Competitive load-outs and ship meta, Is it harmful or beneficial?

[GreyTea]

I love the Squid/Goldfish saying this straight off.

Like the squid the goldfish apparently has no place in competitive..apparently, but then ask why. Is it because it has a heavy weapon at the front that is vulnerable to art or merc fire,Possibly, or it can not get a tri or quad  vector and become a platform, Is the squid to squishy not fast enough. Lets look at the 2 most used ships in competitive.

Junker vs Goldfish
Ok so why is a goldfish undesirable against a junker, atm it uses artimus hades to wreck ships at mid range, and got close range so it is risky taking a manticore for sniped out, but not impossible you can come in high use the terrain to close the gap and go on there brawl side, use some tactics heavy clip disable to close the gap, even harder with the carronade but if you close the gap your in with a shot to wreck the junker 1vs1, you face the same problem in a fish than you do with say a pyra going gat mortar yet no one uses it strange, infact you do not have to get as close with heavy clip manticore,

Junker vs Squid
The junker is the bane of my piloting when i use a squid, but i have been talking to people leagues better than myself for new tactics to use against the junker, and they have alot more success, i,e stay on the long range side and high use a disable squid to pop the balloon and rain down the fire staying above the artimus arcs,  in theroy works perfect in practice you relies how skilled the people are who told you this for them to be able to pull it off,

Loadouts- Junker artimus hades, How to beat it and other ideas you can take,

You can put a lumberjack on the front of a goldfish out range the junker so the artimus have little no effect unless they take lesmock then you can still outrange depending on the map, again a strategy i very rarely if at all see in competitive now. but i feel a viable one,

We are starting to see flak fish make a return, but depends heavily on teamwork however i would argue so does every other build, it is strong vs every ship and build with the right team mate,

Imho manticore fish gat mortar pyra is unbelivably strong mid range disable manticore with a charging pyra focus one target, then the fish can disable the other until the pyra is ready to charge again, or even lumberjack support for a sniping junker or brawler galleon,


Pyra

Nothing beats the gat mortar god tier pyra, except a lot of things actually haha, i,e a manticore fish how can they gat mortar without front guns, how can they charge without a balloon, i have seen some awesome pug games where squids have run around pyras for fun destroying them laughing all the way to 5-0 by being on the right hand side, again i know it is not competitve but please, the skilled people we have i think it would be intresting to see a squid vs pyra at that level,

Conclusion

I think the problem is not with the ships or weapons but the teams, the whole idea of a meta is just wrong, imagine if somone took a manticore fish with an AT squid, focus down one target full disable for the squid to be safe to charge in and mop up, it would be awesome to see, and why can it not happen, because its not meta??

Example i was flying with tropo and we were talking about gattling gun, so we decided you no what gattling guns are op and just use gattling guns mix in buffs and ammo charged lesmock and play around, we won every game, the factors where skill level,ally took all explosive ship, But.... the stats stay the same it can work and with training and pracitce tweaks to a few things might even be viable then it got me thinking of this post, i see so many people talking about balance but it is for the same guns and ships everytime,,, why not make use of what we have and work around changes rather than the other way around.

I wonder if say the Ducks Gents MM started all taking Squids Goldfish and brawling mobula's, would that not just be enough to change the meta itself, public image and prove in the right hands any build will work, and just because a build is overpowered on paper and can be more situational does not mean it is the be all end all, and with training and skill you can beat any build with any other build, rather than balance after balance and demand for more ships and weapons to break up the meta take an ''underpowered'' build/ship and make it work ammo crew positioning even if you die 1000 times eventually people will relise actually the gattling gun has a blind spot when on the right and the mortar can't hit me when i approach from here, i can use this tool to do this, If you know where the sniping spots are look at the map and spectate and think well  if i approach from here i have loads of cover to close the distance, 

Because the issue with balance is, you can change the numbers all you want but there is always going to be a divide always, you can not please everyone,

I know there are alot of different opinions and personalities in the community when it comes to this topic, so please keep it clean and friendly am not looking to start a flame war with you are wrong i am right that's stupid because of this ect..

But i would like to hear peoples oppions and ideas for how we can change the face of competitve play, so it does not become stale, will it get to the point of weapon and play style restriction in tournaments i,e only weapons with a range under 500m or only over ect, will new weapons HAVE to come out to freshing things up rather than people taking risks. or patch after patch until everyone is under happy and no one gets the changes they want after it all?

Thanks for taking the time to read my rambling thoughts i would love to hear yours

-Grey

[Urz]

The 'metagame' is a fundamental concept which is so intrinsic to any competitive game environment that to state "the whole idea of a meta is wrong" doesn't actually make sense. It represents what is strong and what you will expect to face in a high level match. In a well balanced game, the meta is diverse. For GOIO that would mean teams with different styles of play succeeding with different types of builds, and those builds having both favourable and unfavourable matchups.

Whether or not one feels the GOIO metagame is one of diversity is in the eye of the beholder, but ultimately balance plays a huge part. Your hypothetical on what would happen if teams decided to intentionally run suboptimal builds in competition, motivated by goals other than winning, would not change what is strong and what is not.

[Spud Nick]

I'm just here for the flame war. I am a Cake after all...

[Alistair MacBain]

So the current Fotm (favorite of the month) is hades, dual artemis junker.
There are counters to it.
The longrange game is one. The way OVW beat the gents in one SR another.
They simply charged in and put their pyra ontop of one junker which lead to a constant dead balloon so the junker barely had arcs on one of the OVW ships.

The shatterfish (manticore goldy) is quite effective at disabling galleons.
A carro flamer squid will wreck a galleon whenever it manages to get close.
Those are things we all know.
Its a rock paper scissor game.

You cant balance everything gainst everything.
You just need to adapt to the situation and manage to change your style based on the situation.
If you always go the same way there will be one guy figuring out a counter and beating you without any chance if you play your standard play.

I agree that the goldfish has an issue atm.
Imo that is based on its one gun focus which is barely working in the current state.
Its not about medium guns underpowered. 2 guns of whatever kind should always be stronger than a single gun.
The goldfish just has to poor arcs to get bifectas working.
I can imagine a closerange/brawl goldfish quite good if it gets easier bifectas.
WE all know that a brawl spire can kill pretty much any ship quite easy.
Imagine a goldfish with a bifecta of a light and medium gun.
Could cause alot of problems if you ever get close.


The meta will always be there as Urz already stated.
Meta is just what works and what doesnt. Every game has its Meta.
Some things just have a better winchance than others. Its not the job of balance to make everything viable in every siuation.
Its about giving everything a similiar niche where it works best.
And the Hades has a soft counter in the chem spray.

[N-Sunderland]

The 'metagame' is a fundamental concept which is so intrinsic to any competitive game environment that to state "the whole idea of a meta is wrong" doesn't actually make sense. It represents what is strong and what you will expect to face in a high level match. In a well balanced game, the meta is diverse. For GOIO that would mean teams with different styles of play succeeding with different types of builds, and those builds having both favourable and unfavourable matchups.

Whether or not one feels the GOIO metagame is one of diversity is in the eye of the beholder, but ultimately balance plays a huge part. Your hypothetical on what would happen if teams decided to intentionally run suboptimal builds in competition, motivated by goals other than winning, would not change what is strong and what is not.

I couldn't have put it any better than that.

[Sammy B. T.]

I've always felt the goldfish, specifically the blender,  is the natural counter to the junker. It's a tank of a ship,  can balloon lock and grind, and it can can book it. However,  the Artemis is currently the natural counter to the goldfish. This isn't due to the Artemis being opinion. This is because the goldfish gun is so amazingly exposed. It's a clear target that can be immobilized by gats,  light carronades, flares,  mants, flamers, and of course Artemis. Pyras are great blenders despite being one of the least maneuverable ships in the game precisely because their weapons are do hard to shoot out.


Now,  onto the issue at hand, yes I believe a lot of the driver of accusations of op is good teams being great with good builds. Ducks have had a long history of being pretty with the meta. Most of our teams fly the same basic ship in 99 percent of situations. However this is cause we are more about infecting a build than reacting to builds. We know there are other viable ships that if we used would probably be called over powered.  The thing though is we like what we bring.  Before the ducks showed the junker was meta, I flew it, hell I flew the junker when it sucked.

Tldr, just because we try to win doesn't mean we don't enjoy or ships.

[Omniraptor]

I think  a good tactic to counter artemis junkers is to break your front heavy carronade with lochnagar, then almost but not quite rebuild it, then kill their balloon in one shot once you get within 300m or so.

The goldfish really needs to have its front guns tilted forwards a bit, and also decrease the heavy gun rebuild time a little.