this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Easiest way to start hating your new hobby is visiting it's subreddit.
It's obvious for video games because you can assume anyone that wants to be active on a specific game sub is probably a try hard that talks about the meta, or max DPS builds, or other annoying stuff. But then you visit something like the carbon steel pan subreddit, or grilled cheese, and you're continually assaulted with this idea that there are only specific pans and oils that are correct, or that your grilled cheese isn't actually a grilled cheese because it was cooked too close to an open pack of salami.
Video game communities suck, and it makes playing them worse.
You play an FPS and everyone uses the meta gun at the time, then it gets nerfed and they use the new meta gun. Same with RTS and any other multiplayer game. Somehow StarCraft 1 pulled out a perfect rock paper scissors balance, but nothing else really has that so meta is what people do.
And because everyone is so busy grinding and min maxing, that's what the game developers design for now, and it sucks the fun out of games because you just grind hours to get some new items to have the best items in the game.
Occasionally game communities are good. The Chivalry 2 subreddit had a bot that would use GPT to answer questions and then on every post go on about how the polehammer is the best weapon in the game, which was so over the top it made fun of the whole meta idea. The Breath of the Wild communities doing crazy rube Goldberg machines are always fun. And I'll never not enjoy the weird hellscapes people create in the Sims.
This is why I miss arena shooters (Quake, Unreal Tournament, Halo, etc.) being in vogue. There are no loadouts, no inherent differences between players, you're all equal, and any weapons, ammo, grenades, powerups, vehicles, whatever, must be picked up from the map itself. This map doesn't have a lightning gun/rocket launcher/banshee? Well tough shit, you're going to have to do without.
These are games where you must fight with whatever comes to hand, no matter how much you dislike it, and that leaves almost no space for a meta. The closest thing that can exist is a general consensus of "for this situation, these are the weapons you want to have, and these are the weapons you really do not want to be in this situation with".