Once upon a time, people tried for the umpteenth time to get me to play the FF series. I said while it's great to watch the cut scenes, the gameplay doesn't look engaging, doesn't seem challenging. They argued that it was.

I said, OK, set me up with an interesting fight. They saved the game before the "hardest fight in the game".

I explored the menus of options, picking each one and seeing what it did.

And accidentally beat the fight while trying to understand the interface.

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There definitely should be words for "how much effort it takes to code a game" and "how much effort it takes to code an AI". But those are only a few of the values necessary to determine if a game is *good*, let alone whether a particular player will enjoy it.

Some other related values include the level of system mastery necessary to create a competent / top tier / "successfully models your concept" / fun to play character, how successful you can be by "button spazzing" (in play, or in character creation), and what the costs of failure look like (for example, in 3e, people claim that you lost the moment you wrote "Fighter" on your character sheet, but that that isn't obvious until much later).

However, an RPG is not a competitive CCG, and so "only the best can win" is even more toxic in an RPG (like 3e) than in a CCG (like MtG). I'll play silly decks in MtG, because I realize that winning isn't everything, and isn't nearly as important as having fun. 3e offers a *huge* range of potential and, even when I run somewhere close to the top of that range - like with Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named - I can still balance to the table by role-playing him as tactically inept.

So, IME, 3e is made of win and options, not some optimal strategy preventing the possibility of playing others.