ID:1971222
 
Competitive multiplayer games come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but one of the things that tend to pop up in many of them is what is commonly referred to as a meta. For anyone who doesn't play many competitive games or who simply might not know, simply put, a meta is a strategy or group of strategies that are typically seen as the most effective in a game. Metas can last for a short time, such as in most TCG's when a new set or banlist comes out or they can be a solid part of the game, such as League of Legend's laning structure.

The conversation I wanted to present was if whether or not a meta developing in your project is good or bad for game balance. Not all games have a solid meta strategy that works the best, but many of the games that rely on strategy more than reflexes or some other mechanic tend to be where the most metas are developed.

Do you guys think that a meta evolving in your game is a good thing or a bad thing? I personally think that it can be good in some respects in order to softly guide players into roles so the game isn't just a random slap-dash battle, but other times it can be bad in the case that certain metas becoming popular after a balance change might indicate that a certain strategy is simply more powerful than the rest, which might be the result of changes that didn't really balance anything out at all.
I've always kind of wondered how a lot of those top competitive games were made in that regard. I'm sure at this point there's a lot of talk on this subject, but I wonder if it didn't all kind of happen on its own in the beginning, thus becoming standard.
That's actually how most games metas are invented. Players just playing, getting more and more competitive and eventually finding a comfortable strategy that has a higher chance of success than others. League of Legends is a good example of this, because Riot doesn't enforce the top-mid-bot-sup-jg structure like the players do. It's just become the dominant strategy that maximizes the resources available on the field and the talents and abilities of each class of champion.

I would assume that very rarely is ever do the game developers themselves ever try to design a meta or a standard strategy. It's almost always going to be worse than what some top-tier, championship-level player is going to be able to invent anyways. Lol.
It's a developer philosophy thing. Knowing the meta you're catering to can allow you to make really interesting designs even if they're not strong enough to be competitive. League of Legends released Bard and Velkoz, both of which are okay, but not strong enough to be overplayed. I find DotA's heroes to be the opposite. They have SOMETHING they do well, and it's up to the players to mix-match pieces of SOMETHING being done well to make it competitive.

But then again, lol. Posting this on BYOND forums when you should be posting it on /r/gamedesign or something. No BYOND game will ever be that competitive. Even TF2 Proelium wasn't that big.
I know for TCG's the devs will extensively run their own tournies in an attempt to create a rough image of what the meta is going to be. For example, Blizzard though Beast Druid was going to be really big in Hearthstone, so they printed a bunch of beast hosers even though beasts wound up not being that strong anyway.
I would assume that very rarely is ever do the game developers themselves ever try to design a meta or a standard strategy.

Meta falls out of play-testing. It's rarely if ever deliberate.

A good developer just introduces mechanics, watches what their players are doing with them, and when one particular strategy becomes too powerful introduces a counter-play or nerf that re-balances the meta.

My advice would be to think of how you would use something in the game, and keep an eye on your players after the game is playable. If something is too powerful and you feel it's forcing players to adhere to one particular strategy in order to be competitive, you introduce counter-play or nerf.

Play-counter-play I think is a good way to think of it.

It's no coincidence that meta is only something we started talking about after the age of online gaming and post-launch patching came about.

Before the internet, the idea of meta would have been absurd.
There were metagames before the internet; they were just all local. Strategies that worked in London wouldn't work in New York for example. The internet just merged all metagames together.

The metagame itself as a concept is fine. The only issues are when a single strategy dominates or unfun strategies occupy too much space.
Players make the meta, not the developer. The only thing a developer does is design and balance the game. How people play it after this is up to the players.

Also LoL is really a bad example of a meta. Riot has forced the 2 bot, 1 mid, 1 top and 1 jungle meta for years now, and actively design and balance the game around it. That is not meta, that is just how the game is designed.
Players make the meta, not the developer. The only thing a developer does is design and balance the game. How people play it after this is up to the players.

^
In response to The Magic Man
The Magic Man wrote:
Players make the meta, not the developer. The only thing a developer does is design and balance the game. How people play it after this is up to the players.

I do agree with this. My question was more along the lines of whether or not a meta helps or hurts gameplay, but as Ter pointed out, they're far more likely to do damage to the strategy aspect than help it be more balanced.

But what happens when there are no metas in a game and the options for playing become irrelevant; when strategy is thrown out the window and the selection of classes becomes negligible in how the game is won? At that point, the classes aren't differentiated enough and it makes formulating a strategy around synergies worthless. What do you guys think helps prevent that from happening?

Of course, this is just talking about metas surrounding team composition, but that does happen to be a very important factor in gameplay strategies.
What do you guys think helps prevent that from happening?

The only way that can happen is when your gameplay is totally symmetric and every class is identical, and there are zero options for loadout modification whatsoever.
In response to Ter13
Ter13 wrote:
The only way that can happen is when your gameplay is totally symmetric and every class is identical, and there are zero options for loadout modification whatsoever.

And make the game play it's self.

If players can control the game, a meta will always end up forming, simply because some methods of playing the game will always be favourable to others. You can never prevent this unless you entirely remove the ability to play the game.
In agreement. Let the meta happen. Just add mechanics and figure out what people like.
Okay. Good stuff. I guess the important part is to just not let any one meta completely dominate, but that even the best metas have a relatively simple counterplay.
In response to Kats
Kats wrote:
Okay. Good stuff. I guess the important part is to just not let any one meta completely dominate, but that even the best metas have a relatively simple counterplay.

Then the counterplay becomes the meta.

You're not understanding what people are saying. You, the person designing and making the game do not decide what the meta is. You do not decide how it is strong, how it is weak and how players can counter it. The players decide all of this (usually based on many, many games and a lot of experience).

Your job as the designer is just to design the game to be fair and balanced. How you balance the game will naturally effect the meta. But you're not controlling it, the players are simply taking these new changes into account and using it to adjust how they play. That is what the meta is.
I get what Ter is saying, I'm just noting that should a meta evolve, players should have a method of counterplaying that meta. If they don't, then the whole thing can crumble.

Speaking of another question: Snowballing.

If a certain strategy that gains an early lead is allowed to turn into a landslide victory, is that the sign of weak gameplay mechanics or is it simply an eventuality in the system? My pet peeve is that snowballing turns games into rooms where the team who wasn't able to secure an early game advantage basically is forced to just play for 5-10 more minutes even in the face of absolutely inevitable defeat, when the game had been technically lost much, much earlier.
That's the tough question. To say there's no planning required is not quite accurate in the face of that. Certain balancing is obviously necessary, but I do think that if your game has enough variety, new strategies will come into being. If there is one strategy that just becomes the perfect strategy, which I think is unlikely (though, for all I know, might be more likely than I imagine), some extra planning and nerfing might be in order.
The opposite of snowballing is even more annoying.

Imagine dominating the enemy team for the first 10 minutes of the game, and then making one mistake and the enemy just wins from that point on. That's League of Legends in a nutshell. Early game means absolutely nothing, especially in solo queue where those throws are more likely to happen. Unless you know you're drastically more skilled than your opponents ( i.e. you're smurfing ) and know you'll be able to tilt the enemy team into an early surrender, it's almost always better to pick something that scales well into mid and late game, rather than going something like LeBlanc and just being relevant for the first 10-15 minutes.

What happens is, you get 2 or 3 kills mid lane, and then at that point you're looking for roams but bot is always pushed and top is a feeder so you just sit mid lane some more, you get dragon but big deal, it's really only useful at 3 and 5, so whatever. Then everyone groups mid where they wiggle around for 30 seconds until someone finally lands a Blitz grab, then the death match begins but you can't kill anything because this meta revolves around piling 2-3 ( and in some cases 4 ) tanky champions that usually have some form of CC that you have to fly past ( in one piece ) to kill their Jinx ( in other words, she's safe and you have to just either sit on the edge of the team fight waiting for someone on your team to do something smart and make an opening for you or just start pew pewing the 3k hp Malphite who just ulted your team which does jackshit since Malphite doesn't care if he dies after he ulted, his job in a team fight is already complete at that point ) and then rinse and repeat that scenario 3 or 4 more times and you're pressing surrender because snowballing does nothing unless your team has the coordination required to close out the game ( protip: unless the enemy team is tilting very hard, you almost never will ) so the optimal strategy is to make as many mistakes as you want early, all you have to do is capitalize on the tiniest misplay the enemys make ( like literally, something as small as missing an Ashe ultimate during a dragon contest can be the catalyst to your team to lose your 3-5k gold advantage ) and 15 minutes of outplays go completely down the drain and the game just wins itself for whichever team didn't have the snowball comp.

Dota 2 is better in this regard. If you snowball, there are more ways to actually hold onto your advantage. Pudge for instance is just like LeBlanc: you're racing against the clock because if you don't accomplish anything during laning phase, you've essentially just put your team in a 4v5 situation. But if I get kills on Pudge, it's easier to control the game, and Flesh Heap stacks scale really well. I don't have to worry about one missed hook throwing the advantage back in the enemy teams favor. You lose gold on death as well, this helps too. And if you want to comeback from a deficit, you actually have to work for it.
In response to Kats
Kats wrote:
I get what Ter is saying, I'm just noting that should a meta evolve, players should have a method of counterplaying that meta. If they don't, then the whole thing can crumble.

The meta will evolve on it's own as both you update the game, and players become more experienced and learn more about the game.

Meta literally means "outside". As in outside of your control as the person designing and making the game.
I think getting ahead early game should make it harder to pull back, late game, but it should be possible for the losing team to have the opportunity to change up their play style in an attempt to counter the enemy and pull it back.

This is the kind of gameplay my project is based on, since I'm doing away with any kind of in-match progression. The problem with LoL for me is that when someone starts dominating the game by ~3 levels, it becomes far, far harder to topple their advantage. That level and gold difference translates into near-instakills any time you try to engage them, even in odds as bad as 1v5, in the case with Mundo (I 1v5'd with him the other day... fucking disgusting. 3 levels over everyone.)

However, my game has loadouts where players can modify a character's items (passive stat boosts/perks) mid-game to adapt to other strategies in order to keep the game from being won at the team-comp stage or from early-game dominance. It heavily favors skill over a character's raw power, but leaves enough room where even a less skilled player can adapt in order to try stacking the odds back into a more even balance, if necessary.

The reason I cut out in-match progression altogether was because of snowballing.
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