15 replies to this topic

[Nova Latios Storm]

I keep hearing this everywhere. What is it! What the heck is a meta mech!

[Arnold J Rimmer]

Usually a jump-capable Assault carrying autocannon and PPC's. Front-loaded instant damage at long range, pinpoint on one component. Victors or Highlanders carrying 2PPC and AC10 (or 2AC5), Cataphracts with same, Shadowhawks... Honourable mention to the AC40 Jaeger I guess.

[Nova Latios Storm]

Arnold J Rimmer, on 05 June 2014 - 02:40 AM, said:

Usually a jump-capable Assault carrying autocannon and PPC's. Front-loaded instant damage at long range, pinpoint on one component. Victors or Highlanders carrying 2PPC and AC10 (or 2AC5), Cataphracts with same, Shadowhawks... Honourable mention to the AC40 Jaeger I guess.

So...overpowerd mechs?

[Arnold J Rimmer]

Nova Latios Storm, on 05 June 2014 - 02:42 AM, said:

So...overpowerd mechs?

Overused, maybe.

[Nova Latios Storm]

Arnold J Rimmer, on 05 June 2014 - 02:46 AM, said:

Overused, maybe.

I hate getting one shotted in my locuest with thoes dam ac/40s

[Lily from animove]

Meta means what is the top. Its mostly what the so called "pros" use. So people who play for success and for achieving this they mostly use what is delivering the best results. hen you would ahve a perfectly balanced game, it would not have any "meta" game. But this is not the case in any game at all. And therefore a metagame starts to exist, which is then the Game of the top players.
The metagame atm is mostly PPC's and JJ's with pinpint damage, sicne this efficiently kills opponents without being exposed a lot.

LB-X AC's for example are totally un-meta, sicne they may deal a lot damage, but spread it, makign an efficient and fast kill impossible.
LRM's also not.

metamechs in this term are mechs who support this metagamestyle by the way they are. JJ's mostly some higher mounted Energy hadpoints. AC's are also a very viable part of the Metagame.

[Nova Latios Storm]

Guess i am not a pro then. ;-; I run light with my loucust 1V(P) 4mg and a med pulse i use it for recon and spotting goint about 167.8KPH but i use my jester for snipeing/jumpsnipeing and longrange fire suppot and sometimes my centurion for ranged brawling.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Metagame means roughly the game about the game.

IE: in pokemon, are you better off taking an Arcanine, or a Ninetails?
Blastoise or Feraligator?
What if your opponent has a Golem?
Or a Slowbro?


Are you better off in a Griffin or a Kintaro?

The "Meta Mech" would be the one perceived (rightfully or not) as the better choice.

[Nova Latios Storm]

Shar Wolf, on 05 June 2014 - 09:12 AM, said:

Metagame means roughly the game about the game. IE: in pokemon, are you better off taking an Arcanine, or a Ninetails? Blastoise or Feraligator? What if your opponent has a Golem? Or a Slowbro? Are you better off in a Griffin or a Kintaro? The "Meta Mech" would be the one perceived (rightfully or not) as the better choice.

Like type match up? Fire beats grass, ice beats dragoon, eletric - water etc.

[Modo44]

"Meta" in MWO refers to builds and strategies that work best in practiced hands. It can change with game balance. I hear brawling was big a long time ago. Nothing beats jump-snipers at the moment. You can see it on streams of the best competitive players, and you can watch the recent PGI tournament finals for a demonstration.

[Lily from animove]

Nova Latios Storm, on 05 June 2014 - 03:08 AM, said:

Guess i am not a pro then. ;-; I run light with my loucust 1V(P) 4mg and a med pulse i use it for recon and spotting goint about 167.8KPH but i use my jester for snipeing/jumpsnipeing and longrange fire suppot and sometimes my centurion for ranged brawling.

depends on what you want form the game. you can "go pro" but as long as you do not get fun purely out of e-peen stroking, the Metagame is horribly boring. If the game would be better balanced, the metagame would consist of more varietly. Unfortunately its not.

I still prefer my Catapharact 1X and its lasershow. More enjoyable, even if it fails from time to time.

[Koniving]

They are mechs built for fast, potentially instant kills who can do this with minimal risk of damage.

Usually through abusing the game's most flawed mechanics to their fullest extent possible to achieve this goal.

[Modo44]

Koniving, on 06 June 2014 - 12:56 AM, said:

Usually through abusing the game's most flawed mechanics to their fullest extent possible to achieve this goal.

Please do not use this word. There are clear mechanics, not exploits, which are used in full. It is not on players to police against something you dislike, it is on PGI to provide a more interesting balance.

[Barkem Squirrel]

The thing about meta is that it can change. One new mech or a variant can change that overnight. An older mech used in an interesting way can also change that.

Just think, what happens to the game when Streak LRMs enter the time line? How viable is the LRM 100 stalker then? This would give new meaning to the Streakhawk. (a 360 engine in a shadowhawk with 4 SSRM 2's, two lasers and maybe some MG's)

Even as Meta gets established, someone will figure an efficient counter to it and change the Meta again.

[Pht]

Nova Latios Storm, on 05 June 2014 - 02:10 AM, said:

I keep hearing this everywhere. What is it! What the heck is a meta mech!

"Meta" as it is commonly used on these forums is just another way of saying "munchkin" ...

Quote

Munchkin
"Munchkin: One who, on being told that this is a game about politics and intrigue in 17th century Italy, asks to play as a ninja."
— Andrew Rilstone
The Munchkin is the Tabletop RPG player who plays the game to win at any cost, even if that isn't the point of the game. Perhaps the most ridiculed Player Archetype of all time, this player is rarely interested in the story behind the game. Indeed, his characters are little more than extensions of his own personality or whatever personality would give him the most bonuses. He sees fighting monsters and solving puzzles only as a means toward more power, more gold, more stuff, more pluses. A Munchkin is not satisfied until he can kill a god with his +25 Dancing Holy Vorpal Sword of Flame. On a Critical Failure. Of course, the combat mechanics is only the most obvious avenue. Munchkins try to hunt for "XP for roleplaying" by being overly dramatic and heaven help you if the game uses Ritual Magic — everything will stop until the Word Salad cooked up by the Munchkin is resolved. Anything that gives more pluses will be used and abused. The Munchkin's ambition frequently outstrips his sense of fair play. Most of the time, he looks out for number one; the other players are little more than minor inconveniences to him, or obstacles on his path to ultimate power. As such, the Munchkin may engage in one or more of these personas:

http://tvtropes.org/...p/Main/Munchkin


Now, not all munchkin/"meta" players are utter jerks. Lots of people just enjoy winning. Many of them really, really, enjoy playing people who "munch out" just as much or more than they do. Some are the best players to play with, who realize some other people don't get fun out of playing like they do.

Than, yes, there are the horrid trolls who simply must win. It doesn't take many of them to ruin a game.
So a "meta-mech" is a mech purpouse built to win, only to win, and to do so in the most effective manner possible in the game, with the only exclusion being that it doesn't exploit cheats. It just exploits every little bit of the way the gameplay rules are set up.

----

EDIT:

This is also pertinent:

Min-Maxing

Dellyn Goblinslayer: You have Improved Unarmed Strike?
Minmax: I got it by trading in my ability to rhyme on purpose.
— Goblins
The art, much beloved of munchkins, of optimizing a character's abilities during creation by maximizing the most important skills and attributes, while minimizing the cost. This is done by strategic decrease of stats believed to be less important in game (called "Dump Stats"), exploiting hideously overpowered but legal combinations of the Game System, obtaining the best toys and magic weapons accessible to a character, or by stacking flaws and handicaps until your character's Backstory looks like a Joss Whedon character's resume. Seen from a purely mathematical and gamist perspective, it's an elegant process of minimum expenditure for maximum result. Seen from a more narrativist perspective, the process may end up creating a character with absolutely no unifying reason to have the abilities that it does.

http://tvtropes.org/.../Main/MinMaxing

Also:

http://tvtropes.org/...p/Main/Metagame

http://tvtropes.org/...eplayDerailment

http://tvtropes.org/.../ChallengeGamer

http://tvtropes.org/...topHavingFunGuy

http://tvtropes.org/...ain/RulesLawyer

Edited by Pht, 06 June 2014 - 01:57 PM.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Nova Latios Storm, on 05 June 2014 - 11:29 PM, said:

Like type match up? Fire beats grass, ice beats dragoon, eletric - water etc.

Sort of yeah.

If you think about it from the perspective of Pokemon - a Nuzlocke Challenge (warning - language) is actually closer to "playing the game as it should be" than how we actually play it.

The player character isn't going to know what "types" most of his Pokemon are - or what types the moves are (lets face it, in the original games - Gust was a normal move - not flying)

However - we the players do not do that, we stop and think about things that, in game, the character has no way of knowing.

That is, in a very real sense - metagaming. (though it means a lot less in Pokemon, as those stats are presented in game)

Another example - when playing D&D, would your character know that the one bard sitting next to him has 28 points in perform, while the other bard has 27?

Or would he just know that both bards are very good performers, with one maybe being better?


Try reading through Pht's links - though beware that site, as it will eat a lot of time