What is depth?
- Thread starter mistohise
- Start date
I think you could post this any random day and it'd be true.
Anyway, 'depth' is a word you use to pretend your opinion is better than someone else's opinion. Synonyms are 'realism' and 'fun'.
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I play the game. I run missions, I run cargo for profit, I hunt for pirates and anyone with a price tag on their head, I mine, I go exploring, I fly around and look at the galaxy as FD has presented it and sit in my chair, looking at the screen and go, 'they should have sent a poet..oh, right I am one, they should have sent a BETTER one!' because it's so godsbedamned beautiful and I just don't have the words. I enjoy the feel of my ship's handling, or decry the same, while in normal space and in supercruise. I listen to the voices in Witchspace because I know they are saying something that will change my world view, or maybe they are just trying to tell me a good joke, who knows, but I listen so that I may one day figure it out.
And the next thing I know, that's been hours of my time spent in the game without me realizing that hours were spent, I mean, I just sat down with my fresh coffee and..oh, it's cold and untouched, huh...
You know! Truth, Justice, and Depth.
The thing about 'depth' and whatnot is that they're shorthand labels individual gamers use to describe their preferences and assumptions. It's not a shared set of assumptions. So even if I say "depth is having more branching quest-lines and NPCs you have to barter with in a marketplace" that doesn't help if your idea of "depth" is that you want Tier2 NPCs and strategic combat simulation. This is why revolutions usually fragment into squabbling, when the revolutionaries discover they were all
1) against the ruling party
2) in favor of something unique to them
Once you've taken care of #1 then you discover that nobody agrees about #2.
For me, "more depth" would involve being able to build my own faction of NPCs and alliances sort of in a shadows of mordor kind of way, with persistent NPCs that remember my actions and who other players can interact with as well. So I could send my NPC hitman after CMDR so-and-so and if they get killed, I lost them. Wow, that would add "depth" Whereas another player may want to see better quest structures.
Vague, abstract cries for "more depth" should be treated as legitimate wails of pain. But they are inarticulate wails of pain. They are point #1: against the ruling party. They're unhappy but they can't package their preconceptions up and explain them, or put them in context with other players' preconceptions. If the "better quest structures" player and I were to hammer out a common ground on the quest structures versus tier 2 NPC metagame, we'd probably now have a shared idea of what "depth" was until we talked to some PVP addict for whom "depth" means more shooty shooty guns and a weapons modification system.
The hardest part in this process/problem is keeping a separation between what is fact, and what is personal preference. I notice that people don't do that very well; that particular line blurs a whole lot.
Yes, Don Alvarez. The forum needs more depth. It's a predictable grind. You say this, I say that, and (yawn) it's like we need a standard thread-posting computer, already and then we can just AFK and let the threads grow apace.
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But the question isn't what people want. Its what people do, which any of a half dozen answers will be immediately met with a canned dismissive response. That's why people won't answer that question.
Then if you are happy with simple repetitive tasks like 5 types of default missions with brain numming repetitiveness and silly mechanics - such as kill enemy in another system, fly back to the contract giver, be told to fly else where to get paid without any real hunt, just RNG spawn wait and then lots of fetching around which wouldn't even happen in our century as we have discovered phones, fax and oh yeas the internet or mining (same each time you do it), bounty hunting (no persistency or true effect and AI one would cry about while player interaction doesn't carry any weight) then good for you. I have higher expectations of my game like real sensible mechanics. If i wanted to do the same task over and over I could pick up knitting and have sweaters to sell at the end of it. It might be just about same level of fun and I could do it while watching some Scifi series which would give me prettier sites to look at.
All jokes and poison out of the system. The exploration in this game is beautiful, but I'm not an explorer and the rest of the game is less then decent and incredibly shallow. I mean insultingly so... If this game was made in 80 or 90s I could excuse it (of course graphics wouldn't be this good), but for a game of 2015+ It is sorely lacking hell of a lot.
High satire indeed. You and both know, however, that no response to that question has ever pried anyone form the Mile Wide Club away from his position.
Is "depth" the opposite of "grind"?
Nooo, depth allows you to grind deeper
I am not attacking you; this is not personal. But I'm going to use your comment as a way of deconstructing a fairly typical response pattern, OK? With all respect:
If you refactor this, it reads:
Then if you are happy with OPINION OPINION tasks like 5 types of default missions with OPINION OPINION and OPINION mechanics
Because, you and I might not agree what is "simple" and "brain numbing" etc. For example, you might find "go mine 5t of painite" to be "brain numbing" whereas I find it "relaxing while I have my tea and watch a movie on the other screen" ...
The problem comes in when someone tries to sneak their opinions into a comment as if they are facts. That's an ancient rhetorical trick called "well poisoning"; it's not a logical fallacy but it's a sign that your interlocutor is not being intellectually honest. By pre-loading a basic question with a bunch of opinions and challenging someone to answer it, the rhetorician forces them to appear to accept their premise. Which, of course, the other party may not.
The way to respond to well poisoning rhetoric is to do as I just did - to deconstruct the well-poisoner's statement and show that they're not being intellectually honest. Another way is to drag them into a quagmire by arguing each of the individual opinions. I personally hate that strategy because it's intensely boring, but it would look like:
"What makes a task 'repetitive' to you? And can you explain to what degree your life or your day job is 'repetitive' compared to the game? i.e.: do you even know what 'repetitive' is in this context? And when you're done explaining that, can you tell me what you know about how quickly your brain numbs compared to the gaming population at large?"
It gives entirely too much credence to the rhetorician's views. The last (and probably best) strategy when encountering well-poisoning arguments is to roll your eyes and walk away because you're dealing with someone who mistakes their opinion for universal reality and they're never going to be worth talking to; they simply cannot discuss a problem without trying to tip the table in their preference.
SWEET! I need more depth then!
I want 100 Anacondas (all the same) - now do I have 'depth'?
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Depth is cause -> effect -> cause. Depth is interaction. Depth is freedom. Depth is immersion. Depth is uniqueness and unpredictability.
This game can only deliver the freedom part.
Cause - Effect? Nope, all static.
Interaction? Well try to talk to an NPC or create something in ED.
Immersion? The Crimson Blue Corporate asks me to kill members of the Blue Crimson Corporate. Then, when you start hunting for them, a member of the Blue Corporate of Crimsons show up and asks to kill police instead because their corporation likes everything Blue and Crimson in space. Not even my 2 years old kid would find this story fun or immersive.
Uniqueness and unpredictability: All the systems are a random set of of up to 5 different celestial objects using like 20 different texture sets.
This game can only deliver the freedom part.
Cause - Effect? Nope, all static.
Interaction? Well try to talk to an NPC or create something in ED.
Immersion? The Crimson Blue Corporate asks me to kill members of the Blue Crimson Corporate. Then, when you start hunting for them, a member of the Blue Corporate of Crimsons show up and asks to kill police instead because their corporation likes everything Blue and Crimson in space. Not even my 2 years old kid would find this story fun or immersive.
Uniqueness and unpredictability: All the systems are a random set of of up to 5 different celestial objects using like 20 different texture sets.
Aye, there's the rub, the forums have information we seek, and like minded people who share our love of the game, and it's also full of people who feel it necessary to scream at everyone else that they aren't having fun because, well, misery loves company. I read those posts, I look for the kernels of truth in them, and sometimes they are good points, valid and well stated and I agree with them, but that doesn't reduce my enjoyment, because sometimes, beauty is in the flaws, not perfection.
MOST of those posts though are just whines, people wanting attention, demanding that they get what they want because they are entitled to whatever they want because... Those actually amuse the hell out of me, because I can poke them with sticks, something I can't do in real life where I'm literally exposed to this sorts every single day due to what my company does, provide US government subsidized phone service, talk about your entitled demographic. So I'll poke these entitled little brats with sticks here because, well, it's fun
Those posts only have a positive influence on how I view the game, a little odd but true, because if it annoys an entitled little brat, it must be good in my mind.
Oh baby yes...
Yer a funny guy...naw, not really, not amusing at all to be honest.
You asked what I do in the game since I enjoy it, I told you what I do. Your response is to insult me, which shows me that you don't actually HAVE a defensible position, since you resort to attacking me and insulting me for telling you exactly how I enjoy playing the game instead of explaining how the things I'm doing are simple and could be improved by X and Y.
You've lost sirrah, good day
*drops mic*
nope, sorry. I can be intellectually honest with you and myself and say that this game is a grind fest generated by RNG and nothing else in it's currenct state. For immersion to occur the effects need to be persistent and make sense as well as the causes. None ( I REPEAT ) NONE of that is present in ED. It is actually mostly completely random in every possible way.
Last night I took an assassination mission. I killed my target. On the way back I get contacted via chat 18x or so times by the same NPC asking me to drop out as they have vital info for me. I eventually give up and drop down to pick the info and blow them up as they are breaking my immersion being there every time I jump to a system. They tell me that I should pay them 15k or so for killing their ally as he was really important on their op (ok not so bad) I decide to kill him as we are in lawless system, so I blow him up. I jump to new system and who isn't there. The same freaking NPC asking me the same freaking thing. Instead of maybe an wing of NPC wanting to punish me for the murders I've just committed. Nope the RNG gives me the same NPC with the same Name over and over. I've killed them 6x times now and they are still flying in every star system. This is immersion breaking and shows how shallow the interaction with their PVE is. The PVE has no real mechanics excluding the 5 main tasks which are all done in pretty much the same way with no real consequences. That is why it lacks Depth by any reasonable definition. If you want to I could elaborate some more for you
.EDIT: PS your last point is simply trying to make the silly statement about your truth and my truth and they both have equal value. That is a lot of PC bull**** and simply an attempt to outsmart somebody. However there is a well establish factual truth to an opinion if backed by facts such as my statements, so please do not use the my truth your truth argument - it really doesn't hold up. Instead you should try to convince me why your opinions are correct and how deep the game, but instead you use non factual feelings .... Subjectively watching paint dry can be entertaining to somebody, but that doesn't make it a deep experience for majority
By FD I was led to believe that the game was something or is becoming something it isn't. It doesn't feel as a multiplayer sandboxed experience. Instead it feels like a brain numming RNG themepark fest with current Powerplay and legal system...
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