EPTthe best thing blizzard could do balance wise is to just absolutly freeze balance patching with the release version. let player and mappers figure it out. blizzard will still have 2 more shots (the 2 addons) to make some changes.
Don't Focus on Metagame - Page 2
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h0munkulus
Austria1481 Posts
the best thing blizzard could do balance wise is to just absolutly freeze balance patching with the release version. let player and mappers figure it out. blizzard will still have 2 more shots (the 2 addons) to make some changes. | ||
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Slunk
Germany768 Posts
Also, since most players do not aim to become progamers or something, they do whatever is fun and allins are. This might have little to do with the term metagame, but the more different strategies the players discover, the better Blizzard's chances are to prevent a dominant strategy that kills every RTS. | ||
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obesechicken13
United States10467 Posts
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Whiplash
United States2928 Posts
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Shiladie
Canada1631 Posts
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NonY
8751 Posts
On April 16 2010 04:46 AcrossFiveJulys wrote: Very good post. Just wondering, what inspired you to write this? Have you been coming up against a lot of players going for all-in/semi-blind strategies? Yeah. I think that people feel safer and more solid than they actually are. They dismiss their losses instead of learning from them. And when they do learn from their losses and change their game, they tend to sacrifice the strength of whatever they were doing before the changes. Or they might just be content with how often they're winning at the time and they don't know how to improve. They win 60% of the time with their shaky strategy and they stick with it until it drops below 50%. Then they react to that new thing and hit 60% again. They have no idea how to win 70% or more of the time. And cycling back through older strategies can always threaten their 60% win rate. Basically, instead of focusing on moving forward with strategies, they're moving sideways. But because one thing came first and the other thing came second, they feel like they've made progress. Metagame is the culprit. | ||
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Half
United States2554 Posts
The metagame always has underlying causative. Their are factors that caused it to form. Analyzing what those causative are a hugely important process, when trying to independently determine balance information. The causative is most likely due to external factors independent of the game, like player skill, lack of experience, insufficient growth, etc, but they can also reflect internal causative that may detriment the ability of the metagame to grow. Its important to analyze the metagame to determine whether the cause is something that can be changed, or if it is internal to the game itself (Imbalance/poor design) | ||
Chill
Calgary25987 Posts
On April 16 2010 04:32 avilo wrote: good post, but metagame is actually just the theoretically best possible way to play the game at a specific point in time. You cannot just make up terms. Metagame does not mean the winningest strategy nor does it mean the most standard way to play. I think Tasteless started using the word like this on GOM and everyone now believes that's what it means. | ||
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BADSMCGEE
United States94 Posts
I mostly agree.... I agree on your opinion that the strategies used by the player shouldn't be heavily based on the current metagame, but that doesn't make the information from the current metagame meaningless. The metagame always has underlying causatives. Their are factors that caused it to form. Analyzing what those causitives are a hugely important process, when trying to independently determine balance information. The causative is most likely due to external factors independent of the game, like player skill, lack of experience, unsufficient growth, etc, but they can also reflect internal causative that may detriment the ability of the metagame to grow. Its important to analyze the metagame to determine whether the cause is something that can be changed, or if it is internal to the game itself (Imbalance/poor design) I know you're trying to put on the big boy facade because you're talking to someone halfway intelligent, but you would evoke MORE of a conversation if you spoke like a human being and stuck only to words in the dictionary. (i.e unsufficient) | ||
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Wretched
Australia121 Posts
i'm still enjpying me free wins from protoss players who blindly send 3 super fast immortals and 4 zealots blindly at my 48 zerglings | ||
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Smuft
Canada318 Posts
This is just nitpicking though and I think this was a good post. You do not need to get into imaginary psychological battles with your opponents and should just focus on playing solid. | ||
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Floophead_III
United States1832 Posts
Stop doing risky strategies simply to win based on hoping that your opponent does something weak to it. Try to find the best compromise and most flexible build which provides the greatest balance of strength vs a variety of builds. Or in 2 words: Don't cheese. You also are saying that it promotes a better development for the game as a whole when people focus more on finding universally strong strategies than risky cheeses and luck based play. I can't agree more. I've been saying this stuff since day 1 and often get dismissed by players who legitimately think their cheese is good play. It's very troubling because I think people are so much more inclined to win rather than explore. Great post, much needed, and well put. | ||
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nodule
Canada931 Posts
On April 16 2010 04:20 lolaloc wrote: I have a roommate that knows the true meaning of metagame. I was surprised when he said "Got you with my metagame didn't I?" My scanner sweep drove me nuts each time I scan his base. He did a fake Muta to fake Lurker to fake Hydra to Guardian-Scourge. No he doesn't: tricking another player in a game isn't "metagame". If he announced to you that we was going mutas before the game, or knew that you personally always scanned in a certain spot and took advantage of that... that's metagame | ||
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floor exercise
Canada5847 Posts
On April 16 2010 05:07 Chill wrote: You cannot just make up terms. Metagame does not mean the winningest strategy nor does it mean the most standard way to play. I think Tasteless started using the word like this on GOM and everyone now believes that's what it means. You could say Tasteless exploited a timing window to forever alter the metaposting of TLnet | ||
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Antimage
Canada1293 Posts
On April 16 2010 05:01 Liquid`NonY wrote: Yeah. I think that people feel safer and more solid than they actually are. They dismiss their losses instead of learning from them. And when they do learn from their losses and change their game, they tend to sacrifice the strength of whatever they were doing before the changes. Or they might just be content with how often they're winning at the time and they don't know how to improve. They win 60% of the time with their shaky strategy and they stick with it until it drops below 50%. Then they react to that new thing and hit 60% again. They have no idea how to win 70% or more of the time. And cycling back through older strategies can always threaten their 60% win rate. Basically, instead of focusing on moving forward with strategies, they're moving sideways. But because one thing came first and the other thing came second, they feel like they've made progress. Metagame is the culprit. The thing is, some matchups are so broken that metagame cannot possibly evolve without further patches/game fixes. Look at PvT and PvP (from a protoss standpoint). I don't mind losing my games if I know how to fix it in further games, but when it comes to the early game immortal imbalance in PvT or the eventual mass colossi vs mass colossi in PvP, if you don't abuse/act upon those factors, the other player will. (Granted, PvP isn't that bad - I personally don't understand early game but that's just me and I suck at PvP) And to ignore what's been working for 90% of the top players on the server and experiment is very difficult, even if you find a partner willing to do this with you. Fact is, it's a beta and things are broken. The only matchup where I find strategies and choices can vary from game to game is PvZ (again, as a protoss player). And my god, all those posts have really confused me so if I'm going off topic, sorry but this is how I feel right now. | ||
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L
Canada4732 Posts
The metagame is the current field. If you're playing against europeans and europeans cheese 90% of the time, you need to prepare for a cheesy metagame by developing some safe builds that would put you behind against a greedier bunch of players. If you decide to play safe a few games in a row, then toss out a ballsy greedy play in the face of a cheesy metagame, you'd be playing a mindgame. The two are related; the metagame builds incentives to play a certain way inside a particular group of players and mindgames use those presumptions to gain an advantage. | ||
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jtype
England2167 Posts
On April 16 2010 05:07 Chill wrote: You cannot just make up terms. Metagame does not mean the winningest strategy nor does it mean the most standard way to play. I think Tasteless started using the word like this on GOM and everyone now believes that's what it means. I think we're all getting too bogged down in semantics here, but it actually can mean those things, 'standard play' and 'best strategy' are both metagame concepts. I do, however, agree that the term is largely misunderstood and has been overused in some cases. (edit: ) And I do agree with Nony's overall point; the fact that you should focus on improving your play with regards to every possible variable, not just the current trend. | ||
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avilo
United States4100 Posts
On April 16 2010 05:07 Chill wrote: You cannot just make up terms. Metagame does not mean the winningest strategy nor does it mean the most standard way to play. I think Tasteless started using the word like this on GOM and everyone now believes that's what it means. People knew what it meant way b4 gom. | ||
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NonY
8751 Posts
How often certain races are put in situations of imperfect information, how often certain races are able to put their opponents in situations of imperfect information, and how well certain races can come out of these kinds of situations -- all these things are relevant to balance. That's independent of metagame. Metagame doesn't change what is possible; it only changes what is probable. Metagame affects player decisions but player decisions don't affect balance. Metagame limits innovation because it only works by looking backwards. It helps you decide between your current options rather than inventing a new one. To balance a game, you have to know what all the possibilities are. Let's say Terran is winning 60% of its games against Protoss. 1% of Protoss have figured out a way to defeat the thing that Terrans are doing to win 60% of their games. Blizzard is aware of what this 1% are doing. Blizzard should not (and would not) make a balance change to instantly get TvP back to 50/50. They'd let that 1% of Protoss players reap the benefit of their knowledge and wait until that knowledge spreads and see if it tips the balance the other way. If it does, then they'll wait to see if it's reasonable for Terran to come up with a counter or not. If Terran players probably can't, then Blizzard might have to in fact buff Terran, when at the start of the scenario (in the same patch) it was Terran winning 60% of the time. Blizzard can not balance the game by reacting strongly to trends. Trends are strong because of metagame. It would be absolutely delightful for Blizzard if everyone tried to truly solve their losses rather than patching them up with metagame. Blizzard must be patient and wait for people to innovate before reacting too strongly to lopsided win rates among the races. If Blizzard reacts too strongly to what metagame-heavy players are doing, then they're guaranteeing themselves a never-ending cycle of "balancing" the game in response to trends. | ||
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Half
United States2554 Posts
On April 16 2010 05:12 BADSMCGEE wrote: I know you're trying to put on the big boy facade because you're talking to someone halfway intelligent, but you would evoke MORE of a conversation if you spoke like a human being and stuck only to words in the dictionary. (i.e unsufficient) I know you're trying to troll, but writing a paragraph to point out one typo (u is right next to i broski) is a very low troll to effort ratio. nice try tho. | ||
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