> I'm not sure I agree with this. "Finding" the best strategy rewards you for a week at most, until the community absorbs the strategy. Then you're no farther than the people you were beating last week.
In most cases I experienced, exploitative strategies are only slightly improved, and require a fair amount of skill (usually games hotpatch outrageous exploits quickly). The people who find it worse train to use it first, and keep their advantage.
I mean... You said it yourself:
> Most games have co-opted the word "metagame" to describe this phenomenon. Someone discovers an effective strategy, it becomes the metagame, and competitive play revolves around polishing understanding and execution as it pertains to the metagame.
The "shifting meta" is exactly what game designers of big competitive games want, because it requires ongoing engagement to maintain mastery. A chess player may be rusty after a year off, but the game doesn't fundamentally change. Someone playing League or Overwatch cannot say the same as balance has substantially changed.
> Imbalanced games tend to self-balance at higher levels - all the crap that doesn't work just disappears from high-level players' playbooks (except occasionally as surprise gimmicks).
I've been part of the "highest levels" of two competitive gaming communities now, and I can tell you they do NOT self-balance in my experience. And it was incredibly frustrating to watch the rules change deliberately to break up our strategies, even though what we were doing was simply a function of understanding and practice.
Very few pvp games ever "balance out." That's why they have "shifting metas." Indeed, many gamers claim prefer this because they claim it makes it easier for new players to enter into the higher brackets against more experienced players. But really what it does is create a treadmill you can reach the front or back of.
Maybe some people want that treadmill. I am not sure I do.