I played LotRO extensively and my captain's combat was deeper than the class guide / rotation guide you've posted up in the past, as was my loremaster and burglar.
Sadly, I can't post you written evidence without taking a few hours to write a guide myself. My old class guides were on the codemasters forums (old EU hosts) but those have now been deleted, and the guide I wrote for my guild is also gone as our guild stopped playing LotRO when SW:TOR came out.
In terms of anecdotal evidence, every ex-wow player I ever spoke to who raided in both WoW and LotRO said LotRO was harder and deeper, though not necessarily as complex. It did really depend on class though, as the two DPS classes (hunter + champion) were less complex but marginally deeper.
As for SW:TOR - that game has one of the shallowest combat systems out of any MMO I've played, so if you think that is close to WoW then WoW must also be shallow. SW:TOR is a classic example of people mistaking complexity with depth.
SW:TOR had complexity - each class had 20-30 skills of varying cooldowns, plus other usable items on your toolbars. However, the game completely lacked depth! There were very few inter-class skills and not that many "big" skills (emergency skills, short term buffs etc). Even the optimal rotations themselves were crazy easy to work out and execute. Sure, your optimal rotation might be 20 skills long, but that is complex, not deep.
As to WoW's long term success resting on it's depth......LOL! You're constantly asking for proof from other posters, please could you prove this claim?! In my opinion, WoWs success has absolutely nothing to do with perceived depth of combat and I've never seen a single bit of evidence to support your claim (because there is none....).
Is my text invisible? Do you all expect Tetris, Panel De Pon, and Sim City to magically go away if you pretend I haven't said them?
Or can we move on from the fallacious "you only think combat can be deep" nonsense you all keep spewing?
Depth is skill cap. Non-combat activities can have a high skill cap. I've named specific examples.
The non-combat activities presented for SWG did not show a high skill cap. The reason they didn't is they didn't involve a lot of conditional decision-making where an expert would make the choices skillfully while a newbie wouldn't. I'm sure they involved some of those failure points (like using the wrong crafted item to grind crafting skill) but the ones that existed weren't terribly deep, nor were they really recurring skills to improve upon (if you mistakenly grinded up skill with an inferior item, well then you still have those skill points and it's not a decision you even have to worry about anymore because you're above the skill where you care about that.)
If a guide can be posted showing that the set of conditional decisions involved in LOTRO were tougher to master than WOW's, then sure let's present some evidence and talk about facts and reality! Until then, you can understand my hesitance of accepting your anecdotal opinion given that several other posters have done the same thing, then presented evidence showing SWG not to be as deep as they claimed. Keep in mind the guide doesn't have to just be a rotation, as even that WOW rotation guide doesn't hit upon all the other important elements that
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
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It's even subjective how easy it is to learn because it's not that easy when you're not an advanced gamer. I have seen causal players struggle to learn all of the rules of moving, when the king is in check, why a pawn can move 2 spaces instead of one and only attack diagonal.
So the crafting guide isn't really showing much in the way of depth because no decisions are being shown. (WOW rotation guides usually aren't rigid, they're typically a set of logical conditions where you have to react certain ways in certain conditions, and learning how to act in each condition is what causes a player to be known as more skilled than another.) Quality level certainly makes things more interesting because it provides a reason to seek out higher quality ingredients (although I'm basing this on an assumption that SWG crafting worked like H&H crafting, as that SWG guide didn't actually delve into these details very much) But it isn't adding all that much additional choice to the process. It's only by adding decisions to a system that you can (if they're the right decisions) increase the amount of skill involved in the activity, creating a bigger gap between skilled and unskilled players, which is game depth.
Overall depth comes from the overall experience of playing the game. Activities you're doing 60% of the time (like combat in WOW) will have vastly more influence over the overall depth feel of a game than what you're doing 0.5% of the time (like character build choices.) So even if I assume SWG's character builder shows a system of Asheron's Call-like depth (on my work Mac so can't verify it), it still wouldn't move the needle much. Overall depth comes predominantly from a game's most common activities.
The same applies to the PVP prep guide, except in that case the gameplay shown is actually shallow ("press all these buttons" essentially. Get all these buffs.)
Player Cities also don't seem particularly deep (based on this guide I don't see how you would've described a mayor in SWG as being "really skilled at running the city".) The baseline social skills required to amass players is some skill, but it appears no different from maintaining a functional guild in any other MMORPG. (And anything present in both SWG and WOW is obviously factored out of a comparative discussion on the depth of both games.) Which leaves us with a complicated system which I'm sure felt fun and rewarding to play around with, but it wasn't really a significant source of depth because it wasn't a significant source of decision-making.
So while it's great to see some evidence being offered, the topic at hand is game depth, which revolves around whether a game's decisions are hard to master. So only evidence that actually shows that to be the case is relevant.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Not at all. Depth is depth.
I imagine the better sports videogames are deep games. My disinterest in sports games is irrelevant: they'd be deep if the skill involved (created by the decisions involved) was difficult to master.
Sim City has been offered as an example of a reasonably deep non-combat game.
Maybe the best example would be Panel De Pon (aka Tetris Attack (SNES), Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)) as a game which isn't about combat (though you do send 'attacks' to your opponent's board just like in Tetris) and yet which is a phenomenally deep game.
Depth only depends on depth, not personal preference.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
As far as MMO's go, plenty of games have been successful.
Your counter, 'Here's somebody else's evidence'.
Way to continue to not present any evidence yourself, proving my point!
And I did respond to his post, but was busy with work until just now. His list of guides portrayed only one element (slightly deeper crafting) which was deeper than any WOW element, but it's unlikely most players crafted in SWG as much as they fight in WOW (and fighting likely had a bigger gap in depth than the difference in depth with crafting.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I went though pages of showing you evidence that you largely ignore. That benefit of the doubt has now past regarding showing you something that's basically common knowledge to anyone who follows the genre.
There is no bringing proof of what's deeper or more complex because its opinion. I could show tons of evidence why SWG was deeper than WoW. You could wave it away with a hand because you don't agree which you will.
Again, why go through pages of lack of acknowledgement and strawman to get to a point that essentially can't be proven? You're view is that your view is opinion, fact and law.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It doesn't matter what you say, what evidence you provide, what arguments you supply against his points....he is a game designer so he MUST be right, everyone else just has opinions that are wrong becuase, you know, only a game designer knows!
You act like you have self appointed omniscient knowledge of the genre and what's opinions are right or wrong... you either A.) know about SWG and wasting my time asking for information on it.
or B.) you don't know and wasting everyone's time by your lack of knowledge that you pretend to have.
You can't claim you're point of view is right or evidence is greater without knowing the other half right?
Naturally only evidence which actually proves a point is legitimate. For example if the question is "did EQ have 1 million subscribers?" then it would be ridiculous for someone to show this evidence of EQ having 420k subscribers, and claim that "proves" EQ had a million subscribers when it fails to meet the bar. 420k subscribers was an accurate fact of EQ, but it failed to prove the point of having more than a million.
Similarly, accurate facts describing SWG's gameplay were posted, and they were accurate, but they failed to actually prove that the game was deeper than WOW because depth is about how difficult a game is to master, and that requires difficult decisions, and the articles posted about SWG didn't involve very many conditional decisions to learn and master, so they weren't actually showing depth.
So the evidence was accepted as being accurate of SWG's gameplay, but obviously it failed to prove any point that SWG was deeper than WOW.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You very fundamentally do not understand the flaw of your logic, do you.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
How can you discredit his work but need explanation or proof of his work? So either you know and understand what SWG is about or you don't and discredit everything you said before due to lack of knowledge on what your against. I don't need evidence of WoW because I experienced it first hand and even more so than SWG.
1) It was changed drastically.
2) it was no where close to the success of WoW, in terms of sub numbers, and money made. In fact, it was closed down after 8 years (2003 - 2011) of running.
How can you claim both to represent facts but not research facts to know? How can you say you aren't speculating and then imply speculation as to why it failed?
Think anyone who played SWG knows the flaws of the game. But I'll leave the speculation to you lol.
Sorry, but you really have no defense, no "alternate perspective", if you are going to open up with such ABSURD claims. Really you just set the tone for how it was going to go....and I suspect you knew that when you said it.
Some people just thrive off that negative attention. Who needs to be right when people still pay attention to you, right?
- SWG only sold around 1M boxes, and only achieved an estimated 300k subscribers.
You're either a rational person who understands he lives in the real world and accepts evidence of that objective truth, or you're irrational.So the truth is
- what Koster says (A Theory of Fun, Koster 2004) is the model used by nearly all of the most successful games of all time.
- what Koster did (SWG, UO) wasn't as close to that model as it could've been, and resulted in lukewarm success.
Bashing your head against that truth without any shred of evidence supporting your disagreement will result in failure. The only thing that disputes evidence is stronger evidence, or at least very strong logic. You have neither.Asking for the details (where depth lies) is very different from not knowing anything about SWG. Those guides (and the admittance that SWG's combat, probably its most common player activity, was shallower than WOW's) certainly reinforced my assumptions that it lacked the steady flow of interesting decisions required to create a deep game though.
Of course the main reason behind its lackluster success was it was a Star Wars game about Uncle Owen. But shallow gameplay would've simply been a secondary failure if they'd picked a more compelling aesthetic.
"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 those "near exact clones" offered WOW's depth. Most attempts (WAR, Allods, Alganon, Runes of Magic, etc) were MUCH shallower. And even the better attempts (SWTOR, where the rotations were nearly as deep as WOW) made obvious mistakes (a complete lack of mob variety, so that rotations were completely static fight to fight instead of dynamically shifting.)
Nobody even achieved WOW's rotation depth, let alone created challenging decisions in all the other ways that are possible.
So is anyone truly surprised when all these objectively shallower games fail to achieve the success of a game whose long-term success rested squarely on its depth? Apparently some are, but well...you shouldn't be.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I can't attest to it personally though as I never got into WoW. Game was too childish for my liking and having played SWG, it seemed too shallow. However, I played LotRO extensively and my captain's combat was deeper than the class guide / rotation guide you've posted up in the past, as was my loremaster and burglar.
Sadly, I can't post you written evidence without taking a few hours to write a guide myself. My old class guides were on the codemasters forums (old EU hosts) but those have now been deleted, and the guide I wrote for my guild is also gone as our guild stopped playing LotRO when SW:TOR came out.
In terms of anecdotal evidence, every ex-wow player I ever spoke to who raided in both WoW and LotRO said LotRO was harder and deeper, though not necessarily as complex. It did really depend on class though, as the two DPS classes (hunter + champion) were less complex but marginally deeper.
As for SW:TOR - that game has one of the shallowest combat systems out of any MMO I've played, so if you think that is close to WoW then WoW must also be shallow. SW:TOR is a classic example of people mistaking complexity with depth.
SW:TOR had complexity - each class had 20-30 skills of varying cooldowns, plus other usable items on your toolbars. However, the game completely lacked depth! There were very few inter-class skills and not that many "big" skills (emergency skills, short term buffs etc). Even the optimal rotations themselves were crazy easy to work out and execute. Sure, your optimal rotation might be 20 skills long, but that is complex, not deep.
As to WoW's long term success resting on it's depth......LOL! You're constantly asking for proof from other posters, please could you prove this claim?! In my opinion, WoWs success has absolutely nothing to do with perceived depth of combat and I've never seen a single bit of evidence to support your claim (because there is none....).
Or can we move on from the fallacious "you only think combat can be deep" nonsense you all keep spewing?
Depth is skill cap. Non-combat activities can have a high skill cap. I've named specific examples.
The non-combat activities presented for SWG did not show a high skill cap. The reason they didn't is they didn't involve a lot of conditional decision-making where an expert would make the choices skillfully while a newbie wouldn't. I'm sure they involved some of those failure points (like using the wrong crafted item to grind crafting skill) but the ones that existed weren't terribly deep, nor were they really recurring skills to improve upon (if you mistakenly grinded up skill with an inferior item, well then you still have those skill points and it's not a decision you even have to worry about anymore because you're above the skill where you care about that.)
If a guide can be posted showing that the set of conditional decisions involved in LOTRO were tougher to master than WOW's, then sure let's present some evidence and talk about facts and reality! Until then, you can understand my hesitance of accepting your anecdotal opinion given that several other posters have done the same thing, then presented evidence showing SWG not to be as deep as they claimed. Keep in mind the guide doesn't have to just be a rotation, as even that WOW rotation guide doesn't hit upon all the other important elements that
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver