Some random thoughts on the topic..
Meta documentation is poor or untrustworthy at launch.
A player that does not use any meta will wrestle with feelings of inefficiency; that they are wasting their time. A sense of wonder or roleplay exists in some players with enough strength to overcome this. This sense is strongest at launch or for a naïve beginner.
However, using the meta, to optimize for saving time, is a pressure against a player's self-sufficiency, and sense of curiosity / exploration. Some people are willing to do this because that's part of their fun.
If a person disregards a meta and chooses to play the way they want to have their fun, then they become a pressure within groups. Others in a group might also think their own time is wasted by the non-meta choices of others. This might just be a subtle opinion but it might become outright blame with near successes (failures that had a chance if only players were more meta/efficient).
The knowledge of, and trust in, meta does not exist during some duration of a beta/launch period. This might also be true to some degree for patches and expansions. That period of blissful ignorance minimizes skill gaps, and how different people with lots of time and people with less time are. A broader community of people are most similar at early game.
Some developers might think that a more complex game would make it impossible to build a meta, but that's false. Adding points of randomization to remove the meta would probably be hated. Rigging the game to be more friendly to inefficient players will make the meta players feel the non-meta players are being catered to and it's unfair, which is correct.
I played World of Warcraft for some time, and I was exposed to a meta at one point. I tried it, but it turns out that while a meta can exist, each facet of a meta can only exist for a particular type of player. I learned that I could use my own style of play and perform far better with what I discovered than with what's being suggested.
This was only possible because there was enough complexity available in the game for me to match my unique talents with a sort of personal meta which I could discover. Learning my own meta became part of my enjoyment. It was a sense of satisfaction.
I don't know that the various metas for ember can be avoided, but perhaps it's possible to have self-discovered metas available for "inefficient" non-meta players to reduce the performance/contribution gap between them and meta players.
Path of Exile is ludicrously complex yet still has meta builds. In fact, unless a player uses a meta build there are many things they simply cannot do. The game ended up evolving into something that caters to this sort of end-game player.
League of Legends has a meta for each character that is also pitted against the meta of others and yet whole teams have a meta, and ultimately it's down to a global cooperative strategy. A game like that can have all these things to make it such that the developers only have to worry about obvious power differences and required choices, and those are easy to learn about and tweak.
World of Warcraft has various metas, and it's down to culture for players to accept that some players work better with different gameplay in spite of a meta. I knew a healer who was better when he allowed himself to stand in the fire much more than others, because it let him complete long heals. I knew another who was far less effective but was fun to play with because inefficient choices and gameplay gave us a better person.
Some ideas are in here:
Meta documentation is poor or untrustworthy at launch.
A player that does not use any meta will wrestle with feelings of inefficiency; that they are wasting their time. A sense of wonder or roleplay exists in some players with enough strength to overcome this. This sense is strongest at launch or for a naïve beginner.
However, using the meta, to optimize for saving time, is a pressure against a player's self-sufficiency, and sense of curiosity / exploration. Some people are willing to do this because that's part of their fun.
If a person disregards a meta and chooses to play the way they want to have their fun, then they become a pressure within groups. Others in a group might also think their own time is wasted by the non-meta choices of others. This might just be a subtle opinion but it might become outright blame with near successes (failures that had a chance if only players were more meta/efficient).
The knowledge of, and trust in, meta does not exist during some duration of a beta/launch period. This might also be true to some degree for patches and expansions. That period of blissful ignorance minimizes skill gaps, and how different people with lots of time and people with less time are. A broader community of people are most similar at early game.
Some developers might think that a more complex game would make it impossible to build a meta, but that's false. Adding points of randomization to remove the meta would probably be hated. Rigging the game to be more friendly to inefficient players will make the meta players feel the non-meta players are being catered to and it's unfair, which is correct.
I played World of Warcraft for some time, and I was exposed to a meta at one point. I tried it, but it turns out that while a meta can exist, each facet of a meta can only exist for a particular type of player. I learned that I could use my own style of play and perform far better with what I discovered than with what's being suggested.
This was only possible because there was enough complexity available in the game for me to match my unique talents with a sort of personal meta which I could discover. Learning my own meta became part of my enjoyment. It was a sense of satisfaction.
I don't know that the various metas for ember can be avoided, but perhaps it's possible to have self-discovered metas available for "inefficient" non-meta players to reduce the performance/contribution gap between them and meta players.
Path of Exile is ludicrously complex yet still has meta builds. In fact, unless a player uses a meta build there are many things they simply cannot do. The game ended up evolving into something that caters to this sort of end-game player.
League of Legends has a meta for each character that is also pitted against the meta of others and yet whole teams have a meta, and ultimately it's down to a global cooperative strategy. A game like that can have all these things to make it such that the developers only have to worry about obvious power differences and required choices, and those are easy to learn about and tweak.
World of Warcraft has various metas, and it's down to culture for players to accept that some players work better with different gameplay in spite of a meta. I knew a healer who was better when he allowed himself to stand in the fire much more than others, because it let him complete long heals. I knew another who was far less effective but was fun to play with because inefficient choices and gameplay gave us a better person.
Some ideas are in here:
Likes:
farias and Pandagnome
