9
A pug starts to whine.
"Mr Pugglesworth (DEAD): Gorram poptart meta cheese build can't use a real effing 'mech effing toaster strudel S.O.B. needs to die in a fire. PGI nerf meta plox.
Mr Pugglesworth has disconnected."
Just what the hell is Mr Pugglesworth on about? Why is it so frustrating? Why is it EVERYWHERE? Well, to answer those questions we need to go over some terminology first.
What, exactly, is meta? Meta, a Greek prefix meaning "beyond" relates to games in one of two ways. In its simplest sense, it can refer to another level of gameplay above what is normally considered the game. This is used when referring to games that use iterative combat to effect changes on a persistent, populated piece of data. Community Warfare, as described at the Launch party, is an example of a meta game. The effects of your game (the individual round of combat) alter the status of the meta game (the map of the Inner Sphere). Since that is quite obviously not in the game yet, it seems we need the other definition.
Meta in this sense - short for Metastatic gaming - refers to a particular customization that has spread beyond the person or group that originally created it, and now seems ubiquitous in the player population.
Every game that allows for customization of what you bring into battle will contain a metagame. This metagame will change over time in a healthy game, altering what is viable in competitive play. As one customization becomes popular, others which don't fare well against it will have their popularity drop, and those that are particularly suited to exploiting the newly-popularized build will rise to the top.
The prime example of a game with a well-managed metagame is Magic: The Gathering. A new set is released every 2-4 months, and with that release comes a change in what cards are legal for use in the various competitive formats. Typically, you will find on MTG forums a list of three to five "tier one" decks. These decks are used by 65% of the competitive playerbase and win about 90% of the tournaments. Then you will find tier two and tier three decks, which have to potential to win tournaments, but don't often do so because of weaknesses that make them roll over and die to at least one of the tier one decks. These 10 to 15 "lower tier" decks are used by about 30% of players, and win about 9% of the tournaments. Then you have that last 5%. The crazy ones, the deckbuilders who are always trying to come up with something new. Their "rogue" builds account for less than 1% of tournament wins, but they're what keep the metagame fresh between set releases. A rogue deck does well in a tournament, its card list ends up online, people copy it and it becomes one of the top tier decks, shuffling those that it beats to lower tiers (or completely off of the competitive scene).
This sort of healthy metagame environment requires work on the part of the developers in two areas:
1) Initial output of a variety of different mechanics that can be used to achieve victory.
2) Continuous monitoring of the metagame to make changes when one becomes unbalanced.
PGI has done an absolutely phenomenal job of the first one. The weapons are varied in form and function, as are the 'mechs. The game is simply a joy to watch and to play when you see a drop with mixed 'mechs and weapons. Between the tracers of AC fire, the strobe-light effect of pulse lasers carving out chunks of enemy armor and the smoke trails left by missiles on their way to ruin somebody's day, there's a good selection of different methods to kill your opponent.
The second... well... everybody makes mistakes sometimes.
Even Wizards of the Coast - the developers of MTG - have skewed their metagame from time to time. The single most notorious example of which was this ******* right here:
Arcbound Ravager was released in a set called Darksteel, a set which dropped into a metagame consisting of an EXTREMELY wide variety of viable decks. Goblins, Elves, Red Deck Wins, Zombies, White Weenie, Mono-Blue Control, Blue/Black Control, Broodstar Affinity, and any number of combo decks. There were literally dozens of deck archetypes to choose from, and all of them could be seen in varying numbers having varying degrees of success in all levels of competitive play.
So when Darksteel came out, lacking in any apparently game-changing new mechanics, it was met with a collective yawn. Then, out of nowhere, some rogue deckbuilder decided that Arcbound Ravager + Skullclamp + Disciple of the Vault + dozens and dozens of free artifacts = consistent turn 4 kills that can never be stopped.
It was faster and more resilient to disruption than the current crop of aggro decks, and control and combo decks were unable to control it long enough to execute their own plans for winning. It was massively OP.
All of those other decks? Well, they almost entirely disappeared. The once-thriving metagame became a simple coin-flip. There was "Ravager Affinity" - the big dog that beat everything else - and "Tooth and Nail," which excelled at doing only one thing: beating Ravager Affinity.
If you ran Ravager Affinity, you beat everything except Tooth and Nail. If you ran Tooth and Nail, you beat Ravager Affinity and nothing else... but there WAS nothing else. The metagame was so badly warped by the presence of Arcbound Ravager that there were no other options. Play Ravager, or play to beat Ravager.
Once WotC realized their mistake, they brought out the nerf gun. First they banned Skullclamp, which was the mechanism that Ravager players used to draw more cards once they ran out. The ban had little effect on Ravager, but took a useful tool out of the hands of any rogue deck builders who wanted the challenge of out-aggro'ing the aggro king.
Then they banned Disciple of the Vault, which also had little effect since Disciple was a backup weapon at best.
On the third try, they finally got it right. They went after the one thing that fueled Arcbound Ravager more than anything else... the artifact lands that kept it fed with fresh, zero-cost +1/+1 counters. This third ban, approximately four months after the playerbase became acutely aware of Ravager's devastating effects on the metagame, was decried as too slow. WotC must have been asleep at the wheel, players said, and people left the game by the thousands.
Which brings me back to MWO. There are a handful of competitive formats out there. You have unrestricted 1v1, 2v2, 4v4 and 12v12, and restricted 12v12.
The metagame in 1v1, 2v2 and 4v4 could be better, but there is some wiggle-room for rogue 'mech builders to surprise people. Hell, there's a team tearing up the 2v2 ladders using a pair of DRG-FLAMEs... but when you get to unrestricted 12v12 (the only OFFICIALLY supported competitive format), there's only one option.
You either fill the team with jump-snipers, or you die quickly. There is precisely one tier-one deck. There are no tier-two or tier-three drop decks in competition. The speed and efficiency with which jump-snipers kill the enemy is stunning, and their resilience to counterattack makes it very difficult to disrupt their plans.
As players, and as teams, there is absolutely nothing wrong with running jumpsnipers. They work, brutally and effectively, and there is a definite skill involved in their use - just as there was skill involved in correctly utilizing a Ravager Affinity deck in MTG. The problem comes in the delay between the playerbase's acknowledgement that there was only one competitive build strategy, and PGI's acknowledgement of the same. Mr Pugglesworth was right in calling for a nerf, but completely wrong in his reason behind it. It's not the easy "I win" button that many people think it to be, and it's not the fault of the person who is practicing the skill behind jumpsniping in the public queue. It's simply a warped metagame that needs to be fixed.
Thankfully, PGI seems to have finally noticed and has started taking action to balance the metagame. They've even said that they're investigating further action for followup if this proves to not be enough. In the MTG analogy, they've just banned Skullclamp.
So relax, Mr Pugglesworth. Everything's going to be fine.
Edited by StillRadioactive, 04 June 2014 - 01:21 PM.
