Does anyone care about the current "meta-game" at all?

I like playing PS2 and I like leading squads. I have not played PS1 back in the day, but heard a lot of good stuff about big tactical battles, sneaky infiltrations, last-second ANT runs, etc. Those things were what made me check out PS2 in the first place. It's an okey-ish shooter, and a certain feeling of epicness is there in the big battles, however... the "meta-game" has been seriously lacking ever since I started playing this game in December last year.

I still have some hope that SOE will implement system that makes the battles actually meaningful, but right now were are stuck with a very poor "meta-game" wannabe.

Still I like to pick my fights with some - more or less - strategic thought. I look for battles my squad could make a real difference. I prioritize defending key facilities or cutting of big chunks of enemy territory when possible. Often this will result in good enjoyable fights, but sometimes it means a couple of easy captures with little resistance.

Over the last couple of months I noticed a trend with a lot of players I team up with regularly: They will simply go to the biggest fight they can find to duke it out. Defending a Tech Plant in 12-12? Nah, there is a big 48-48 fight in some unconnected territory on the other side of the map, let's go there! Sneak behind enemy lines with a couple of AA Maxes and Engineers to pick on unsuspecting ESFs/Libs? Nah, too much waiting, not enough XP per hour!

A lot of players I know have become so focussed of XP/hour, personal score, etc. That they will simply ignore that last enemy Sunderer, because "killing it takes away all the nice farm" (sic).

Ok, so after this long wall of text I got some questions for you, especially squad and outfit leaders:
- Do you care about what little meta-game we currently have at all?
- Do you pick your fights mostly depending on where you think the xp or "farm" will be best?
- Are there any outfits that actually think 12-12 fights can be just as epic, and more tactical, as zerg vs zerg?
- Should I just give up hope?

You thoughts.

There are outfits, and zergfits. Zergfits are normally the biggest. If you don' like that military theory (or the lack thereof) then join a different outift.

IMHO the lattice system backfired quite a lot, as it limited the options for smaller squads, but on the other hand, you can still put squads in strategic locations and change battles.

We had a good outfit member leading last night a full outfit squad of 12.
-We took a biolab on indar by camping the SCU shield. As soon as the neighboring point turned we took out the shield and SCU. The TR zerg was all busy fighting at their other biolab, and missed their 5 minute window entirely.
-Back capping. Always nice. We push into the enemy territory, to take the point. We can't hold it, but just by doing so we have pushed the enemy back, and moved the fight to their territory rather then ours.
-Lots of tech plant/ amp station drops. Hack the terminals, and turrets so when they go back to defend there isn't anything to defend with. Waterson TR is really good at this, and its annoying.

Otherwise we just go wherever we feel we can turn the tide of the battle. Lots of gal drops on hot fights. Lots of jumping around. It can get annoying, but its often worth it. I sure wouldn't want to do it all the time though.

Does anyone care about meta-game?


What meta-game?

I don't know what a "metagame" is and frankly I don't care.

I play PS2, or any game for that matter, because it's fun.

I suspect most casual gamers would say the same as well.

Why would I go and bore myself to death in a underpopulated area when I can have a decently good (or great) fight on a different place? I mean WDS actually adds an incentive to actually capture territories but at the end of the day I'm here to have some good times with my mates while killing stuff and ghost capping doesn't cut it.

Also, farming a sundy can be a "strategically" viable choice because it allows a smaller group to contain a larger number of attackers fairly easily.

The **** you are talkin bout bro, what metagame?

The term "metagame" can refer to a lot of things, but basically it's the use of knowledge about the game to play the game.
Some things that are a part of PS2's metagame:
- Best/worst weapon/vehicle/ability in a certain situation and in general
- Weapon/vehicle/ability balance
- How/why one performs an action (like deploying a sunderer in a good spot [single person], MAX crashing a bio lab [multiple people], or attacking/defending a base [strategy])
- Core and player-created game mechanics and how to use them to gain an advantage (squad/beacon deploy abuse, fourth factioning)

Casual gamers do actually care about the metagame, because it's an integral part of the experience. Would they discuss it here on the forums? Probably not. But it will influence their actions, leading them to pick certain factions, use certain guns and vehicles, and so on and so forth.

Most players left are in outfits with strong communities or the K/D crowd. There maybe some casual players but pretty sure lattice has discouraged a lot of them. I cannot get people I know to play more than a few weeks, they see no point.

There needs to be a Community/Empire goal, but even that with the instant switching to the winning side in alert makes that problematic at best. These forums are also filled with contrarians that add no value to any discussions.

The push for MLG type gameplay will likely be the end for me. I had not played a shooter since golden eye really as K/D is booring. Starting to rant, this game needs a restart badly.

I also think too many people are misusing the word metagame to mean a carrot on a stick or a win condition. Meta is beyond in latin. So meta-game is what you do beyond actually playing the game. Its another case of ... "I dont think that word means what you think it means".

I remember the "please add Lattice now" threads. Lattice was the chosen one. It was said that it would add depth to the metagame, not destroy it. Encourage strategy, not leave it to zergfits.

I actually spend more time with the meta-game than I do actually playing these days. Yes, I do care, and I do enjoy it. I recently helped reboot a multi-outfit alliance on Waterson, and the result of my participation seems to have actually affected the way things are pretty greatly. Like I said, I play the meta-game more than I play the actual game, but when I've been on, command chat has actually been useful as of late, and I think that that is the general sentiment of the faction. It's actually pretty difficult to get in contact with the other outfits out there, and work with them outside the game to make something happen inside the game. When the effort is successful, however, it's a pretty awesome feeling. I guess that's the point of a game though; it provides a challenge, and you either rise to it, or give up on it. The best challenges are the ones where victory was never set in stone, you actually have to earn it.

Y'all been playing this game wrong.

No system is going to get it right. Hex system had its own problems, if you were defending a piece of territory so well that attackers couldnt take it, they could go around you and youd have to leave unless you wanted to lose everything around you. Lattice made defending more important because you can halt attackers progress, not just say "no this one is mine... but you can have the rest". Remember when people would JUST fight at the crown but lose the rest of Indar? The hex system caused that.

You simply cant please everyone, and now that the Hex system is pretty much gone, except on a continent which a) hardly gets played on and b) already funnels players in predictable paths, we have kind of forgotten things about that system and how it actually ran. Its very easy to look back and say "oh that was better" because because we dislike the current system. Thats why many people said lattice would be a great idea, they didnt like Hex then. Now people dont like lattice and want Hex.

If we switched back to Hex, people would do the same thing they are doing to Lattice. "I hate X i want Y" and the cycle continues.

Yeah, people don't realize that Hex and Lattice both "have" metagame. I was more pointing out that "Lattice pls" threads were all about the upsides of Lattice versus the downsides of Hex, and now we're seeing the inverse in "Lattice sucks, bring back Hex" threads, as you said.

The difference here is that the latter are supported by half a dozen people.

I know that bringing back Hex explicitly is not popular and pretty much a non-option for the devs at this point, but I have seen plenty of threads complaining about Lattice and how it's limited options. OF COURSE IT DOES, THAT'S THE POINT. I don't know how people weren't expecting this to happen.

I could not make sense out of this statement. I think putting in lattice was a bigger deal than taking it out. Now we're just grumbling because it wasn't the magic fix everyone expected it to be. The game does need the lattice though, the servers just don't have a high enough population for the hex system. It assumes there will be enough people to defend most bases, but there just aren't. Just spinning around each other in circles capturing bases, and not fighting. As it stands, there are plenty of undefended bases to capture on the lattice system for small squads. I see them all the time, completely uncontested. They're just easier to defend now.

I've heard stories about how the hex system led to ghost towns in PS2. At least the lattice system encourages large battles, which is a good thing.

The potential for a meta game was always there in both the hex and the lattice systems. For a time when the vs held indar and gloated ceaselessy about their ill gotten lock on mattherson, the meta existed because the vs and the tr were actively trying to one up each other. Basically, the common term of meta-game as seen in PS2 requires more than one empire to actually employ strategy and the will to win.

So to answer the OP: no, no one really gives a **** about the meta game because no one cares to organize or win, they just want to find PS2's #1 selling point within seconds of logging in and shoot $#!%. Hexes, lattice, cont locks or whatever won't suddenly change this mentality. You have to note that even in PS1, the zerg just kind of followed the line to the nearest base that was leaking bad guys. Rose tinted glasses are providing most of that game's claims to glory.

Esamir seemed to have grown in popularity after the lattice introduction by quite a large margin... Amerish is still a dead continent. I think the player base is quite clear on what they prefer.