This Meta You Speak Of

Well I tried to point out that every game has its meta. That’s how things work.

Yes but a meta is always a sign of there being no balance, thats why it only exists in either games that are released with lacking balance or games that are in a constant changing developement course, such as gems.

Now how this developement course is practiced decides if its a changing meta or a static one. Right now were in a static one with BD still not being nerfed, and ofcourse sometimes devs make the mistake of creating hard counters to something that is op rather than nerfing the op thing creating new problems but ive explained this before in several threads.

Best meta=deckbuilding decides antimeta and changes dont create new imbalances (changes as in new cards to the roster)
Horrendous meta that gets as narrow as the butt of an autumn imp=create cards with hardcounters against meta, creating powercreep and inevitably making the game lightning paced oneshot decided (what you have now with BD already)

Card is weak against the meta? Let players figure out and build a deck around it. Dont for instance overload it with hardcounters to the meta. That should be how the game works because thats the way its fun.
Waiting every once in a while for a new op card to hoard and dominate with isnt, its braindead dumbed down decline of gaming what it is.

Thats why designers shouldnt listen to biased players asking for buffs when they compare their decks to the meta. Only when its about something that is clearly unbalanced (in the minus) compared to the collective.

Lets take peasant, nobody would use it even if BD/manticore etc didnt exist.

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Yep. Gems evolved from a game with infantry and tanks to a game that’s a race to see who can launch their nukes first.

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Was getting some tea and editting my main post now and then.

Anyway…

Right now the “meta” is “how to oneshot the other team before they oneshot my team pref with cards that can round 1 get things going and decide the match”

That means all cards with 1: Devour. 2: Empowered (both toxic features to gameplay)
Then people started building 3x behemoths to go against such teams… so (and thank god only few cards have this trait) Impervious became the ‘created out of necessity’ countermeta (so not a deckbuilding antimeta)
But that didnt really hit off as bigly as mana deprivement strategies because as i said only few cards have that trait… and that should stay that way because otherwise its going to get very onesided from hereon with everyone using 4 impervious troops mark my words.

So now were at people trying to prevent the oneshot cards from every getting a hit in with mana deprivement like drain especially which is why manticore was so hot since he had very low costs to begin with and drumroll empowered (not anymore but beside the point)

How can crew fix this?

Replace devour’s oneshot abillity by just it taking half of all stats of the selected enemy troop to stop people arming against the 1 spellcast = matchdecided factor.
Delete impervious from the game and create two sets of traits that both block a different 3 status effects at once so you dont turn cards into 100% uncounterable.
Stop making more cards with oneshot mechanics such as deathmark, rng aside the only effect it has on players is that they feel sabotaged after putting ages work into building up their deck.
(the feeling of sabotage/unfairness is THE cause of anger caused by videogames, not violence)
And for the love of god do not ever put mana drain on a low mana cost or empowered troop again.

Last few new card designs were absolutely brilliant save for that they are not ever going to be viable untill shit like BD and the above is nerfed.

So gems of war is on the right track, in a sense.

p.s. IF they dont want to nerf BD in any way (which they really, REALLY should) Then atleast create more cards with 0 armor like the zxzxztscxzdg whatever its name is)
And to prevent true damage to take over a static meta again, up the life regen on traits for cards that have it. 1 life per turn isnt even useful in early game. Make it atleast 3 or 4.

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Well said @wskill. Also really like your suggestion about more troops with 0 armor. I rode KoS like crazy from early to mid game, then I got my BD and now I desperately want to build teams with KoS, for no other reason then nastalgia, and I just can’t because they essentially fill the same deck need, but BD is the late game KoS. Period.

One LEGENDARY should not COMPLETELY replace another LEGENDARY’S role in the late game, this is the clearest evidence of imbalance in my opinion.

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Oh, dearest Don, that would require competition to not exist. Or any optimal strategy whatsoever. It would require a game to not only be non-competitive, but also require competitive players to not exist.

The “Meta” is simply the “most effective tactic available”. No, that is not where the term came from, it has its own roots, but that is a good way to conceptualize it and explain what it means. And it fits as an acronym. Which is a coincidence. But this is NOT a post about linguistics, it is one about the metagame, the concept of metagames, and the inevitablity of one.

Incorrect. You get metagames in a game that lacks perfect balance. In order for there to be no most effective tactic, all tactics must have the same exact value, result, outcome, odds of winning, etc. This is just not possible, without having a game that only has one single tactic or way to beat it, like a block-pushing puzzle from Legend of Zelda. There must be only one correct answer. Otherwise, there will be different answers, and where there is diversity, there is difference.

While I would like to say that it is possible for two completely different situations to be equal, that would simply be impossible. One will always be better at doing something than another, or else they are the same. Unless you’re talking about Mass Effect 3’s ending. I’m not getting into that. That leads to a very depressing thought train about inevitability and I don’t want to go there.

But my point is still that if things are different, which they must be, there will always be times where one is more effective than the other. And that, in itself, is the birth of a meta. Given two roads, one longer and one shorter, would you choose the longer to get to the same destination? That is why metas exist.

A metagame is not a sign of not having balance, but rather not having perfect balance, which is unobtainable, and even if it was, it would stagnate games.

Quite frankly, saying “tl;dr” about someone else’s posts is hypocritical of me, but you wrote a lot and seem to be repeating the same stuff, so I skipped everything you said after that quote. Just like you probably skipped this part as well. (Hi, Zubo!) But my stuff is incredibly long and I know this is hypocritical but I don’t have the attention span to continue reading this. Instead, I will point you in the direction of an Extra Credits video about the concept of “perfect imbalance”.

Also please have a nice day

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I’m not sure you can say that a well-balanced game would stagnate considering that there’s still people playing Starcraft competitively.

I did not say “well” balanced. I said “perfectly” balanced. There is a MASSIVE difference there. You can have balance without everything being perfectly even.

If all options were perfectly even and equally effective, there would be no tradeoffs for anything, so all players would simply resort to the method that takes the least effort, seeing as how all of them will have the same result, anyway. That is a meta of its own as well.

If you go further and make all equal options take an equal amount of effort, then you can be considered to have “perfect” balance. This is just not remotely realistic, if at all possible. There needs to be variability. There need to be things that are less effective for less effort, things that take more effort but are more effective, and it needs to be left to players to find where they like to sit between them.

I could go further and bring win rates into this as well, and how no game can be perfectly balanced until the win rates of all strategies are even as well (4x peasant winning just as often as Manti/Manti/DB/BD, for example)

It’s just… Not realistic. There will always be a meta, no matter how well you balance a game.

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I think we’re splitting hairs and talking past each other. You’re looking at “perfect” balance as some sort of scientific or mathematical formula, I think.

For me, “perfect” balance doesn’t mean that everything is equal, it just means everything is equally FUN.

In my previous post, I referenced Starcraft. That game was masterfully balanced and even though all 3 sides weren’t the same, they were “perfectly” balanced, IMHO.

Gems has almost 300 troops and there are about a dozen that we se over and over and over again. There’s really no reason we should be discussing “perfect” balance when this game obviously is still at the other end of the spectrum, so to speak.

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You shouldve read my other posts, perfect balance doest exist in videogames, what we need is a changing meta by deckbuilding rather released hardcounters. That balances toward fun. numbers arent fun, creative lebensraum is. Personalization > Speed in gameplay. Whoever liked simplicity for long anyway. …It gets old real fast.

That’s what I was implying :slight_smile:
If there’s competition there’s meta.

<3

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Get a room you two! :heart_eyes:

No one gets to talk about Don that way but me. :heart_eyes:

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Oh we should organize a fight in chocolate. You would be fighting in bikinis and the winner gets me!

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All day I was proud of starting a thread that was getting some good discussion going. Now that I see where it’s gone I’m not so sure it was a good thing :smile:

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Just going to post this right here. might be the next meta for the next 4 days…or maybe not.

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Well some things don’t change…

But they’re worth Event Gems now, @Jainus:stuck_out_tongue:

Edit: He says, as his PvP choices immediately after posting look very similar… :frowning:

totally agree with that

also i like the idea about splitting impervious into 2 traits with smaller amount of immunities each (maybe a little more then just 3 per, but still)

and i still wait for a mana drain immunity trait U_U

to be honest i believe that there SHOULD NOT be a harmful effect in game - aside from pure damage dealing - that has no immunity trait for it

  • coz whatever it is, it should not work for SOME units. just some or at least some,
    that would bring more balance making every single meta not a “100% universal/ effective”
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I wish people were kind and using my defence team. Ghoulx2, sunweaver, summoner. It creates unlimited undead so you can quickly finish the event. (well quickly is a matter of opinion seeing as you are at the mercy of the ai using its summoner spell.