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Most Effective Tactics Available for META is stupid
Meta is a greek word meaning transcending. It is the same meta as in metaphysics and metaprogression. Metagame means a game within a game which is usually a juggle of multiple dominant strategies. It is the state of the game, what gets played and how. It does not judge. An acronym working out to almost mean the same thing sometimes is a convenient coincidence.
Why is substituting the greek meta for that acronym stupid? Because it is incomplete, based on perception, and a blanket statement. It arrogantly asserts players, or at least the ones everyone copies from, understand the game to the point where they can judge what is most effective. It ignores strategy/build evolution proving them wrong, edge cases like players rejecting the most dominant strategies, players knowing each other so well that they do suboptimal moves to throw off the other, and players unable to get any value out of the theoretical most dominant strategy (see Dead Hard). Mindgames are part of most metagames but the acronym has no place for them as well. Using this acronym for bronze league gamers is absurd. There are different metagames in different regions - the acronym cannot deal with that.
Stick to metagame to have a more complete grasp of the concept.
Comments
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did chat gpt write this?
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Why are we even talking about the meaning of words in a video game?
No one uses any words to describe things in video games so that it's correct by the meaning of the words, I mean "slugging" also doesn't mean directly that you let survivors on the ground. Everyone knows whats meant when you say "meta" so it's getting used like this xD
Most people playing this game aren't language scientists so they won't use the perfectly accurate words and they probably also don't care about using it.
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Sure, it is a minor issue. The point is what is popular is not necessarily the best which is what the acronym says, and that there can be different sets of popular strategies where the acronym is quite singular. Depending on the context it loses the little sense it has. You don't have to be a linguist to mildly pay attention to the words you use. Or just arbitrarily string to together random letters and call that a word.
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Educating dbd players on etymology? What a strange notion.
There are just too many of them, you can only reach a tiny fraction.
I rather giggle while I imagine how confused will they get once they hear about things like metamorphosis or metaphysics.
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While it's probably true it's still very much the best in terms of dbd. People like winning so the things that are popular are probably the things that let you win a lot/the most.
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Except we know Japan really likes Self-Care while in West it is commonly considered griefing even if you pair it with Botany. This is exactly why adding a judgement component to the concept is problematic.
It's more a semantics concern, the etymology is just a bonus for context. Unfortunately, there is an even worse offender than meta - the unholy, over- and misused prefix pre. So, yes, you are correct, this thread is mostly pointless.
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Stick to metagame
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What a shame. I wrote this post for you.
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I wrote the post for you.
I know. I salute your effort, but META in the context of gaming does not require the affix of "-game". Its meaning is already well-established in gaming as is.
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You say this but i remember it being used differently 10 years ago.
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That is (fortunately/unfortunate) the evolution of language; new words are created, old words get new meaning, and old words sometimes disappear from the collective vocabulary all together.
If you compared modern day English to English from one, two, or three centuries ago, I'm sure you're aware of how vastly different it would be.
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Yes, but this particular evolution is not just different but inferior.
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Japan plays a lot different than us as far as I know, they play a lot less without tunneling, camping and slugging and more with pure chasespeed if I remember correctly. That being said I just saw a few tournament-like matches from hens and I can't tell how it's in normal games.
Yes you're right of course you can't just take it as the best for all enviroments, but with the different playstyles you could kinda see it as it's own game and therefore it would be weird if it's still the same meta. You have to look at which context it's meant and for what circumstances, a meta forms usually in a specific enviroment and it's not even like there's just the one meta for everything. As excampel distortion is meta against aura-perks, blood echo will probably be meta against exhaustion-perks, pop and pain-res are meta against gens and so on (of course that will probably be different in japan if they really use pure chasespeed they'll probably use chase-perks a lot I asume).
The meta at it's whole is just a combination of meta-perks for specific cases against another combination of meta-perks for specific cases. Also it's not stale (at least if anything would change with the playstyle or perks)
Well I can't explain it very well because my english is probably too bad for me to explain it perfectly but it makes sense in my head to use it how it's already used and also see it as the best. ^^
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Doubtful.
Anyway yeah the acronym is weird (and i think it's a backronym), but you can say "meta" without it necessarily being the acronym. You don't have to say metagame every time.
I think like 95% of people who say "meta" mean it in the context of metagame, as in the game beyond the game, not "most effective tactics available".
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What an interesting thread. Definitely a much appreciated detour from the norms around here. Kudos to you my friend @alpha5
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I think you'll find that this sentiment was present in every generation of language. It's just much harder to appreciate it while it's happening. With every generation, loss is inevitable. But with it also comes enrichment, which becomes much harder to notice if you only pay attention to the things going out of fashion. My personal favourite of news words (neologisms) entering the "DbD lexicon" would be "kobe'ing".
In linguistics, there's these two terms: prescriptivism, and descriptivism. Heavily simplified, prescriptivism is the act of describing how a language "should" be used in order for it to be considered "correct", most prominently in use of lexicon and grammar. This is the approach you'll find in school books. It focuses on how you "should" use language in order for you to be understood by the biggest group of people. It's essentially a large set of rules that we've all more or less subconsciously agreed to adhere to, in order to communicate properly with people we don't have anything in common with.
Descriptivism chooses to more or less toss that notion of "correct" out the window, and instead focus on how that correctness vastly differs per situation, and even then it constantly shifts. By extension, to a descriptivist, there's no such thing as a "stupid" or "inferior" way of using language, in any form, so long as the fundamental basis of communication remains intact. Which is to say, so long as the message is clear, and is understood by both parties (speaker/writer & listener/reader), the lexical/grammatical "correctness" of the means of how that's achieved is largely irrelevant.
The latter is why dialects and jargon aren't necessarily considered incorrect in the grand scheme of languages. For all intents and purposes, they could be considered their own mini-languages, with their own lexicons, grammar, and the like.
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but with the different playstyles you could kinda see it as it's own game and therefore it would be weird if it's still the same meta.
This outside factor of choosing how/what to play is exactly what transcends a game. A metagame is an information game where you make decisions before the game even starts. If there are multiple strategies being used at the same point in time they are part of the metagame. If you separate these strategies into different metas running parallel to each other but are played by the same group of people you reduce it to a list of popular strategies in which case there is no reason to use the term meta at all.
All this is a lot more obvious in a RTS like Starcraft or DotA/League. In Starcraft you have a set of strategies that somewhat circularly beat each other and choosing which to go for during the loading screen on ladder when you see what matchup you got is the metagame. Cheese/super early all-in > fast expanding > safe one base play > cheese. Furthermore there are tech rushes and harassment builds that can end up on either side. Starcraft Brood War's last patch was 2001 yet the metagame still evolved years later like Bisu revolutionizing the PvZ matchup in 2007 coming up with a completely new build/playstyle. More generally, choosing builds for a Best of X series is peak metagaming especially if you know who you are playing against. You might know your opponent heavily favors early aggression so you play safe, or he prefers fast expansions so you play even greedier than you expect him to but then he proxies two barracks just outside the base you want to expand to. In DotA/League you have the pick/ban phase and the choice who send to which lane.
The meta at it's whole is just a combination of meta-perks for specific cases against another combination of meta-perks for specific cases. Also it's not stale (at least if anything would change with the playstyle or perks)
This is only mostly true. True metagaming happens occasionally in DBD like when Plot Twist was new and killers brought Deerstalker, or when Sable came out and killers checked basements or brought Territorial Imperative, or you burn copious amounts of Sacrifcial Wards during night time DBD because you know literally every game would be Eyrie of Crows or Bedham if you don't, or survivors running Object of Obsession expecting killers to run Weave Attunement. Though I agree Metagaming in DBD is limited because perks are blindpicked and usually doesn't extend further than running anti-tunnel builds after you have been tunneled repeatedly that day or playing around specific gen spawns like RPD lobby or the 3gen around gallows on Saloon.
Yes, you are correct. Thanks for pointing it out. I just hope to contain this little desaster.
Yes, change is inevitable and sometimes adds to the language. Still, I reject this change in particular because that backcronym impersonating a 2500 year old word that is still in use today is to be thrown out. If it was a new word altogether I couldn't complain as much.
Thank you for this excursion. I appreciate it.
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