Moving the Meta – Should Devs Make Arbitrary Changes to Shake Things Up?

The year is 1998. It’s a beautiful, sunny Sunday, but you aren’t going to spend it outside. Instead, you’re headed over to your friend Timmy’s house to play Tekken 3 again. You spent all last night thinking about how Timmy beat you with Ogre over and over on Saturday – he won’t low kick spam you to another KO this time! He’s been stomping you regularly for almost a month now, but you think you finally know all his character’s moves, and you’re ready. You say hi to his mom, hop onto the couch, and proceed to get your first win this month against Timmy’s Ogre. 

Fast-forward to 2024. Tim has begged you to update League of Legends, and you’ve finally relented. You’re assaulted by notifications as soon as the launcher opens – after a few minutes, you’ve finally clicked them all away, and you get into a lobby. After a brief 15 minute wait between search, lobby, and load, you’re finally in game. Your lane opponent is Akali – or so you think, until she dashes into a nearby low-HP minion and kills you at level 2. You realize it’s actually just another Irelia skin you haven’t seen before, but there’s no time to think about that now – your team is pinging you to come to the dragon – there’s a vote for it, confusingly – but you end up dying to the strange-looking dragon because they do way more damage than the last time you played. Your team surrenders a few minutes later. 

While the first story might be completely unfamiliar to gamers born after 1999 or so, the struggle of returning to a multiplayer game after a few patch cycles is one almost every multiplayer gamer has experienced at some point. With the ubiquity of internet connections, it’s become possible for developers to constantly patch their games, if they so choose. While this has been a boon for single player games – which can now get bugs and quality of life  issues fixed post launch in a way that wasn’t possible before – it’s an even bigger game-changer for multiplayer game. Many titles are constantly updated, often on a regular schedule. 

With the possibility of regular updates comes the ability for developers to directly impact a game’s meta through balance changes. At first glance, this seems like it could only be a good thing. After all, it’s unlikely that any multiplayer game has been released in a state of perfect balance, and patches allow devs to buff and nerf things towards a more ideal state of parity. 

However, having a game change every 2 weeks makes it much more difficult to stay abreast of the meta, not to mention essential stuff like what units or characters can even do. For example, take a look at the most recent LoL patch notes  – if you’re an average reader, they’d take you about twenty minutes just to get through them.

Tack on the fact that the changes have knock-on effects that also need to be considered, and suddenly you’re looking at a situation where you essentially have to do homework to remain competitive on the ranked ladder. If you aren’t willing to study patch notes, you will almost certainly be behind players who are. While it’s always going to be the case that players with more time to study and practice the game will generally end up at higher ranks, is studying patch notes bi-monthly something most players actually want to do? 

Well, it depends. When a meta gets stale, especially if that meta isn’t considered “good” or fun, people may stop playing a game. In that regard, regular patches are important, as they shake things up and keep people playing. Even arbitrary changes – done not for balance’s sake but simply to bring new strategies and tactics into the game – can support player engagement. (Riot Games famously buffs exciting and high-skill cap champions right before the yearly World Championships.)

But sometimes it becomes so difficult to keep up with the meta that players simply don’t try. One of the most popular World of Warcraft add-ons, with almost 40 million downloads, tells players what spell to use next. This removes the need for players to learn the current optimal “rotation”, and instead lets them do what the add-on tells them to. In Age of Empires 4, a popular YouTuber’s builds tend to permeate the ranked ladder after a new patch, with players unable – or perhaps simply unwilling – to take the time to come up with their own effective strategies after a new patch. Some of this is undoubtedly due to how rank and win-focused online multiplayer gaming seems to have become, but a lot of it is almost certainly due to how difficult it has become to keep up with rapidly changing metas. 

While frequent patches make it harder for players to keep up with the current strategic landscape, ironically they can also stifle creativity as well. Whatever has been recently buffed or changed is often the most popular choice, as players naturally gravitate towards new and/or strong options. When the meta isn’t given time to develop, players will often fail to recognize alternate strategies, sometimes even very powerful ones. 

Take the RTS Starcraft: Broodwar, a very popular eSport in Korea that got its final balance patch in 2001. Fast forward to 2006, and the consensus is that Zerg dominates the Zerg vs Protoss matchup. Yet in a tournament finals, pro player Bisu introduced a brand new Protoss build and won a convincing 3-0 victory against the reigning Zerg champion sAviOr. His innovation came a whopping 5 years after the game’s last balance patch, and totally changed the dynamics of PvZ forever. 

There are a few mitigating factors: SC:BW is a very complex game, and while it wasn’t receiving balance updates at that time, there were new maps introduced regularly, which did affect what strategies and tactics were effective. Still, the point remains that a fundamental shift in the meta only occurred half a decade after the game last saw balance changes. 

We can see this in modern RTS games as well. Take the Company of Heroes 3 mortar pit. This combat structure saw no use for multiple patch cycles, virtually ignored. Players finally discovered its strength, the structure entered the meta, and quickly proving so strong that the developers removed 25% of its HP and had its veterency requirements increased by an incredible 375% – a nerf suggestive of the fact that the structure, despite being slept on for months, was overperforming by an incredible margin.

Of course, we all know that reality doesn’t matter nearly as much as perception – if players feel the game isn’t fresh enough, or that a strategy or champion or ability is broken, they’ll cry on Reddit, Steam, and official forums (and do their best to chase away new players) until the devs “fix it” or update the game. Conversely, players often return to games when there is a patch, even if the patch doesn’t bring new content.

So, it’s often in the devs’ best interests to patch their game regularly, even if the game is arguably in a good state – assuming the goal is to keep player numbers high, rather than to simply make a good, balanced, and bug-free game. It probably comes down to what kind of player base the game is attempting to target: a hardcore team-based shooter might want to patch a lot more often than a casual party game (though apparently no one has told the Dead by Daylight devs yet). 

Given how many games now rely on microtransactions and content packs, or otherwise function as a service, the meta shakeups and constant patches probably aren’t going anywhere. But it seems worth considering when and where they are helpful, and when it might be time to let the meta breathe a bit.