META bullying rant

Just as a reminder to all of you so offended by their favourite career not getting on exemplifying META list:

There is no reason to start holywars over the fact, because it is here simply to represent their average value in team composition building. Average as is in hands of your mediocre player and in your typical Legend combat situation. And if you insist that you are godlike with @career_name@, then you should be proud that you’re doing a better job with more challenge than your teammates, and not offended, unless you’re being dishonest.

Yet again, the topic is not about how poor and weak some characters are. It adresses developers’ unhealthy favoritism towards some careers and disregard to the others. And if it goes on as it is, we might just end up with situation every tl;dr poster took their time to assume on the topic: off-meta characters being objectively bad and not worth picking at all.

Supporting feedback givers and developers on the cause of improving every player’s chances of winning with every hero and making it adequately challenging, thus making the game diverse and fun will help you and the game you (supposedly) love in the long run. Boasting about “that one game you won a race against your teammates” will help nothing.

The thing is that the AVERAGE player shouldn’t be in legend in the first place. The devs said that they wanted legend to be pushing the limits and deeds are for pushing beyond it. And to be honest here, the average players are most probably still playing veteran.

That was one of the points on the topic, if you read it carefully. If they were making Legend harder and more challenging while fixing bugs with AI director - you would have a good point here, and this thread would not exist in the first place. But Phatshark are doing exactly the opposite, dumbing down difficulty for the masses while keeping victory somewhat RNG-based, unfair. The latter, considering the final state of VT1, was not their intended goal back there, as in VT1 you fight standard encounters of waves, roamers+specials, patrols+roamers, bosses+specials, and sometimes it’s a mix of small portions of everything. In VT2, devs did not make a single step towards stardandizing the encounters, yet almost every patch is aimed at directly lowering their difficulty, which even became hot topic on GC steam highlights on several occasions.

So, yeah, “challenging gamemode” excuse on developer’s side doesn’t hold any water, because if else, this topic wouldn’t probably exist, as it would’ve been completely fine that an entire gamemode is dedicated strictly for tryharders, and not just one part of a hero selection roster.

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You could always just leave.

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If anything, they have been reducing the RNG on legend and are still working to make it much more even throughout multiple runs. There are bugs that exists though that the devs are still trying to kill like facepatrols, which makes runs at times entirely RNG. But there is a whole lot of things experience players can do to minimize the effects of it.

Also if you want to talk about ‘favouritism’, the devs have been/will be nerfing the OP careers (pyro/beamstaff), but the rest of the careers are not bad, just not so easy to use that your average player can pick up and steamroll with it. If you see the careers you listed:

Pyro - Yeah OP and nerf. Now it seems to be slightly better and we’ll get there eventually.

BH - Good ranged burst damage but sustained damage vs armour is quite lacking. Overall pretty balanced but people like to pick it because you can 1 shot CW.

FK - 20% damage reduction aura + 10% damage reduction passive + 150 hp + 25% hp, need I say more? newb friendly, and the charge is pretty fun to use and is fairly useful.

IB - 30% damage reduction + 150 hp + 20% hp and grommil passive on top of that. Add in the flamethrower which makes newbs feel like they are helping while keeping them alive with a ton of ehp. Not to mention the ult which makes the IB near impossible to kill.

So there you go, 1 OP and getting nerfed career, 1 burst DPS career, and 2 hard to die tanks. Can anyone say newb trap? Simply put, the pyro carries the team (or not) with the BH helping while the two newb tanks absorb damage and try not to die. I’ve seen so many bad players on legend playing them just because they are crutches that lets bad players actually do something in a semi-useful manner.

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Yeah I’m not sure where this idea of fatshark trying to force people onto this supposed “meta” of IB/FK/Pyro/BH comes from, when we have not only had bug fixes which sorted a lot of power gain options those classes in particular don’t have and also buffed a lot of these classes as well. Like the main reason why Shade is even being looked at now is because they massively buffed her ult in 1.0.5, the same patch they nerfed waystalker on.

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This is very true, you can see this about all the less viable classes “The Insert weak class has a very high skill cap” is the argumet used everytime someone brings up weaknesses in a class, which they don’t have. Why would I handicap myself and my party just to play a class that’s “harder” to play when I can pick something that’s more powerfull and requires less?

However, the Meta is bad argument is not viable either. There will Always be a meta in gaming, dominant strategy will always decide what people play. Making a game 100% balanced is impossible, making a game where some classes are more usefull in some sitauations is easy but will make the game feel unbalanced where you get situationts like “If only we had X, we wouldn’t have whiped”. A game like L4D is a lot more balanced than V2 but it’s also a lot less fun since you can’t change it up and you rely on RNG for completing a level.

I’ve seen people wanting to remove classes all together and just let weapons drop on the maps, to that I say no, that would be awefull for this game. But I’m not going to complain about meta gaming, there will always be an “easy” way of completing levels, a strategy that works more often than not, you can’t get away from that.

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OP has very good points. The question it boils down to on most “off-metas” that are “viable” is: You can, but why would you want to? The only case in which I think it is true is with Slayer, which I personally consider on par with IB (if not a little bit more powerful when it comes to horde controlling), but requires alot more in terms of items and effort and allows for alot less margin when it comes to making mistakes, in all other cases, picks over meta are quirky at best and ruining at worst.

I think it lies partially within the way the game is layed out. You can nerf ranged into oblivion, it will still be more viable in many a situation than melee. You don’t want a game focused on ranged dps? Then don’t spam us with unreachable hordes of specials that deal damage at range. Then don’t give bosses RIDICILOUS amounts of damage reduction against melee attacks (not to mention the increased difficulty and risk involved in attacking a boss in melee). Then don’t give us map bosses that are hair-pullingly atrocious and tedious to fight in melee because they spam you with ranged attacks that hit like a freight train, have melee DR up the burble against melee and can teleport (I’m looking at you, Bubblesoup Hailstorm).

For the record, I don’t mind the game being the way it is. And I don’t think melee is that worse off than ranged. In fact, apart from some very apparent offenders, ranged and melee have a pretty good balance.

Melee on Legend is punishing and doesn’t allow much room for error, which is rightfully so. Problem is: You can very easily run pure ranged parties. I’ve played with Pyro, BH, Huntsman and Waystalker parties and if you know what you are doing, you don’t need tanking ability. You melt through bosses and should have little problems controlling hordes. You’ll have a VERY hard time running pure melee parties because you simply don’t have the dps for bosses. You can beat them, but it takes so long that it gives the AI director enough time to throw other stuff at you like hordes or pack of disablers and other specials that increase your chance of whiping.

I am by no means saying you should “nerf” the meta. There are certain things that need tweaking (Pyro’s special needs a cooldown increase tbh, heat sink needs a look into it, BH’s passive might need some tweaking like removing the melee kill cooldown or such), but otherwise, we need buffs and reworks on other carreers to make their playstyle more competible.

You want a melee focused game? Then let us deal more damage to bosses in melee. Let us stagger them with certain weapons heavy attacks and abilities (it’s almost bizarr that ranged DPS classes have more and better staggering ability from a far than the close combatants). Give us more temp-hp when killing in melee than when killing in ranged. Give melee talents and passives more of a punch and put ranged carreers that lack DPS (basically just Ranger Bardin and in further extent WS Keri and A LITTLE BIT Huntsman… yes, he has insane dps from his ability, but cooldown is a serious hurdle on it).

I don’t think we are actually THAT far from having proper class balance. The problem with most meta carreers is that apart from the game just catering to a certain playstyle, they have defined roles. What role does Ranger Bardin have? He certainly is neither ranged nor melee dps, his abilities suggest “support” character, but the support really doesn’t come from him, but from his drops. His playstyle or setup doesn’t change one bit, no matter if you select bomb drops, potion drops or ammo drops, he doesn’t produce them, they are just there. His active is very useful, but in the end, a lesser version of IB’s taunt while having only marginally better ranged and less… well, less everything.
What is WHC’s role? He has some melee thrown into the mix, but has very low HP and is kinda squishy. He has some headshot thing going on and get more ammo, his active somehow suggests a supporting role.

Speaking of WHC, that is another thing: Many non-meta carreers have sometimes mind-bogglingly long cooldowns for what they are worth. Taking WHC again, you have to wait like what, 2 minutes to get a whopping SIX seconds of extra crits for MAYBE the whole team and an AoE knockdown/stagger. It’s not only unreliable, the game is fast paced and action oriented, you want to use your abilities often. Doesn’t mean I am advocating for everything to have just a 30 second cooldown, but look at how Shade became very viable after her ability’s cooldown got reduced. Now you can actually play with it, experiment with it and use it in other situations like killing priority, find new ways how it can be a boon.

tl;dr: We are not that very far away from having good balance. But we need more defined roles for certain carreers and ther abilities geared towards that imho. Melee needs a serious buff against bosses and overall more incentive to use apart from damage, cleave and stagger.

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I agree with what you’ve said, but I am not asking for a perfect balance here.
Perfect balance is unachieveable, but “good enough” balance means simply moving towards perfection step by step, and not in the opposite direction, like in VT2’s case.

As I said, whenever they try to nerf OP things, they end up just making it worse for “everything, but”. Beamstaff nerf is a good example. It used to be a good equilizer for Unchained and Battlemage to keep up with Pyro in terms of rapidly eliminating key targets in a fight as long as they are good with instant headshots (specials, SV, berserks), rapid bodyshots (Mauler) and mix-ups of both (shield SV). Guess what, Pyro’s power boosts and nearly guaranteed crits allow them to consistently keep doing this post-nerf. Meanwhile, subclasses lost the only thing that was making them a decent option, while also having numerous downgrades when comparing to Pyro.

Same can be said about, for example, Kerillian, who gets butchered up and down in different careers without really bringing anything valuable to the table in the first place. It is by far the most played character mainly because it’s much easier to run on lower difficulties. Needless to say that people keep running her on Legend, because she should be a pick as good as any. But in reality, Kerillian and Kerillian players are a huge meme and are usually equilized to a noob who just got out of Veteran without any game knowledge. And, considering the fact that racing for stats in a pretty counter-productive way to play the game, this impression of heroes who were “just doing their job” by supporting dedicated classes instead of running forward to kill more than their DPS and put the game at risk, usually rewards off-meta players with toxisity for “under-performing”. Same “bad impression” can grow around any party member w/o great (not good, but great) killing utility, because they are not designed to perform well by simply existing, unlike their superior counterparts, which don’t have to put the run at risk to objectively perform better.

This is (not the only) reason why I say the game bullies you into playing meta. If you desire to play productively and still have your selected hero have as much impact on your game’s outcome as any, you must consider playing what’s best over your preferrences. I, for example, was running Unchained Sienna to both complement party needs AND have fun with something exotic. After the nerf, I moved onto Zealot. I have to reserve playing, say, HM to playing with premade, because that’s where I have no fear about going forward and scoring some kills without sacrificing our victory, while taking her into pub almost guarantees bad performance, toxisity, lost runs and so on.

P.S:

Thanks, love.

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It’s almost impossible to take seriously anyone who misuses the term “low key”.

Isn’t that Odin’s brother, anyway?

The meta is shaped by whichever classes work best in any situation, thats true. But people that enforce said meta also forget that there certainly are people out there that can play WHC or Unchained to their fullest potential, they are just rare. So they assume any WHC or Unchained they see is garbage, and act accordingly.

That being said, people enjoy easy runs. Pyro burning head spam is the easiest boss killer out there, ridiculous damage and almost perma stunlock with conc potion. And thats not even taking beam staff into consideration. BH is favoured because of his ability to systematically whittle down the boss with free crits and bottomless ammo. WHC will inevitably run out, and pretty soon. Ranged superiority is extreme when it comes to bossfighting, because they are rather unpredictable when it comes to aggro. More than once I approached a spawn or rat ogre from behind while he was fighting a comrade, just to have him 180 into ground slam that I couldnt possibly react to. Mind you, BEFORE I even hit him.

I have seen quite alot of people that were honestly thinking that without a pyro or BH in the group, the game is lost by default and do their best to sabotage the run to prove their point when you dare disagree with them.

I’m really ticked that people actually think IB and FK are more powerful than the alternatives. Here is a hint: You don’t need tanks on legend.

Ranger Vet is a very strong career to play if you know how to play it well. I make the pyros in my games when I’m playing him cry because they can’t get their green circles anymore if I’m in the mood for it. I’m much happier seeing a ranger in the team than an IB as a ranger can bring a lot more support and firepower to the team than the IB can.

To be accurate, it is the newb players that bully you to play meta. You can play pretty much most careers and have significant impact on the game provided you have the skill level to be able to use whatever you are playing. Of course there are some things that still needs tweaking, but those will be fixed over time for sure.

If anything, I’ve had better experiences with off meta players than with meta only players. Most people that I’ve come across insisting on meta builds on legend should have been playing on champion or under, their skill levels were simply not good enough and need to crutch with easy to play characters to get where they are at (and they still struggle at it).

I’ve played before 1.0.6 (currently on vacation so i can only read about the changes) and i have not noticed that anyone in legend “enforced” meta classes or whatever. People were playing everything, in my experience. We should not be discussing “meta”, we should be discussing fun.

Make every class/career more fun to play, that is what is most important. If you have a good time playing, you will come back and play more. Every class is viable and i have beaten legend as merc Kruber numerous times, with both “meta” and “off-meta” groups, as i am sure many others did as well. Is it easier with the “top 4” classes? Sure it is, but whatever you do, there will be 4 classes on the top.

I would welcome if every single career would be absolutely bonkers in a single thing. Imagine if all monster HP was increased by like 1000% and every career gets a HUGE bonus against some types. You would be “I wish we had a slayer now” if a chaos warrior took 50 hits to take down but 5 for slayer and you encounter 4 CW in a horde.

Each career should have a distinct identity and we’re all set. I am sure the devs will get to this eventually, give them time :slight_smile:

We already have several careers with identities. It can only get better going forward :smiley:

Overall, game is fun and the only thing i am concerned about is that legend will become too easy after some time. There really should be an “YOU DO NOT GO HERE UNLESS YOU ARE INSANE AND WANT ADDITIONAL CHALLENGE WITHOUT INCREASED REWARDS” difficulty.

Legend is, unfortunately, too hard for an average player and that is a fact. I think more players would stick around if champion was the endgame grind and that only thing that legend would give you is a “notch on your axe”. As it stands right now, you are “expected” to play on legend, or you suck. People do not like to suck at a game, they will quit.

And i am actually fine with that, it means i will get to play with players who are enjoying the challenge, even if it means that i will need to wait a bit longer for the game.

And the whole “Meta” thing? Completely irrelevant. Pick a career, git gud at it and you will be welcomed in every group (except in the ones that you do not really want to be in, anyway), once they see what you can do. Or don’t, your choice.

Peace

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Maybe not go too crazy on the “Imagine if all monster HP was increased by like 1000% and every career gets a HUGE bonus against some types.” since that means you then require groups to take certain classes just to be able to deal with certain things. We already have this in place partly with the amount of armoured enemies there are and it unfortunately does make some weapons harder to use because at some point you are going to be facing quite a few stormvermin.

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WHC is my main, I completed alot legend runs with him without much trouble…

However, there is increasing number of people who discriminate non meta heroes, and instant kick 2sec after join if they not like your class, its just sux to be kicked before they even try you.

Meta; making bellow average skill players to look and feel pro (since invented) this is best definition of meta I ever found, paintfull truth for army of people, across all games in the world

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You can’t seriously compare WHC to BH. Sure if you’re a good player you may have good WHC runs but BH is just miles ahead in the same situations.

Watch this video about game balance. Meta gaming is a bad word for many but it doesn’t mean anything bad, it’s just a way of explaning the current strategy that wins most times.

I’ve already seen it. You should probably watch it too, it explains some of the points I have adressed in my discussion, and can be related to many things suggested in this thread by other users. As I remember, it also touches different balancing aspects Phatshark should look into, for example, not having characters who can do everything, or not having direct downgrades of your playable options.

No Bounty Hunter’s really not.

He’s got Ranged… and the WHC’s Ranged isn’t that big of a dropoff. The thing that is the real difference is the Ult and unlimited ammo portion of the Bounty Hunter.

And the WHCs abilities affect both Ranged and Melee. The Bounty Hunter’s melee is as low compared to WHC as the WHC’s Ranged is compared to Bounty Hunter.

The ONLY way you would believe what you do… is if Ranged is more powerful than Melee. But even then the WHC’s ranged is still top tier in comparison to most other characters.