06-21-2017, 02:46 PM
I think it has always been like that. I have observed this in online RTS games since the beginning of online RTS games.
Classic pattern:
* Players play the game more or less like a bunch of idiots.
* Some particular strategy rises from the mud that works well.
* All of the idiots mimic that strategy.
* Every new player just copies that strategy and never tries anything else. The tank rush is the meta so day 1 they are tank rushing.
I want to say that in RTS gaming you're really talking about an elite 1-in-200 or less people who really go out there and form new strategies. Everyone else just mimics them. If mechanics change then the general population just sort of blunders about until that 1-in-200 manages to cough up a new meta for everyone else to blindly follow again.
Like 99% of why I love RTS gaming is to go find out what the meta is and then find some way of beating it that is not the meta. When everyone is playing with scissors I love to go find the rock and I will lose again and again and again trying different things until I get that rock. (I consider it to be a bad RTS game when I have thoroughly racked my brains and tried a hundred things and cannot find the rock. If it turns out that there is only 1 scissors way to play and everything else is paper then I lose interest. Scissors vs scissors is only interesting in lesbian porn.)
Naval Action is the same ol' same ol' in terms of players.
I mean you saw it in EQ2 as well. The meta was "flimsy DPS classes that melt everything in 2 seconds". That was the scissors and everything else was paper EXCEPT for what we stumbled upon, which was if you make a guild consisting almost entirely Paladins and Shadow Knights, that was the rock. We just crushed all these "elite PvP" groups unless they massively outleveled us and even then we could give them some trouble. And the funny thing is that for such an effective tactic, nobody else was doing it. Where were all the other thinkers?? Why didn't we run into other guilds doing the same thing? It was great for PvP and PvE so you'd think it would be fairly common.
I think it's because the world is full of... I guess we'd just have to call them lazy thinkers. They see what works and they mimic it and they won't risk trying new things.
And I might argue that Purge is one of the best gaming guilds out there because our ratio of thinkers to mimicers is WAY out of whack to the general population. I think pretty much everyone here has outlandish ideas on a fairly regular basis and is willing to die and lose trying them. And frequently enough we uncover better ways to play without following the meta. It's what I've always really enjoyed about gaming.
And think back to POTBS. We'd beat them in brawls because we are all thinkers and all capable of adapting on the fly to whatever is happening around us. They were mainly mimicers and without their leader able to tell them what to do they got lost in a brawl. Their leader was good and could do a great line battle with a bunch of zombies behind him but make everyone think on their own and most of them were useless.
Although one change I feel I've seen over time is that I think the morons are more vocal now, demanding developers adapt to them rather than the other way around because there is some history of that working. The idiots will dumb down games to their level whenever they can. "Why adapt when I can cry and make them change it" has worked a few too many times.
But the morons were still there 20 years ago. They just didn't talk quite as much because forums weren't as big of a thing and developers weren't as accessible. Instead of crying on forums demanding the game adapt to them, they'd find the top player, watch what he does and just mimic him, essentially letting someone else figure out the solution to the problem because they could not be bothered to do so themselves.
Classic pattern:
* Players play the game more or less like a bunch of idiots.
* Some particular strategy rises from the mud that works well.
* All of the idiots mimic that strategy.
* Every new player just copies that strategy and never tries anything else. The tank rush is the meta so day 1 they are tank rushing.
I want to say that in RTS gaming you're really talking about an elite 1-in-200 or less people who really go out there and form new strategies. Everyone else just mimics them. If mechanics change then the general population just sort of blunders about until that 1-in-200 manages to cough up a new meta for everyone else to blindly follow again.
Like 99% of why I love RTS gaming is to go find out what the meta is and then find some way of beating it that is not the meta. When everyone is playing with scissors I love to go find the rock and I will lose again and again and again trying different things until I get that rock. (I consider it to be a bad RTS game when I have thoroughly racked my brains and tried a hundred things and cannot find the rock. If it turns out that there is only 1 scissors way to play and everything else is paper then I lose interest. Scissors vs scissors is only interesting in lesbian porn.)
Naval Action is the same ol' same ol' in terms of players.
I mean you saw it in EQ2 as well. The meta was "flimsy DPS classes that melt everything in 2 seconds". That was the scissors and everything else was paper EXCEPT for what we stumbled upon, which was if you make a guild consisting almost entirely Paladins and Shadow Knights, that was the rock. We just crushed all these "elite PvP" groups unless they massively outleveled us and even then we could give them some trouble. And the funny thing is that for such an effective tactic, nobody else was doing it. Where were all the other thinkers?? Why didn't we run into other guilds doing the same thing? It was great for PvP and PvE so you'd think it would be fairly common.
I think it's because the world is full of... I guess we'd just have to call them lazy thinkers. They see what works and they mimic it and they won't risk trying new things.
And I might argue that Purge is one of the best gaming guilds out there because our ratio of thinkers to mimicers is WAY out of whack to the general population. I think pretty much everyone here has outlandish ideas on a fairly regular basis and is willing to die and lose trying them. And frequently enough we uncover better ways to play without following the meta. It's what I've always really enjoyed about gaming.
And think back to POTBS. We'd beat them in brawls because we are all thinkers and all capable of adapting on the fly to whatever is happening around us. They were mainly mimicers and without their leader able to tell them what to do they got lost in a brawl. Their leader was good and could do a great line battle with a bunch of zombies behind him but make everyone think on their own and most of them were useless.
Although one change I feel I've seen over time is that I think the morons are more vocal now, demanding developers adapt to them rather than the other way around because there is some history of that working. The idiots will dumb down games to their level whenever they can. "Why adapt when I can cry and make them change it" has worked a few too many times.
But the morons were still there 20 years ago. They just didn't talk quite as much because forums weren't as big of a thing and developers weren't as accessible. Instead of crying on forums demanding the game adapt to them, they'd find the top player, watch what he does and just mimic him, essentially letting someone else figure out the solution to the problem because they could not be bothered to do so themselves.