Why is META such a disagreement?

[KickingJoub]

Hello there people who play Starmade or just browse the forums. I, as a long time lurker, have a question to ask. I'm sorry if this is obvious to everyone, has been discussed to death, is far too long, or I'm just being stupid, I make a habit of it at times. So, my question, and TL:DR:

What exactly is this whole META (Most Effective Tactic Available) discussion about, and why is it such a seemingly huge problem?

TL:DR:
Agree to disagree, go on your own servers, and enjoy your own playstyles. THEN make sure you suggest whatever you can that the game has good mechanics which allow variety and different strategies to achieve different goals. Besides, aren't PvP and RP servers already a thing? What's the big problem?

(not accurate to Starmade) Old META: Giant space station built with great effort and engineering

(Also not accurate to Starmade) New META: Tiny fighter with author bias

Now the wall of text:
As to what I consider META discussions: everything related to game mechanics. Hear me out why: Every change to game mechanics changes the META, obviously, and there seem to be massive differences in what people want the META to be, based on the discussions involving mechanics I can see.

So, what is it all about? From what I gather, there are 2 camps: The PvP'ers, and the RP'ers, who disagree massively.
I'll just mention how utterly silly it is to divide along the line of: Shoot players VS Not shoot players, when the actual division seems to be between "Competitive" and "Casual" players. One camp tries to find and play the META, the other shouldn't give a single toss about it.

The primary fears of the two camps are: "That ship built as efficiently as possible is better than mine which isn't!" and "They will force us to not build as efficiently as possible!" (both exaggareted some, but I suck at wording)

Those two fears, as anyone can see, are mutually exclusive. There will forever be a META, and those using it will forever be better than those not taking advantage of it. That's a simple reality, which will never change.

Then why, instead of discussing having good mechanics that allow a wide range of playstyles, does the discussion rather seem to be: "META must be destroyed!" vs "This doesn't destroy META, it just makes it something else"? Or perhaps rather "Why isn't META what I wanted?" vs "Why should META be what you want?"

Additionally: Why, instead of simply dividing the two camps (like most games do, "Ranked/Competitive" and "Unranked/Casual"), onto their own servers, is there a massive hateboner going on to exterminate one or the other? It's a building game, in every building game ever, you can build "pretty", or you can build efficiently, the two never coincide. Age of Empires 2, you can make a beautiful village with walls and such, but it's a waste in any competitive sense, or you can like the way militia looks, but they won't beat knights.

I have a few theories, which are somewhat relevant:
1: the game takes bloody long to get anything done in, so everyone gets invested.
2: Some people want to blow each other up, others don't, and for some reason both can't exist in different places at the same time.
3: Some people say "If I see your RP Stardestroyer, my Spaghetti META monster will blow it up without mercy", which is relevant because the division doesn't happen.
4: The weird concept that: META in Starmade should be decided by the developer, not discovered by the players and then tweaked.
5: People disagree what counts as abuse and what doesn't (what is and isn't a broken mechanic).

So, have I completely missed the mark and am "a fool who knows what he talks about" or "a nooblet" or perhaps "a complete wanker" or have I somewhat gotten somewhere and am "a brilliant genius" or was this all a giant waste of time?

 

[Hemmingfish]

You have missed the mark completely and attempted to boil the game down into two strawmen and made them fight. The new system coming in does nothing but constrain creativity in order to make a ship that functions, let alone strong. I'm not a PVPer, I just want to make ships that farm pirates. The problem is that I can't do this unless I build my ships in developer-approved shapes under the new system. If I don't want to make a stick, I'm screwed. PVPers are annoyed because the new system does not fix the problems that they find with the current power system, while adding additional restrictions to people who want to make good-looking but PVP-viable ships. It's a wasted update and doesn't succeed in any of the goals the developers have outlined.

I actually haven't seen any compelling arguments other than "you're wrong" from the two or three RP people on the forum who are consistently bombarded with disagrees, so they can safely be discounted.

 

[The Judge]

4: The weird concept that: META in Starmade should be decided by the developer, not discovered by the players and then tweaked.

Tbh the dynamic meta is the only thing the game has

 

[Non]

The best answer I think I can give to this is that some meta designs arent acceptable. Spaghetti is not an acceptable meta (using the term very loosely), because literally nothing can compete with a well made spaghetti at equal mass. Dumbbell ships are not an acceptable meta because they push mass outside a distance where it can be easily damaged, or something like that. They generally prevent people, rprs and pvprs alike, from having fun in the game.

 

[Zoolimar]

The best answer I think I can give to this is that some meta designs arent acceptable. Spaghetti is not an acceptable meta (using the term very loosely), because literally nothing can compete with a well made spaghetti at equal mass. Dumbbell ships are not an acceptable meta because they push mass outside a distance where it can be easily damaged, or something like that. They generally prevent people, rprs and pvprs alike, from having fun in the game.

Adding to this - same applies for any mechanics that could be exploited through docking additional entities in large quantities due to how it strains the servers and makes game that much less fun for everyone.

 

[KickingJoub]

You have missed the mark completely and attempted to boil the game down into two strawmen and made them fight. The new system coming in does nothing but constrain creativity in order to make a ship that functions, let alone strong. I'm not a PVPer, I just want to make ships that farm pirates. The problem is that I can't do this unless I build my ships in developer-approved shapes under the new system. If I don't want to make a stick, I'm screwed. PVPers are annoyed because the new system does not fix the problems that they find with the current power system, while adding additional restrictions to people who want to make good-looking but PVP-viable ships. It's a wasted update and doesn't succeed in any of the goals the developers have outlined.

I actually haven't seen any compelling arguments other than "you're wrong" from the two or three RP people on the forum who are consistently bombarded with disagrees, so they can safely be discounted.

You have missed the mark completely as I don't think I once mentioned my opinion on the new power system. In fact, you will find that I'm against there being some kind of mass divide (in the way the game is viewed) between RP and PvP players, and advocated that good mechanics should be the priority for everyone. I also said that I don't believe the developer should be the arbitrator of what are approved ship shapes.

Actually I'm pretty sure you're just misplacing my motives completely, though I appreciate the comment anyway as it's a point of view I forgot about completely (since it's my own, I just want to derp about and shoot pirates myself)

Thank you The Judge and Non and Zoolimar for your replies.

 

[FlyingDebris]

Tbh I kind of count myself square in the middle of both camps, but meta is always something found out by the players that (optimally) the devs should try to balance out to keep all playstyle equal. Schine, however, seems to have a hard time doing this.

 

[KickingJoub]

To drag in the power update, as that's apparently the hot potato, I think it's a bunch of garbage and fails to achieve whatever weird goal it supposedly has.

Tbh I kind of count myself square in the middle of both camps, but meta is always something found out by the players that (optimally) the devs should try to balance out to keep all playstyle equal. Schine, however, seems to have a hard time doing this.

With playstyles, are you referring to stuff like: hunting pirates, mining and/or building factories, blowing up other players, or being a merchant? (or roleplaying, which barely fits?) That's what I mean when I say "playstyles", which can then be defined as either competitive or casual. Competitive factory builders make the most efficient ones possible, casual ones make one that works. Can those ever be equal? Competitive players should and will beat casual ones every single time. Competitive PvP'ers make spaghetti meta, casual PvP'ers hit each other with sticks (which beats spaghetti so long as it's boiled)

The best answer I think I can give to this is that some meta designs arent acceptable.
*snip examples*

So the issue is rather that methods should be found to combat these "unacceptable meta builds", without unduly constricting other ways of playing/building. Do I at least have that right? So there should be several roughly equally good meta designs with comparative mass/resource cost, that have strengths and weaknesses and are thus designed for different strategies?

 

[FlyingDebris]

To drag in the power update, as that's apparently the hot potato, I think it's a bunch of garbage and fails to achieve whatever weird goal it supposedly has.



With playstyles, are you referring to stuff like: hunting pirates, mining and/or building factories, blowing up other players, or being a merchant? (or roleplaying, which barely fits?) That's what I mean when I say "playstyles", which can then be defined as either competitive or casual. Competitive factory builders make the most efficient ones possible, casual ones make one that works. Can those ever be equal? Competitive players should and will beat casual ones every single time. Competitive PvP'ers make spaghetti meta, casual PvP'ers hit each other with sticks (which beats spaghetti so long as it's boiled)



So the issue is rather that methods should be found to combat these "unacceptable meta builds", without unduly constricting other ways of playing/building. Do I at least have that right? So there should be several roughly equally good meta designs with comparative mass/resource cost, that have strengths and weaknesses and are thus designed for different strategies?

Essentially, but no one strategy should be more viable than others. Currently, that strategy is speed and range tanking, and slow, armored, single entity ships are completely non-viable.

 

[Dire Venom]

It is the devs job to make a system which is fun and can be compedative for a variety of players.

Unfortunately the devs lack of understanding of their own system and it's effects have resulted in clearly broken systems that fail to achevie their desired effect.

Up until recently the concept of islands/spaghetti was completely new to the devs (which says a lot about communication cosidering they've been a hot topic for the past 6 months)

 

[KickingJoub]

Essentially, but no one strategy should be more viable than others. Currently, that strategy is speed and range tanking, and slow, armored, single entity ships are completely non-viable.

Thanks for the explanation, my RTS background sometimes clouds me from thinking Ship VS Ship. Maybe indeed it should be made so that with good play, both glass cannons and tanks should be viable, though from the way I understand it, it's currently possible to make a high DPS ship with good survival qualities. Kind of breaks the meta, or something.

It is the devs job to make a system which is fun and can be compedative for a variety of players.

Unfortunately the devs lack of understanding of their own system and it's effects have resulted in clearly broken systems that fail to achevie their desired effect.

Up until recently the concept of islands/spaghetti was completely new to the devs (which says a lot about communication cosidering they've been a hot topic for the past 6 months)

That clears up some of what caused me a bit of confusion (devs don't pay attention to the ones who use the mechanics most effectively, thus know them the best). So thanks. Can't think of anything smart to reply, so here's an emote instead

 

[Zackey_TNT]

meta is really hard to pin down because you can "make" anything in starmade work if you put enough effort into it(and thats whats great about starmade), but there is always the nonobjective build styles out there that are definitely superior over a good chunk of designs. I've had a few.... they don't last long

 

[NeonSturm]

For me it's that a RP-ship should have about 80% the combat rating of a META-ship.
Not just 30%.

To accommodiate for that 20% loss you can bring one more ally or build bigger, but 30% efficiency is just too few.

As Example:
It is also about letting RP-builds cloak/jam indefinitely if they choose without making META too op by making cloak/jam 90% of the RP's power source and 40% of the META's.

And sometimes it's about who can jump just a little bit faster to catch someone else before they jump again.

 

[Scypio]

For me it's that a RP-ship should have about 80% the combat rating of a META-ship.
Not just 30%.

To accommodiate for that 20% loss you can bring one more ally or build bigger, but 30% efficiency is just too few.

....

I'm tired and tilted of reading this over and over. Explain me why "rp" builds are worse than pure pvp ones. You can post a wall of text if you so please to.

 

[NeonSturm]

I can make an RP ship 14x9x20 or strip the RP part to get 14x4x20.
Obviously the stripped variant has less hull (about 1/2 or 2/3) and needs less thrusters.
For that I can make more systems. It also has a lower sized hitbox.

As long as the advantages are not more than 110% or 120% combat rating compared to the RP ship (or the RP ship 80-90% compared to the PvP) all is fine.

Assuming you cannot make them equal, I want a smaller margin as long as it's possible.

 

[Scypio]

The first sentence and you are already wrong.

You are comparing two ships with their sizes. You should know with the spaghetti meta that comparing ships with their sizes is just utterly wrong in any way possibles.
Even heard about baffled armor ? You can even make it pretty and add some interiors. Not to mention that empty space doesn't add any weight at all while adding more systems do. There is enough proof on this forum about well designed ships with interior being as good as any others. I'm not going to explain it again.

 

[jstenholt]

I just want to make sure that OP doesn't think "meta" is actually an acronym.

 

[NTIMESc]

I just want to make sure that OP doesn't think "meta" is actually an acronym.

I think it would be more informative to state that some players may be using the term meta to refer to metagame, but the OP did in fact define META as an acronym, so all subsequent use should be referring to his acronym, unless the point was to turn the conversation into a metagame.

 

[KickingJoub]

I just want to make sure that OP doesn't think "meta" is actually an acronym.

Your concern warms my heart, but I know rather well what the various meanings of "meta" are. NTIMESc explains my intent aptly, though I will say that I had no intent of fostering a meta-conversation.

 

[PizzaPress]

I think that, within reason, as many shapes/designs(Star Destroyer, Giant Isanth, Borg Cube, Nadesico, Enterprise) of ship as possible should have an insignificant difference in effectiveness. This is a difficult goal to achieve, especially whilst also making interesting building mechanics.
Internal space for RP rooms without significant deficits in efficiency is even more difficult to achieve.