The "Depth" of Darktide

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
163

This discussion is already way too focused on semantics, so I don’t want to belabor this point, but I feel I must point out that the standard game theoretic notion of a game’s complexity class is precisely the time it takes to fully solve the game. (Or other limiting resource, but in practice it almost always refers to time complexity.)

Is it, though? To most people, “depth” is a fundamentally subjective thing – a matter of opinion – regarding whether they (and people like them) find the game to be persistently interesting and challenging. Why do you think everyone else in this thread is pushing back on your notion of “depth” – even people like me that generally agree with your object-level point that Darktide’s combat has depth?

Fwiw, I suspect David Sirlin would agree that a game’s depth is a matter of opinion. When he says that what makes something deep is whether experts find it strategically interesting, he’s pretty clearly not making some technical point about the depth of the game’s decision tree, or the number of improvable skills that exist a game, etc. He’s talking about how ensuring a competitive game is only solvable with a mixed strategy helps keep players interested (in the plain-English sense of the word) in playing the game over the long term, even after they’ve become experts.

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164

That’s like implying a scientist doesn’t care what people think on any topic, just because they don’t care what people think on the topic of, “water is wet.”

Again, there’s a reason you’re stuck distracting off topic instead of addressing the core of what I’ve said. And the reason is I’m right and you want desperately to disagree (for some reason) but you don’t actually have a good reason for disagreeing.

165

Its all there black and white clear as crystal read it. You’ve got nothing left but semantics.

(Willy Wonka: "YOU LOSE! GOOD DAY SIR!" - YouTube)

166

No, in design circles complexity and depth are known to be separate.

  • “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery (note that he died in 1944, so we knew this was important in design long before videogames existed.)
  • Chess is objectively simple (the rules fit on one piece of paper and there aren’t many types of pieces), but objectively deep (mastering the deep decision-matrix takes many years).
  • Extra Credit also works in the industry, and here’s him saying essentially the same thing:
    https://youtu.be/jVL4st0blGU
    You could even just stop where he says he could stop the video (at the 30 sec mark) because he sums it up right near the start where you want maximal depth with minimal complexity.

The amount of the depth players perceive varies.
The amount that exists doesn’t: that depth is there whether a player explores those depths (or is aware of them) or not.

Well the entire thread’s direction was off from the start by not quoting the definition of depth (which was present in the other thread), and so the entire OP was talking about non-depth things. Clearly that immediately sets a bad trajectory for a conversation.

Additionally the players in the thread are players. So it’s unlikely many (if any) have really put a lot of thought into the topic prior to this thread. That’s why I’m pointing to industry people to establish the definition, and pointing to objective factors within Darktide to establish its depth – but meanwhile those who disagree don’t really seem to have meaningful objections that actually deal with that concept of depth, or the evidence establishing Darktide has depth, and they certainly aren’t pulling up industry professionals who argue depth is something else.

167

Your just rewording the same argument again. The combat and movement in the game is depth for you. With the added players might not understand that depth but its there.

Fact is people are just running around doing everything on your list on day one even if we accept your interpretation it still is not a deep game. Like the tick tack toe example in the video. Maybe your a slow learner and you see this as a deep game because you take a long time to learn the basics.

Rest of us picked all this up much more quickly that’s where the rest of it comes in.

Like I said before

For you it might be a deep game but for the majority it is not. Maybe you’ve never played a fps game before? Maybe you’ve never played a game of any kind before? from that position there is a ton to learn and explore. That’s why its subjective. No two people are exactly the same but I’m betting the vast majority of the people who played dark tide have played an fps before.

From your own video link >

Depth = The amount of emergent experientially different possibilities or meaningful choices that come out of one rules set.

Try to use that description of depth and apply it to what you posted here.

  • learning the stagger animations of mobs to know that your first headshot will stagger that enemy and so if you want a follow-up headshot you have to aim at a distinct part to get the second headshot. (But it’s 3D game, so depending on their facing the mouse movement will obviously vary slightly situation-to-situation.)
  • The tactical considerations of when to jump down off a ledge (vs. leveraging the climb animation to easily beat a horde; DT probably has the same damage bonus to climbing enemies as V2 had) are a factor.
  • Forcing fights to happen near stairs or other terrain that gives an Ogryn shots with their brutal horde-clearing weapons is a factor. (Since Ogryn’s default vantage point is higher on the battlefield, which makes it harder to land those shots even while crouching.)
  • Engaging assassin targets in melee for better damage (though skills which are just knowledge like this tend to be shallower bits of depth, due to being transferred very easily, like I mentioned with the PoE skill tree point earlier).
  • “Saving” horde in assassination fights to use them to restore toughness after the boss strips your toughness.
  • Dodging out completely to avoid the boss stripping out your toughness, because you’ve learned the tempo of those moments.
  • Learning to aim delayed nades so they land somewhere useful and not way behind the horde or uselessly getting half value because it donked the first dude in the face and the horde isn’t moving because you’re right there.
  • Learning to move the horde around to maximize the value of those nades (or barrels)
  • Using barrels to deliberately launch yourself in a direction, when you’re confident on health.
  • Deliberately taking damage to trigger Until Death so you can heal on cooldown with Holy Revenant (but waiting til the correct number of enemies are around you and soloable so your teammates don’t just shred any chance of recovery).
  • Dodging in front of ranged fire as Ogryn/Zealot even without a good long-ranged weapon to split up enemy shooters so your dedicated ranged players can work things down…
  • …or deciding to run in to tie up ranged enemies in melee to completely shut them down.
  • …and the ranged teammates behind you should know to prioritize the ones you’re not attacking, so that all ranged are dealt with evenly instead of just robbing the melee of all their kills (which they need to restore toughness) while leaving as many enemy ranged alive as possible basically.
  • Knowing the set of attacks/weapons that will lower a Bulwark’s shields and/or learning what aggroes them to help consistently turn them around for your team – and then on the flipside knowing that if a teammate turns a Bulwark around you should probably prioritize that mob because they can complicate oterhwise simple situations if left unchecked.

For instance what meaningful choices or emergent experientially different possibilities arise from he tactical considerations of when to jump down off a ledge lol

It will boil down to you either win or loose hit or miss and I guarantee EVERYONE who plays this game will understand this very very quickly indeed. therefore it is not a deep game even by your own definition of that phrase. Which I still disagree with.

You are describing Execution skill and that does not equal depth for me.

168

They are indeed separate. That’s my point: depth is not normally defined as “time to completely solve a game” – that concept is, as far as I know, always referred to as “time complexity”. Idk what you mean by “in the industry”, but fwiw I’ve published papers on game theory and feel I have a reasonable grasp on basic terminology etc. However, I really do not want to argue semantics any further so this will be my last response on this topic.

Do you see the point I’m making, though? The definition of depth you’re insisting on using – regardless of where you got it – is in fact not consistent with the common English meaning of the word. (As mentioned in my last reply, I think you are also misunderstanding Sirlin’s definition – his definition is broadly consistent with the normal English use of the word, and is in fact a subjective notion. Yours isn’t.) You’ve expressed confusion about all the pushback you’re getting. This, specifically, is why you’re getting all this pushback.

Anyway, I don’t want to discuss this any further because it’s 100% semantics at this point and imo nothing is less interesting than arguing about how words are defined. But, as a parting suggestion, seriously…why not just use a different word? Call your thing, like, “deepitude” – or anything else that doesn’t already have an established plain-English meaning.

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169

If you know you have to lie, why not just agree with me? If you queue Damnation today (long after day one) people won’t do all the skills I’ve listed perfectly. So then that’s depth. That’s the skill gap between newbie and expert.

Those players making those mistakes have a different experience as a result of navigating the rules worse than they might have. So then like you quoted, “Depth = The amount of emergent experientially different possibilities or meaningful choices that come out of one rules set.” The choices were meaningful. When we had 2 players in Damnation run earlier who weren’t doing these things well, we wiped. It was the result of them not performing those skills at anything close to Damnation level and my own skill not being perfect (but able to carry at least a couple other groups through Damnation, just out of the runs I did today).

So not everyone even has a strong understanding of all these skills, but certainly not everyone has fully mastered each of them. I mean are you really going to lie to me and tell me you land 100% headshots on every enemy with every shot? No? Well then it sounds like there’s a skill gap between you and perfect play, and that’s depth.

Right well I can’t stop you from ignoring the meaning of depth. I can only point you to strong evidence that this is definitely what depth means in the industry, and then point to strong evidence Darktide has it. If you don’t care about truth, I can’t make you care. We can all just watch while you ignore reality.

170

What’s unclear?

  • The definition I’ve provided is from a game designer.
  • I’m a gamer designer.
  • I quoted a designer who predates videogames who clearly indicated design isn’t about pursuing complexity for its own sake (but instead the reverse)
  • I provided a video from an industry professional (Extra Credit) who explained the distinction between depth and complexity too.

And again, “strategically interesting” isn’t the same as “interesting”. Interest is subjective. But being strategically interesting relates to the decision tree, and is an objective thing.

Because it’s a common industry term and has been for decades. You can either say “oh, that’s what they call it” and learn something, or you can nitpick semantics in a very unproductive way.

It’s a lot like if you argued “retention” doesn’t relate to how long players stay playing a game, because that’s not what the English dictionary defines it as. It’d be such a shallow argument and would miss out on the fact that this is just how people have used “retention” in the industry for years, and they’ll continue to do so.

171

So now you think players making mistakes equates to depth rather than a lack of execution skill.

The games deep you just don’t see it. Sure lol or maybe your just wrong.

Again quoted from your own video linked above.

Quoted from your video “where depth comes in is in the players ability to think around and use the options the rules set presents within the context of play to make meaningful choices within the rules presented to them. This is what were talking about when we say that first order optimal strategies can potentially negate a games depth”

Tell me how many of the plethora of weapons presented at launch do people take to damnation and how many are pretty much useless or just underpowered and don’t see any action.

Darktide RANGED WEAPON Tierlist for Tier 5 Damnation (UPDATED 1.0.23) - YouTube

There are most definitely first order optimal strategies in the game for every class and people are even pigeon holed with which classes are currently the strongest too.

Quoted from your video
“Depth is entirely a mental activity If players cant think around should I use my rocket launcher or my machine gun if they cant make a conscious choice about it then there is no depth”

You still have not answered my previous post either.

Depth = The amount of emergent experientially different possibilities or meaningful choices that come out of one rules set.

Try to use that description of depth and apply it to what you posted here.

  • learning the stagger animations of mobs to know that your first headshot will stagger that enemy and so if you want a follow-up headshot you have to aim at a distinct part to get the second headshot. (But it’s 3D game, so depending on their facing the mouse movement will obviously vary slightly situation-to-situation.)
  • The tactical considerations of when to jump down off a ledge (vs. leveraging the climb animation to easily beat a horde; DT probably has the same damage bonus to climbing enemies as V2 had) are a factor.
  • Forcing fights to happen near stairs or other terrain that gives an Ogryn shots with their brutal horde-clearing weapons is a factor. (Since Ogryn’s default vantage point is higher on the battlefield, which makes it harder to land those shots even while crouching.)
  • Engaging assassin targets in melee for better damage (though skills which are just knowledge like this tend to be shallower bits of depth, due to being transferred very easily, like I mentioned with the PoE skill tree point earlier).
  • “Saving” horde in assassination fights to use them to restore toughness after the boss strips your toughness.
  • Dodging out completely to avoid the boss stripping out your toughness, because you’ve learned the tempo of those moments.
  • Learning to aim delayed nades so they land somewhere useful and not way behind the horde or uselessly getting half value because it donked the first dude in the face and the horde isn’t moving because you’re right there.
  • Learning to move the horde around to maximize the value of those nades (or barrels)
  • Using barrels to deliberately launch yourself in a direction, when you’re confident on health.
  • Deliberately taking damage to trigger Until Death so you can heal on cooldown with Holy Revenant (but waiting til the correct number of enemies are around you and soloable so your teammates don’t just shred any chance of recovery).
  • Dodging in front of ranged fire as Ogryn/Zealot even without a good long-ranged weapon to split up enemy shooters so your dedicated ranged players can work things down…
  • …or deciding to run in to tie up ranged enemies in melee to completely shut them down.
  • …and the ranged teammates behind you should know to prioritize the ones you’re not attacking, so that all ranged are dealt with evenly instead of just robbing the melee of all their kills (which they need to restore toughness) while leaving as many enemy ranged alive as possible basically.
  • Knowing the set of attacks/weapons that will lower a Bulwark’s shields and/or learning what aggroes them to help consistently turn them around for your team – and then on the flipside knowing that if a teammate turns a Bulwark around you should probably prioritize that mob because they can complicate oterhwise simple situations if left unchecked.

For instance what meaningful choices or emergent experientially different possibilities arise from he tactical considerations of when to jump down off a ledge lol

It will boil down to you either win or loose hit or miss and I guarantee EVERYONE who plays this game will understand this very very quickly indeed. therefore it is not a deep game even by your own definition of that phrase. Which I still disagree with.

You are describing Execution skill and that does not equal depth for me.

Almost nobody here agrees with you and your interpretation’s and your response is to say they are just players and don’t understand or to call them a liar.

Passive aggressive.
So You Get Nothing, You Lose! Good Day Sir! - YouTube

I’ve answered every point you’ve made. Like the other guy said its getting into semantics now.

172

Yeah but you do see it now that I’ve pointed you to some of the many distinct skills that exist. If you weren’t so adversarial and dropped your pride for a moment, maybe we could even cooperate to discover even more skills that each of us wasn’t aware of!

Why would that matter? Seriously, imagine you presented the strongest-imaginable version of that argument: you presented a video that mathematically proved a certain weapon was best against every target type. Undeniably that weapon would be overpowered and would make the game a shallower game that it might otherwise be.

Would that make the game itself shallow? No. Because we’re posting in a thread with giant lists of distinct skills that currently matter (and the majority of them aren’t related to specific weapons).

So while game depth would certainly improve with better weapons/feat balance, even imagining the best-possible version of your argument, it fails to address my argument.

As with depth: ignoring something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

As I’ve explained over and over, depth isn’t up for debate. Depth is just a measure of whether there’s a gap between good and bad players, and there is. If there wasn’t – if I was wrong – then you’d be addressing my argument instead of ignoring it every post. Well the definition of depth and the list of skills proving Darktide has it remains unaddressed, and honestly I don’t even see how you could address it without even longer lists for other games showing they have even more skill vectors involved while being a coop PVE game.

173

From the video you linked to help make your point.

What is a first order optimal stratergy.
First Order Optimal Strategy (FOOS) is a strategy with the best power/effort ratio . These strategies require the lowest effort and skill, but provide relatively high power or other reward. They are often discovered early on.

There is no reason for any weapon to underperform in a pve co-op game. By having a weapon meta they remove player choice and like the guy said no choice no depth.

Think of flamers power swords bolters by now you will know roughly what loadout people bring same goes for the list of bullet points up there people hear a horde… move to a doorway or corner group up etc anyhow no time to go into detail ive gtg. Lucky for you lol

174

So then you don’t have a reason it matters?

Because imperfect weapons balance limits the depth of weapon choices. But it doesn’t mean the entire game is shallow.

For the entire game to be shallow, weapon choice would need to be so dominant that no other skills would be needed. You could hand the S Tier loadout to a 6-year old and expect 100% Damnation win rates.

Meanwhile in the average Damnation match – among players some have said knew all these skills “day one” – even those players don’t get 100% win rates. Even with S Tier weapons.

Maybe you ran out of time before you could actually make the point. Next time save a draft.

175

Eh, to be fair I think most people are just ignoring this topic at this point outside of 4-5 people in general.

The walls of text are tiring, even for me (And I tend to ramble and love my parenthetical asides), you guys are just running in circles around each other. Agree to disagree and move on, you’re just getting increasingly incensed at the other person.

It’s genuinely not healthy to be getting this involved in a fruitless debate on the internet after a certain point. Take it from someone who gets into fruitless debates on the internet too often :smiley:

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176

I made my point in the first post I made here after that I was spamming meme’s at this guy as he tried to break down the subject like it was his job(until you guys flagged them all). I guessed he was a game dev almost immediately and I was right! haha question is does he work for fatshark?

Maybe your right though. Ok axhilt last post.

@ Axehilt

The reason most players stay out of damnation and a lot of runs fail is not because people don’t understand the game and how to play it. It’s because its a buggy laggy janky mess and the higher up the difficulty you go the worse it gets. The more that’s going on on the screen the more shaky it is.

So if the game craps out after 45 mins like your getting shot through a floor or you got stuck on a wall etcetc insert funny bug here all that time was wasted its why malice/heresy is where everyone farms for the most part. Game breaking bugs still exists that have been in since beta not to mention the amount of lmb spamming. Next time your chopping away think about how much nicer it would be to just hold the button down.

Unless you want to include playing around broken or malfunction parts of the game as part of its depth for the purpose of your example. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.

Damnation might be fun, when the games finished. Anyhow I digress go ahead and complain I’m off topic whatever :slight_smile: that’ll do for this subject.

177

Long story short, depth is defined differently for different people and that’s ok (or should be)

/thread

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