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

[CooLDoG]

What are it's uses, limitations, pitfalls, and anything else related to "meta"?

Does it skew game balance? Does it work?

[CooLDoG]

I created this thread based off of the site ideas thread. I think it is more appropriate here.

I think that meta is completely useless and always gives an advantage to scum when it is used. I do not think it is a legitimate way to catch scum and empirically leads to town losing games.

[Faraday]

always gives an advantage to scum when it is used. I do not think it is a legitimate way to catch scum and empirically leads to town losing games.

i mean, given that i've seen meta cases be super accurate and super inaccurate it doesn't always help scum. however it's like, not as good/useful as the people who rely on it believe - not is as bad as people like you think. it's probably no more or less effective than most scumhunting methods, really.


(also the obvious pitfalls are that most people rely on small sample sizes and shallow meta analysis so even if meta works it requires too much effort to do "right")

[Faraday]

reading a bunch of old games for a player's meta sounds p boring though really.

oh, it's useful if like people are voting for a reason that just objectively isn't a scumtell. like if you vote x for selfvoting, and they always selvote and you still think it's scummy when people tell you their meta then you're probably a retard or something. but that's talking about pretty straight forward and non nuanced shit, so not too relevant.

[MonkeyMan576]

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.

[DrippingGoofball]

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.

[Espeonage]

I hate meta. Like despise it and think it's useless.

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

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.

Not really. You can learn things about a player's playstyle even from reading games you weren't in as long as you have a large enough sample size.

[kuribo]

Not really. You can learn things about a player's playstyle even from reading games you weren't in as long as you have a large enough sample size.

1- That's a big "if" that alot of players don't adhere to before applying meta arguments and

2- I'm of the opinion that one's very presence in a game tends to skew the behavior of others. ie, someone may react differently to certain "tells" or whatever when they're called out by, say, you as a opposed to me. Sometimes differences in a person's "meta" can be as simple as the playerlist being different or that player being in a different mood at the time.


like, for example,

"Steve is scum here because he totally lurks all the time as scum." Except, you may not realize that Steve strongly dislikes three of the players in this game, and plus his wife threw a snowglobe at his head this morning so he really isn't all that concerned with looking town. When he does flip town, he'll simply mention that he had an off-game. You may have all the sample size in the world, but you can't necessarily account for the fact that Steve could not give less of a shit about this game.

[LlamaFluff]

Meta is best used for getting a feeling for someones basic playstyle, skill level, etc. It really shouldn't be used as the crux of a case.

Its fine to use as a "wow this player doesn't feel right this game" and then go back and see what is bothering you. Or when a player magically is not understanding concepts or theories that they have shown they understand in the past. Things like that are about the only place where "meta" is worth something. Most times people start spouting off about meta, especially when its critical to their case, it should be a red flag that their case is very weak if that's what they lead with.

[Mina]

A less flippant post than the one I made in the other thread (since no one is talking about lynching me anymore!):

Meta is definitely not worthless. There are players whose scum play is the polar opposite of their town play, and others whom it'd be close to impossible to catch as scum without meta. On my other site with alts, there are a couple of players who have fairly distinctive scum styles if you spot them, but who still steamroll games because the alts give them cover.

When deciding if someone's motivations fit better as scum or town, you need to take into account their experience level, their temperament, their articulacy, their impulsiveness, their judgment, their normal level of transparency, etc. Dismissing all that as useless is ridiculous. Otherwise, you're arguing the least charismatic player in the game should be lynched 100% of the time, and someone who can fake effortwalls and occasional AtEs as either alignment should never be lynched.

The problem lies when instead of scumhunting, people engage in superficial pattern-matching. And unfortunately, our brains are wired to see patterns in unrelated coincidences. ("You're acting awfully jokey. Look, you made lots of jokes in this scum game I just dug up, and none in that town game. Also, in his town game, I saw Jesus's face in a piece of toast, but it still hasn't happened here. CAUGHT! Oh, wait, it's because your father died during that town game? Too late.")

Moreover, one's perception of someone's meta tends to be static and based on behaviour from the past, when in fact, humans are mutable and learn from their mistakes--and thus Tammy coasts to endgame

yet again

because everyone knows she'd NEVER get this mad as scum! Any good meta read needs to factor in the likelihood that the player has grown or adapted her play since you last experienced her as a particular alignment.

So most people (myself included) are much, much, much, much, MUCH worse at metagaming than they think they are.

Completely separate from whether metagaming

works

is whether its prevalence on mafiascum ruins the average player's experience. There's probably a case to be made for it (e.g., certain people always getting lynched for not being "town enough", people

hypothetically

sabotaging their town game to be under less pressure as scum, people making really really awful meta cases, games becoming inscrutable to those who aren't in the know and deteriorating into Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra rather than Mafia).

But I'll still use all the tools that are given to me to win any particular game, rather than penalize myself and not lynch strong scum players because they deserve gold stars for being

so good

.

[Mina]

Also, people who play badly just to win more games in aggregate are stupid. For one thing, if you're going to be all Machiavellian about it, you realize no one pays attention to your win rate, but LOTS of people pay attention to your perceived skill level, right? The latter grants you far more respect and social currency. For another, you're only scum 25% of the time. For yet another, why are you even playing Mafia at all? Ooh, you're sabotaging yourself

in a pretend Internet text game

, just so the next time you play a pretend Internet text game, people will call you stupid a lot...but the game will be easier!

I dunno, the thrill of completely hoodwinking a town through protown zeal is much more satisfying than making it to endgame because lynching you is as good as random.org. Why invest so much time into this website if you don't want to be challenged or to keep upping your game?

[Cheery Dog]

because winning via claiming scum as scum is just so much easier and requires no effort.

I'm fairly sure that's actually why i started drifting away from playing mafia though, that win along with most of my others because town destroyed themselves weren't actually that fun besides giving me an unbeaten streak as scum.

[ZZZX]

meta can be used as town and scum as a tool to get a free pass.

but you need good convension methods

also reading by meta aint right. unless its the general feel. feeling you get from someone are hard to fake

[Shadowmod]

It works incredibly well on certain players and utterly fails for others... Like anything else, I guess. You need to try and learn to distinguish these two cases and not rely on just a narrow scope of scumhunting methods.

Self-meta, however, should always be regarded as an invalid defence and counted as null at best.

[T-Bone]

Moreover, one's perception of someone's meta tends to be static and based on behaviour from the past, when in fact, humans are mutable and learn from their mistakes--and thus Tammy coasts to endgame

yet again

because everyone knows she'd NEVER get this mad as scum! Any good meta read needs to factor in the likelihood that the player has grown or adapted her play since you last experienced her as a particular alignment.

This is probably the biggest problem with meta, it assumes that players can't or don't change from game to game and that's just plain wrong.

Meta is nothing more than an anecdotal tool. I have seen meta be used to the detriment of an entire game, but never to a benefit. Furthermore, a group of players who use meta in the same game (because they are familiar with each other/friends/something) to the exclusion of the players outside this 'meta-clique' just make the game plain unenjoyable to play. I've been in a few games where a certain group of players go "we need to lynch everyone outside of our 'meta-friends' group to ensure victory". That's dumb (because in that game it did happen and one or more of the 'meta-friends' were scum), and completely inconsiderate of the other players in the game because you are denying them any opportunity to interact with you in the present game. Meta is a bad tool and a tool that creates an unfun environment for anyone who isn't a 'meta-friend'.

[Muffin]

What are it's uses, limitations, pitfalls, and anything else related to "meta"?

Does it skew game balance? Does it work?

Most people horridly abuse/misuse meta. Suffice it to say, a lot of people throw out statements like "Oh, so-and-so should know that this is not my scum meta" and for some bizarre reason people tend to swallow it without chewing. See my sig: as soon as a person knows their own meta, it becomes useless. Like that scene from Casino Royale where Bond thinks he's got a great tell on Le Chiffre but then Le Chiffre uses it to clean him out.

It

can

be a powerful tool but I find that 99% of explicit meta mentions I see are fallacious.

[Reticent]

I think that meta is completely useless and always gives an advantage to scum when it is used. I do not think it is a legitimate way to catch scum and empirically leads to town losing games.

This is one of those instances where I thought I knew my stance on something until I heard it expressed in such starkly dogmatic terms that I was forced to question how it could possibly be valid.

---

Honestly I think merely by virtue of how much easier it is to tell if someone is lying or not (in or outside the context of mafia) the better you know them, I'd have to say meta can't be inherently bad. I would agree that most of what we call meta is too shallow to be feasible, though.

[TheDudeAbides]

In my experience, for many players, there is as much variation within their town games as between their town games and scum games.
On the other hand, i think people's scum games are somewhat more rigid. If you can match a players game to their scum game, that's somewhat meaningful, but if you match it to their town-game, that's basically meaningless - 'cause of the first thing, and the fact that they are trying to play like town.

[callforjudgement]

Meta is not very good for forming cases. It works well at shooting down cases, though.

"Player X is acting weird" can be a decent scumtell, but if they've done that in a bunch of towngames, it's much less of a good scumtell.

[EspeciallyTheLies]

most effective when used to read someone you know and are very familiar with, while being supported by other evidence from the game thread.

ineffective when used as the only basis for a read on someone you have not played many games with.

some people have very distinct meta tells that can be very effective as a way to read them. most people do not.

biggest problem with using meta is not taking into consideration all variable factors that contribute to a particular meta behavior. confbias needs to be recognized as meta can be severely influenced by it.

[Mina]

Honestly, self-meta isn't always worthless. I mean, taking it without at least a pound of salt is just dumb, but 1) people tend to know their own thought processes pretty well, 2) how they use it (e.g., whether it shows a conviction they actually strongly believe they're town, whether it's used self-servingly) can be revealing, and 3) being aware of a tell doesn't necessarily mean you can avoid it. For example, some players just don't give a shit as scum and can't get invested in the game. Or are bad actors.

And then there are instances where you can catch someone on it--e.g., F-16 claiming one thing about his meta in a scum game and the polar opposite in an ongoing town game.

[Espeonage]

I always interpret self meta as a trust tell. And therefore against the rules and against the spirit of the game. It serves no purpose other than to create confusion and wifom.

[kuribo]

I always interpret self meta as a trust tell. And therefore against the rules and against the spirit of the game. It serves no purpose other than to create confusion and wifom.

The difference between self meta and trust tell is:

"Why would I X as scum?" -self meta
"Have you ever seen me X as scum?" -self meta
"I will never X as scum" -trust tell

[Espeonage]

The third option is exactly how every person I have seen use self meta go about it.