Microblog Memes

You forgot the funnest two, Melvin and Vorthos!

Melvin is the mechanics guy, he plays because he loves the complex interaction between different parts. This is the guy building fully automated redstone in Minecraft.

Vothos is the lore master. He might not even be good at the game but he can recite the history of Tamriel in elder scrolls verbatim.

You are forgetting about Steve. Steve doesn't care about winning, Steve only wants you to suffer. He will play a mono blue deck (or red with tons of removal) full of counters and spells to bounce back permanents to your hand. He will have a single 1/1 flier to poke at you every turn while he stops you from playing the game completely. Go fuck yourself Steve. (also Teemo main in league)

Isn't there like a Winston?

Winston is a filthy casual. Complicated rules, paragraphs on the card, any automation, doing too many things in a single turn are all reasons he doesn't have fun. He isn't very bright. He is the antithesis of Spike. He has fun by playing the game for a reasonable length of time.

Losing on turn 1 is the culmination of everything Winston hates.

Source: Am a Winston...

Right now Winston stops playing every CGC because of incessant power creep.

I'm definitely johnny. I find a playstyle/character/build/whatever applies I like and then I'll minmax the shit out of it. But I won't just switch to what's meta.

This is a great thread. I'll add Jesse.

Jesse is there to hang out with his buddies and wants to just BS.

The game is just common ground for a Jesse or group of Jesse's to shoot the shit for an hour or two at the end of a long day. Previous generation would find your Jesse hanging out at the bar, or sports ball games. Jesse's really started appearing in games en masse during covid. They aren't necessarily good at the game, often bad, but that doesn't matter.

My gaming group are all Jesse's.

This time for sure, I'll throw away every bow I get, just blade and magic this time! Oh wow, you can conjure a sword that does way more damage than the swords I have access to. Let's see what else I can conj- and I'm a stealth archer with a bound bow, damnit...

Never happened to me, but I hate shooters.

Especially in RPGs, you shouldn't want the most efficient build possible because those are boring. You should instead want something that is fun to play and fits your character.

I immensely enjoyed dual wielding swords and using the time stop shout. Its DPS was so high, they could kill an entire room of enemies before the time stop ended. making them all fall to the ground at the same time while you sheath your swords like a badass.

Or the time I played in VR a stealth conjuration/necromancer. I could just sit on the floor and nobody could find me. While my minions did all the fighting. If an enemy died, their corps would be raised and added to my army.

The humorous bit to me is I have never even been tempted to stealth arch. I just started flaming people to death from level one and never stop. Why, yes, I will kill alduin with double handed flames, thank you very much!

The best/optimal items.

Short for "meta gaming" or "meta game", which is essentially the identification and application of the various playing style archetypes that work best in any given game.

As others have said, it functionally means picking the most optimal strategies and/or equips, but it's now somewhat archaic use was more like a scholarly examination/application of archetypes, playstyles, use-cases, and vulnerabilities/bugs/eccentricities that could be taken advantage of and brought together to make consistent winning strategies. There is rarely ever (probaly never, really) a meta that stays unchanged throughout its games history because meta is, in a way, an ever-ongoing conversation between the game, its players and, in some ways, the wider audience that both bring in.

Well balanced games with deep design choices often have sleeper strategies that, while available at release, are not necessarily noticed or honed until later on because they require a measure of abstract thought and/or an understanding of various other elements and the interplay they create under specific circumstances. In that it takes into account both refined knowledge and practical, creative application, "meta" is kind of that sweet spot between science and art that so many people get drawn to in so many other ways.

Edit: should have read more of these comments before jumping the gun. I dont think I've added anything that hasn't already been said in some way or another. Oops

The meta in any given game is "the most effective tactic available" or just information acquired outside of the game to be efficient.

Like you could pick a class like warrior in some game and hours into playing realise that its the most difficult class to play, meanwhile the sorcerer is easy and good out the gate, so people would look up the best class/gear/shortcuts/exploits even before starting a game to be the most efficient, instead of just playing what they like.

While Million's explanation is good, I'd like to try my own phrasing:

In this context, setting up your character's armor by 'the meta' would basically mean picking the armor with the best stats, that maybe synergize with each other and/or the playstyle/class build that is the most overpowered, most broken.

You could maybe call that 'optimizing the fun out of the game'.

What this person, OP, is saying is... nah, I'm just gonna pick the armor/clothes I think look the best, knowing that will make things harder for me than just choosing the 'optimal' armor, and I'll either git gud at the game, or die trying.

Its... kind of like how DBZ characters wear weighted clothes.

Its an intentional, chosen handicap, in a gameplay mechanics sense, that makes things more difficult, so training / playing the game is harder... but if you can handle it, you're probably going to be better at the game.

I think that's only part of it. Take a game like any monster catching one. There is going to be a meta, a "tier list" that tells you that these monsters are the best of the best. And that's fine. But the problem is when the game is poorly balanced so if you don't play the meta, you can't complete the game. If I can't beat the game using what I like, the game is just telling me that I shouldn't play it.

It's a video game term, picking the meta means picking the characters considered the strongest in the present state of the game. (Presumably a game that receives constant patches to achieve balance between old and new characters so that all characters are viable to play)