10 ms·

Who else thinks that Chess is too simple and too boring compared to other strategy games that we have now? Starcraft 2, Agricola, Twilight Struggle, Through The

Who else thinks that Chess is too simple and too boring compared to other strategy games that we have now? Starcraft 2, Agricola, Twilight Struggle, Through The Ages, etc.

zeitg3ist 7y ago
All these games include some sort of random component and thus cannot be compared to chess which is purely skill based.
- Retric 7y ago
  Starcraft is deterministic, the only random element is how people click. Slow the game to 1/10,000th current speed and it’s turn based.
  - jmgao 7y ago
    Starcraft is not deterministic, and the nondeterminism can matter in significant ways. In Starcraft 1, every ranged attack had a 120/256 chance of missing a unit that was up a hill or behind a tree, and a 1/256 chance of missing always. In Starcraft 2, attack cooldowns are slightly randomized, so two units that are commanded to attack each other will almost never kill each other simultaneously.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Starcraft 2 replays work by replaying player actions not game state, they don’t need to record a random number generator’s output just a shared seed. Now, you can argue the prng is effectively a random number generator, but that’s more semantics than reality. Further, RTS games use a shared seed to minimize network traffic. So, this is an important design choice. However, as I said the player’s actions prevent individual players from exploiting the prng as they both interact with it.
      - BoiledCabbage 7y ago
        >Now, you can argue the prng is effectively a random number generator, but that’s more semantics than reality. That's not "arguing semantics", that's the entire point. It's irrelevant if the randomization is pseudo or not - players cannot deterministically know the result of their actions in all cases. They can only know probabilistically. Whether that source of probabilistic knowledge comes from a roll of a die or particle decay is irrelevant - it is now a random game by definition.
        Retric 7y ago
        prng’s are exploitable if the other agent is fixed and deterministic. A winning game can then be repeated as long as the initial seed is identical. In such cases it’s also possible to extract information from the prng as to which opening is used. This is a common strategy with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool-assisted_speedrun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool-assisted_speedrun, https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation As Starcraft is also a single player game this is very much relevant. So again, to be as clear as possible. Starcraft is deterministic, it’s only in multiplayer games when a players actions are randomized that the game appears to be random.
        catern 7y ago
        This is an interesting argument. If I understand right, you're saying that since the random numbers are produced by a deterministic process with a hidden seed, Starcraft isn't actually "random", it's just a hidden information game (the hidden information being the seed). Taken to its extreme, you could take Chess, and add in a hidden seed at the start of the game, and run a PRNG during the game, and randomly decide some events. And you wouldn't have taken a full-information game and added randomness; you would have taken a full-information game and added hidden information. Now, you're talking about using weaknesses in the PRNG to predict future random results. It seems to me there are two ways to do that: Learn what the seed is directly (perhaps by controlling what the seed is), vs. learning what the seed is by looking at PRNG outputs. If we say the first option (directly learning the seed by controlling inputs or whatever) is impossible (which makes sense), then the only reason we can exploit the PRNG is that it's not cryptographically random. Which is interesting. What if it the PRNG is indeed cryptography-secure? If an element of a hidden-information game is "deterministically" produced by a cryptography-quality algorithm, then that element can't be predicted. But it's still entirely deterministic. So in some sense, no games have any randomness, they only have hidden information, and that hidden information can be kept very hidden using cryptographic techniques/algorithms. A CPRNG + hidden information gives us seeming randomness in games. What other cryptographic techniques could you add into a game, and what would they map to from a human player's perspective? Encryption is seemingly obvious - hidden communication. What about hashing? What about homomorphic encryption? Others?
    - qazpot 7y ago
      By your argument Pokemon is also a non deterministic game
      - rictic 7y ago
        Pokemon is highly nondeterministic. To take just one example, there are many moves which probabalistically induce game-changing status effects on the enemy.
        Retric 7y ago
        This is exploitably incorrect. It seems that way to players but tool assisted Pokemon speed runs regularly use luck manipulation. https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation Games have had really bad prng’s for preformance reasons and gamers have been exploiting them for years. The most extreme example is probably Doom’s which was simply a hard coded list of numbers. https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator
        djur 7y ago
        Luck manipulation is only possible in more recent entries by exploiting game-external factors like the system clock. But, in any case, when it comes to comparing games implemented in software (like Pokemon) with games that aren't, you have to distinguish between "the game" and "the software". The Pokemon game is designed to be non-deterministic from the player's perspective, regardless of the fact that the Pokemon software may be deterministic in some detectable or manipulable way. Just like craps would still be a game of chance even if you figure out how to fix your rolls.
        Retric 7y ago
        So in your mind actual Pokémon games are deterministic, but the platonic ideal for Pokémon is not. Why would you assume the real Pokémon game was your mental model? I mean the software implementation defines the game and it’s the only thing anyone has ever played. It seems to me any change you make results in a different game. It’s not like a game allowing pawns to move 3 spaces can be called Chess even if everything else was the same.
    - bagacrap 7y ago
      Starting positions are also randomized and the maps are not symmetrical (nor are Terran buildings with add-ons!) so starting position matters slightly. Plus the balance tweaks are somewhat aribitrary so there's a degree of luck to when exactly a match takes place. I'm sure there are many more examples of non determinism but the biggest differences to chess are hidden information, which makes it resemble poker, and real-time actions, meaning SC is a game of dexterity as much as it is a brain game.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Compared to Warcraft, especially so. But there's also a small random effect in starting location.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- eru 7y ago
  Just play often enough, and the randomness evens out. (In probabilistic prime number testing, they usually refer to something like 'running the algorithm often enough until being killed by gamma rays is higher probability than the algorithm being wrong'.)
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  Other classical games, like backgammon or poker, are also stochastic or have hidden information, elements that are not in chess. And yet, those games are also considered to be skill-based and interest in them is comparable to that of chess (although chess reigns supreme in the pantheon of classical games, probably only rivalled by go). Anyway, the absence or presence of stochasticity or other specific game elements can't be what sets chess apart from strategy games played on a computer. I think the real difference is the level of abstraction in the game. Like I say in another comment, chess is pared down to the bare essentials whereas games like Starcraft 2 have loads and loads of detail that does not server strategic purposes, and so detract from the point of the game.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Compared to Go, Chess has irrelevant details and more than bare essentials.
timeattack 7y ago
I think that Chess is still interesting for many people because of a) rules are easy to understand but game is hard to master; b) there is a social aspect of playing against human being face to face.
- TheHypnotist 7y ago
  I've recently started on chess.com and while i've always known how to play, I never realized just how bad I am. Currently slowly making my way out of the 600's in ELO, but it's been a learning experience. The depth of such a "simple" game is quite surprising.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    600 ELO on chess.com is about 90th percentile among all humans. Well, sort of. 600 is so low, and so far below the arbitrary rating given to new players, that it's very hard to find people to match with who have a consistent 600 score. Have you read a chess book? Just knowing the basic tactics from a 1-day tutorial, and paying attention to not hang (give away) your pieces should be enough to get you to 800, where recently started elementary school students are.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thrower123 7y ago
The perfect information is a bit boring. I find something like Stratego, where one must discover the composition and deployment of the enemy, more interesting.
- TheHypnotist 7y ago
  I can not imagine a competitive Stratego (only really played with family), but thanks to you, i am curious at what level of strategy people have come up with.
dh5 7y ago
Simple doesn't mean boring. There are many, many nuances that are only realized after playing at higher levels, and many more we haven't discovered yet as evidenced by the engines.
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
I don't play chess. But I think I understand the enduring appeal of the game. Watching games (like in the animation of the Immortal Game on the wikipedia article) I get this weird feeling as if I'm watching a constraint solver, or a theorem prover walking through the steps of a proof, where the theory it's trying to prove is a theory of how to get to a check mate and the constraints are the moves that "our" or "their" player can make in any given board state. It's got a very maths-y and logic-y feeling to it and you can see that chess players play until they can prove to themselves that the game ends, then they resign or announce their win. The article above says that Kieseritzky resigned three moves before the end of the game, when it became clear that his defeat was inevitable. I mean, at that point, the two players could actually _calculate_ the outcome of the game. I think a game like this is intriguing to anyone who has an analytical mind, who likes to study and create algorithms, or to just watch things work. The fact that the elements of the game are very simple is actually a feature: it's pared down to the bare essentials, an elegant abstraction that leaves no ambiguity. Only the elements that matter in the game are actually in the game (so it doesn't really matter what the king looks like, as long as it's recognisably a king). At the same time, the combinatorics of the game mean that an analysis, while straighforward, is anything but trivial, at least until the game gets to that point where the number of possible moves shrinks to a mere handful. The games you list, while they're more entertaining as games than chess, also have too much superfluous detail, too much that relies on being able to play the game on a computer to keep track of all the things you (think you) don't need to think about, like the appearance of units and so on. With the simplicity gone, the elegant abstraction also goes and analyses of the game become so much less clear. If I compared chess to a modern game, that would have to be Magic: the Gathering. While M:tG is, on its face, a goofy game with dragons and angels, there is a base set of game elements that is simple enough and easy enough to understand, and analysing a game with precision is possible and in fact, pleasing. You can again watch mechanisms work, cogs turn, parts slide into place as a player develops their strategy. It is intellectually gratifying to play such a game, because it's perfectly balanced between complexity and simplicity, it's at the sweet spot where detail is interesting, engrossing, without it becoming overwhelming (though there are times when M:tG boards can become overwhelming, say if you have a couple dozen permanents on each side) (though I get that many people are attracted to it because of the fantasy themes rather than the gaming component). Unfortunately, M:tG is a proprietary game and the materials needed to play it are harder to acquire than chess (not least because they keep making more of them every few months). So I don't guess it will ever catch on as chess has.
TheHypnotist 7y ago
Simple, yes. But the difficulty in advancing your skill level is quite high which keeps it from getting boring at least for me.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Interesting, for most people that's why they do get bored of chess. The learning curve is too steep.
mellosouls 7y ago
If you think it is too simple and boring, I'm guessing you don't have much exposure to it at a non-rudimentary level? That's fine - but it is not necessarily the best vantage point to be comparing other "brain" games. Of course, if you are a chess expert, then that's a genuinely interesting point of view - but I'd be interested in seeing more people with an advanced background in both comment.
otabdeveloper2 7y ago
Chess is better than all the games on your list bar Agricola, possibly. Agricola is a four player game, though, so not playing on the same field as chess.

Who else thinks that Chess is too simple and too boring compared to other strategy games that we have now? Starcraft 2, Agricola, Twilight Struggle, Through The Ages, etc.

zeitg3ist 7y ago

All these games include some sort of random component and thus cannot be compared to chess which is purely skill based.

Retric 7y ago
Starcraft is deterministic, the only random element is how people click. Slow the game to 1/10,000th current speed and it’s turn based.
- jmgao 7y ago
  Starcraft is not deterministic, and the nondeterminism can matter in significant ways. In Starcraft 1, every ranged attack had a 120/256 chance of missing a unit that was up a hill or behind a tree, and a 1/256 chance of missing always. In Starcraft 2, attack cooldowns are slightly randomized, so two units that are commanded to attack each other will almost never kill each other simultaneously.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Starcraft 2 replays work by replaying player actions not game state, they don’t need to record a random number generator’s output just a shared seed. Now, you can argue the prng is effectively a random number generator, but that’s more semantics than reality. Further, RTS games use a shared seed to minimize network traffic. So, this is an important design choice. However, as I said the player’s actions prevent individual players from exploiting the prng as they both interact with it.
    - BoiledCabbage 7y ago
      >Now, you can argue the prng is effectively a random number generator, but that’s more semantics than reality. That's not "arguing semantics", that's the entire point. It's irrelevant if the randomization is pseudo or not - players cannot deterministically know the result of their actions in all cases. They can only know probabilistically. Whether that source of probabilistic knowledge comes from a roll of a die or particle decay is irrelevant - it is now a random game by definition.
      - Retric 7y ago
        prng’s are exploitable if the other agent is fixed and deterministic. A winning game can then be repeated as long as the initial seed is identical. In such cases it’s also possible to extract information from the prng as to which opening is used. This is a common strategy with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool-assisted_speedrun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool-assisted_speedrun, https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation As Starcraft is also a single player game this is very much relevant. So again, to be as clear as possible. Starcraft is deterministic, it’s only in multiplayer games when a players actions are randomized that the game appears to be random.
        catern 7y ago
        This is an interesting argument. If I understand right, you're saying that since the random numbers are produced by a deterministic process with a hidden seed, Starcraft isn't actually "random", it's just a hidden information game (the hidden information being the seed). Taken to its extreme, you could take Chess, and add in a hidden seed at the start of the game, and run a PRNG during the game, and randomly decide some events. And you wouldn't have taken a full-information game and added randomness; you would have taken a full-information game and added hidden information. Now, you're talking about using weaknesses in the PRNG to predict future random results. It seems to me there are two ways to do that: Learn what the seed is directly (perhaps by controlling what the seed is), vs. learning what the seed is by looking at PRNG outputs. If we say the first option (directly learning the seed by controlling inputs or whatever) is impossible (which makes sense), then the only reason we can exploit the PRNG is that it's not cryptographically random. Which is interesting. What if it the PRNG is indeed cryptography-secure? If an element of a hidden-information game is "deterministically" produced by a cryptography-quality algorithm, then that element can't be predicted. But it's still entirely deterministic. So in some sense, no games have any randomness, they only have hidden information, and that hidden information can be kept very hidden using cryptographic techniques/algorithms. A CPRNG + hidden information gives us seeming randomness in games. What other cryptographic techniques could you add into a game, and what would they map to from a human player's perspective? Encryption is seemingly obvious - hidden communication. What about hashing? What about homomorphic encryption? Others?
  - qazpot 7y ago
    By your argument Pokemon is also a non deterministic game
    - rictic 7y ago
      Pokemon is highly nondeterministic. To take just one example, there are many moves which probabalistically induce game-changing status effects on the enemy.
      - Retric 7y ago
        This is exploitably incorrect. It seems that way to players but tool assisted Pokemon speed runs regularly use luck manipulation. https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Luck_manipulation Games have had really bad prng’s for preformance reasons and gamers have been exploiting them for years. The most extreme example is probably Doom’s which was simply a hard coded list of numbers. https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator
        djur 7y ago
        Luck manipulation is only possible in more recent entries by exploiting game-external factors like the system clock. But, in any case, when it comes to comparing games implemented in software (like Pokemon) with games that aren't, you have to distinguish between "the game" and "the software". The Pokemon game is designed to be non-deterministic from the player's perspective, regardless of the fact that the Pokemon software may be deterministic in some detectable or manipulable way. Just like craps would still be a game of chance even if you figure out how to fix your rolls.
        Retric 7y ago
        So in your mind actual Pokémon games are deterministic, but the platonic ideal for Pokémon is not. Why would you assume the real Pokémon game was your mental model? I mean the software implementation defines the game and it’s the only thing anyone has ever played. It seems to me any change you make results in a different game. It’s not like a game allowing pawns to move 3 spaces can be called Chess even if everything else was the same.
  - bagacrap 7y ago
    Starting positions are also randomized and the maps are not symmetrical (nor are Terran buildings with add-ons!) so starting position matters slightly. Plus the balance tweaks are somewhat aribitrary so there's a degree of luck to when exactly a match takes place. I'm sure there are many more examples of non determinism but the biggest differences to chess are hidden information, which makes it resemble poker, and real-time actions, meaning SC is a game of dexterity as much as it is a brain game.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Compared to Warcraft, especially so. But there's also a small random effect in starting location.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
eru 7y ago
Just play often enough, and the randomness evens out. (In probabilistic prime number testing, they usually refer to something like 'running the algorithm often enough until being killed by gamma rays is higher probability than the algorithm being wrong'.)
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
Other classical games, like backgammon or poker, are also stochastic or have hidden information, elements that are not in chess. And yet, those games are also considered to be skill-based and interest in them is comparable to that of chess (although chess reigns supreme in the pantheon of classical games, probably only rivalled by go). Anyway, the absence or presence of stochasticity or other specific game elements can't be what sets chess apart from strategy games played on a computer. I think the real difference is the level of abstraction in the game. Like I say in another comment, chess is pared down to the bare essentials whereas games like Starcraft 2 have loads and loads of detail that does not server strategic purposes, and so detract from the point of the game.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Compared to Go, Chess has irrelevant details and more than bare essentials.

timeattack 7y ago

I think that Chess is still interesting for many people because of a) rules are easy to understand but game is hard to master; b) there is a social aspect of playing against human being face to face.

TheHypnotist 7y ago
I've recently started on chess.com and while i've always known how to play, I never realized just how bad I am. Currently slowly making my way out of the 600's in ELO, but it's been a learning experience. The depth of such a "simple" game is quite surprising.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  600 ELO on chess.com is about 90th percentile among all humans. Well, sort of. 600 is so low, and so far below the arbitrary rating given to new players, that it's very hard to find people to match with who have a consistent 600 score. Have you read a chess book? Just knowing the basic tactics from a 1-day tutorial, and paying attention to not hang (give away) your pieces should be enough to get you to 800, where recently started elementary school students are.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

thrower123 7y ago

The perfect information is a bit boring. I find something like Stratego, where one must discover the composition and deployment of the enemy, more interesting.

TheHypnotist 7y ago
I can not imagine a competitive Stratego (only really played with family), but thanks to you, i am curious at what level of strategy people have come up with.

dh5 7y ago

Simple doesn't mean boring. There are many, many nuances that are only realized after playing at higher levels, and many more we haven't discovered yet as evidenced by the engines.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

I don't play chess. But I think I understand the enduring appeal of the game. Watching games (like in the animation of the Immortal Game on the wikipedia article) I get this weird feeling as if I'm watching a constraint solver, or a theorem prover walking through the steps of a proof, where the theory it's trying to prove is a theory of how to get to a check mate and the constraints are the moves that "our" or "their" player can make in any given board state. It's got a very maths-y and logic-y feeling to it and you can see that chess players play until they can prove to themselves that the game ends, then they resign or announce their win. The article above says that Kieseritzky resigned three moves before the end of the game, when it became clear that his defeat was inevitable. I mean, at that point, the two players could actually _calculate_ the outcome of the game. I think a game like this is intriguing to anyone who has an analytical mind, who likes to study and create algorithms, or to just watch things work. The fact that the elements of the game are very simple is actually a feature: it's pared down to the bare essentials, an elegant abstraction that leaves no ambiguity. Only the elements that matter in the game are actually in the game (so it doesn't really matter what the king looks like, as long as it's recognisably a king). At the same time, the combinatorics of the game mean that an analysis, while straighforward, is anything but trivial, at least until the game gets to that point where the number of possible moves shrinks to a mere handful. The games you list, while they're more entertaining as games than chess, also have too much superfluous detail, too much that relies on being able to play the game on a computer to keep track of all the things you (think you) don't need to think about, like the appearance of units and so on. With the simplicity gone, the elegant abstraction also goes and analyses of the game become so much less clear. If I compared chess to a modern game, that would have to be Magic: the Gathering. While M:tG is, on its face, a goofy game with dragons and angels, there is a base set of game elements that is simple enough and easy enough to understand, and analysing a game with precision is possible and in fact, pleasing. You can again watch mechanisms work, cogs turn, parts slide into place as a player develops their strategy. It is intellectually gratifying to play such a game, because it's perfectly balanced between complexity and simplicity, it's at the sweet spot where detail is interesting, engrossing, without it becoming overwhelming (though there are times when M:tG boards can become overwhelming, say if you have a couple dozen permanents on each side) (though I get that many people are attracted to it because of the fantasy themes rather than the gaming component). Unfortunately, M:tG is a proprietary game and the materials needed to play it are harder to acquire than chess (not least because they keep making more of them every few months). So I don't guess it will ever catch on as chess has.

TheHypnotist 7y ago

Simple, yes. But the difficulty in advancing your skill level is quite high which keeps it from getting boring at least for me.

lonelappde 7y ago
Interesting, for most people that's why they do get bored of chess. The learning curve is too steep.

mellosouls 7y ago

If you think it is too simple and boring, I'm guessing you don't have much exposure to it at a non-rudimentary level? That's fine - but it is not necessarily the best vantage point to be comparing other "brain" games. Of course, if you are a chess expert, then that's a genuinely interesting point of view - but I'd be interested in seeing more people with an advanced background in both comment.

otabdeveloper2 7y ago

Chess is better than all the games on your list bar Agricola, possibly. Agricola is a four player game, though, so not playing on the same field as chess.