What is meant by "the meta?"

One common complaint new viewers of competitive 6s have is that the metagame is stale and unchanging. While playing 6s and watching older demos quickly shifts this perception, it's become so prevalent that I felt a guide to understanding the 6s meta using Viaduct as a case study would be useful.First we need to address what “the meta” actually means. Colloquial usage of the term usually refers to class and weapon selection. The metagame refers to the community's understanding of the best way to play the game successfully, which can refer to roles, playstyles, tempo, and strategies as well as weapons and classes.The colloquial view of meta is most common among players and watchers of MOBAs, where the class pick/ban system and item builds are a large part of the viewing experience. However, if this were all the term meant, then games where both sides are completely symmetrical would be unable to have a meta at all. In games like Quake and chess, both sides start with the same resources. Understanding and enjoying these games comes down to watching how various players use their resources to gain advantages over their opponents. Though both sides have the same resources, they have unique skillsets and different ways to utilize their pieces or weapons.Merely changing items/classes does not inherently mean changing or ignoring the metagame. If a 6s roamer decides to run the Black Box, that's a loadout change that could potentially lead to a different strategy. However, running that weapon alone isn't enough; the soldier needs to change his playstyle to accommodate for his new abilities. If the roamer is just used to play aggressively, bomb the enemy medic during stalemates, and initiate team fights through bombs in general, he's not changing the meta by using the Black Box; he's merely playing the traditional role of a roamer with less effectiveness. His loss of a rocket means that bombing in with a double rocket jump renders him unable to kill or force a medic without having to reload. He's not using the weapon's advantages and he's not changing the meta.However, if a Black Box roamer decided to play more passive on the flank, work with his scouts to keep it locked down, and take less heals (and so need to shift out of position left), this would be utilizing the roamer's new capacity and change his role. It would have a domino effect for the rest of the team as well. A team could decide that without an initiator they want to have a more aggressive combo. They could decide that without someone to force ubers, they want to push respawn advantages without uber instead. Or they could decide that having a passive roamer allows their scouts more room to get aggressive, changing one of the scout's roles to the initiator instead. These are all fairly simple changes, but as teams practice these strategies their team dynamic will continue to adjust and shift in ways that might not be immediately predictable.Many weapons in TF2 don't really change how class roles and team strategies function. A scout running Winger on a map without any Winger jumps isn't going to function any different than using stock. Even on maps with useful jumps, all running the Winger changes is slightly reducing the amount of time it takes a scout to reach certain positions. This may have minor effects on individual 1v1s, but won’t have any impact on the rest of the team’s decision about how and were to push. Were the Bazaar Bargain legal in 6s (it's banned due to a bug on nocrit servers) it probably wouldn't change the sniper's role or playstyle too drastically either. As snipers are generally run to get a pick and open up a push, they have ample time to charge their shots and take a quick peek. Teams likely push on the first pick, so the faster charge time will amount to very little.Class selection can function the same as well. The notion of a “pocket pyro” is often floated at low levels, and we’ve seen its use by Invite teams Exertus and Street Hoops. Simply having a pocket pyro doesn’t change team roles. In many cases, an uber push with a soldier would look similar to an uber push with a pyro. Uber is used to push the defending team back into spawn or away from the point while attacking last on maps such as Badlands and Gullywash, and the only difference a pyro will have in the scenario is an inability to rapidly close in on enemies or reposition.