Lately I've seen many people asking questions about META game. Most of them are unsure what the term means and I am sure that after they read this article they will not only be more informed about the term but they will be better players. Because of the size, I will give article in parts.
The line between bad player and a good player is huge. Bad players are bad because of many reasons. If you are observing their games you can see that they are doomed to lose after their first moves. Build order is bad, creeping pattern makes no sense, they go back when they are supposed to push, they are making unit combos because they saw it in some replay but the fact is that they have no clue what they are doing.
The reasons for their bad play are also numerous. They are inexperienced or they have hard time learning new game. They are unable to do several things at the same time. They are bad at making choices. They are unable to risk and take chances. They can not adapt but are able to play only the same way from game to game without any talent for improvisation. They are naturally slow. And the biggest and the most important - they are unaware of their mistakes. They believe that if they do everything by the book they have to win. Truth is that they will but only if their opponent is worse than them or equal to them but played worse in specific game. But, they are not always playing against the players who are equal to them or worse than them.
On the other side, good players have what bad players don't. Good build order, decent micro and creeping pattern, basic knowledge of when to push and what to push, map awareness and all those things needed for a player to be good player. But, they are unable to connect these things into one big plan which is needed to win the game against a very good player. That big plan is META game.
Term META comes from metaphysics and it is a branch that tries to understand the whole universe with it's individual parts. The key of understanding is to go deep into studding the relations that these individual parts are creating when they are acting together. To make it simple, you can look at a tree like a "stuff" that sits on the ground, but only if you connect it with other "stuff" like water, air, people, fruits you will understand it's purpose and it's position in the universe.
META is beyond something obvious, it is a never-ending evolution and expansion of information which improves our interaction with "stuff" that surrounds us. Our knowledge of "stuff" that surrounds us can only grow with the time. And our understanding of the connections that these "stuffs" are creating can only be bigger and wider.
Every Warcraft 3 era had it's dominant players in the past. These dominant players played their races which, obviously, became dominant because they were played by the best players. These best players who were playing "best" races used certain strategies in particular ways and created certain mainstream strategies or simply, META strategies.
Example:
You stepped in time-back machine and it brought you in 1.02 Warcraft 3 ROC version. However, you kept your knowledge from the future. Sitting in front of your PC you pick Random and search for a ladder game. You get Orc on Tranquil Paths against Night Elf. Of course, you go for Tower Creeping Mana Fountains because you believe (based on the experience that you have) that this is the most effective strategy against Night Elf on Tranquil Paths. You are thinking few steps ahead as well. You plan on going Wyverns or some Caster strategies but your main weapon will be strong hero levels combined with the items you get from the fountains. You will harass your opponent by abusing the mana fountains.
After 4-5 minutes in the game you meet your opponent. You expected to see high level Demon Hunter or even Keeper Of The Groove with crazy amount of Archers behind him, burning your mana and chasing your heroes. But wait! What the hell is this guy doing? Immolation? Several Huntresses? What the hell is this newbie thinking?
Based on your experience and knowledge he should have played differently because you know that Immolation is "useless" spell against Orc who is towering the map, that stack of Huntresses cannot be compared to stack of ranged units. That Night Elf has to creep fast to gain level 6 Demon Hunter which demolishes everything. And how the hell can he creep fast without Archers?
Based on your opponent's experience, Immolation is good because it burns enemies units. And Orcs always make Grunts first, right? Huntresses own Grunts so badly and it will be an easy game for him. And making Archers is pretty dumb because they have low HP and any melee unit owns them easily.
From your perspective, your opponent is damn newbie. Truth is, he is not. He did what he did because his current META game told him to play like that. He was prepared only for the things he knew and he covered what his knowledge could cover. But after he gets heavily owned in that specific game he will go, if he is aiming to become better and to improve his META game, in deep replay analysis and next time you meet him he will be well prepared for your tower creep strategy.
here is article from a starcraft forum, that may help you guys too understand it if you didnt understand dinkers(which for me was pretty nice).
ReplyDeletehttp://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Metagame
For bad players taking risks is stupid, for good players not taking risks is stupid.
ReplyDeleteI could beat players after not playing for almost 2 years just because most players kept doing the same stuff they did 2 years ago. I had no problem finding them on the minimap, even though I didn't have a unit available to scout for them. To take it further, I was far from a top player and so was my friend. Yet we were a great 2v2 team because we both were really adeptive and always kept an eye on what the opposing teams were doing. Most cookiecutting strategies work anyways because of the imbalanced experience creeps give in RoC, massing archers or fiends make it really easy to creep when not disturbed so new players start to feel comfortable when playing the belonging races. After undead doesn't give the wanted results they will discover Night Elf usually will. After a lot of games they might discover that sometimes it might be better to realize that they play an online game and disturb their enemy. If they don't they will always be stuck in the bad players corner because they will, as you said, always do the same and will always fail against a better player because they are will do the same but better. This comes back to where I started, a bad player is good when he doesn't take risks because he doesn't know when to exploit the advantage of the risk, but a good player is bad when he doesn't take the risk because a better player will always beat him because he is better at the same game.