I would like to formally redefine the term "cheese". Most people seem to think it means something that has obvious positive results, which someone abuses, and has nothing to counter. This is incorrect.
Cheese has, and always will, be defined as something out of the ordinary, which has a huge chance of failure. Like a toss of a coin. If it succeeds, then you get to laugh in the face of your enemy because they were too stupid to do something before it was too late. It is comparable to trolling.
This definition largely revolves around my experience with Starcraft 2. A good example would be a popular streamer named "dragon". He would do things such as a proxy-cannons or cannon rushing, which could ultimately fail very easily if the opponent noticed the photon cannons on their screen, or scouted for them in time. This strategy made you extremely vulnerable if this happened. But it could also mean an instant win if it didn't. As a streamer, 'dragon' was known for the fact that, if he lost when using a cheese tactic, he had to eat raw powdered cheese on-stream as a punishment for losing. It was gross but funny and it helped people understand that cheese tactics are not something to always be proud of.
For me, a great example of a cheese tactic in Hawken would be 'shield+EMP baiting'. Basically, you toss down a shield between you and an enemy, and walk backwards. Then you wait for the enemy to run into the shield and EMP them as a trap. I've done it a few times, and it has a large chance of failure. But if you nail them, then it is an instant kill. The delay between items is usually too much to make it work reliably. But if I dance around the shield for long enough, I can sometimes make it work.
Edited by WillyW, 22 July 2015 - 07:39 AM.