47 replies to this topic

[Ismael]

Paigan, on 13 February 2015 - 06:01 AM, said:

I play MWO since december.
I have long struggled, but now I simply must write this, as the misuse of this word drives me crazy.

The word "meta" does NOT mean what so many of you MWO players use it for.

"Meta gaming" means to get an advantage inside a game by using an OUTSIDE means.
(Meta means above/beyond/outside, btw. like meta physics or meta studies)

What is meta gaming?

A good example for me is:

In Eve-Online (a spaceship game) people could log out / disconnect with their ship being in in mid-space.
The ship would float there for a while, then warp away and magically disappear, untrackable for enemies.
If they log in, the ship magically reappears and warps back to the place where the player "left" it.

This allows to lay unpredictable and unpreventable traps:
A single ship would idle at a stargate while all his buddies log out and wait in IRC/TS.
A squad of enemy players would roam the area, see the solitary ship and decide to take the easy kill.
The single pilot notifies his buddies outside the game upon being attacked, all buddies log in simultaneously and easily kill the squad.

The meta gaming is to exploiting the "magical" special logout feature while coordinating OUTSIDE the game to gain an ingame tactical advantage.



An example for MWO might be if you can induce lag at will to gain a protection advantage for your mech due to outside technical reasons, not by ingame game-mechanical reasons.
THAT is meta gaming.


Meta gaming is unfair, OP, imba, whatever. Yes.

BUT. That does NOT mean that everything that is (perceived) unfair or OP or imba or whatnot is described correctly with "meta".

An (allgedly) OP build is NOT a "Meta build", it's just OP.

Whoever falls for such a fallacy has a serious problem with logical thinking.
And using that in texts read by others drives those with intact logical thinking INSANE.

If the internet era really causes such dramatic intellectual decay, I fear for humanity. No joke.

It's like saying "I'm water" every time I'm cold, just because water is cold as well.
Or like saing "I have 12" every time I have won something, just because in MWO you win with 12 kills.
Maybe this clears it up a bit how painful it is to read that utter error over and over again.
It drives you crazy if you know about the correct meaning of the term.

So I beg you: stop writing "meta" if you mean unfair or too good. Say "OP" or "imba", that actually means what it should.

Thank you for booking this story!
("Thank you for reading this text" with meta logic)




tl;dr: "meta" means above/beyond/outside, not unfair. STOP USING IT THAT WAY, it causes brain pain simply by reading it.




PS:
Nice google result:
WHY HAVE PEOPLE SUDDENLY STARTED USING "META" WHEN WHAT THEY MEAN IS GAMEPLAY?
*sigh*

Funny. But to decide if something is meta or not you have to know the origins or what people call lore in MWO. If you look in the tabletop game. Jumping with a mech gets you the highest penalty for your aiming dice rolls. Sounds logical? Yes. Imagine you sit in a really heavy object that is lifted by some sort of rocket. Imagine that object is not meant to fly and therefore isnt aerodynamic. And now try to aim with weapons installed in this object. Conclusion would be: Yes the penalty is logical. So jumpsniping was meta in MWO. Cause it added a never seen element in Battletech to MWO.

[Navy Sixes]

I'm sorry this bothers the OP. We all have our language peeves (my own is the word "literally" used to intensify a figurative expression: "Dude, I literally crapped my pants!" and that sort of thing.)

So while it is good that the OP's forum-buddies are all here to make clear the evolving meaning of "meta" in relation to online gaming, I hope they understand that peeves aren't supposed to be logical. They're just the things that drive us up the wall...

...figuratively.

[Sparks Murphey]

It's not evolved to mean anything different. It still refers to the game above the game.

Take tic-tac-toe for example (or noughts and crosses, if you prefer that name). The game is to attempt to get three in row while preventing your opponent from doing so. But it becomes pretty clear that there are certain strategies that are superior. Figuring out those strategies is the metagame: if you can figure out a better strategy at the metagame level than your opponent, you have a clear advantage at the game level. In the case of tic-tac-toe, "going first" is the superior strategy and, barring mistakes, wins every time. In MWO, taking a Stormcrow or Timberwolf fitted with many pulse lasers is a superior strategy and improves your odds of winning the game even before you start playing the game: you have "won" the metagame. Unlike the quick fire changes at the game level, the metagame changes relatively slowly, when the conditions and rules that govern the game change, the requirements for winning the metagame change too. Sometimes, this can be a very long time; chess has had a stable ruleset for centuries, and while some strategies have come to the fore in the chess metagame, no singular winning strategy has emerged.

[Novakaine]

I think we should stop using the word meta.
And start using meaty instead

[AccessTime]

The OP is missing the concept. Yes, Meta does mean outside, it applies to the 'big picture' or the 'game outside the game itself'. It's a perfectly sensible use of the word.

Mainly this applies to counters, and a well-designed game with lots of counters will typically develop a meta that shifts over time (since a class of players will always be trying to counter the predominant play style that exists at that point in time). The basic problem with MWO is that a lot of common builds are simply uber. The best counter is often just "do it more" or "do it better". The result is that, the meta ends up being largely static, until the designers step in and try to change things with buffs, nerfs, or other "balance" adjustments. We saw this before with portarting, we're seeing it now with LASER-spam, and so on.

[Sorbic]

Please stop using "wrongly" incorrectly.

[Mycrus]

CapperDeluxe, on 13 February 2015 - 06:46 AM, said:

Don't care, the word meta is stupid and I'd like to see it stricken from use. Just after we ban the word "brah".

Das meta brah.