metagame
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The Summoner's Guidebook: Stop worrying about the LoL metagame
If there's one thing that seems to be fairly static among low and mid-level League of Legends players, it's that they dislike the metagame. If I weren't such an exception (being a kind of bad player overall), I'd say that probably 100% of low-level players challenge the meta. This kind of complaint hits the comments, my email inbox, or IMs all the time: "LoL is so dumb! There are only four viable champs in each role, and the meta is static." The first thing I'd like to point out is that those statements, regardless of variation, are all wrong. LoL as a game changes wildly from patch to patch and season to season, and while the existing Summoner's Rift solo queue metagame is more or less fixed in terms of roles (duo bot, one jungler, a "support" who does not CS in favor of giving it to an ally), none of that applies to premades of three or more players or other game modes. Even between the roles, there's a wide variation in expectations of what those roles should do. Stop blaming the game; think outside the box and start seeing the game for what it really is.
The Soapbox: That's not an MMO
You may not be aware of this, but Massively is a website focused primarily on massively multiplayer online games. It's kind of what we do. However, the world of MMOs in 2013 is far different from the world of MMOs in 2007, when the site was founded. The niche has changed and the games industry has evolved. There was a time when "online" told you everything you needed to know about a game because there was really only one type of online game. You knew in picking up an online game that you and some friends would be leveling, looting gear, and slaying dragons. It took a while for developers to notice that online play was actually a thing that could work in more than one particular format. Nowadays, online games range from traditional MMORPGs like Guild Wars 2 and RIFT to MOBAs like SMITE and League of Legends. There's no clear definition for what an MMO is or isn't because so many games are massive, multiplayer, and online. Maybe it's time to embrace MMO as a broader term than previously thought.
The International: A Primer on Dota 2 and the biggest single-game tournament in eSports history
Dota is a Big Deal. The original Defense of the Ancients, which was nothing more than a mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, became a core pillar of the competitive online gaming scene thanks to its tight balance and deep strategy. It was played by millions and showcased at tournaments across the globe. Dota is considered one of the primary influences on the now booming genre of games that we refer to as MOBAs; League of Legends is supposedly the biggest game in the world, but without Dota, it would have never existed. When Valve snagged the mod's developer, known as IceFrog, and charged him with making a sequel, expectations were high. Dota is a game celebrated for its intricate design, complex metagame, and robust character roster -- the pressure to improve on this formula without losing the basics was immense. It took over two years of somewhat closed beta testing to get everything right, and changes rolled out every week like Clockwerk. But that's all history. Dota 2 launched last month, finally. For better or worse, the game is considered complete (minus a few heroes). And what better way to celebrate the launch of a hotly anticipated title than by throwing one of the biggest tournaments in all of competitive gaming? Welcome to The International.
The Summoner's Guidebook: LoL melts special snowflakes
Never let it be said that I don't listen to feedback. Recently, one of you readers suggested that I write about following the metagame, and I thought, "Hey, why not?" This was largely spawned by the Penny Arcade comic suggesting that somehow, a player should pick the champion he wants without regard for what his team needs. Who actually believes that this is a good thing to do? League of Legends is a team game. Characters in LoL are designed with strengths and weaknesses. It is not only important but natural to pick characters that fit together. The natural evolution of this thought process is the metagame: a series of standard roles that characters can fill on a team. I've talked about meta before, and you guys seem to have differing opinions than I do. "Meta is for the sheep," you say. I don't think that picking the right man for the job makes you a sheep. I think of it more like running with the pack rather than being a lone wolf.
EVE Evolved: Impressions of the New Eden Open
If you like to watch spaceships shoot at each other with graphs and numbers all over the screen, then the New Eden Open might be right up your street. It's EVE Online's latest competitive tournament and the first one to have a cash prize, pitting teams of players against each other in a bid to win a cut of $10,000 US. Until now, EVE's only foray into the competitive gaming space has been its annual Alliance Tournament in which in-game alliances compete for billions of ISK and blueprints for rare ships. The addition of a cash-prize tournament with fewer entry restrictions is a welcome change; hopefully there are more to come. The Alliance Tournament has historically been filled with drama and politics, with some teams using spies to manipulate the outcome of matches. With real cash prizes on the table, players have worried that even more rampant spying would ruin the New Eden Open. After three weeks of great fights, however, the tournament seems to be going strong. In fact, EVE's metagame has actually helped the tournament in a way that no one expected. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give my impressions of the $10,000 New Eden Open, highlight an early match I liked, and look at the strategies players are using to win.
PlanetSide 2 releases huge beta update with metagame content
In less than two weeks, Sony Online Entertainment's new MMOFPS PlanetSide 2 is launching. And with that November 20th date fast approaching, the development team is cranked into high gear, deploying frequent patches to both add content and squash various bugs. Last week, the patch included the final continent for launch. This week, the dev team will release another huge update focusing on metagame. Some of the highlights of this update include continent domination benefits, special facility benefits, and a map functionality to help players find a fight easier. This patch is also changing the way bases are captured, resulting in less attacker and defender dead time; instead of the ticket race, base ownership will be decided by a Tug-of-war system. For full details on these changes and more, check out the official patch notes.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Following the League of Legends metagame
One thing that pops up a lot in the comments of the Summoner's Guidebook is how you readers like to play outside the metagame. There's nothing wrong with experimenting with new builds or compositions, and with over a hundred different champions, League of Legends has a lot of room for experimentation. However, the established metagame is the way it is for a reason. People played the way they thought was best, and through collaboration, determined what strategies worked the best. Laning champions in their current "accepted" positions has evolved over the few years since LoL's release. Choosing to play a composition outside the metagame is always a gamble. You're trading stability and familiarity for a gimmick, and that can backfire. Playing in the established metagame is a statement that you want to let skill be the deciding factor in battle and that you can handle silly tricks like moving the duo lane or running a heavy kill lane on bottom. On the other hand, unorthodox positioning of champions can be an asset, since the initial unfamiliarity of whatever composition you've run can lead to mistakes on the enemy's part. As little mistakes can easily snowball on the Fields of Justice, playing a gimmick is all about making the most of those kinds of openings. This week, we'll talk about some common choices for unorthodox lanes and also how you can deal with them.
Attract Mode and Fangamer host all-ages video game art show Saturday night at PAX
If you're in Seattle this week – perhaps for PAX Prime – then your Thursday night plans have been taken care of. You'll be at Joystiq's Borderlands 2 party, and you'd better say hi when you see us there. But PAX goes for four days, you say – what about the rest of the weekend? We'll cover Saturday for you as well: "Videogame collective" Attract Mode and videogame apparel site Fangamer are teaming up to hold a great big live art and game show, starting at 7pm on Saturday, September 1 in Seattle.Cumulo Nimblers, Capy's Super Time Force, and Eric Zimmerman's Metagame will all be there and playable, 8-bit artist Danimal Cannon and hip-hop gamer MegaRan (he's good) will provide the tunes, and the whole show will be drenched in some of the best video-game related artwork you'll find (and which you can see examples of in the gallery below). It'll be a rad time indeed; it's an all ages show that's open to the public, and admission is $5.The event starts at 7pm and goes until 11 on Saturday September 1, and you can find it at the 1927 Events space, at 1927 3rd Ave. in Seattle. As for your Friday and Sunday nights at PAX, well, you'll have to find your own party space for those.%Gallery-163481%
Why spells should work the same in PvE and PvP
This ugly subject inevitably comes up: "I do bad damage in PvP, but they can't buff me because of my high PvE damage." Spend enough time around MMOs, and you'll hear that line with nearly the same regularity that the cock crows each morning. That statement leads to this one: "Spells should work differently in PvP and PvE. They're two different games!" They're not, they shouldn't, and please, no. Ghostcrawler himself just hit the forums to point out a few good, solid, technical reasons. To sum up his excellent explanation, Blizzard can't just duplicate all the spells and make them work different in PvP and PvE because that multiplies the level of complexity in the programming. The more complexity you add to the system, the more likely you are to see bugs and exploits sneak into the game. Not to mention, on the other side of the fence, the PvP dynamic itself is so complex that you can't just assume "low damage" is a function of the game itself. It can easily be due to the metagame, not to mention each player's performance. Ghostcrawler's logic seems to be a slam dunk, but I've had the misfortune of playing in a few games that did use different rule sets for PvP and PvE. It's a nightmare. City of Heroes was so clumsy in its divisive handling that I still wake up at night screaming, "That was my power move!" WoW isn't an either/or game. You don't tend to completely eschew PvE when you're playing PvP, no matter how much we wish you could. Dailies, raids, and other circumstances force you into the world. Even dedicated PvE players jump into the BGs occasionally. Separating the rules between the playing arenas creates yet another barrier to playing the entire World of Warcraft. Not to mention, if those different rules are different enough, it ends up feeling like you're running two different characters. Is that really the game we want? It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
The Summoner's Guidebook: Why big metagame changes to League of Legends could be bad
It's fairly common knowledge now that League of Legends is undertaking a massive rework of its two permastealth champions, Evelynn and Twitch, in the next big patch. These changes were desperately needed. Evelynn was in horrible shape; she's the least-selected champion in the game by far, and her gameplay needed a tremendous amount of work. Twitch was in better shape, but he was a poor selection on Summoner's Rift for either of his two roles (jungle and carry). Twitch was considered a strong pick on Dominion, however. Riot Games chose to completely rework these two champions, weakening Twitch's stealth aspects in order to make him a more normal carry. Evelynn was completely reworked, and she is so much different from her old self that she's basically a new character. Both of these champions are still "weird," however; despite the changes, neither character exemplifies any element of the current metagame. I think that this is sort of dangerous. Riot has already introduced one very weird champion recently that has turned out to be viable (if not strong), Jayce. The stealth rework patch will also be succeeded by Zyra, who has very weird caster/pet mechanics. With all of these dramatic meta changes, League will become very unpredictable, especially at the middle levels of skill where I reside. I think that this is somewhat of a bad thing.
The Daily Grind: Do you like bonus experience systems?
"Rested experience" in MMOs seems like it ought to be a casual player's best friend, right? If you log out for long enough, the game will double your experience gain rate the next time you play... up to a certain point, of course, and only if you log out in the right spot (or only if you're a subscriber). But after a while, you get so inured to bonus experience that playing without any of it banked starts to feel like playing at a huge disadvantage. Double exp becomes the new normal, and old normal feels slow. I can't stand feeling like I'm taking the sucker's bet to play now at half the speed rather than wait. And that always makes me create and turn to a stable of alts to maximize my rested exp, which means I'm metagaming and playing characters I don't really want to be playing. Never mind the annoyance of always having to find a tavern or cantina to log out in, which is a breeze in some games and rather a pain in others! So what about you? Do you like bonus experience systems? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Some Assembly Required: I saw the wilds of Salem (and lived to tell about it)
I spent an hour romping through the woods of Salem last Friday with Seatribe head honcho Bjorn Johannessen. The tiny indie company (current dev population: two) is hard at work on its followup to Haven and Hearth, an acquired taste of a sandbox game notable for its no-holds barred approach that includes permadeath and the ability to summon (and kill) criminal characters -- even while their lulz-loving puppet-masters are offline. Publisher Paradox bills Salem as "the crafting MMO," and boy it's not kidding. Over the course of this particular dev tour, I saw crazy amounts of tradeskill functionality, all kinds of cool world-building stuff, and ultimately, more than enough reasons to spend time with the game when it launches later this year.
Storyboard: The leveling effect
A couple of weeks ago, I took a look at some of the issues that crop up when you start considering in-game details in the context of roleplaying. Today, I'm doing something very similar but in the opposite direction. Instead of fitting verisimilitude into the game world, I'm trying to fit game mechanics into the game world. And if you've ever tried to explain in-character what level you are, you should understand that this is an arduous task to say the least. Of course, to some people, the very idea is ridiculous. There's a reason why gameplay and story generally remain in two different baskets: When you start trying to mix them too closely, everything gets dicey. The problem, of course, is that level isn't just a mechanical concept; it's tied to almost everything in the game world. And that begets all sorts of questions, the same sort that you start asking when you ask yourself about time, but from a different angle.
New End of Nations trailer goes meta
You can't fight here, this is the war room! Wait, you can? Nevermind, carry on. Today we have a new trailer from Gamescom highlighting Trion Worlds' End of Nation's metagame. The developers are careful to note that anyone can contribute to their nation's war effort, whether you're a green novice or a hardened veteran. The trailer also takes some time to highlight the different types of battle maps available to players, from the standard PvP map to the monumental mega maps, which feature up to 50 players on the map, each will a full army. The battles raging on each of these maps will determine which faction controls the territory, and each territory grants its controlling faction a different advantage. It's up to the players to decide which territory would most benefit their faction's current needs, and then to bring the firepower and capture the territory. For the full trailer, blast your way past the cut.
World of Tanks releases Ultimate Conquest mode
Wargaming.net is finally taking the wraps off its much-anticipated World of Tanks clan wars mechanics, and hundreds of clans are gearing up to wage war across the title's expansive map. Ultimate Conquest is now live and features its own web destination complete with clan rankings, a world map, and a handy guide. The clan wars map currently encompasses Northern and Mediterranean Europe and will eventually include Asia, Africa, and North America. "We've been working on this for so long, and now we are proud to say that the Ultimate Conquest has begun. This mode is a huge leap for the whole project, as it will add an important strategic element everyone has been so passionately waiting for," says clan wars coordinator Kirill Mal. You can learn more about the World of Tanks metagame at the official North American or European portals, and you also check out our clan wars-focused GDC interview with Victor Kislyi. And we've got a new clan wars tutorial video for you just after the cut.
Breakfast Topic: Getting guildies to the website
This is certainly an issue (if not a full-blown problem) in my guild, so I wouldn't be surprised if most guilds have a rough time getting guild members to use some of the outside resources they've put together. Nowadays, there are so many ways to make a guild website and so many different things you can do with one that most every guild has at least one place online to call its own. And those places are usually frequented by one or two people in the guild (usually the person running the site and/or maybe the GM and an officer or two), but in my experience, it's kind of tough to get people to use those resources, just because of lack of interest or know-how or habit. What's the point of having a database of members, a message board, and a blog and picture gallery when no one uses it? Enter Ankie of WoW Ladies, with an intriguing idea to support the guild's website.
The gold standard: A WoW economics course proposal
If you're like me, you're ... well, you're probably incredibly handsome and charming. But you're also probably interested in WoW's economy, given that it's the biggest and most involved metagame in WoW and a fascinating microcosm of a free-market economy.I personally think that the how and why of WoW's economy is worth a deep look, and it appears there are a lot of people who agree with me--even some academics. It might even be worth just as much as any other book-learnin'.At least, that's the basis of David Friedman's World of Warcraft economics course proposal. Friedman is an academic economist from San Jose, CA who's assembled this article as a think-tank for what a WoW economics course would entail if you had to fill it with a semester's worth of content. There's a lot of neat stuff in here, talking about relative prices of ore based on character level and rarity of ore and supply/demand, but he also asks for your input as to possible course material, which I'm sure you could gladly provide in the comments section of his page.Good idea with sound academic basis, or another in the long list of high falootin' academia's attempts to justify playing WoW on the government's dime? WE REPORT. YOU DECIDE.
EVE's spies and metagamers
EVE Online is one of the few MMOs where players in guilds (corporations and alliances) have some valid concerns about spies from rival groups infiltrating their ranks. The concept of being a spy or saboteur is a profession of sorts that arose in the game. There aren't any game mechanics that necessarily enable spying or make it into a viable profession, nor are there any rules that prohibit most of these activities. Wes from EVE Tribune recently wrote a piece called "Metagaming", dealing with how espionage can impact rival corporations and alliances in EVE. Wes asks, "Why is everyone so paranoid about spies and metagaming?" then goes on to explain how espionage in EVE works, categorizing spies by their modus operandi:
Frag Dominant on the importance of composition
Nick Bee over at GotFrag interviewed members of Evil Geniuses (previously called Frag Dominant), and revealed a few points about the Arena that many casual players don't necessary see. While Nick doesn't actually say to which member he talked, the interview doesn't seem about the individual as much as the team.When asked about perceptions of Frag Dominant, the Evil Genius responded that before the MLG San Diego tournament (which they won), the only really available basis for opinions was from the Tournament realm and other tournaments. But his real point is that since Frag Dominant could run multiple class compositions using the same players, they had a very good chance of winning -- their adaptability was higher than other teams'.He reinforces that idea of composition flexibility at the end of the interview. The Genius says whether you like it or not, you need to be aware of WoW's metagame if you're going to compete seriously in the Arena. (This means each person on a competitive team should have experience with multiple classes, and how the dynamics between those classes change.)I think this outlines an idea that many folks miss about the Arena. Arena competition isn't just about your character competing, but also the players behind the characters. I could be the best Hunter to ever tame a pet -- but I probably don't bring much to a team if I can't tell the difference between a Silence and an Interrupt. Your skill isn't just fast-twitch reflex or single-class knowledge: it's overall knowledge about the whole enchilada. In the midst of nerf-calling, we should keep in mind that player skill doesn't just mean "skill at my class."
New Battlefield Heroes trailer hits the beach
When last we heard, there was no other information about the upcoming casual MMO Battlefield Heroes other than 'It's in development'. Well, now we have more -- a lot more.According to the trailer, BH is completely free to download and play, features full leveling of your character, a matching service that ensures that you only play against others of your level, an overarching 'metagame' to measure your progress against, and it's still slated for a Summer release.It's worth checking out the website for the developer blog, as anyone who's interested in how a game like this comes together will find items of interest both now and going forward. Perhaps our earlier question about whether or not the WWII setting will feel limiting is mitigated by the fact that for all intents and purposes, you'll be playing an olive drab colored online version of Mario Kart. [Via Joystiq]
