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To get good, go after the metagame

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Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#81

Post by nimblegorilla »

richk449 wrote: post #57
na85 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Take his final example where he says that adjusting tactics in response to your opponent in ultimate frisbee is meta. No, that just strategy. Choice of strategy can be "meta", though. It depends on the context. For example in ultimate frisbee the current meta is to play Vertical offense, and so you see a lot of teams training for how to run it and how to defend against it. Back in 2004 ish, the dominant teams played…

Eh, it’s all semantics. What you are calling meta has been called strategy for thousands of years. No big deal - words change. I’ll get used to it.

Meta is an aspect of strategy, but the terms aren't interchangeable.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#82

Post by fenomas »

richk449 wrote: post #57
na85 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Take his final example where he says that adjusting tactics in response to your opponent in ultimate frisbee is meta. No, that just strategy. Choice of strategy can be "meta", though. It depends on the context. For example in ultimate frisbee the current meta is to play Vertical offense, and so you see a lot of teams training for how to run it and how to defend against it. Back in 2004 ish, the dominant teams played…

Eh, it’s all semantics. What you are calling meta has been called strategy for thousands of years. No big deal - words change. I’ll get used to it.

The article's usage seems to drift around somewhat, but in esports I follow "meta" refers specifically to the consensus about which strategies are good or bad, not to strategies themselves or to anything someone does in a given game.

E.g. saying "foo is meta right now" means most players consider foo to be stronger than the alternatives, and if a player uses a strategy other than foo one might say they were playing off-meta, etc. But the term is wholly distinct from strategy itself.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#84

Post by dillonmckay »

majos wrote: post #66
asood123 wrote: post #20

One of my favorite books of all times: The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. He was the chess prodigy written about in Searching for Bobby Fisher . He quit chess shortly after and became a world champion in Tai Chi. The book is about learning two very different skills and how they are the same. Thesis that learning one thing deeply helps learn other (unrelated) things makes total sense to me.

If anyone reacts as I did and wonders how it's possible to compete in Tai Chi, the competitive sport [1] is not the slow-movements-in-the-park activity I had in mind. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_hands

Yes, it is a martial art, and there are some interesting moves.

Also, if you enjoy that sort of thing and action movies, I recommend:

Tai Chi Master

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0108281

Man of Tai Chi

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2016940/

There are also random youtube videos of various ‘push hands’ techniques.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#85

Post by meta-definition »

richk449 wrote: post #57
na85 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Take his final example where he says that adjusting tactics in response to your opponent in ultimate frisbee is meta. No, that just strategy. Choice of strategy can be "meta", though. It depends on the context. For example in ultimate frisbee the current meta is to play Vertical offense, and so you see a lot of teams training for how to run it and how to defend against it. Back in 2004 ish, the dominant teams played…

Eh, it’s all semantics. What you are calling meta has been called strategy for thousands of years. No big deal - words change. I’ll get used to it.

Meta is the set of viable strategies GIVEN the strategies that your competitors commonly employ.

Here's a concrete example:

Soccer fundamentals: passing, dribbling, etc.

Soccer strategies: formation, player roles, etc.

Soccer meta: viable formations, player roles, etc.

No one is out there playing a 8-2-1 formation because it's not a viable strategy, i.e. it's not part of the current meta. The current meta in soccer is largely 4-4-2 and 4-4-3.

3 in the back is relatively rare, because it's weak to the player roles that we currently see being employed by competitors. It's not part of the meta because it's a weak strategy against the currently common strategies in the meta.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#86

Post by DelightOne »

ggambetta wrote: post #44
Proziam wrote: post #3

Getting good in almost all games is based on understanding and mastering the fundamentals to the extent that you can make consistently correct (or at least a high degree of 'correctness') decisions based on them. This is true for all esports titles, and probably all games in general. Mastering the fundamentals will make you 'good' to a level that very few people ever reach. It's not until you reach a level where ever…

> Mastering the fundamentals will make you 'good' to a level that very few people ever reach. Can you clarify this? Is this because most people don't care about mastering the fundamentals in the first place? I can't tell whether I'm missing something and the idea is more complex, or that's what you're saying.

The reward function does not necessarily hit the fundamentals while you do not focus on them.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#87

Post by Spellman »

FreezerburnV wrote: post #13
Proziam wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you were hoping for but I'm happy to answer questions! On coaching: Coaching is probably the best and worst job in esports, depending on the day. It's also a role that is completely misunderstood by the management of most organizations, to the extent that coaches have had their decision-making hamstrung by management. This is getting better as time goes on, and I expect that it wi…

Can you expand a bit on why you pulled the plug because of there being “no way to make it work like it’s ‘supposed to’”? I’m actively working hard to improve at Overwatch to try and break into the tiered competitive scene, so any reservations about its future are of great interest to me and figuring out whether or not it’s a ship to move from at some point or not.

As with most eSports, the key metric is how much inflow there is and how much outflow.

I'm not familiar enough with Overwatch specifically, but it sounds like there isn't enough income and prize pools to go around. The top team may earn a decent wage and splashy amounts, but there isn't enough at the 2nd or top 10 rung to support a thriving ecosystem longer-term.

I'm more familiar with the LoL/DotA scene where there's enough smaller tournaments and the prize pool+sponsorships are enough to cover a wide range of top talent. Yeah, there's a lot of hype about winning the #1 Internationals, but that's only for one team out of hundreds that play. Or compare to how LoL is set up with their leagues where the top X teams get to play consistently and take in a steady income. Plus their broadcasting system to bring in more income to support the scene.

Similarly, you can look at stream numbers to get a feel for other income available to the players.

In general, without a healthy "middle-class" and "upper middle-class" of players to bring excitement and income, you lack the buzz and support to build top-tier competition longer term. And those don't exist unless there are ways for them to keep playing and monetize their skills.

Fortunately, if you're grinding up the FPS ladders, most FPS games tend to have more transferable skills letting you move from game to game more easily than some genres. Ninja is pretty famous for being the best at Fortnite, but he was a pro PUBG player and pro Halo 3 player before that. So it's not uncommon to see FPS pro players shift between the more in vogue FPS game of the time. (Caveat that not all FPS games reward the same skills and all that, CS is not TF2 is not CoD is not Fortnite is not Overwatch)

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#88

Post by rwmurrayVT »

Proziam wrote: post #8
wpasc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wouldn't mind posting a paragraph what coaching an esports team is like and how you feel about the current state of esports, I'd love to hear about it from an insider!

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you were hoping for but I'm happy to answer questions! On coaching: Coaching is probably the best and worst job in esports, depending on the day. It's also a role that is completely misunderstood by the management of most organizations, to the extent that coaches have had their decision-making hamstrung by management. This is getting better as time goes on, and I expect that it wi…

I would not be surprised to hear that TSM and CLG are the only ones remotely close to profitability.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#89

Post by plinkplonk »

Tyr42 wrote: post #60
nonanonymous wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author's usage of "meta" doesn't match up with how I've seen it used elsewhere. He refers to the "metagame" when really he's just talking about the game itself.

He defines it when talking about Magic, where there's the two games. The match "game", once you sit down with your decks and draw 7. And the metagame, where you choose which decks to bring, what sideboard to pick, etc. If there's a really popular rush deck, do you drop some cards which shut down blue control and put in some anti rush cards? That will help when you match against the rush deck, but if everyone does it,…

yes, the author seems to use "metagame" to mean a combination of pre-game strategizing (including creation opponent specific strategy) and post game review (+ absorbing lessons learned into the pre game strategizing for the next game).

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#90

Post by digibo »

xixixao wrote: post #49
mangoman wrote: post #41

Interesting. I'm familiar with the meta as it relates to gaming (I follow SC2 pretty closely, though I basically never play anymore). I am curious to explore what the meta is as it relates to building web apps, or building software systems. I guess in web apps, the meta has evolved away from stateful and towards stateless applications, rigid to ephemeral infrastructure, and away from big kitchen sink frameworks towar…

The meta in software engineering in general is people. Once you have sufficient technical expertise, you realize that the largest gains come from working efficiently with others.

I wouldn't say that working efficiently with people directly counts as "meta". Productive cooperation with others sounds like a straightforward skill to improve, with no new rules being introduced. Maybe new company/team organizational approaches or methodologies (Waterfall, Kanban, etc.) can count as playing the meta and give you an edge over the competition.
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