Probably best if everyone except Moondrop skips this monstrosity.
I've calmed down now after being compared to the protagonist of Pi.
This comment here is I waited until morning to respond (edit: Fuck, it's 1pm already). Assuming you weren't joking about being worked up, why did you need to calm down, especially when you later mentioned taking it as a compliment? I feel like this is a nice, relaxed discussion we're having here and it kind of bothers me that you might be getting worked up or taking it personally.
To be clear: I respect your opinion a lot, and I'm glad you regularly share your thoughts in this thread (if anything, you don't post often enough). The last thing I want is for this discussion to turn into a heated debate because I feel like it's discussion worth having. If my language has been incendiary in any way, then I apologize.
I think we have different ways in which we measure success and advancement in games, but there's no reason both views can't exist within the same game or are mutually exclusive. For example, we've run dungeons together where my "what feels right" approach and what I assume is your much more calculated approach were compatible, at least enough to where we were able to complete the content without any trouble.
And we both hate stacking, so there's our common ground.
I've been re-evaluating this paradigm after reading some of the foundational principles for Camelot Unchained (sidenote: I recommend these to anyone interested in WvW-style combat, and it gives me flashbacks to GW2's pre-launch days). Across multiple posts including
this one, the author reframes the debate as a "skill-based game" vs. a "class-based game." Taken to its extreme, in an entirely skill-based game there must be no difference between player characters, as only how the user operates them in real time matters. Whereas in a class-based game, each class can perform a different set of actions, and strategy is dictated by how the player's class interacts with that of the enemy; rock-paper-scissors is the epitome of a purely class-based game.
So, I'm not sure what you're getting at with this paragraph; up until this point, we've been discussing skill as "the capacity of the player to do something" but here you're bringing up skill as a game construct, where it's representing a particular
character ability. "Skill-based" the way it's being used here describes something like UO, EVE Online or the Elder Scrolls games where your character advancement is free-form and there aren't any restrictions on how you build your character. "Class-based" is how most RPGs work, where you pick a class with pre-determined skills and you generally can't learn anything outside of what the developers intended.
Good design practices have lead to games where character classes are less rigid and you can customize your experience by selecting which character skills you wish to use. I don't think there's ever been a pure "Class-based system" even going back to D&D, the game that
defined character classes.
I also don't believe that RPS is class-based OR a skill-based (in the "character ability" sense... ugh, going back to what I said about game design having a crappy vocabulary...) because both of those are methods of
character advancement. Just because a system has choices doesn't make it either; as an example "moving to the left" and "moving to the right" wouldn't be considered skills or classes, they're just decisions.
Maybe I'm missing what you're getting at here (again, vocabulary, etc.)
But just as no one plays rock-paper-scissors for fun, I don't believe people actually want to play a pure skill game either (hence the no items/final destination/fox only meme).
Here you've switched to the "capacity of the player" definition of "skill-based", because neither RPS or Smash Brothers have character skills or abilities that the player selects (the water is already very muddy, but we could call each character in Smash Bros. a "Class", but that's not what you're getting at here, as far as I can tell).
I disagree that people don't want to play a game of pure skill; chess, for example, is entirely skill-based because both players have the same number of pieces with the same moves. The only variable of chess that isn't skill-based is that white moves first and thus has an advantage, but chess matches are played in even numbered sets to negate this.
I also disagree that the "No items, Fox Only, Final Destination" thing is inherently 'bad' even if I personally can't imagine playing Smash Bros. that way. The reason people go for that is because it creates a more even playing field in which to determine player skill since Smash Brothers' characters vary wildly in terms of balance and items/stage mechanics introduce chance, the antithesis of skill. It's trying to make Smash Brothers behave more like Chess, i.e. more skill-oriented. The meme is funny because Smash Brothers is an insanely chaotic game and the idea of stripping all of the 'fun' stuff out and being super serious about it is amusing (in the same way we chuckle at RPS tournaments).
In a purely skill-based outcome, all that matters is your reaction time, dexterity, and ability to read your opponent. But when you introduce class into the mix, it adds an entirely new strategic layer involving one's knowledge of game mechanics and how the various classes interact.
I would add "familiarity with the game" to the list of things that matter, as well as "ability to read and predict the state of the game." Small nitpick, I know.
And now finally returning to my point: when you frame the debate as, "I am better at gameplay" vs. "I have higher numbers," I feel you're neglecting all of the strategic gameplay resulting from, "He is higher in A, but I'm higher in B, how can I use that to my advantage?" And this component is inherently based on quantifiable differences
between classes.
So, here's basically where we dig in to the heart of this discussion, which seems to be the misinterpretation that the "I want gameplay to matter" folks believe that numbers don't exist (they do) when in fact, the point is that numbers shouldn't matter more than anything else, if at all.
As a very basic example; Mario. There are tons of articles written about how Mario's jump behavior works; the speed, acceleration, gravity, inertia, arc, etc. People have filmed and measured these things down to the pixel and documented the mathematics behind the jump. But the math doesn't define why the jump "feels" so good, or why 30 years on you can pick up a Mario game and it feels right, even if you've spent those 30 years playing games with a thousand variations on "jump."
Knowing the math also does not make you any better at jumping, even though when you break it down it's all numbers. Unless you're some kind of savant who can process these sort of things in real time (in which case, why are you wasting your gifts playing video games), I think most of us pick up the controller, press the buttons and feel our way through what "jump" does. The numbers make the whole thing work, but for the purpose of making Mario jump,
they don't matter; Jump is something you feel rather than think about.
The "gameplay first" side of the discussion doesn't deny that the numbers exist, or that the differences between characters are quantifiable. When you say "
He is higher in A, but I am higher in B", we're not denying that part of the scenario exists. It's the "how can I use that to my advantage?" part that's problematic, because we feel that on the list of things that should determine victory or defeat in the moment-to-moment gameplay of an action-oriented game like Guild Wars 2, "what are his stats?" or "is he traited for +50 toughness" should be very low, behind things like "who knows how to play their class better," "who has the faster reaction time", "who has more situational awareness", "who has the best strategy", "who knew to bring the right skill and use it at the right time" and so on.
More to the point of why this discussion started, any change that gives the mathematics more impact is a bad change
for us (and likewise, any change that reduces the impact is a good one). Not because the numbers shouldn't exist, but because we feel being a better
player should be more important than having the better
character. When we win or lose, we want to know that it's because one of us was a better player, not because one of us had a bunch of invisible mathematic advantages.
That's why when we talk about "gameplay-oriented" traits, we're talking about things that make a substantial change in how a skill works; to use the jump metaphor, being able double jump, lower the effects of gravity to float in mid-air longer or shake the ground and flip enemies on their back when you land. Yeah, there's totally numbers running how those things work, but the effects, the
feel, matters more. Compare the four playable characters' jumps in Mario 2; yes, the numbers under the hood are different but you're not
thinking about gravity values, you're thinking "holy shit, Peach can freakin'
fly!"
Likewise, when we talk about passive, "math-y" traits being boring, we're talking about things that don't have much impact and small, near-invisible advantages. Getting a bunch of traits that are the equivalent of "you jump 10 pixels higher" isn't as interesting as the examples above, or as noticeable (unless you get a bunch of them at once).
Already running a bit long here, and I'm not sure I even understood your entire post since the second paragraph is talking about something unrelated as near as I can tell. I'm not even sure I have a 'bottom line' to end on because I still feel like we're sorting out what exactly we mean before we actually have a discussion. The one thing I will say though is that no matter how player skill-oriented or action-y the game gets, the math is
always going to be there for theorycrafters to tinker with, at least. As you said, numbers are in everything...