In my experience, this only ever happens when people die to *reused* mechanics. They might be new to the boss, but that doesn't always mean they haven't seen the mechanics before.
@@rhael42 I got flamed all the time when I solo queued in wow for not knowing the dungeon right away. Especially if you're leveling years after the game came out, everyone is just smurfing at that point and expect everyone else to be pros on their alts
Upon release, if there's an easy to access guide online from a PTS or something, it's good to use it before going into new "hard" content in an MMO. Otherwise, you're essentially forcing those who did do the research to teach you instead. Or nobody researched and the run will be a fail. This is caused by the devs needing to make content challenging after the first run or two. If it's intuitive enough to figure out and clear without some prior knowledge then it doesn't have longevity. If it's "old" content it comes down to how much individuals lacking knowledge can cause the entire team to fail. I think it's okay to enter content that not-sweats have on farm and isn't make-or-break based on peak performance, and ask others to teach you real quick, since you failing during the learning process doesn't force others to fail. From there it's just picking a game and a tier of content that you're comfortable with. Problems and lack of fun are only introduced when people try to jump sweatiness tiers while refusing to put in the effort expected by the content.
It sucks that because of LFGs and such that raids and dungeons have gone from an exciting piece of endgame content that's fun to learn and experience fresh to something players are chastised for not 100% spoiling themselves on right away I will never understand how people have fun reading raid guides without at least trying them out by themselves first. I get that LFGs just don't work if half of the players are there to just grind through the content ASAP and the other half was a fresh and exciting experience but that's kinda the issue I have with LFGs in the first place.
@@SomniaCE People like to be informed on raids because a boss could have a mechanic were if you jumped when the boss would yell a line, it would wipe the whole raid. Well guess how fun it would be if all 40 players didn't know that mechanic? And on top of that, what if some people in the raid don't speak your native language? Imagine if there were multiple mechanics that could wipe raid if 1 person doesn't know what their doing. If you'd want a raid full of people who have no idea what their doing, go ahead and wipe for 3-4 hours on the first boss, but just know you're the very few minority in this case.
I've been playing online games for a long time. The way video game communities have evolved to be entirely focused on winning is one of my pet peeves. So many online players have forgotten the point of playing games...having fun.
Loved Star Wars Galaxies due to the fact that you could do more than just fight. You could be a dancer and use the game to just socialize. Knew one dancer/musician on there that only stayed in the cantinas; she used it to unwind after a long day of work. There was also the crafters and merchants that fueled the in game economy. Too bad most MMOs don't care about anything except kill the baddy the most efficient way possible.
Well to answer your question - why ignore the meta? It's because meta builds are often not fun for some people. Some people like to play with abilities that I dunno look or feel cool or satisfying rather than judging them by their usefulness. Personally this is what have been keeping me away from many MMOs. Eventually I reach a point where people just don't want to play with me because I don't follow meta. In my opinion meta is in it's core *against* the idea of an RPG - instead of creating a character *you* want to play with flaws and issues you follow a guideline to the point it doesn't feel like your character anymore. You are just playing a prepared excel spreadsheet. Yes creating your own meta is also a thing you could do, but you most likely still will ignore less useful stuff and there is zero guarantee that you will come with something meta-viable. Just like you said while the concept of meta comes from min/maxers in tabletop RPGs I personally feel like the other side of the spectrum - the people that randomly rolled poor stats and just go with it because they feel its gonna be fun playing this character - could use some representation in online MMOs. Good vid thou, thanks for making it.
League Of Legends suffered greatly from the "meta" when I was heavily invested in it, I was always told I couldn't play certain champions or even play certain champions how I wanted to because it wasn't meta, that pushed me to want to play my own way even more. The amount of people who wanted to play what they'd seen in E-Sports was unreal, what's worse is that 95% of them never understood why they played that way so whilst they were playing the "strongest champion" at the moment, they weren't being played by the strongest players so none of it even mattered.
On one hand you shouldn't be a total slave to the meta on the other hand Jungle Yuumi is not gonna be a fun time for your team. LoL's meta issue is you gotta hope whoever is going off meta is at least doing something usable
Everyone falls for the dunning kruger in competitive video games. In lols credit the meta has never been set in stone and a good off meta player has always done better than an average meta slave. Meanwhile characters like Leroy from tekken exist in some games or balancing works with musical chairs of flavor of the month.
The higher up the ladder the meta becomes more enforced because its what everyone else is doing. Full AP Amumu mid lane isn't going to work in Diamond1 Master tier elo
When I had to play against annie support three games in a row, I quit. I got tired of seeing the same 'meta' picks every damn game.. Then felt like nobody really knows wtf is good when they finally started playing Janna in every e-sports match... the character I had mained the whole time.
For me, the problem of the MMO design of hard enrage contributes to the problem of the meta. By enforcing that you must clear this boss by x time or else everyone dies only further encourages players to adhere to a meta and enforce that meta onto others.
Enrage timers needs to be done, if not, strategies with more healings and more tanks would be applied to just out-sustain any damage the boss will deal, leading to a guaranteed win (albeit way longer time)
For real man. You can still kill a boss playing casually, I've done it myself. Now, if you want to kill it in the best time possible, so you can farm it or break some tipe of record, that's different. In my opinion, that's what branched into the meta stuff. At the end of the day, everyone should be able to play a GAME they way they want to play it, as long as they're also respectful of the choice other people decided to play it.
@@Virusness It's fine to have soft enrage. These are things like vulnerability stacks and AoE attacks where tanks or healers have to mitigate damage for the party to survive or apply growing damage over time for mistakes. Bosses might even gain more buff stacks over time during a fight. Mistakes will eventually lead to death. That is why I specifically refer to the problem of HARD ENRAGE. Hard mode bosses of MMOs usually have an attack that will instantly wipe a party at a given point in time, usually something like 8 or 10 minutes into a fight. This in turn makes the battle a time attack and ends up enforcing a meta strategy because you have to make it under that time or else. With a soft enrage, you might be able to push that timer up to 8:30 through heals as the boss gradually ramps up damage and this in turn provides an alternative strategy. The problem with this is that mistakes end up encouraging the party to just wipe rather than try to push through a fight to a close victory. The entire fight just ends up turning into an eight minute long dance routine where if you screw up, the preferred option is for everyone to suicide and start over. And if your preferred option after a mistake is to quit a fight and just start over, I would argue there's a problem with the game's design.
You don't want enrageless bosses. Gw2 has that and it's just depressing to see 4 healers and the boss taking fucking 15 mins when it's killed in like 3
I've been having a problem with the meta in ESO myself. When the game came out, it was encouraged to mix and match weapon types, armor types, classes, just make whatever mix you enjoyed. I loved it. But now, years later, slowly playing all the while, it feels like these days I have to follow one of these meta builds for my char not to suck ass. I made a point of asking the community about it recently and I was explicitly told to respec my dual wield, heavy armor character into a light armor, staff wielding one. Honestly, it killed my spirits, hard. I feel like this is a point where the meta became harmful to the game at large.
Ignore them! There are ways to make any builds work with the right sets! And nailing that down isn't really too important until you hit late game anyways!
Like scientific research, you gotta find more effective ways. Once you found the most effective way to play how you want to play, you can pull big brain strats from down under the rug. Imo, not sure if its being the Devil but, I think it's best that you do not share your secrets so that people really try to think and learn about yours
It might become a slight issue when you run heavy armour in a veteran hardmode trial and it gets to a dps race. With dps you need crits and loads of them, so dual wielding without at least 5 medium pieces costs damage and crit potential. The magic focused meta is often caused by its viability in fights where you have to stand away from others and damage shields, as you are otherwise too close to other stam dd's... As a stamina dd myself, I find this a bit of a big oversight from Zenimax themselves.
@@Georgeveen This is the perfect example of what nerdSlayer said at the end of the video. Why ignore collective intelligence when it can ease ur suffering? Not running medium armor gimps ur own dps and the tradeoff is more tankiness, however, as a dps thats an horrible tradeoff (specially when u are not supposed to be getting hit hard and often) You dont have to play 100% of the meta, but some parts of it are kinda of mandatory to be useful in ur role (most specially in holly trinity scenarios)
The issue with ESO goes back to its foundation for resources. Magicka dps has always been better than stamina dps. The main reason for this is that magicka is only really useful for use with abilities. Stamina also has abilities tied to it but also sprinting, blocking, dodge rolls, and break out mechanic. It means stamina is far more valuable and far more in demand for defenses. In essence it was designed more for tanking and survival (especially pvp) than it was for dps. Stamina also influences weapon to the same degree as magicka does spell power, but stamina is limited in its range because of said weapons being mostly melee and bows always sucking outside pvp for no good reason. Staves have range and scale with magicka on the other hand. Both provide equal levels of return on power attacks too. So already by a mechanical standpoint magicka is way better than stamina for a purely dps purpose. This issue is compounded by another mechanic of the game: light and heavy attacks. They do hardly anything even when empowered. A majority of all damage comes from abilities. Light and heavy attacks were designed to be filler so resources could recover before being dumped again. Stamina being required for survival mechanics means you have less to spend on abilities for dps than magicka builds already and so more reliant on light and heavy attacks. This equals a massive dps drop while magicka doesn't lose anything since they can dedicate their stamina fully to defense and mobility where stamina can not. The easiest way to fix stamina dps would be if they made stamina based weapons deal more damage naturally with their light and heavy attacks while also giving them more power on their abilities. Now this could lead to stamina dps being better for raw burst if someone dumps all their stamina at once but with how required the mobility and defense mechanics are in both pve and pvp it would likely get someone killed just for that one moment of insane damage. I think it is a fair trade off but that is just me.
0:19 Blade and Soul1:13 Final Fantasy XIV 1:23 Dauntless1:30 World of Warcraft (WoW) 1:45 Tera1:59 Albion Online2:04 Guild wars 2:10 Blue Protocol (had to look that one up myself...)2:54 Elder Scrolls Online (ESO)3:42 Kurtzpel6:10 Old School Runescape (OSRS) 7:38 Star Wars Galaxies (from my 5min research, walking animation and Graphics)8:52 Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR)
@Chosenxeno And that is why the classic wow community is shit. Sure you can have fun, but don't you dare try it or you'll find yourself playing a single player game.
i never followed the meta, warrior through and through, but what killed it for me is that it got really boring and all classes were the same apart from some where melee and some were ranged.
@@Amutsal Well, it is an MMORPG, and the MM part of it is massive multiplayer, if you want to play your way then play it, but don't expect other people okay with it.
When I played WoW, I mained Demonology Warlock. I did not care how often I got yelled at "wtf go Affliction" "dude come on go Destro". Which was most of the time. I rarely ever had my moment in the sun, but I'd never have it any other way.
In Gw2 i mained Engineer, the weakest DPS with the hardest rotation in the game, a true jack of all traits. Took a while to get my first boss kills at the 3rd Raid....
Yeah, I was a dedicated Fury Warrior only for the entire time I played. That includes PvP, my favorite part of WoW, and I remember getting a lot of flack for being Fury PvP in Cataclysm and more than a few expansions afterwards. But I wouldn't have it any other way, that extra chip on my shoulder, the challenge, it was thrilling to me to win.
@@Obiwancolenobi Nope. I held my own which was why people let me get away with it. Rather be good at the average class than force myself to play one I suck at (Affliction) or just dont give a damn about (Destro).
I've always held the opinion that people who consider metas as the only viable playstyle and only play games for efficiency and not for fun while blatantly shaming and bullying people with certain playstyles or weapon/armour preferences for not playing their way really aren't that enjoyable to play with, usually.
@@stayskeptic3923 FF14's biggest time sink and focus is on its Main Scenario quest, there is a lot to do in the game but the almost unanimous thing the community agrees on is not to skip story in the game. A lot of the game's amenities and such are also unlocked through the story, so you will have to go through it to get to the Endgame. The story is continuous and connects to each other through each expansion and each job has their own side story! You could also have all of the possible classes unlocked and played on just one character so it helps with not needing to make a million alts to go through the story again and again. :O
If you're looking for an MMO that feels like a world, Elder Scrolls Online is a way better one than FFXIV. Don't get me wrong, I love FFXIV for its gameplay/story, but exploring its world feels hollow. It's way more of a theme park, or one of those fake looking MMOs from an anime than it is a sprawling world for you to explore. FFXIV just can't compare, when its engine is built on paper clips and string. Choose Elder Scrolls Online for a world, and FFXIV for a game.
@@yancyzhang845 The main quest is something you do once while you're leveling your first job, the big time sink of this game are dungeon / trial / raid. I like the game but it's A LOT like wow, it's pretty much an always online dungeon crawlers, a good one, but with very few RPG elements (I mean there's no character customisation whatsoever, everyone from your class will have the exact same abilities).
Tbh, I never cared for meta and just do my own thing. I like to experiment with builds if the game allows it and in my experience, meta gamers are one of the obnoxious players of the game.
I remember in FFXIV the tank meta during one of the ultimate fights was PLD + WAR. However, World First clear for that fight had Dark Knight in the comp. People would accuse the clearing party for using exploits or some unheard of strategy with the DRK, but the DRK player just responded with "I just like playing Dark Knight," which baffled everyone. Similarly, another World First clear of a Savage tier had a Summoner (which has always been meta) player switch to Black Mage (which has never been in world first clear team) because his hand was cramping too much playing SMN. Metas are dumb, self-imposed limitations on parties but unfortunately they are used by low and mid-skill level players wanting to LARP as high tier raiders
This is true for any game. Metatards are pretty much never as good as they think they are. And people who are at the high tier usually just use whatever they're comfortable with or feel like using, unless they're pushing for speed clears.
It depends on the game and encounter. For Nya'lotha on Mythic, as an example, there were fights where youd bring a blood DK as a third tank to do mass grip to counter some of the adds chasing allies. If an encounter has certain conditions that only certain classes can do, that's where the meta is more like a "necessary" list, rather than an efficiency one. If an encounter doesnt have those conditions, and certain classes are taken just because they're statistically better, then you can play whatever you want, but you will be working harder to do the same work as the others. That's why people follow the meta, it's about efficiency and ease. You can still get world first if you don't follow the meta and the encounters don't have requirements that only certain classes can meet, but you'll be putting in more work. Just because you play the best classes doesn't mean you'll do the best, but if you had 20 raiders with the exact same knowledge, performance and skill level compete with 20 raiders with the exact same knowledge, performance and skill, where one used optimal classes and the other didn't, the optimal classes would win every time. Skill is a factor, but so is consistency in performance. Ultimately that's what it mostly comes down to since no two teams of players will be alike in those ways. If a team with a player using an off-meta class is over-all better than a team using all meta classes, then they will win. So meta isn't something to neceessarily blindly follow - but it also varies from game to game. Sometimes the statistical difference between classes is so great that it can't be ignored. Like with wow dps ranking. There are classes that do twice as much aoe dps as other classes, while also having extremely strong single target dps. You have demon hunters, which as a dps, are strong in raiding, high mythic+ and arena. Then you have other classes like WW monk which are below average in raiding, strong in high mythic+ / arena. So you have to unfortunately also know what type of content your choice allows you to do in relation to other classes. So I disagree entirely that they are dumb, self-imposed limitations - on the sole condition that information is provided as to what the list is displaying. EG: Wow single target dps list, Wow aoe dps list, etc. They are essentially tier-lists showing what classes perform better on a statistical level. The problem comes in with ease-of-play - not every class in the meta will be easy to play. DH are mind-numbingly simple, only having a few buttons, yet they are one of the strongest classes in wow.
I'd like to point out right now that DRK is pretty damn meta for Prog because TBN is busted. A large part of the controversy surrounding that whole Ultimate thing was accusations of Thoughts-Per-Second hacking the servers to steal mechanics info because Sindalf figured out a hidden mechanic 4 days before the rest of the playerbase did; and also largely because the World First winners were from the American DCs. And the European and Japanese servers have this feeling of superiority about being intellectuals compared to the NA mouth-breathers, so a lot of them lost their shit at losing WF to "a guy who doesn't even have a bed."
Same can be applied to mobas. Just look at games like League or Hots and you see usually the same characters, builds and behaviours (looking at you Klepto Ezreal). Metas are for people who do not want to enjoy a game but to those who just are addicted to winning.
I... What? Esports is literally the highest tier of competitive play, no fucking shit people are "addicted to winning" that's literally what their job is. Also a much much better example would be GOATS in overwatch which was so strong that it completly took over the game and since it was also super boring was detrimental go the game.
@@Zerasad I am talking about players blindly following metas without even knowing why these things work. They just do it because everybody says it is the best, which could be true, but nobody says why it is the best.
I disagree, I play league casually because I enjoy the mechanics and playing with my friends, but I don't have the time to sift through all the possible item/builds I could use for my preferred characters, so I just metagame and look up what builds work best so I can get to the part I enjoy faster. Some games I do the same with character/class tiers as well, I play for reasons other than the rpg,, make-your-own-build aspect so meta tiers are really helpful.
"Why ignore the meta?" Cause its more fun i like to figure stuff out myself than follow the meta like a drone. cause that's whats its all about right? fun ?
Ah, PVPing the counter meta...Sun Tzu said all warfare is based on deception but who needs to deceive when people are already locked into their preconceived notion about how a fight should play out? Why "waste" my resources turning my Deflect ability into a Reflect? Because no one expects that their spells will reflect back at them even when the "Deflect" animation is obvious. Why not have a spider pet when it nets players in webbing? Because all the players are expecting to be netted in webbing and have refined procedures for countering/mitigating this ability...unlike my parrot who can disarm them. Why, oh god, why would I ever invest so much in Stamina as a damage dealing class? Because people expect to play the burn down game and will have exhausted their abilities on the assumption I'd be dead by the end of it. Gain the edge in battle by not confirming to expectations.
generally im an anti meta player. i purposely like to find and play builds or ideas that might be unexpected or odd, like seeing if i can make a class that is typically relegated to healing function as dps. As a result, i tend to keep away from mmos that are too static regarding player choice, like say, wow or ff14, where if you play a certain class, you are likely to be identical in actual capabilities to every other player of that class
I have more problems with meta outside of MMOs. Getting yelled at if I pick Caitlyn mid (LoL), or play DPS when we "need" two tanks (OW), or god forbid we don't have a Sage (Valorant).
Meta is subjective if you are good enough you can beat it. Plus the meta might be nerfed (if the developer is actually competent not like in DCSS where you can always go statue form irradiate or a minotaur fighter/berserker with an axe) so playing off meta might be better
In the Anime "Overlord" which is about a fictional MMORPG, the main character is from a guild that actually focuses on the Role playing aspect and he said they would often make builds to fit their builds based on lore or personal desire. They werent a guild of min maxers. I always liked that part about it.
Their guild is a pay2win/whale guild in real mmo standards. One of the requirements on entering iirc is you have to have a stable job to be on the guild. And ains was using those cash shop items vs shalltear 😂
@@LoneBluesman They wanted stable people, who are able to invest heavily into the game, to be the very best guild. It's more that the whole game was p2w, which makes RL gold important and might be seen as a way to "be" better at the game. Also, Season 4 when?
@@kouron ikr its probably the reason why yggdrasil is closing too its probably a cash grab dead mmo with no players 😂 lets hope s4 doesnt get delayed because of covid
One of the best parts about Dark Souls Coop/PvP is just seeing the different builds and playstyles people use. Most weapons are viable. Some players are aggressive, others defensive. Each area can be completed in very different ways. Make a game that supports as many playstyles as possible
This is exactly why World of Warcraft Classic is such a flaming dumpsterfire: Everyone knows the meta of pretty much everything, the meta isnt especially hard (because the game was designed to be easy) and its an old game where the expectation was that only the top less than 1% know the most optimal strategy. Therefore that strategy (im specifically talking world buffs) is really... well... badly designed. Not only that, but the ease of access to this information makes guild leaders expect more and more from their players, especially if they come from private servers that are filled with elite players.
I haven't had much experience with WOW myself but every time I hear about something in WOW Classic it always seems to have the same message to me of the game aging really poorly. Everything's been figured out already.
thats just because the puritans dont allow changes to be made, nerf/buffs to balance out the dumpsterfire that is classic they have known for ages, they dont want to relearn things and readapt while also losing the edge they have towards other newbies, Its the same people that bitch all day why it isnt the same as when they played, but then question why the playerbase is slowly quitting due to being bored as shit from the game.
@@mattwo7 " That makes no sense when you consider that they might have had to relearn classic after all these years" It does - most of them come from private servers, so they DIDN'T have to relearn classic. They were playing it.
I've had so many people complain to me about being off meta. The vast majority of them were bad players, with little or no understanding of how the game actually worked. Figure out what build works for you, then refine it. Even if you aren't "best in meta", you will still be more effective in a build that suits your playstyle rather than someone else's cookie cutter build.
To be harsh, if you have anyone to blame for the "meta" then blame bad players. Bad players cannot clear end game content with non min-maxed builds. Bad players have a slightly higher higher chance to clear end game content with min-maxed builds. However, because these players do not understand how to play the game (the number 1 thing you need to be able to play off-meta), these players NEED everyone else in their group to play meta builds to even have a chance at clearing content within a reasonable amount of time. Better players are simply able to adapt to having non-meta players in their group because they can rely on their own knowledge and experience (and actually trust people to do their job).
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. Truthfully, the meta is something I never paid attention to and bothered with. I played what's fun and what worked, and usually stuck with that. Conicidentally, I generally am more of a soloer, playing through the game at my own pace and rate and in my own way. Aside from situations where I am forced to be with others (dungeons, primarily, raids are too much for me) I don't really group up much.
Tldr: We need people who don't follow the meta, so we can make the meta. They are the ones finding the new combos that everyone else blinding follows. In GW2 I usually avoided the meta. Not because I felt like I was better than the meta, but because if we all follow the meta blindly, we won't have progress to the meta. I was the person who ended up making the phantom trapper build that took wvw by storm years after it's creation. The build basically had 100% stealth up time and let you continue to damage players... I used it to 1 v zerg, and was able to take down (and stomp) around 5 players per hit and run without any fear of downing. I would have never made that build if I followed the meta, and I enjoyed using that build from 2015- the nerf date, updating the build every time they made a change to how my skills worked. The reason it got nerfed it because my niche off meta build finally got picked up by someone, and posted to the metabattle site (and I wasn't given credit for making the build,) so people started to use it mainstream and it forced the devs to rebalance the trapper runes, and how thieves use traps. I later made another perma stealth build that involved spamming the kneel action on the rifle, that wasn't as useful as the trap build, but it worked... they nerfed that a few weeks later. Btw, I had both of those builds on my channel, but I deleted them after they were nerfed to the point of being impossible. I tried to make update vids for the trapped build, I even made a structured pvp version, but it didn't feel right keeping a vid with around 100k views up when it was no longer useful forth viewer.
A lot of people try to break the meta. Are you sure your build got stolen without credit, rather than someone happening to come up with the same idea that you did?
I don't see a problem with "the meta" by itself. It's those elitist people following like word of god who makes a problem of it. I've played many MMORPGs to have an idea of what is strong and why given the mechanics of the game, and while i'm not a Meta-slave, I try to know the strongest classes or playstyles to be a helpful member in my guild/static/group of friends so if my class or playstile becomes the meta i know how to squeeze the potential or in the contrary how to still be effective when other classes are objectively better. On a side note.. I loved playing Berserker Tank in TERA, but due neglect of the devs the "subclass" was killed when the gear revamp patch with class-specific tunes dropped and there was no way to reroll my gear to be effective at tanking.
In MMORPG´s you must have been if... 1. You were alone and used +300 hr into a game, since the pve stuff is basically what doesn´t need one other than... 2. Dungeons, Events and Group quests. 3. Played pvp 4. Were in an active guild. The Meta is in most games, but games like shooters hide it well behind all the chaos and lack of strategy. MOBA´s and CCG are a total different story.
@@stayskeptic3923 lol, Overwatch suffered from meta more then most games. Stoped playing it myself when the dominance of goat was established a couple years ago and as I know they still haven't recovered from it
Honestly, following the Meta is fine and all but it makes the game feel like a chore instead of playing however you want. Kind of makes you lose a sense of identity and joy
If you play any game long enough chances are you'll end up "meta gaming". It just doesn't make sense to purposely limit yourself or choose weapons that are fundamentally bad. Eventually once the initial rush of fun wears off you'll start picking items and upgrades that make the game easier and quicker to complete. No one is going to Bruce Lee there way through a shooter. You'll find the gun that's the most accurate and most destructive then pass over anything that doesn't compete.
Most people complain about off-meta because they're blind and ignorant, but I also get tired of people saying they'll "break the meta" but have the strategic creativity of a waffle. No, tank Ashe isn't good, and I'm not saying that just because it isn't the standard build.
Meta has and always will ruin online gaming. From hero shooters like overwatch to games like Monster hunter. It discourages free play and forces players into a box of 2-4 configurations just to be useful. It gets worse when players start kicking other players out of matches just for playing how they want.
Back in the time when MMORPG's still were RPG's we used to have fun. Storming an open world dungeon in a group of 8 tanks, just to see how far we'd get and afterwards celebrate ina Tavern in DAoC was some of the greatest times I had in an MMO. I loved playing a gypsy in Archeage, to be a dps with my own little healer attached, because it suited me got me nothing but shit from others because it wasn't "very effective". How was it not effective if it provided fun for me - more fun that other class combinations. The whole meta thing is an inherently toxic concept that takes people away from playing the game into gaming the game. Turning the affair from an experience into an optimization task. And while this appeals to many and they try to force it on others it just does not appeal to me. I am successful enough in optimizing my real life, like my finances, my career, my cooking skills and my further education. I don't need to transfer that into my gaming, I can "grind" through a new Excel file any day, what I seek in a game is to enjoy it and have fun experiences. So while I love crafting, PVE, exploration and mass-combat PVP in MMORPGS I always get sad when the game fades out of the early stages of free experimentation and starts to calcify in it's meta, this dictated "this it's how it's done and how dare you wasting your time doing it differently" and it usually made me leave and dream of the golden early days.
The thing is mmos are online, and you’re working as a team (usually) so yeh you being a dd that hits like a noodle, but hey you’re providing heals, so it’s fine.. that may be fun for you.. but it’s not fun for the other X amount of players, you’re causing to slow progression, or potential completely stop progression entirely.. so in an endgame environment, people want to succeed, and using the meta, or at the v least close to it, is how you do that.. however there is nothing stopping you from making your own guild/clan in said game, full of people with the same goal as you, being more casual and doing goofy shit, like taking a bunch of tanks in a raid.. you just can’t simply go into an endgame environment and expect people to enjoy your casual sided gameplay, when your decisions alone could be the difference between clearing a raid in half an hour, or 6 hours
@@phased3941 it's not teamplay. it's 4 random dudes speedrunning a dungeon without saying a word. You describe exactly what I hate. Teams implies that there is social interaction but there isn't. And yes, people want to succeed, because they are gamers, not roleplayers. They don't give a shit about the game they just want to succeed. Modern MMO's are also cut to that insane anti-roleplaying concept. In DAOC you had no groupfinder and groups were made out of 8 people. so you weren't the only healer or the only tank, there was room for variation.
@@catriona_drummond 4 man dungeons aren’t end game in any mmo.. the raids are endgame, and if you want to clear that then you have to communicate.. and be optimised If you want team work, without group finders, go try eso and join a guild to do the endgame dlc trials, and to a lesser extent the dlc dungeons challenges, I don’t play that game anymore, because they made the game easier jus because of noobs, but you still can’t just blitz through the endgame content with randoms
@@phased3941 you are a gamer. you will never understand what I am talking about. Also I am speaking about stuff I did in 2003. that world is long gone, so just leave me alone.
@@catriona_drummond maybe I don’t understand, but everything you’ve described so doable today, going into a trials with a bunch of dumb shit that shouldn’t do well, just to have fun, then doing more hard core stuff with optimised groups, you can do all that, especially in eso for example, since you can be in 5 guilds, unlike most (and I’m not trying to be hostile towards you, just talking)
In PvP contexts one of my favorite things to do is to look at a meta and think what the game plan of that meta is and how I can best annoy and exasperate anyone following it. A lot of strategies that are niche in a vacuum become overwhelmingly strong in the context of checking a strong meta because that meta was usually born in the middle of a different meta.
I would separate the meta between PvE and PvP modes. When it comes to PvE, following the meta in dungeons/raids will generally improve your team's performance, which is why it's often "reinforced". If you're doing "group content", playing whatever build you find fun (at the group's expense), will bring you negative attention for a reason. When it comes to PvP though, there are genuine benefits for going off-meta, makes you less predictable, and perhaps more efficient against meta builds (provided you build against them). There's an argument to be made against min-maxing in general, but I find myself siding more with the meta when it comes to higher level PvE. Conversely, I'm completely against it in single player games lol
I feel like the opposite is true, you might be being thrown off by group sizes/relationships. In general the larger the group is and the less of a connection it has the less off-meta negativity you will get. You're probably comparing PvE groups of ~5 vs PvP "groups" of 20+. Taking those into account PvP is much harsher on non-meta play since looking for someone to blame for losses is more likely. In PvP you're going to lose ~50% of games, people get very upset, and individual performance can drastically effect the chances of your team winning. PvE success on the other hand is usually more about how fast you win and not if you win, unless you are doing very poorly you shouldn't drastically effect the odds of your team winning, and it's more readily apparent to the team if your off-meta strategy is working. I've never really had issues with off-meta play in MMOs but I don't tend to play anything dramatically different and don't play very competitive parts. For off-meta PvP hate I just think of LoL, TF2, and Overwatch.
At the same time, this is bollocks. Going against the meta in PVE can often improve the group, but people's slavish adherence to the meta makes them not see it, leading to drama, whining, and in-group stupidity. Example: Healing Paladins in classic WoW, or tanking Paladins/Druids in TBC. The meta was that it couldn't be done at a point, and so people acted as if that was the truth, even if reality was the opposite, as it turned out later. Eventually, the meta shifted, and the same crybabies that whined that X class couldn't do X suddenly shouted that class X SHOULD do X. It was funny to watch. At least we got server firsts because we were the only guild not stupid enough to reject classes outright due to "meta" lol.
Yeah, in single player, I feel to find meta (or strong builds) is part of the game. Just looking it up literally means you are just omitting part of the game.... which is really weird. Why would you do that?
@@fy8798 My friend played holy paladin all through Vanilla and was the main healer of our guild. I was offtank/dps with an arms warrior. We also had druid offtank, fury war offtank/dps, disc priest... Our small guild was non-meta all over the place but we knew pretty well how our classes/kits worked. We cleared all Vanilla content without much problems (well except Naxxramas, only cleared half of that) and were often tag-alongs when the big pgm guilds of the server needed some extras for raids. I remember doing my BWL attunement just before the raid and got in stuffed like a peon, then going all the way to Nefarian in a single evening. Tanked the adds long enough to play my role, only died because of Nefarian fucking with the druids. Nowadays you can change spec on the go, in Vanilla all you had to do is equip a shield and change stance, you had all your kit at your disposal, all the time. Now I will ramble on for an hour about how WoW is shit since you can't do frost nova > flamestrike > blast wave > blizzard > cone of cold any more :p
After 10 years WoW etc. I can say: 90% of players dont have to bother with Meta. They dont have the technical enviroment and/or the skill. I know many people who adopt to meta on the cost of fun, but in the raid, they have 1 hand in the chips bag, 100 ms delay and 25 fps. If you only are at 70% of what the elite players achieve, you dont have to care about the meta, tweaks and game theory that make differences in the 90-100% area. Play the game and hf. It`s like a shooting competition. Why you would try to calculate the wind and temp in order to hit a target in 1000m distance, bother with breath controle etc. etc. if you neither have a weapon with the range nor you hit the 50m target right before your nose!
The proliferation of metawhores has made playing off-meta surprisingly rewarding in in pvp situations, where many players are prepped to fight a meta build (often /with/ a meta build) gaining you an advantage by pulling skills out that they have no counter to, or really just do not expect.
BRO HOLY SHIT YOU'VE BEEN READING MY MIND OR SOMETHING SINCE I WAS JUST GRIPING ABOUT THE META WITH PATH OF EXILE AND WHY IT MADE ME TURN AWAY FROM THAT GAME COMPLETELY! O-O
I recognized World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, and Runescape, and one of the Star Wars MMOs (The Old Republic or Galaxies?) but what were the other games?
0:19 Blade and Soul1:23 Dauntless1:45 Tera1:59 Albion Online2:04 Guild wars 2:10 Blue Protocol (had to look that one up myself...)2:54 Elder Scrolls Online (ESO)3:42 Kurtzpel7:38 Star Wars Galaxies (from my 5min research, walking animation and Graphics)8:52 Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR)
breaking metas has become it's own genre in League of Legends, it's pretty fun to do weird and wacky builds, turning tanks into mages, healers into DPSs. League is even designed with meta breaking in mind somewhat, and it's super fun to do.
I'm a guide writer for a super old text based MUD that helps define archetypes and training paths based on the game skill systems. this absolutely struck home. I do tones of research, tons of comparative analysis on one decision versus another, and anytime I recommend something, it's usually with a few paragraphs of backup information to support my decision, and to let you know exactly why you're wrong. So often I see the points that you brought up where people blindly follow meta without considering why and the underlying reasons, and I fully appreciate your comprehensive analysis of the meta!
I really like how you approach this. I always looked at the meta in a negative way - thanks to some randos in dungeons calling my build trash (despite it being completely adequate to get the job done), but I found your points on using the meta to counter it to be pretty insightful
This depended entirely on the Level, at least on Dark Souls 2. Later soul levels there were clear signs as to what worked best since people could stack more stuff. I do have to say nobody ever expected the 1 - 2 - parry with a greathammer in that game. Now that was the good shit.
@@DuckieMcduck Yeah, both greathammer and giant warrior club were great with spacing that R2 ooof remember playing with cowctus and Otzdarva back in DS2 when he was just a small streamer good days, still my favourite PvP in DS2
@@boogit9979 The buffkatana giantdad ringed knight greatswords "pros" are always garbage, if you are using anything other then the metabuild weapons they're complete clueless
It's actually hilarious because I knew a ret paladin in Vanilla that did progression raiding. He didn't change spec, all he did was change gear and focus more on keeping buffs up on everyone. People chasing meta in Classic WoW feels like people not taking advantage of the flexibility that WoW used to have.
And then we have FFXIV. 1. Always Be Casting (ABC). 2. Use your cooldowns. 3. If more than 3 targets, use AoEs. 4. Do your rotations. 5. Don't stand in the bad. Following these simple five steps will put you among the 'Way Way Way Way Above Average' players.
To play with somebody whom refuses to improve in an mmo is the equivelent of playing Mario co-op with somebody whom refuses to hold down sprint. Literally keeping all the other players back.
i use to play meta builds in gw2 a long time ago while my brother made his own builds. he would get mad when me or someone else goes down, hating meta because no defense. he'd run a selfish surviable build no utilities. I always liked the Meta there because you needed more teamwork to make it shine and learn how to play instead of tanking (also time). But with pugs (pick up groups) i would bring a more team friendly build to get through, there were hardly any much team work and i'm a protecter (changes to guardian). With my brother he ended up better than random pugs but he never got better to the point of doing harder content due to his playstyle and not realizing how much others carry him, or how little utility others bring. He would call me to party for such harder dungeons. I got good enough to carry with my skills due to having no def meant i needed to learn to dodge. no matter what its frustrating to deal with others who think they good. Just because its a Meta build doesn't mean you have the skills to use it effectively. you should try to find what works with you while trying to become better. theres just so many Metas for what you want to do? PVP/PVE/STRGT/AOE/Close RNG/Long RNG/DEF/Attack/ not to mention the mechanics of a boss allowing certain builds to shine more. No time to think about that? just get a pick up and play simple build( games are here to have fun with after all)?
I completely agree. I tried meta builds but they didn't work for me. I made my own build, realizing it works the best for me and I eventually got very good with it. I think the magic lies behind understanding your own build/class, rather than following the meta.
@@gr9032 I feel likes its more skill and knowledge seeing as you can survive with little to no defense, well back then. just make sure you try to support your team in a party. Utilities help so much more than builds in parties
This is why I only play single player RPGs. Also mmorpgs don´t even feel like rpgs anymore; just take out the rpg of the name and add in Massively Multiplayer dungeon loot crawler.
The thing i hate is the fact that all MMORPG's or MMO's are always boasting "Be Creative, Do what you WANT, Be What you Want" Then you get in, and Guess what you can't do none of that if you expect to ever make a reasonable build that will be acceptable, because they will either give certain Race's better attributes in specific stats that certain classes require to improve, am i really being who i want to be in game if i have to be a certain race, or race gender in order to have an edge in the class I want to play, i feel like games should yes be able to differentiate their races a bit, but i think it should just be left to either cosmetic or physical attributes that don't have an effect that would make them better potential as a class than any other race, my two cent even though i know a good majority probably like this due to competitive nature in games.
I always thought of the META in multiplayer games as the "Most Effective Tactic Available". That leaves the player with 2 options of which option to is technically limitless options. 1. Follow the META 2. Work around the META. As in break it down to it's basic assumptions and find a way to subvert or outright break it. But option 2 has a very high barrier to entry because it takes intimate mechanical knowledge of the game and a lot of time invested to find out what might work and if it does how it will work for you.
Back in the day in FFXI, my buddy was playing RDM/NIN for dual wielding. He was kicked from group after group after group because it was a "bad" combo of jobs. About a year later, we had moved on from the game but had fries who still played. Guess what was now the Meta? RDM/NIN.
I always play meta or top tier because that is fun. Being optimal is fun. Trying to be better each and every time is fun. Playing well is fun. Being effective is fun. Being the best that you can be is fun. Playing a game not to enjoy it but to challenge it, make it a chore, a task, an objective is fun. Doing the same combo over and over is fun as long as it's optimal. Analyzing how the game changes as it progress and what tools the player is given is fun. Spending time theory crafting and outlining fights, encounters, instances, whole game sections to be the fastest, most effective, and most optimal is fun. Practicing for hours to overcome the challenge of getting better numbers on the screen is fun. Playing a new game at the hardest difficulty, constantly throwing yourself in the path of turmoil is fun. And if you don't think that's something you're gonna enjoy, well then enjoy playing sub-optimally and incorrectly.
Yeah sure, but some people don’t like being confined to specific play styles. Some people don’t like spending hours upon hours to make progress in a game when they have other hobbies or very busy. There’s a specific point where playing pump the number up game becomes unfun because the stats may change but the feel barely changes unless if the meta is inviting. It’s the reason why I began to dislike Destiny’s combat and raids. Also, there’s no incorrect way to play a game as long as you’re having fun.
This was super interesting I love your content dude! Not a huge mmo player but I do play fighting games and pokemon very heavily which also have very pronounced metas. Fighting games theres very little customizability so people either pick top tier or bitch about the top tier. But with pokemon, which has a very specific meta and a ton of customizability the meta often shifts as people discover new sets for often overlooked mons, which leads to a flavor of the week build etc. What's interesting as well about it is certain 'bad' pokemon can compliment good ones and non meta builds of meta pokemon can end up being a boon to you in the short term if the opponent reads your set wrong. FEAR teams are basically this concept turned up to 150 as a team with level 1 pokemon can end up sweeping a team of all lv 100 pokemon if they dont have a counter to that specific strategy. Lastly I think one of the main reasons i never got into mmos was the heavy emphasis on optimization veteran mmo players have very little patience for mistake making and like whats an mmo good for if everyone just calls you trash as you learn. From my experience I never thought of them as online friends more just pressure from other people to play a game that they just chastise me for playing. Im not saying cool people arent out there but from my 5 or so attempts to sink into an mmo thats about my experience and why i didnt stick with it.
The only thing i want from a meta is that everything is playable, i HATED it as an Engineer main in Gw2 to be kicked from raids because my class was to weak, the same problem Necromancers and non healing Druids or non Tank Mesmers had.Guild wars 1 has a stone hard meta, everything has its place, some classes arent favored in certain instances, but all classes have builds that make them equally viable compared to the meta class. The same goes for FFXIV, the meta changes with almost each update or everytime a non-meta comp gets a Worlds first (which happens more than you would think), and while some Jobs are favored, the balanced isnt so horrible that some Jobs couldnt perform at all.
If there's one MMO where i feel like the Meta is not a thing, it's FFXIV. Except recently where summoner is kinda broken, the game has always been quite balanced and the selection of this or this job was mostly based on personnal preference. Look at the last raid tier. All the "big teams" where following some kind of "meta" with summoner, ninja etc. Then come a japanese team, playing with a mink, a black mage, and 2 physical ranged DPS and they had the first kill, whereas everyone was laughing at them because "lul comp team looks like a PUG".
I play a LOT of ffxiv, and I see people asking what the meta is all the time. The answer is always "play what you like". Because they're all balanced enough that you can be successful with anything.
I was an Arcane Mage (WOW Burning Crusade) at heart during a time of "Fire Mage is best DPS" meta. Most fire mages ate dirt because they weren't watching agro while chasing a number. I enjoyed the ability to survive till the end while still being in the top 5 of damage/DPS.
This is good advice and even applies to my own field of TCG. I have mentioned on my own channel that if a player is looking to win, taking a look at the top decks is a good starting point. However, it's best to not just copy (aka NetDeck) those decks without understanding how they work first. Also, if a player enjoys playing a different archetype from the meta ones, find a way to make that archetype counter the top decks.
I think this is actually why I enjoy FFXIV so damn much. Been playing since beta for ARR and not once have I heard people even discussing the meta, let alone enforcing it. Due to combat not having wide-reaching variables like talent trees, builds etc the devs can very finely tune the output and balance of every job/class. Savage and Ultimate raid World Firsts are frequently beaten with jobs that people don't expect to see. All it comes down to is learning your job, learning your rotation and learning the fights. And with the wellspring of information available to us that's easier than ever to do with just a little research and effort.
Ugh meta is cancer. I get that people want to be efficient but min/maxing and cookie cutter builds are bullshit that creates toxic attitudes and dissuade fun.
I can remember around the time Emerald Nightmare came out in WoW and I was one of the few people on the server tanking on a Brewmaster monk at the time (www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/541vdf/brewmasters_make_up_only_4_of_tanks_in_emerald/) and got lambasted in a PUG group by the Prot Warrior at the time for not picking a 'viable' tank spec. What occurred though was priceless, tanking Ursoc HC the Prot Warrior failed to taunt at the correct time leaving me with several additional debuffs that I could easily 'shrug' off compared to the Warrior - they quickly blamed me and left the group and we stuck through it with another tank and cleared the instance. Meta has always been somewhat of a hit-or-miss in WoW and scenarios like these show that people picking the 'dominant' classes often don't know how others function. Skip to Trial of Valor and you see top raiding guilds SOLO tanking bosses on Mythic using Brewmaster Monk, safe to say investing time in the class in levelling my artifact weapon / going for legendaries paid off :D It's kinda sad to see that this mentality has somewhat been heightened in Classic WoW and has put me off the game for now with people stacking world buffs and meta picks to clear instances quickly, despite the fact that the Raids in Classic aren't at all difficult..
It's barely less mandatory the meta when you are with a simple guild (early, midgame raiding), you grow with them, you start to learn a lot of some playstyles of your companions and establish some changes to the meta that work enough for better progress.
I think META also stands for Most Efficient Tactics Avaliable. Playing off META requires understanding of what led to the META and how it changes over time. If something is there to counter the META it will become META at some point because of what it counters, unless something stops being playable because the off meta-picks counter it so well. But playing off meta isn't playing a wierd talent build in WoW that makes no sense when pugging a raid and then complaining you get kicked because you do low damage. Saying that is because everyone is a META-slave is just ignorant, if you get kicked because of your class or build however it might be because the leader is a META-slave and doesn't understand what you are playing however. META isn't inherently bad, it might however be a pain for people not wanting to put a lot of effort into a game.
I dont agree that MMOrpg suffers the most because of meta just because of the genre game design, the problem comes from the player base who are not content with seeing one class or build vastly outperform the other. Single player rpg games always had game breaking meta like witcher for example had OP broken alchemy build that outperformed everything else by a mile. And more freedom a player has to customize their own characters more metas will be common. Perfect example is arpg genre, Diablo, grim dawn and especially POE which has some of the craziest one sided meta than any longtime running online game.
Ironically, MMOs with lots of available classes like WoW, GW2 and ToS suffer the most from META. Whereas games with more limited pool of playable classes like TERA felt less affected by it.
The worst I've encountered was back in WotLK, was in a progression guild but wasn't part of the raiders. Eventually one of the raid leaders got a bit burned out and created a C-team of raiders that was just made up of the ones that were more casual, so it had a very relaxed atmosphere. Our first try we cleared 3/4 wings of Naxx, and then second go we got to Kel'thuzad but couldn't down him. This caught the eye of the more hardcore guys who then asked to join with alts, and we were like "sure, join in". These guys couldn't stop whining about how we did everything wrong, and the raid disolved after the boss that rages and you need to down an add to get ridd of the rage. I was off-tank that fight and keeping the adds busy, but the adds died before we could down her, and ofc she rages. Me thinking I'd buy the guys some time because she was pretty low on health, taunts her off the main tank and is lucky with some doges and parries before she one-shots me, and she turns back to the main tank and dies. I was the only casualty, but boy did we get to hear about how much we sucked from the hardcore guys. Killed my joy of the game for a long while.
I remember the "meta" problem playing League of Legends back in the day, because i did play "flash/teleport" mid with anivia two years before teleport mid was even a thing and CONSTANDLY got cursed at for not playing with ignite, because i thought " i never have to situation with my anivia where i miss a little bit of damage to kill the enemy" and i noticed that i can use the teleport to teleport to wards that people put in the bushes to teleport in behind the enemy and slow them with my icestorm (they will flash) and then put a wall infront of them, totally locking them in. It's ALWAYS the braindead people that dont even understand the mechanics well enoth... but ALWAYS stick to what someone else told them is the meta. They dont understand how gameplay evolves and just because something is "meta" doesnt mean that there isnt a better way or a counter. I cant even count how many times the toplaner cursed me and then failed his lane, but i won my lane after teleporting top and finish the enemy that just dived him, giving me the uperhand in the mid to win. Even if i wasnt winning... i could ALWAYS go back home and TP back mid right away to save my tower... people just couldnt understand this concept back in the day.
I almost always played bot/support and I would try random characters to see how they worked back like, 6 yaers ago or whatever And people would *lose their minds* that I ran Support Lux or Support Shaco I left for a few yeasr and now Support Lux is the main role for her lmao
@@mitchellhorton9382 I also played support veigar or lux back in the day (with the item that gives you massive bonus AP after kills/assists), but to be fair... the builds that you see today are with items that we didnt had back in the day (passive income.. or income when your ADC kills something). I think the most rage i ever got was playing karma pre rework, because ANYONE said that it's not possible to play her, while me using her shieldbomb confused the shit out of people when they dived the team and couldnt kill the target, but took massive AE damage to their squishy DPS classes like attackspeed/crit Xin without any HP. I wonder how support shaco would work.. i gues you play defensive and wait for jungle, then snowball with the "kills/assists give you AP" for the dagger and the boxes? Or gank mid when the jungler goes top and the enemy feels save? or gank witht he jungler? I mean i see how it could work, but only if the jungler helps you out (i wouldnt play that in soloQ).
Meta has never been interesting to me, I play games to have fun and will follow that. Had a blast playing classic wow for the first time on my way to hit 60 I was a shadow priest who didn't even know untill level 50 I had a shadow form to boost my damage lol (also love the persona music in the vid)
There is a problem on some games regarding the meta, which is rounds around recommending builds when the ones who recommend hide a better build than those they share to public. Take ESO for instance: Meta guides for builds, as well as streamers, recommend a build but the ones behind it are using a better one so they keep on the top scores and, when a new hand or item sets break the meta, they will mostly change one of the sets while keeping the remaining of the build mostly intact, this in favor to their guilds to keep selling the featured item sets at a high price, and the more the time those item sets are "dominant" in the market the more they inflate each year (especially DLC item sets). They make an exception to Tank role builds by featuring bound sets because the dungeon queues are overpopulated with DPS players while close to zero Tank ones at the point of having DPS players faking the Tank role in queues. Simply put, the meta here works like a mafia of sorts where the capos keep at the top eating caviar while giving dog food to the ones below to eat (while profiting from it).
isnt "meta" short form for "metagame" not meta as a word itself lol, anyway the point im trying to make is that metagaming and meta are two separate things.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss how is this not about metagaming??? your literally talking about people following "the meta" aka people subscribing to a meta game
imagine my attempts at trying to explain people in wotlk how stance dancing only increases your dps by around 1% , it simply showed me that most people simply accept things as they hear it instead of checking out what its really about , most people believe that stance dancing increases your dps astronomicaly when it obviously doesnt
The meta wouldn't matter as much if the game itself didn't punish players for not following the meta. I understand the idea of "being prepared is part of the battle". But fuck that when "being prepared" means tackling a wall made for microtransactions to prosper.
I think looking at meta builds is important, it can make you realize you're using skills out of order, blowing cooldowns, not activating buffs etc. afterwords everything starts to flow together and make sense. Can turn a class you dont think is fun to play into something magical.
This is part of why I really enjoy playing combat focused tabletop games like Pathfinder and DnD - I love being able to theorycraft builds, fun class combinations and weird ideas in an attempt to capture a specific theme or idea. I find it a lot more difficult to translate this into MMOs, however, where I feel the pressure to play optimally. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy MMOs, but I do typically stick to the meta of whatever my race/class is - I do choose that based on what I want to do, at least, regardless.
My biggest problem with MMO metas, especially regarding best equipment and such, is that they are usually always locked behind these huge raid bosses that take ages to beat. I'm anything but a MMO player. Heck, I absolutely hate forced multiplayer. However, what bothers me is when a MMO is allowing you to play solo, but then lock almost necessary equipment behind things you need other people for. I would love to just grind one dungeon or enemy like 500 times for 1 material each to craft a set of equipment. That's just so much more exciting to me than fighting the one same boss for way too long over and over and over again, just for a chance for getting anything. As for stat specific meta. I can kinda understand that...for the most part. Certain dungeons/bosses are just too strong to really take on if you don't have sort of minimum requirements. The problem with that is just when people set those requirements to the max possible stats of the game, just so they play with people that can clear the entire thing in no time. It makes it hard for new players (that don't have friends to play with) to really get anywhere at all. My first point actually ties in to this: Let's say you are a new player, you have the average gear for you level and progress and try to do the current big thing in the game that you are supossed to do at your stage in the game. Then you realize that it's not possible for you alone. So you ask other people to help you, but then they ask you for your stats and even at this point (where the game epects you to be at) it's not enough for anyone to want to play with you. Because you can't do it fast enough. In the end my point is that: MMOs lock too many things behind big multi party road-blocks where other players just expect you to be past those things already to be qualified for them.
I think the amount of ffxiv footage is surprising. All jobs can do everything and they're balanced well. I never actually heard anyone complain or recommend anything on the meta in 14 in my experience as a relatively "new" player
I'd love to see a video expanding upon this with overly numerous class / specialization options where inevitably, there will be repeats in function where numbers win, and things are less situational than others.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss Oh, I agree too! I just think some genres take it too far. MOBAs, and poorly planned MMOs, sometimes cater to a very wide angle of "play what you like" only for some angles to end up being brutally un-meta. To the point that it even affects casual play. An example. World of WarCraft is, at some levels of play, inundated with classes that do the same job in similar ways, depending on Spec. Now, WoW does a good job with what it has, but there's so many classes and specs now that it is a little hard to tune everyone to their own unique situation, so the overlap becomes problematic in certain patches, and at certain levels of play. This increases toxicity at those certain levels of play, and turns some people away. Which WoW has a pretty solid reputation for. Though, a little exaggerated IMO. MOBAS though, like League of Legends, which I feel try to cater to or piggy-back off the MMO market, take this to an exponentially higher level.
If no one wanted to play meta, no one would. People play meta because they want to be the most effective they can be. Meta is a product of want. Wanting to be more powerful. Wanting to be faster. Wanting to be stronger. Wanting to be smarter. Want is never the problem.
The "curse of meta" is really just "the curse of people that can do math". Video games are built upon mathematical formulas, as is literally every computer program in existence. As such, there is a finite, definite, absolute, and calculatable maxima. All you need to find that maxima is to know the formulas you're working with. Most game combat operates on a pretty simple formula. You have X amount of health and you do Y amount of damage. Your enemy has A amount of health and does B amount of damage. You must make your Y equal their A before their B equals your X. Not rocket science. Now you can add crowd control effects, healing, and other mechanics in there to make it a little more complicated, but all those numbers do at their core is adjust the X, Y, A, and B values. The basis remains the same. The idea of "meta" is simply seeing through the pretty graphics on the screen and focusing on the formulas that actually dictate the outcome. "Metagaming" vs "casual" or "for fun" is really just a logical vs. emotional methods of playing the game. Emotional, I want to feel things vs logical, I want to be the most effective.
I know It’s an CCG not an MMO, but when i played hearthstone I friended a lot of people and was surprised how many of them asked where i got a deck or what website i use to get them because i always built them myself, didn’t even know what “net-decking” was for a long time. I never saw the fun in using a deck someone else made, the fun in HS for me was always theory crafting and seeing how i can refine a deck to be on par with the current meta.
Well said. Here's a question though: Isn't it also unfair to be far off meta, and hold your team back from clearing content. Is it still unreasonable to ask your PUG to be prepared for the dungeon or raid they've qued up for?
The worst thing you can do as a developer concerning balance changes is to be a metasheep. A lot of games became gradually unfun because the devs are insistent on forcing one particular method of play the way they want and change the game gradually to where it becomes the only good option.
GTA is a perfect example. So many business locations, but each only have one good one due to mission locations. Or how every vehicle is obsolete if it's not fast or armored.
The other thing that always gets me about this is that sometimes people want to play something for a reason other than raw in-game power. Some people play fire mages because they want to burn everything!
I think metas can be broken if you offer different objectives and ways of "winning". People will still 90% follow the easiest meta but offmeta will not actively hurt during difficult encounters. An example is dominion mobility builds that captured towers in LoL.
This very much rings true when one is expected to know everything about raid/dungeon and its bosses before even going in the first time.
In my experience, this only ever happens when people die to *reused* mechanics. They might be new to the boss, but that doesn't always mean they haven't seen the mechanics before.
@@rhael42 I got flamed all the time when I solo queued in wow for not knowing the dungeon right away. Especially if you're leveling years after the game came out, everyone is just smurfing at that point and expect everyone else to be pros on their alts
Upon release, if there's an easy to access guide online from a PTS or something, it's good to use it before going into new "hard" content in an MMO. Otherwise, you're essentially forcing those who did do the research to teach you instead. Or nobody researched and the run will be a fail.
This is caused by the devs needing to make content challenging after the first run or two. If it's intuitive enough to figure out and clear without some prior knowledge then it doesn't have longevity.
If it's "old" content it comes down to how much individuals lacking knowledge can cause the entire team to fail. I think it's okay to enter content that not-sweats have on farm and isn't make-or-break based on peak performance, and ask others to teach you real quick, since you failing during the learning process doesn't force others to fail.
From there it's just picking a game and a tier of content that you're comfortable with. Problems and lack of fun are only introduced when people try to jump sweatiness tiers while refusing to put in the effort expected by the content.
It sucks that because of LFGs and such that raids and dungeons have gone from an exciting piece of endgame content that's fun to learn and experience fresh to something players are chastised for not 100% spoiling themselves on right away
I will never understand how people have fun reading raid guides without at least trying them out by themselves first. I get that LFGs just don't work if half of the players are there to just grind through the content ASAP and the other half was a fresh and exciting experience but that's kinda the issue I have with LFGs in the first place.
@@SomniaCE People like to be informed on raids because a boss could have a mechanic were if you jumped when the boss would yell a line, it would wipe the whole raid. Well guess how fun it would be if all 40 players didn't know that mechanic? And on top of that, what if some people in the raid don't speak your native language? Imagine if there were multiple mechanics that could wipe raid if 1 person doesn't know what their doing.
If you'd want a raid full of people who have no idea what their doing, go ahead and wipe for 3-4 hours on the first boss, but just know you're the very few minority in this case.
Got confused and touched a stove. Now I'm a max level fire mage.
I've been playing online games for a long time. The way video game communities have evolved to be entirely focused on winning is one of my pet peeves. So many online players have forgotten the point of playing games...having fun.
Loved Star Wars Galaxies due to the fact that you could do more than just fight. You could be a dancer and use the game to just socialize. Knew one dancer/musician on there that only stayed in the cantinas; she used it to unwind after a long day of work. There was also the crafters and merchants that fueled the in game economy. Too bad most MMOs don't care about anything except kill the baddy the most efficient way possible.
Well to answer your question - why ignore the meta?
It's because meta builds are often not fun for some people. Some people like to play with abilities that I dunno look or feel cool or satisfying rather than judging them by their usefulness.
Personally this is what have been keeping me away from many MMOs. Eventually I reach a point where people just don't want to play with me because I don't follow meta. In my opinion meta is in it's core *against* the idea of an RPG - instead of creating a character *you* want to play with flaws and issues you follow a guideline to the point it doesn't feel like your character anymore. You are just playing a prepared excel spreadsheet.
Yes creating your own meta is also a thing you could do, but you most likely still will ignore less useful stuff and there is zero guarantee that you will come with something meta-viable. Just like you said while the concept of meta comes from min/maxers in tabletop RPGs I personally feel like the other side of the spectrum - the people that randomly rolled poor stats and just go with it because they feel its gonna be fun playing this character - could use some representation in online MMOs.
Good vid thou, thanks for making it.
League Of Legends suffered greatly from the "meta" when I was heavily invested in it, I was always told I couldn't play certain champions or even play certain champions how I wanted to because it wasn't meta, that pushed me to want to play my own way even more. The amount of people who wanted to play what they'd seen in E-Sports was unreal, what's worse is that 95% of them never understood why they played that way so whilst they were playing the "strongest champion" at the moment, they weren't being played by the strongest players so none of it even mattered.
lols esport scene is so boring its like watching the same game over and over again
On one hand you shouldn't be a total slave to the meta on the other hand Jungle Yuumi is not gonna be a fun time for your team.
LoL's meta issue is you gotta hope whoever is going off meta is at least doing something usable
Everyone falls for the dunning kruger in competitive video games.
In lols credit the meta has never been set in stone and a good off meta player has always done better than an average meta slave. Meanwhile characters like Leroy from tekken exist in some games or balancing works with musical chairs of flavor of the month.
The higher up the ladder the meta becomes more enforced because its what everyone else is doing. Full AP Amumu mid lane isn't going to work in Diamond1 Master tier elo
When I had to play against annie support three games in a row, I quit. I got tired of seeing the same 'meta' picks every damn game.. Then felt like nobody really knows wtf is good when they finally started playing Janna in every e-sports match... the character I had mained the whole time.
For me, the problem of the MMO design of hard enrage contributes to the problem of the meta. By enforcing that you must clear this boss by x time or else everyone dies only further encourages players to adhere to a meta and enforce that meta onto others.
Enrage timers needs to be done, if not, strategies with more healings and more tanks would be applied to just out-sustain any damage the boss will deal, leading to a guaranteed win (albeit way longer time)
For real man. You can still kill a boss playing casually, I've done it myself. Now, if you want to kill it in the best time possible, so you can farm it or break some tipe of record, that's different. In my opinion, that's what branched into the meta stuff. At the end of the day, everyone should be able to play a GAME they way they want to play it, as long as they're also respectful of the choice other people decided to play it.
@@Virusness People would still go for the fastest kills posible...just to make the grind faster.
@@Virusness It's fine to have soft enrage. These are things like vulnerability stacks and AoE attacks where tanks or healers have to mitigate damage for the party to survive or apply growing damage over time for mistakes. Bosses might even gain more buff stacks over time during a fight. Mistakes will eventually lead to death.
That is why I specifically refer to the problem of HARD ENRAGE. Hard mode bosses of MMOs usually have an attack that will instantly wipe a party at a given point in time, usually something like 8 or 10 minutes into a fight. This in turn makes the battle a time attack and ends up enforcing a meta strategy because you have to make it under that time or else. With a soft enrage, you might be able to push that timer up to 8:30 through heals as the boss gradually ramps up damage and this in turn provides an alternative strategy.
The problem with this is that mistakes end up encouraging the party to just wipe rather than try to push through a fight to a close victory. The entire fight just ends up turning into an eight minute long dance routine where if you screw up, the preferred option is for everyone to suicide and start over. And if your preferred option after a mistake is to quit a fight and just start over, I would argue there's a problem with the game's design.
You don't want enrageless bosses. Gw2 has that and it's just depressing to see 4 healers and the boss taking fucking 15 mins when it's killed in like 3
I've been having a problem with the meta in ESO myself. When the game came out, it was encouraged to mix and match weapon types, armor types, classes, just make whatever mix you enjoyed. I loved it. But now, years later, slowly playing all the while, it feels like these days I have to follow one of these meta builds for my char not to suck ass. I made a point of asking the community about it recently and I was explicitly told to respec my dual wield, heavy armor character into a light armor, staff wielding one. Honestly, it killed my spirits, hard. I feel like this is a point where the meta became harmful to the game at large.
Ignore them! There are ways to make any builds work with the right sets! And nailing that down isn't really too important until you hit late game anyways!
Like scientific research, you gotta find more effective ways.
Once you found the most effective way to play how you want to play, you can pull big brain strats from down under the rug.
Imo, not sure if its being the Devil but, I think it's best that you do not share your secrets so that people really try to think and learn about yours
It might become a slight issue when you run heavy armour in a veteran hardmode trial and it gets to a dps race.
With dps you need crits and loads of them, so dual wielding without at least 5 medium pieces costs damage and crit potential.
The magic focused meta is often caused by its viability in fights where you have to stand away from others and damage shields, as you are otherwise too close to other stam dd's... As a stamina dd myself, I find this a bit of a big oversight from Zenimax themselves.
@@Georgeveen This is the perfect example of what nerdSlayer said at the end of the video. Why ignore collective intelligence when it can ease ur suffering? Not running medium armor gimps ur own dps and the tradeoff is more tankiness, however, as a dps thats an horrible tradeoff (specially when u are not supposed to be getting hit hard and often)
You dont have to play 100% of the meta, but some parts of it are kinda of mandatory to be useful in ur role (most specially in holly trinity scenarios)
The issue with ESO goes back to its foundation for resources. Magicka dps has always been better than stamina dps. The main reason for this is that magicka is only really useful for use with abilities. Stamina also has abilities tied to it but also sprinting, blocking, dodge rolls, and break out mechanic. It means stamina is far more valuable and far more in demand for defenses. In essence it was designed more for tanking and survival (especially pvp) than it was for dps. Stamina also influences weapon to the same degree as magicka does spell power, but stamina is limited in its range because of said weapons being mostly melee and bows always sucking outside pvp for no good reason. Staves have range and scale with magicka on the other hand. Both provide equal levels of return on power attacks too. So already by a mechanical standpoint magicka is way better than stamina for a purely dps purpose.
This issue is compounded by another mechanic of the game: light and heavy attacks. They do hardly anything even when empowered. A majority of all damage comes from abilities. Light and heavy attacks were designed to be filler so resources could recover before being dumped again. Stamina being required for survival mechanics means you have less to spend on abilities for dps than magicka builds already and so more reliant on light and heavy attacks. This equals a massive dps drop while magicka doesn't lose anything since they can dedicate their stamina fully to defense and mobility where stamina can not.
The easiest way to fix stamina dps would be if they made stamina based weapons deal more damage naturally with their light and heavy attacks while also giving them more power on their abilities. Now this could lead to stamina dps being better for raw burst if someone dumps all their stamina at once but with how required the mobility and defense mechanics are in both pve and pvp it would likely get someone killed just for that one moment of insane damage. I think it is a fair trade off but that is just me.
Always and forever 'to hell with the meta, I like fun.'
Fun in a video game?!!! BLASPHEMY!
Me too man, but that fucking pact sorcerer emp is meta as fuck and tanks whole raids so fuck em lol
Sometimes the meta is more fun, especially with PvE grinding.
what if your fun build is actually meta?
Thats the way I play ESO I'm kitty thor.
0:19 Blade and Soul1:13 Final Fantasy XIV
1:23 Dauntless1:30 World of Warcraft (WoW)
1:45 Tera1:59 Albion Online2:04 Guild wars 2:10 Blue Protocol (had to look that one up myself...)2:54 Elder Scrolls Online (ESO)3:42 Kurtzpel6:10 Old School Runescape (OSRS)
7:38 Star Wars Galaxies (from my 5min research, walking animation and Graphics)8:52 Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR)
Got them all right 👍
Thank you king
I thank you for this kind offering my liege (you are king).
Soundtrack is from Persona games.
Thanks for putting Blue Protocol on my radar :)
Trying to follow meta in classic wow is what killed the game for me
YES
@Chosenxeno
And that is why the classic wow community is shit.
Sure you can have fun, but don't you dare try it or you'll find yourself playing a single player game.
i never followed the meta, warrior through and through, but what killed it for me is that it got really boring and all classes were the same apart from some where melee and some were ranged.
Thing is, if you DIDN'T follow the Meta, and wanted to play fire mage or Ele shaman, kids endgame goodbye. Everything is immune to your spells.
@@Amutsal Well, it is an MMORPG, and the MM part of it is massive multiplayer, if you want to play your way then play it, but don't expect other people okay with it.
When I played WoW, I mained Demonology Warlock. I did not care how often I got yelled at "wtf go Affliction" "dude come on go Destro". Which was most of the time. I rarely ever had my moment in the sun, but I'd never have it any other way.
In Gw2 i mained Engineer, the weakest DPS with the hardest rotation in the game, a true jack of all traits. Took a while to get my first boss kills at the 3rd Raid....
So, you had people carry you to do group content? Lol
I hope you at least turned taunt off.
As a DAOC Smite Cleric main I feel this.
Yeah, I was a dedicated Fury Warrior only for the entire time I played. That includes PvP, my favorite part of WoW, and I remember getting a lot of flack for being Fury PvP in Cataclysm and more than a few expansions afterwards. But I wouldn't have it any other way, that extra chip on my shoulder, the challenge, it was thrilling to me to win.
@@Obiwancolenobi Nope. I held my own which was why people let me get away with it. Rather be good at the average class than force myself to play one I suck at (Affliction) or just dont give a damn about (Destro).
I've always held the opinion that people who consider metas as the only viable playstyle and only play games for efficiency and not for fun while blatantly shaming and bullying people with certain playstyles or weapon/armour preferences for not playing their way really aren't that enjoyable to play with, usually.
My problem with MMORPGs is they lose the rpg and end up being glorified dungeon crawlers. Make it an rpg, a virtual world not another wow clone.
Final Fantasy 14 is that for you, and if you dont like that, try out Guild wars 1, the original one.
@@stayskeptic3923 FF14's biggest time sink and focus is on its Main Scenario quest, there is a lot to do in the game but the almost unanimous thing the community agrees on is not to skip story in the game. A lot of the game's amenities and such are also unlocked through the story, so you will have to go through it to get to the Endgame. The story is continuous and connects to each other through each expansion and each job has their own side story! You could also have all of the possible classes unlocked and played on just one character so it helps with not needing to make a million alts to go through the story again and again. :O
If you're looking for an MMO that feels like a world, Elder Scrolls Online is a way better one than FFXIV. Don't get me wrong, I love FFXIV for its gameplay/story, but exploring its world feels hollow. It's way more of a theme park, or one of those fake looking MMOs from an anime than it is a sprawling world for you to explore. FFXIV just can't compare, when its engine is built on paper clips and string.
Choose Elder Scrolls Online for a world, and FFXIV for a game.
Yancy Zhang Yeah I don’t mean just a good storyline. I mean making the world feel like a big dnd session that kind of forces roleplay through gameplay
@@yancyzhang845 The main quest is something you do once while you're leveling your first job, the big time sink of this game are dungeon / trial / raid. I like the game but it's A LOT like wow, it's pretty much an always online dungeon crawlers, a good one, but with very few RPG elements (I mean there's no character customisation whatsoever, everyone from your class will have the exact same abilities).
Tbh, I never cared for meta and just do my own thing. I like to experiment with builds if the game allows it and in my experience, meta gamers are one of the obnoxious players of the game.
I remember in FFXIV the tank meta during one of the ultimate fights was PLD + WAR. However, World First clear for that fight had Dark Knight in the comp. People would accuse the clearing party for using exploits or some unheard of strategy with the DRK, but the DRK player just responded with "I just like playing Dark Knight," which baffled everyone.
Similarly, another World First clear of a Savage tier had a Summoner (which has always been meta) player switch to Black Mage (which has never been in world first clear team) because his hand was cramping too much playing SMN.
Metas are dumb, self-imposed limitations on parties but unfortunately they are used by low and mid-skill level players wanting to LARP as high tier raiders
And don't forget the World First for TEA had a Red Mage!
This is true for any game. Metatards are pretty much never as good as they think they are. And people who are at the high tier usually just use whatever they're comfortable with or feel like using, unless they're pushing for speed clears.
It depends on the game and encounter. For Nya'lotha on Mythic, as an example, there were fights where youd bring a blood DK as a third tank to do mass grip to counter some of the adds chasing allies.
If an encounter has certain conditions that only certain classes can do, that's where the meta is more like a "necessary" list, rather than an efficiency one.
If an encounter doesnt have those conditions, and certain classes are taken just because they're statistically better, then you can play whatever you want, but you will be working harder to do the same work as the others.
That's why people follow the meta, it's about efficiency and ease. You can still get world first if you don't follow the meta and the encounters don't have requirements that only certain classes can meet, but you'll be putting in more work. Just because you play the best classes doesn't mean you'll do the best, but if you had 20 raiders with the exact same knowledge, performance and skill level compete with 20 raiders with the exact same knowledge, performance and skill, where one used optimal classes and the other didn't, the optimal classes would win every time.
Skill is a factor, but so is consistency in performance. Ultimately that's what it mostly comes down to since no two teams of players will be alike in those ways. If a team with a player using an off-meta class is over-all better than a team using all meta classes, then they will win.
So meta isn't something to neceessarily blindly follow - but it also varies from game to game. Sometimes the statistical difference between classes is so great that it can't be ignored. Like with wow dps ranking. There are classes that do twice as much aoe dps as other classes, while also having extremely strong single target dps. You have demon hunters, which as a dps, are strong in raiding, high mythic+ and arena. Then you have other classes like WW monk which are below average in raiding, strong in high mythic+ / arena.
So you have to unfortunately also know what type of content your choice allows you to do in relation to other classes.
So I disagree entirely that they are dumb, self-imposed limitations - on the sole condition that information is provided as to what the list is displaying. EG: Wow single target dps list, Wow aoe dps list, etc. They are essentially tier-lists showing what classes perform better on a statistical level. The problem comes in with ease-of-play - not every class in the meta will be easy to play. DH are mind-numbingly simple, only having a few buttons, yet they are one of the strongest classes in wow.
this comment is part of the problem
I'd like to point out right now that DRK is pretty damn meta for Prog because TBN is busted. A large part of the controversy surrounding that whole Ultimate thing was accusations of Thoughts-Per-Second hacking the servers to steal mechanics info because Sindalf figured out a hidden mechanic 4 days before the rest of the playerbase did; and also largely because the World First winners were from the American DCs. And the European and Japanese servers have this feeling of superiority about being intellectuals compared to the NA mouth-breathers, so a lot of them lost their shit at losing WF to "a guy who doesn't even have a bed."
Same can be applied to mobas. Just look at games like League or Hots and you see usually the same characters, builds and behaviours (looking at you Klepto Ezreal). Metas are for people who do not want to enjoy a game but to those who just are addicted to winning.
its very interesting in league especially that the lane roles came about because of the meta
I... What? Esports is literally the highest tier of competitive play, no fucking shit people are "addicted to winning" that's literally what their job is. Also a much much better example would be GOATS in overwatch which was so strong that it completly took over the game and since it was also super boring was detrimental go the game.
Zerasad I don’t think he’s only talking about esports players I think he means anyone in general. Metas just make the game less fun honestly.
@@Zerasad I am talking about players blindly following metas without even knowing why these things work. They just do it because everybody says it is the best, which could be true, but nobody says why it is the best.
I disagree, I play league casually because I enjoy the mechanics and playing with my friends, but I don't have the time to sift through all the possible item/builds I could use for my preferred characters, so I just metagame and look up what builds work best so I can get to the part I enjoy faster. Some games I do the same with character/class tiers as well, I play for reasons other than the rpg,, make-your-own-build aspect so meta tiers are really helpful.
"Why ignore the meta?" Cause its more fun i like to figure stuff out myself than follow the meta like a drone. cause that's whats its all about right? fun ?
oh boy oh boy. The philosophical underpinnings of META gaming? I can't wait.
Hoo boy*
There's no philosophy to it. Meta gaming is simply, "I want to be best", and being the best in a video game is just doing the math.
Ah, PVPing the counter meta...Sun Tzu said all warfare is based on deception but who needs to deceive when people are already locked into their preconceived notion about how a fight should play out?
Why "waste" my resources turning my Deflect ability into a Reflect? Because no one expects that their spells will reflect back at them even when the "Deflect" animation is obvious.
Why not have a spider pet when it nets players in webbing? Because all the players are expecting to be netted in webbing and have refined procedures for countering/mitigating this ability...unlike my parrot who can disarm them.
Why, oh god, why would I ever invest so much in Stamina as a damage dealing class? Because people expect to play the burn down game and will have exhausted their abilities on the assumption I'd be dead by the end of it.
Gain the edge in battle by not confirming to expectations.
Unless this whole comment is a logical deception to make us not use the meta so we are easier targets 🤣
@@alexanderrahl7034 The Chad Wizard maxes strength. Beguiling foes with his furious auto-attack.
generally im an anti meta player. i purposely like to find and play builds or ideas that might be unexpected or odd, like seeing if i can make a class that is typically relegated to healing function as dps. As a result, i tend to keep away from mmos that are too static regarding player choice, like say, wow or ff14, where if you play a certain class, you are likely to be identical in actual capabilities to every other player of that class
I have more problems with meta outside of MMOs. Getting yelled at if I pick Caitlyn mid (LoL), or play DPS when we "need" two tanks (OW), or god forbid we don't have a Sage (Valorant).
Meta in competetive mobas are extremely important and very seldom does picking off meta result in a win.
Meta is subjective if you are good enough you can beat it.
Plus the meta might be nerfed (if the developer is actually competent not like in DCSS where you can always go statue form irradiate or a minotaur fighter/berserker with an axe) so playing off meta might be better
In the Anime "Overlord" which is about a fictional MMORPG, the main character is from a guild that actually focuses on the Role playing aspect and he said they would often make builds to fit their builds based on lore or personal desire. They werent a guild of min maxers. I always liked that part about it.
Their guild is a pay2win/whale guild in real mmo standards. One of the requirements on entering iirc is you have to have a stable job to be on the guild. And ains was using those cash shop items vs shalltear 😂
@@LoneBluesman but he uses cash item once at that battle only tho
@@LoneBluesman They wanted stable people, who are able to invest heavily into the game, to be the very best guild. It's more that the whole game was p2w, which makes RL gold important and might be seen as a way to "be" better at the game.
Also, Season 4 when?
@@ariq45 dude ains can only wear 10 rings because of whaling and those gear swap sticks are cash items too
@@kouron ikr its probably the reason why yggdrasil is closing too its probably a cash grab dead mmo with no players 😂 lets hope s4 doesnt get delayed because of covid
One of the best parts about Dark Souls Coop/PvP is just seeing the different builds and playstyles people use. Most weapons are viable. Some players are aggressive, others defensive. Each area can be completed in very different ways. Make a game that supports as many playstyles as possible
This is exactly why World of Warcraft Classic is such a flaming dumpsterfire: Everyone knows the meta of pretty much everything, the meta isnt especially hard (because the game was designed to be easy) and its an old game where the expectation was that only the top less than 1% know the most optimal strategy. Therefore that strategy (im specifically talking world buffs) is really... well... badly designed. Not only that, but the ease of access to this information makes guild leaders expect more and more from their players, especially if they come from private servers that are filled with elite players.
I haven't had much experience with WOW myself but every time I hear about something in WOW Classic it always seems to have the same message to me of the game aging really poorly. Everything's been figured out already.
Seriously, you had people kill Onyxia without any fucking gear in Classic WoW.
thats just because the puritans dont allow changes to be made, nerf/buffs to balance out the dumpsterfire that is classic they have known for ages, they dont want to relearn things and readapt while also losing the edge they have towards other newbies, Its the same people that bitch all day why it isnt the same as when they played, but then question why the playerbase is slowly quitting due to being bored as shit from the game.
@@mattwo7 "
That makes no sense when you consider that they might have had to relearn classic after all these years"
It does - most of them come from private servers, so they DIDN'T have to relearn classic. They were playing it.
The odd thing about it is that classic wow raids get harder as they come out, theirs no heric or mythic difficulty settings you can change.
I've had so many people complain to me about being off meta.
The vast majority of them were bad players, with little or no understanding of how the game actually worked.
Figure out what build works for you, then refine it. Even if you aren't "best in meta", you will still be more effective in a build that suits your playstyle rather than someone else's cookie cutter build.
To be harsh, if you have anyone to blame for the "meta" then blame bad players. Bad players cannot clear end game content with non min-maxed builds. Bad players have a slightly higher higher chance to clear end game content with min-maxed builds. However, because these players do not understand how to play the game (the number 1 thing you need to be able to play off-meta), these players NEED everyone else in their group to play meta builds to even have a chance at clearing content within a reasonable amount of time.
Better players are simply able to adapt to having non-meta players in their group because they can rely on their own knowledge and experience (and actually trust people to do their job).
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
Truthfully, the meta is something I never paid attention to and bothered with. I played what's fun and what worked, and usually stuck with that. Conicidentally, I generally am more of a soloer, playing through the game at my own pace and rate and in my own way. Aside from situations where I am forced to be with others (dungeons, primarily, raids are too much for me) I don't really group up much.
Tldr: We need people who don't follow the meta, so we can make the meta. They are the ones finding the new combos that everyone else blinding follows.
In GW2 I usually avoided the meta. Not because I felt like I was better than the meta, but because if we all follow the meta blindly, we won't have progress to the meta. I was the person who ended up making the phantom trapper build that took wvw by storm years after it's creation. The build basically had 100% stealth up time and let you continue to damage players... I used it to 1 v zerg, and was able to take down (and stomp) around 5 players per hit and run without any fear of downing. I would have never made that build if I followed the meta, and I enjoyed using that build from 2015- the nerf date, updating the build every time they made a change to how my skills worked. The reason it got nerfed it because my niche off meta build finally got picked up by someone, and posted to the metabattle site (and I wasn't given credit for making the build,) so people started to use it mainstream and it forced the devs to rebalance the trapper runes, and how thieves use traps.
I later made another perma stealth build that involved spamming the kneel action on the rifle, that wasn't as useful as the trap build, but it worked... they nerfed that a few weeks later. Btw, I had both of those builds on my channel, but I deleted them after they were nerfed to the point of being impossible. I tried to make update vids for the trapped build, I even made a structured pvp version, but it didn't feel right keeping a vid with around 100k views up when it was no longer useful forth viewer.
A lot of people try to break the meta. Are you sure your build got stolen without credit, rather than someone happening to come up with the same idea that you did?
I don't see a problem with "the meta" by itself. It's those elitist people following like word of god who makes a problem of it. I've played many MMORPGs to have an idea of what is strong and why given the mechanics of the game, and while i'm not a Meta-slave, I try to know the strongest classes or playstyles to be a helpful member in my guild/static/group of friends so if my class or playstile becomes the meta i know how to squeeze the potential or in the contrary how to still be effective when other classes are objectively better.
On a side note.. I loved playing Berserker Tank in TERA, but due neglect of the devs the "subclass" was killed when the gear revamp patch with class-specific tunes dropped and there was no way to reroll my gear to be effective at tanking.
For me part of the fun is to discover what works and what don't on your playstyles... meta just feels like following a checklist, it's a chore...
Never in all my life have I ever cared about the "meta".
In MMORPG´s you must have been if...
1. You were alone and used +300 hr into a game, since the pve stuff is basically what doesn´t need one other than...
2. Dungeons, Events and Group quests.
3. Played pvp
4. Were in an active guild.
The Meta is in most games, but games like shooters hide it well behind all the chaos and lack of strategy. MOBA´s and CCG are a total different story.
@@stayskeptic3923 lol, Overwatch suffered from meta more then most games. Stoped playing it myself when the dominance of goat was established a couple years ago and as I know they still haven't recovered from it
Honestly, following the Meta is fine and all but it makes the game feel like a chore instead of playing however you want.
Kind of makes you lose a sense of identity and joy
If you play any game long enough chances are you'll end up "meta gaming". It just doesn't make sense to purposely limit yourself or choose weapons that are fundamentally bad.
Eventually once the initial rush of fun wears off you'll start picking items and upgrades that make the game easier and quicker to complete.
No one is going to Bruce Lee there way through a shooter. You'll find the gun that's the most accurate and most destructive then pass over anything that doesn't compete.
Austin F if the fun wears off what’s the point of playing anymore
Most people complain about off-meta because they're blind and ignorant, but I also get tired of people saying they'll "break the meta" but have the strategic creativity of a waffle. No, tank Ashe isn't good, and I'm not saying that just because it isn't the standard build.
reminds me of getting the guy who goes warmogs teemo at howling abyss.. lolllll loser handicapping the team
@@D1CTATE if he got it as a 3rd or 4th item after several damage items I could see it working but full tank Teemo won't
@@verxintRising oh he was lacking in ap items I assure you lol looked like he just wanted to be able to take dmg.. atrocious
Meta has and always will ruin online gaming. From hero shooters like overwatch to games like Monster hunter. It discourages free play and forces players into a box of 2-4 configurations just to be useful. It gets worse when players start kicking other players out of matches just for playing how they want.
If people are going to play like clowns they should expect to get kicked.
Back in the time when MMORPG's still were RPG's we used to have fun. Storming an open world dungeon in a group of 8 tanks, just to see how far we'd get and afterwards celebrate ina Tavern in DAoC was some of the greatest times I had in an MMO.
I loved playing a gypsy in Archeage, to be a dps with my own little healer attached, because it suited me got me nothing but shit from others because it wasn't "very effective". How was it not effective if it provided fun for me - more fun that other class combinations.
The whole meta thing is an inherently toxic concept that takes people away from playing the game into gaming the game. Turning the affair from an experience into an optimization task. And while this appeals to many and they try to force it on others it just does not appeal to me.
I am successful enough in optimizing my real life, like my finances, my career, my cooking skills and my further education. I don't need to transfer that into my gaming, I can "grind" through a new Excel file any day, what I seek in a game is to enjoy it and have fun experiences.
So while I love crafting, PVE, exploration and mass-combat PVP in MMORPGS I always get sad when the game fades out of the early stages of free experimentation and starts to calcify in it's meta, this dictated "this it's how it's done and how dare you wasting your time doing it differently" and it usually made me leave and dream of the golden early days.
The thing is mmos are online, and you’re working as a team (usually) so yeh you being a dd that hits like a noodle, but hey you’re providing heals, so it’s fine.. that may be fun for you.. but it’s not fun for the other X amount of players, you’re causing to slow progression, or potential completely stop progression entirely.. so in an endgame environment, people want to succeed, and using the meta, or at the v least close to it, is how you do that.. however there is nothing stopping you from making your own guild/clan in said game, full of people with the same goal as you, being more casual and doing goofy shit, like taking a bunch of tanks in a raid.. you just can’t simply go into an endgame environment and expect people to enjoy your casual sided gameplay, when your decisions alone could be the difference between clearing a raid in half an hour, or 6 hours
@@phased3941 it's not teamplay. it's 4 random dudes speedrunning a dungeon without saying a word. You describe exactly what I hate. Teams implies that there is social interaction but there isn't.
And yes, people want to succeed, because they are gamers, not roleplayers.
They don't give a shit about the game they just want to succeed.
Modern MMO's are also cut to that insane anti-roleplaying concept.
In DAOC you had no groupfinder and groups were made out of 8 people. so you weren't the only healer or the only tank, there was room for variation.
@@catriona_drummond 4 man dungeons aren’t end game in any mmo.. the raids are endgame, and if you want to clear that then you have to communicate.. and be optimised
If you want team work, without group finders, go try eso and join a guild to do the endgame dlc trials, and to a lesser extent the dlc dungeons challenges, I don’t play that game anymore, because they made the game easier jus because of noobs, but you still can’t just blitz through the endgame content with randoms
@@phased3941 you are a gamer. you will never understand what I am talking about. Also I am speaking about stuff I did in 2003. that world is long gone, so just leave me alone.
@@catriona_drummond maybe I don’t understand, but everything you’ve described so doable today, going into a trials with a bunch of dumb shit that shouldn’t do well, just to have fun, then doing more hard core stuff with optimised groups, you can do all that, especially in eso for example, since you can be in 5 guilds, unlike most (and I’m not trying to be hostile towards you, just talking)
In PvP contexts one of my favorite things to do is to look at a meta and think what the game plan of that meta is and how I can best annoy and exasperate anyone following it. A lot of strategies that are niche in a vacuum become overwhelmingly strong in the context of checking a strong meta because that meta was usually born in the middle of a different meta.
I would separate the meta between PvE and PvP modes. When it comes to PvE, following the meta in dungeons/raids will generally improve your team's performance, which is why it's often "reinforced". If you're doing "group content", playing whatever build you find fun (at the group's expense), will bring you negative attention for a reason.
When it comes to PvP though, there are genuine benefits for going off-meta, makes you less predictable, and perhaps more efficient against meta builds (provided you build against them).
There's an argument to be made against min-maxing in general, but I find myself siding more with the meta when it comes to higher level PvE. Conversely, I'm completely against it in single player games lol
I feel like the opposite is true, you might be being thrown off by group sizes/relationships. In general the larger the group is and the less of a connection it has the less off-meta negativity you will get. You're probably comparing PvE groups of ~5 vs PvP "groups" of 20+.
Taking those into account PvP is much harsher on non-meta play since looking for someone to blame for losses is more likely. In PvP you're going to lose ~50% of games, people get very upset, and individual performance can drastically effect the chances of your team winning. PvE success on the other hand is usually more about how fast you win and not if you win, unless you are doing very poorly you shouldn't drastically effect the odds of your team winning, and it's more readily apparent to the team if your off-meta strategy is working.
I've never really had issues with off-meta play in MMOs but I don't tend to play anything dramatically different and don't play very competitive parts. For off-meta PvP hate I just think of LoL, TF2, and Overwatch.
At the same time, this is bollocks. Going against the meta in PVE can often improve the group, but people's slavish adherence to the meta makes them not see it, leading to drama, whining, and in-group stupidity. Example: Healing Paladins in classic WoW, or tanking Paladins/Druids in TBC. The meta was that it couldn't be done at a point, and so people acted as if that was the truth, even if reality was the opposite, as it turned out later. Eventually, the meta shifted, and the same crybabies that whined that X class couldn't do X suddenly shouted that class X SHOULD do X.
It was funny to watch. At least we got server firsts because we were the only guild not stupid enough to reject classes outright due to "meta" lol.
Yeah, in single player, I feel to find meta (or strong builds) is part of the game. Just looking it up literally means you are just omitting part of the game.... which is really weird. Why would you do that?
@@fy8798 My friend played holy paladin all through Vanilla and was the main healer of our guild. I was offtank/dps with an arms warrior. We also had druid offtank, fury war offtank/dps, disc priest... Our small guild was non-meta all over the place but we knew pretty well how our classes/kits worked. We cleared all Vanilla content without much problems (well except Naxxramas, only cleared half of that) and were often tag-alongs when the big pgm guilds of the server needed some extras for raids.
I remember doing my BWL attunement just before the raid and got in stuffed like a peon, then going all the way to Nefarian in a single evening. Tanked the adds long enough to play my role, only died because of Nefarian fucking with the druids. Nowadays you can change spec on the go, in Vanilla all you had to do is equip a shield and change stance, you had all your kit at your disposal, all the time. Now I will ramble on for an hour about how WoW is shit since you can't do frost nova > flamestrike > blast wave > blizzard > cone of cold any more :p
After 10 years WoW etc. I can say:
90% of players dont have to bother with Meta. They dont have the technical enviroment and/or the skill.
I know many people who adopt to meta on the cost of fun, but in the raid, they have 1 hand in the chips bag, 100 ms delay and 25 fps.
If you only are at 70% of what the elite players achieve, you dont have to care about the meta, tweaks and game theory that make differences in the 90-100% area.
Play the game and hf.
It`s like a shooting competition. Why you would try to calculate the wind and temp in order to hit a target in 1000m distance, bother with breath controle etc. etc. if you neither have a weapon with the range nor you hit the 50m target right before your nose!
The proliferation of metawhores has made playing off-meta surprisingly rewarding in in pvp situations, where many players are prepped to fight a meta build (often /with/ a meta build) gaining you an advantage by pulling skills out that they have no counter to, or really just do not expect.
They'll just call u gimmicky and move on usually, that's how you know you won.
BRO HOLY SHIT YOU'VE BEEN READING MY MIND OR SOMETHING SINCE I WAS JUST GRIPING ABOUT THE META WITH PATH OF EXILE AND WHY IT MADE ME TURN AWAY FROM THAT GAME COMPLETELY! O-O
I recognized World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, and Runescape, and one of the Star Wars MMOs (The Old Republic or Galaxies?) but what were the other games?
One of them is ESO (Elder Scrolls online)
0:19 Blade and Soul1:23 Dauntless1:45 Tera1:59 Albion Online2:04 Guild wars 2:10 Blue Protocol (had to look that one up myself...)2:54 Elder Scrolls Online (ESO)3:42 Kurtzpel7:38 Star Wars Galaxies (from my 5min research, walking animation and Graphics)8:52 Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR)
breaking metas has become it's own genre in League of Legends, it's pretty fun to do weird and wacky builds, turning tanks into mages, healers into DPSs. League is even designed with meta breaking in mind somewhat, and it's super fun to do.
Yeah i remember atack speed/crit twisted fate. It was so much fun when i played it.
I'm a guide writer for a super old text based MUD that helps define archetypes and training paths based on the game skill systems. this absolutely struck home. I do tones of research, tons of comparative analysis on one decision versus another, and anytime I recommend something, it's usually with a few paragraphs of backup information to support my decision, and to let you know exactly why you're wrong. So often I see the points that you brought up where people blindly follow meta without considering why and the underlying reasons, and I fully appreciate your comprehensive analysis of the meta!
I really like how you approach this. I always looked at the meta in a negative way - thanks to some randos in dungeons calling my build trash (despite it being completely adequate to get the job done), but I found your points on using the meta to counter it to be pretty insightful
Any good Dark Souls player knows the satisfaction of punishing metanoobs with a parry or unexpected build :)
This depended entirely on the Level, at least on Dark Souls 2. Later soul levels there were clear signs as to what worked best since people could stack more stuff.
I do have to say nobody ever expected the 1 - 2 - parry with a greathammer in that game. Now that was the good shit.
@@DuckieMcduck Yeah, both greathammer and giant warrior club were great with spacing that R2 ooof remember playing with cowctus and Otzdarva back in DS2 when he was just a small streamer good days, still my favourite PvP in DS2
@@boogit9979 The buffkatana giantdad ringed knight greatswords "pros" are always garbage, if you are using anything other then the metabuild weapons they're complete clueless
That one guy in classic wow raid: Ret Paladin!
everyone else: Here we go again....
It's actually hilarious because I knew a ret paladin in Vanilla that did progression raiding. He didn't change spec, all he did was change gear and focus more on keeping buffs up on everyone. People chasing meta in Classic WoW feels like people not taking advantage of the flexibility that WoW used to have.
And then we have FFXIV.
1. Always Be Casting (ABC).
2. Use your cooldowns.
3. If more than 3 targets, use AoEs.
4. Do your rotations.
5. Don't stand in the bad.
Following these simple five steps will put you among the 'Way Way Way Way Above Average' players.
Its really hard to pay attention to your words when that bangin Persona soundtrack is playing.
To play with somebody whom refuses to improve in an mmo is the equivelent of playing Mario co-op with somebody whom refuses to hold down sprint. Literally keeping all the other players back.
i use to play meta builds in gw2 a long time ago while my brother made his own builds. he would get mad when me or someone else goes down, hating meta because no defense. he'd run a selfish surviable build no utilities. I always liked the Meta there because you needed more teamwork to make it shine and learn how to play instead of tanking (also time). But with pugs (pick up groups) i would bring a more team friendly build to get through, there were hardly any much team work and i'm a protecter (changes to guardian). With my brother he ended up better than random pugs but he never got better to the point of doing harder content due to his playstyle and not realizing how much others carry him, or how little utility others bring. He would call me to party for such harder dungeons. I got good enough to carry with my skills due to having no def meant i needed to learn to dodge. no matter what its frustrating to deal with others who think they good.
Just because its a Meta build doesn't mean you have the skills to use it effectively. you should try to find what works with you while trying to become better. theres just so many Metas for what you want to do? PVP/PVE/STRGT/AOE/Close RNG/Long RNG/DEF/Attack/ not to mention the mechanics of a boss allowing certain builds to shine more. No time to think about that? just get a pick up and play simple build( games are here to have fun with after all)?
I completely agree. I tried meta builds but they didn't work for me. I made my own build, realizing it works the best for me and I eventually got very good with it. I think the magic lies behind understanding your own build/class, rather than following the meta.
@@gr9032 I feel likes its more skill and knowledge seeing as you can survive with little to no defense, well back then. just make sure you try to support your team in a party. Utilities help so much more than builds in parties
i dont get why people get mad when someone dosent play the top meta like its so stupid let people play the way theye wanna play
This is why I only play single player RPGs. Also mmorpgs don´t even feel like rpgs anymore; just take out the rpg of the name and add in Massively Multiplayer dungeon loot crawler.
The thing i hate is the fact that all MMORPG's or MMO's are always boasting "Be Creative, Do what you WANT, Be What you Want" Then you get in, and Guess what you can't do none of that if you expect to ever make a reasonable build that will be acceptable, because they will either give certain Race's better attributes in specific stats that certain classes require to improve, am i really being who i want to be in game if i have to be a certain race, or race gender in order to have an edge in the class I want to play, i feel like games should yes be able to differentiate their races a bit, but i think it should just be left to either cosmetic or physical attributes that don't have an effect that would make them better potential as a class than any other race, my two cent even though i know a good majority probably like this due to competitive nature in games.
I always thought of the META in multiplayer games as the "Most Effective Tactic Available". That leaves the player with 2 options of which option to is technically limitless options.
1. Follow the META
2. Work around the META. As in break it down to it's basic assumptions and find a way to subvert or outright break it.
But option 2 has a very high barrier to entry because it takes intimate mechanical knowledge of the game and a lot of time invested to find out what might work and if it does how it will work for you.
Back in the day in FFXI, my buddy was playing RDM/NIN for dual wielding. He was kicked from group after group after group because it was a "bad" combo of jobs. About a year later, we had moved on from the game but had fries who still played. Guess what was now the Meta? RDM/NIN.
The meta is simply the Most Effective Tactic Available.
I always play meta or top tier because that is fun. Being optimal is fun. Trying to be better each and every time is fun. Playing well is fun. Being effective is fun. Being the best that you can be is fun. Playing a game not to enjoy it but to challenge it, make it a chore, a task, an objective is fun. Doing the same combo over and over is fun as long as it's optimal. Analyzing how the game changes as it progress and what tools the player is given is fun. Spending time theory crafting and outlining fights, encounters, instances, whole game sections to be the fastest, most effective, and most optimal is fun. Practicing for hours to overcome the challenge of getting better numbers on the screen is fun. Playing a new game at the hardest difficulty, constantly throwing yourself in the path of turmoil is fun. And if you don't think that's something you're gonna enjoy, well then enjoy playing sub-optimally and incorrectly.
Yeah sure, but some people don’t like being confined to specific play styles. Some people don’t like spending hours upon hours to make progress in a game when they have other hobbies or very busy. There’s a specific point where playing pump the number up game becomes unfun because the stats may change but the feel barely changes unless if the meta is inviting. It’s the reason why I began to dislike Destiny’s combat and raids. Also, there’s no incorrect way to play a game as long as you’re having fun.
This was super interesting I love your content dude! Not a huge mmo player but I do play fighting games and pokemon very heavily which also have very pronounced metas. Fighting games theres very little customizability so people either pick top tier or bitch about the top tier.
But with pokemon, which has a very specific meta and a ton of customizability the meta often shifts as people discover new sets for often overlooked mons, which leads to a flavor of the week build etc. What's interesting as well about it is certain 'bad' pokemon can compliment good ones and non meta builds of meta pokemon can end up being a boon to you in the short term if the opponent reads your set wrong. FEAR teams are basically this concept turned up to 150 as a team with level 1 pokemon can end up sweeping a team of all lv 100 pokemon if they dont have a counter to that specific strategy.
Lastly I think one of the main reasons i never got into mmos was the heavy emphasis on optimization veteran mmo players have very little patience for mistake making and like whats an mmo good for if everyone just calls you trash as you learn. From my experience I never thought of them as online friends more just pressure from other people to play a game that they just chastise me for playing. Im not saying cool people arent out there but from my 5 or so attempts to sink into an mmo thats about my experience and why i didnt stick with it.
Aw sweet, an upload on my birthday.
Happy Birthday 🎂
Happy birthday 🎂 ^^
Happy B-day!
Cake?
Happy Birthday 🎉
The only thing i want from a meta is that everything is playable, i HATED it as an Engineer main in Gw2 to be kicked from raids because my class was to weak, the same problem Necromancers and non healing Druids or non Tank Mesmers had.Guild wars 1 has a stone hard meta, everything has its place, some classes arent favored in certain instances, but all classes have builds that make them equally viable compared to the meta class. The same goes for FFXIV, the meta changes with almost each update or everytime a non-meta comp gets a Worlds first (which happens more than you would think), and while some Jobs are favored, the balanced isnt so horrible that some Jobs couldnt perform at all.
Casual: So the meta was created by us?
Pro: Always was.
That feeling though when you do your own thing and still smash meta slaves. Not many games work like that, but when it happens it's soooo satisfying.
If there's one MMO where i feel like the Meta is not a thing, it's FFXIV. Except recently where summoner is kinda broken, the game has always been quite balanced and the selection of this or this job was mostly based on personnal preference.
Look at the last raid tier. All the "big teams" where following some kind of "meta" with summoner, ninja etc. Then come a japanese team, playing with a mink, a black mage, and 2 physical ranged DPS and they had the first kill, whereas everyone was laughing at them because "lul comp team looks like a PUG".
I play a LOT of ffxiv, and I see people asking what the meta is all the time. The answer is always "play what you like". Because they're all balanced enough that you can be successful with anything.
I have always thought meta in gaming stood for Most Efficient Tactic Available.
I was an Arcane Mage (WOW Burning Crusade) at heart during a time of "Fire Mage is best DPS" meta. Most fire mages ate dirt because they weren't watching agro while chasing a number. I enjoyed the ability to survive till the end while still being in the top 5 of damage/DPS.
This is good advice and even applies to my own field of TCG. I have mentioned on my own channel that if a player is looking to win, taking a look at the top decks is a good starting point. However, it's best to not just copy (aka NetDeck) those decks without understanding how they work first. Also, if a player enjoys playing a different archetype from the meta ones, find a way to make that archetype counter the top decks.
Came here for the logic behind "Meta".
Came back with more knowledge for human psychology.
I think this is actually why I enjoy FFXIV so damn much. Been playing since beta for ARR and not once have I heard people even discussing the meta, let alone enforcing it. Due to combat not having wide-reaching variables like talent trees, builds etc the devs can very finely tune the output and balance of every job/class. Savage and Ultimate raid World Firsts are frequently beaten with jobs that people don't expect to see. All it comes down to is learning your job, learning your rotation and learning the fights. And with the wellspring of information available to us that's easier than ever to do with just a little research and effort.
Ugh meta is cancer. I get that people want to be efficient but min/maxing and cookie cutter builds are bullshit that creates toxic attitudes and dissuade fun.
I can remember around the time Emerald Nightmare came out in WoW and I was one of the few people on the server tanking on a Brewmaster monk at the time (www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/541vdf/brewmasters_make_up_only_4_of_tanks_in_emerald/) and got lambasted in a PUG group by the Prot Warrior at the time for not picking a 'viable' tank spec. What occurred though was priceless, tanking Ursoc HC the Prot Warrior failed to taunt at the correct time leaving me with several additional debuffs that I could easily 'shrug' off compared to the Warrior - they quickly blamed me and left the group and we stuck through it with another tank and cleared the instance. Meta has always been somewhat of a hit-or-miss in WoW and scenarios like these show that people picking the 'dominant' classes often don't know how others function.
Skip to Trial of Valor and you see top raiding guilds SOLO tanking bosses on Mythic using Brewmaster Monk, safe to say investing time in the class in levelling my artifact weapon / going for legendaries paid off :D It's kinda sad to see that this mentality has somewhat been heightened in Classic WoW and has put me off the game for now with people stacking world buffs and meta picks to clear instances quickly, despite the fact that the Raids in Classic aren't at all difficult..
It's barely less mandatory the meta when you are with a simple guild (early, midgame raiding), you grow with them, you start to learn a lot of some playstyles of your companions and establish some changes to the meta that work enough for better progress.
I think META also stands for Most Efficient Tactics Avaliable. Playing off META requires understanding of what led to the META and how it changes over time. If something is there to counter the META it will become META at some point because of what it counters, unless something stops being playable because the off meta-picks counter it so well. But playing off meta isn't playing a wierd talent build in WoW that makes no sense when pugging a raid and then complaining you get kicked because you do low damage. Saying that is because everyone is a META-slave is just ignorant, if you get kicked because of your class or build however it might be because the leader is a META-slave and doesn't understand what you are playing however. META isn't inherently bad, it might however be a pain for people not wanting to put a lot of effort into a game.
I dont agree that MMOrpg suffers the most because of meta just because of the genre game design, the problem comes from the player base who are not content with seeing one class or build vastly outperform the other. Single player rpg games always had game breaking meta like witcher for example had OP broken alchemy build that outperformed everything else by a mile. And more freedom a player has to customize their own characters more metas will be common. Perfect example is arpg genre, Diablo, grim dawn and especially POE which has some of the craziest one sided meta than any longtime running online game.
Never seen your channel but that intro and the persona background music made me like your channel that much more
Ironically, MMOs with lots of available classes like WoW, GW2 and ToS suffer the most from META. Whereas games with more limited pool of playable classes like TERA felt less affected by it.
The worst I've encountered was back in WotLK, was in a progression guild but wasn't part of the raiders. Eventually one of the raid leaders got a bit burned out and created a C-team of raiders that was just made up of the ones that were more casual, so it had a very relaxed atmosphere. Our first try we cleared 3/4 wings of Naxx, and then second go we got to Kel'thuzad but couldn't down him. This caught the eye of the more hardcore guys who then asked to join with alts, and we were like "sure, join in". These guys couldn't stop whining about how we did everything wrong, and the raid disolved after the boss that rages and you need to down an add to get ridd of the rage. I was off-tank that fight and keeping the adds busy, but the adds died before we could down her, and ofc she rages. Me thinking I'd buy the guys some time because she was pretty low on health, taunts her off the main tank and is lucky with some doges and parries before she one-shots me, and she turns back to the main tank and dies. I was the only casualty, but boy did we get to hear about how much we sucked from the hardcore guys. Killed my joy of the game for a long while.
To truly understand the meta, one must demonstrate the ability to break it.
I remember the "meta" problem playing League of Legends back in the day, because i did play "flash/teleport" mid with anivia two years before teleport mid was even a thing and CONSTANDLY got cursed at for not playing with ignite, because i thought " i never have to situation with my anivia where i miss a little bit of damage to kill the enemy" and i noticed that i can use the teleport to teleport to wards that people put in the bushes to teleport in behind the enemy and slow them with my icestorm (they will flash) and then put a wall infront of them, totally locking them in.
It's ALWAYS the braindead people that dont even understand the mechanics well enoth... but ALWAYS stick to what someone else told them is the meta. They dont understand how gameplay evolves and just because something is "meta" doesnt mean that there isnt a better way or a counter.
I cant even count how many times the toplaner cursed me and then failed his lane, but i won my lane after teleporting top and finish the enemy that just dived him, giving me the uperhand in the mid to win. Even if i wasnt winning... i could ALWAYS go back home and TP back mid right away to save my tower... people just couldnt understand this concept back in the day.
Dude, i was worse, i only played attack speed twisted fate in jung or mid. I was flamed so hard, but that was the best time i had in game.
I almost always played bot/support and I would try random characters to see how they worked back like, 6 yaers ago or whatever
And people would *lose their minds* that I ran Support Lux or Support Shaco
I left for a few yeasr and now Support Lux is the main role for her lmao
@@mitchellhorton9382 I also played support veigar or lux back in the day (with the item that gives you massive bonus AP after kills/assists), but to be fair... the builds that you see today are with items that we didnt had back in the day (passive income.. or income when your ADC kills something). I think the most rage i ever got was playing karma pre rework, because ANYONE said that it's not possible to play her, while me using her shieldbomb confused the shit out of people when they dived the team and couldnt kill the target, but took massive AE damage to their squishy DPS classes like attackspeed/crit Xin without any HP.
I wonder how support shaco would work.. i gues you play defensive and wait for jungle, then snowball with the "kills/assists give you AP" for the dagger and the boxes? Or gank mid when the jungler goes top and the enemy feels save? or gank witht he jungler? I mean i see how it could work, but only if the jungler helps you out (i wouldnt play that in soloQ).
Meta has never been interesting to me, I play games to have fun and will follow that. Had a blast playing classic wow for the first time on my way to hit 60 I was a shadow priest who didn't even know untill level 50 I had a shadow form to boost my damage lol (also love the persona music in the vid)
There is a problem on some games regarding the meta, which is rounds around recommending builds when the ones who recommend hide a better build than those they share to public.
Take ESO for instance: Meta guides for builds, as well as streamers, recommend a build but the ones behind it are using a better one so they keep on the top scores and, when a new hand or item sets break the meta, they will mostly change one of the sets while keeping the remaining of the build mostly intact, this in favor to their guilds to keep selling the featured item sets at a high price, and the more the time those item sets are "dominant" in the market the more they inflate each year (especially DLC item sets). They make an exception to Tank role builds by featuring bound sets because the dungeon queues are overpopulated with DPS players while close to zero Tank ones at the point of having DPS players faking the Tank role in queues. Simply put, the meta here works like a mafia of sorts where the capos keep at the top eating caviar while giving dog food to the ones below to eat (while profiting from it).
isnt "meta" short form for "metagame" not meta as a word itself lol, anyway the point im trying to make is that metagaming and meta are two separate things.
Which is why this isn't about metagaming, it's a separate topic (which is said in the video btw)
@@nerdSlayerstudioss how is this not about metagaming???
your literally talking about people following "the meta" aka people subscribing to a meta game
Actually I think it originated from an acronym: Most Effective Tactic Available, which would make sense in this context.
@@glavenusmaximus8860 source?
@@glavenusmaximus8860 Most Effective Tactic Available is a backronym, the term absolutely originates from metagaming.
imagine my attempts at trying to explain people in wotlk how stance dancing only increases your dps by around 1% , it simply showed me that most people simply accept things as they hear it instead of checking out what its really about , most people believe that stance dancing increases your dps astronomicaly when it obviously doesnt
The meta wouldn't matter as much if the game itself didn't punish players for not following the meta.
I understand the idea of "being prepared is part of the battle". But fuck that when "being prepared" means tackling a wall made for microtransactions to prosper.
Problems arise when META is actually OETA {Only effective tactic available})
I think looking at meta builds is important, it can make you realize you're using skills out of order, blowing cooldowns, not activating buffs etc. afterwords everything starts to flow together and make sense. Can turn a class you dont think is fun to play into something magical.
That's not really what "meta" means in this context...
This is part of why I really enjoy playing combat focused tabletop games like Pathfinder and DnD - I love being able to theorycraft builds, fun class combinations and weird ideas in an attempt to capture a specific theme or idea.
I find it a lot more difficult to translate this into MMOs, however, where I feel the pressure to play optimally. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy MMOs, but I do typically stick to the meta of whatever my race/class is - I do choose that based on what I want to do, at least, regardless.
My biggest problem with MMO metas, especially regarding best equipment and such, is that they are usually always locked behind these huge raid bosses that take ages to beat.
I'm anything but a MMO player. Heck, I absolutely hate forced multiplayer. However, what bothers me is when a MMO is allowing you to play solo, but then lock almost necessary equipment behind things you need other people for.
I would love to just grind one dungeon or enemy like 500 times for 1 material each to craft a set of equipment. That's just so much more exciting to me than fighting the one same boss for way too long over and over and over again, just for a chance for getting anything.
As for stat specific meta. I can kinda understand that...for the most part.
Certain dungeons/bosses are just too strong to really take on if you don't have sort of minimum requirements. The problem with that is just when people set those requirements to the max possible stats of the game, just so they play with people that can clear the entire thing in no time.
It makes it hard for new players (that don't have friends to play with) to really get anywhere at all.
My first point actually ties in to this: Let's say you are a new player, you have the average gear for you level and progress and try to do the current big thing in the game that you are supossed to do at your stage in the game.
Then you realize that it's not possible for you alone. So you ask other people to help you, but then they ask you for your stats and even at this point (where the game epects you to be at) it's not enough for anyone to want to play with you. Because you can't do it fast enough.
In the end my point is that: MMOs lock too many things behind big multi party road-blocks where other players just expect you to be past those things already to be qualified for them.
I think the amount of ffxiv footage is surprising. All jobs can do everything and they're balanced well. I never actually heard anyone complain or recommend anything on the meta in 14 in my experience as a relatively "new" player
I'd love to see a video expanding upon this with overly numerous class / specialization options where inevitably, there will be repeats in function where numbers win, and things are less situational than others.
I mean numbers are always an option, what do you mean? Throwing more people at things is pretty useful.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss Oh, I agree too! I just think some genres take it too far.
MOBAs, and poorly planned MMOs, sometimes cater to a very wide angle of "play what you like" only for some angles to end up being brutally un-meta. To the point that it even affects casual play.
An example. World of WarCraft is, at some levels of play, inundated with classes that do the same job in similar ways, depending on Spec. Now, WoW does a good job with what it has, but there's so many classes and specs now that it is a little hard to tune everyone to their own unique situation, so the overlap becomes problematic in certain patches, and at certain levels of play. This increases toxicity at those certain levels of play, and turns some people away. Which WoW has a pretty solid reputation for. Though, a little exaggerated IMO.
MOBAS though, like League of Legends, which I feel try to cater to or piggy-back off the MMO market, take this to an exponentially higher level.
Tried to clean stains from my screen 3 times just to figure out they were part of background on that crumpled paper. You sir are a monster.
Meta is boring, everyone should play whatever they want. That’s the magic of create your character.
If no one wanted to play meta, no one would. People play meta because they want to be the most effective they can be. Meta is a product of want. Wanting to be more powerful. Wanting to be faster. Wanting to be stronger. Wanting to be smarter. Want is never the problem.
Being stuck on the same content for a month is boring, but to each their own.
The "curse of meta" is really just "the curse of people that can do math". Video games are built upon mathematical formulas, as is literally every computer program in existence. As such, there is a finite, definite, absolute, and calculatable maxima. All you need to find that maxima is to know the formulas you're working with. Most game combat operates on a pretty simple formula. You have X amount of health and you do Y amount of damage. Your enemy has A amount of health and does B amount of damage. You must make your Y equal their A before their B equals your X. Not rocket science. Now you can add crowd control effects, healing, and other mechanics in there to make it a little more complicated, but all those numbers do at their core is adjust the X, Y, A, and B values. The basis remains the same. The idea of "meta" is simply seeing through the pretty graphics on the screen and focusing on the formulas that actually dictate the outcome. "Metagaming" vs "casual" or "for fun" is really just a logical vs. emotional methods of playing the game. Emotional, I want to feel things vs logical, I want to be the most effective.
Players who are metaheads are so boring, just play what's fun!
Winning is fun
@@kruger7796 For PvP sure but for PvE following a meta is analogous to having someone else win for you.
I know It’s an CCG not an MMO, but when i played hearthstone I friended a lot of people and was surprised how many of them asked where i got a deck or what website i use to get them because i always built them myself, didn’t even know what “net-decking” was for a long time. I never saw the fun in using a deck someone else made, the fun in HS for me was always theory crafting and seeing how i can refine a deck to be on par with the current meta.
1:35 Wtf!? It's an acronym for "Most effective tactic available."
Well said.
Here's a question though: Isn't it also unfair to be far off meta, and hold your team back from clearing content. Is it still unreasonable to ask your PUG to be prepared for the dungeon or raid they've qued up for?
The worst thing you can do as a developer concerning balance changes is to be a metasheep. A lot of games became gradually unfun because the devs are insistent on forcing one particular method of play the way they want and change the game gradually to where it becomes the only good option.
GTA is a perfect example. So many business locations, but each only have one good one due to mission locations. Or how every vehicle is obsolete if it's not fast or armored.
META is actually an acronym for "most effective tactics available"
The other thing that always gets me about this is that sometimes people want to play something for a reason other than raw in-game power. Some people play fire mages because they want to burn everything!
I think metas can be broken if you offer different objectives and ways of "winning".
People will still 90% follow the easiest meta but offmeta will not actively hurt during difficult encounters.
An example is dominion mobility builds that captured towers in LoL.