AltMeta Class Beta

That is very cool!

The fruits of our(mostly Kryo's) labor.

Hope you all like it.

Thanks to all for this.

And I'm not just saying this because I can finally see my character ranked without having to hit "view more results"!!!

Woot, our first positive comment.

Remember that this isnt permanent yet, it is a 'beta'. So please critique as you see fit and even more than that.

This may take a while to take off. The Data Charts are actually both very useful and interesting. There will be a bit of a learning curve and it will take a bit for the word to get out, but having played with it for awhile now it's head and shoulders above the current system (no real offense to the current system as it is it's currently the only way we have to get data into the AltMeta).

I encourage everyone to read the veribage in the links contained in the OP. They're really not all that long and they do provide useful information.

This should also open things up quite a bit. Currently all classes except the All Universal are pretty haphazard. No one had any real incentive to make a major move. But now there is. I expect that there will be quite a bit of jostling now that there's a class for pretty much every type of game that people prefer to play. Don't want to play gigantic, fine, you have two other size ranges to compete in. Can't stand playing the game out to the bitter end, fine, take the influence or alliance win and get on to the next game.

Also since the scoring system doesn't penalize you for the number of games submitted, playing lower scoring but quicker games can be an effective way to compete even in the All Universal class. But beware, once you reach that lofty goal of top ten in your prefered class you better not take too long a rest because with those games decaying at 1/6th per month, you can fall back down as quickly as you rose.

Finally, this is really only just a beginning. Certainly along with the current single choice of banners we want to provide banners for each class. Then there's medals and we haven't even begun to talk about "future" functionality. For now we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. Kryo thinks he's actually done for the moment. I think he deserves a nice rest but it probably won't be as long as he'd like.

In the meantime suggestions from all are welcomed and encouraged. This is *your* metaverse. Tell us what you think would improve it. Don't expect any instant gratification but if it's a good idea or even if it's a bad idea that a lot of people want, who are we to argue with the voice of the people.

I'm sorry if I missed a discussion about this facet of the AltMeta, so take this as a comment from someone who doesn't know the reasoning behind it.

I personally would like to be able to shoot for those who have made high scores, without thinking that I might be climbing as they fall because of factors outside of the gaming world. Why would your scores not stay up?

The only thing i can think of that is confusing at first look is the new classes that are used (galactic & solar). Maybe you could add a section that explained the new classes etc.
Other than that it looks really good

Umm. When in doubt, read the manual.   

AltMeta Class Criteria

This is actually a facet of the AltMeta in it's current state and really isn't a result of the introduction of classes.

The short answer is that it's due to the different method used by the AltMeta to calculate total score verses the method used by the official metaverse. There are pros and cons behind each method but I think the current method used by the AltMeta is superior for a number of reasons. I do have a chapter listed above dedicated to the explanation of the AltMeta Scoring Calculation. Instead of me simply repeating these explanations it would help if you read the manual. Don't worry, it's the last thing that I usually do as well.   

Besides the reading the manual a concrete example is useful. Take a look at the current 2nd page of the official metaverse. The player that's currently 11th (who actually only recently fell to 11th) is Killzone. Folks that have been around for awhile may remember him. An excellent player, however by no means so excellent that he still should be ranked 11th in the metaverse after not posting a game for close to nine months. On the same page the character in 17th is similar, submitted a total of three games over the course of 2 days in his entire career almost 9 months ago and is still ranked 17th. Where is the fairness in this.

Anyway, there's no aspect of the AltMeta that's cast in stone. Everything that's been done has been done in the interest of fairness. If some aspect of the AltMeta can be improved or is thought to not be as fair as we intended then the scoring method, or anything else, can be changed. But read the manual and listen to the reasoning behind the way it's done and then we can discuss it.

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Actually the AltMeta does have an All-Time Total Class where a characters total undepreciated scores are kept forever. In this case the above mentioned character currently in 17th is listed in 41st position. This is where such a character belongs, ranked according to his all time score but not cluttering up the current rankings nine months after posting his last game. Also 41st is far more appropriate to his performance since the only reason he's so high in the official metaverse is because he played a couple of reasonably high scoring games and the official metaverse severely penalizes your rank based on the total number of submitted games.
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Very nice. Kudos Kryo and gang

The classes are quite appealing. I don't have the system or the time to run huge/gig maps, I've pretty much stopped at Large. The new classes gives me my own little bracket to compete in.

Thanks, Mumble, that explains it quite sufficiently for me. Yes, I'll at least peek at the manual next time.

No big deal. I'm as likely to do this as the next guy. Just remember that old adage "When all else fails read the manual".   

Looks good!

Says the 1st place character in both the Military Galactic and the Military Solar classes. Congratulations are certainly in order, although I'm hopeful that some folks will be along shortly to give you a run for your money. This is of course, in addition to being 3rd in the All Universal class.

Also for those that think that you have to play gigantic games to compete, Wyndstar is a prime example that this assumption isn't true. Take a look at Wyndstar's Data Chart. The following screen shot shows Wyndstar's games graphed for the last six months showing score as the height and Class as Color.



Note the three violet dots to the far left are the only gigantic/huge galaxy games that he's played in this time period and all in all they really didn't score that highly. Most recently he has a pretty even distribution between Galactic (Large/Medium galaxy) and Solar (Small/Tiny galaxy) class games. With virtually no gigantic galaxy games Wyndstar has a pretty impressive record in the All Universal Class where supposedly the gigantic galaxy is the only way to compete.

Another interesting point to note about this graph is that overall his scores in the Galactic class are larger than those in the Solar class. This is only to be expected. Also note that his latest Solar class scores are larger than his older Galactic class scores and even his older Universal class scores. This is to be expected as well.

One final point to make. The All Universal class includes all games (please read the referenced docs in the OP). While Wyndstar's official metaverse rank of 14th is nothing to sneeze about, why is that so much lower than his 3rd place rank in the All Universal class on the AltMeta. The reason is the number of games he's submitted. Even though the official metaverse divides your total score by somewhat less than the square root of the number of games submitted this turns out to be a pretty severe penalty once you have even a few games under your belt. At 73 games Wyndstar gets credit for a little less than 18% of every new game he posts.

I can't encourage folks enough to read the referenced documentation listed in the OP. They contain a wealth of information and aren't really very long. Also I want to apologize to Wyndstar for using him as an example. He does make a good one because he has a large number of games and a nice variation of sizes and victory conditions. In fact Wyndstar's chart (as of a couple of weeks ago) is used as the example throughout the AltMeta Data Chart for exactly this reason. Thanks for being a good sport.

Well done, gentlemen. Thank you all for the effort that you have put forth in support of the GalCiv community. I look forward to being an active participant in the AltMeta.

Well done, gentlemen. Thank you all for the effort that you have put forth in support of the GalCiv community. I look forward to being an active participant in the AltMeta.

No apology necessary. I'm flattered.

Your data breakdown is interesting. I just don't have the time to invest in a huge/gigantic map anymore, so I made it my goal to see how I could maximize the scoring on the smaller map sizes.

I will admit the new AltMetaBeta has me considering taking the time to throw together a few political/influence wins to see how I would compete.

So what is next? The new medals?

Any suggestions on my tournaments? Does the metaverse council intend to take them over at some point?

Good luck!

Yes, Yes and Yes. Although it would be nice for you to continue to work out the kinks in the tournaments for a bit. Keeping things on a race basis, as opposed to an individual basis, is a good idea. It brings out a more communal cooperative spirit instead of a directly competitive one, although a bit of competitive spirit is good as well. I still think a bit more notice on the start of a tournament would be a good idea. I also would like to see some canvassing for folks opinions on the types of tournaments that they would like to see. But again this is all part of what I call working out the kinks.

Actually our first order of business is to give Kryo a bit of a rest. Things like new medals should be pretty easy to add and I suppose these could come quickly. I also expect that we’ll want to give folks some time to absorb the AltMeta. Although it’s basically functionally complete we’re still looking for feedback about all aspects of it. We’d like to watch things for a bit and see how the competition in the new classes shapes up. Currently it’s just based on people submitting the kinds of games that they prefer to play without much regard to how they compete. That’s in fact what we’re hoping for, but we also assume that things will heat up a bit and go back and forth as people realize that they *can* compete playing the style of game that they prefer. However, we need to keep an eye on things and make sure they work out the way we planned. If the competition we expect doesn’t materialize then there are perhaps other things we can do to encourage it.

We look at tournaments as part of a more general problem that includes metaverse mods and metaverse scenarios. Our initial work will be directed at developing some kind of infrastructure that will allow folks to directly submit games to the AltMeta that would otherwise be flagged as cheats by the official metaverse. With this in place there are all sorts of things that can be done. But like the three months it took to get to where we are now in the AltMeta, we can’t expect this to happen overnight. There are also major concerns about maintaining some level of security and providing some assurance that everyone is competing fairly. These are not trivial issues, but I think this latest effort demonstrates what can be achieved. It’s this level of professionalism that we want to pervade everything that we do.

Oh, I almost forgot. Actually, one of our primary goals when founding the Metaverse Council (MVC) was that it was to be a representative body of all metaverse players and potentially representative of the entire GalCiv2 community. In order to just get started we settled on the initial councilors being appointed by the empires that at the time showed the most life. However, even at that point we knew that we’d like to have a more democratic representative selection process. We’re getting close to the point of wanting to make this a reality. Again, we’ll let things settle down for a bit after the release of the AltMeta Classes but we will shortly want to start the process of holding a general election here on the GalCiv2 forums for at least one new MVC representative. More about this later.

Yeah, I thought about doing this again, and again decided against it. The reason I don't is because I don't want people saving up four or five games with the race they want, and then flooding a bunch of submissions right at the start to unbalance things. Why crush the spirit of the other side right off the bat?

I may be relying on false assumptions. Basically, it seems to me that from the moment it is advertised, people can start playing towards a tournament. For that reason, it feels to me like it is a more level playing field to give people no advance warning what races will be in the next one.

I am, of course, open to arguments from the other point of view. Perhaps queueing saved wins for mass submissions on the first day isn't a problem, because it would still mean more submissions overall. Maybe no one would actually use that tactic. Maybe for my next one I will try it the other way around.

Good stuff, as always.

That's the problem with these decisions. They're always not as clear cut as you'd like them to be. In my case I just happen to like the immersive quality of a gigantic abundant all game. I doubt I could finish this kind of a game within a month if my life depended on it. However, if they ever fix the autopilot bug I might have a chance of doing it. Anyway the points you make are valid. In the end what's best to do is the way that interests the most people and that in and of itself can be a difficult thing to determine.

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However, this points out an advantage in having a way to submit these kinds of things directly to the AltMeta. This would allow the current progress to remain secret so that the early results may not influence what people decide to do later. If you see all the results going opposite the direction you would normally pick you might be dissuaded from going that way or even from playing at all. Clearly this couldn't happen if the result was only announced at the end with no preliminary results.
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Might be an idea to put a link to that on the altmeta itself then as most people wont know where to look for the manual.

Still it does look good

I thought we might include some of these articles within the AltMeta as some kind of users guide. I was hoping to get some feedback as well as allow some period of time for changes to occur before pressing for this, but I do think this is a reasonable thing to do sooner or later. At the moment I think Kryo may be a bit burned out on the AltMeta so I prefer to give him moment of peace before bothering him with such a minor issue. There's sure to be some mods needed before too long, I think we can wait a bit for this.

It has only been a day or so, let things settle, I am sure the complaints and praises will continue to flow in.

Awesome! Lookout Galactic/Military class   . Finally can play my kind of game for some props   .

Good. It looks like Wyndstar needs some competition there. We could also use some folks going after some of that Military Solar action as well.

It currently seems a bit more balanced in all of the Civil classes but that may just mean that these classes are wide open for anyone that wants to focus on any one of them.

There's no doubt in my mind that there's a lot more opportunity for competition now, but I do think it will take some time for folks to adjust. Also it's difficult to really get the word out. Not everyone submitting games necessarily checks these forums every day or even every month.

That's one of the most frustrating things is that there are so many folks posting games but not necessarily ever posting in the forums. Not to pick on anyone in particular but take the character Spindoctor. This character has posted 108 total games (36 in the last 6 months) to the metaverse and belongs to terrymc512003. As far as I've been able to tell terrymc512003 has made only a single reply on any of these forums and that was in Aug '06. He's a member of the Qourth Empire and has posted 4 games every month this year except for January when he posted 12. Speaking of the Qourth Empire the MVC has never once been able to make contact with anyone in the Qourth Empire and it's not been because of a lack of trying. Yet members of the Qourth Empire have submitted 143 games within the last 6 months. This is certainly not evidence of a dead empire, yet from their forum presence they may as well be. The Overmind with 78 six month submissions, the Colonial Fleet with 61 and the Browncoats with 53 also fit into this category as well as a good handful of others.

Again I’m not trying to single folks or specific empires out but there is far more activity in the metaverse than one would think if based on forum presence. I’m just really at a loss as to how to contact these folks and get the word out.

The MVC had been attempting to contact folks via the email user function here at the GalCiv2 forums. Actually DethAdder put in most of the effort. But this was interrupted by the forum changes that occurred when PM’s were instituted and the default character settings were changed to not accept direct emails. Since then the MVC Outreach program has been on hold but I think we should start this up again except using PM instead of email.

One thing I discovered when trying to look up the games submitted by individual characters and empires in the AltMeta is that the total games submitted is listed but the number of games submitted in the last 6 months isn’t listed directly. The 6 month submissions for both characters and empires should probably be listed directly but there is an indirect way of getting the information. In any of the “View Full List” links for any of the six classes or the empire rankings there are details listed showing numbers of games, average size, average difficulty and total score. In this case the numbers of games listed are only those that count in the AltMeta, namely the games submitted within the last six months. This is useful in determining the recent activity of the character or empire.