152 replies to this topic

[DGTLDaemon]

The Lobsters, on 07 December 2016 - 04:02 AM, said:

Also, with maybe one exception, this is the most mature sounding thread I've read on these forums in a while. Well done lads, well done x

Yes, and as the one who started this thread, I'm very grateful to everyone for keeping it civil and sharing your input on this rather sensitive topic

[Lily from animove]

Thats because the meta is often boring.

The metaitself as a word is the abstraction of a concept.

The concept of MWO involves lots of wepaons and stuff. The meta of MWO, is the abstraction focussed on maximising, which therefore erases all inferior choices. Whats then left is what we call the metagame. In a perfectly balanced gaming concept, like stone, paper scissors, there is no meta.

In nearly any other game, there is imbalance and in these will a meta appear.

The meta sucks is surely a subjective dfinition, but mosly used then when what the meta does is contrary to what the game is supposed to be. (remember the jump sniping meta, which was hardly any Mechwarrior feeling meta). or when the meta is such a small subset of the original rules that it becomes totally broing and repetetive.

Look at the first championship, it was durng the jumpsniping era and was horribly boring to look at, nor any mechwarrior like as a mechwarrior gae should be. It was actually the worst of all emtas as it was repetitive, low variance and unmechwarriorlike.

A good game is where the meta consists at leats of some distinguishly different playstyles, that also go well with what the game was supposed to be.

[The Lobsters]

Lily from animove, on 07 December 2016 - 04:39 AM, said:

In a perfectly balanced gaming concept, like stone, paper scissors, there is no meta.

How to win at Rock, Paper, Scissors.



.

Edited by The Lobsters, 07 December 2016 - 04:47 AM.

[Bud Crue]

The central premise of the thread is wrong. People do not really hate the meta chasers. They hate the fact that to not be at a disadvantage in this game they are forced to also chase the meta, and they resent that fact.

According to the devs this is a competitive game where all mechs, down to the variant level, are supposed to be of equal value regardless of their role. This is of course utter bull shi7. Because we are impotent to do anything about this inherent lie, but yet we still want to play our stompy robot game; rather than walk away, we whine that meta chasers are ruining the game. But the reality is that it is the Dev's inability to balance the mechs that is ruining the game and which allows a "meta" to even exist.

Alas. I don't know that it is actually possible to balance these mechs. I think the Devs have legit tried, but also failed. Nothing for it. At least their efforts and their failures result in a pretty fluid meta for us to constantly be chasing. To wit: remember kids, this months road map has machine gun changes!...perhaps a new and glorious (sounding) meta?

Edited by Bud Crue, 07 December 2016 - 04:48 AM.

[Lily from animove]

The Lobsters, on 07 December 2016 - 04:45 AM, said:

How to win at Rock, Paper, Scissors.

pffft, thats noob tricks, it works with predictable opponents that haven't understood the concept of the game, These tricks work vs predictable opponents who cannot randomise their own choices, and further these tricks don't even work if both sides know these tricks, as then both alter their behavior towards the previous opponents behavior, but both will have to adjust which makes all tricks invalid.

These "tricks" are basically like T1 vs T5 which is not a comparable thing at all.

it's also like tic tac toe, theres tons of tricks, but in the end youc annot win the game unless one makes a mistake.

[The Lobsters]

Hey man, I agree with what you are saying, It wasn't a challenge. I was just expressing that 'Rock Paper, Scissors' is a bad example of non-meta.

All Metagaming is tricks. If the players know the T5 tricks, and know that the other players know the T5 tricks, then they will develop other tricks in response to that. Tic tac toe is a better example but even that is not immune to metagaming, although the scope is very limited. Wether they are T5 tricks or T1 tricks, they are all tricks, and the T1 tricks don't disqualify the T5 tricks from being tricks. Making the other player make mistakes can be part of the meta game too. The game is what's on the board on the table. The metagame is the game between the players.

All metagaming means is the 'game within the game', or the 'game above the game' more literally.

No game is immune. 'How to win at rock, paper, scissors' is an oft cited example of this. Psychologists and Game Theorists have made careers out of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors. Good job to have, huh! I load trucks with @ssholes at 4am in the cold rain


.

Edited by The Lobsters, 07 December 2016 - 05:21 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Bud Crue, on 07 December 2016 - 04:47 AM, said:

Alas. I don't know that it is actually possible to balance these mechs. I think the Devs have legit tried, but also failed. Nothing for it. At least their efforts and their failures result in a pretty fluid meta for us to constantly be chasing. To wit: remember kids, this months road map has machine gun changes!...perhaps a new and glorious (sounding) meta?

no not when you throw them into the same bucket - if you had different matchmaking tonnage tiers on the other hand - the Vindicator for example, can be a very potent sniper in the lower tiers.
ok then you might still have Hit Registration when you are not able to hit fast movers below a specific range with the PPC while they have no problem to gut your Vindicator at 180m with a laser volley.

[davoodoo]

Meta or most effective tactic available is simply using imbalance to your advantage, which pretty much kills variety.

Basically if you want to play meta assault, your only option is kdk3 with 2 builds.

Comparing that to mass effect, your shepard should be vanguard with lets pull numbers out of *** 4/3/5/6/3/2 or youre not optimized... sounds like absolute fun having 90% of builds being simply bad.

Edited by davoodoo, 07 December 2016 - 05:28 AM.

[BattleBunny]

Reading through all of this make me very happy I do not have any "lore baggage" and just play the game for what it is.

[Morggo]

Agreed, this has been a very refreshing and actual discussion.. thanks!

Most has been said well above, so my summary points would be

• Lore and nostalgia. Boom. This game has 34 or so years of people's childhood as the foundation. The Meta twists and deforms "what BT and thus MWO should be". This brings some of the hate from that part of the community.
  
• Boredom. Once you get to "you need to take one of the following 6 mechs with one of two viable builds" point of a current meta there simply isn't enough variety to make it interesting (and people in #1 above trying to not meta get smashed and rolfstomped).

I agree with Bud, Cathy, others above... it comes down to glitches and gaps that appear in the game balance and human competitive nature of many to capitalize on them. It is those game balance issues that create the Meta, and in this particular game/IP that meta is never close enough to Lore to feel "right".

Me? I inherently dislike the Meta generally. But will also admit that I do drift and have some mechs that are uncomfortably closer to the Meta, but that usually results from my tinkering in the Mechlab and coincidence. Most of my mechs have been evolving toward mixed builds these days, still have more to re-tool and load but getting there. That said, my mixed builds, which to me is more Lore-like to run, also may not be THE mixed build a Stock loadout should have. So I'm sorta caught in between meta and non-meta.. but I have the spirit on non-meta for sure, if not always in execution.

Edited by Morggo, 07 December 2016 - 06:11 AM.

[RangerGee412]

It's all boat or go home. Boat ballistics, boat srms, nothing large pulses and medium lasers. It's a lot of 1 mouse button builds.

I use it all the time too. I just wish you could make mixed builds and it be awesome. I wish a single lrm 20 would be devastating, or a single uac 10, a gauss rifle, or a single large laser be powerful. But we can't have that because the next logical step is to boat.

It is what it is and I just play the game. At least currently there are a few flavors of meta so at least you can choose which one is fun for you.

[Trollfeed]

Part of the hate for meta builds comes from huge power disparity between most powerful meta builds and those poor mechs that have only few mixed low hardpoints and bad geometry. I want to play my zeus or victor but after few matches I'll be gnashing my teeth and switch to something more competitive like a shadowhawk for example.

I have 47 unique chassis from the 70+ different mechs that are in the game at the moment. Significant part of those mechs are just pure frustation to play when compared to "metamechs" and that frustration tends to turn into dislike against meta.

And as said before, another big part is the lore. What we have in this game right now would be comparable to WWII game where you could switch tank engines to smaller and remove armour so you could fit a second gun to turret and autocannon to machine gun port. Battletech already proved that completely free build rules break the game completely if any of the players are munchkins because you pretty much lose automatically if you don't minmax too.

PvP multiplayer games are competitive by their nature so it isn't really players fault that they go for the most effective possible builds and it isn't players fault either if they complain about perceived balance problems and demand fair change for all mechs. Our only hope is that PGI somehow makes mixed builds with few guns as valid as boating which would make picking single best build more complicated thus toning down hate.

Edited by Trollfeed, 07 December 2016 - 07:19 AM.

[Yanlowen Cage]

Why min/max is hated. simple, the game (MWO) is made for just that. Which seems to go in the face of what most people originally wanted. Modding is almost unlimited and counter intuitive (which people love/hate). The maps are WAY too small for the actual scale that lore is based on (minus a few). Mechs have become way too durable and way too damaging. Let me try to explain what I mean.
The game is designed more like Call of duty than Battletech. Fast action with lots of firepower and in your face twitch gaming. Battletech was never "in your face twitch." it was a grand scale game. A game of Regiments facing off across large areas with varying terrain in which the generals used strategy (not tactics) to fight wars (not battles). There is no economy in the game to makes it painful to lose a mech or a lance. It's run down to the stop and shop and get another atlas. "hell we have an over stock of them in the back." And as the game was on such a grand scale mechs had to be multi purpose (multiple weapons of various types to fit in with the overall battle scheme). Mechs in Battletech could not easily swap components unless they were omni and only within the weight/slot restriction of those omni pods. and as to why the game goes in the face of battletech is that omnis have pods(not regular mechs). The pods are not based on a specific energy, ballistic, or missile load out. whatever you could fit in that pod by weight/slot is okay. certain set components could never be changed. (swapping standard structure for endo). But people want modding so there you go. and since the small scale of the maps, the twitch mindset and massive modding ability the game has become a min/max first person shooter. Which for those people that came to this game with the idea that they would see economy, grand scale, often lore based, and sensible battletech like game play are butt hurt. But in retrospect no mechwarrior game(not battletech mind you) has every reasonable simulated the actually feel of the battletech universe. Battletech was a game where people of any age could sit down and play with out the burden having to have exceptional reflexes. MWO only caters to that specific crowd of twitch players. which believe it or not is not the larger fan base of Battletech.
Sorry, couldn't get the editor to cooperate so post is alot jumbled and disorderly.

P.S. It is all those factors that drive people to build meta. Either to dominate other players or not to be dominated by the meta builds. Thus furthering the meta. Creating resentment caused by almost being forced to play meta to remain competitive.

Edited by Yanlowen Cage, 07 December 2016 - 08:19 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Requiemking, on 06 December 2016 - 11:58 PM, said:

The main reason people hate "meta chasers" around here is because, as is our experience, these sorts of people tend to get in the way of having a balanced game were all the mechs can have a fair shot at victory. Take, for example, the Kodiak 3. For months after the thing's release, it was OP as hell. Naturally, people wanted it nerfed to make the game balanced. However, the "meta chasers" constantly obstructed this, making several people quite angry.

You have it completely backwards, the only way to bring attention enough to balance issues is to push the meta to it's limit. It is the minmaxers and the best players that shed light on balance problems, and they do it by abising the hell out of whatever is overpowered.

If you are frustrated about boating of certain weapons and other specific consequences of game imbalance, that is a problem with balance and not with the people boating the weapons.

Specialization is naturally the most powerful approach to any task though, and this is especially true in team games. In a single player game or a duel game you may have to be personally prepared for an array of threats and situations, but in a tactical team game that isn't necessary. It is always more effective to have the sniper snipe, the brawler brawl, the midrange DPS dish out damage and so on. All of these roles are weakened by bringing equipment that don't help with your specific task. That is what role warfare is about, it is about specialization, it is about "boating". It should be embraced.

If the majority of builds were mixed the game would actually be much less interesting strategically.

If you look at a competitive duel game like magic the gathering you can see how the duel environment and the diversity of strategies require each player to be able to either beat a number of other strategies or be faster than all other strategies. So while the decks are still extremely streamlined around a single gameplan they still have to pack answers and sideboard hate against the other decks, that is a good way of enforcing "mixed" builds, make them necessary.

But in a team game the entire team is your "deck" and build diversity should be measured on a team level, not on individual mech level. A healthy meta will produce team decks with several roles included, they can all be boats as long as they aren't all boating the exact same weapons. And it's ok if some of the best strategies are linear team builds, as long as there are also competitive setups with more than one role in it. You can look at it in terms of "aggro" and "control" for example, a proactive aggro strategy might be all brawlers of the same speed, while the reactive control strategy might have a little more variation to be able to defeat both a brawling team and a sniper team. Reactive strategies are naturally more skill intensive, since for aggro you only have to do your thing and hope the enemy can't respond, for control you actually have to respond correctly, sometimes perfectly, to win.

Edited by Sjorpha, 07 December 2016 - 08:55 AM.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

BattleBunny, on 07 December 2016 - 06:04 AM, said:

Reading through all of this make me very happy I do not have any "lore baggage" and just play the game for what it is.

I have lore baggage, but at the same time I'm not some 40yo basement dweller with autistic levels of hate for anything not "muh lore."

I can also discern that I owe no other player his/her experienced perception of how the game should be played as they also do not owe me. And that's where the disgust at the meta really comes from, people think other players owe them a prescribed play based on the perception of how think the game should be played.

Sjorpha, on 07 December 2016 - 08:32 AM, said:

You have it completely backwards, the only way to bring attention enough to balance issues is to push the meta to it's limit. It is the minmaxers and the best players that shed light on balance problems, and they do it by abising the hell out of whatever is overpowered.

HashtagTruth

It won't show up on their metrics otherwise.

Edited by Saint Scarlett Johan, 07 December 2016 - 08:34 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

I personally dislike having a load of weapons of different firing patterns and ranges, lots of weapon groups, or just builds that don't sync up well in general.

I prefer builds with 2 weapon types that sync up well. That also happens to be the meta so what I like fits right in.

I never get attached to things for emotional reasons now a days, so I don't carry over any of the "this mech should have these sort of weapons" or "Non mixed builds are bad" mentality. Then I have all the actual boat mechs in lore to go off of anyway even if I did put any weight into my mentality. It just doesn't make sense for me to constantly play in a mech that I don't enjoy driving, but I guess for the people who find playing the meta builds boring and they find getting rekt in mixed builds boring they are out of options.

I came from RTS games mostly, so I'm very familiar with metas, some of the RTS game metas are rather annoying with quick rushes that lead to near instant easy wins against weak opponents, but they can lead to very fast paced and enjoyable matches against good opponents. In this game the meta is pretty wide in its options, its like a game of countering similar to rock, paper, scissors but you also have the underclass of bad builds that have half the chance to win compared to the big contenders.

[Livaria]

The issue is mostly concerned with variety. A good part of the fun happens when players are able to find new ways to fight. But when the game becomes over-saturated with a certain play-style, it happens because a particular type of meta is unfairly strong. When this happens; games become predictable and can become no longer become a strong learning experience for the users.

There are players who play to win and players that play to learn. Each of them may have a conflict of interest since one side wants to have interesting battles, another would favor the ability to win. They are both valid, and it often becomes a resentment of other players for using metagame methods.

To oppose people that would rather win than learn is sort of a misguided decision. Players should offer suggestions and make issues within the game known. That's all we can do about it.

Edited by Livaria, 07 December 2016 - 08:48 AM.

[Maker L106]

Lily from animove, on 07 December 2016 - 04:39 AM, said:

In a perfectly balanced gaming concept, like stone, paper scissors, there is no meta.

This is actually something I've been seeing a lot in the past 4-6 years in videogames specifically and I get that in certain types, RTS etc: that yes its true due to the underlying mechanics behind such games. However in some games, not citing MWO specifically mind you, this is simply untrue. Perfect balance of gameplay depends solely on the player and the better player wins either more often or absolutely depending on the skill gap. Granted PRS is probably a bad example from my point of view (but not from others, POV's a *****) but the idea that something has to have a direct counter is a source of never ending frustration that people actually ASK for and I'll never understand it myself.

I've always held to the belief that in gaming anyway (because real life sure doesn't work like this) the player / person should be able to dictate the outcome if the situation is measured in a 1v1 on even (for any given definition there of) footing.

Obviously this isn't assault vs locust conversation or Quake's PoP vs QD but the concept of PRS has been around for so long and permeated so many things that instead of having options available on the small scale to deal with individual choices of PRS you see it in all encompassing globes of mistakes.

also unrelated to mechwarrior really but this is why (IMO) why so many game studios struggle with stealth in their games. It's not hard to balance if you've dealt with it enough, Just like heavy armor / speed / deflection etc: aren't hard to balance either. The difference in this example is exposure. Snipers typically have a very come and go approach to a game at any given time but can be massively effective if setup and supported. Another critical piece most dev's don't see enough of. I'll stop now though. If i linger on this topic the rant will be 3 pages long and get me banned.

[Edit]
In MWO or Mechwarrior like games so to speak this can be further avoided by having "useful fat" in a mech that otherwise would not be useful at all due to circumstances. Machineguns currently inhabit this space of potentially useful but not always due to armor stripping / ease of destroying the unit and not the crit slots.

This is why sometimes i'll run a tag on my marauder BH2's Head E point or a NARC on my Shadow Cat (or the MG's) They might not seem grotesquely useful directly but to bring in outside effects which can tilt things in your favor by using non meta setups or non-traditional ideas can easily turn what would be a strait forward fight on its head.

In games with this sort of tool set i'd like to see the "useful fat" become something that's recognized more than it usually is. (then again tier 4 scrub so take that how you will)

Edited by Maker L106, 07 December 2016 - 08:59 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Sjorpha, on 07 December 2016 - 08:32 AM, said:

You have it completely backwards, the only way to bring attention enough to balance issues is to push the meta to it's limit. It is the minmaxers and the best players that shed light on balance problems, and they do it by abising the hell out of whatever is overpowered.

Alas, shedding light on balance problems by abusing whatever is overpowered only helps the game if the devs are not so egotistical as to remain obtuse to those balance problems being demonstrated to them by that abuse.

Often, or so it seems, when that abuse or potential abuse is pointed out, the devs of this game choose to ignore it, or totally misinterpret it. I mean if Kodiak-3s running UACs is a problem, then does it really make sense to nerf the Enforcer 5P? Or if laser spaming Black Knights, Grasshoppers and Warhammers were once OP did it really follow that the structure of the Jester needed a nerf?

[Tordin]

In my opinion. I dont hate dynamic meta. What I hate is the one-trick pony meta being for example that PPC - Gauss are the most optimal weapon combination, making anything else worthless. If you cant mount that combo, no matter the weight class, you are dodo.

A healthy meta is a meta that is a bit more effective overall BUT also can have certain drawbacks. Which again can level the playing field so that other weapon systems ( and combinations) can find and improve their rythm on the battlefield so they can overthrow the current meta.