Last of MP Metagame thoughts

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The Last of Us's MP (aka Factions) Metagame - some reflections

I should say that I didn't love the metagame so much as I admired what it was trying to do, which was weird and different and complex.

The basic idea is that you have a clan of individuals (that you grow by being successful in MP matches) that have to survive for a set number of matches - 84 matches total (represented as 12 weeks of 7 days where 1 day = 1 match). There are various story events that alter the fate of your clan, which happen once a week for 3 days. Story events include things like "sickness hits your clan, you must get antibiotics" or something like that, and for the 3 days the event is occuring, you have challenges that you choose from that you have to succeed at (get 9 downs, get 9 headshots, get 9 kills with a specific gun, etc). If you repeat a challenge it gets harder, so if I choose get 9 headshots the first time, I might have to get 12 head shots the second time, then 15 and so on.

you grow your clan by getting supplies. Supplies are the ingame unlock currency. Supplies are picked up as loot drops (2 per kill) or as your match score/100 (I think, where 2300 points (called parts) would equal 23 supplies) They serve double purpose:

whatever supplies you accumulate in game are added to your cumulative supplies, earning you weapon and gadget and perk unlocks.

separately, supplies are added to your total population. So if I leave a game with 80 supplies, and I have a population of 45, I would get 3 new clan members. (80-45=35, 35/10=3 rounded down). so the next time I played a match, I would need to get at least 48 supplies, or my clan would start to get sick/lose members. Achieving certain thresholds of population unlocks cosmetic items (hats, masks, etc).

Pros:
- fully integrated into the whole world narrative. You are living the story of a group of survivors that you are fighting for and scavenging supplies for. This has the potential to create an emotional engagement with your clan, and a flavor to the time you spend in game, despite the fact that's its just a blue int. You can also hook up your facebook account from which it will pull names and use them as clan members (Thad Sasser joined your clan! Evan Champlain is cleaning fish! Jeff Zaring has died!). This creates a sort of long term engagement broken up into meaningful chunks. It very much captures the essence of the Last of Us's campaign in that way.

- Success in the metagame challenges nets boosts (boosts are applied per round, like armor costs 50% less, or start with a pistol upgrade). It made me feel like I had worked for something that had value, as evidenced by my reticence to use them willy nilly.

- the challenges can entice you to play difference playstyles. I would never have realized how good I was with the hunting rifle if not for the challenges. Same thing with the revolver.

- as a skill barometer it feels pretty elegant. You have to combine in-match tactics and out-of-game strategies to be really successful.

Cons:
- This system is very difficult to explain and understand. My understanding took me probably 10 hours to come to. For a long time it was confusing why anything was happening. There is no way I could explain it in a sentence.

- Can fragment the goals of individuals in a team based, objective based mode. I can be more focused on scavenging supplies (supplies are rewarded for actions in game, supplies are also loot drops a la kill confirmed that I must pick up) than the objective.

- winning quickly and cleaning is essentially punished by the metagame. If I can accumulate 10 supplies per minute on average in a match and a match can last up to 7 minutes, it would be optimal for the match to last as long as possible. If my team is awesome and we win in 2 minutes, I can't accumulate the supplies I need. This can lead to some interesting situations, however like "objective farming", where the team you are on collectively agrees to not take down the final objective and farms kills. I can see this being very frustrating for the team it happens to, however.

- it is very difficult to maintain populations of 150+ because of the balance of incoming supplies. I think I peaked at 65.

- It's something that only you are aware of and has no bearing on your in-game beyond the boosts. The fact that it only unlocks cosmetic content is further diluted by purchasable cosmetic unlocks that are far cooler than the base set. An argument could be made that this metagame establishes an actual value for the cosmetic unlocks, driving more people to be willing to purchase them, but that's for the psychologists to argue. There's population number shown on the leaderboard for instance, or a max population achieved.

- the punitive nature of the challenges can be hardcore. Some of the challenges are "achieve goal X or loose 100% of your population". I ended up choosing an impossible challenge and lost all of my progress. I posted on the Lead MP Designer's Facebook wall about this, because he used to be my boss. Not everyone has that opportunity.

Anyways that's what I thought about that.

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