luck and randomness don't make a game unstrategic, you just have to adjust your strategy to accommodate the factors you can't control.

Luck isn’t a player-made decision and therefore games that use too much of it no longer makes it a strategy game, but a game of chance.
Picks you receive from auto distribution aren’t player-made decisions.
Things like 0% WR where 3v2 is 80%ish chance working and 4v2 always working is risk management. High luck modifiers greatly increases the number of armies needed for a reliable chance of an attack to work. It’s not risk management but luck.

by your logic, no game that uses dice or a shuffled deck of cards is strategic. but that's obviously false.

Those are games of chance with some strategy but they are not strategy games.

When we say “strategic”, we refer to it under the definition of a “strategy game” and not “strategy” because any setting can be strategic, but how settings are combined turns it into a strategy game or other game type.

Do you understand how the meanings of “strategy” and “strategy game” are different?

Might want to have a read from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_chance:

A game of chance is in contrast with a game of skill. It is a game whose outcome is strongly influenced by some randomizing device. Common devices used include dice, spinning tops, playing cards, roulette wheels, numbered balls, or in the case of digital games random number generators. A game of chance may be played as gambling if players wager money or anything of monetary value.

Alternatively, a game of skill is one in which the outcome is determined mainly by mental or physical skill, rather than chance.[1]

While a game of chance may have some skill element to it, chance generally plays a greater role in determining its outcome. A game of skill may also may have elements of chance, but skill plays a greater role in determining its outcome.

It would be incorrect to say that “normal” games are predominantly are determined by skill and therefore they would not fall into the “strategic” game type. “Strategic” has low or no chance involved. It’s why there needs to be a distinction between “normal” and “strategy” games.

Edited 12/1/2023 23:55:48

you're not really approaching this with much nuance Dan. you're basically saying that Catan is in the same category as a slot machine, a false equivalency.

strategy games can involve some luck factors without becoming unstrategic. it's up to the player to make sure that strategic planning accounts for anything out of the player's control.

strategy changes based on a number of factors. elements of chance just add another thing you have to factor in when you come up with your gameplan

Let's move on to the next constructive discussion where one party believes nuance doesn't exist

At no point did I imply Catan isn’t a strategy game. There is some luck to it but luck isn’t main winning factor. I’ve never played it myself, but I’m going of information I can find on it.

Do I need to explain to you how automatic distribution is luck and how at higher levels of play, picks are how the better players win because both players play the picks as well as possible?

This isn’t a debate about what strategy is but what characteristics of strategy games are in terms Warzone game templates. I believe I have successfully shutdown any counter argument you have - you use “strategy” to define the “strategic” game type instead of “strategy game”. “Normal” games and “strategic” games as game types are very different. Do you recognise the difference?

Dan, you have explained everything and everybody except one got it. You should be satisfied with yourself and just leave this, as you wrote yourself :)

Edited 12/2/2023 01:17:08

Sure :)
Now back to the original question, “what makes a template ‘strategic’?

Hey you, reader, I know that you are at your lunch break, logged in to check out whats happening in warlight, I am here to facilitate your reading experience and give you a TLDR.

queefballs says games traditionally not considered strategic due to elements of luck (you reader that is about to yell at me that he isn't talking about the luck setting but airlifts, i mean luck as randomness or random effects, actions on the game that the player has not control over in general) can still require critical and Strategic thinking. He (I assume) challenges and wants to dethrone the elitist separation of normal vs strategic games, as its arbitrary and unnecessary.

dan emphasizes that strategic points should involve primarily player decisions, (yes primarily as he has defended some luck as "risk management" lmao), with minimal influence from luck. and supports his opinion through a wikipedia link and the surely not confirmation biased chatgpt response. He (I assume), wants a clear distinction between normal and strategic games based on the luck factors involved and the degree to which they influence outcomes.

and now for the the actual biased response i still agree more with queefballs more than dan. I am very surprised he is still taking you guys seriously, thats some insane levels of persistence. Maybe it is the fact that he has been consistent and not provocative, despite the responses he receives. Let's take a trip back to the past to an era where emergency blockade was considered not strategic shall we?

https://www.warzone.com/Forum/150696-airlift-cards-considered-strategic

Chris I’m not sure what your link is trying to prove. The argument there looks identical to the one in this thread with identical points on both sides of the argument. I’d say the anti-airlift side was actually even more eloquently argued in that thread by "Kenny" than it has been by anyone in this thread.

I didn't read everything, maybe someone else already pointed this out, but as far as I can see it's just semantics.

Rename the format to anything else like "chess format" instead of "strategic" and that might make them happy? And if not they can create their own format...

I posted it in hopes that both parties realise that their beliefs aren't formed over the last month but go way back into the past, so from pov its very ironic trying to invalidate and tarnish each other opinions in the way its happening in this forum.

I agree, Kenny solved that forum with a very simple yet thorough explanation.

But I also can see a very thin line between the concepts of "risk management" and straight up "randomness".

Where in risk management I see WR and other settings categorised, as despite being inherently luck-based, someone with more experience over the concept surrounding that setting will consistently win more games.

In randomness, a category which I am not proud of its name, I understand we include outcomes that are entirely, or largely beyond the player's control, thus determined by chance. Under this definition, the factor of guessing whether your opponent will or will not airlift a stack of armies in the territory you plan on attacking fits in perfectly.

To my understanding and experience, this thin line between:
predictive play and management of the probabilities and potential outcomes vs
elements the player has little to no ability to influence their outcome,

is constantly challenged with new and complicated templates, with innovative ways to introduce settings that would otherwise be considered straight up luck. Under these premises, both parties are simply correct in their own way.

We can hate on queefball for reminding us that some "random inducing settings" still require critical thinking and strategic play, but the evolution of templates in this website supports his arguments.
We can hate on dan for his conservative view of strategics, but indisputably he has a point wanting this thin line to be clearly defined.

To me both viewpoints have a merit and overlap. I don't understand the "I fundamentally disagree with your opinion" and "Who allowed this guy to have an opinion" and all the bullshit taking place here due to the inability in having a simple discussion without invalidating and degrading their counterpart. That is exactly why i linked a forum from 7 years ago.

But I would argue now that publicly considered strategic templates now incorporate settings and concepts that 7 years ago were trashed upon. Under this premise, queefball's arguments are, at this moment, much more valid than 7 years ago.

Chris, there is a difference between outright saying 'XY setting is trash', and 'how XY is currently used is trash'.
Like many people said that what matters is how any setting is being used in combination to other settings.

What queefball is saying tho is that any setting / template is strategic period.
Which is true to his defintion he uses, but then again the definition he uses basicly also says "breathing is strategic" because its simpy that broad.
Hence why nobody agrees with him as its a useless definition.

A template that is now considered strategicly trash will be strategicly trash in 1, 2, 7 or 30 years too.
What can change is how any settng might be used to make it work strategicly which nobody refuted in this thread.

I would consider myself to be more open to new ideas and also said earlier that i think airlifts can be used strategic (especially if it were changed or more customizeable) but when a certain queefball invites me to a 2v2v2 with auto dist and tries to tell me that thats strategic then thats just a hard pass for me.
And saying "oh you just gotta adjust how you play to account for it being a 2v2v2 with automatic distribution" borders rediculous levels as you cannot "adjust" to spawning in the center randomy, surrounded by 4 players and you just die.

Edited 12/2/2023 14:51:39

Well yes, can't really argue with 2v2v2 automatic distribution that's in the fun and not in the strategic

Yeah it's fairly accepted that all templates (except the pure lotto templates) and all settings involve strategy; the real question here is not whether these settings/templates involve strategy or not, but how much strategy is required for a template to be considered 'strategic'?
Which is very subjective, and it's been really interesting reading different people's takes!

Most of the discussion between Dan and queefballs simply boils down to a disagreement about definitions which is ultimately a very uninteresting debate imo. I propose retiring the term "strategic" and replacing it with the term “competitive”, which I would define as meaning a "competitive template" is one that is appropriate for high level competitions such as Clan League, a seasonal ladder, AWP, MTL, etc.

That said, I’m sure someone would then say "all games are competitive since players are trying to win", so maybe that wouldn’t work either :P

Edited 12/2/2023 17:22:15

@Beren
probably yes, that would happen.
'Skill-Based' is another one but really there is no reason to change it really.
Strategic works just fine as everyone understands what is meant by that anyhow.

Edited 12/2/2023 17:33:43

what is meant by strategic? and who is this everyone?

Some very broad guidelines to constrain the definition perhaps:

1v1 or 2 teams of equal size
Luck modifier <=16% (why some of you play 16% WR I will never understand, but somehow there's enough of you out there)
Manual starting picks
Enough available picks for both players/teams to receive their quota
No, Light or Normal Fog
Cyclic or No Luck attack order
Fixed number of pieces of each card per turn (where an attack is successful)

This obviously still includes some very unfun templates, like airlift hell, but everyone is on a level playing field, and the most optimal player/team should win significantly more often.

Making a template competitively viable also requires it to not be boring to play, but to deny the existence of strategy in tiny maps, commander + bomb template, and airlift templates is disingenuous.

Even with all that said, the term "strategic" has generally come to mean competitively viable on WZ, so trying to pin an exact meaning of the term down is a waste of energy.