To get good, go after the metagame • Hacker News Board

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#261

Post by bena » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #214

bena wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your advice is bordering on "you're having fun wrong". You are coming with the assumption that "fun" is some objective standard that is on a scale with "playing to win" on the other end. For some people, playing to win and finding the metagame is the fun. And there is nothing wrong with that. And too often I find that people who complain about people who are just "playing to win" are really just trying to complain ab…

> > unless you love metagames for their own sake > There's apparently some intangible, undefinable, nebulous quality being lost. Yes, it's called "fun". It's using the game as a platform for creativity and expression, not merely optimization for a fixed arbitrary set of rules. Saying that this doesn't count is you saying "you're having fun wrong". It's also why professional sports evolve rules to stop camping strateg…

There was derision in the phrase "intangible, undefinable, nebulous quality". Because it doesn't really exist. Fun exists in many forms.

And I never said fun didn't count. I said people find fun in different ways and trying to police how other people have fun is a bad look. So please, if you want to argue against me. Do it against what I actually said and not just what you wish I said.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#262

Post by joncrane » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

DevKoala wrote: post #71

joncrane wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the meta I'm struggling to learn at the moment. I constantly gripe that people making similar salaries in my organization don't produce nearly as much as I do...but they seem happy and I'm constantly stressed out. Which begs the question...who's winning?

What do you mean by “don’t produce nearly as much as I do”? Are you measuring feature completion or business impact? If your managers are happy with your coworkers that “produce less”, then chances are their efforts have the same business impact as yours.

I deliver more results, get assigned more important and complex work, and work more hours.

It's a project with a fixed span, and the barrier to entry is very high (government clearance and certain skills) so many people who gain entry exploit the situation because they know we're short on people and won't fire anybody unless they have a negative impact on the business. So the bar is high to get in, but the bar is very low to not be kicked out (have some positive impact). So we'll keep people that only do 1-2 tasks per week because it's better than 0, but don't reward the folks who can do 10 tasks per week.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#263

Post by someguyorother » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

hamilyon2 wrote: post #260

Spellman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I break the tiers down into 3 categories. 1) Literacy. Can you move and shoot in the FPS? Know how pieces move in chess? Basics of the how to play. You must master these and make them reflexive to move forward. 2) Fundamentals. The emergent gameplay that arises from those basic rules. But importantly these are all contained within the game. I usually break these up into Tactics and Strategy. Tactics are the moment-to…

As people noted elsewhere in thread, metagame in starcraft is pretty important, when skill level is equal (which is often on ladder). When skill level differs even a little bit, metagame becomes non-deciding factor.

Is meta opponent modeling? Then it would make sense that it becomes non-deciding when skill level differs - chess engines don't bother with it at all and just aim to destroy the opponent through sheer strength of play.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#264

Post by K0SM0S » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

I think the author is basically describing the "meta" as what is mathematically sort of a conformal space to the game space — loosely the idea that a conformal description of the game space lets you operate transformations on said space; and understand why it has the shape it has).

I've personally always focused on the meta indeed; I'm the kinda guy who goes for the map first in dungeons, because I'm more about coordinates than superstition (I'll take a matrix over an oracle, thank you very much). That works when, in the meta, finding the map is an expected player move by the developers (it even becomes part of the storytelling of exploration; think Zelda or Bioshock).

But in the real world, the developer's program is kinda like (maths \wedge physics)^chaos , so the meta is very much NOT clear-cut — there's no jury of life to rule that "this year, we'll outlaw dick moves in office politics", or that retribution for many comes next in the form of a #metoo. The players are anti-Shakespearian, they're chronically fuzzy and chaotic and non-trivial.

There are thus, from our "game space" standpoint (unable to grasp the higher-dimensionality of our conformal space), an infinity of possible meta-games, possible descriptions of what's conformal to us. There are religious descriptions and beliefs about that, there are theoretical social-science accounts, there are witnesses in the thousands or millions even who gave their truth in some book or other long form, there's what your neighbor says, what your best friend says, etc. You, the player, get to make your own meaning.

So we kinda perform "loops", from our game space and back, passing by the meta: we try to grasp at it, understand the "higher" or "deeper" mechanisms. How can I get this...?, Why is it that...?, "What is this...?" By trial and error, we manage to get our bearings, have a "feel of" or "sense for" this field / domain / situation / locality we're in. We kinda "know the ways" to think outside this box, after enough time contemplating it.

A truly "superior intelligence" (like we're superior to ants) would probably solve our "meta" like it's basic dominos — but again it's not magic, nor categorial, but really just more of the same: computing power and specialized features devoted to analyzing patterns up to some order.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#265

Post by bena » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

hnick wrote: post #229

TulliusCicero wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Starcraft, the one that gets hammered on the most for lower-level/newer players is "constantly make workers and spend all your money". The most basic rule of thumb is to not stop making workers until you hit 70 or so. If you do that in silver league, you're going to stomp 99% of your opponents even if your scouting and strategizing and unit compositions are all awful. You could do nothing but make a single unit ty…

And it's actually really hard (from personal experience) to keep this up and have your money all spent and controlling your units all at the same time. So simply practicing this one simple rule makes you better at many aspects of the game because you're forced to scramble and keep up. I actually had games where I was too focused on this where I hadn't made a single aggressive move, the opponent pushed and saw my mass…

Yeah, I was never amazing, but I played a decent amount of Brood War back in the day. So I had build orders, I knew of the importance of making workers and staying broke and expanding early.

We had my ex-wife's brother living with us for a while and he wanted to play StarCraft. I was like, "Sure, we can play 2v2 against the computer until you're comfortable". He was like "Nah, I've played Age of Empires, I know how RTS works, let's play 1v1." I tried to tell him, "StarCraft is fast". He insisted. So we played.

I built workers, sent a scout across the map, found his base. He was hoarding mineral until he could afford a barracks. I was pumping out workers. I built a secondary base in his expansion area, a barracks and a factory and staged a bunch of siege tanks along his opening, then drop-shipped several marines, firebats, and medics behind his mineral line.

He had just started building his second barracks. He sent his troops to try and handle the situation, then I pushed my siege tanks in from the other side and ruined his barracks.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#266

Post by Balanceinfinity » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

He writes "There seems to be something in getting good at a skill tree that helps in latter life. I’d like to think it is a function of exposure: once you see the competitive meta at the top of one skill tree, you begin looking for it everywhere else."

Two things explain this phenom: 1) you learn how to learn - and if you pay attention you become better at learning, more efficient; 2) you develop the confidence that your time invested will pay off with expertise, so you don't begrudge the investment

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#267

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #238

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you played against grandmasters your fundamentals were likely extremely good relative to most players

> If you played against grandmasters your fundamentals were likely extremely good relative to most players Relative to most players, no doubt. To be fair though, even someone in diamond is "extremely good relative to most players". I was a mid+ NA grandmaster zerg, and took games off players like EG demuslim. And even at the level I was at, fundamentals were the most important thing. And even at the level I was at, I…

I was a masters NA Zerg, not quite at your level but we probably could have met in the ladder at some point.

I totally agree, I just think it's not great advice to say "if you want to get good go after the meta". Some gaming communities over emphasize the meta and IMO StarCraft is one of them. Meta is just one aspect of ways to get an edge and as you progress in your skill you need to take advantage of every edge you can get.

Many StarCraft streamers will do challenges where they only go for a certain, non dominate strategy to see how high they can rise, the one that stuck with me the most was destiny going mass queen. I saw so many people asking "what can counter mass queen" because they saw him winning over and over again. The answer wasn't how should you change your strat to deal with someone going mass queen, they aren't that good, the answer was to be better at macro than that player.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#268

Post by hi_im_miles » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

Thriptic wrote: post #147

dfxm12 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's more complicated than that. Largely, it just seems that way because most people never bother to understand the rules past a cursory Google whereas big companies have teams of very experienced regulatory professionals from the agencies themselves who are all about it and therefore know every way to tweak inputs so that they trigger certain regulations rather than others. I was working on a regulatory compliance p…

I think the fact that it took an entire month to understand how to reach compliance speaks to the "pay to win" nature of regulatory barriers-to-entry.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#269

Post by rc-1140 » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #224

rc-1140 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Since a bunch of people seem to be responding to you about competitive games/experiences, my friend left me with the following pointer when he gave me a lengthy rundown on 2D fighters (cleaned up a bit for HN posting): "Tech and meta aren't things to chase after because they're things that come with learning fundamentals. You practice fundamentals until you die". It was like that when I was playing Quake, whe…

What does your friend mean by fundamentals? In 2D fighting games, learning the character's move set is easy compared to learning when and how to use them effectively. People seem to focus on learning combos but a good player can do a lot of damage just by establishing and breaking patterns: throwing when they expect you to attack, attacking low when they expect a high attack, not switching patterns when they expect y…

> What does your friend mean by fundamentals?

Your second sentence is mostly it, although it really generalized and lessened what it means to learn your fundamentals; learning your character's options are and what the basic flow of combat will be based on those options. Fundamentals gives you the tools and skillset to play the rock-paper-scissors metagame you've described (Team Fortress 2 also behaved like that). Things that would fall under fundamentals for something like Street Fighter would be:

- learning basic ranges on the stage (SF4/5's "grid" stage highlights this really well)

- learning the range of your character's moves (i.e., Chun Li's standing heavy punch/fierce has considerable reach, more than 1 square on the grid stage)

- using your jab/short to "check" aggression

- using your anti-air moves to catch your opponent's jump-in attacks

- rudimentary okizeme (after you knock the opponent to the ground, you can catch them with either damage or block pressure)

- what general actions beat other general actions (blocks beat moves, grabs beat blocks, jumps beat grabs)

The list goes on to some extent before it starts mingling with more refined actions. While it's rarely a 1:1 translation, things like the above have plenty of carry-over between 2D fighters, and the concepts themselves apply to 3D fighters like Tekken. I'd also go so far as to include knowing what bad habits are as part of fundamentals, like mashing fast buttons while still blocking or after getting up from being knocked down.

It's been buried in the comments but someone posted a link to Richard Garfield's MTG paper about "metagame" and I like his definition of metagame: "It is how a game interfaces with life". The game of rock-paper-scissors doesn't exist in a vacuum: even at a low or casual level, understanding the fundamentals allows a player to make educated guesses about how an opponent will behave during that game of rock-paper-scissors. It's not concrete, obviously, but noting what fundies the opponent has and which ones they're not good at or are completely missing can change how a player approaches the fight over the course of the game.

Re: To get good, go after the metagame

#270

Post by jerf » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

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.

Recent HN post on the topic: https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265197

A direct experience report on the same topic from a particular game.