Weekender XLBS: Can We Banish The Meta From Wargaming?
September 2, 2018 by crew
For some website features, you will need a FREE account and for some others, you will need to join the Cult of Games.
Or if you have already joined the Cult of Games Log in now
What difference will having a FREE account make?
Setting up a Free account with OnTableTop unlocks a load of additional features and content (see below). You can then get involved with our Tabletop Gaming community, we are very helpful and keen to hear what you have to say. So Join Us Now!
Free Account Includes
- Creating your own project blogs.
- Rating and reviewing games using our innovative system.
- Commenting and ability to upvote.
- Posting in the forums.
- Unlocking of Achivments and collectin hobby xp
- Ability to add places like clubs and stores to our gaming database.
- Follow games, recommend games, use wishlist and mark what games you own.
- You will be able to add friends to your account.
What's the Cult of Games?
Once you have made a free account you can support the community by joing the Cult of Games. Joining the Cult allows you to use even more parts of the site and access to extra content. Check out some of the extra features below.
Cult of Games Membership Includes
- Reduced ads, for a better browsing experience (feature can be turned on or off in your profile).
- Access to The Cult of Games XLBS Sunday Show.
- Extra hobby videos about painting, terrain building etc.
- Exclusive interviews with the best game designers etc.
- Behind the scenes studio VLogs.
- Access to our live stream archives.
- Early access to our event tickets.
- Access to the CoG Greenroom.
- Access to the CoG Chamber of Commerce.
- Access the CoG Bazarr Trading Forum.
- Create and Edit Records for Games, Companies and Professionals.
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Happy Sunday
Just home from playing D&D, so time to relax
Happy Sunday @rasmus!
Happy Sunday all
Happy Sunday to you too @higgy!
Happy Sunday !!!!!1
Happy Sunday @beardragon14 🙂
*sniff* Thanks mate …. *chokes up* … that somehow makesv it all worthwhile …
Happy Sunday!!
If we’re using the term ‘meta’ to mean anything (and strictly the term on its own is meaningless, it needs to be ‘meta-something’; like ‘meta-model’, ‘meta-language’ etc.) then you can’t banish it otherwise the word that follows it that you’re omitting can’t exist… Probably ‘game’ and ‘meta-game’ in this case – or even ‘rules’ and ‘meta-rules’.
Let’s go with either of these as the basis for what you’re calling ‘the meta’. The games we play are abstractions of reality or fantasy that need artificial constructs we’ll collectively call the ‘static and dynamic models’ which needs to operate according to some ‘rules’ and with physical representations of the model elements we call the board, the pieces, the tokens and in our cases often the minis. If the underlying artificial constructs are and accessible and robust we might consider the result a fun game.
A game is therefore an abstract form, and some people will always be able to analyse these underlying ‘static and dynamic models’ for aspects they can exploit. This kind of player is less into the physical and visual representations that the game employs to create a mini world to enjoy participating in than others; their fun comes from mastering the abstraction or ‘the meta’ as you call it.
The problem is – when players of these two kinds meet in a game and their behaviours are incompatible to the point one or both don’t enjoy it.
Great Points 🙂
Looking forward to this one! Great morning so far. I have four Pork Butts on the Smoker (go ahead @warzan I know there’s already a joke spinning up in your head on that one!) going for dinner tonight. But while they are cooking i’m chilling with the guys on XLBS!!!!
Happy Sunday @silverfox8 🙂 And your butts sound delicious 😉
If the Essen Spiel team comes over early they can taste them themselves! I’m only 90 mins south of Essen Spiel!
Happy Sunday! So on the topic of a randomly generated miniature game. What happens if I get a character I don’t like or get terrible abilities like Justin brought up? I have to buy another miniature to get another random chance to get a card that suits my game play? That sounds horrific! I might as well buy blind bags of clix models. Either that or the game would be so generic as not to be a game that would be fun. If every model is balanced you might as well play chess. It’s the different combinations of imbalanced models that makes a game fun I believe.
What I were trying to say below – but I did end up doing it in a much more long winded way 😉
My defence is that it is 2:30am
Yeah, it would certainly be a very very different feel of game, in that you basically play what you are given and you have to place complete trust in the system that balance exists.
I’m very reluctant these days to describe anything as ‘impossible’ but certainly, the underlying challenge to create a system like that seems enormous. 🙂
Okay @warzan I will bite at this
Your idea of getting an unique add on unit, while at first intriguing, become very hard at least with the resolution that we use in gaming today, move any value on a d6 and you move it 17% (roughly) on the success/failure scale so balance would be very hard to do even with 1billion play throughs by a computer. This could be mitigated by going to d100 or something, but aside from the mess of using d100s on the table top. Your unique unit loose some of the glam if it is just 1-5% better than Justins on the attack and equally worse on defence.
Also I and most others I think get into a fraction for the look, feel and playstyle of that fraction, when you get to computer generated stats like that would it still feel the way of the fraction – Orcs in WHFB/40K with out the +1 in Strength are just green odd looking humans.
Finally with out points or a point like structure the idea of getting an attachment “blind” how can the system guess the strength of it with out knowing what else you have, and how can it not turn in to an arms race where the winner is who ever throw the most cash at it until they get an OP attachment? Unless the attachments are the same?
I think it can work in card games where the computer can balance the deck internally, notice there are not add-ons to the decks (as far as I am aware) but a mass battle wargame is a form of organised chaos (which is why we love them) so even building balance between starter armies in a meaningful way – is out of the real of any computer, for the next decade I would say
I agree on all counts mate 🙂
The chances of taking any existing system of play we know of and doing this is probably very very slim, we are most likely looking at something conceived from scratch with the resolution at a higher degree to facilitate the subtlety you would imagine it would need.
If the game is going to facilitate choice to any degree then you automatically reintroduce meta (as you say above) but you could have a fixed force org perhaps where you must fill the available slots.
I’m not sure (even now after sleeping on this) what exactly the gain is in all of this even if it was elegantly executed.
Three desirable gains might be to avoid/prevent:
1) Pay to win
2) Cheese
3) Lore-breaking
I have to admit to having never heard the term meta gaming before.
Happy Sunday people. Well that’s 2 new games on my family play list thanks to Ben. Interesting main subject… Meta is a variable thing in many games so I’m not sure it’s such a big thing to be honest. For me balance is very important but this doesn’t have to be within the models this could be victory conditions. I see nothing wrong with games with no meta or very little meta as long as you have fun. I know people I won’t play because with meta a force that breaks the balance.
On the topic of Fighting Fantasy have you picked up Steve Jacksons introductory RPG book called Fighting Fantasy with it’s add on Riddling Reaver? Run the same way as a solo book but each room has a GM description and then the players deal with it. Really simple progression for Fighting Fantasy Solo books back in the day. They later did Advanced Fighting Fantasy with a book called Dungeoneer. It’s a fantastic intro to RPG.
I remember Dungeoneer… not a lot … but I remember seeing it and thinking .. this could be cool
It was. :-]
Didn’t they do a magazine for FF and some large 54mm figures as well
For solo gaming the old Tunnels and Trolls by Flying Buffalo has lots of solo modules written for it a lot of which are available as downloads
http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/solo.htm
funnily enough the minute @warzan talked about it I thought of that, I should have 2 or 3 to throw up to him as well
Radio killed the video star?! ?
Interestingly X-Wing 2nd Edition introduces “quick build” cards. Essentially a ship with mandatory upgrades, balanced to a “threat level” for that build. I reckon FFG could procedurally generate those for some interesting tournaments.
Hmmm… I wonder if Miremarsh and Goblin Quest met and compared notes over a few drinks late one night?
Talk about impulse…. I stopped the fire Bens chat about goblin quest & Four against Darkness. Goblin quest now bought PDF) and the other coming on Tuesday. Thanks Ben, good call 🙂
Ok so on the topic of removing the Meta, if I have the understanding of this right to some extent has not Guild Ball gone down this route. The only thing you do is pick a team all the models are pretty determined and all the stats are already determined.
It’s only when you start getting into the game at a deeper level and don’t play a basic starter team you can start to choose which players play but Guild Ball kick-off starter is meta free play straight from the box.
You could then call all 2 player starter boxes “meta-free” -but you can get in to the game via other routes as well and by them self the masons and brewers are the start of a meta
Some people enjoy playing games out of their normal style of play. It prevents each game starting to feel the same especially if you play against the same group of people. I’m enjoying in Gangs of Rome at the moment randomly selecting fighters and equipment to fixed point cost. It makes me have to think about how I’m going to make the best use of what I’ve got.
In terms of doing this I think you can’t think of it in terms of I’ll change this stat by one and this other stat by one to balance such that an Orc may feel like a human. I think you have back and decide what are the defining characteristics of each faction are. So for example you have to decide that the weakest Orc is stronger than the strongest human and set their stats and ranges on stats appropriately.
If you do the balancing at a unit level and sell at unit level you still have meta – I can choose in my force these type of units or those. So you have to do this and sell at the force level.
I think the point made about getting the miniatures to match the card will soon(?) not be a problem the system just like Keyforge could 3D print the army or send the files for 3D printing.
I think you would want to be able to say when buying what type of force you want so that it matches the type of play style you like. For example I want a highly mobile elite force or a want a force that swarms over its opponents. To allow for the variability in how we all like to play and reduce the risk of buying an army that I don’t like the play style of.
Happy Sunday guys,
Great job to all those who won themselves a Golden Button for their awesome work.
Have to admit the meta term threw me for a second as I had associated it with the background and backstory and not with meta gaming.
I think banishing the meta would not work for most people.
In KeyForge cards played out on a table will have a set rule in association with that specific card. That won’t change. By seeing the image of the card you will understand what it is and with it being placed on the table, you can read and reference it easily during normal play. Over time you will know what this card always is.
Having to play against opponents whose miniatures will have varying stat lines and special rules even though they will look the same and potentially be armed or equipped the same but still be different, will essentially cripple the streamlining of the game as you cannot learn a generic format. At a skirmish/low model count level this is probably not too annoying as you have a low model count and may be able to remember whats different on your opponents cards. No-one wants to keep asking their opponents, what this or that units stat line is, during a game.
The truth of this though is that this would be by far the most accurate form of wargaming. People have mentioned how they may not like a model, or its equipment, it strengths and weaknesses, its special rules or its stat lines, welcome to pretty much any nations armed forces. Each individual will not necessarily be the best of the best, often you will have one of the weakest of the weak but you still need to use them.
It is very difficult to keep coming up with new special rules to place onto cards when we are talking about the volume that’s required for a well fleshed out model range. It would require a huge amount of man-hours from concept to application and testing. Attaining some form of balance with this amount of variables is likely just not possible and having had some feedback about balance from gamers in the past during playtesting is actually something they didn’t want. In past reviews and comments I have found that most gamers want the ability to achieve a water-cooler moment using a spike of unbalance through chance, strategy or skill.
It’s interesting to see chess referenced so much as a balanced game due to pieces being the same, I wonder if people don’t think winning the choice of going first or second doesn’t go some way to giving you an advantage before the game has even started and after you have deployed 😉
I think what quickly became the crux of the subject and may have been lost in the back and forth is that what you all were proposing still seemed to have meta, and I am going off of how you were referencing and using examples. You didn’t seem to be talking about a ground up generated meta build without a framework or pre-determined sliding scale but making each unit different. It felt like you guys had moved onto individuality rather than a meta-data vacuum for every model/unit that needed to be filled.
After all without some established guidelines for individual unit types each unit would lose some of its identity. Can you call a genestealer, a genestealer if a gretchin can beat it up in combat and due to its generated stats is highly likely to do that every time? Wouldn’t that take away from the genestealer lore of its combat traits?
I will be honest @warzan your clarifying statement of what you guys were referring to in this instance by “banishing/having no meta” I am not sure I understood it the way you meant it. The meta of a game is what happens before you play a game, is what you referred to during the video. Does this mean Mythos fits this as it has just five factions of fixed models that are set? If so there must be a lot of skirmish games out here that fit this format.
A good subject to have a ponder over though.
Have a great gaming week everyone!
@noyjatat the meta in Mythos will probably lie in the fact that faction a is strong vs faction b but weak vs faction c and so forth.
I am afraid @warzan you cannot escape the meta, Keyforge will eventually, if t succeeds, acquire its own meta, even if all decks will be theoretically balanced and it is up to the player to get good with it, the skill sets required (and playing preferences) required to play the deck will differentiate the decks in meta categories and will generate both a secondary market for decks and meta for what decks with some variance players will gravitate towards.
I would agree that the likelihood is where that game is likely to progress to 🙂
However… if it doesn’t and this ‘meta-less’ approach is somthing they have commuted to it’s an interesting thing to watch 🙂
I definitely agree from a designer’s perspective, even an amateur one, it is a vastly interesting topic, especially since it is not a theoretical but a practical appliance.
Even if it fails to deliver a meta-less environment, I believe the information the wider gaming community especially at designer and developer level will vastly benefit from such experiments.
They indeed break new grounds, for all of us.
But that could be a different type of meta. It wouldn’t necessarily be I want to play with a deck with house 1, 2 and 3 because that’s the overall most efficient but that’s the way I like to play and is most efficient for me. Whereas what we have today in some games is you need army list x.
Gym done, now its time to watch beasts…
Happy Sunday folks
I would love to remove meta from wargames, I hate facing armies that have been so finely tuned via the meta that they sap all the fun out of the game. I enjoy games where “rule of cool” is at the forefront, e.g. “yes this unit is crap in terms of efficiency, but it look awesome!”
In reference to unit meta and going back to @warzan ‘s choice of example today, I think 8th ed 40k is a perfect example for this – The humble Tactical marine is now somewhat redundant when compared to his new shiny Primaris equivalent on the tabletop. This is purely through GW almost enforcing a meta into the equation and ensuring sales of their new posterboys by making them more points efficient than their older kits.
I don’t think that specific example is a good one, although I don’t disagree with your position itself.
In the current meta, I think that Primaris Marines are generally regarded as inefficient and uncompetitive, and competitive players are more likely to run tactical or scouts for troop choices
In my experience it has been the complete opposite, pure primaris armies trouncing my “classic” marine army, whereas play against another classic army and it’s a fight to the the death.
An Intercessor gives you an extra wound, 6″ longer range and -1 AP on their main weapon for only a few points more when compared to a classic Tac marine… and then there’s the Hellblasters….
Happy Sunday everyone! With regard to banishing the meta, personally I think it would be a terrible idea for the war games I care about and would push me away from them. I have no interest in competitive games or tournaments, however every model and unit i have purchased has been for a specific reason based on the story behind my army(s). The idea of having what the unit is and how i can use it pre determined would mean i could never collect the force I want or tell the story I want to tell.
I think the aim should be to change the meta in our games.
How we put together our armies should be dictated more by:
Flexibility – lists that feel like real forces, because they have the flexibility to deal with lots of different threats, rather than hard counters for whatever is hot at the moment in the meta.
Fluff or historical accuracy- forces that look like something likely to find it’s way onto the battlefield in the setting, rather than spamming the most efficient unit.
Fun – forces that are built to create a fun challenge for your opponent, not to win at all costs.
This can be achieved at either end, by the seller or the consumer. As players, we can create a culture in our gaming communities where this sort of play is encouraged, and netlisting, cheese-mongering and WAAC attitudes are discouraged. Designers can aim for greater balance, avoid power-creep, and impose force selection rules which encourage the flexibility, fluff & fun approach.
The latter is unlikely to happen with the bigger companies though, because they are extremely adept at moving the meta in order to drive sales. You don’t strive for balance if you want a new line to sell well.
In regards to banishing the Meta (on the table top), I believe that there is a game that if it doesn’t banish the meta, it severely restricts it. (Tell @dignity to reach behind him and grab the MERCs 2.0 rule book). No I m not going to get into the MegaCon Games KS crap, I’m only discussing the MERCs game-play here in regards to the Meta, or the lack/limitation of it.
MERCs in a very small sci-fi skirmish game that can play on a game area of 2ft x 2ft or 3ftx 3ft. Games I’ve seen and played can last as little as 15-20mins or go for over an hour, depending on your opponent. It does require a moderate amount of terrain, or its a very short game.
MERC’s 2.0 has 12 factions, each faction has 10 troop types. You can only field 1 of each type in a team of 5 members that are all from the same faction. Every troop type from each faction is balanced against all troops from each faction. Depending on the game mode that you wish to use(2.0 rule book pg332-336), on average you’ll have a team of 5 squad members from 1 faction vs any player who has another faction (again team of 5). Its the tactical choices (and the dice Gods) that will dictate who will win. If you want a bigger game, you use the Platoon mode, that lets you field all 10 troops from your faction, BUT you can ONLY activate 6 MERCs per turn (depending on your faction, there is a variation for 2 factions that do not follow this).
Each faction has its own play style and synergies, but they are all balanced and it comes down to how the faction and then the team you choose work to complete your game objectives. Effectively I’d describe the game as “here’s a toolbox with 10 tools, pick 5 and go do the job”(unless you playing the platoon mode then “here’s 10 tools get this job done, but you can only use 6 tools each turn”).
In answer to @dignity‘s question of cost of getting involved, excluding the rule book, you can get a free down loadable rules from their website, and you buy a faction box that has all 10 miniatures, all 10 cards for the mini’s. and buy some 10 sided dice and you can play.
I am certain that others either will disagree, and fair enough we will all have an opinion on this matter, or they may never have heard of this game. And there may be other games out there that I may not have heard of that do the banishment/limitation of Meta better than MERCs.
I do love this game, but the company has left a sour taste in my mouth after some of their KS shenanigans, but for another discussion. Sorry for the wall of text and possibly ranting, but there’s my opinion/thought regarding today’s topic. Yes @dracs your package is being organised to be sent soon.
Happy Sunday!
I think the meta-gaming debate has to recognise that players of a wargame will fall somewhere on a 3 way spectrum when picking an army.
1) Motivated by lore / setting (including a lot of historical gaming) where the priority is to have a force that matches the setting even at the expense of competitivness.
2) Motivated by the army-building as a hobby in its own right. Banishing the ‘meta-game’ would by definition be working against what these players find fun.
3) Motivated by an elegant, balanced game as an end in itself. This would include those who like the idea of ‘taking what they’re given’ and making the best of it, and who are attracted to the idea of perfect balance.
Banishing the meta – if it can be done – is irrelevant to players drawn to the first of these poles, is counter to the interests of the second. Those who might be attracted to abolishing the meta in the third group will either not care very much about it in practice, or will be drawn to games which are fairly different from what most of us consider to be tabletop wargames. In other words, if they really care about this, they’ll be playing games like Chess or certain board games.
I don’t see how you can banish the meta to any significant degree and keep a game attractive to most of those currently drawn to play tabletop wargames.
And any effort you’d expend on trying to create a meta-less game I would rather see invested in making and maintaining a tight, elegant set of rules and/or striving to balance the various factions and units as much as possible on an ongoing basis, recognising that perfect balance is impossible in a tabletop wargame and wouldn’t be fun if it was achieved.
Ok I think I understand better what meta means. I presume it’s another ‘in’ word like narrative and organised play but that’s another story
In the past games like DBA gave you fixed armies that you couldn’t deviate from and Basic Impetus and Armati give you fixed armies that you can maybe swap out one unit for two lesser ones. For WW2 we always play scenario games so you have what was there in real life which seems the most logical way to go
DBA?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bellis_Antiquitatis
Just play games that don’t have ‘meta’, like most historical games, though Im not really sure what it means…
Guess I don’t have it in wargaming then and thus no need to remove it?
I think from what the guys said if you choose your units that would be meta.
But how does that work with scenarios based on real world engagements? I guess as those are designed by the scenario and reality then no ‘meta’?
yes, meta only really comes in when you have a list build with no specifics in mind. Although if you want you can think of meta in real world armies. Republican Romans changing how they fought in response to Dacians, or the AFV and weapon race within the world wars. People develop something and the current army is ill equipped to deal with it, so changes occur
I suppose if you take into account that a lot of the historical games that are based on real world engagements are rarely correct due to the sheer numbers of units people would have to field, the meta in these cases is what you pick and choose to field. Squad level games such as spectre could be more easily adapted within a meta less game as you could individualize each miniature with a pre-determined skill set and stat line from the company.
not exactly, meta gaming is the overall selection, just choosing units wouldn’t be meta gaming. But only choosing the optimal units is meta gaming. Say playing a german list and ignoring the historical accuracy in favour of selecting only the best units for your points. When everyone does this within a game the overall “meta” of the game changes, so only using flying units in fantasy game means infantry are at a disadvantage, you either compete with more fliers or gun lines. By the end of year of play seeing cav and infantry blocks is a rarity. These shifts seem to move in cycles, fliers win most everyone shifts to counter fliers, then people counter the gun lines then people counter the counter. Sometimes it can also be geographical, the meta within one area can develop separately.
@avernos Warren clarified for Justin that what they meant by meta for the purposes of this video was “The meta of a game is what happens before you play a game”, following that they talked about force selection, army selection, the ability to change stat and equipment within the unit. So I agree yes the overall but also the small stuff as well, hence we got the tactical squad example. I will be honest though buddy I struggled to fully understand what was being discussed today as the milling gloves came out early on so I probably don’t have a good understanding of the subject matter 😀
It may be that the quote I have put in was Warren trying to clarify something on the spot to keep things on track and that it is not a true reflection of what he meant as well though.
apologies for replying in your post @piers
No problemo @noyjatat and @avernos it kinda tallies with what I thought it means… kinda like optimal list choosing? Power gaming so to speak and that then changing how a game is played.
I can safely say it doesn’t happen in our historical games as even our points based pick up games don’t suffer from this due to the lists restrictions forcing you down a historical path. Also a lot to do with the players too I suspect.
that’s how I how view it, it’s been a long time since I worried about optimal builds when I went to tournaments and I suspect I wasn’t much fun to play with then as the objective was to ruin someone elses day.
You might be the only person here who remembers or knows of this @avernos but at one of Joe’s game days at central hall in Belfast in a very early edition of WFB on the competitors entire army was a high elf champion on a dragon.
I remember that, I know that there was another player who had something undead and filthy, his opponent spent an age putting his army out and then the (f)undead player placed one mini. His opponent looked at it and started putting everything away.
Those games days were fun
By this argument and definition, Wellington choosing his position before the Battle of Waterloo began was ‘meta’ in the real world – exploiting the circumstances to his benefit. 😉
Yep right up until he rolled for first turn 😀
Oh, re: feedback on the new Mics… Around minute 41 Justin goes very quiet when turning to look at Ben. I could still hear him, and only noticed it because you pointed out that you were experimenting with sound recording and asking for feedback, but the only times I previously remember not hearing things is when you’ve got several people talking at once and/or people pronouncing things quickly or in a weird way – in other words, I don’t ever remember thinking that the speech wasn’t properly recorded.
Happy Sunday, time to sit down, paint some miniatures and listen to the Beasts 🙂
Now on BOW FM.
lol
I think meta in wargames is necessary but I think it comes mostly down to the players to make it work or not. Competitive players will try to field an army to just obliterate the enemy while fluff players might go something more balanced as that would be used in that world and if they play against each other it could lead to a very unbalanced game.
Getting rid of the meta in wargames will in my eyes restrict the possibilities of things you put in the game. If you have a lot of diverse things (like races, weapons, vehicles) you have more the change of generating unbalanced forces. Like putting all astra militarum infantry against space marines infantry(I know it is extreme), I don’t think the astra militarum will survive without there shiny toys (tanks).
I think early historical games (crusades, gallic wars) might lend them best to this, you all play with man and the weapons for the most are all equal.
I don’t know if this might be a factor but don’t some companies not exploit the meta to sell more of their stuff? Giving the new kid on the block some new trick or weapon to deal with the others. Pricing the better units more because they know that people will pick them up because it is better.
the removing the meta is an interesting topic, for games like Gangs of Rome I think it works perfectly and could theoretically scale up. However even with gangs of rome there were still issues with perception. Despite talking for months before the release and preorder about it’s randomness people still bought in and then complained it was random. This is because people are terrible and we can never remove them all. However with larger wargames it does become more of an interesting proposition. When I used to play competitive warhammer you could point at the current army books and knew what would be in the army. Cookie cutter lists where the norm and if you played outside of them or with a lower tier list it was close to impossible to win. Kings of War has attempted to balance this with the Clash of Kings books. If you’re not into competitive play then the basic game is grand, but every year the rules committee, who are volunteer gamers working with Mantic, look at what has become the norm, if everyone is using an artifact in every list does that need toned down, it’s points raised or removed completely. This fine balancing and tweaking has kept tournaments much more balanced, but it’s an ongoing thing to be revisited annually and the game is better for it. But as long as games have an army building mechanic you will always get this. Even in chess white is over powered as it always gets the first turn 😉
Meta. I think the meta-game is a good part of wargaming. But how much time and effort should you put into it?
I like playing cool looking armies so I don’t like putting much effort into the meta-game. But does this make it less fun for my opponent to play me?
And if someone puts loads of time and effort into the meta-game and makes a very difficult to beat army is it less fun for their opponent that just plays a cool looking army?
What is to much and what is to little????
Happy sunday !! I think it will be hard to remove the mete from wargaming. It really depends on the gamers. Some people just like to make meta list for eks 40k. Its part of their hobby to make the best list they can, they research to find the best.
I usually play with what I like in 40k and not what is essentiel the best. And when i play against a meta gamer, well sometimes i got my ass wopped. But when I sometimes win its a good felling to beat a meta list with a regular list.
Everybody’s voices sound super sexy with those new mics!!!! I’m off for a cold shower you naughty boys….
On the topic of removing the meta, or having a perfect balance if you would… the more different factions you have, the more difficult it is to make them perfectly balanced and at the same time unique. With the modern technology like the learning AIs you possibly could get close to that I guess, the question is if it’s something people would take interest in. And I believe some of them would definitely. But at the same time, there’s lots of other types of players that don’t care about the meta, people that just want a very specific army for whatever reason (taste, lore, story, visuals, fun etc.).
I’d agree that making that sort of balanced wargame would probably be possible only through pre-determined boxes as was said, because even with all the technology available I don’t think you can create a perfectly balanced faction with different kinds of units so that no matter what the composition of an army you do it will be always balanced. There is too many variables that come into play for that to be possible. And with those boxes, you lose that variability, the possibilities for your own army and that would put some players off, myself included.
Even as a total noobish beginner with wargames (I am just about to get into Kill Team and that will be the first step I take into wargaming), it’s those possibilities you have to make your own army that appeal to me. I do however see the upsides of those balanced boxes, you don’t have to worry about the composition of your army, because you have that already done for you. I have been worrying about that a lot honestly even with the small scale Kill Team, but funnily enough I have been enjoying figuring it out on my own, searching the internet for people’s thoughts and discussing it with a few friends that are more experienced wargamers.
Might sound a little nonsensical, but having pre-determined unique boxed armies is taking the vast possibilities and options out of wargaming. I would say it is possible in theory though.
hang mike from the roof and drop the face of ben
A great show Guy’s the goblin quest game does Look a fun game.
hey everyone you normally do not hear much from me.
but now you have done something that I have not been able to do for a long time.
I have a hearing problem on my right ear and hear only 80%. (no sterio sound for me)??
normally I put the laptop or tablet on my left side but now with your new microphones I can put you in front of me and I can hear the deep warm (sexie voices :-)) it was fantastisch??thank you guys and girl?
Just had to say, great profile pic!
death with cat one of Paul’s best
What happened to the NO button, it should definitely be tested using the new mics!
IMHO, the Meta especially for long established IP is a barrier to new players. A game without meta or something that can be balanced for new players would be welcome.
In regards to what Warren is doing and what Ben spoke about with Four Against Darkness is great. It is hard to get new people into RPGs. Far too often there is always a single person being the GM all the time. It would be great if there was an app or pre-done stories with choose your adventure aspects based on the outcomes of the group for a puzzle or scenario. If the scenarios are done like scenes in a movie then people could pickup and stop at different scenes like a TV series. It could work with players quickly building their characters and maybe already have miniatures and then include a play kit which has item cards, coins, maps, a journal of the adventure and maybe an online character builder so each person could get a custom character sheet. There is no winning in the games. Winning is subjective. What is important is getting through the story and the story has many possible endings depending on the choices made. IMHO this type of RPG with less improve but more on rails could get far more people into RPGs and then many would venture out to more traditional RPGs. To me, that is a missing type of game right now.
Procedurally generated armies are an interesting proposition. I suspect it would make horde armies tough to play. With any degree of granularity, they would become tough to manage effectively. If every Guardsman or termagent is unique, how the hell do you keep track of that? It also flies in the face of the fluff.
Perhaps giving each unit a ‘quirk card’ could work. Adds flavour and offers something unique.
The vagueries of dice also ensure that the character of specific models is created during the game itself. No matter how average the stat block, we have all seen great dice turn an off-the-peg trooper into a hero!
On the meta/no meta-Isn’t 40k doing something similar to this right now. You can play instead of by points by power Level. Now I’ll admit I immediately dismissed the whole Power Level concept because I’ve played 40k for a long time and its not the way it was done back in my day(old man moment). This way you have whatever unit you like..you can give them whatever you like on their datacard and it costs exactly the same. I will say it would make building an army WAY faster,but you still get your units to have the look you want.
That sounds more like a way of switching the meta that removing it. A looser points system where you pay in treat level rather than points, and if it is faster it will still let you meta game.
Happy Sunday, another great show as always!
I played quite a few variations on the adventure book genre as a kid, and there was one very glossy one I recall with custom dice and sheets, wish I could remember the name of it. I got quite into the lone wolf series though, which had a nice mechanism for letting you carrying your character across from one adventure to the next, unlocking various cool abilities.
I have to say throughout the discussion on Meta I can’t get the Tenacious D song out of my head (about not being able to kill the Metal 🙂 )
Well as ever, a thought-provoking episode, and one focused on game design, a subject close to my heart. To set my stall out at the start, I’d be against removing meta, for a few reasons,
– I think it’s fair to say the vast majority of players are not hard-core tournament players, who are the ones that suffer/benefit the most clearly from real “broken” meta (as opposed to the “false-meta” I discuss below).
– List building is a fun activity in itself, for a lot of reasons. Searching for that perfect synergy or combo. Not only that, playing with a list, seeing it work or not, then refining it. That whole process is a hobby unto itself.
– Historically video games and RPGs have tried to streamline or mitigate meta and failed to find the scale of the commercial audience they had with heavier metagames. I think this is actually due to a phenomenon I would call, “false-meta”. People think, something is unbeatable, or a combo is broken and uncounterable. They discuss it endlessly on forums and in clubs. Eventually, they will move onto the next meta-debate, or they’ll see it wasn’t so. It doesn’t really matter, it’s fun to debate it.
I think one of the reasons for the enduring popularity for meta, is linked to the same reason we argued about Batman Vs Superman as kids, or He-Man vs Optimus Prime.
Can it be done? That is a very different question. I guess a better one is can it be done and the game still be fun. I am sure it could be done, so many avenues you could go down. One would certainly be the discussed randomly generated stats on unit cards and having combat be primarily unit vs unit. Just having pre-constructed lists for existing games would get you this quickly. Some experts could build say 3 Ork lists, 3 Space Marine lists etc.. and you can pick, and they’ve been heavily play-tested to make sure that both average (and excellent players) have reasonable even results with them.
Can you eliminate meta, keep unit choice, and keep the feeling or lore and thematics come through with the units. I think that is much tougher. Because as soon as I can choose the units before I play, and those units really feel like they look in how they play, we have a problem.
I have a proposition, what if instead of trying to eliminate the meta, we eliminate what we don’t like about the meta. I think the main arguments against meta are…
– Tournament scene becomes dominated by a single play-style (I think the annual generals hand-book and FAQ type approach works for solving this).
– Newbie players feel like they get beaten everytime they play an experienced player (if a game is more about skill than luck, isn’t this a problem regardless of the meta?).
– I want to build a fluff-based list, but its so non-competitive I can’t even field it in my local club without hope of getting trounced.
Ok, so the only one I think is a real problem, that there isn’t a good solution for already stated above, is the last one. I think this comes on focussing on making the choices in the game have more weight than the choices made in preparing your list. I don’t want to eliminate list building, just mitigate how important it is in-game. I think that can be done by making a game very random, but I am pretty sure that isn’t fun (some pretty good books on game design research agree with this).
@dignity As for a game working without dice/cards or some other random mechanic, well my game design project Deneb is all about this idea. Sure it’s got challenges, but I humbly submit that I think I might have at least come close to cracking them…
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/deneb/
Sam’s never been to a dungeon? That sounds like a suspiciously specific denile – you guys might want to check his wardrobe for leathers and latex. ?
Surely Death’s weakness is games? ?
Codices, not codexes. Surprised Mr Pedantic didn’t pick up on that. ?
That was a great show ? and I’m Andre61 not Andre77.
Lol thanks mate good to see you happy again lol 🙂
I’m sure its been mentioned, but Justin’s mic volume comes in and out as he turns his head to talk to the screen… so not sure if he just needs to reposition the mic or if we should buy him a laser pointer… 2 rather.. one for home, and one for work…
Check out the Polemos System (Done by the 6mm Company Baccus). They do a lot of different Historic periods in 6mm.
Let’s take the Napoleonics. They have a cool army building mechanic, you pick your faction and how many Generals you want to take (between 4-7). That’s it. Everything else you roll for from the Generals proficiency all the way down to whether an Infantry Brigade has attached artillery.
Not exactly balanced and it’s more of a “Here’s a cool way to play the game differently” but it’s a cool way to have a quick game.
I have been thinking about whether it’s possible to create a meta-free miniatures game and ignoring the fact that actually I don’t think you would want to do so, the conclusion I came to is kind of yes, but not if you want to make a viable game
Using 40k as an example, it’s not enough to provide a procedurally generated stat card inside the box of tactical marines to remove the 40k meta, you would need to procedurally generate the entire army roster. If a stat card was procedurally generated but you could choose how many of each unit you wanted to take, then you still have meta. Even something as simple as choosing your faction introduces a tiny amount of meta. Any decision around the composition of an army list that is left to the player introduces meta. However if you remove all of the meta, as @dignity said, you are faced with the possibility of ending up with an army you actually don’t like in terms of models. Not an attractive option for something that’s going to cost you £150 – £200. And unlike card games, if you don’t like your blind buy it’s not like you can just buy a new one when it’s the same price again with the same odds you won’t like what you end up with. Even if you scale it down, say make Kill Team a meta-free game, it’s still £50+ per team is still unreasonably expensive for a blind buy. So You can definitely reduce the amount of meta but you can’t really remove it entirely and produce a viable miniatures game.
The only way I can see of removing the meta entirely is to play pre-generated scenarios that feature pre-generated lists but is this how people really want to play? It’s more suited to board games (i.e. Conan) than wargames.
Great Points
I’m actually more in favour of having the meta if I am honest. Not because I absolutely love meta but because I like choice. I’m a hobbyists more than anything and I get off on great looking armies and tables. For me it’s more about what looks cool than what plays well. If you remove the meta you remove so much scope for creative freedom that it actually would switch me off
Why does the procedurally generated stats have to be in the box you buy? Why not buy a starter set and create an account online and let it randomly generate your lists that way? Then you can reroll if it doesn’t math your desired play style, assuming a practically infinite range of possibilities. Maybe you can “bank” “N” lists per faction to stop someone claiming everything, but allow players to buy more slots cheaply.
I’ve just spent the weekend at a Warmachine tournament. I usually only get to play aginst one other player so every round I was playing against an army I didn’t know. Its open information so I can look at my opponents stats at any time and ask questions. I cannot take on board all that information like that. Thankfully I have absorbed some over the years and have a broad strokes understanding of a lot, so I actually managed to win 3 of my 6 games somehow. If the entire system was designed around me fighting large armies that were entirely unknown to me every game then I do not think I could keep up at all.
I do like the idea though that you could sign up to an event, pick your faction, and a few weeks before the event you get issued 3 procedurally generated lists and you get to pick one to play. Maybe you get to see everyone elses 3. Maybe you get to see their choice once you have submitted your choice. This would have to be based around a standard army box though, and be flexible when it comes to WYSIWYG unless models were sold with magnets in all their options. I feel this would work better for small scale skirmish games, around the size of Infinity, rather than mass battle. Easier to see what you have, and easier to track what your opponent has.
I really hate the idea that I could want to play beserker orks charging in and hacking my enemy to pieces, and I could spend £100+ on a box, and get home to find all the random cards list everyone with ranged attacks instead. I also hate the idea that I would have to rebuy the box if I got what I wanted and then 6 months later I want to try a different approach to orks.
I do not think Keyforge can eradicate the meta. I believe that after a few months certain deck styles will reveal themselves as more powerful and everyone will decide you need at least 2 dispel cards in your deck to be competative (For example. I don’t know the game) but only 1 in 10 decks has that which results in people feeling obliged to keep buying and junking decks until the get what popular wisdom says they need.
Agreed, on generating lists online.
In fact, the whole predetermined meta (provided it can be balanced to some degree maybe using machine learning) is growing on me as another optional style of play.
I had considered the online app that would generate stuff for you, like the stat cards, but you could just keep clicking “regenerate” Until you get what you’re after so it didn’t really seem useful; you may as well let people just choose as have infinite re-rolls on the random table.
Maybe when you buy a box you get a code that allows “X” lists to be rolled and stored, but you can buy more without buying a new box?
It’s still a bit of a halfway house though. As I said above if you remove the option to customise the squads and go for auto generated stats, you can still customise your army by choosing how many tactical squads or assault squads or tanks that you take. The idea of randomly generated squads in an otherwise customisable army seems a little weird.
Also, consider that if I really want a marine with a plasma gun because I think plasma guns look cool then that’s what I want to build and paint and I will be damned before I let a computer tell me otherwise. So a further consideration for any such game would be that miniatures were pre-assembled and pre-painted (a la XWing). A game like 40k where the painting and building is as much a part of the hobby as the game probably cannot survive without a great deal of it freedom if choice which in turns implies meta.
A pre-painted Shadespire warband with a predefined deck might work, although it would possibly move away from that game’s business model.
I think this only really works if either your entire list is generated as a whole, or perhaps if its a pick 5 characters game and you buy and generate them individually. it doesn’t feel right to me for lettine me pick how many of what i want and it then generates their stats later for me.
For casual play, having lots of rerolls doesn’t matter so much. For organised play I like the idea of lists being assigned rather than people bringing their own, although that has merrit. If lists are always assigned, lots of rerolls doesn’t matter. If people bring their own, then they guy whos mouse finger on the reroll has the most stamina has an advantge. If you cap the number of rerolls this either stops being an issue or becomes pay to win/gain an advantage. Thats where MTG has always lived though anyway.
I totally agree (posted in my comment above). Especially with something that requires a great deal of financial and temporal investment to buy, build and paint, you really have to let people do so with the models that they want. If you’re going to take the option to choose away I think you have to also remove the need to invest time building and painting too. But giving people the option to choose means you are immediately introducing Meta.
It would be possible to create a game with vastly reduced meta, but it would need to be very different from something like 40k. I think you could get away with it with something like X-Wing (small, 3 or 4 ship squadrons with pre generated ships and crews) but not something like 40k.
A way of removing the meta is to remove everything, and just have standard units and army lists for everyone and every fraction. Make every army something like:
2×20 swordsmen
30 pikemen
3×10 archers
15 horsemen
No deviation allowed.
That might be the most fun to play, I agree but the meta is gone with the choice – the moment there is a choice of some kind there is a meta, for better or for worse.
All this did remind me of some anti-meta tournaments we had in my old club in the UK – bring your worst list and then you would draw a list out of the lot and play with that for that round of the tournament, and for the next you would draw again – winners were the guy who scored the most points and who made the list that scored the least
Your comment about anti-meta gaming environments echoes a thought I like to work with in my events. This is one of handicapping. Skilful players accrue a handicap through winning. Powerful lists accrue their owners a similar handicap through winning. Weaker players can always feel they have a better opportunity of winning knowing their opponent carries an appropriate handicap.
The drawback of this is the handicapping mechanic is unique to every game system and can take a hell of a lot of balancing which is presumably why it isn’t an out of the box game option for most products. :-]
Happy………. Monday all 😀 yeah I’m a little behind. Still unpacking, sorting, settling and the like after the big move back home to Ireland. Hope everyone had a great weekend 🙂
Welcome Home
Cheers matey
One of the chief problems that I’ve run into with trying to achieve game balance is subjective perception. The whole tendency for people to believe that “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” distorts the players’ belief/confidence that the game is balanced.
I’ve had unbalanced games where I had the disadvantaged side. But I kept my cool, made better tactical decisions and had good dice at key moments. My opponent, despite having the more powerful force and consistently good dice, had decided that he had already lost and made bad decisions. When the game was over he was so convinced that the game was unbalanced in my favor that even the other four friends that were there could not convince him the truth of the situation.
Happy Tuesday!
Having listened to both Weekenders, I’m definitely heating the difference in the mic’s just from my iPhones inbuilt speaker. Real smoooth ?
I think it is neither desirable nor realistic to want to banish a metagame environment from any complex and potentially asymmetrical gaming product.
The ‘meta’ fulfils an important role in obligating human interaction and the development of a ‘social contract’ within the game space.
It’s presence means that the participants need to be aware that different agenda’s may be at play and it would be wise to discourse with your opponent(s) on the nature of your, potentially varied, expectations before beginning, in order to avoid a toxic gaming experience.
It occurs to me that Games Workshop have considered this and come to the same conclusion. Their adoption of the ‘three modes of play’ (open, narrative, matched) provides the very trigger for the conversation I mention above. Both players agree the type of game they are playing and by association the degree to which the meta-game environment will or will not apply.
Darkest Dungeons sounds cool. I used to solo play Space Hulk with a few dice and graph paper.
The older rules (2nd edition) are a free download. They are pretty easy to find on google. I drew the map and drew my terminators’ positions and blips / Genestealers on the map.
It worked really well.
I don’t believe in a meta-less game.
I would think that even in a game like chess, the meta is about the currently favoured strategies, opening moves, etc.
I think even KeyForge has a meta, it is just obscured from the players currently and will take time to reveal itself. it will perhaps take longer to appear, and might not even fully reveal itself if the game dies beforehand….
My thought is that the meta really comes into play when there is a high level of competition between players…. Thus to me the way to remove that possible friction between players is a cooperative game.
The meta is still there, which roles in Pandemic work best for the situation the game evolves into, but it is hopefully between the players as a group and the game itself.
GenCon had a Pandemic Survival competition. Teams of two players. All card decks sorted to be in the same order. Each team had the same two roles to use. Timed game turns. So it came down to the strategies applied during each game. Each round a number of teams drop out and the umpires change the order of the cards and maybe the win conditions – not sure on that last bit.