Is there a way to prevent community obsession with "meta" classes/characters/builds and tierlists?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

IIRC, Asheron's Call had randomized spells and requirements per player. Do you think some randomization like this would deter autistic minmaxxers from creating tierlists and meta builds and then pressuring other players in a game to conform to that tierlist or meta guides?

[AmericanMonarchist]

Devs can randomize spells, but then the meta hunters would shift to optimizing the things you can select.

The meta hunting problem is the fault of YouTube and online multiplayer. Encountering sweats was rare pre-Xbox Live because most multiplayer was split screen. Networked MP opened the gated to the wider player base encountering a minmaxer and the only way to beat them is by minmaxing yourself. Pre-Youtube this was hard since you had to dig through Ascii Covered GameFAQ threads to sift through rumors to find the real optimization strategy. The Youtube Era allows anyone to type "COD:Mw69 Best Custom Class" into search and find a hundred videos. The community more or less asynchronously collaborates to minmax with all the minmaxers watching each other's videos. A game that would get optimized in a couple of months if not a year can be minmaxed in under a week.

Devs cannot control off platform actions and the internet incentivizes tryharding while making it more accessible than ever. You either minmax or get stomped by the other minmaxers.

[Tangerine]

No. Players will optimize the fun out of the game if the rewards are worth it.

[Rand]

No.
A lot of people are turds. Turds will always try to overcompensate for being turds by "winning".

[J1M]

Subjecting players to the whims of randomness for their progression is stupid.

Actual options:

• Allow players to change their character building choices freely. This encourages experimentation.
• Offer fewer choices. If players can only pick 5 things it is much easier for the developers to make 4 of them worthwhile.
• Publish design philosophy so 1. You actually have one 2. Players can hold designers accountable. 3. It is clear why certain choices are bad at certain things.
• Design a game that doesn't expect equally useful contribution from everyone all the time.
• Have some choices that are prestigious to play because they are harder to use. (Not more powerful when played well, just prestigious.)
• Less predictable content. If you know the exact hurdles of a dungeon you can hyper optimize it. If you don't, you will build a flexible group. But don't make everything varied in the same way, the Crypt should still favor bringing a Cleric or you will still end up with a meta group composition.
• Actively punish compositions you want to stamp out in-game instead of tuning power level. For example, if you decide a group with 3 mages is not desired, create enemies that use anti magic shell when there are three mages.

[rusty_shackleford]

Keep increasing the difficulty to optimize character builds, the asherons call idea is actually a neat one. It's a good idea to do things nobody does as long as nobody does it anymore because it was a bad idea.

Yeah on paper it might sound like a "" bad"" idea until players get synergy between abilities/skills they didn't expect and create character builds you never thought of

[nullSector]

Yeah on paper it might sound like a "" bad"" idea until players get synergy between abilities/skills they didn't expect and create character builds you never thought of

Quite a bit of roguelike/lite genre is just this, isn't it?

[Oyster Sauce]

People always want to play poopy classes if they like the class fantasy - That Guy will pick feral every time. Make an MMO with 279 classes like Pathfinder.

[rusty_shackleford]

People always want to play poopy classes if they like the class fantasy - That Guy will pick feral every time. Make an MMO with 279 classes like Pathfinder.

lub me hybrid classes

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Is there a way to prevent community obsession with "meta" classes/characters/builds and tierlists?

I think you need to remove the gameplay reason for community to obsess over meta things. You can't completely avoid it, there always will be some guy who want highest possible stats for some reason, but you can minimize it.

[TND]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" - some random ****** dev idk

[rusty_shackleford]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" - some random ****** dev idk

I don't agree with it, I found a lot of fun in optimizing suboptimal builds

[TND]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" - some random ****** dev idk

I don't agree with it, I found a lot of fun in optimizing suboptimal builds

I am extrapolating this from the quote but i think he meant players finding a meta, and then sharing it with others until everyone uses the meta. Not using the meta just puts you at an obvious disadvantage at that point. Then the game stops being fun for everyone but the people with 3000 hours on it (see Mordhau)

[Vaako]

Only if you have a game with massive grind where its not worth it making a new character and you cant change builds. And a game like that would not sell really unless the actual combat/gameplay loop is really fun and no other game has it yet. You could have a secondary progression with very minor build options which hardly matter tho to give the illusion of choice and progression.

[Tangerine]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" - some random ****** dev idk

I don't agree with it, I found a lot of fun in optimizing suboptimal builds

This is like saying "Not all women!"

[J1M]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" - some random ****** dev idk

I don't agree with it, I found a lot of fun in optimizing suboptimal builds

I am extrapolating this from the quote but i think he meant players finding a meta, and then sharing it with others until everyone uses the meta. Not using the meta just puts you at an obvious disadvantage at that point. Then the game stops being fun for everyone but the people with 3000 hours on it (see Mordhau)

The quote refers to players optimizing for extrinsic rewards like player power over intrinsic rewards like enjoying the moment to moment experience. A classic example is people running Maw of Souls over and over because it was the shortest dungeon.

[asf]

devs should focus on making the game playable instead of artificially removing all fun from it

also people who complain of those things need to be shot

[Norfleet]

I am SHOCKED, I say SHOCKED, that someone would game the system in a GAME. It's almost as if it was designed to be gamed!

[Xenich]

It would be like an HOA for gamers and it would eventually only end up pissing everyone off.

I just ignore them, play the way I want. My only complaint is when developers decide to design around them and in online games, I have to suffer the idiots who think "da current best build meta" is somehow the only way you can play... well... until someone posts the "next" build meta that somehow someone figured out... /sigh

[aimlesshealer]

You can't stop them. Rather than derail development to prevent a certain type of player from having fun, it's probably better to make sure that everyone else can have fun in spite of them.
Adding chaos is a possible solution. The more chaotic a game's systems are, the less likely there's a single best option for every situation.

[Norfleet]

The key is in purposefully creating different niches. Otherwise, you're going to run into Gause's Law. At that point you're fighting the laws of nature, and you can't win that as a mere developer.

[Barntar who Plows]

It is a universal fact that given enough time, and given the opportunity, players can and will optimize the fun out of a game. Even then, that itself is considered fun to many people. There will never be a way to prevent tier lists and minmaxxing, best you can do is separate the types of players just enough that if either player type (casual/hardcore minmax) doesn't want to interact with each other that it doesn't affect either person's enjoyment to an extreme degree.

Being the best is an innate human trait, so is the curiosity of "what works best here." Trying to remove this is...foolish, instead you should embrace it and even expand upon it. What I mean is, if you have a game and everyone makes the same tierlist with very minor differences, that's a problem even if it can be mitigated by proper balancing, with fun being the most important aspect. If a game has so much (good) variety or balance things evenly enough that not many tier lists are the same, then the issues of meta is far less egregious and it will most likely become more fun overall.

If meta becomes an issue, then it incentivizes an anti-meta. If an anti-meta can't exist, then a game can't exist (for long). Ultimately, I believe @J1M's post is far better than anything I can write, and more concise. Brevity is the soul of wit and all that.

[KnightoftheWind]

This is why online multiplayer isn't fun anymore. It's impossible to play casually and just have a good time, because everyone else is obsessed with "metas" and treating the game like it's an e-sports match. Devs themselves have noticed this, and create entire games based around that. We'll never have Halo 3/Halo Reach type multiplayer again.

[Norfleet]

This is why online multiplayer isn't fun anymore.

I attribute at least some of this to the paradox of choices, where giving the player more choices results in fewer actual options. Consider a spaceship combat game: In the Olde Timey version, you had no choice in how to equip your ship or even which ship: You got the ship you were assigned to by Command. It had the equipment that was part of the ship class. That was it. In a NEW game like that, you would have a whole host of equipment slots and ship hulls to pick from. Guess which game ended up having more actual depth of gameplay?

Sure, the new game has plenty of buildfaggotry, but once you get into the actual game, your options have essentially been constrained by buildfaggotry, which is dictated by a meta. Every piece of kit is dictated by whether or not it pulls its weight in buildspace.

In the old game, there was none of this. Since there were no builds, there was no debating whether you should remove all your torpedo launchers and go all lazors or the other way around. You didn't get to remove your tractor beam to install another lazor cannon (and then find yourself leaving Spacedock without a tractor beam). You didn't even really get to pick what class of ship you got to fly, since that was assigned to you by Spacefleet Command. The gameplay was about creatively using what you had on hand like a proper Space Captain.

Ultimately, a game has only so many decisions to make, and buildfaggotry pushes a lot of those decisions OUT of the game itself. In Old D&D, there was no buildfaggotry: You had a class with a fixed package of skills that you made better or worse use of by your attributes. NuD&D, on the other hand, is largely dominated by buildfaggotry. Guess which makes for better moment by moment play?

Conclusion: Buildfaggotry replaces and ultimately ruins gameplay. If you want to prevent community obsession with "meta" classes/characters/builds, don't have them.

[Vaako]

This is why online multiplayer isn't fun anymore. It's impossible to play casually and just have a good time, because everyone else is obsessed with "metas" and treating the game like it's an e-sports match. Devs themselves have noticed this, and create entire games based around that. We'll never have Halo 3/Halo Reach type multiplayer again.

"and create entire games based around that" I would say thats way more of reason why it is no fun. Overbearing devs are like helicopter parents. And you surely dont want that in a game.