Who is defining the current metas?
I have been thinking about this for the past few days after watching the reactions of Darth Revan and Malak. Who is actually defining the meta recently? Is the community defining the meta or is CG forcing us to play a particular meta? People have been complaining about the current percentage of people running almost the same teams in PVP. And I admit I am one of those people running a Jedi Knight Revan team as well. Why? Simple because it wins. Characters I would like to run because I am a fan of in the movies do not have a chance at winning. Not because I have bad mods or their kits are not good, but simply because their base stats are not well designed. Or rather their initial design has been so surpassed that it’s impossible for them to keep up.
So because CG is designing these new characters to be so godlike that we are being forced to run a certain meta instead of trying to create a new interesting meta. There are so many characters now; by my math there are 172 and how many of those are currently worth leveling up or gearing up anymore? I know that the Grand Arena has allowed us to use more teams and try different combinations, but even then it is so limited. I still run into the same teams every GA and that is becoming stale. I don’t even care if I win anymore.
The raids also have become so boring running the same specific teams over and over again to see if RNG will allow me to get the best score possible. I don’t even care if I ever get Traya. I would love to experiment with other teams and characters, but it’s nearly impossible to level every character up to a point where they are viable in the raid. Again we are forced to use specific teams to complete a boring raid.
So obviously this is just my opinion and my feeling, but I imagine other people are feeling this way, too. We need to be able to truly play this game how we want with the characters we want. This game is called Star Wars: Galaxies of Heroes. Not the Galaxy of the Chosen Meta. I honestly think this game needs to rework their entire roster and their stats. Not the just the godlike characters. Other online games have done it and I believe this game is also capable of doing so.
Feel free to post why you agree or disagree with me.
So because CG is designing these new characters to be so godlike that we are being forced to run a certain meta instead of trying to create a new interesting meta. There are so many characters now; by my math there are 172 and how many of those are currently worth leveling up or gearing up anymore? I know that the Grand Arena has allowed us to use more teams and try different combinations, but even then it is so limited. I still run into the same teams every GA and that is becoming stale. I don’t even care if I win anymore.
The raids also have become so boring running the same specific teams over and over again to see if RNG will allow me to get the best score possible. I don’t even care if I ever get Traya. I would love to experiment with other teams and characters, but it’s nearly impossible to level every character up to a point where they are viable in the raid. Again we are forced to use specific teams to complete a boring raid.
So obviously this is just my opinion and my feeling, but I imagine other people are feeling this way, too. We need to be able to truly play this game how we want with the characters we want. This game is called Star Wars: Galaxies of Heroes. Not the Galaxy of the Chosen Meta. I honestly think this game needs to rework their entire roster and their stats. Not the just the godlike characters. Other online games have done it and I believe this game is also capable of doing so.
Feel free to post why you agree or disagree with me.
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In the end they are reworking but only some at a time which means that it will never come to an end, the first rework will be outdated when the last is done. And they aren't going to balance everything because of - you guessed it - the (needed to keep the game alive) money. There's no perfect world where we can just do as we like. We need to make the Star Trek move and get rid of this evil called money first, sadly. I'm sorry sir, no holodeck for you today.
- Grand Admiral Thrawn
Who is selling 1-5 parts of that meta, they are.
How many parts you need to get ready is based on time in game and the general plan you have.
How much you have to buy, 0.
Can you explain a bit more of how we are defining the meta? Whether we plan well or buy anything does not solely define the meta. What I’m talking about is the absence of balance. There are characters in this game that are probably unusable in almost every aspect of the game.
Although I don’t disagree with you, I don’t think characters have to be godlike better in order to sell. They could have well balanced stats and kits and still be interesting enough to sell. There are plenty of characters I would have bought if buying a new character didn’t mean spending more than my monthly rent. For example I really liked the bounty hunter rework and the new ones they added. I thought it was a truly creative and an interesting mechanic to add the contract system. However they are almost unviable in all aspects of the game. Mainly only for back ups in GA.
People cried for a Grevious rework. I don’t use him, but I think the concept is great. However people cried when his rework did not fit the “meta”. Or did his rework actually fit the meta but we are so used to these god tier level characters that our sense of balance in this game is gone?
Balance has nothing to do with META. By definition the META is a majority, since it is the "most effective".
We define the meta by theory crafting around the pieces that are being introduced into the game. If they introduce one piece or 2, we build out the full 5 around that. They have never introduced all 5 pieces.
Teams have counters, (besides out last 90%reign) and they are based on the current meta, but are not as effective on defense. So while they exist some will avoid them. That is us defining how this balance looks to some extent.
Of course we could choose to use other teams, but why would we? Those teams are winning and have been winning for months. And this type of gameplay is going to take over fleet battles as well soon. More and more people are unlocking the original Falcon this week. The top 20 is going to be all Falcons.
I guess my point is that the meta should always be shifting. A meta is created, countered, and then that counter is countered. And that counter is then countered and so on. But that has just stopped happening in this game.
JKR, is the one exception that I was mentioning.
Across the game, he is one of a few metas currently and that will differ from shard to shard.
DR is a counter and is by no means as put of balance as JKR was.
But to that point before JKR came around the second time there were teams in the mix that could win, once he came back everyone switched.
We are getting back to a better balance right now in many shards and swgoh.gg data shows this. We should see more steps in the right direction as events repeat and more comes out. It may not be desirable but it's better then them trying to make a big swing to correct from the last meta.
Definition 1: The metagame. Meta is engaging not just with the game itself, but with what other players are doing within the game. Decisions are made to account for current popular teams, not everything in the game. Though the devs can influence what the metagame will look like, it is purely player-created.
Definition 2: Meta is an acronym for Most Efficient Tactic Available. This is mostly defined by the devs, though it can be influenced by the metagame. It is, however, discovered by the players at a playerbase defined rate.
When people say "meta," they usually mean some nebulous amalgam of those two definitions. So to answer the question? Both, and to which degree depends on how far towards one definition or the other you cleave.
That said?
A metagame almost always solidifies. The most effective tactic will be identified and utilized en masse, whether it's pinned as most effective or is just most popular. From there, a new piece of content can do one of two things, whether intentional or not.
1) It offers no particular advantage against what's popular at the moment. There is no particular impetus to go after that thing for arena purposes. The meta remains more or less unchanged.
2) It directly counters what's popular at the moment, and therefore becomes appealing and people jump over to beat the thing they fight the most.
A lot of the new metas are not necessarily more powerful, or "godlike," but rather directly address what's popular at the moment to keep things fresh. Palpatine and Vader's rework was a direct answer to Jedi, which were rampant in the meta around the time, but weren't necessarily more powerful than any of the titans. Bastila beat Palpatine because she gave her team the tenacity to ignore his debuffs. Traya's lead ready line by line as a pile of antimeta. Almost every line of Kevan's lead reads as a counter to Traya.
Kevan is very good. However, the lock JKR had on the meta was not because Kevan was some "godlike" toon.
The strength of the Kevan meta team is not just Kevan. It has three linchpins. Kevan himself, sure. However, the entire team revolves around calling Yoda to assist and keeping Yoda alive, relying on his enormous damage output and internal turn meter engine; something the team basically does not have without Yoda. Jolee is a brick wall, very difficult to kill especially once he gets retribution, and brings back the entire team. Without Jolee, Yoda will die fairly easily because he's squishy, and a GK who's gone stays gone. The team has two vectors for giving Yoda an extra life, five vectors for calling Yoda to assist, and one vector for saying, "Yoda goes now." It's not just Kevan; it's the entire team funneling into one character.
What's more, the Kevan team is not God. There were multiple teams during Kevan meta that can face it as an equal. Most notably the Rebel quartet with R2 and Nightsisters. Kevan's assets that made the team so dominant were not just power. It is an extremely accessible team; fairly easy journey farm vice two of the hardest legendaries in the game or a just generally involved investment in sisters. It's easier to get working and to run. It has strong defensive AI. Its ubiquity also became an advantage, especially paired with the fact that it is a slog to fight even if you win. Kevan v Kevan mirror matches are a pain that doesn't just attack the opposing team; it attacks the opposing player, and they'll take nearly any matchup if it isn't Kevan v Kevan. Nightsisters may be able to face Kevan as an equal, but if all the surrounding Kevans are targeting you because they want anything different, you're gonna lose some of those, and you're going to drop.
Nightsisters did not drop out of the meta because Kevan was that much better. It dropped out because people wanted to fight not-Kevan. And while design pressures influenced that event- game design is largely behavior and experience shaping- it was driven by player decisions regarding the metagame more than dev decisions about the most efficient tactic available.
As to which units are worth farming and gearing?
Honestly, most of them.
Arena is only one aspect of the game. You will only ever need five units at a time for arena, so that's not a viable measure for the usefulness of 174 units.
But look at other modes. In fleet arena, you need a capital ship and eight ships, for nine pilots minimum, probably more like fifteen, and probably not the ones you're using on your arena team unless you're using Han and/or Chewie. To contribute to every phase of the Sith raid, you need at least 20 units. To get all the legendaries and journey characters, you need dozens of characters. To participate in all the assault battles, particularly mythic tiers, you need a large pile of units. Between varying node requirements, territory battle requires a couple dozen units each.
Then, there's TW and GA. IIRC, the top tier of 5v5 GA requires seven teams. That means at a minimum, you need 35 units on defense, 35 units on offense (maybe dropping a few for things like Farmboy/Nest eating a team), and you want more than that in case you need two teams against something.
Most of the roster is useful.
I go through the roster looking for units who aren't useful to gear, and it's not many. The Hoth bros aren't really worth gearing much even for TB since the rest of the team can easily carry them. Luminara is pretty much trash these days. Mob Enforcer was always trash. Tuskens other than maybe Shaman. Some of the scrap GR Jedi like Kit Fisto. Bodhi. Ugnaught. Clone Wars Chewie. Some of the now-homeless droids. Lobot. Gamorrean Guard.
Even Teebo has value for splitting Ewoks in 3v3. And Phasma, aside from having a ship, is a good unit in 3v3 where Phasma, FOO, FOTP can throw down well above their weight class.
It's actually really impressive how many units are actually useful, if only due to the rotating TW buffs. They aren't immediate priorities, sure, but not everyone has to be.
I hope you are right about balance, but I feel like Darth Malak erased any progress in balance that was created by Darth Revan. If the DR team was a good counter to JKR prior to Darth Malak then why would they need to add what’s arguably the best tank in the game to that team?
The phase 2 hunters are great. Bossk, Jango, and Embo are just straight up great. Not arena material, but very good in TB, TW, GA, good for the Chewie event, and for the bounties event. Aurra is surprisingly deadly, and she's the core of a great P3 hSith team.
Yes, you see Greedo and Cad more often than Embo, but that's because Embo is much harder to get and you can manage with the other two.
But of the % who got DR, only a % of those got malak. We also got the bastilla buff with this introduction.
Either way, malak is not going to make DR another JKR.
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/201442/upcoming-change-to-darth-malak#latest
Signed
Blue Whale
This argument is really no different than the first time JKR came around. The arena only seemed balanced because not enough people had JKR. That just means when we get the second coming of DR and then Malak, it will be a new arena setting with all sith empire teams.
The game is not balanced because only a few people got unique characters. The problems those characters bring to the game are just hidden.
I don’t like (but I get) the argument that whales feed this game, but let’s not pretend like this power creep is not making old characters irrelevant.
Last time I played TW, Ship arena, GA, and TB, I didn't realize I could win just because I have 1-2 characters because they are new, but i guess we all play a different game. There is more to the game than arena.
or maybe we can not pretend that there is no diversity.
I am not calling this balanced, but diverse. which is not what we had before.
Well tbf once the malak changes take effect palp will be gone from the meta so lets not act like cg wants diversity.
100% serious
So would the 100s of 1000s of F2P.
At max gear and zetas with equal mods, Nightsisters can face a Jedi Knight Revan team as equals and win a substantial portion of the time.
At max gear and zetas with equal mods, Phoenix squad with Sabine can face Nightsisters and win a substantial portion of the time.
That should be telling about the state of power creep and balance in the game. People love complaining about it, but new characters skew more anti-meta than strictly more power. They seem more amazing because the first thing they're thrown against is the thing they're targeted against.
What's more, in a mode like GA, where you need to worry about the outcome of fourteen fights with fourteen completely independent teams, the new hotness has a much more limited impact. You would be wrong.
You don't have to spend a dime to do well in this game.
Im gonn say 1 true thing , you always blindly defend cg , so thats why most ppl ignore you