The Current Metagame

How do you all see it breaking down? What are the bgs and mechanics you need to account for? How is this impacting your bg choices?

 

SP atm is all about counters to everything, like Hyaenid Dreamcrusher for dispel and shatter summons, and whirling quarry and the new moga for seism etc...

 

Rough notes:

Prevalent: Equipment, Indirect damage, Damage multipliers for basic attacks, combat relics, Cleanse, Healing, high-resource theme setups
Rare: Stealth, Hard detection, anti-equip, Dispel, low-resource rush

Based on casual observations.

 

How do you categorize Hard detection? The actual detection ability?

It is interesting that equipment is so prevalent but anti-equip is so rare.

Do you think that the scarcity of dispel due to the champions it is on, or due to people thinking that it is not worth pulling even on otherwise worthwhile champions?

Is cleanse more common in this metagame than you have seen in previous theme set-ups?

What do you mean by high-resource theme setups?

 

Shatter is kind of expensive (6 nora) so the only champs with it that are runnable have to be really streamlined. Deploying a champ with shatter (and just for shatter) after your enemy equipped a problematic equip is not really workable. Many equips also pay for themself the turn they are played or are simply on support champs way in the back. I've found Crush (from SP) to be amazing in some games because it deals with equips anywhere, and before they are usable.

Not much changed with spot cleanse imo

 

Effects explicitly dedicated to detection. I think people are comfortable leaving it up to AoE or are just otherwise not worried about Stealth right now, at least not enough to invest in it directly.

Some decks do run anti-equip, but it isn't universal. Equipment just doesn't shape a game enough to need an answer.

There aren't many sources out there. Some factions couldn't even include it if they wanted to (I could be forgetting something).

Cleanse has always been prevalent, but I think it's a little less pervasive than it has been in the past.

Themes that depend upon in-play interactions to buff stats. They depend upon getting out a lot of different units and then jamming them together to make them more efficient. That's the standard for themes in Pox right now, with astoundingly few excepts; the kind of theme-related abilities which have been made generic should indicate this direction.

 

Interesting, do you see high-resource theme setups being more common for some factions than others? And do you consider things like murkwater frenzy, the salaman ingenuity abilities, or the mirefolk come into play abilities as examples of this?

FS tends to not have/run a lot of those generic abilities, and even champions who have them tend to be fringe choices rather than primary ones. Psychic Amp is probably a clear exception there, though its abilities are difference in what they do rather than their role.

 

They are less common in UD and FW. Those factions have historically had less in the way of Boost/Cmdr aside from specific situations (Skeletons and maybe Spiders come to mind -- Zombies, Undead, and Demons are never getting Boost, though). All of the Prot factions and SL have these sorts of interactions. SP remains somewhere between those ends.

Yes, those fall into the same category. They aren't as obviously generic, but they still fit into "field more units with this tag and put them in a rough, 8-tile formation." That's really what I'm talking about. Plenty of design has treated that approach -- proximity checks, racial tags, numbers-based synergy -- as good practice, the way in which decks are supposed to look. So, plenty look like that right now, and it leads into certain strategic and tactical similarities i.e. high-resource gameplay with distinct rune pools that have limited overlap with each other.

 

Interesting. That would explain the overall decline in the amount of "meta" bgs floating around too, outside of the most extreme varieties (splits). I have mixed feelings about this.

 

I have seen a lot of variety in UD meta decks from top players

 

Agree on this. UD is light on themes aside from Spiders, Minos, and Fire.

 

Themes seem to have taken a back seat lately, which seems reasonable enough given that they were dominant recently.

Rediscovering goodstuff, and overlooked interactions between different races, seems a good thing.

 

Yeah. I think it also may just people's inclination to go with the path of least resistance. I am back to trying to play around with FS meta decks (with some success) until I wait for semi-aquatics to ssettle down enough that I can write a guide and it seems that there are actually a fair number of interesting options and possibilities opening up.

So I guess the question is if non-high resource meta decks are competitive with the high resource theme decks, and people's inclination towards them is a result of just normal exploration and our low number of players or if it is a clear sign they are stronger.

 

I agree that this is a prevalent theme in the design of this game. It's kinda boring to me. Surge, Commander/Defender, Leverage, Camaraderie, Call to Arms are all pretty much just numerical modifiers that make playing a bunch of the same race more efficient. I would like for there to be more qualitative differences in the mechanics of different deck modules, but that isn't really how Pox tends to develop.

Deck archetypes which provide an incomparable mechanic are usually the most interesting, but in today's Pox they are rarely the most competitive/consistent. And usually when they are competitive they get nerfed because people dislike having to play against something outside of the format that they're used to. Examples: Mischief, Goblin Thievery, Worms, Knockback, old Dragon Engine, Battle Fatigue, Chopping Block, Darkness engine

 

Do you find the sort of non-generic boosting like in those themes I mentioned above to be interesting/qualitatively different or are their parallels enoguh to make them uninteresting to you?

 

Depends on their details The Merfolk CitP stuff is cool; the Salaman are neat because they specifically reward a different suite of support runes. Snaptooth are material power, so it's much more like Commander/Boost etc.


As far as design, here is a wonderful quote -- one of many -- from E.B. White in The Elements of Style:

"Many references have been made in this book to 'the reader' -- he has been much in the news. It is now necessary to warn the writer that his concern for the reader must be pure: he must sympathize with the reader's plight (most readers are in trouble about half the time) but never seek to know his wants. The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. Let him start sniffing the air, or glancing at the Trend Machine, and he is as good as dead, although he may make a nice living."

Designers of a game like Pox make compromises -- it's an inherently competitive, community thing, and it's there to make money -- but this essential distinction between caring about the audience and listening to the audience should guide any kind of design, whether in writing, or games, or music, or governance.

 

Don't listen to peeps about undesirable mechanics Sok, you are doing a good job at being creative and creating an interesting game so keep on the same track! If you want any criticism, then giving 2 abilities on a champ which has manic and MA3 which gives the champ 1 ap per attack for the ability, that's a bad idea. I mean Snaptooth already have the strongest racial in the game, and then when you combine that if the second strongest racial in the game essence capture they become OT. I mean the ranged Snaptooth could keep murkwater frenzy for their ranged units, as long as vivify and impatient are on the same upgrade line for frenzy, and the crypt changes to give soul tap or something else.

Basically the prob with Snaptooth atm is they have the strongest 2 racials in the game! They would be balanced with murkwater frenzy or essence capture, not both!

 

Yeah, people are usually conservative, even when it isn't in their interests. They will moan about something that 'breaks fundamental rules' or is 'inherently OP' with one breath, then complain the game is stale with the next. So I kinda feel that if nobody complains about a new mechanic then it hasn't had enough of an impact.

 

Very true. This is basically the problem I was indicating, and I'm also contributing to it with my own bias. There isn't much getting around it in a game where the community expects the type of developer response that Pox's does.