M:tG metagame, anyone?

I'm sure many people that have played any amount of Guild Wars PvP and Magic: the Gathering (or any trading card game) will recognize the undeniable similarities between the two.

One thing i'm noticing though, is the lack of a defined metagame. For those that dont know, the metagame (by my definition) is the game of playing the game. If you've ever played for a couple hours and realized that there are a whole lot of Minion Masters running around, then changed to a Smite monk, then you've played the metagame before.

In Magic, the metagame was outlined very definitively by the Pro Tour of tournaments. The top 8 decks of the tour would be cataloged, card for card and published/updated in whatever magazines there were. This let people gauge their own decks, by playing against the top 8 decks with their friends. If your new deck can beat the top 8 decks, then you were gold, and ready to take on the tournaments.

I think that it would be awesome if Anet could create this sort of environment in the GW PvP arenas. the problem is consistency and implementation. This leads me to my suggestion (i apologiuze for taking so long :P)

What i was thinking is that Anet could replace the standard pallet(palate?) of builds with a sort of top X (where x is a predetermined number, not necessarily equal to 8) list of builds. and perhaps, if that list could be dynamic with the GW servers, and give each unique build a win percentage for the past 24 hours, then list only the top X builds with the best win percentages.

One flaw i can see is that tracking of the umpteen thousand builds that are played in a 24 hour period would cause a ridiculous amount of processing stress or whatever. hmm...

or maybe if the win percentage for each build is first calculated client-side until Y number of matches have been played. At that point, if your percentage is high enough, then you can submit the build to the server. Then, and only then would your build be tracked for the next 24 hours and compared to the other builds that have been submitted. each submission could be identified when players see the build on the list, to give their creator's credit.

I just think that it would make it much easier for the average player to stay competitive without having to play for several hours a day to keep up with all of the metagame shifts...

input plzkthx

they should just make the pre-made builds change every month, being part guild suggestions, and part FotM builds.

not to encourage too many cookie cutter builds, the list should change every month.

I like the idea, but with magic, those top decks would have probably cost a pretty penny to reproduce. In guild wars, and couple hours of pvp and you could instantly reproduce these top builds. So instead of people taking the highroad and coming up with a counterbuild, they just use one of the top builds(cough IWAY cough). Thats not to say some people would't come up with the counter, but just not enough. And you would have to have the GvG top builds, Tombs top builds, CA top builds, and so on.

Also, to a certain extent, the Guild of the Week thing an guild wars.com, kind of gives top pvp builds. I mean why interview a guild withno skill?

So overall, I would like the idea but it would just help to create more "cookie cutter" builds. This is just my opinion, please feel free to refute these claims.

ben, if you've ever played the tourney scene, then you know that this was commonplace in magic, as well (it was called net decking, if memory serves).

Really, it's not that much of a problem.. newbs get a chance to see how a good build works, advanced players get to tweak them and experiment, and the expert players aren't forced to play against unarmed noobs when testing a build in CA (because the builds will always be effective by some standard according to the current metagame). at the same time, everyone is given a little more direction, people with ingenuity and innovation are rewarded, wile those without still have what they need to get by... basically, what i'm getting at is why are cookie cutter builds a problem?

as for having a seperate Top X list is for every arena, i'm not sure how to solve that without just lumping them all together... i agree that they should be seperate, but in the worst case scenario, lumping them all together could be acceptable, i suppose.

i'm not familiar with GotW, i'll have to check that out.

no other input?