Metagame vs. Strategy

i often see/hear about PS2 lacking metagame. In the correct usage, it has plenty. But what people should be saying instead is strategy.

Metagame means "outside the game" or when devs make the game do something that supports the game aspect over the story aspect. For instance, it is a metagame decision to prevent us from destroying non-linked generators. It makes no sense in the narrative of the game. Why would a generator be indestructible when the enemy has no link? If we can make the gen invulnerable when the base is not linked, why would we turn off that protection when the enemy is at the door? This decision is about the game, in this case, some bizarre interpretation of fairness. People whined about shield gens being taken down by outfits smart enough to send saboteurs ahead of the main force.

What PS2 does lack is strategy. Tactics are the on the ground, in the moment fighting techniques. Strategy is about winning the war. It's high level, top down, long term and abstract. Throwing sand in the opponents face is a tactic. Bombing factories and destroying generators at PS1 Tech Plants is strategy. PS2 has precious little strategy.

And now a series of snowflakes will post about how words mean whatever they think they mean because their mommy told them they are right about everything to spare their delicate self esteem. And by the way, sneak is a regular verb and decimate means to kill or destroy one tenth. A decimeter is one tenth of a meter, not a whole meter.

The definition used in PS2 is underlined and bold for your convenience.

Decimate:

1. To select by lot and kill every tenth man.
2. To exact a tax of 10%.
3. To reduce drastically, especially in number.
4. To cause great destruction or harm to.

Strategy:

1. A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.
2. The art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle.

Meta:

1. A prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.

PS2 doesn't lack strategy, it lacks metagame. Metagame is the abstract piece, not strategy. Strategy exists now. When I tell my squad members to attack from the North because there are tanks on the South side, that's strategy. There's no abstract goal beyond the immediate. There's "Capture this base!" and that's it. What the developers are trying to do is add an additional layer of play, beyond "Here's where we fight now."

"Come on, guys, we can take the continent!"
"Hurry, the resources at the base are almost dry, you have to get here fast!"

I want destructible buildings...

I've allways defined metagame as systems where by actions at a tatical level (i.e individual engagements) have a larger

The whole 'beyond' thing is a little dated and comes from confusion over what to call a particular book of aristotle's. What people have allways been calling for is these systems, as its been perceived as a failing of PS2 that it did not launch with systems PS1 had like ANT's.

And in logistics and continental lattice, we are likely getting them as much as Ps1 ever had.

Strategy: Setting a goal or goals
Example: Capture a bio lab

Tactics: How to accomplish that goal
Example: MAX crash

Metagame: Why that goal is worth achieving
Example: a minor health regen bonus

The first two are intrinsic to any game, as there will always be goals to reach for and ways to achieve them (usually). However, metagame is created completely by the devs and the players. It is not "how", it is "why". And currently the "why" is lacking. Outside of alerts, there is no reason to capture a continent or even own bases (unless you're a tank driver and you don't have a tech plant). This game is a 3-way team deathmatch that doesn't end.

What the game is lacking, that most people complain about, is a reason to play the game. Or, they want their actions to matter, and have a useful goal.

So your right and everyone that doesn't agree with you is a snowflake? What a pretentious Frack.

Decimate is not a unit of measure it originates from Romans. If your unit ran in combat it would get decimated, 1 out of every 10 troops were put to death. So snowflake I know the words mean whatever your mommy tells you they do. Don't worry little buddy you ARE special.

But it does lack strategy.


I've seen many people lead; and so far they fall into 3 categories:
-The fool
-The snake
-The lord

At first, there's the Fool. He believes a frontal assault is how you do things. He believes that pointing a direction and fighting with his men is a Leader's duty. He will try to "defend" things, and attack" places. He will throw men on the frontline without achieving anything.

Then, there's the Snake. This guy has grown and learned. He knows the cracks in the system. He will order a Squad deploy everytime he sees a Sunderer. He knows how to win: be devious, be cheesy, use every cheap tactic you can in order to win.
He gets the job done by being obnoxious and ending the so-called "good fights" in a matter of seconds.

Finally, the Lord. He's just the Fool, with the wisdom of the snake. He only "pretends" to win. Wherever he could have crushed the enemy by acting like a Snake, he will act a fool and give morale to his troops. He knows that everything is pointless, so he'll just try to offer "good battles" to motivate players.


In other words ?
Fools are mindless drones. Snakes are bitter winners. Lords are gentle liars



EVERY respected leader who's been commanding since launch is only "pretending". There is no strategic depth.
The only valid strategy in the game lies in three words:

Destroy the Sunderer

If we all turned into Snakes tomorrow, there would be no battles anymore.


Anyway, back to topic; it will be hard to make players care about "the game" more than "the certs"; EVERYTHING so far revolves around cert incentives.

There's also the General, and he's no better than the others.

He thinks that real tactics work in video games and forgets about the cheesy ones because they're not honorable. He likes to use words like "flanker" and "pincer movement" and "before they know what hit them!" and "ambush".

General's strategies include:

The firing line. Line up your tanks in one area and FIRE! FIRE! Never mind the fact that all of you would die to a single C4 fairy the way I've got you positioned! Keep firing!

The bull rush. Get in there! Get in there! Armor, get to the front, batter through their lines! CHAAARGE! Oh, we lost the armor? GET MORE! CHAAARGE!

Notable quotes:

"I'm not running a zerg here, this is an organized PLUH-TOON, and everyone has a place and a job."
"You WILL NOT shell that spawn room! Stand on the point!"
"Where are the ammo sundies? I told you people to pull god damn ammo sundies! We're got gonna win this without logistic support!"

Playing my TR toon one day, I had a platoon leader kick three members for using the Striker. I don't like it either, but REALLY?

Your post is as stunning in its cynicism as it is in its simple brilliance. I know you're not right if only because the only idea more ignorant than trying to divide something into three pieces is trying to divide something into two pieces.

Astute observations. Powerful observations. But their very nature begs me to ask; if you're this jaded, then why bother coming back?

I agree partially with the OP, there's strategy, but on a lower level, there's no one deciding the global strategy of a faction in a given server, and that's almost impossible to have, unless that whole faction coordinated together (yes, including pugs) under the leadership of some random guy who decided where to send each Squad/Platoon.

Wrong, I'll never understand why people confuse metagame with motivation, they're completely different things.

Metagame is what drives the squad leader to decide on a MAX crash instead of another squad composition, if someone finds a counter to the MAX crash strat and renders it useless, then that squad leader will decide on a squad composition to counter that counter. That's what the metagame is all about, the evolution of the different tactics and their counters, and the counters to those counters and so on.

err, killing people in a videogame is fun I guess, same as every other FPS out there.

I can agree with these definitions (although I think the motivation that makes the metagame is "motivation" in a rather wide sense of the word)), and looking at these I think is both missing: both strategy and metagame. Especially since the latice we don't really have any decisions, there are only a couple of bases we can attack. Well, actually people even fail at planning any strategies now, these huge zergs always leave undeafended bases behind, allowing the enemy to cut off territory. But that's due to the fact that only idiots are running the platoons, instead of faction wide leaders making the decisions.

But the game also lacks metagame, because there isn't really a reason to capture anything other than the XP, of course. I'd love to say "because of the fun", but using the most effective "tactics" isn't any fun! Not that fun is some kind of metagame to begin with. You win nothing of any importance for capturing a base, not for capturing a whole continent, not even for capturing all continents at once.

Very cynical post.

I do lead and I find it a little offensive that your break it down into straight insulting divisions. I understand now why you always make dumb posts now, your upset and want other people to be as well. It sounds by the tone of your post that you feel like everyone is stupid or not as smart as you. It is the only reason I am not really upset by your post, your acting like a little kid who knows better then adults.

If the game is so pointless leave and a lot of people will thank you for not having to read the trash you post on these forums.

If you want to see how a real outfit runs an Op your welcome to stop buy Imperial Reach when we run an OP( thats your as in readers of this post, not you OP your a moron) We have a 18+ outfit so yelling and boosting morale are unimportant. Knowing WTF your doing is much more important.

Best tip for leaders trying to get better, learn the mechanics inside and out, and practice your timing, everything in this game is spawn points and timing.

GL with leading its a thankless job that usally attracts new people for a bit, once they really figure out that you need to have leadership traits to get people to do what they need to everyone quits.

"Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming

While your definition of metagame is correct. It is not the only definition of the word. In fact, what you consider to not be metagame is actually the alternate definition.

It's not insulting.
I respect the "Lords" who manage to keep outfits together because they work hard to get their players entertained.

As I said, the difference between a "Lord" and a "Fool" is that they actually know there's a more efficient way to do the job, but they won't do it because it's no fun. I've known leaders who were entirely too serious about getting things done and used the wrong tools at the wrong place and the wrong time. You'd get yelled at because you didn't accomplish an objective you could sweep in mere seconds using a Gal drop or whatever.


And I'm a snake myself.
Early on, I used to contest orders, and rightfully so because our Platoon was ineffective as hell, and we had other priorities on the map. Some told me to shut up (Fools), some told me it didn't really matter (Lords)
Also stopped squad leading as I used to because I'd just abuse every tool at my disposal and take people out of their confort zone (that's really how it felt) to win. Now I'm mostly dedicated to getting the best out of a cert farm.

It would be nice to have the back story to the game at least mean something. I wouldn't mind being a part of something where I was supporting the faction instead of simple point trolling... over and over again.

I wouldn't mind understanding that wearing Red, Blue or Purple has some kind of meaning.

At least that.

The Meta-Game as I've always understood it, was the reality of the game universe outside of, but related to, the actions of the individual gamer.

It would be nice to have these things tied together in PS 2.

Congrats, you have achieved enlightenment.

Currently that is the meta-game, we're stocking up our war chests for when the rest of the meta-game gets here!

My sig

Metagame is a set of rules the game gives you.
Class system is a metagame. A ****ty one as opposed to say freeform inventory, since playing tetris is more interesting than playing a game where you select one of 6 ways your teris game ends without the actual time spent filling the screen with blocks, but that's my IMO.

"PS2 lacks metagame" means:
PS two gives you too much freedom, making it so you have to entertain yourself, by yourself. (See Dishonored; Star Wars: The Force Unleashed; etc for better understanding of the phrase)




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EDIT:
The funny thing is - Metagame actually means the opposite, the fact that PS2 gives you alot of freedom implies that metagame is encouraged, since the meaning outside the PS2 limits means "a set of rules in the game developed by players". So Zombie Event by RPS is technically metagame. But since the term is typically misinterpreted, the statement above the edit line bears more weight.

That's not what people complain about.