Correct, and if 100% of the people who beat you are using all the same "meta" then that suggests it's not a skill variation that explains it. That makes the game extremely boring.

> You should quickly pick up on what they were doing and learn to counter it. If you can't then how can you claim to be better than they are?

You must not be familiar with what "meta" means. Modern video games seem to all have an across-the-board superior configuration. And yes, the way to "counter it" is to copy it, which is why this strategy spreads like a virus through the game until 100% of the people who beat you are all doing the exact same thing.

If the desired outcome of the game design was for everyone to use the same configurations (the meta) in order to "counter" the meta, then why have configuration options at all? Give everyone the same exact thing all the time.

The reason they don't do that is because it's extremely boring. But unfortunately the "meta-finding" capability of the streaming community yields the same functional outcome anyway. Ergo: the games are made boring by the community, as stated at the very top.

I'm familiar with the term, thanks. I'm suggesting that if you're consistently losing to it that's a skill issue. Sure, you might find the gameplay boring but then that's a complaint about a perceived failure in the game design (notably only from your perspective, not necessarily other's). I appreciate that you're more interested in casually playing off the wall builds for fun rather than competitively playing to win but casting that as others being less skilled or the community being in the wrong is just petulant.

Yes, it is a game design failure (obviously) insofar as it seems not possible to make a perfectly balanced game. But games weren't previously perfectly balanced either, presumably. But they didn't have this same "herding" dynamic because there wasn't an entire industry (literally!) of people trying to discover and disseminate knowledge about the imbalances.

And no, the issue isn't "I like to casually play with off-the-wall builds." The issue is "video games were a lot more fun when you encountered different types of opponents."

This is, of course, why game designers put so much work into supporting variations in builds, so obviously they agree too.

I didn't criticize anyone for being less skilled or anyone for being "in the wrong." I'm observing a game dynamic that makes games less variable than their designers clearly intend.

I think you aren't appreciating how varied other's views are here. I'm not a fan of starcraft because I don't enjoy how important micro is to it but that's clearly an integral part of that particular game. As far as meta goes there are clearly lots of people that greatly enjoy trying to win by optimizing every last detail out of a build, fully playing into the current meta or alternatively going against it in an attempt to score a win by surprising the opponent.

If you don't like it that's fine - I'm actually mostly in agreement with you. But I don't think it's necessarily a flaw in the game any more than chess openers are necessarily a flaw with chess (although chess960 does exist so clearly not everyone appreciates the typical openers).

If the intent was for everyone to use the same build, then game designers would not invest in the concept of builds. The convergence is clearly not intentional (it is a flaw in the game design) but also basically impossible to avoid in the presence of 1) high-dimensionality balance space and 2) highly-motivated meta-seekers.

I'm not saying people who do this are evil or bad. I'm saying they make games not fun, and it's not clear at all that this is solvable by the game designers except by vastly simplifying the games (e.g. getting rid of builds).

The fact they design for variance so much but then do not achieve variance is an empirical proof that it is a flaw in the design.

Yes, this is also a flaw with chess and is why chess is an extremely boring game. You can just ask someone their Elo and know who will win. As you get into higher Elos, variation in play style becomes less relevant, i.e. more homogenous. This makes the game boring.

It's not my job to lend airtime to other people's opinions on the matter. I'm sharing my opinion. You can share yours if you want.

FWIW, meta pressures exist without an entire industry dedicated to them.

I’ve been playing BAR since it was called Balanced Annihilation and it peaked at 1 concurrent 8v8 daily and there was little/no youtube presence to speak of. Meta pressure was still huge, to the point that trying (now-meta) then-off-meta strategies would have you mocked, called a troll, and sometimes kicked from the room. Pretty much everyone was a meta slave, except for a few (mostly top) players who had their own quirky meta-rejecting style.

I think there’s a global desire for comfort/safety which drives meta, and this works without an industry. Copying is safe, playing the same map endlessly is comfortable, and fun for fun’s sake is neither. And ego seems to have something to do with it too. Players with less ego seem to experiment more, change things up more, break the meta more.

Yes, I am aware they exist. But the addition of an industry that systematically finds and disseminates this obviously accelerates the process of discovery and dissemination.

This is like saying "scientific progress exists even without scientists talking to each other." It sure does, but collaboration and competition among them dramatically accelerates the discovery process.

Many games operate on a rock-paper-scissor system though, and even if rock is perhaps a bit stronger than it should be, what that actually means is that it wins more against scissor than it loses to paper, but it still loses against paper.

This is how games are meant to operate. But the balance space is now so incredibly high-dimensionality that it turns out there is almost always a meta-optimal strategy. There is a Rock that beats both Scissors and Paper at greater frequency than expected.

Just go read the changelogs for any major game to see them trying to balance and rebalance and adjust and constantly failing to actually achieve what you describe.