Let's have a discussion about the usage of "meta"

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Post Post #25 (ISO) » Fri Jan 30, 2015 5:23 pm

Post by pirate mollie »

I will never vote you in a game espo.

that is a lie. so not a trust tell.
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Post Post #26 (ISO) » Sat Jan 31, 2015 2:29 pm

Post by Venmar »

Plenty of reasons for and not for meta. It's just a shame that not too many people know how to use meta properly, end up misreading someone's meta, and for the rest of the game end up applying an almost unchangeable viewpoint on a certain player. Too many people abuse meta and just end up being useless because all of their reads become bad, cause they either A) can't meta for shit, or B) don't know how to use meta to make proper reads.

I've used meta to success and confidence, and will continue to if I start playing again, but meta overall is hit or miss.
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Post Post #27 (ISO) » Mon Feb 09, 2015 7:51 pm

Post by Iecerint »

Trust tell means you set up a way to confirm yourself as town by doing something subtle in your town games that you can refer back to to clear yourself. Doing this damns your scum games, so it violates the rule to play to wincon across games golden rule.

Self-meta is useful when you are playing with people who can't or won't see why you are town barring unlikely WIFOM. You can manufacture this as scum, so it doesn't damn your scum game and doesn't violate the rule to play to your wincon. That's the difference.
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Post Post #28 (ISO) » Tue Feb 10, 2015 8:17 am

Post by Muffin »

In post 27, Iecerint wrote:You can manufacture this as scum

This is why I feel strongly that "self meta" is useless.
One's self-meta cannot be known without invalidating it.
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Post Post #29 (ISO) » Tue Feb 10, 2015 8:58 am

Post by Iecerint »

In post 28, Muffin wrote:
In post 27, Iecerint wrote:You can manufacture this as scum

This is why I feel strongly that "self meta" is useless.

You can manufacture any legal town play as scum.

Guess every town play is useless!
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Post Post #30 (ISO) » Tue Feb 10, 2015 11:35 am

Post by Muffin »

That's a really odd way to distort my point and then stretch it to absurdium.

The point is this: If you know your "town meta" then you can play to it as scum. Therefore any and all arguments about how this is or is not "your town game" should be immediately discarded because they are just WIFOM and serve as nothing other than a distraction. I mean what kind of player possesses the self-awareness to know their own meta but lacks the ability to execute even a reasonable facsimile of it?

Look at guys like notscience who are more or less known for being apathetic and low-activity as scum. Then he had a recent large theme where he rolled scum and lolposted his way through most of the game. His activity was high and he was mostly avoiding suspicion because of it, and IIRC even said as much in his QT.
One's self-meta cannot be known without invalidating it.
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Post Post #31 (ISO) » Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:29 pm

Post by Iecerint »

I am not talking about something as facile as "activity level." As a player, you can mess with that in a non-interactive way. If your meta is to barely play the game like a lot of players on the site (including notscience in a lot of games I used to play with him, though I think maybe he's improved in the last year or so), I honestly think players should question why they sign up for games and mods should blacklist certain players from games.

I'll give an example that is closer to what I am talking about. If you are being scumread, no one is reading the game, and you feel frustrated, but you realize that you made a towntell like 10 pages ago (e.g., especially one that was locally bad had you been scum -- for example, forgetting an aspect of the set-up such that you alienated a town player), it can be really useful information to demonstrate that because it can clarify your motivations. It's definitely 100% better if someone in the town actually plays like town and realizes stuff like that on their own, but it's pretty rare that you can count on people to pick up on stuff because people skim content that isn't related to themselves.
Last edited by Iecerint on Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #32 (ISO) » Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:32 pm

Post by Iecerint »

An argument against self-meta is an argument against defending yourself using your own previous posting (i.e., as opposed to doing it using others' posting). That's all "self-meta" boils down to.
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Post Post #33 (ISO) » Thu Feb 12, 2015 7:30 am

Post by Egg »

In post 4, MonkeyMan576 wrote:Some people have more tells than others. Some people are easier to read than others. Meta is only as good as the person who is using it and the person you are using it on.


^this. People who don't like meta are effectively arguing that you'll do a better job, or at least exactly the same job, of reading complete strangers than people who you are familiar with. I just can't possibly agree with that. But flawed meta is just as bad as, hell probably worse than, no meta at all.

In post 5, DrippingGoofball wrote:I am very sensitive to a game's atmosphere, I react differently in every game.

I suspect this applies to a great number of players.

Now there is "gut-meta" where someone whose playstyle you are intimately acquainted with feels different, and "pretend-meta" where you skim a scum game, a town game, and pretend your impression apply to a current game. It's BS.


That's why you needs patterns. Multiple games. I mean, even if you've only played one game with someone I can understand the "you feel different this game" vibe as long as you factor in the non-alignment possibilities as to why. But for the most part, if you don't have a decent amount of experience with someone, you can't say for sure that someone is town or scum based on meta alone.
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Post Post #34 (ISO) » Thu Feb 12, 2015 9:13 am

Post by Muffin »

In post 31, Iecerint wrote:I'll give an example that is closer to what I am talking about. If you are being scumread, no one is reading the game, and you feel frustrated, but you realize that you made a towntell like 10 pages ago (e.g., especially one that was locally bad had you been scum -- for example, forgetting an aspect of the set-up such that you alienated a town player), it can be really useful information to demonstrate that because it can clarify your motivations. It's definitely 100% better if someone in the town actually plays like town and realizes stuff like that on their own, but it's pretty rare that you can count on people to pick up on stuff because people skim content that isn't related to themselves.

Is that meta, though? A towntell in a game that's only relevant in that game?

I don't really think that that falls under the definition of "meta".

An example of what I'm arguing against is when people are being scumread and reply with "look at my posts and see that this is my town game, not my scum game".
One's self-meta cannot be known without invalidating it.
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Post Post #35 (ISO) » Thu Feb 12, 2015 10:07 am

Post by Iecerint »

I am of the opinion that everything a person does is best interpreted in light of who they are.

In terms of the example I gave, anytime someone says that they towntold, or someone says that something is a towntell, it's implicit that that person believes the towntell is relevant to the player being discussed. For example, if the player in my example had previously demonstrated that they feign set-up confusion as scum, then the "towntell" isn't really only relevant to the current game.

In terms of the example you gave, I think the main bad thing about that vein of statement is that it is non-interactive with the content in the current game. It's purely rhetorical and could be cross-supplied to almost any content in any game. I think a more specific version of it might be effective.
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