Your argument was that the game is less interesting if ties are common. You used tic-tac-toe as an example, versus Dominion. And you argued that tic-tac-toe lacked depth because ties are common.
People pointed out that it is not a fair comparison because Dominion is very deep and tic-tac-toe is not. And note that tic-tac-toe does not lack depth due to ties, but because it is an extremely simple game that is SOLVED. Chess was brought up as a counter-example as another game where ties are common. Do you argue the depth in Chess?
It does lack depth, but that's not because ties are common - it's the reason why ties are common. Ties are much less common in casual level chess than pro level chess, because the difference in skill is bigger. In pro games, the difference in skill is smaller, but it's still obviously there. The reason for chess's high tie rate is not lack of depth though.
We are talking about depth. Your Dominion variant has just as much depth as regular Dominion, because the core game mechanics are exactly the same. The fact that ties are more common in your variant does NOT change the depth of the game. Likewise, the game is just as interesting, because the gameplay is still the same. But the game is much more FRUSTRATING, because the final score can be a draw EVEN THOUGH one player vastly outperforms the other(s). Someone could piledrive the Provinces and still end up tying.
The problem with the variant is NOT that ties are common, but that ties are common in spite of a large skill disparity. And that does not make the game less deep or less interesting. It just makes the game more frustrating. The frustration is not because winning is difficult, but because you can't win even when you do way better. There is a difference.
And yes, it is artificial and meaningless because you impose a filter on the scoring mechanism that makes no sense at all. Yeah, draws are horrible if they occur even though one player is much better at the game. That doesn't say anything at all about draws in general.
Maybe you were talking about depth, but I wasn't. I was talking about difficulty. The game is much more frustrating, because it's much more difficult to win: even if you're a very good player, you still end up not winning most of the time. The same can be said about the video game I Wanna Be The Guy, which is extremely difficult, so even if you're a very good player, you still end up not winning most of the time. And while watching extremely skilled players beating I Wanna Be The Guy is interesting, playing the game is not, because I'm not extremely skilled and there's no way I can beat it, and knowing that I'm going to fail anyway is not interesting. And it's not interesting to play a game that's way too easy, either. For me, about 1 retry required for winning the game is a pretty good level of difficulty, and I'm sure that some others prefer more difficult games. In 2-player board games, it's pretty close to that on average assuming that I'm an average player (which is true for most board games).
Of course it is artificial and meaningless. But it doesn't matter that it's artificial and meaningless. J. S. Bach composed a lot of artificial and meaningless songs, but some of those songs are pretty good anyway. Just because something is artificial and meaningless doesn't mean it's bad, my Dominion variant is bad for whole other reasons.
