by Richard Foge, Andy Collins, and Brian Giaime
From the very outset, we knew that we wanted PvP to be a huge part of Moonrise. In this article, we’re going to chat a bit about an important element of PvP in Moonrise. Specifically we’re going to dig into meta-gameplay.
Metagame is a term that is used by developers to refer to the layers of gameplay that exist outside the rules and environment of the game itself. In the simplest sense, it’s when you use out-of-game information to affect the decisions you make about playing the game. For example, when you use knowledge about the other players at your table to modify your strategy in a board game, you’re engaging in a metagame activity (because that knowledge lives entirely outside the rules of that game).
The metagame can have a drastic impact on how players interact with the game’s systems and engage with each other inside the game. It can change your strategy, suggest particular tactics, and even alter the play environment itself. A strong, vibrant metagame keeps your game compelling for players long after the initial excitement of “new and shiny” has worn off.
Design Influences
There are a many ways that the metagame can grow and evolve. One of these ways is design-influenced evolution. This occurs when new systems and mechanics are added to the game and the metagame adapts to incorporate those systems.
Take, for example, Solari Traits. Before these were a part of Moonrise (that is, early in our development cycle), skill & stat builds on each type of Solari were fairly consistent. Your Emberjaw looked pretty much like everyone else’s Emberjaw. Players felt this was a solved issue and didn’t spend time thinking about how to build their individual Solari.
Once we added Traits — such as Primal Health, which healed the Solari whenever it dealt Nature damage — players started building their Solari in ways that took advantage of these Traits. Sometimes players relied on Traits to remedy a weakness, while other times they used them to capitalize on a strength. Suddenly we saw more varieties of every Solari in play, and the set of viable builds blossomed to include a great deal more configurations and combinations of Solari.
Player Discoveries
Another way that the metagame can evolve is from the discoveries of players. When players find a particular strategy that is effective and share that knowledge, that strategy proliferates among other players. (This can occur in PvE or PvP gameplay, but it tends to move a bit faster in PvP.) But that discovered strategy in turn creates opportunities for new discoveries that react to the newly evolved metagame.
For example, players might discover a particular Solari team build that becomes very effective. (“Good old Stone, nothing beats Stone.”) Observant players adopt some or all of that build, and soon it becomes popular and widely used. At this point, the smart thing to do in PvP is to find a build that works effectively against this popular build. This creates a new effective and popular team build, which in turn leads cutting-edge players to devise yet another counter-strategy. In some situations, this process can even continue until the original build becomes effective again.
This evolution of metagaming can also occur in the tactical space, and we’ve definitely seen that playing Moonrise PvP internally. One area we’ve witnessed interesting tactical shifts is in the opening moves of combat. When a Moonrise PvP battle begins, neither you nor your opponent have any Solari on the battlefield. Because gameplay is affected by affinity matchups, some players start a match by waiting to see who their opponent would summon first, hoping to counter with an ideal affinity matchup. That led to players quickly summoning Solari that had massively damaging attacks with slow boot times so they could punish whichever Solari the other player brought out. Which led to folks immediately summoning one Solari as a counter to the heavy hitters and waiting to summon the second. And so on, and so on.
Building a Better Metagame
A strong metagame is crucial for ongoing commitment from players. If your game offers only a few optimal strategies, players will figure those out quickly, then come to the conclusion that your game is a solved problem. Since one of the critical attractions to games is the opportunity to solve the challenges provided by your systems, a solved game rarely holds people’s attention for long.
To design a game that supports a robust metagame, developers must create systems that are flexible and have massive possibility space. This is usually done by keeping your systems as simple and clean as you can and allowing interesting interactions between those systems (instead of adding layer upon layer of rules for how those systems can interact). For example, the Trait system described above is relatively simple in concept, but creates a large possibility space for small design tweaks that support different Solari builds and team strategies.
The best part of having a strong metagame is that active players in the community shape the game as much as the developers do, by exploring the bounds of the systems in ways that the designers may never have considered. A player-influenced metagame is a sign of a game with flexible systems that allow for a lot of creativity from players. This is something that we’ve put a lot of time and care into for Moonrise.
We’re looking forward to seeing where you take our meta!