How was the Democratic debate Tuesday night in Ohio? To answer this question, we must first ask: Which debate are you talking about?

Let’s do, to borrow a word from Andrew Yang’s lapel pin, the math. There were 12 candidates onstage Tuesday, any of whom could have had exchanges with one or more of the others. That made for (counts on fingers) a lot of different interpersonal dynamics. The debate was scheduled for three hours, yet — even with formal opening and closing statements dispensed with — it still ran long.

So there was room for a great number of debates within this debate, sponsored by CNN and The New York Times. This debate had many rooms. It had geologic ages. I believe that somewhere in there, they awarded the Oscar for Best Picture. It is said that near its beginning, the candidates argued about the merits of Medicare for All and how to pay for it, but those are only rumors; no written records remain from that time.

This ultramegasupersized format was the product of the decisions, first, to re-loosen the qualifications that had been tightened for the September debate, where only 10 made the stage, and second, to hold it all on one night, at “Lord of the Rings” length, with as many participants as there are signs of the zodiac. (Everyone who qualified last month got into this debate, with two more joining them for good luck.)

So there was one debate, in which Elizabeth Warren — perceived as the front-runner by the field if not by every poll — fought off challenges from candidates trying to break into the top tier, on everything from health care to Senator Kamala Harris’s demand that President Trump be kicked off Twitter. There was another debate, involving Ms. Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders and Vice President Joseph Biden, in which the three leaders mostly seemed glad to speak next to rather than at one another.

There were also lonely, individual debates, starring Senator Cory Booker (did you know he’s a vegan? Let him tell you about it), who debated against “tearing each other down” during a debate, and the businessman Tom Steyer, who seemed to share one of the viewing public’s deeply held beliefs: He could hardly believe he was up there either.

The decision to make the early debates big and inclusive, of course, had a good intention, to avoid shutting out too many voices too early. But that also left little room for anyone besides the leaders to get real attention or lasting traction. (Even Marianne Williamson’s becoming a meme in the early debates didn’t carry her through to this still-generous round.)

The moderators, Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper of CNN and Marc Lacey of The Times, imposed a mostly minimalist structure on the maximalist event, readying short questions on topics — automation, Syria, gun control — and asking them of most or all of the field.

The trade-off, space and time being finite, was skipping over some subjects, like climate change, that are top of mind for many Democratic voters. There was, however, time for a closing question from Mr. Cooper that resurrected the recent debate over Ellen DeGeneres’s palling around with former president George W. Bush at a football game.

If we were going to rehash that luxury-box problem, the question might have tried to tease out its moral complexities, like what is the point at which principle is more important than comity? Instead, we closed the debate with a dozen candidates each trying to prove their bonhomie bona fides by describing their “surprising” friends, an impressive number of whom were the late Sen. John McCain.

What we didn’t get, though, were the sort of showy questions designed to goad the candidates into fights — not necessary anyway, since so many participants came with fighting points prepared.

And late in the evening, one more debate-within-a-debate broke out, among Mr. Sanders, Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren, over who was more effective at getting big things done. After Mr. Biden pointed to his long record in Washington, Mr. Sanders added, “You got the disastrous war in Iraq done!” (“I say this as a friend.”) And Ms. Warren responded to Mr. Biden’s attempt to claim credit for helping her establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by thanking … Barack Obama (whom you may have heard Mr. Biden mention once or twice).

It was a brief preview of the contrasts we might see when the debates actually get edited down to a manageable size. Then, the leaders might realize they need to engage one another and demonstrate how they’d handle a general-election face-off with a president who is not known for Ellen-esque comity or for politely waiting his turn to speak onstage.

So maybe the question isn’t, have the Democratic debates been useful? Maybe it’s, when will they start?