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Almost one year ago Nony argued that it, at the time, would be counter productive to focus on the metagame. Now I would like to make the opposite claim.
In here I would like to argue that people "playing the metagame" will speed up our journey towards a settled metagame and the discovery of something similar of a nash equilibrium. Furthermore, you would benefit from being one of those players.
Every single SC2 pro out there knows how to defend a 6 Pool, and they did so 3 months ago too. Yet during the last Dreamhack tournament a really cool guy managed to Zergling rush his way into the top 16, knocking out some of the world's best along the way. How could this possible happen?
While I might know how to stop a 6 Pool in general, I don't know how to stop an unscouted 6 Pool with a 15 Nexus. Yet I might use 15 Nexus a lot. Why? Because in general, it tends to be successful.
Another player might find himself in a different environment. He might find himself swarmed in 6 Pools, and thus he chooses a different opening. We both choose our openings based on how we anticipate our opponents to play, which we in turn base on our experience.
Which opening is best? That's a function of the environment, of the metagame.
Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.
In simple terms, using out-of-game information, or resources, to affect one's in-game decisions.
-Wikipedia
Let's say I look up my next opponent's match history and see that he really likes 4 Gating. Now it might not be a good idea to blind counter a 4 Gate, but at least it would be a good idea to choose an opening which is good against a 4 Gate and to scout specifically for that saved up early energy on the Nexus, perhaps even sacrifice an Overlord to see it.
That would be metagaming. But not the kind of metagaming which I'm interested in here. I'm interested in how I generally tend to play against a generally unknown opponent and how I expect him to generally play against me. I'm interested in the hidden assumptions people carry into their game and how to twist them into my favour.
My Metagame
Sometime ago I always got a pretty quick Spire off 2 bases against Terran. This was vital because Banshees and Hellions tended to control the map thus preventing me from taking a third. Since a lot of Terrans played like this, a lot of Zergs responded just like me - they got that Spire. This made Banshee/Hellion play much less useful and thus Terrans moved on.
Nowadays I find myself playing mostly against Bio based attack timed to strike so that they would demolish me if I got those quick Mutalisks, and so I focus on rushing my Creep towards where I intend to take my third base, and on getting Baneling Speed asap. While this kind of Terran delays my Mutalisk harass, it lets me take my third earlier than the old Terran style did.
Perhaps this kind of Terran vs this kind of Zerg is slightly more Terran favored than the old kind of Terran vs the old kind of Zerg, or perhaps it's the other way round, or perhaps there's no difference at all. The interesting thing is the success enjoyed by the first people who switched styles.
Pioneers of new eras are generally vastly successful -for a while- but you don't always have to take a step forward to ride the metagame towards success. Sometimes it works just as well to take a step backwards.
I wonder, what would happen to me if a Terran chose to go back to an do aggressive Banshee build? Against my current build he would even have time to get an expansion up to fake the "normal" play-style and I imagine he would catch me unprepared.
Would it work twice? No. I don't have to go back to Mutalisk rushing to stop this, shuffling some more resources into scouting -perhaps a quick Overseer- would be enough. However, this would weaken my normal build an make his normal build more effective.
Am I saying that Zergs are basing their current playstyle around the assumption that no Terran would go 2 base Banshee against them? No, I'm saying that I am. I don't play TvZ often enough to know if Zergs in general do it and thus I can't tell if the Banshee build would be good, in general.
Their Metagame
While I don't know how Zergs on my level approach ZvT in general, I do know how the Terrans and Protosses approach playing against Zerg - and this I can use in my favor.
Let me give you an example. Some time a go a lot of Protoss players liked moving out around 7:00 to put some heavy, early pressure on me. Now this was quite bothersome to deal with and often put me in a hole from which I couldn't recover - and I thought ZvP was terribly inbalanced.
However, after giving it some thought I realised that the Protosses were only able to do this because they left their own expansions wide open, and so I began making more and earlier Zerglings. If the Protoss had know that I made those Zerglings he would just have sat in his base and I would have ended up wasting a lot of Larva on Zerglings. However, he didn't know what I was doing and Zergs in general wouldn't do this, so he moved out and I netted myself quite a few freewins on counter attacks.
I imagine I wasn't the only doing this since Protosses eventually stopped moving out blindly. This of course made me lose a few games with my Zergling stabs, but as I realised what was happening I could switch back and enjoy my old, normal playstyle with much less off a worry about that 7:00 timing attack. Now I could get Burrow up in time before he would have the means to scout for Zergling patrols and/or secure his natural with Cannons.
The Zergling stab might have been a silly abuse of the metagame involving little real skill, but so was their 7:00 timing attack really. I fought fire with fire and in the end the metagame stabilized somewhat.
In General
Eventually the metagame will probably settle in a Brood War like manner, but it will only do so if we constantly seek holes in our opponents' metagame. Sometimes others will help us do this, but sometimes the hand of fate must be forced, and those who run the forefront of a revolution will always enjoy a lot of cheap success.
I think it would be worth reminding that I'm not advocating out of the norm play just for the sake of it. I'm advocating abusing the assumptions of your typical opponent in your favour. Remember, we all play in different environments and that which puts you ahead in your metagame might put me behind in mine.
If you find a hole in your opponents' metagame, by all means go ahead and abuse it. I'm telling you that both you, your race and the StarCraft community in general will benefit from you abusing it - but don't come here yelling you've found the ultimate solution to the match up.
Furthermore, remember that much of the advice you read on these forums are based on the metagame in the poster's environment. Highly praised advice generally comes from top level players and is based on their metagame, but the metagame in your environment might make their advice counter-productive.
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To be honest, I don't know which tag to put on this, or even if it would be better off in the SC2 forum. Feel free to edit the title, if you have the power to do so.
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Well stated, and interestingly enough, inspiring, notably, I found it interesting to think about the line you mentioned "how to counter a 6-pool with a 15 nexus". Now, that particular task might be impossible, but for any player not in the highest of Diamond and Masters, I think the idea of knowing HOW to transition out of your favourite/standard openings into a defense or abuse of any given strategy you scout from your opponent is VERY useful.
This is exactly why studying your replays is a vital task -- to spot the holes in your own metagame opponents are abusing and to fix them. I've won many games because someone was doing something that has beat me before, and I've been ecstatic about it, because if I've analyzed my replay I knew EXACTLY how to respond - down to cancelling buildings/cutting workers.
Anyone with any intent on improving their gameplay, or ENJOYING their gameplay should give serious thought to this article and think about what it means to their style of play.
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So here's a question. I've tried prepping for that 7:00 push-out off of a 3-gate expo as well myself and I've tried not prepping for it because it seems so blind. Even on Xel'Naga with a medium distance natural to natural it can be difficult to defend it making units only after the push out.
What do you think the stable response is in this situation or what do you think it might look like?
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That is actually really insightful.
As the game develops, more and more strategies are added to the "arsenal" of the metagame. Early on, all we knew as terrans would be things like reaper rushing, banshee rushing, or MMM, maybe with tanks. Nowadays, we have pure mech styles for every matchup, reaper rushing is still possible(though patches made them uneffective) and banshee rushing is still effective, except that every protoss and zerg can deal with banshee/reaper rushes much easier than they could at that time, because they dealt with it or saw people dealing with it.
Everyone remember's MC's crazy timing push with sentries that totally dominated Jinro and the GSL3? Well, not many people worry about it anymore because they already know how to deal with it - it is still extremly powerful nonetheless, but not that much.
Jinro's mech terran was incredibly strong, who in the world would be able to beat that if MC himself couldnt? We still saw a really good transition into biomech by the "world's best terran" MVP on GSTL, and still Squirtle could deal with that - because he knew about the existance and how to work with it.
As the game develops, more and more strategies will emerge, to a point where old strategies will become suddenly effective again - hell, why would you prepare to a banshee rush when nobody does it anymore? What's the point of walling your base when 6pools are so rare? Why double-wall when baneling bust is something nobody cares about anymore? Who needs sentries to expand, you know your oponent is going double expand anyways, just get some tech! Why would I get colossus on PvP, he can just get Voidrays! That's the kind of things that will happen in the future. And the metagame is something to be used as a weapon as well - heck, there is even a fake-FE build for protoss that simulates a 3-gate robo with hallucination, isn't the metagame already beeing used?
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Really good read and self questioning. Nice to see the highlighted post as well.
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I've noticed that metagame can be very powerful when I started rushing protoss with 5 marines and 5 scvs on SoW. Against a well informed opponent, this attack wouldn't kill them right away, but it would cause sufficient losses on both sides usually in my favor. At this time the protoss will almost always counter attack shortly after with warpgate tech finishing and I would be forced to make bunkers to defend. Now, most protoss will expect you to have an expansion if you bunker outside your natural without actually seeing the command center. At first I tried expanding right away but would almost always lose to a 1 basing protoss. Then I figured out that I could trick them into thinking I've expanded and instead mass bio units and kill them with stim research. This strategy seems noob and all-in-ish, but it's actually a very well thought out strategy which can win games against the best of opponents.
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crazy sht lol, never really thought of it that way.
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Very cool post. I think the hardest part of this is probably accurately judging just where the metagame is and what you're likely to see out of opponents, especially for people who aren't playing at the top of the ladder. The pool of potential opponents for someone in mid-diamond is pretty huge, and if you aren't mass-gaming, it can be hard to really have your finger on the pulse of every matchup.
One possible way to deal with this might be http://www.sc2replayed.com/ 's "most popular strategies" section, which parses all of the uploaded replays and tries to in some way determine what "strategies" were used. I'm not sure they pull out enough information to make this a really useful barometer for the metagame (for instance, you don't seem to be able to sort by league), but it definitely seems like something that with a little work could make for some very cool analysis of what you're likely to see in ladder, and as such what your best bet for countering it is.
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On February 18 2011 03:23 bobq wrote:One possible way to deal with this might be http://www.sc2replayed.com/ 's "most popular strategies" section, which parses all of the uploaded replays and tries to in some way determine what "strategies" were used. I'm not sure they pull out enough information to make this a really useful barometer for the metagame (for instance, you don't seem to be able to sort by league), but it definitely seems like something that with a little work could make for some very cool analysis of what you're likely to see in ladder, and as such what your best bet for countering it is.
I'm not sure that works reliably - it shows 14% of Terran 1v1 games over the last 30 days as being a reaper rush -- perhaps it's mis-parsing a reaper scout as a 'rush'? -- but I dunno the "strategies" listed are pretty simple (understandably so since it's just parsing replay files). Better to keep an eye on regular running tournaments - get replays from the weekly tournaments, the opens, etc - watching a few replays and following the strategy forum here will probably lead a player more in the right direction than something as arbitrary as this type of replay parsing (especially since "COMMON" games are probably uploaded less).
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Canada13389 Posts
very good read I really enjoyed it. It is true that the meta-game affects your decision and i feel it should be noted that particular skill levels have their own microcosmic metagame. For example, it is possible to observe a reverse beel curve with regards to cheese and all ins between bronze and diamond and probably even masters (though I am admittedly one diamond myself, the masters comment comes from watching master level streams of non semi-pro + players).
In bronze cheese such as the 6 pool is common as it is easy to pull off and wins games. At the same time, individuals who are able to succesfully pull off the cheese consistently will win within their relative skill category and thus move up the ranks. As they move up cheese becomes less viable and we see a drop in the silver gold plat range of such play as these individuals are learning new one base all in openings. At higher platinum to diamond many Terrans for example seem to be playing a 3 rax opening which they very rarely recover from if their push fails to do much damage. Zergs at the higher diamond level where I am have also begun to incorporate the 3RR speedling all in much more often than other strategies. These individuals who are good at accomplising their builds are more able to effectively move up the ranks until they hit a wall where the meta game of their relevant mmr/skill level dictates the weaknesses in their play at a meta game level. The individuals then are more able to effectively hold off one base all ins more often.
EDIT: as a side note I am now a proud dragoon ! I am happy - sorry for the off topic I just found it cool
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The highlighted user thing is really neat ^.^ Great post too.
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I think that for the most part people aren't forgetting about six pooling and timing pushes of the past, I think people are getting a lot better and knowing the timings of certain builds and working their game play around the effective ways to survive early pushes without falling of their game plan. As a zerg player myself, I never feel like my build is blatantly vulnerable to some kind of harrass or push that was popular but isn't really popular anymore, instead I have come up with lots of ways of transitioning in the game to various kinds of defenses as need. For instance, I hatch first on every map against protoss and terran in every spawn position. I am often bunker rushes and 4 gated, but I rarely lose to them because I know what to scout for and I am pretty good and defending them. I think with the 3 gate expand economy builds from protoss and two racks, iEchoic builds, ect from terran all the races are starting to figure that kind of stuff out. Good builds that are strong and can counter cheese.
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Here's another example of this sort of metagaming in TvP that most people have forgotten about;
The BratOK build in TvP was wildly popular for a while in beta and shortly after release, popularized partially by Day9. For those who don't know what it is, it's a pure ghost + marine + medivac timing attack. This build crushed gateway-based armies, was flexible to stop starport openings and DTs, and was generally pretty powerful. This made greedy economic builds very risky. However, the BratOK build was weak to one thing, which was a 1-base colossus.
After a while, the BratOK build fell out of favor because of the popularity of 1base colossus (its popularity inspired itself by the build). People sort of forgot about the BratOK build over time.
Now all of a sudden, not having to worry about this build, Protoss players began playing with and standardizing a FE build. Now FEs in PvT are very common, mostly just because BratOK's build basically just was forgotten.
To bring it full-circle, as the OP does, you can easily win games just based on observations of the metagame changing. Sometimes when I know a Protoss player likes to FE I'll just run a BratOK build and pick up what is almost always an easy win.
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+ Show Spoiler +On February 18 2011 02:46 ZerG~LegenD wrote:Almost one year ago Nony argued that it, at the time, would be counter productive to focus on the metagame. Now I would like to make the opposite claim.
In here I would like to argue that people "playing the metagame" will speed up our journey towards a settled metagame and the discovery of something similar of a nash equilibrium. Furthermore, you would benefit from being one of those players.Every single SC2 pro out there knows how to defend a 6 Pool, and they did so 3 months ago too. Yet during the last Dreamhack tournament a really cool guy managed to Zergling rush his way into the top 16, knocking out some of the world's best along the way. How could this possible happen? While I might know how to stop a 6 Pool in general, I don't know how to stop an unscouted 6 Pool with a 15 Nexus. Yet I might use 15 Nexus a lot. Why? Because in general, it tends to be successful. Another player might find himself in a different environment. He might find himself swarmed in 6 Pools, and thus he chooses a different opening. We both choose our openings based on how we anticipate our opponents to play, which we in turn base on our experience. Which opening is best? That's a function of the environment, of the metagame. Show nested quote +
Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.
In simple terms, using out-of-game information, or resources, to affect one's in-game decisions.
-Wikipedia Let's say I look up my next opponent's match history and see that he really likes 4 Gating. Now it might not be a good idea to blind counter a 4 Gate, but at least it would be a good idea to choose an opening which is good against a 4 Gate and to scout specifically for that saved up early energy on the Nexus, perhaps even sacrifice an Overlord to see it. That would be metagaming. But not the kind of metagaming which I'm interested in here. I'm interested in how I generally tend to play against a generally unknown opponent and how I expect him to generally play against me. I'm interested in the hidden assumptions people carry into their game and how to twist them into my favour. My MetagameSometime ago I always got a pretty quick Spire off 2 bases against Terran. This was vital because Banshees and Hellions tended to control the map thus preventing me from taking a third. Since a lot of Terrans played like this, a lot of Zergs responded just like me - they got that Spire. This made Banshee/Hellion play much less useful and thus Terrans moved on. Nowadays I find myself playing mostly against Bio based attack timed to strike so that they would demolish me if I got those quick Mutalisks, and so I focus on rushing my Creep towards where I intend to take my third base, and on getting Baneling Speed asap. While this kind of Terran delays my Mutalisk harass, it lets me take my third earlier than the old Terran style did. Perhaps this kind of Terran vs this kind of Zerg is slightly more Terran favored than the old kind of Terran vs the old kind of Zerg, or perhaps it's the other way round, or perhaps there's no difference at all. The interesting thing is the success enjoyed by the first people who switched styles. Pioneers of new eras are generally vastly successful -for a while- but you don't always have to take a step forward to ride the metagame towards success. Sometimes it works just as well to take a step backwards. I wonder, what would happen to me if a Terran chose to go back to an do aggressive Banshee build? Against my current build he would even have time to get an expansion up to fake the "normal" play-style and I imagine he would catch me unprepared. Would it work twice? No. I don't have to go back to Mutalisk rushing to stop this, shuffling some more resources into scouting -perhaps a quick Overseer- would be enough. However, this would weaken my normal build an make his normal build more effective. Am I saying that Zergs are basing their current playstyle around the assumption that no Terran would go 2 base Banshee against them? No, I'm saying that I am. I don't play TvZ often enough to know if Zergs in general do it and thus I can't tell if the Banshee build would be good, in general. Their MetagameWhile I don't know how Zergs on my level approach ZvT in general, I do know how the Terrans and Protosses approach playing against Zerg - and this I can use in my favor. Let me give you an example. Some time a go a lot of Protoss players liked moving out around 7:00 to put some heavy, early pressure on me. Now this was quite bothersome to deal with and often put me in a hole from which I couldn't recover - and I thought ZvP was terribly inbalanced. However, after giving it some thought I realised that the Protosses were only able to do this because they left their own expansions wide open, and so I began making more and earlier Zerglings. If the Protoss had know that I made those Zerglings he would just have sat in his base and I would have ended up wasting a lot of Larva on Zerglings. However, he didn't know what I was doing and Zergs in general wouldn't do this, so he moved out and I netted myself quite a few freewins on counter attacks. I imagine I wasn't the only doing this since Protosses eventually stopped moving out blindly. This of course made me lose a few games with my Zergling stabs, but as I realised what was happening I could switch back and enjoy my old, normal playstyle with much less off a worry about that 7:00 timing attack. Now I could get Burrow up in time before he would have the means to scout for Zergling patrols and/or secure his natural with Cannons. The Zergling stab might have been a silly abuse of the metagame involving little real skill, but so was their 7:00 timing attack really. I fought fire with fire and in the end the metagame stabilized somewhat. In GeneralEventually the metagame will probably settle in a Brood War like manner, but it will only do so if we constantly seek holes in our opponents' metagame. Sometimes others will help us do this, but sometimes the hand of fate must be forced, and those who run the forefront of a revolution will always enjoy a lot of cheap success. I think it would be worth reminding that I'm not advocating out of the norm play just for the sake of it. I'm advocating abusing the assumptions of your typical opponent in your favour. Remember, we all play in different environments and that which puts you ahead in your metagame might put me behind in mine. If you find a hole in your opponents' metagame, by all means go ahead and abuse it. I'm telling you that both you, your race and the StarCraft community in general will benefit from you abusing it - but don't come here yelling you've found the ultimate solution to the match up. Furthermore, remember that much of the advice you read on these forums are based on the metagame in the poster's environment. Highly praised advice generally comes from top level players and is based on their metagame, but the metagame in your environment might make their advice counter-productive. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To be honest, I don't know which tag to put on this, or even if it would be better off in the SC2 forum. Feel free to edit the title, if you have the power to do so.
hmm interesting proposition, it would probably work, but these meta game stages are happening passively as we go anyway
is it only me that sees his post with a blue background, yet nothing in its quote makes mine blue? (or at least the quote) 
i just read nonys post, if you find a hole in a very strong current metagame in an old metagame, sure use it, but the other people wont go back to an old metagame because it becomes build order losses
instead of relying on what has been, try to improve on the current metagame or find a new strategy which creates an exploitable hole in it
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This is a great post. It's something I've thought a lot about, and it's fascinating to see the evolution of each match up, and how some have even come full circle. Some of this change has been driven by patches (e.g., the death of 5rax reaper), but a lot of it is just down to the metagame. For example, ZvT has evolved from a point where 15 hatch was standard, to being an extremely risky opening, and now to a point where hatch first and pool first openings are both quite playable. Similarly, I noticed the period you mentioned in ZvP where openings like 13pool speedling were extremely effective. It wasn't a particularly good opening, but it came at a time when zergs were generally opening hatchery first or with a much later pool, and so most protoss players felt safe opening greedily. The result was an exploitable timing window where protoss had very little defence. As protoss players started denying early hatcheries with cannons and pylon blocks, thereby limiting zerg's options, they were also forced to patch this hole.
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Since we're on the topic, Do you guys think tricky plays such as faking an expo and then canceling it would be a viable strategy? One example I can think of is faking a fast natural if the zerg does a 15 hatch then canceling for an all in. This could cause the zerg to possibly go for a fast 3rd which will give you a huge advantage in army size.
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Here's a fun one that I came up with about 2 weeks ago, unfortunately I'm having trouble getting a stable follow-up, it feels very promising though.
ZvT anti-2-rax pressure.
I build 10 drones, then as soon as my overlord is building, I send 2 drones to scout the map.
As soon as possible, I get them both into the Terran's base, typically harassing the SCV that is building his barracks, maybe starting a small worker war, then I proceed to double gas steal him.
2 rax's strength comes on the assumption that Z will get his expo up as soon as possible, since I have forced this build, I instead throw down a spawning pool, gas, and roach warren as soon as possible. Keeping just 16 drones in my main for the time being.
Build 10 Roaches (maybe some other stuff like a few lings & bling nest to give me options), and poke at Ts ramp.
This may sound like an all-in, but having a queen back at home means I can build 7 drones every 30 seconds compared to his 2 or 4 depending on whether or not he has an in-base command center. This should allow me to compete with his MULE income (though I do admittedly give him a huge mineral lead, but that's ok, he has no gas for the time being). All I am doing is utilizing that small army to screw with Terran's expo timing while I secure my own expansion. Sound familiar?
I am still having problems like how to deal with a MM stim-timing all-in, but this build is totally going along the lines of this thread, using commonly accepted ideas like "2 rax is strong" against the person executing the build.
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On February 18 2011 06:00 Jermstuddog wrote:
Build 10 Roaches
I'm curious at what time you are able to get 10 roaches with this strategy. How long are you able to hold on to the gas? In other words, how many marauders could he possibly build, supposing he kills your gas steal faster than it takes you to get the 10 roaches?
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It's only feasible to have 1 marauder by the time I get to his base.
The problem is that 2 barracks with 2-3 bunkers full of marines behind them can hold off the roaches by themselves.
The BO is pretty simple:
15 double gas steal
13 pool
12 gas
16 queen
18 roach warren
18 overlord
18 overlord
18 overlord
make 10 roaches
This is a shitload of army at that point in the game, but you just can't fit it all up T's ramp if he has a good sim city going on.
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The needs of the many vs. the needs of the few.
Playing the metagame gives you a temporary advantage over other players until the metagame changes. In that sense it's good for racking up wins in the short term (say, in a tourney), and it might be helpful to the community in terms of metagame evolution.
But it doesn't increase your raw skill or make you a more solid player. Until you're at the highest levels, isn't that what you should be focusing on?
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On the contrary ... in my eyes as long as the metagame doesn't settle being able to read and exploit it is a big "skill". Most of those exploits are the strategies of the "future", finding and playing them is the essence of RTS. Proper execution of a standard strategy is nothing but boring.
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On February 18 2011 07:10 nodule wrote:
The needs of the many vs. the needs of the few.
Playing the metagame gives you a temporary advantage over other players until the metagame changes. In that sense it's good for racking up wins in the short term (say, in a tourney), and it might be helpful to the community in terms of metagame evolution.
But it doesn't increase your raw skill or make you a more solid player. Until you're at the highest levels, isn't that what you should be focusing on?
Absolutely disagree. A big part of starcraft is not just in the mechanics but also in the decision making and reading your opponent. Intellegence is a critical skill - as long as the metagame isn't totally settled, practicing reading your opponents and metagaming them is critical. Also by performing metagame builds you are increasing your skill with those builds, and if they become standard then you will have a solid advantage.
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On February 18 2011 07:10 nodule wrote:
The needs of the many vs. the needs of the few.
Playing the metagame gives you a temporary advantage over other players until the metagame changes. In that sense it's good for racking up wins in the short term (say, in a tourney), and it might be helpful to the community in terms of metagame evolution.
But it doesn't increase your raw skill or make you a more solid player. Until you're at the highest levels, isn't that what you should be focusing on?
I think he's saying not to abuse the metagame for the sake of winning, but rather to stabilize the metagame of SC2 overall asap.
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I can't comment on zerg because they play differently, but I disagree that the "forcing the metagame" concept should be applied to terran.
What I believe is best for the community is the safe & standard builds are tweaked so that it can withstand anything. For example, lets say after GSL someone uses a new build. The build will appear on the ladder as many people will copy it. I don't believe that a player should do something specific just to beat that if what they do is only applicable to that build. What I think will advance the game the most is the player tweaks their build and figures out how to defeat it with their standard play.
For example, take oGsMC's VR/stalker variations. A terran player (who normally opens 1-1-1) metagaming may make a viking first. However, that viking is not useful if the protoss didn't go VRs. What I believe is better is if that terran player figures out how to defend while keeping their same build.
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On February 18 2011 07:10 nodule wrote:
But it doesn't increase your raw skill or make you a more solid player. Until you're at the highest levels, isn't that what you should be focusing on?
The two aren't incompatible because they don't fit in the same "slot". You focus on solid mechanics while playing a match, you focus on coming up with new strategies in between matches.
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It has been mentioned before, but many games have a concept of rock-paper-scissors built in where one strategy / unit is better than another. Some of the "counters" are hard, some are soft.
What makes SC1 and SC2 so good is that there are manyh different rock-paper-scissors combinations, including multiple races, ground/air, armored/light, bio/mech, expand/tech/aggro, etc, etc...
In SC2, we are still discovering what the rock, paper and scissors are. In TvZ MM vs bling/ling: marines > muta > maruader > bling > marines
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Very good post.
The metagame is the reason I FE as Z on Steppes of War. Everyone thinks I'm going to rush them at my level (high diamond).
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Aye, there are some times when playing the metagame really helps.
For example, in ZvT, a properly executed baneling bust is impossible for the terran to scout without using a scan, and looks otherwise just like a pool first build that gets a slightly delayed second hatch. Its also a free win, unless the terran scanned, was going for a 3rax stim push, or walled himself in with production buildings.
So if all the zergs would unite, and baneling bust terrans at least 10 times each, then we would end up in a situation where a terran that isnt going for a 3rax stim push needs to wall in with production buildings (making it easier to scout for zergs), or scan (making it easier on zergs due to the terran losing out on money).
So as a whole, it would be awesome for zergs if terrans had to take a baneling bust into account when playing.
The problem though, is that if only 1 person decides to baneling bust each ZvT game, well that one guy is going to have a really high win-loss ratio, but will be stuck in winning every ZvT with a baneling bust, since he alone wont be enough to actually cause a metagame shift.
If everyone does it, we all get a couple of free wins, the bulk of the terrans adapt, and we can all go back to "normal" play, and just have it slightly easier.
But if I do it, then Im just winning a lot with an all-in, and not really improving my play.
Its similar to actionjesus and his 6pools.
If zergs as a whole 6 pooled a decent amount of the time, then it wouldnt be possible for toss to safely open with a 15 nexus.
However though, if 1 single zerg 6 pools, then he gets some free wins, true, but it isnt really improving his play, or the metagame as a whole.
In conclusion:
I dont think that people "playing the metagame" will help improve the metagame at all. It will only really help that specific player, and do nothing to the metagame as a whole. Even if you play massive amounts of games each day, you wont ever come close to actually affecting your opponent's decisions on their builds, since to them, you are just an anomaly, and not something that they actually have to take into account when choosing a build.
If you 6 pool only, and thxs to you, protoss now have a 0.000000000001% chance of running into a 6 pool when they 15 nexus, well that wont stop them.
The only way to have the metagame actually shift, is to have hundreds of players start to play differently.
Thus it only really happens when a prominent caster (such as d9 for example, or idra and artosis making their show about 2base void-colossus being unstopable) makes a suggestion, or when a pro does something cool that players want to imitate, or when someone posts a guide on the forums, and so on. Then, there is a chance for the metagame to shift, because then, and only then, is there a chance for a lot of players to start abusing that hole, and thus they force a reaction from the opponent.
TLDR:
One person doesnt affect the metagame. If you find a hole in the current playstyles and exploit it, it helps no one but yourself, and it wont cause any shift in the metagame whatsoever, unless it somehow becomes public.
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Input from a low level Plat Zerg player:
As someone whose schedule dictates that I spend more time reading forums/ watching commentaries about SC2 than actually playing the game, I can say that the Metagame has a HUGE effect on the decisions I make before and during every game at my level of play.
Ill use the old Void Ray rushes that use to destroy me as an example:
I use to die to VR rushes all the time, and as a result would always prepare early Spore Crawlers and extra Queens and I would never FE against a Toss because at my current skill, I have issues protecting both bases against this.
At the time I was watching a dozen commentaries a day but only playing maybe 10 games a week and I saw this as the best way to protect myself without going to Hydras.
Once the VR Nerf hit, and 4Gates became absurdly common against Z, I was still making extra Spore Crawlers and Queens and got ROLFStomped by the first or second wave of Gateway units and lost 5-6 games in a row.
It wasn't until I spent more time thinking about the Metagame, reading forums, and watching commentaries that I realized I didn't need to spend those extra resources so early against an attack that was most likely not gonna happen.
Most players that have the luxury of playing 50+ games a week don't see this as anything but "learning from experience" but I had to learn HOW to play the game better when I wasn't playing the game. To me that is Meta game : Thinking about the game when you aren't playing the game. And if you do this enough, you can learn as much from playing 2-3 games as you would playing 100 games and NOT thinking about what the other person was thinking as early as the "Map Preference" screen.
TLDR:
I think the players are always "Playing the Metagame" whenever they make a decision based off of past experiences (either that they have had themselves, or they have read about/ watched in a replay).
I also think the best way to move a game forward in terms of the complexity and variety of strategies seen is by players thinking about more than the efficiency of their mouse clicks and keystrokes they made during the game and rather focusing on WHY their opponent made their choices.
Metagame makes Checkers into Chess.
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Great post! People who are at the forefront of developing new strategies will always be some of the most successful and fun to watch.
Evaluating the metagame and trying to exploit it is almost a whole third of the game in my opinion, the others being mechanics and strategy (decision making).
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How can you force the metagame when you know nothing about the opponent in a random 1v1?
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On February 19 2011 04:52 rapier7 wrote:
How can you force the metagame when you know nothing about the opponent in a random 1v1?
There are still trends that you can take advantage of. For instance, right after a GSL match, chances are a particular build may crop up quickly on the ladder. Someone can thus metagame by playing in an approach that directly counters that GSL build. Also, by playing many ladder games, you can quickly get a feel for what openings and builds are currently popular.
I made an earlier post in this thread about how I disagree that a player should engage in the metagame. I'll give an example using my own personal experience:
In the TvP matchup I play 1-1-1 cloaked banshees with reactored marines. However, there was significant steps before I arrived at its current form:
- I used to play techlab-rax for marauders. I find marauders good against 4-gate (better than reactor-rax) but very weak against VR openings. However, if I were to engage in metagaming, I may deliberately play techlab-rax if the VR openings were out of favour on the ladder. However, I don't wish to metagame and thus reactor all the time.
- I used to get a raven first before banshee but found that VR openings were good against the raven. If I were to engage in metagaming, I would get a viking (then banshee) if the VR openings suddenly became popular. However, instead, I decided to tweak my build (I go banshee then raven now) which better handled protoss all-ins. Hence, by not metagaming, I feel that I have advanced my build.
- Currently, I rarely encounter DT openings. To exploit this, I may just use mules without saving energy. However, I play it safe and save one scan prior to my raven building. This has saved my some games where the protoss did go quick DTs.
Thus, I feel that if I had engaged in metagaming and played a guessing game, I would not have been able to tweak my build as effectively as possible.
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Great post. I think most of my success in Masters is due to the fact that I am one of those ahead of the metagame, which is a flaw. I rarely 4-gate, and I've been using stargate openers since beta, so my success is due to opponents not being geared to handle my builds. However, I would caution players against trying to get wins this way. My flaws are thrown into sharp relief when I play superior opponents, and trying to switch backwards into common builds nets me even more losses because I, compared to other players who have used these common builds for months, am relatively inexperienced and suffer for it. Coming from War3, my macro is still quite poor, and my micro that was getting me ahead early in my play is now being matched by equal level opponents. It is now that I realize how deficient my play is and how my approach to laddering in sc2 has not granted myself any benefit.
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Great post, and I wanted to use CecilSunkure's recent writeup of the 3 Stalker counter to 4Gate as an example of how settling the metagame can be beneficial to the SC2 Community:
I think most P's will agree that when correctly executed, the build is extremely good at countering 4Gate. Most P's will also agree that at the highest level, 4Gate is extremely prevalent, and it is probably a good metagame play to assume your opponent will attempt a variation of it and plan your build accordingly (why you don't see 1 Gate FE or even 3 Gate FE in PvP).
Now that the build is out there, people will start executing it and start squashing 4Gates with regularity, and IMO the metagame of PvP will shift away from 4Gating each other to death to more stable play (into Colossi wars /facepalm). While the entertainment value of Colossi wars is debatable, few people would make the claim that 100% of high level PvP being 4Gate is enjoyable, since you either 4Gate to kill your non-4Gating opponent or 4Gate to survive against your 4Gating opponent.
Seems like semantics, but I'm confident strategies such as this one will help stabilize the meta game and make for more interesting ladder games in general.
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I agree with the OP. This mindset is very easy to see if you take a look at the 3 gate expand with sentry heavy in the beginning in PvZ, that used to work sooo well against zerg who mainly went alot of roaches, and slowly made hydras and slowly made corruptors. However, nowadays, it works.. but not nearly as effective as it used to be. Zerg know how the protoss will play and react with that strategy, so they become very cost efficient and skip units to get slightly higher tech than they really should get away with. For instance, the jump to hydras can be done soo fast if the zerg choose too. Some protoss react by getting colossus when they see the hydras, but since the zerg knows they will come the corruptors will be there waiting for them in great numbers. Then suddenly all the tech is gone from protoss and it's almost time to type gg. It's wierd, but forces you to start thinking outside the box with going back to strategies that opens up 2 gate and with the addition of a robo or stargate instead.
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On February 20 2011 02:18 413X wrote:
I agree with the OP. This mindset is very easy to see if you take a look at the 3 gate expand with sentry heavy in the beginning in PvZ, that used to work sooo well against zerg who mainly went alot of roaches, and slowly made hydras and slowly made corruptors. However, nowadays, it works.. but not nearly as effective as it used to be. Zerg know how the protoss will play and react with that strategy, so they become very cost efficient and skip units to get slightly higher tech than they really should get away with. For instance, the jump to hydras can be done soo fast if the zerg choose too. Some protoss react by getting colossus when they see the hydras, but since the zerg knows they will come the corruptors will be there waiting for them in great numbers. Then suddenly all the tech is gone from protoss and it's almost time to type gg. It's wierd, but forces you to start thinking outside the box with going back to strategies that opens up 2 gate and with the addition of a robo or stargate instead.
Void ray colossi is mid/end-game, and will destroy super-quick-teching zergs. All the toss has to do it scout, and if he sees hive tech then he can easily reach. Phoenixes are great scouts, and they're almost always checking expansions/hive.
I always go 15 nex into stargate into colossi (with 3-5 gateways depending on zerg) and always won because they just massed corruptors, so I got more void rays and stlakers.
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I believe the most important part of metagame is the scouting aspect of it.
For example, if that 7:00 minute timing attack is popular, you would focus on scouting and reacting properly to that tactic to ensure you can handle it and come out on top. Once that changes and people rarely go for that timing attack, you can change your scout timing to look for things that are popular.
As the timings and play styles change, I believe that by changing your scout timings, that will already put you on top.
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EPT
