Hollis had a great idea and created a strawpoll to gauge how the current meta is impacting your enjoyment of the game.
We would like to know how everyone feels about the current state of the game compared to pre Worlds Meta, before DLR and Faust rampaged the wyldside and if thereâs a different feeling depending on whether you play casually or competitively so please use the polls that most aligns with your competitive nature.
PLEASE ONLY VOTE ONCE
Choices are pretty basic
1.The game is in better shape.
2.The game has not changed much.
3.The game is in worse shape.
Iâm really interested in what the community thinks about the game. Over the last 4 years, its been fairly positive. In my local meta however, there has been this wave of discontent concerning the current meta. While iâve been interested in the game since almost the beginning, we have newer players that are simply finding it difficult to enjoy playing with the current state of the game. Its a number of different things that affect this, but I am interested to see where many of you stand on the current meta.
What are some of the things you think are detracting from newer playersâ learning experiences? I donât disagree with you, Iâm just curious for elaboration since my meta doesnât have any super new players.
I feel like people are whiners honestly. Andy Sucker with Siphon spam was a lot less fun to play against than most of the current meta decks, and it dominated for a long, long time. Faust, is a great card, some would say broken card, i get it. I honestly think Wyld-cakes is what is broken much more than faust, since it essentially transforms runnerâs turns into 6 click turns with a simple two-card combo, and even before pancakes is online they are 5 click turns.
But is it honestly ruining more games than previously âbrokenâ cards that everyone simply couldnât deal with? I would venture to say no, and everyone just has exceptionally short memories.
As for Corps, while FA is still around there is an actual answer to it via turn table or clot lock. For remotes with Ash and Caprice, first off you need to get that set up, and second off scoring out of a remote, behind ice with some defensive upgrades seems like good netrunner to me.
I may be in the minority, but I am enjoying the game now as much as I ever had, and look forward to that continuing.
I think the current mwl has been a problem for the meta. Pretty clear it shifted things in an unhealthy direction. I think this wouldnât be as much of a problem if it wasnât for the fact distribution got messed up so itâs been a stale meta into a broken meta for the last 7 months. This is compounded by the fact for a lot of players tournament season ends in June so the games been in a lull to immediately come back to a completely busted meta has been not great for game enthusiasm.
I think youâre less in the minority than you think. Itâs always popular to complain, and people will always complain about something.
For the longest time, Account Siphon was ruining the game and was so overpowered and needed to be banned, etc. etc.
I see it in every game. Same with Hearthstone. In a competitive game, there will usually be a most-popular meta call deck, and group think will exacerbate the problem, and everyone will complain about the deck and post about how itâs ruining the game. Then, a new deck will become popular and then IT will be the cancer which is ruining the game.
It gets quite exhausting. Just play, and have fun! There are counters to everything now, so if a single deck is rampaging over the meta maybe the corpeople meta needs to change.
I donât see how distributing the power level around messes things up negatively. Sure, Anarch is pretty dominant right now, but at least thereâs different kinds of Anarch. Before the list it was Kate, there wasnât any other Shaper.
Is it just the MWL though? I mean, we canât really know what the meta would have looked like without the MWL. Sure, we can speculate (DLR Val, Foodcoats, NEHFA, PPVP Kate), but most of the speculation seems to point to a meta no different from before the distribution issue.
Strictly speaking, the MWL has been in effect in the competitive scene for 5 weeks. Compared to a meta of how long with PPVP Kate sitting pretty much at the top of the pile?
For all we know Faust decks were naturally on the rise.
There were pre-MWL. CT Siphon, Bagbiter CT, myraids of Kit builds ranging from Stealth to Mopus Vamp, diverse explorations of Hayley ranging from Stealth to Hyperdriver haymaker combo.
And there was plenty of Anarch too.
Crim was the minority here. It was just Andy and Faust Game.
It doesnât change much for me,Faust deck is rising with/without MWL.I wouldnât take shot at MWL,I think the meta change is due to 2 factors:certain cards in sansan cycle helped Anarch especially Faust deck rising,and MWL take down certain other archetype which are also strong or have a good match up against Anarch deck.Damon said Faust wasnât on MWL simply because âitâs a new cardâ,so I guess he kind of realize the problem but donât want to put new card on MWL.
The problem isnât the MWL - I feel the current Faust / D4V1D meta would have resulted even without it. Faust + D4v1d is just REALLY good. It gets through basically ANY ice without much of a cost. Anything cheap gets broken by Faust for practically free, and anything big gets D4v1dâd. I actually feel like the meta would be even more heavily weighted towards F+D without the MWL, due to having more influence for recursion. of course, this isnât necessarily Faustâs fault, itâs more because of the support anarch has for it - adding Wyldeside and / or Adjusted Chronotype to MWL will probably go a long way to tone it down.
Honestly, Iâd say D4v1d is a bigger meta problem than Faust. It makes almost all expensive ice almost pointless. Navi-Mumbai City Grid will go a long ways towards helping with this problem, but itâs a little while away, a yellow card (big surprise) and costs 2 inf- and is pretty easily trashed.
There are three reasons itâs bad. One anarch is way more dominant than any faction was at worlds. Itâs winning 60-70% of scs when scs are normally more evenly distributed than worlds because lower caliber of competition means people can wjn with pet decks. Worlds being held now means over under on top 16 non anarch is like 2.
Secondly, the particular decks that are good are based around Faust and wyldsides. Wyldsides pancakes is a heavy variance strategy because itâs power is highly dependent on when you draw wyldsides, which is something completely independent of player skill.
Thirdly side balance is way off. At worlds at the top tables runner was probably a mild favorite. Now runner is a huuuge favorite overall. Games better when sides are balanced.
Even if it was Noise and Kate rampaging it didnt mean that corps had to tech against those decks to the point where they would be anemic and helpless against other runner decks.
I like where the meta is at but, then again, I also liked the Andysucker meta. Mostly I just love Netrunner and realize that this period, like all things, is a wave that will subside. I am also one of those people that likes MWL, but would also be just fine if it had less cards or didnât exist.
That said, Faust is dumb and I miss PPVP Kate. I canât wait for sufficient Faust hate, and I want PPVP off the MWL.
It was mainly Anarch because Noise had been in the spotlight during regionals and US Nats and because of how good DLR Val was at King of Servers. Look at a list of winning IDs so far this Store Championship Season. Itâs very diverse and very fun. Faust may be really good and seem to be killing the game but it was Account Siphon before this and Scorched Earth before that. Also, do you know how easy it is to stop the Pancakes combo?
Some people are mad as hell, and they donât want to take it anymore?
Just look at the winning decklists of tournaments on Stimhack. Are people seriously saying that more diversity is worse for the game? Let Anarch have their days in the sun for a while.
I ask because the data I came across from the rare tournaments that tracked runner and corp win rates seemed to skew slightly in favor of corps winning 55-60% of games. This surprised me somewhat, so I am certainly interested in what data you have that confirms runners are winning more often than corps.
and if thereâs a different feeling depending on whether you play casually or competitively so please use the polls that most aligns with your competitive nature.
