What does game "depth" really mean?

Put another way, if a game has depth, its NOT because of obscure game knowledge, secret tricks, it because the overall speed and action of the game pushes the mind into places it couldn't reach before. This is what keeps me addicted to Nexuiz.

Trouble is, there isn't diverse enough action in Nexuiz/Xonotic so they compensate with more and more speed to keep the competition from falling into tic-tac-toe (stalemate).

This is typical of legacy games- super simple and super fast. Probably because the much older hardware of days past couldn't handle complex simulations, so they cranked up the challenge levels by making the few things that could happen, happen much faster.

Also people probably did a lot more cocaine. Now we use coffee, which burns up only enough neurons to play sanely paced tactical shooters.

Unfortunately tactical shooters are so dominated by hitscan pseudo-realistic simulations of ballistics that most of the gameplay revolves around hiding and chatting.

If player A beats player B, it needs to be because of a superior mind. IMHO, the only way to achieve this is to have speed and capability of the player limited only by their mind, and not by the physics. Best minds = best players.

Well that's insane. The human mind is adapted to deal with external limitations in your environment, and to innovate ways of dealing with them.

You take those away and you'll be so far outside the realm of human reflexes that simple chance will take over. And meanwhile the vast majority of your brain that isn't responsible for pure reflexes and hand-eye coordination will be idling and getting bored.

Then you have something no better than the far opposite extreme of hyper-micromanagement strategy games, with you having only speed and them only complexity.