> But now with the internet, reddit, Discord etc. people can come together and basically "solve" the game they play.
meta gaming kills strategy for me. From back when I first started playing AoE3 I was absolutely infatuated with the game and genre, but found myself incapable of winning MP matches. Some guys from the old pre-DE competitive scene helped train me a bit, and I could win MP matches now, but the game is no fun, instead of being a fun 4X/RTS, it was “follow this foundation, time everything perfectly, micro perfectly, min/max everything and it lost most of the appeal.
Even more recently CK3, which can be a pretty immersive game, often loses that immersion when the game becomes less about what I do as a king, and more about min/maxing mechanics.
A lot of strategy games start to feel less “strategy” and more “who can exploit mechanics and follow predefined path”. Ironically one AoE3 legend rose from nowhere a couple years back with strategies different from the meta and winning. People called him toxic for it.
meta gaming kills strategy for me. From back when I first started playing AoE3 I was absolutely infatuated with the game and genre, but found myself incapable of winning MP matches. Some guys from the old pre-DE competitive scene helped train me a bit, and I could win MP matches now, but the game is no fun, instead of being a fun 4X/RTS, it was “follow this foundation, time everything perfectly, micro perfectly, min/max everything and it lost most of the appeal.
Even more recently CK3, which can be a pretty immersive game, often loses that immersion when the game becomes less about what I do as a king, and more about min/maxing mechanics.
A lot of strategy games start to feel less “strategy” and more “who can exploit mechanics and follow predefined path”. Ironically one AoE3 legend rose from nowhere a couple years back with strategies different from the meta and winning. People called him toxic for it.