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To get good, go after the metagame

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Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#111

Post by NikolaNovak »

clairity wrote: post #93
wilburTheDog wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charles Ellis wrote a book(1) about that. He asserts that any professional sports competition is a winner's game - you win by successfully executing difficult plays and being better than your competition. But amateur sports is usually a loser's game - you win by not making as many mistakes as your competition. The book is about finance but the observation is universal. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Losers-Game-6t…

not having read the book, that seems insightful on the surface but isn’t particularly useful or actionable. all it seems to be saying is that to become better, make fewer mistakes, with an implied exhortion to practice. is there more to it than that?

I think it's more actionable than it may appear.

For me, in most multiplayer games (Overwatch and such), I became far better (and more useful to the team) when I focused more on staying alive ("not making mistakes") rather than trying to execute fancy plays.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#112

Post by colonCapitalDee »

I see a lot of debate over what "meta" means, and I'd like to throw my own hat in the ring.

I would argue that a playing a game at the base level (i.e. playing without meta) consists of (a) finding different strategies to use, (b) figuring when is appropriate to use each strategy, and (c) executing strategies optimally. When the game is first being played, most strategies haven't been discovered. At this stage strategic play consists of (without loss of generality) player A using a strategy they think is effective, player B devising and using a strategy that will be effective against the strategy used by player A, Player A adapting in response, and so on. This is strategic play, but it isn't a meta-game. The meta-game arrises when players A and B are both experienced enough at the game that they can debate which strategy is the objective best. The meta then becomes the agreed upon dominant strategy (or set of strategies). In the base game (i.e before the meta develops) strategies exist mostly independent of each other, while the meta-game consists of fitting strategies into a framework.

The meta can change because of external or internal forces. An external force is a change to the base game, which is common to e-sports, and less common in actual sports. In e-sports, most games will tweak how the game is played (change the cooldown of abilities, change the size of a characters health pool, etc) every month or so. This will change which strategies are best, and therefore change the meta.

Internal changes arise from the changing skill level of players. As players get better at the game, hard to execute strategies will become more viable, while easy to execute strategies will remain at about the same level of viability.

This article shows a great example of what the pro Overwatch meta (the game I'm most familiar with) looks like and how it evolves, and it's (mostly) accessible to non-Overwatch players: https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/23053244/the-meta-rep... (WARNING: autoplay video).

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#113

Post by oblio »

clairity wrote: post #93
wilburTheDog wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charles Ellis wrote a book(1) about that. He asserts that any professional sports competition is a winner's game - you win by successfully executing difficult plays and being better than your competition. But amateur sports is usually a loser's game - you win by not making as many mistakes as your competition. The book is about finance but the observation is universal. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Losers-Game-6t…

not having read the book, that seems insightful on the surface but isn’t particularly useful or actionable. all it seems to be saying is that to become better, make fewer mistakes, with an implied exhortion to practice. is there more to it than that?

For most sports, if you're defensive you'll beat offensive minded people until you reach a very high level of amateur play. People will constantly make low percentage plays because they're fun and they will misplay while executing them.

They will "fall on their own swords".

For most games with a net, focus on keeping the ball in play. For team sports, play defense and just keep it simple.

Basically, "never interrupt your adversary while they are making a mistake".

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#114

Post by cjmb »

Good article and a nice read :)

You can apply the same analysis to the study of how "entire societies / nations generate Wealth" and get an interesting picture of the international econo-political metagame throughout history...

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#115

Post by inerte »

dfxm12 wrote: post #65
inerte wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes entertain myself watching "knowing the rules" sport videos on YouTube, for example https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=football+knowin... Not to mention when organizations have to write new rules to prevent someone exploiting unintended consequences of the existing ruleset. It's fairly common not only in sports but source of many regulations and laws in any sector.

It's fairly common not only in sports but source of many regulations and laws in any sector. Regulation is more of a pay to win game.

I don't disagree, but I think that view is complimentary to regulation being created and discussed and implemented. People see organizations doing bad stuff, create constraints, which a lot of times the organizations welcome since raises the barrier for competitors to entry.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#116

Post by meristem »

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'd say 'effectively' over 'efficiently'

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#117

Post by slowmovintarget »

clairity wrote: post #93
wilburTheDog wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charles Ellis wrote a book(1) about that. He asserts that any professional sports competition is a winner's game - you win by successfully executing difficult plays and being better than your competition. But amateur sports is usually a loser's game - you win by not making as many mistakes as your competition. The book is about finance but the observation is universal. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Losers-Game-6t…

not having read the book, that seems insightful on the surface but isn’t particularly useful or actionable. all it seems to be saying is that to become better, make fewer mistakes, with an implied exhortion to practice. is there more to it than that?

That depends. I think it means that at a certain level, in order to improve, you must play tougher opponents.

The game of Go makes this abundantly clear. You can actually damage your own skills by playing too many inexperienced or weaker opponents. But playing someone just a bit stronger than you can improve you both.

I don't know if this works the same in e-sports, but it is striking in Go, or to a lesser extent, Chess.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#118

Post by Spooky23 »

blackandblue wrote: post #64
Proziam wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience it comes down to two things: 1. People think they already have the fundamentals 'down' 2. Actually mastering the fundamentals can be boring and make a game feel like work (which, if you don't truly enjoy pushing the limits in a game, it is.) A totally random example from League of Legends. 99% of players go into game after game and literally never review their previous games. They will spam games but…

learning so much from you guys lol not even a gamer :) now i think i am going to try to invest into a camera to record my piano practices. i wonder if that would help me get better...

It absolutely would.

We used an iPad to record swings of our little leaguers and it made a huge difference for them.

It helps because it’s easier to see what is happening vs hearing it. One example that we would see is kids dropping the back shoulder when they swing. Once they see it, they correct.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#119

Post by jimduk »

colonCapitalDee wrote: post #112

I see a lot of debate over what "meta" means, and I'd like to throw my own hat in the ring. I would argue that a playing a game at the base level (i.e. playing without meta) consists of (a) finding different strategies to use, (b) figuring when is appropriate to use each strategy, and (c) executing strategies optimally. When the game is first being played, most strategies haven't been discovered. At this stage strate…

A build on this, is as a soft-core participant in a game, often it is more enjoyable to participate in a game where the meta is not known, and everyone is in the 'finding different strategies' mode - bit like early days starcraft. Now the Internet exists, everyone jumps to semi-optimal strategies by copying, not putting in their own thinking time. While I admire high level play, at mid/low level it is more fun if the meta is not nailed down, also philosophically I think life is more 'hidden' than people think, and the idea there is a best-move/ common optimising strategy without thinking yourself is detrimental. I personally would like games which are more random, or where optimising is harder and less discoverable and not shareable.
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