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I am also tired of the inflationary use of the word metagame.
I myselft often described it as a kind of "übergame" (yeah i know just translating it won't solve anything...). Metagame is basically everything related to gamedecisions based on things that aren't "in the game". Counter-countering is one part of it, tendencies, trends, predictions and the preparations you draw out of them as a kind of gameprophylaxis are another. It is a higher form of strategy, it is autonomously and has nothing to do with mechanics and blunt execution. It is playing the opponent and not the units themselves.
Hope that definition goes d'accord with you,
TurboT
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Brilliant thread.
I used to play a lot of Magic the Gathering. That game is all about metagaming. Most people (myself included) would play the "best" strategy (deck), which is actually just "flavor of the month".
And one lonely day prior to the start of next season, I have decided to come up with my own strategy (deck). I created several ones and tested them with my friend, choosing the best one.
And know what - I have won first two big tournaments of that season. Then the metagame settled and the strategy was not effective anymore.
To sum up, SC2 needs a healthy amount of people that don't focus on metagame to ensure strategy development and easier balance.
But we also need ones who cheese, for example I did SVC all-in at lest 30 times to ensure that Blizz fixes it.
However, bad and mediocre players often have a hard time trying to come up with solid strategies. For example, currently I have no idea how to beat Thor/Marauder/Hellion army as Zerg, and that is what 90% terrans do due to "flavor of the month". So, i use my knowledge of the metagame and do all-in baneling bust every game where I spot supply-based wall.
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solid play develops out of a massive amount of exploitation
the community goes through this big pressure cooker build order arms race to figure out all these different "all ins" and slowly more solid play develops as people figure out the core of each matchup and what they can get away with offensively and defensively. if a certain build is strong, the first step is figuring out how to counter it 100% -- if my opponent tells me it's coming and doesn't lie, can i beat it? now, if the answer is yes, then the question is how do my opponents other choices effect it, and how accurately can i predict it is coming? sometimes the imbalance of a particular build manifests in the fact not because it's unstoppable, but because the opponent has too many other possibilities that crush the only viable counter, and i can't accurately scout it.
things evolve on their own naturally, they should never involve the cooperative participation of players to ignore their tendencies, that just covers up issues that are really there. the best thing blizzard could do is mandatory replay release every platnium ladder game so the entire community can get their collective exploitation subconscious going.
they should also patch more dramatically more often, in my opinion. there's no law that says patch 9 has to be "more balanced" than patch 8. they should try shit out, back track, take things away, etc. combined with automatic rep posting, people and the game get a lot of experience trying and comparing screwy strategies
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Agree with OP, the best way to become a really solid player is through practice with builds that are all around solid, not builds that are designed to snipe other specific builds/players/races etc. Those are for tournament situations.
I also agree that it most likely helps the development of the game if the majority of players played this way, as it is what eventually will create the "standard" builds.
In sc1 i think we can all agree that when you practice to become good from a low level, you'll want to practice the standard BO's for each MU, now in SC2 we may not know what the standard BO's might be, but i bet it's not going to be an scv/marine all-in rush or anything similar.
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To be honest, this isn't going to improve substantially until the map quality becomes a lot better. Maps are what balanced sc1, they're what stagnated wc3 so badly, and currently half of the maps are just terribly painful to play in sc2 as well. It's obvious that even on the more standard-ish maps Blizzard still wanted the more obscure (read: annoying and unsustainable) strategies to be viable. Unfortunately this creates the scenario where 1base openings and mass units are the only safe way to play for most races. There's nothing anywhere similar to a corner-spawn ramped main that has no backdoor, with a natural that isn't cliffable.
I suppose this would be less of a complaint if we could actually choose what maps to ladder on, and hopefully that functionality comes soon. However, the standard sc1 builds we were used to seeing are nowhere near as safe even on LT cross spawns.
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Having a friend who played in tournaments across Europe (he qualified from Australia, and went overseas) for Magic the Gathering, and my own experience playing Call of Duty/Counter-Strike, I'd agree that metagame means the way wikipedia describes it:
Another game-related use of Metagaming refers to operating on knowledge of the way a game is played within a particular geographic region or tournament circuit. This local or circuit-specific context is often referred to as the metagame. A player who is aware of the metagame for their particular gaming environment may make play choices that are optimized against the play styles of the majority of players they are likely to face in that specific competitive arena.
Sirlin, a famous Street Fighter player in America who runs his own website uses metagame in this fashion as well.
Another aspect of preparing for a tournament is knowing the meta-game that you are facing. That means knowing the prevailing trends of how the game is being played now, and how it will be played at the tournament. In Warcraft, is everyone going to play Night Elves and rush with Huntresses? In Street Fighter, is everyone going to play Chun Li? In Magic: The Gathering is everyone going to play a mono-red Sligh beatdown deck? If you don’t know what you are going to face, you can be really thrown off come tournament day. Having an inkling of the meta-game lets you prepare for the right things. This is unusually important in a game like Magic: The Gathering where everyone brings their own custom-made decks to the tournament. If you know everyone is going to play a certain type of deck, you can make a deck that would ordinarily be bad, but is designed to beat what is popular. Being well-connected with your gaming scene and regularly attending tournaments gives you an advantage over the more isolated players.
In my own fighting game experience, I have seen that at high levels of play, the “meta-game” has an entirely different meaning. Top players usually don’t need to consider the prevailing trends of how the game is played overall, because they can easily crush the mid-tier and below players anyway. But they often do need to consider the “mini-meta-game” composed of the current tricks and techniques of the two or three other players in the tournament who can actually beat them.
Either way, you can see that knowing your enemy is part of preparing for tournaments. Time and time again, I have seen new players who think they are very good claim that they would do well in tournaments, and they basically never do, at least not right away. Part of being good is being plugged into the tournament meta-game, and it’s extremely difficult, and in some games impossible, to simply develop skills in a vacuum then waltz in and win a tournament.
I think that alternative meaning could explain some of the differing opinions in this thread.
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Comparing the MTG metagame to the BW/SC2 metagame is somewhat ridiculous IMO. In MTG you show up to the tournament in an objectively different state. Your deck is completely different than someone else's (I mean obviously lots of people run the same/similar deck type), whereas in BW/SC2 we already know everything about our opponent at the start. So in MTG, you can show up and immediately be at a disadvantage if 70% of the field is deck A and you run deck B which only wins 30% against deck A with optimal play on both sides. In BW/SC2 there is never a similar situation.
Also, I think we can learn a lot about all-ins and other strategies from poker/game theory. Suppose in PvZ I can play 3 different builds at the start, and they can play 3 different builds. If 1 of my builds is terrible against 2 of theirs, but works well against the 3rd build they can do, then most of the players professing "solid play" would recommend rarely, if ever, playing this build that will fail against 2 of the opponent's builds but crush the 3rd, unless the metagame suggests that nearly all zerg players play this 3rd build. But a truly solid (unexploitable or optimal in a game theory sense) would play a mixed strategy where we play builds 1, 2 and 3 some percentage of the time against any of our zerg opponents who we think are nearly equal to us in skill (against weaker players we will want to try to exploit their tendencies, or just out-mechanic them to death in the long game).
Basically, to become unexploitable, we need to do "cheese" type builds some percentage of the time in order to force the opponent to not exploit us by playing excessively greedy builds.
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You could argue the other way around. I mean, isnt it the meta game that have kept new BW strategies popping up during the years?
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Unfortunately people have a natural tendency to play to win... but you're 100% right, that's not the point, ESPECIALLY during a beta.
Edit: Although, I can see my own counterargument that finding the all-in's that work now is good to make sure they get balanced. But... not exclusively.
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Excellent point. It's about time the all-in builds die out. Lets see some quality games again
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Here's a good example of meta game courtesy of the Princess Bride.
+ Show Spoiler +
It is my hope that the game remains very dynamic in terms of meta game with many viable strategies. And plenty of opportunities to out think your opponent. I think that any game that can be mathematically solved and played perfectly by a machine is kind of boring. I also like what ilnp said I totally agree.
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I agree, creativity and flashy new strategies make games far more interesting. It is for that reason that The Little One is liked by so many people.
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It's like football. A few trick plays are ok here and there but there's a reason almost every team plays 'conventionally'.
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IMO metagame is just everything occurring outside the actual constraints of the game.
Current trends are the metagame, but not the definition of the word. Blind countering your opponent can also be the metagame.
I also hate the word and never use it since its generally butchered and abused.
Agreed with Nony though, most people only focus on how to win the current game at hand as opposed to developing a way to play that might not win today, but will win tons in the future.
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On April 18 2010 06:44 ManiacTheZealot wrote:Here's a good example of meta game courtesy of the Princess Bride. + Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUee1WvtQZU It is my hope that the game remains very dynamic in terms of meta game with many viable strategies. And plenty of opportunities to out think your opponent. I think that any game that can be mathematically solved and played perfectly by a machine is kind of boring. I also like what ilnp said I totally agree.
Ah man that scene fits this thread so well.
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EPT
