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Comment by na85 | Hacker News Reader

>Take his final example where he says that adjusting tactics in response to your opponent in ultimate frisbee is meta. No, that just strategy.

Choice of strategy can be "meta", though. It depends on the context. For example in ultimate frisbee the current meta is to play Vertical offense, and so you see a lot of teams training for how to run it and how to defend against it.

Back in 2004 ish, the dominant teams played Horizontal offense, and we only saw Vert for set plays after a foul or other play stoppage.

The meta has changed because the dominant strategies have changed.

Then you can get even more meta, because perhaps your team is playing "long ball" and you know that if you start calling lots of travels, the other team will reciprocate. And you know that because even a contested travel causes a return to the thrower, it will hurt you more than hurting them.

All of that is both strategy and meta.

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Eh, it’s all semantics. What you are calling meta has been called strategy for thousands of years.

No big deal - words change. I’ll get used to it.

Meta is an aspect of strategy, but the terms aren't interchangeable.

The article's usage seems to drift around somewhat, but in esports I follow "meta" refers specifically to the consensus about which strategies are good or bad, not to strategies themselves or to anything someone does in a given game.

E.g. saying "foo is meta right now" means most players consider foo to be stronger than the alternatives, and if a player uses a strategy other than foo one might say they were playing off-meta, etc. But the term is wholly distinct from strategy itself.

You're literally trying to game the game.

Meta is the set of viable strategies GIVEN the strategies that your competitors commonly employ.

Here's a concrete example:

Soccer fundamentals: passing, dribbling, etc.

Soccer strategies: formation, player roles, etc.

Soccer meta: viable formations, player roles, etc.

No one is out there playing a 8-2-1 formation because it's not a viable strategy, i.e. it's not part of the current meta. The current meta in soccer is largely 4-4-2 and 4-4-3.

3 in the back is relatively rare, because it's weak to the player roles that we currently see being employed by competitors. It's not part of the meta because it's a weak strategy against the currently common strategies in the meta.

Goal: to win

High level strategy: wear down opponent, exploit endurance advantage

Low level strategy: aggressive midgame, long passes, high tempo, rotate attackers

Tactics: 4 4 2 formation, joe and Jean on wings, etc. force opponent mike to run side to side to wear out, then focus on scoring in final third of game.

Fundamentals: passing, communication, give and go, etc.

Meta: realizing that you can make more from your Instagram account than from playing the game.

Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about soccer (football)

Feels like you're starting to argue in bad faith with the only purpose of rejecting the concept of "meta" as it's being presented.

If you'd like, you can think of "meta" as short for "meta-strategy", with the distinction between "meta-strategy" and "strategy" as similar to the distinction to "meta-physics" and "physics". People who claim that "meta-physics" is just "physics" would probably be regarded as "pedants".

OP here. Exactly this.

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