Meta is one of those words that has taken on new meanings in recent years, although it could be argued that they are more like evolutions than new meanings. Meta gaming in a tabletop setting is using knowledge your character wouldn’t have to your advantage. Cheating, to some degree. That degree is often debated. Meta narrative is one that’s self aware, or aware of tropes in the genre, or what have you. Meta gaming in terms of a video game is using the “Most Effective Tactics Available”. There’s also the Meta company that pretentiously renamed itself, but let’s forget about them. In fact, let’s forget about them as an entire culture.

I play Fire Emblem Heroes and the meta for that game is money. The secondary meta changes over time based on how much money you want to spend chasing it. Actually the current meta is damage reduction, although it’s evolving into revoking damage reduction. I’m sure this holds true for many live service games but the meta tends to evolve based on whatever thing the developers came up with 6 months ago that they can’t figure out how to fix. I’ve played since almost the beginning of the game so I’ve played through all the various metas. Vantage sweeping, armor, Reinhardt, armor effectiveness, save tanking, I’ve played through them all. Since I’m a largely free to play player I’ve only had meta relevant teams on accident over time by trying to simply survive the current meta with whatever free characters I manage to build up. It’s kind of a golden age for me because they just released weapons you can trade off to older characters to make them much more powerful. So my old teams suddenly get much more dangerous if I manage to pull an arcane weapon. Characters who most people thought of as worthless have become relevant and I tend to be drawn to worthless characters.

Anyway, that’s what Edward is talking about when he says “meta” and “power creep” Over time the strength of characters escalates because the developers add stats instead of thinking up better game mechanics. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but generally that’s what it is. When a character supersedes the meta they are sometimes called overpowered (OP), meta breaking, meta defining, or whatever else nerds come up with. Jess is implying that Ed defines the meta, at least for her.

The meta for the internet is money and attention. I have your attention so now I’ll try and get your money by reminding you that the links above can enable you to support my work. I will use the money to make myself happy, make comics, and have insurance, among other things. The replacement keyboard I bought recently allows you to change the color of the backlights. That makes me happy in addition to helping me make comics. Very meta defining.

Posts authored by Jackie

2567 Most Effective Tactics Available.