[HN Gopher] To get good, go after the metagame
___________________________________________________________________
To get good, go after the metagame
Author : shadowsun7
Score : 358 points
Date : 2020-02-25 14:19 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (commoncog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (commoncog.com)
| zeveb wrote:
| Interesting point that one has to master the game first, before
| mastering the metagame. I am reminded that Warren Buffet & Bill
| Gates are reputed to enjoy the game of bridge, which comprises at
| least three games: the trick-taking game; the bidding game which
| is about how many tricks one thinks one can win; and the
| communication game which runs over the bids themselves. One could
| argue that outa-of-band communication is a third, cheating, game.
| One might also consider multi-table play to be a metagame,
| although it is a fairly simple one.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| The meta game is a high level arena for people that hammered
| through the proven advantageous strategies. Once you beat
| everyone unwilling to do that, you are now in an arena with
| people that used your exact same strategy.
|
| A short example of this is a fighting game where the majority of
| people want to play the characters they enjoy playing.
| Unfortunately, like life, there is no perfect balance, and
| picking some specific characters will give you an advantage (even
| if you hate playing them). So long story short, play the
| character with the advantage, ride it to the top, everyone at the
| top got there doing the same shit you did --- and voila, the meta
| game, how do we all with the same strategy compete against each
| other.
| seniorsassycat wrote:
| Donkeyspace is my favorite idea derived from metagames, but I
| can't find any good descriptions online.
|
| As any given meta becomes dominant, other playstyles become
| viable that would not be viable in a game against players unaware
| of the meta, or in a different meta. A counter-meta. Sometimes
| there's counter-counter-meta and then you're really in
| Donkeyspace.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| http://gamedesignadvance.com/?p=2346
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| This article is really the same thing as Elon Musk's "think from
| first principles", except Musk's formulation is much better imo.
| libertine wrote:
| In my opinion the byproduct of first principles thinking is
| precisely the opposite of meta : you wouldn't get a meta, but
| several metas for the same game, since you built your
| conceptualization from the fundamentals which are established
| truths.
|
| Metas seem to be built around constrains, limitations,
| exploits, or other forms of disruption that are introduced in
| the game in a cyclical fashion (new rules, new laws, new
| markets, new medium, new tools, etc).
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Totally disagree. First principle thinking is a clearer
| formulation of what the author wanted to achieve with the
| meta concept. For example in the marketing example where the
| meta dictates movement from adsense to xyz platforms you can
| also get there by first principles, which is finding the most
| cost effective way to reach the audience.
|
| When you're thinking from first principles you are not
| disregarding the current conditions, including constraints,
| you are just not allowing yourself to be a lazy and are
| constantly reevaluating the situation from base. Many people
| love to talk meta but they end up with a hazy understanding
| of fundamentals and end up behind the curve, very
| detrimental. First principle thinking just avoids these
| issues.
|
| BTW. Games are not perfectly analogous to IRL. Games can
| sometimes be (imo poorly) designed to function completely
| based on a fluctuating rps system that forces a meta, where
| if everyone goes rock you'll have the highest percentages
| going paper. IRL doesn't really work that way. Pikemen beats
| cavalry, cavalry beats swordsmen and swordsmen beats pikemen,
| but guns beat all 3 and it's completely OP.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| The metagame is PARAMOUNT in Starcraft Brood War, which has had
| no patches in nearly 20 years. The only thing that's changed is
| the map pool and the players' skill/knowledge (finding some bugs,
| mapping out defense to rushes, etc.). Thus, players have years
| and thousands of hour to grind "standard" or "optimal"
| strategies, and someone who is less creative but more
| mechanically gifted can advance just by copying cookie-cutter
| strategies but executing them 5% better.
|
| However, the Brood War leagues know this tendency, so they often
| add crazy maps to the mix. This season, ASL added Inner Coven,
| which is a really bizarre island-ish map, and has created a
| totally new meta. Check out this TvT, it's one of the weirdest
| games I've seen in years, all due to a map prodding the meta
| game.
|
| https://youtu.be/yF6GczAXpJI?t=3185
| asood123 wrote:
| One of my favorite books of all times: _The Art of Learning_ by
| Josh Waitzkin. He was the chess prodigy written about in
| _Searching for Bobby Fisher_. He quit chess shortly after and
| became a world champion in Tai Chi. The book is about learning
| two very different skills and how they are the same.
|
| Thesis that learning one thing deeply helps learn other
| (unrelated) things makes total sense to me.
| majos wrote:
| If anyone reacts as I did and wonders how it's possible to
| compete in Tai Chi, the competitive sport [1] is not the slow-
| movements-in-the-park activity I had in mind.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_hands
| dillonmckay wrote:
| Yes, it is a martial art, and there are some interesting
| moves.
|
| Also, if you enjoy that sort of thing and action movies, I
| recommend:
|
| Tai Chi Master
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0108281
|
| Man of Tai Chi
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2016940/
|
| There are also random youtube videos of various 'push hands'
| techniques.
| rasz wrote:
| Its TMA, as effective as ballroom dancing. Do _not_ try to
| delude yourself into thinking it has any defense qualities.
| rasz wrote:
| its pure bullshido
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-KX99T5r3A
| gorpomon wrote:
| I am the worst (maybe best) person to play board games with
| because 5 minutes after learning the rules I loudly proclaim what
| I perceive the meta to be, and unashamedly telegraph my moves in
| regards to it. I lose almost all of the time, but it makes the
| night much more memorable and I enjoy the mental exercise of
| trying to quickly grok a meta. Sometimes for fun I loudly
| proclaim "I'm going to Moneyball this!", and then often we end up
| discussing baseball or movies for a fair bit too.
|
| Here are a few games and what their meta is not:
|
| The Climbers - Don't try and get as high as quickly as possible.
|
| Munchkin - Don't try and become a mercenary for hire defending
| anyone who needs it.
| scott_s wrote:
| A saying I have related to this is "Rules make sports." The
| skills and strategies that matter in a sport develop _around_ the
| rules. Change the rules and you change the sport.
|
| The judo example the author presented is actually one of my go-to
| examples as well. Not only did disallowing grabbing the legs take
| out an entire suite of offensive options, it took out _defensive_
| options in judo. In judo, the main way to win is to throw your
| opponent such that they land on their back. Before, a judo player
| could grab their opponents legs as a way to counter a throw. Now
| grabbing the legs is a penalty. But allowing yourself to be
| thrown is going to at least result in your opponent getting a
| point, and has potential for you to lose the match. So the
| solution is, in some situations, judo players will just
| intentionally face-plant onto the mat to avoid the throw. It
| looks silly, no one would do it in a self-defense situation, but
| rules make sports.
|
| Note that just about all combat and grappling sports have this
| quirk: because they have rules, and are not just a free-form
| fight, you're going to encounter situations where the optimal
| thing to do in the sport would be terrible to do in a real fight.
| 83457 wrote:
| The 2004 Olympics Judo representative for USA at 99kg, Rhadi
| Ferguson, retired from Judo competition after leg grabs were
| made illegal because that was such a big part of his game.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Jj7r3CLwQ
| _hardwaregeek wrote:
| Fencing exhibits this phenomenon nicely. Fencing does not come
| even close to mimicking a real sword fight. One reason for this
| is right of way, basically the idea that the person who attacks
| first gets precedence and the onus is on their opponent to
| defend against the attack before attacking themselves. However
| what is defined as an "attack" in fencing is very different
| from what a layperson would assume. Really, it's defined as
| forward movement without a clear intention to take the blade.
| Which means that tactics such as advancing with ones arm held
| back are rewarded.
|
| A lot of people, upon hearing this, respond with something
| along the lines of "fencing is stupid! We should make our own
| sword fighting system that encourages real fighting!". HEMA is
| a nice example of this. Putting aside the questionable logic of
| a martial art based around swords, what inevitably happens is
| that as the system develops, people want to compete, to see who
| is the better fighter. Since they clearly can't judge fights
| by, well, murder, they need to come up with a rules and points
| system. Once this system develops, someone starts to realize
| "hmm, if I do x action, I can win fairly easily". Thus a meta
| develops. Once a meta develops, everybody starts using the meta
| to win and the fighting becomes less mimicking killing people
| with a sword and more competing in a sport.
|
| Some argue that the way to prevent this is to not have
| competitions or rules. But...then you have a bunch of people
| waving around swords with no clue as to whether it's actually
| effective.
|
| Side note, fencing has had a few of these major meta
| developments in its history too. Johan Harmenberg famously
| pushed epee's meta to be a lot more athletic and dynamic.
| rlayton2 wrote:
| Another great example is the difference between Rugby Union and
| Rugby League. While there are lots of rule differences, a key
| one for me: in Rugby League, defenders must go back 10m after a
| tackle, while in Rugby Union they do not. This leads Union to
| be a very close affair with play rarely moving without
| consistent strong effort, while any fast player in League will
| get at least 5 of those meters back after every tackle. Very
| different games strategically, while from an outsiders
| perspective they are just the same.
| plinkplonk wrote:
| Does the author actually define "metagame" anywhere? He seems to
| use the term throughout the article to mean multiple subtly
| different things.
| nonanonymous wrote:
| The author's usage of "meta" doesn't match up with how I've
| seen it used elsewhere. He refers to the "metagame" when really
| he's just talking about the game itself.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| He defines it when talking about Magic, where there's the two
| games. The match "game", once you sit down with your decks
| and draw 7. And the metagame, where you choose which decks to
| bring, what sideboard to pick, etc.
|
| If there's a really popular rush deck, do you drop some cards
| which shut down blue control and put in some anti rush cards?
| That will help when you match against the rush deck, but if
| everyone does it, then when you reach the finals you might be
| against the control deck.
|
| That's the metagame, at least how it's used in those circles.
| plinkplonk wrote:
| yes, the author seems to use "metagame" to mean a
| combination of pre-game strategizing (including creation
| opponent specific strategy) and post game review (+
| absorbing lessons learned into the pre game strategizing
| for the next game).
| viburnum wrote:
| Yeah, this article is a woolly mess.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| I see a lot of debate over what "meta" means, and I'd like to
| throw my own hat in the ring.
|
| I would argue that a playing a game at the base level (i.e.
| playing without meta) consists of (a) finding different
| strategies to use, (b) figuring when is appropriate to use each
| strategy, and (c) executing strategies optimally. When the game
| is first being played, most strategies haven't been discovered.
| At this stage strategic play consists of (without loss of
| generality) player A using a strategy they think is effective,
| player B devising and using a strategy that will be effective
| against the strategy used by player A, Player A adapting in
| response, and so on. This is strategic play, but it isn't a meta-
| game. The meta-game arrises when players A and B are both
| experienced enough at the game that they can debate which
| strategy is the objective best. The meta then becomes the agreed
| upon dominant strategy (or set of strategies). In the base game
| (i.e before the meta develops) strategies exist mostly
| independent of each other, while the meta-game consists of
| fitting strategies into a framework.
|
| The meta can change because of external or internal forces. An
| external force is a change to the base game, which is common to
| e-sports, and less common in actual sports. In e-sports, most
| games will tweak how the game is played (change the cooldown of
| abilities, change the size of a characters health pool, etc)
| every month or so. This will change which strategies are best,
| and therefore change the meta.
|
| Internal changes arise from the changing skill level of players.
| As players get better at the game, hard to execute strategies
| will become more viable, while easy to execute strategies will
| remain at about the same level of viability.
|
| This article shows a great example of what the pro Overwatch meta
| (the game I'm most familiar with) looks like and how it evolves,
| and it's (mostly) accessible to non-Overwatch players:
| https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/23053244/the-meta-rep...
| (WARNING: autoplay video).
| jimduk wrote:
| A build on this, is as a soft-core participant in a game, often
| it is more enjoyable to participate in a game where the meta is
| not known, and everyone is in the 'finding different
| strategies' mode - bit like early days starcraft. Now the
| Internet exists, everyone jumps to semi-optimal strategies by
| copying, not putting in their own thinking time. While I admire
| high level play, at mid/low level it is more fun if the meta is
| not nailed down, also philosophically I think life is more
| 'hidden' than people think, and the idea there is a best-move/
| common optimising strategy without thinking yourself is
| detrimental. I personally would like games which are more
| random, or where optimising is harder and less discoverable and
| not shareable.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| Totally agree! Overwatch is often criticized for the pro meta
| "infecting" regular play, because low/mid level players will
| find themselves pressured by their teammates to play heroes
| that are meta at the pro level, even though pro strategies
| are only meta when they're being executed at the highest
| level of play.
| jonas21 wrote:
| So, I suppose learning to identify and excel at metagames is the
| meta-metagame?
| [deleted]
| mc3 wrote:
| Yes there is a general trend that a new "market place" opens up.
| It could be adwords, or it could be udemy. There is then a race
| to the top/bottom where the marketplace becomes popular and
| crowded out. The "crowd" progressively gets a worse deal (except
| for the winners of the crowd) and the owner makes more money.
|
| For example adwords:
|
| 1. Crowd gets worse deal: average bidder pays more for ads, hard
| to make a profit, might break even if you are lucky. Might be OK
| in a new niche if lucky.
|
| 2. Winners: people with sharp marketing teams who can bid on the
| right keywords and have an excellent sales funnel to take
| advantage. They can outbid the crowd and make a profit.
|
| 3. Owner: Google makes a tonne of money from ads of course:
|
| Udemy:
|
| 1. Crowd gets worse deal: I saw a 80 hour course for $20 on
| there. Most are 20-30 hours course for $20. Course maker gets a
| fraction of that. 100's of similar course means the platform
| doesn't necessarily give you much traffic.
|
| 2. Winners: Some people sells thousands of units of their course
| on these platforms. Again those with good funnels to get them to
| buy off the platform probably win (I am guessing).
|
| 3. Owner: Udemy does well.
|
| Same applies to the app stores!
| z3t4 wrote:
| It's interesting that in the early days of Google Adsense it did
| cost 100x less to advertise, and publishers got 100x more. I'm
| not that good at math, but does that mean Google takes a 99.99%
| cut!? Or more likely they rigged the market in the beginning in
| order to gain publishers and advertisers, eg. they subsidized
| advertisers and over-compensated publishers. Making the market
| explode with advertisers and people looking to monetize web
| content...
| shinryuu wrote:
| First time I ever understood what "the meta" refers to. Though
| I've definitely participated in the metagame without realizing it
| before.
| richk449 wrote:
| The definition of meta used in the piece doesn't match my
| understanding. Take his final example where he says that
| adjusting tactics in response to your opponent in ultimate
| frisbee is meta. No, that just strategy.
|
| Same goes for most of the examples he gives.
|
| Looks like I'm getting old, and the word has been redefined
| from out under me:
|
| _In video games, however, the metagame has its own meaning--
| and depending on which game you play, the context differs. In
| short, the metagame in video gaming means using characters or
| items that are the most powerful at the time to try and find
| the best and quickest means to victory._
|
| https://dotesports.com/general/news/what-is-the-meta-meaning...
| gowld wrote:
| Meta is anything where the best action depends on something
| outside the game. Identifying the best weapon to challenge
| your opponent's defense is not meta. Identifying the best
| weapon to counter your opponent's predicted defense is meta.
|
| Choosing to use a weapon at all is not meta. Choosing to not
| use a weapon to lure your opponent into trying to grab it
| while you wait to snipe them, is meta.
|
| Think about rock-paper-scissor. The game is totally random.
| There is no in-game strategy that can do better. The only way
| to do better than half chance is to play meta and predict
| your opponent's strategy.
| bena wrote:
| Meta is weird.
|
| Say you have a game with various weapons. Each weapon has
| attack power, attack speed, and weight. If everything is
| balanced right, there could be no singular optimal weapon.
|
| And let's say that the best considered weapons are all of a
| certain weight. They do the most damage in the least amount
| of time available.
|
| Playing the metagame would be recognizing the game everyone
| is playing is using those weapons as best as possible. And
| then choosing the knife because it lets you run faster than
| everyone else. And your strategy becomes knifing people in
| the back and running away before they can fire back.
|
| Then more people catch on to the knife strategy, because
| the best players are using it. Now most people are using
| knives and the game is all about maximizing run speed.
|
| So you start using the pistol. It's a very slight hit to
| your run speed, but you can still fire back on anyone who
| knifes you in the back. You start just capping knifers left
| and right.
|
| More people catch on. Pistols beat knives. As more people
| become pistol wielders, knifers get worse. The game is all
| about pistols now.
|
| Until someone realizes that shotguns and rifles are only
| slightly slower than pistols, but do way more damage.
| Basically, everything of a certain weight is just good when
| facing a lot of pistols. So the game comes right back
| around to the start.
|
| This is different from in-game strategy. In-game strategy
| would be planning routes and knowing how and when to cover.
| Meta is out-of-game strategy.
|
| Like, investing in infrastructure, technology, etc is all
| war meta. It lets you approach the situation in ways your
| opponent isn't thinking about. You can make their
| strategies during the war irrelevant.
| laughingbovine wrote:
| I think the "meta" in this case would be your entire
| post. Ie. "use knives when heavy weapons are popular, use
| pistols when knives are popular, use highest dps weapon
| when none are popular" is The Meta... assuming lots of
| people agree that its the best way to win.
| bena wrote:
| Yes. That's why I said it's different from in-game
| strategy. In what manner did you think I was implying
| that what I was talking about wasn't talking about an
| example of the metagame?
| ffgddd_gfghvc wrote:
| Yeah meta in games is used very loosely -- the M4 in CoD is
| meta, meaning the best available.
|
| I got the feeling reading this that the author is more
| familiar with the video game usage and worked backwards to
| give it some more substance.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't think it's that loose actually, at least not the
| way I see it used. usually the "meta" is about choosing
| between two or more roughly equipotent strategies/tactics
| based on what you expect your opponent to do. you predict
| what your opponent will do by observing current trends in
| the game. the meta certainly changes after balance updates,
| but it can also change organically over time as people try
| different things.
| richk449 wrote:
| This interpretation seems to unnecessarily constrain
| strategy. A strategy is not just something you pick at
| random. A good strategy is chosen with all context in
| mind - including your opponents choice of tactics and
| strategy.
| leetcrew wrote:
| that's a fair point; "meta" is probably a subset of what
| people generally mean by "strategy", especially in
| military contexts.
|
| in games though, I consider strategy to be something that
| arises more directly from the game mechanics and perhaps
| in response to your opponent over the course of a match,
| while meta comes from understanding the greater community
| ("meta" because the community exists outside of the game
| itself).
| jpxw wrote:
| This is "meta" as in Most Effective Tactic Available, as
| opposed to the normal use of the word "meta" ("referring to
| itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-
| referential.")
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| But the former is the latter because the most effective
| tactic available depends on what all of the other player
| in the game are going to do. The most effective tactic
| available is only the most effective given that other
| players are also going to choose the most effective
| tactic available.
| plinkplonk wrote:
| thank you for this! I was reading the article with the
| latter meaning in mind, and got quite confused. Should
| read the comments on HN first!
| laughingbovine wrote:
| I don't know about this acronym... "meta" from the
| article is certainly not using it. The acronym definition
| breaks down because technically something can be meta and
| not be the most effective tactic available. Eg. when the
| rules of a game are too complex to solve in a short time,
| you will see players rally around a "meta" strategy until
| a more optimal one is discovered and vetted.
| wkey wrote:
| So what is your definition? :)
| richk449 wrote:
| I can think of two definitions:
|
| 1) a higher level of abstraction. For example, creating a
| class is programming. Creating a class factory (a class
| that creates classes) is meta programming.
|
| 2) self referential. The movie Adaption is meta, because it
| is about itself.
| NoodleIncident wrote:
| This article is about the metagame, which is derived from
| this meaning. It just gets confusingly shortened back to
| meta in some contexts
| vnorilo wrote:
| I would not call 1 metaprogramming. Meta means something
| like "outside of". Metaprogramming usually means higher
| order programming (programs that produce programs, such
| as source generation, lisp macros or templates).
| richk449 wrote:
| Okay. It's outside my area of expertise, so maybe I
| didn't pick the best example. The internet seems to imply
| that there is a lot of debate as to what is meta
| programming.
| na85 wrote:
| >Take his final example where he says that adjusting tactics
| in response to your opponent in ultimate frisbee is meta. No,
| that just strategy.
|
| Choice of strategy can be "meta", though. It depends on the
| context. For example in ultimate frisbee the current meta is
| to play Vertical offense, and so you see a lot of teams
| training for how to run it and how to defend against it.
|
| Back in 2004 ish, the dominant teams played Horizontal
| offense, and we only saw Vert for set plays after a foul or
| other play stoppage.
|
| The meta has changed because the dominant strategies have
| changed.
|
| Then you can get even more meta, because perhaps your team is
| playing "long ball" and you know that if you start calling
| lots of travels, the other team will reciprocate. And you
| know that because even a contested travel causes a return to
| the thrower, it will hurt you more than hurting them.
|
| All of that is both strategy _and_ meta.
| richk449 wrote:
| Eh, it's all semantics. What you are calling meta has been
| called strategy for thousands of years.
|
| No big deal - words change. I'll get used to it.
| meta-definition wrote:
| Meta is the set of viable strategies GIVEN the strategies
| that your competitors commonly employ.
|
| Here's a concrete example:
|
| Soccer fundamentals: passing, dribbling, etc.
|
| Soccer strategies: formation, player roles, etc.
|
| Soccer meta: viable formations, player roles, etc.
|
| No one is out there playing a 8-2-1 formation because
| it's not a viable strategy, i.e. it's not part of the
| current meta. The current meta in soccer is largely 4-4-2
| and 4-4-3.
|
| 3 in the back is relatively rare, because it's weak to
| the player roles that we currently see being employed by
| competitors. It's not part of the meta because it's a
| weak strategy against the currently common strategies in
| the meta.
| richk449 wrote:
| Goal: to win
|
| High level strategy: wear down opponent, exploit
| endurance advantage
|
| Low level strategy: aggressive midgame, long passes, high
| tempo, rotate attackers
|
| Tactics: 4 4 2 formation, joe and Jean on wings, etc.
| force opponent mike to run side to side to wear out, then
| focus on scoring in final third of game.
|
| Fundamentals: passing, communication, give and go, etc.
|
| Meta: realizing that you can make more from your
| Instagram account than from playing the game.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't know anything about soccer (football)
| nimblegorilla wrote:
| Meta is an aspect of strategy, but the terms aren't
| interchangeable.
| fenomas wrote:
| The article's usage seems to drift around somewhat, but
| in esports I follow "meta" refers specifically to the
| _consensus_ about which strategies are good or bad, not
| to strategies themselves or to anything someone does in a
| given game.
|
| E.g. saying "foo is meta right now" means most players
| consider foo to be stronger than the alternatives, and if
| a player uses a strategy other than foo one might say
| they were playing off-meta, etc. But the term is wholly
| distinct from strategy itself.
| shadowsun7 wrote:
| OP here. Exactly this.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I had the same - the "choice of strategies" in Splendor is
| just that - strategy. The "meta game" would be the level
| above that.
| shadowsun7 wrote:
| In this instance, the metagame is the optimal strategy
| given your gaming group's current strategic preferences.
|
| I've found that over time, the dominant tactics in Splendor
| for my group swing between build and buy. People do
| whatever is necessary to win. Tactics used 50 games ago go
| away and then get brought back. People hold grudges against
| others over old games, and act to disrupt each other. All
| of this can be predicted and folded into game strategy.
|
| I'll admit, it's a little difficult to see this type of
| meta in most gaming groups -- my group happened to be my
| entire office, and we played Splendor every lunch break for
| probably a year. That's hundreds of games within a small
| group of people.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| You do see this in Chess, various openings fall in and
| out of favour over time. I guess you could call this
| "meta" - tactics change in line with strategy, strategies
| change in line with the meta game. But as GP says, I've
| always considered this as just "strategy".
|
| Made me think, though. Thanks :)
| gowld wrote:
| The Splendor part was a but confusing. The author's point
| is that the simple strategy has no meta, because players
| can't interfere with each other. It's just a race. But the
| strategy of saving up points _opens up a metagame_ because
| players can now interfere with each other, so the game
| becomes about guessing opponent strategies and
| counterstrategies.
|
| Another analogy is a bicycle race. You could have everyone
| run separately and compare their best times. But by racing
| together, you get peloton and team effects where players
| can attack opponentns and support teammates, but expose
| weakness that could be exploited, and the success of an
| act, like passing or drafting, depends on how others react.
| richk449 wrote:
| That's exactly my point. Nobody calls a peloton meta
| racing. A peloton is just strategy. Always has been.
| euix wrote:
| There is also the ultimate version of the metagame i.e. your
| personal human condition. Blindly pursuing your career or chasing
| money without understanding the finite duration of your own
| physical existence, the scale of the universe, where you want to
| be in terms of life goals and family.
| downerending wrote:
| One of the benefits of long experience is often being able to
| see forward quite a distance. If you can see that the project
| you're working on will fail with high probability, you can
| avoid a lot of useless work/angst. And perhaps even enjoy the
| wreck.
| joncrane wrote:
| 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?
| guntars wrote:
| I think the question is wrong so no answer is going to make
| sense. Parts of life are indeed a competition, like work, but
| in those limited domains it's easy to tell who's winning -
| it's who's making the most money. Happiness doesn't even
| factor in there. If you include your whole life, happiness
| matters big time, but then it's not a game or a competition
| anymore.
| DevKoala wrote:
| 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.
| athenot wrote:
| The answer probably lies somewhere halfway between you and
| them. What you are doing is probably good in terms of staying
| sharp with your skills. But _some_ detachment can help: I am
| assuming (correct me if I 'm wrong) that you care very much
| about what's going on at work and that causes stress.
|
| But I think it's possible to continue to care while not
| letting the organization's sluggishness affect you in a
| personal way. You care because you believe it's the right
| thing to do and/or because it furthers your skills. Good. The
| others are missing out; even if their pay is the same now, in
| 5-10 years you will be better positionned than them for
| whatever opportunities come. At the same time--and this is
| where that balance comes in--if you're slaving away with no
| enjoyment of life, it all seems pointless.
| bluGill wrote:
| You are missing an important meta. Those who don't produce
| as much might produce something that is more valuable than
| you and thus be more valuable than you despite not
| producing as much quantity.
|
| I've seen a lot of people fall into that trap and then get
| bitter when the "less productive" person was promoted.
|
| Of course sometimes the meta is licking your bosses boots
| not something that makes the company money...
| F_J_H wrote:
| Re: playing the meta game, a great article on coyotes being "too
| clever by half" and missing the meta game to their detriment came
| up on HN awhile ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079369
|
| Basic idea - you can be too clever for your own good, and as a
| result, fail miserably at the meta game, which less clever people
| don't do.
| draw_down wrote:
| I think this is a much better treatment of the idea. I had
| forgotten about this, thanks.
| gbasin wrote:
| I love this concept. I've been thinking about ways of "traversing
| skill trees" and identifying meta-games for some time. Collecting
| ideas here: https://garybasin.com/thinking-toys/
|
| I think this can be done systematically...
| juliend2 wrote:
| The "skill tree" image seem like a good mental model[1] for
| learning.
|
| [1] https://fs.blog/mental-models/
| jason46 wrote:
| Git gud, is the correct term.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| "The metagame" in MTG was popularized by the game's creator,
| Richard Garfield after playing a lot of Cosmic Encounter and
| other games.
|
| He wrote a great paper on it here:
| https://edt210gamestechsociety.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/2...
| tdy_err wrote:
| TL;DR: Magic became competitive and players influenced Magic by
| demanding competitive rules.
| Proziam wrote:
| 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 _everyone_ around you has a mastery of the fundamentals,
| that the meta comes into play.
|
| source: coached and managed professional esports players, in
| multiple games, who have competed in the world championship of
| their respective titles.
| [deleted]
| shadowsun7 wrote:
| I absolutely agree. However, in my experience, recognition of
| the metagame comes way before you actually require it.
| Proziam wrote:
| This is 100% true. Unfortunately, it inhibits player growth
| tremendously. Players who are too focused on the meta lose
| sight of fundamentals. This can manifest itself in weird
| ways, like LoL players picking up the flavor of the month
| picks instead of playing what they're strongest on when they
| can.
|
| When I first started coaching LoL I came in to coach a team
| where the coaches I replaced suffered from some pretty
| serious delusions that come from the same place. They had
| _very_ strong beliefs about playing 'the meta' and the value
| of certain flex picks at the time. When I took over and took
| the team back to fundamentals and reduced champion pools by
| half - winrates skyrocketed. It's really easy to want to copy
| what you see works for other people, but it's not always the
| best course of action.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Most people who play these games watch elite pro youtubers
| and apply the pro meta to bottom-ladder-rank matches
| timerol wrote:
| TFA definitely agrees with this opinion, but also asserts that
| learning about the meta teaches you what fundamentals are most
| useful to know.
|
| > Note what I'm not saying, however. I'm not saying that I
| should actively pursue the meta -- this is ineffective, because
| I am not good enough to play. I cannot execute even if I know
| where the puck is going. But studying the state of the metagame
| as it is right now often tells me what I must learn in order to
| get to that point.
| [deleted]
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| This rung true for competetive Halo. The novice was focused on
| aiming good and getting accurate with the bread and butter
| weapon (magnum or battle rifle depending on which halo you
| played)
|
| The top players were great at the standard weapon, and a the
| power weapons, and the meta became:
|
| - instead of individual kils - teamwork to double team a single
| opponent
|
| - map positioning to control where the enemy would respawn when
| killed,
|
| - timing when the power weapons on the map would regenerate.
|
| key skills became teamwork, coordination and communication when
| everyone is a good aim.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I would be really interested in reading a long blog post about
| your experience. I'm sure it would reveal many details that
| most people (including me) wouldn't easily guess.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| I disagree slightly. The metagame is relevant whenever you're
| facing opponents of _similar_ skill. If you 're way better than
| your opponent, you can use highly sub-optimal, non-meta
| strategies and win through sheer experience and skill. For
| instance, I could kill 50% of Starcraft opponents lower than me
| by building only one unit and even announcing which unit I'll
| mass up.
|
| However, if you're making a similar number of errors as your
| opponent, then the meta does come into play. Regardless of the
| raw error rate, where pros make few and amateurs make many, if
| this rate is similar to your opponent, then it still matters if
| your opponent has a strategic/meta counter to your strategy.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I agree, but applying this isn't always easy: When discussing
| meta and strategy, it's usually discussed in the context of
| high level esport play. But the optimal strategy often
| drastically changes with skill level. For example in a
| shooter when everyone has bad aim and bad
| teamwork/communication you need a different strategy then in
| high level esport in the same game where everyone is great at
| aiming and lives in the same flat as his teammates.
| novok wrote:
| I think it depends on the game too. In Dota 2 (and probably
| LoL) the balance between heros can change significantly per
| patch, and a lot of winning is having good hero picks compared
| to the other team. If you don't keep up with the meta, then
| your win rate will go down, and this is true for amateurs and
| the pros.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| I don't agree with that. It goes back to
|
| > It's not until you reach a level where everyone around you
| has a mastery of the fundamentals, that the meta comes into
| play.
|
| At any given MMR bracket, everyone around you has a similar
| mastery of the fundamentals so the meta is relevant.
|
| However, put someone with the fundamentals of a 6k+ MMR
| player into a 3 or even 4k match and they'll demolish
| everyone else even with a disadvantage relative to the
| metagame.
| jpxw wrote:
| This is definitely true of chess.
| Proziam wrote:
| I played a lot of chess as a kid. That's actually where I
| 'discovered' the real value of fundamentals. Quick wins in
| chess are universally the result of an opponent making a
| horrific mistake. Of course, that means the opposite is also
| true!
|
| There is no faking it in chess. You either grasp the game or
| you get soundly defeated over and over. That is also true of
| esports titles, which is why I fell in love with them.
| blackandblue wrote:
| would you guys mind giving examples of what you are calling
| fundamentals?
| gowld wrote:
| In Chess, you can learn techniques used by players a few
| hundred points above your rating, but still make game-
| losing blunders (hanging a piece totally undefended, not
| knowing how to finish a winning endgame) that are easy to
| spot (if you are careful). Patiently eliminating blunders
| will do much more for your rating than learning myriad
| openings variations and complex combination moves.
| blackandblue wrote:
| ah, i see. so fundamentals is like the basics and in
| these FPS games it's things like aiming, ducking, moving
| around, etc?
| Spellman wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| In FPS, aiming moving and ducking are like learning how
| to move the pieces in chess. And sure, those are the
| basics to even play.
|
| But when people talk about "fundamentals" they are
| talking about the emergent things that come from those
| skills and are usually unique to the game. In chess, this
| is stuff like don't hang your pieces, tactics like
| spotting skewers or forks, understanding endgames, and
| later general strategic goals like controlling the center
| or develop your pieces to "good" squares.
|
| In FPS games, this often deals with understanding the
| flow of a map (choke points vs open areas, cover and
| sniper locations), proper navigation (efficient
| pathing!), role synergy, and how a match develops (at
| about 30 seconds I should expect an opponent, if they
| went straight path A, to show up around _this_ corner).
|
| MOBA games moving and attacking and using a skill are the
| language. Fundamentals involve map awareness, ganking,
| vision control, wave management, etc.
|
| Fighting games move, jump, attack, block is the language.
| Understanding zone control, the Rock-Paper-Scissors of
| strike/block/grapple, how to manage your health and
| special meters, character movesets/matchups are the
| fundamentals. Picking character X against player Y is the
| meta.
|
| Once you have all of that squared away, you can start
| doing "meta." That is figuring out optimal picks vs
| particularly optimal setups, researching your opponent to
| build a specific toolkit against them, etc.
| jeremysalwen wrote:
| I tried to find the original comment on HN, it was very
| informative, but some chess master (grandmaster?)
| commented on here that until you are highly rated (say
| 2200), the only thing you should focus on to improve at
| chess is to improve your ability to notice tactics in
| games. He went into more detail but I can't find the post
| :(
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| 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 type and still
| win.
|
| Of course, if you do this at least somewhat well you'll
| rapidly "level up" in the ranking system to the point
| where you'll need to actually start scouting and
| reacting.
| Proziam wrote:
| Fundamentals can be hard to define concretely because
| they can even underly the principles of how people talk
| about playing the game. Take, for example, the age-old
| advice in chess "control the center." To an absolute
| novice, this is interpreted as 'have your pieces in the
| center.' To more experienced players control can be more
| fluid. In some cases, it's as much about protecting a
| position as it is about occupying it.
|
| To give an example from a game I love dearly: Halo. The
| number one fundamental isn't aim, or knowing sick trick
| nades, or masterful timing of power weapons. It's
| positioning. Positioning controls where your opponents
| respawn, it controls where your team respawns, and it is
| the single most impactful part of "map control." Good aim
| means nothing if you stand in the wrong places at the
| wrong times. Power weapons are useless if you get
| yourself back-smacked by opponents getting split-spawned
| that you weren't aware of.
|
| Fundamentals are (somewhat) unique to a game, and they
| typically reveal themselves either once you've
| intuitively started applying them, or through thoughtful
| analysis.
| EdwardCoffin wrote:
| My biggest improvement in chess came after comprehending
| _The Theory of Steinitz_ [1]:
|
| 1. At the beginning of the game the forces stand in
| equilibrium.
|
| 2. Correct play on both sides maintains this equilibrium
| and leads to a drawn game.
|
| 3. Therefore a player can win only as a consequence of an
| error made by the opponent. (There is no such thing as a
| winning move.)
|
| 4. As long as the equilibrium is maintained, an attack,
| however skilful, cannot succeed against correct defence.
| Such a defence will eventually necessitate the withdrawal
| and regrouping of the attacking pieces and the attacker
| will then inevitably suffer disadvantage.
|
| 5. Therefore a player should not attack until he already
| has an advantage, caused by the opponent's error, that
| justifies the decision to attack.
|
| 6. At the beginning of the game a player should not at
| once seek to attack. Instead, a player should seek to
| disturb the equilibrium in his favour by inducing the
| opponent to make an error - a preliminary before
| attacking.
|
| 7. When a sufficient advantage has been obtained, a
| player must attack or the advantage will be dissipated."
|
| [1] http://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/theory-steinitz
| 131012 wrote:
| I feel that you have summarized the general meta of
| symetric warfare.
| jstanley wrote:
| > 2. Correct play on both sides maintains this
| equilibrium and leads to a drawn game.
|
| Note that this is still not actually proven! But it is
| generally accepted.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| It assumes both players are of equal skill I guess.
| tydok wrote:
| The fundamentals are about positional elements and
| strategic principles.
|
| For example: Relative value of the pieces, Control of the
| center, Pawn structure, Tactics, Initiative, Tempo,
| Opposition, Keep the position balanced, Develop multiple
| ideas/areas (strategy), Control open lines
| (files/ranks/diagonals) and crossings
| darkmighty wrote:
| Fundamentals -- let's go back to the fundamentals of
| fundamentals (cognition)!
|
| Cognition and agency in the real world is often
| hierarchical in nature. You learn a task by breaking it
| down into simpler tasks, and if necessary breaking down
| the simpler tasks into yet simpler. This is due to
| nothing more than algorithmic efficiency (when at all
| possible -- it usually is IRL), divide and conquer.
|
| The fundamentals are the basic tasks which higher level
| tasks rely on. Sometimes (quite common really) the nature
| of this (inverted) tree is such that the higher level
| tasks have a sort of soft max-min relationship: your
| overall skill will only be about as good as your weakest
| subskill. An example that comes to mind is manual
| driving. You could be the most brilliant, strategic,
| high-reflex rally race car drive in the world, if you
| miss most of your stick shifts you will likely be a
| mediocre driver, if even competitive. Shifting properly
| and quickly makes a significant difference. So much that
| it's almost completely futile to practice those higher
| skills unless you've nailed down the basics.
|
| When you're just having 'fun', learning something
| intuitively, without the sharp focus on improving, it's
| easy to neglect those fundamentals. They are likely areas
| where you have some natural relative difficulty, which
| can lead to shying away from them (in larger contexts
| sometimes this is even wise -- you want to use what
| you're good at afterall!) -- it could be because they're
| uncomfortable, painful, repetitive, boring, too difficult
| (break it down!) and so on. Compensating for weaknesses
| exists I believe, but in high levels of competition it's
| something extremely subtle; again risking generalizations
| almost every high skill individual will have fundamentals
| mastered.
|
| Most of my activity is academic, and I have some
| anecdotes in this regard. I feel like I've really evolved
| when (a) I've focused on learning the basics of my field
| really well (going down to the math foundations and
| axioms) (b) focused on improving weaknesses. It wasn't
| intuitive to me that this attention to fundamentals could
| yield so much.
|
| edit: It should be noted (as others noted) that
| identifying _what are_ the fundamentals can be something
| difficult itself. Common tools here are reviewing your
| games /production/etc, or asking others (teachers, peers,
| etc).
| rc-1140 wrote:
| 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, when I was
| playing Team Fortress 2, CounterStrike, etc., and it was like
| that when I was playing Starcraft.
| munchbunny wrote:
| In my experience, there's a sort of hierarchy of skills
| relevant to the game or competition. There are basic skills
| (like being fast and accurate with aiming, or predicting the
| opponent's movement), and then there are skills that are
| dependent on basic skills (leading targets), skills that are
| only possible once basic skills become automatic (map
| awareness), or skills that are situational.
|
| The "fundamentals" are usually the 80% mark on this graph:
| it's the generally agreed upon set of skills that are
| relevant in 80% of situations, so if you have your
| fundamentals down better than your opponent, you will win in
| 80% of those situations. The meta might win you the other
| 20%, but that's capped at 20%.
| inerte wrote:
| I sometimes entertain myself watching "knowing the rules" sport
| videos on YouTube, for example
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=football+knowin...
|
| Not to mention when organizations have to write new rules to
| prevent someone exploiting unintended consequences of the
| existing ruleset. It's fairly common not only in sports but
| source of many regulations and laws in any sector.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _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.
| inerte wrote:
| I don't disagree, but I think that view is complimentary to
| regulation being created and discussed and implemented.
| People see organizations doing bad stuff, create
| constraints, which a lot of times the organizations welcome
| since raises the barrier for competitors to entry.
| Thriptic wrote:
| 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 product for a bit and the first thing
| I did was pull every applicable regulation, standard, and
| rule governing the space and read them. This took about a
| month and made me much more knowledgeable than the vast
| majority of people in the field who didn't even try. Being
| an expert is about taking the time to sit down and read the
| RFCs, basically. We don't have many experts because no one
| wants to do it.
| wpasc wrote:
| If you wouldn't mind posting a paragraph what coaching an
| esports team is like and how you feel about the current state
| of esports, I'd love to hear about it from an insider!
| Proziam wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is exactly what you were hoping for but
| I'm happy to answer questions!
|
| On coaching:
|
| Coaching is probably the best _and_ worst job in esports,
| depending on the day. It 's also a role that is completely
| misunderstood by the management of most organizations, to the
| extent that coaches have had their decision-making hamstrung
| by management. This is getting better as time goes on, and I
| expect that it will eventually get to a similar place as
| traditional sports. With all of that out there, coaching is
| just straight-up fun. It's awesome to be able to see people
| improve over time and to pull together all your resources to
| try new things and push to a higher level. Between playing,
| coaching, and managing, I feel coaching is the most
| rewarding.
|
| On esports:
|
| I'm honestly torn about the state of esports at the moment.
| On the one hand, I'm very bullish on its future and happy to
| see that it's come as far as it has (it wasn't anything like
| this back when I first fell in love with it in the early MLG
| days - about 2004?). On the other hand, I feel like a
| majority of the money coming in is straight up _dumb_. The
| Overwatch League is probably the best example. The moment it
| was announced, I pulled the plug on the game entirely because
| it was clear there was no way to make it work the way it was
| 'supposed to.'
|
| However, if people continue to come into the space and invest
| in solid fundamentals (quality talent, management, and
| support) rather than fads ( _cough_ team Ember...), then the
| esports industry is going to thrive. In my opinion, it will
| become the 'new sports' but without the baggage of so much
| legacy. Esports has the potential to evolve and push the
| envelope in so many areas that the way we absorb 'sports'
| entertainment is going to change dramatically over the next
| decades.
|
| (EDIT: To expand on the overwatch question)
|
| The math behind the Overwatch Scene doesn't make much sense.
| If you compare the amount of capital drawn in vs the amount
| of money the average team can make, it's an extremely high-
| risk / low reward ecosystem to be involved in. That said,
| there aren't many organizations that actually turn a profit
| right now, and the valuation of _everything_ is dubious at
| best. Almost every Overwatch player I know at this point is
| looking forward to Project A and praying, but only time will
| tell how that plays out.
| FreezerburnV wrote:
| Can you expand a bit on why you pulled the plug because of
| there being "no way to make it work like it's 'supposed
| to'"? I'm actively working hard to improve at Overwatch to
| try and break into the tiered competitive scene, so any
| reservations about its future are of great interest to me
| and figuring out whether or not it's a ship to move from at
| some point or not.
| JRKrause wrote:
| I am no means an expert but my take was that many people
| from grass-roots esports backgrounds balk at the numbers
| set by ATVI for OWL team licensing (20mil for a team
| iirc?) and associated player salaries (reaching upwards
| of 200K in some instances). Certainly in it's current
| state, team merch/tickets sales are nowhere close to
| recuperating these expenses from an investment
| standpoint.
|
| I would argue that these complaints aren't understanding
| the 'meta' of capital investment in the current climate.
| Spellman wrote:
| As with most eSports, the key metric is how much inflow
| there is and how much outflow.
|
| I'm not familiar enough with Overwatch specifically, but
| it sounds like there isn't enough income and prize pools
| to go around. The top team may earn a decent wage and
| splashy amounts, but there isn't enough at the 2nd or top
| 10 rung to support a thriving ecosystem longer-term.
|
| I'm more familiar with the LoL/DotA scene where there's
| enough smaller tournaments and the prize
| pool+sponsorships are enough to cover a wide range of top
| talent. Yeah, there's a lot of hype about winning the #1
| Internationals, but that's only for one team out of
| hundreds that play. Or compare to how LoL is set up with
| their leagues where the top X teams get to play
| consistently and take in a steady income. Plus their
| broadcasting system to bring in more income to support
| the scene.
|
| Similarly, you can look at stream numbers to get a feel
| for other income available to the players.
|
| In general, without a healthy "middle-class" and "upper
| middle-class" of players to bring excitement and income,
| you lack the buzz and support to build top-tier
| competition longer term. And those don't exist unless
| there are ways for them to keep playing and monetize
| their skills.
|
| Fortunately, if you're grinding up the FPS ladders, most
| FPS games tend to have more transferable skills letting
| you move from game to game more easily than some genres.
| Ninja is pretty famous for being the best at Fortnite,
| but he was a pro PUBG player and pro Halo 3 player before
| that. So it's not uncommon to see FPS pro players shift
| between the more in vogue FPS game of the time. (Caveat
| that not all FPS games reward the same skills and all
| that, CS is not TF2 is not CoD is not Fortnite is not
| Overwatch)
| rwmurrayVT wrote:
| I would not be surprised to hear that TSM and CLG are the
| only ones remotely close to profitability.
| ggambetta wrote:
| > 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.
| drchickensalad wrote:
| Most people consistently make mistakes. They're not really
| playing to win, and going over all their footage to ensure
| they have their fundamentals down. It's actually really hard
| to perfect your fundamentals.
| DelightOne wrote:
| The reward function does not necessarily hit the fundamentals
| while you do not focus on them.
| Proziam wrote:
| In my experience it comes down to two things:
|
| 1. People think they already have the fundamentals 'down'
|
| 2. Actually mastering the fundamentals can be _boring_ and
| make a game feel like work (which, if you don 't truly enjoy
| pushing the limits in a game, it is.)
|
| A totally random example from League of Legends. 99% of
| players go into game after game and _literally never_ review
| their previous games. They will spam games but _literally
| never_ go into a custom game to practice last hitting. Or,
| they 'll play a different champion every game, instead of
| putting in the repetition required to fully comprehend all
| the matchups they will find themselves in.
|
| In short, very few players think of their most time spent
| practicing fundamentals as a valuable investment. Related,
| most players never even learn what the fundamentals are
| because revealing them takes a lot of effort.
|
| For example, Starcraft is a game largely driven by economy or
| 'macro' rather than ultra-fast reflexes. However, the
| importance of macro is basically hidden from novice players.
| Their in-game experience is 'the other player always has more
| _stuff_ than I do! ' which they often attribute to build-
| order or other game decisions. It actually takes a while
| before a player really gets in tune with the idea that they
| need to be deploying resources ASAP and balancing the
| resources they acquire with the unit composition they are
| _going to have_ in the next [insert window of time].
| city41 wrote:
| I also think fighting games are a good example. Most
| beginners gravitate towards the special moves and supers.
| But basic moves and understanding positioning can elevate
| your game much more.
| blackandblue wrote:
| learning so much from you guys lol not even a gamer :) now
| i think i am going to try to invest into a camera to record
| my piano practices. i wonder if that would help me get
| better...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It would! If you can get past how embarrassing it is to
| watch yourself play, which I've never been able to do. So
| many mistakes...
| madhadron wrote:
| Similar advice in music. Record your practice sessions.
| Listen. Wince. Pick out targeted things to fix. Drill.
| Record again. Comfort yourself that at least that
| targeted thing is less painful. Repeat.
| theremightbe wrote:
| And it can be so tempting to delete them immediately
| because the videos are embarrassing. But you'll be so
| happy to have them in a few years to look back on how
| you've improved!
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It absolutely would.
|
| We used an iPad to record swings of our little leaguers
| and it made a huge difference for them.
|
| It helps because it's easier to see what is happening vs
| hearing it. One example that we would see is kids
| dropping the back shoulder when they swing. Once they see
| it, they correct.
| Spellman wrote:
| Yup. It could.
|
| However, the key isn't necessarily video recordings. It's
| deliberately practicing individual things you are bad at
| in isolation until you are good at them.
|
| We need to record LoL and StarCraft games because it's
| tough to pause and redo something in the middle of a
| match. Similarly recording baseball swings or people
| dancing or swimming is useful for reviewing the complete
| action.
|
| But when you practice piano, you can pause and redo a
| measure or line until you get it right, then slowly
| reincorporate it as part of the whole piece.
|
| The WORST thing you can do is keep playing and think
| "I'll fix that later." Because inevitably you'll play a
| piece again, probably do the same mistake, and now you're
| actually practicing the mistake and ingraining it into
| your memory.
|
| A video recording and reviewing it of a whole piece can
| help you go back and isolate your mistakes though. But
| it's just a tool for the goal of identifying and fixing
| mistakes.
| blattimwind wrote:
| > 2. Actually mastering the fundamentals can be boring and
| make a game feel like work (which, if you don't truly enjoy
| pushing the limits in a game, it is.)
|
| 3. Mastering the fundamentals can just be hard. E.g.
| movement and aim in most first-person shooters. Mastering
| these fundamentals can be hard to the point of even
| professional players having significant gaps, e.g. players
| that are known to have excellent movement but lackluster
| aim, or vice versa.
| floatrock wrote:
| How much of this is data-driven? I mean, every shot can (in
| theory) be digitally logged and analyzed. Is there anyone
| doing a Moneyball-style player performance data analysis
| service? I hate to use the term, but an "AI coach"?
| Proziam wrote:
| Data is getting to be a bigger component, but that was
| driven primarily by esports betting (another area I've
| had some experience in, coincidentally). Data, in
| general, is under-utilized by almost everyone and the few
| 'real' data folks I've met have the habit of missing the
| forest for the trees (there's not exactly a tremendous
| wealth of coaching experience in esports, so the number
| of folks who could do the coaching and implement/build
| new tools for that purpose is near-zero).
|
| It's pretty hard to go straight from DATA -> ACTIONABLE
| COACHING DECISIONS
|
| It's much easier to go from COACHES INTUITION +
| SUPPORTING DATA -> COACHING DECISION
|
| I'm not aware of any other coach (but there probably is
| some) that has the technical skills to build the kind of
| tools that would be required. Bear in mind, most games
| don't actually give you all the data you'd want to look
| at. That said, there were a few folks who made a killing
| in esports betting for a while.
| gowld wrote:
| IMO, if you get to the point where the metagame matters, unless
| you are getting paid to play professionally, or you love
| metagames for their own sake, you should stop or drop down to a
| lower level league.
|
| Replacing every game by its metagame, as some "board game
| geeks" tend to do, destroys the diversiry and value of
| inventing different games in the first place.
|
| "Scrabble is an area control game with a complicated resource
| tree" may be fun for some, but informal not-technically-
| enforceable rules like "only play words you have ever used or
| seen before in a sentence" keeps it fun and interesting and
| meaningful for people who play games for valuable reasons (like
| learning, or skill development, or humor) other than just the W
| and L. If you are afraid to make an elegant or humorous play
| because it harms your chances in the metagame or to win
| overall, you are shortchanging yourself and your play partners.
| bena wrote:
| 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 about losing
| without seeming sore. The pattern is easy to spot, anything
| that causes them to lose is somehow "playing wrong" or not
| "fun". There's apparently some intangible, undefinable,
| nebulous quality being lost. But in reality, the only thing
| actually being lost is your chance to win.
| dmurray wrote:
| That's not the meaning of "metagame" used in this article and
| typically used in esports.
| mercer wrote:
| I've noticed this to be true for table tennis and other sports
| too. When I play against a less experienced player, it's quite
| frustrating to notice that most of the points I score are clear
| mistakes on their part, rather than any kind of skilled moves
| on my part.
| cwillu wrote:
| I routinely tell my teammates "let the other team make the
| mistakes".
| JackFr wrote:
| I used to play chess in college with a master (now
| grandmaster) player. He would always let me take back moves
| when I did something stupid (sometimes even a couple). As he
| put it it was no fun to win on someones goof, what was fun
| was winning when they were playing the best possible game
| they could.
| wilburTheDog wrote:
| Charles Ellis wrote a book(1) about that. He asserts that any
| professional sports competition is a winner's game - you win
| by successfully executing difficult plays and being better
| than your competition. But amateur sports is usually a
| loser's game - you win by not making as many mistakes as your
| competition. The book is about finance but the observation is
| universal.
|
| 1. https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Losers-Game-6th-
| Strategies/dp...
| mercer wrote:
| I've noticed this with chess too. As a kid, I briefly
| developed an obsession with chess. The book I read through
| argued that if I simply followed a few basic rules
| religiously, I'd instantly be a 'better' player than many
| who maybe played a lot more, but didn't know about these
| rules.
|
| And sure enough, when my obsession quickly waned, and
| without having played much chess at all, I found myself
| consistently winning from novices who had a lot more
| experience than I did. In hindsight, I suspect what
| happened is that they played a better game but were more
| likely to make catastrophic mistakes.
|
| Of course, I suspect any player with any training probably
| applies these basic rules already, and would easily defeat
| me.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Do you recall these rules? I'm rather curious about them.
| clairity wrote:
| not having read the book, that seems insightful on the
| surface but isn't particularly useful or actionable.
|
| all it seems to be saying is that to become better, make
| fewer mistakes, with an implied exhortion to practice. is
| there more to it than that?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I think it's more actionable than it may appear.
|
| For me, in most multiplayer games (Overwatch and such), I
| became far better (and more useful to the team) when I
| focused more on staying alive ("not making mistakes")
| rather than trying to execute fancy plays.
| ska wrote:
| I think the idea is that if you aren't operating at "pro
| league" level in anything, you should focus mostly on
| getting the basics right and not making mistakes. But if
| you are operating at that level, this is table stakes and
| you need to do more, or your competition will overrun
| you.
|
| I suspect most people/organizations operating at the
| highest level understand or have internalized this, but
| many in the other category have not, to their demise.
| I've certainly seen organizations get themselves in
| trouble by trying to execute on something trickier than
| they were ready for. And others fail at something through
| an accumulation of clearly (at least, in retrospect)
| avoidable mistakes.
|
| The corollary being that you are very likely to be in the
| latter category, like it or not, and it's best to realize
| it.
|
| I haven't read the book though so could easily be
| misinterpreting.
| clairity wrote:
| > "I think the idea is that if you aren't operating at
| "pro league" level in anything, you should focus mostly
| on getting the basics right and not making mistakes."
|
| still, that's just a matter of definition and
| perspective. even at a pro level, if you don't win, you
| made at least one mistake relative to your opponent. so
| to win, make fewer mistakes, right?
|
| i don't play video games anymore (and never played more
| than recreationally), but i've played pro-am basketball,
| and from my observation, being a pro doesn't mean you
| don't make mistakes. it usually means that, besides
| having highly honed skills, you have more tricks in the
| bag to recover from your mistakes (and conversely, to
| induce mistakes in opponents).
|
| so the contention is that everyone can benefit from a
| strategy of reducing mistakes (aka active practice), pro
| or not, and the prior anecdote isn't really super-useful.
|
| --devli's advocate
| ska wrote:
| > so to win, make fewer mistakes, right?
|
| I don't think that is correct according the to thesis
| (and again, haven't read it so may be misrepresenting).
|
| They are saying that at that (pro) level, not making
| mistakes is not enough, you have to make things happen
| too. Obviously making too many mistakes will cost you,
| but they are suggesting that playing "perfectly safe" can
| still easily lead to a loss. I don't think anyone was
| suggesting that pros don't make mistakes (hell, there are
| entire stats dedicated to this), but rather than merely
| focusing on minimizing them will not win you a
| championship.
|
| The idea is that conversely at lower levels of
| performance, this isn't the case, and it really is mostly
| about lowering mistake rates. More tellingly, it suggests
| that the opportunity cost of focusing on anything else is
| likely too high.
|
| To tie it back to the actual post, this suggests if you
| are spending a bunch of time and effort "metagaming" but
| you haven't already mastered the game, you are probably
| going to have poorer returns than just getting better at
| the game. This at least sounds plausible to me.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| There's also an argument that a some areas just don't
| really HAVE a pro league, so focusing on not making
| mistakes is plenty... This can be the case if a) everyone
| is a beginner, because the field is new, and/or the
| fundamentals aren't cleanly understood, or b) no one
| really cares enough to become a pro (perhaps because it's
| an area that isn't rewarded by available incentive
| structures).
| JackFr wrote:
| Until you get to the level of college and NFL, being
| successful as a quarterback is largely about being
| physically gifted. At those lofty levels though sometimes
| a QB who looked unstoppable at a lower level looks lost
| at sea. That because everyone on the field is a supremely
| gifted athlete, the game becomes far more intellectual,
| and these guys find themselves unable to handle the
| complexity of the defensive schemes and offensive
| systems.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| In my experience not everyone is mindful of their
| mistakes. If you write them off to 'bad luck' or
| circumstance, you miss the opportunity to understand the
| root cause of the outcome (the mistake if you will).
|
| As an action plan, I would write that: Engage in the
| activity and dive deeply into all of the mistakes you
| make and develop the skill or tactic to avoid that
| mistake in the future. At the point where you don't make
| mistakes any more, _then_ you start look at the meta and
| responding to what your opponent is setting up to do,
| rather than what they are doing right now.
| clairity wrote:
| that's a good point--players should practice acively,
| rather than passively (like shooting lots of baskets but
| never working on improving your shooting form).
|
| but i'd still contend you never get to a point where you
| don't make mistakes and _then_ turn to the meta-game.
| folks tend to start thinking about, and honing, the meta-
| game at different levels of experience.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| That depends. I think it means that at a certain level,
| in order to improve, you must play tougher opponents.
|
| The game of Go makes this abundantly clear. You can
| actually damage your own skills by playing too many
| inexperienced or weaker opponents. But playing someone
| just a bit stronger than you can improve you both.
|
| I don't know if this works the same in e-sports, but it
| is striking in Go, or to a lesser extent, Chess.
| breischl wrote:
| In the original context (finance/investing) his point is
| that virtually nobody actually manages to consistently
| beat the market average (net of fees). So it's a "loser's
| game" and most people would do better avoiding mistakes
| like paying high fees than trying to beat the market.
| oblio wrote:
| For most sports, if you're defensive you'll beat
| offensive minded people until you reach a very high level
| of amateur play. People will constantly make low
| percentage plays because they're fun and they will
| misplay while executing them.
|
| They will "fall on their own swords".
|
| For most games with a net, focus on keeping the ball in
| play. For team sports, play defense and just keep it
| simple.
|
| Basically, "never interrupt your adversary while they are
| making a mistake".
| ErikAugust wrote:
| I think this is true in professional ball sports in sort
| of the inverse. Once you reach the highest level, then
| the focus is once again on defense. Defense wins
| championships.
| ksdale wrote:
| I played a lot of American football growing up and so
| heard the quote "Defense wins championships" very
| regularly and I always disagreed.
|
| Teams lose games all the time while holding the other
| team to a very low score, but almost no one ever loses if
| they put up 50 points.
|
| But then again, I played offense...
| Aardwolf wrote:
| > Judo -- the sport that I am most familiar with -- has a
| metagame that is shaped by rule changes from the International
| Judo Federation. A few years after I stopped competing, the IJF
| banned leg grabs, outlawing a whole class of throws that were
| part of classical Judo canon
|
| It also has the metagame of carefully crafting your weight to
| optimally fit in your preferred weight class
| bena wrote:
| I think that's true of every sport with a weight class. You
| want to be the heaviest guy in your classification.
|
| I don't think that's metagaming so much as just simple min-
| maxing.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| I wonder why sports with weight categories don't implement
| floating weight windows? If there is 10kg spread in a given
| category, place every participant in the center of their own
| category so they always fight somebody at most 5 kg different
| from them in either direction and adjust points being earned
| appropriately (based on weight difference and an impact
| factor of weight in given sport).
|
| Then points will be normalized and you can compare skill of
| underfed ballerina and a sumo fighter directly if they
| compete in the same sport.
| tylerjwilk00 wrote:
| If you find metagame strategies interesting, you may enjoy
| Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene [1] and specifically
| Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS)[2]. Of course ESS takes
| place over a much longer timeline. Summary of ESS in this video
| by Veritasium [3].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUxt--mMjwA
| mangoman wrote:
| Interesting. I'm familiar with the meta as it relates to gaming
| (I follow SC2 pretty closely, though I basically never play
| anymore). I am curious to explore what the meta is as it relates
| to building web apps, or building software systems. I guess in
| web apps, the meta has evolved away from stateful and towards
| stateless applications, rigid to ephemeral infrastructure, and
| away from big kitchen sink frameworks towards smaller tools built
| for specific purposes (here I'm thinking like netlify, react-cli
| / vue-cli, serverless and aws lambda compatible frameworks and
| languages). In database land, I think there's a bit of reversal
| towards a happy medium between Relational and No SQL with the
| whole NewSQL trend (though I think most people just end up using
| whatever they're comfortable with).
|
| I think the concept of 'covered ground' is especially fascinating
| when it comes to thinking about the meta of building web apps. Do
| you really appreciate the trade offs between MySQL and MongoDB,
| if you haven't ran into the scaling issues between the two? I
| don't think "running a bad migration" is covering enough ground
| to appreciate the differences. Is struggling to wrangle a bug in
| an Angular 1 directive enough 'covered ground' to understand the
| meta in building frontend applications?
|
| And I wonder if the meta is moving towards low code and no code
| frameworks. Dark Lang looks pretty cool, though I've never really
| used it. Retool proved really valuable for internal dashboards
| for managing customer support at my last company.
|
| You could explore the meta at a more fine grained level than just
| 'web apps', or zoom out to software in general and try to
| understand the meta (just like you could analyze why certain
| units in SC2 are just broken, or understand why the economies of
| the different races mean different opportunities for timing
| attacks for each race)
| xixixao wrote:
| The meta in software engineering in general is people. Once you
| have sufficient technical expertise, you realize that the
| largest gains come from working efficiently with others.
| meristem wrote:
| I'd say 'effectively' over 'efficiently'
| digibo wrote:
| I wouldn't say that working efficiently with people directly
| counts as "meta". Productive cooperation with others sounds
| like a straightforward skill to improve, with no new rules
| being introduced. Maybe new company/team organizational
| approaches or methodologies (Waterfall, Kanban, etc.) can
| count as playing the meta and give you an edge over the
| competition.
| streb-lo wrote:
| You're using 'meta' as a synonym for popular.
|
| Metagame is the 'game outside the game' ie in rock paper
| scissors the game is trivial the metagame involves guessing
| what the opponent will pick.
|
| Meta-software-engineering would be things outside of your
| software stack that affect the overall process. People, sleep
| patterns, office layouts, commute time, corporate culture etc.
| floatrock wrote:
| There's the classic "startup engineer" metagame: hop from
| startup to startup to build up an options portfolio. Stay
| until the 1-year cliff, exercise whatever options you get,
| and move on to the next one so you've hedged your bet over as
| many promising companies as possible.
| streb-lo wrote:
| Yes that's a good one.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Yes, excellent analogy!
| edw wrote:
| The process of building things is embedded in various contexts.
| As is the process of _being paid_ to build things. And those
| contexts are themselves embedded in other contexts. There are
| first-, second-, third-, nth-order "smart" moves in a given
| situation given the specific contexts in play.
|
| In terms of creating web apps or other software, there are
| organizational, hiring, funding, exit, marketing, and many
| other meta-games going on -- and they're all in constant flux.
| _pastel wrote:
| Playing a game immediately after learning the rules is my
| favorite challenge - especially when the other players are all
| new too.
|
| At this stage, tactics are mostly about keeping all the rules in
| your head and thinking hard before each move. But strategy is
| really interesting. Everyone is guessing blindly, and you can
| often win by guessing slightly less blindly.
|
| I have two meta-strategies:
|
| (1) Game phases
|
| While learning the rules, whenever possible, mentally categorize
| game mechanics as opening-related or endgame-related. For
| example, a lot of board games have some engine-building in the
| opening and some point maximization in the end.
|
| During the game, constantly estimate the distance to the end of
| the game. On the first playthrough, most people transition to
| endgame too late.
|
| (2) Mechanics comparison
|
| Whenever a game has different types of mechanics or resources,
| search for reference points that compare them. For example, in
| Dominion, you must choose between buying treasure and action
| cards. So on the first playthrough, you should deduce that 1
| silver is similar to an action with (+2 treasure, +1 action).
|
| The article talks about the metagame transition in Splendor, when
| players realize that a strategy with minimal engine-building is
| viable. I deduced that on the first playthrough by trying very
| hard to estimate the value of a 2-cost card vs taking resources.
|
| Of course, you need to continuously re-evaluate as you understand
| the game better. By I have a very high winrate on first
| playthroughs relative to my general ability.
|
| Does anyone else have meta-strategies for this situation?
| aliswe wrote:
| Is management perhaps the "meta" of software development?
| bradlys wrote:
| The meta of software development is vague. Software development
| and the job aspects can be completely independent - and tightly
| coupled.
|
| So, really, the meta of software development as it pertains to
| your job would likely be more about the meta of your
| organization. You could try to scale up those ideas to a whole
| career and across all organizations but it's gonna be hard.
| What works in one place won't work in another - but if you know
| how to recognize the meta within each organization, you can
| find a meta that you think you'll do well in, and then try to
| work at places that follow that meta. But - honestly - I've
| found that hard as many organizations aren't very upfront with
| how they actually operate.
|
| We've all likely found that being really good at software
| development doesn't end up getting you a reward at your place
| of employment. You can be exceptionally good at something - the
| best - but still lose frequently. True of games as it is with
| life. It could be because the place you're working at is very
| team oriented - your team does well, you all get rewarded. It
| could be purely that your manager dictates it and won't
| recognize you. It could be that you're in an organization that
| doesn't value software engineers at all. It could be that
| you're good at the software development but haven't engaged on
| the more social aspects and that's what's key to getting
| rewards. I've had talks where the reason I wasn't getting
| rewarded is because I seemed too carefree about things - they
| wanted someone who seemed stressed out and really concerned all
| the time. Is that really related to software development in
| itself? I don't think so. There's a fuckton of reasons that
| aren't related to software development in itself that dictate
| why you won't progress. And I think that varies a lot between
| organizations/teams.
|
| Therefore, I'd say there is no big meta for a career in
| software development. I'd say there is a meta for work in
| different organizations. (As I don't see a lot of these things
| as specific to software development but specific to just
| general work culture)
| cjmb wrote:
| Good article and a nice read :)
|
| You can apply the same analysis to the study of how "entire
| societies / nations generate Wealth" and get an interesting
| picture of the international econo-political metagame throughout
| history...
| pretendscholar wrote:
| When did meta come to mean strategy? It can't really be 'meta' if
| its about one specific game or implementation.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The "metagame" describes the competitive/race aspect of testing
| and discovering new strategies from match to matches, adjusting
| for changes to rules and the strategies you see others
| employing. I'd say it's this change over time across many
| individual matches and rulesets that justifies the "meta" part
| of the term to differentiate with adjustments you might make or
| try to make within one match.
|
| The term "meta" is often colloquially used to describe a
| currently dominant strategy... in other words, whatever's
| winning the metagame. "Meme-game" could be a less flattering
| but also pretty accurate description of how "the meta" often
| plays out with a kind of herd mentality.
| screye wrote:
| MetaGame is not strategy. The metagame is often the behind-the-
| scene variables that enable a certain set of strategies to
| flourish.
|
| For example, in Dota, changes to armor or magic resistance
| scaling can change the metagame to be magic or physical
| focused, but the strategies and trends themselves develop in
| ways that take the meta-game into account.
|
| During one meta game, it is common to see various different
| strategies flourish. IMO, as it is one level of abstraction
| higher, it is fair to call it meta-strategy and by extension
| the meta-game.
| echelon wrote:
| To further expound upon this, the vast majority of a game is
| encoded in the engine or ruleset. Core strategy is in dealing
| with these these ground truth fundamentals. This is the realm
| of beginners and casual players.
|
| Small tweaks to the rules or weights (simple numeric
| multipliers!) can dramatically change how the game is played
| amongst those who are incredibly skilled at the game's
| fundamentals.
|
| Metagame is truly emergent phenomena.
| [deleted]
| dillonmckay wrote:
| So any Tetris 99 training suggestions?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-02-25 23:00 UTC)