CELESTA AUNGM
Kang Lo Directorate
Gallente Federation
115
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Posted - 2014.01.21 20:41:00 -
[1] - Quote
 Greetings, NoxMort3!
I've heard time and again the definition/explanation of what "Meta" levels mean in the game.... The explanations here are PRETTY similar to the explanation given in a dozen other threads. NozMort, the problem is this:
The explanations you've been given are all correct, .... and yet they are KIND OF wrong 
Let me try to make sense of what I just wrote...
The Meta Level of any item is an acknowledgment that EVE and Dust are PROGRESSIVE and PERSISTENT games. Because the "corporations are regularly updating their weapons with new industrial advances" (...that's the Lore way of saying the game's devs will constantly be introducing new guns and items to mix with the old ones we're still playing with), there will be a difference in technological "Efficiency" between say an ole' workhorse Plasma-cannon battery that EVE capsuleers used from the Militia years in Eve Online, and the new Logan II hybrid plasma battery introduced in the Eve Retribution expansion pack.
(If we're talking Dust, it might be the difference between the ole' reliable Assault Rifle taken from the Gallente-Caldari Militia wars, and the more-modern-thus-less-PG-hungry Danzig IV Tactical AR).
In EVE Online, "MORE EFFICIENT" performance is how you could describe what Meta means.
And it makes sense,... the modern electro wrench is made better than that old crusty wrench from 5 decades ago, so the modern item will have the Meta 9, and that old grandpappy item will have the Meta 1. Or sometimes a new experimental proto version is a little too specialized for just ONE combat situation, so it's called LESS efficient than an advanced version that has a more general design.
 The shear human nature of players also will cause the Meta 9 item to be more DROOLING and DESIRABLE, so you COULD use the Meta numbers to roughly predict the item's popularity too (when you're shopping for a new proto-cannon, the Meta-8 model is the new black, baby--no one's savin' up their ISK to get that old dullsville Meta-5 version anymore).
 Note that SOME races, like the poor Minmatar, don't even HAVE a militia history! The weapons the Minmatar are making ARE the first generation stuff.... so technically they are STUCK with a Meta 1 classification for the time being, because there's no older version to compare their efficiency to. Bummer...
But as you've discovered with the Flaylocks, here in DUST, Meta is not so useful a guide. In EVE maybe it is, but in Dust, a player on the ground realizes that often the "more CPU/PG/hitpoint efficient" gun, ain't necessarily the gun that works best for YOUR playing style.  If Celesta has to keep reloading her fancy Meta-9 shotgun after every 2 rounds, she'll get killed way faster than when she's got an 8-round Meta-6 shotgun, so for HER style of combat, the Meta-6 shotgun is "the better quality" gun. For some of us, the powerful splash of that ole' Meta-1 clunker grenade makes it "the better quality" over that newly designed prototype grenade that is Meta-9 sexy efficient, but has almost no splash at all.
So when I mean that the explanations here are kinda wrong, I only mean that they are the definitions that come from EVE Online. In EVE Meta apparently really does work well to show what's "better quality",.... but in Dust, that Meta stuff can't NO WAY tell you what your "better quality" face-smasher is. |