Guild Wars 2

In every game I’ve played, there is always a ‘meta’ that develops. People do the maths and come to a certain combination which ‘works’ and that statistically gives the best results.

No matter how much balancing, nerfing, or counter balancing occurs. The meta always ends up somewhere.

I’ve been wondering, what do you think would happen if Arena net were to be the first company to actually capitalize on this in a positive manner?

Instead of balancing, nerfing and counter balancing to try and encourage build diversity that can never be reached, why not ‘set the meta’ to be explored in more depth.

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So what do you think, do you think the ‘Meta’ is a good thing? And that to keep the game fresh and balanced ANet are going about it the right way with continual balancing? What do you think would happen if ANet started to support the meta? Good or bad?

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An Example Suggestion
Right now Condi is the ‘meta’ of the month. ANet are discussing buffing other skills here and there to help people move away from it.
But lets say instead, they actually give each class a very attractive ‘condition’ based trait or skill. Thus, lots of people change their builds to deal with the ‘meta’ and how people are building. It’s not just about capitalizing on the conditions, it could be about reducing them or making them work in different ways. It makes for some interesting builds to think about how the meta can be dealt with.
Then, the next balance period, Arena net buffs Crit skills to be the ‘flavour’. Everyone can start to explore an entirely new area of skills and buffs and trait trees.

They did that in GW1 with PvP Effects each month, pretty cool idea.

personally I do not want to see this. Building characters is one of the major features of a rpg to me. I know that build diversity is usually rather theoretical as you either come up with one of a few cookie cutter builds yourself or just outright copy it from somewhere, but still: I rather have them trying to approach a never attainable balance so you can play a bit with builds from time to time.

Sad me, eles and guardians cant be part of this conditions meta due to guardian only having burning and eles only having burning and bleeding (both bad at it btw since while we do have the ways to put them, we lack the means to survive like say a necro, who has an insane pool of HP, DS, fears, lifesteal, minions to clutter and block projectiles and also do most of the damage for them sometimes, all that while remaining at max range, fully mobile and insta cast skills)

Instead of making contions the meta, how about giving conditions some rework. Some classses (namely guardians and eles) have the smallest hp pools in the game, and unless you go fully into condition cleanses (totally forsaking damage) you will melt since neither toughness, protections, retaliation or damage soakers can save you from conditions.

I would prefer if we rather had more versatility. I want to play damage dealers, with spikes, right now only “viable” options for this are thieves and mesmers and thats because stealth also needs balancing.

No, I dont want Anet to balance around the “current meta” , because while you definitely love it, many other people dont. Riot tried to do the same and failed. They have more than 100 champions yet the game is overall balanced, took years to accomplish that but it was done. I sure Anet can redirect more of its resources to balancing, considering they only have 2 devs working in balance, I would say it is not fair for them to have so much work to be done.

Im down for having options, options are good, say no to being stuck with only one gameplay or meta.

Ok, I might sound like a real noob, but what is this “meta”? Judging from the context it sounds something like fotm (flavour/favourite of the month) to me. Can someone please explain?

Fortus.6175:

Sad me, eles and guardians cant be part of this conditions meta due to guardian only having burning and eles only having burning and bleeding (both bad at it btw since while we do have the ways to put them, we lack the means to survive like say a necro, who has an insane pool of HP, DS, fears, lifesteal, minions to clutter and block projectiles and also do most of the damage for them sometimes, all that while remaining at max range, fully mobile and insta cast skills)

Instead of making contions the meta, how about giving conditions some rework. Some classses (namely guardians and eles) have the smallest hp pools in the game, and unless you go fully into condition cleanses (totally forsaking damage) you will melt since neither toughness, protections, retaliation or damage soakers can save you from conditions.

I would prefer if we rather had more versatility. I want to play damage dealers, with spikes, right now only “viable” options for this are thieves and mesmers and thats because stealth also needs balancing.

No, I dont want Anet to balance around the “current meta” , because while you definitely love it, many other people dont. Riot tried to do the same and failed. They have more than 100 champions yet the game is overall balanced, took years to accomplish that but it was done. I sure Anet can redirect more of its resources to balancing, considering they only have 2 devs working in balance, I would say it is not fair for them to have so much work to be done.

Im down for having options, options are good, say no to being stuck with only one gameplay or meta.

League of Legends also has a Meta. Based on what champions are picked in tournaments/most frequently. But also based on how it’s ‘normal’ to go ap mid, ad bot with support, and a bruiser top. That’s meta. A while ago it used to be ad in mid to get more cs.
Yes, their champs are balanced. But the game finds it’s niche of what works and ends up there.

If you don’t do anything about it, it gets stale.

That would be the sensible thing to do, but…

Brood War was an interesting example, since it was heralded as the most balanced game ever for many years even though it wasn’t. Regardless, it had blossomed into a very complex metagame because it was allowed to grow on its own. Strats that you thought were impossible 5 years ago are suddenly “standard”. It’s amazing what you can discover over years of refinement. Constant meddling in this stunts metagame development, and leads to stagnation. On the other hand, through enough testing, it can be proven that some elements do need to be changed. However, in most sane scenarios, this is never 1-2 months. You can’t just change it that fast.

Which is why its sequel, Starcraft II, kinda got shafted by the constant meddling to achieve a certain amount of balance. Still, it’s not heading a bad direction because Blizzard is smart and doesn’t listen to the terribad noob QQ’ers looking for easy wins and only pays attention to the big picture, as well as high level play. The other thing is that their changes tend to be more subtle and “wait and see” things that usually won’t affect average players. They did take the sledgehammer approach with Diablo 3, and that game ended up quite bad. I’m afraid, A-net tends to go towards the later.

Essentially, one can never balance a good game around average players, since average players are bad, overestimate their own skill, and lack the vision to approach things from a different perspective. Indeed, when you hear people describing things in black and white terms and ends up with the inevitable conclusion they are disenfranchised, everyone would be best off not listening.

Jatacid.3725:

Fortus.6175:

Sad me, eles and guardians cant be part of this conditions meta due to guardian only having burning and eles only having burning and bleeding (both bad at it btw since while we do have the ways to put them, we lack the means to survive like say a necro, who has an insane pool of HP, DS, fears, lifesteal, minions to clutter and block projectiles and also do most of the damage for them sometimes, all that while remaining at max range, fully mobile and insta cast skills)

Instead of making contions the meta, how about giving conditions some rework. Some classses (namely guardians and eles) have the smallest hp pools in the game, and unless you go fully into condition cleanses (totally forsaking damage) you will melt since neither toughness, protections, retaliation or damage soakers can save you from conditions.

I would prefer if we rather had more versatility. I want to play damage dealers, with spikes, right now only “viable” options for this are thieves and mesmers and thats because stealth also needs balancing.

No, I dont want Anet to balance around the “current meta” , because while you definitely love it, many other people dont. Riot tried to do the same and failed. They have more than 100 champions yet the game is overall balanced, took years to accomplish that but it was done. I sure Anet can redirect more of its resources to balancing, considering they only have 2 devs working in balance, I would say it is not fair for them to have so much work to be done.

Im down for having options, options are good, say no to being stuck with only one gameplay or meta.

League of Legends also has a Meta. Based on what champions are picked in tournaments/most frequently. But also based on how it’s ‘normal’ to go ap mid, ad bot with support, and a bruiser top. That’s meta. A while ago it used to be ad in mid to get more cs.
Yes, their champs are balanced. But the game finds it’s niche of what works and ends up there.

If you don’t do anything about it, it gets stale.

while a “meta” exist, the amount of variatiuons within it is enormous. You have double AP, rush-ins, poke teams, attrition teams, grab-n-kill teams, roamers, late-game teams vs early game teams, champions that go from farmers to gods, or early gankers into walking menacing tanks. There are plenty of strategies and while certain champions are really strong, the “meta” has been broken with champions which normal players would naver take into another role. That, is versatility.

Right now this is the only things we have dominating; condition stackers (necros, rangers, engis), bunkers which you need 3+ to get them off the point, 5 to kill (rangers, engis, etc) and stealth spammers which either insta gibs you or run away 99% of the time(thieves, thieves, thieves). Anything other than that usually has no real place other than give some boons and hope not to die. Eles have ben nerfed patch after patch, to the point that not even support they can bring to the table, the only thing they can do now a days is hope that their only one trick S/D can burst someone or definitely die trying.

Right now the meta is stagnated and it will take more than ; “we fixed a tool tip..” or “we reduced necros applying all conditions every 8 seconds to every 9 seconds”

I think that’s an interesting perspective. Personally, I feel balancing is good but it needs to be done with an eye on the long game. Kneejerk reactions of any kind are bad, whether that be kneejerk nerfs to something that seems too good or kneejerk buffs to things that seem too bad. A month is far too short a time cycle for this sort of thing. That’s not even enough time for the actual meta to be established at all, never mind enough time to give other competing views time to knock it down a peg or two.

Even if Anet had absolutely nothing to do with it and made no attempt to re-balance classes and skills the meta game would still keep changing.

You see exactly the same thing in off-line games that don’t get updates until a sequel is released. Take Pokémon for example (just because it’s the one I’m most familiar with). Someone will figure out a new trick and the particular pokemon or team required will be declared ‘Uber’ (Over-powered) and everyone will use it and/or complain about everyone using it, it will be “obviously” the best. Then, within the same generation with absolutely no change to the pokemon or moves someone will work out a counter, which spreads through the metagame and suddenly the previous favourite is useless and is falling down the tiers like a rock while a new favourite takes it’s place. Then a month or two later the same thing happens again.

Developers stepping in to buff or nerf certain things just adds another way for exactly the same end result to come about.

Esya.3427:

Ok, I might sound like a real noob, but what is this “meta”? Judging from the context it sounds something like fotm (flavour/favourite of the month) to me. Can someone please explain?

Meta is short for Metagaming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-game

In brief it’s using “outside” information to influence the game. For example instead of going into a PvP match and watching what their opponents do then reacting to it a metagamer would read the forums and fan sites to find out what builds are popular at the moment and set their own character up in advance to be ready to counter that.

Favour of the Month builds are a part of it – they’re usually produced to some extent by metagaming and they’re also what it’s aiming to counter. But there’s a lot more to it.

Jatacid.3725:

League of Legends also has a Meta. Based on what champions are picked in tournaments/most frequently. But also based on how it’s ‘normal’ to go ap mid, ad bot with support, and a bruiser top. That’s meta. A while ago it used to be ad in mid to get more cs.
Yes, their champs are balanced. But the game finds it’s niche of what works and ends up there.

- In order to have a metagame the game needs to have depth. League of Legends has that with character roles that work well together. Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, is not a deep game by design. There are no roles and every class is a damage dealer. Some skills don’t have damage numbers (like the Thief’s steal and a number of traits) and things like attack speed or even damage reduction mechanics are not explained to the player. Itemization is very rigid with equipment pieces having pre-determined stats. In the absence of challenging AI monster quantities are increased and bosses are loaded with millions of hit points, all waiting to be brought down in very straight-forward fashion.

You can’t have ‘metagame’ on game like this.

I believe that is no real direction for the meta. it seems as though they are trying to stuff silly tricks into a small profession and combat box and call it a day. at this point I kinda feel like they are holding out to consolize things or are assuming their professions and combat here are good.

kudos though on the gem store and hiring 4 teams to churn out content to make more loot while professions and combat are abysmal.

The meta’s moving away from Condi on its own. Now there’s a stun/fear locking burst meta starting which directly counters the Condi meta. The counter to that is high mobility and evades with high burst damage. It’s called cyclical imbalance, and each meta shift only reveals things that are actually overpowered, which ArenaNet nerfs to increase variety and level the meta so that it can shift rather than remain stagnant. In a few years after numerous metas have evolved and been balanced, true cyclical imbalance can maintain itself in the game. It’s all a matter of counter-play from there, as it was in the later years of GW1.

Zenith.6403:

Jatacid.3725:

League of Legends also has a Meta. Based on what champions are picked in tournaments/most frequently. But also based on how it’s ‘normal’ to go ap mid, ad bot with support, and a bruiser top. That’s meta. A while ago it used to be ad in mid to get more cs.
Yes, their champs are balanced. But the game finds it’s niche of what works and ends up there.

- In order to have a metagame the game needs to have depth. League of Legends has that with character roles that work well together. Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, is not a deep game by design. There are no roles and every class is a damage dealer. Some skills don’t have damage numbers (like the Thief’s steal and a number of traits) and things like attack speed or even damage reduction mechanics are not explained to the player. Itemization is very rigid with equipment pieces having pre-determined stats. In the absence of challenging AI monster quantities are increased and bosses are loaded with millions of hit points, all waiting to be brought down in very straight-forward fashion.

You can’t have ‘metagame’ on game like this.

Read my above post. Just because classes aren’t balanced around each other and instead themselves doesn’t mean there can’t be a meta game. That’s why there are “bunker guardians” and “condition warriors” and “control necros” and “HGH engies”. You identify how that person has set up their class and identify the means to counteract it. Have you ever seen a thief in WvW go into stealth while approaching you and thought, “I should evade a few seconds from now or use a damage mitigation utility in order to avoid that backstab”. That’s meta. Thieves like burst, but they also like conditions and control as well. I start every fight by identifying the class, then the weapons they’re using. Having every class leveled to 80 and played all of the popular build for each it’s easy to figure out what build they’re running and how you should manage your skills to fight them. More often than not I’ll use a set attack that I’ve gauged it’s damage, and test the armor and vitality levels of my opponent to determine whether or not they’ll be dealing heavy damage or if I’ll have to keep the pressure up in order to down that bunker. That’s all meta. It’s not class-specific, like WoW or LoL. Just like GW1, classes didnt have set roles. Just because you were a monk didnt mean you were forced to be a healer, and just because you were a warrior didnt mean you were forced to face tank. The roles are blurred in GW2, sure, but they’re still there nonetheless. My mesmer plays a support healer to where I can heal my entire party within a radius of 600 for 7,000 every 3 seconds. It’s great for back lining and team support to keep your entire group up in WvW.

Knows what he’s talking about, former Team Legacy member,
~Ferrum Blacktide.