Poll: Feelings about the competitive meta-gaming community .

[Nemusus]

Well, the only metagame I've known much about is Pokemon, and boy oh boy is it a mixed bag. There are several groups of players, from guys who just want to have fun, and are therefore not heavily involved in the meta, guys who just copy the flavour of the month teams, and the guys who come up with new and random stuff. 90% of competitive battles revolve around knowing the 10-15 most common Pokemon at the time and how to beat them. The fun matches are when you come up against someone who uses less common Pokemon or underrated Pokemon that force you to think outside the box to come up with a plan, those are my favourite battles by far.

So based on my experiences, you've got like 80% of competitive players following the trend, 10% just having fun and not taking stuff to seriously, and about 10% coming up with wacky, weird and wonderful ways to play the game. I don't like that distribution much, because most battles end up being a case of following a formula, but when you're up against a quality opponent it's a lot more fun. I don't know too much about MOBA's, but from what I've heard, they share a similar breakdown of players, except a lot more competitive and intense.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Ive been playing video games since I was about 2 years old, and certain games Ive managed to get quite good at. But it was only when I started playing smash bros did I realise how seriously some people took 'getting really good at a game' and what is skill and what isnt.

This isnt a rant really, I just wanted to know how this part of the internet feels about the meta gaming community. Iam obviously not part of it, but I wouldnt describe myself as a casual gamer either, I dont mash buttons or anything like that. But when the only 'true test' of skill is just playing fox/sheik/marth on final destination with no items, I feel like the game is cut down for less people to enjoy it.

This has also put me off Tekken to a slightly lesser extent, but I walking around with the label that I play casually feels a little demeaning, I just play games as best as I can.

I am with you here. I don't have the time of day, or the willpower to devote that much effort into a single game like that... I also don't know why I would want to. I will play a game until I have used up all the enjoyment I get from it. If that enjoyment is playing something on a hard mode then I will do that and get to the end... if it starts taking all of my time then I get annoyed that I am not putting effort into another game that warrents it and I move on...

Some games I am not amazing at... for example I enjoyed the Guitar Hero games, but due to having small hands (with artheritis in one) and a lack of desire to hearing the same songs on repeat in all my free time (a lot of which I didn't really like in the first place) has lead to me never using the orange note on my controller... This doesn't bother me in the slightest though, because I had loads of fun playing my favourite songs on medium!

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Well, the only metagame I've known much about is Pokemon, and boy oh boy is it a mixed bag. There are several groups of players, from guys who just want to have fun, and are therefore not heavily involved in the meta, guys who just copy the flavour of the month teams, and the guys who come up with new and random stuff. 90% of competitive battles revolve around knowing the 10-15 most common Pokemon at the time and how to beat them. The fun matches are when you come up against someone who uses less common Pokemon or underrated Pokemon that force you to think outside the box to come up with a plan, those are my favourite battles by far.

So based on my experiences, you've got like 80% of competitive players following the trend, 10% just having fun and not taking stuff to seriously, and about 10% coming up with wacky, weird and wonderful ways to play the game. I don't like that distribution much, because most battles end up being a case of following a formula, but when you're up against a quality opponent it's a lot more fun. I don't know too much about MOBA's, but from what I've heard, they share a similar breakdown of players, except a lot more competitive and intense.

My experience with pokemon involves getting to the end of the single player, and then trying to catch the lot with a mate...

For the first time (as of tomorrow) we are playing a pokemon past gen 1.... We have Black and White set up and are determined to 'catch 'em all'. That's my idea of 'hardcore' gaming... Playing competitivly sounds boring from what you are saying, and is what has turned me off of a lot of online games!

I used to play CoD online... and it was entertaining for a couple of hours to find how people genericly run around the maps (routes they take, traps they set) and then just duping them at their own games... however this took far too long to learn, was dull, I died a lot, I got bored, I got fed up of how others act online in terms of abuse and immaturity and eventually stopped! :/

 

[marioandsonic]

I'm all for competitive gaming and tournament play (heck, I'm planning to attend the EVO event this year), but I'm really not a fan of so many competitive gamers who are either "STOP HAVING FUN!" guys, insufferable elitists, or both.

It's one of the reasons I stopped playing Pokemon. "Your Scizor has a 128/255/0/0/0/127 EV split? LOL L2P n00b"

 

[Naeras]

I play stuff competitively. And I love it. I thoroughly enjoy breaking games down to find the most powerful strategical and tactical patterns. You'll often find me analyzing my own games to identify mistakes and errors I'll try to fix later. And I love trying to outsmart other players who are as good as me or better. As such, as long as something isn't completely broken and/or unenjoyable, I won't refrain from using that option if I can get away with it.

That being said, I have no issues whatsoever with playing games "the wrong way", and those who take issues with that needs a bonk on the head. Why? Because it's easy to distinguish between playing for the thrill of the competition, and playing for laughs with a bunch of friends. There are those who can't make out that difference(see the Smash Bros-community, which, thankfully, mostly grew out of the FOX ONLY FINAL DESTINATION-bullshit), and those that make a deal out of it are usually afraid that all their hardcore cred will be gone if they're ever found playing ARAM in LoL, items on in Smash, etc etc.

So, the issue mentioned in the OP really not related to people playing stuff competitively. It's related to specific individuals.

 

[Foolery]

Meta-game communities usually piss me off. Pokemon in particular. Up until the recent X&Y, a large amount of people just used hacked monsters. Feels fucking pointless to spend time training, hatching eggs, doing things legit, when people are just going to go around that and get the stats they want while going into competitive.

Besides that, you have the Smogonites, people running the same teams and strategies all while saying 'X is banned' or similar junk. It's irritating.

Which is why I only play for fun and battle friends.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

I think in cooperative competitive games it is absolutely necessary. If I'm playing league and somebody decides to go teemo, I hate them by default. They are hurting my experience of the game because they "just want to have fun." I have fun all the time playing champs that are at least vaguely viable in the roles that I play them in. Jungle Panth, Wukong, they're fun, and they actually add to a team unlike fucking tanky teemo mid. It isn't that hard.


Outside of that though, I don't think it's too important for casual players. Unless you're playing at a particular level, you should not be concerned about which Brawl character is the best.

(I am not bitter about the fact that I have to carry extremely hard as jungle over the past few weeks. Not bitter in the slightest.)

This is why I mainly play singleplayer games. Selfish reasons such as yours. "Wah, they ruin MY fun, wah, MY experience". The same can be said about you getting mad at someone trying to have fun. You are ruining their experience. Too many people get mad over trivial things and thats why MOBA games in particular aren't any fun to play. They follow strict metas and that just kills the fun.

People that take video games too seriously just annoy me beyond belief.

I am selfish... Hilarious. I play the three most unrewarding roles in the game, top, jungle, and support. I always let everybody else pick their role first. I always pick champs I am familiar with so that I know I will be able to help out, rather than try out new champs with random people and waste their time. I always try and put the team on my back. My biggest flaw as a player is that I tend to jump into unwinnable scenarios so I can save other players.

I am not selfish.

The moron that decides that today is a good day to waste everybody else's half an hour by trying something they know for a fact will not work because it will be "fun," pretty certain that's the selfish one. Maybe I became unfamiliar with what selfishness was at some point, but I'm pretty goddamn certain it's not when you just want everybody to work together and just fucking try.

 

[Benpasko]

I am selfish... Hilarious. I play the three most unrewarding roles in the game, top, jungle, and support. I always let everybody else pick their role first. I always pick champs I am familiar with so that I know I will be able to help out, rather than try out new champs with random people and waste their time. I always try and put the team on my back. My biggest flaw as a player is that I tend to jump into unwinnable scenarios so I can save other players.

I am not selfish.

The moron that decides that today is a good day to waste everybody else's half an hour by trying something they know for a fact will not work because it will be "fun," pretty certain that's the selfish one. Maybe I became unfamiliar with what selfishness was at some point, but I'm pretty goddamn certain it's not when you just want everybody to work together and just fucking try.

If you have to justify how unselfish you are, you're selfish. Hating on a person because they don't pick a character YOU think they should have is selfish, no matter how you try to justify it. I've been playing since pre-s1, and people like you are so prolific that it ruins the game. I'd rather have someone who knows how to play a role pick that and have a janky comp, than to have them try to fit into the metagame and pick a champ they suck at. The only place your mentality belongs is in ranked (Which is why I don't play ranked).

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

I am selfish... Hilarious. I play the three most unrewarding roles in the game, top, jungle, and support. I always let everybody else pick their role first. I always pick champs I am familiar with so that I know I will be able to help out, rather than try out new champs with random people and waste their time. I always try and put the team on my back. My biggest flaw as a player is that I tend to jump into unwinnable scenarios so I can save other players.

I am not selfish.

The moron that decides that today is a good day to waste everybody else's half an hour by trying something they know for a fact will not work because it will be "fun," pretty certain that's the selfish one. Maybe I became unfamiliar with what selfishness was at some point, but I'm pretty goddamn certain it's not when you just want everybody to work together and just fucking try.

If you have to justify how unselfish you are, you're selfish. Hating on a person because they don't pick a character YOU think they should have is selfish, no matter how you try to justify it. I've been playing since pre-s1, and people like you are so prolific that it ruins the game. I'd rather have someone who knows how to play a role pick that and have a janky comp, than to have them try to fit into the metagame and pick a champ they suck at. The only place your mentality belongs is in ranked (Which is why I don't play ranked).

There's a difference between playing something mildly out of the meta, and just flat out not caring about how you will do. Go ahead, play Garen top or Tristana mid. Just don't do it the other way around, because that's just a waste of everybody else's time. I don't care how bad the comp is (unless I am in a very foul mood, which I would not blame on anyone else), I just don't want to deal with another adc teemo. There are four other people in every other game who's experience relies on you doing well. Don't ruin it for them unless you have no other choice.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I think it's something that can be interesting to watch but there's no way in Hell I could ever join. I don't count myself as a casual gamer but the Pokemon Competitive scene downright intimidates me. I play games to have fun after all and I just don't really have fun if I'm playing with people, especially if it's with people I don't know or too competitive.

 

[Rolaoi]

I like meta for actual competition, but inserting meta and expecting other to abide by it as well in non-ranked matches is the essence of being a no-fun-allowed prick.

 

[PFCboom]

A good friend of mine is a professional TF2 player, and for all his talk of having fun while doing it, I've never seen anyone have so little fun while playing a game. The things he was saying was so far out of his normal character. Raping this person blah blah this team sucks blah blah this guy doesn't know what he's doing blah blah. It was almost scary.

That said, I love watching competitive play. SC2 in particular. It's far above any skills I'll ever have, but I can at least appreciate and get excited when I see great plays.

 

[Vegosiux]

Speaking as a former competitive metagamer, that community's full of people who seem to have a stick up their rear end which they only pull out when they want to beat someone up with it. And it's not even really fun playing in that manner, and we liked it that way, games are srs bzns, second place is for losers, etc. >.>

Then I got rid of that stick of mine, and gaming's been a bit more fun and less soul-draining since then.