With the above said, although the submission issue is by no means settled it is now bounded into a decision between two reasonably well defined choices. Therefore while which way we go on this issue is yet to be decided it is reasonable to move on to discussing the next aspect of this. However addressing the issue of how to do scoring within the AltMeta is probably the most changable issue we have and therefore probably the last thing that we should discuss. There are a wide range of options for scoring going from completely administrator defined to totally automatic and everything in between. However before we discuss this I think we should discuss exactly how the MVL results will be displayed.

Clearly the results of each round need to be displayed independently, however we will also want to be able to display the results of all previous rounds to date. These results in either on a individual round by round basis or as a sequence of the X number of most recent rounds also needs to be displayed fromt the point of view of the league as a whole, from the point of view of an individual team and then down to the details of each individual member.

For the AltMeta Classes we spent a fair amount of time defining all of these formats. In that case it was an easier problem because there were a fixed number of classes that we implemented (i.e. 6) and that then determined the format of the various screens. In this case it's different because we have a variable number of teams. We started with 4 and are currently at 5, hopefully we will do better at attracting new members (the AlMeta will hpefully help us do this) and we will have many new teams in th future.

This is where a few pictures drawn up by some clever members can start to give folks a true idea of what this will look like. I have a few ideas of my own but at the moment don't have time to draw them up. Perhaps some others could come up with something here. Marshall was instrumental in coming up with the initial AltMeta Classes display format perhaps he might come up with something here.

The AltMeta basically ages games differently than the real Metaverse. I think in our case there will be no cumulative month to month score but each month is merely a snapshot in time. Clearly we want to be able to look back on previous performance but I see no need to have any aging of scores since that don't accumulate month to month.

But yes we should be able to add and change scoring rules over time like we have done so already, however this really isn't an AltMeta function it's a function of the new software that we are currently defining.

Basically the way I see it is that this is really a totally separate thing form the AltMeta. It perhaps shares hosting with the AltMeta. It perhaps may share location so that people that visit the AltMeta for the AltMeta sake would be able to see MVL results if they so choose and vice versa. Also I would hope that some of the graphing features of the AltMeta would be available to use to display MVL league results. Also the AltMeta would be the source from which game data is extracted. However we are really talking about an entirely new entity and as such we are free to define scoring criteria that is free to change over time.

I just want to emphasize that this is essentially a brand new thing that we should feel free to model after the AltMeta but we are by no means required to do things just because the AltMeta did something similar in a certain way.

Fraking hell!!!

This is what sucks about being on the other side of the world, this whole thread exploded whilst i was asleep and now after reading it all i have forgotten it all!!!

Here goes,



I vote for this, the individual way. It allows a little more freedom as it does not rely on each captain being around to facilitate submissions. This would be a concern as people come and go often with no rhyme or reason. It has happened before..(round 1)

Just so there is no confusion as to my vote,


Further on this, as is the nature of our threads, we are getting away from this issue again. Mumble if you haven't already, please set up a poll at the core outlining the choices. I don't expect a great deal of participation but the people in this thread will respond and we all seem to be the ones who are doing the hard yards. The rest of the players are happy enough playing within the confines of what we (us in this thread) work out. Let's live with that and between us just decide, Individual or Captains.



On top of what Mumble already outlined as advantages of being the AltMVL and he did touch on this a bit, but it also gives us a sense of legitimacy. It no longer looks like a side project put together by a few players, but now has had some real involvement from Kryo, which gives us a stamp of approval if you will. A dedicated AltMV style page just for the league will be a huge attraction for players who cringe at our thread based way...nothing flashy or official about that, but the AltMeta provides the flashy interface, the (somewhat) automated submissions, the history of our rounds and that sense of being an official entity. Now where are not trying to convince ourselves or anyone else that Stardock is involved in anyway, but people know that Kryo set up the AltMeta and that we could not have done this without him.....People will make that connection.



Yes! We will need a name that reflects our new standing, otherwise many people may not know that anything has changed. Also perhaps we need to advertise the AltMeta itself a bit more. It has not been the center of any front page threads for some time and a bit of exposure sure would help us too. Perhaps that is something for the MVC, it has slept for too long....
As for some names......"MVL powered by the AltMeta" "AVL - AltMetaverse League"

On a final note, and mainly out of curiosity, Kryo, has the MVL made any noise in the Stardock offices, not counting seeing MVL all over the forums? Just wondering if anyone has taken any notice of it at all?

I think i had more to say but i will come back after reading all the posts again.

sweet. Kudos to you, as always, Mumble for tackling our collective chaos

Also, thank you Kryo for all your help and input so far; no matter what direction we decide to take it, is very highly appreciated.

I'm all ready to get the word out to see where this goes.

How about "AltMeta League"? But selecting a new name should be the least of our worries right now.



Its like inter-school soccer. i.e. girls are allowed to play but not many actually do.



This is how I envision the AltMeta League to look like once its finished. Its a bit simila to the current way the AM displays scores except for colour and other things. Its a quick rough diagram of sorts. Don't laugh.

The individual player could by accident make the wrong submission for another player. And you can't resubmit...

Do you have that too? I can't post normal replies anymore.
I MUST use advanced mode!
The only thing I am wondering about: Was the computer trying to tell me to shut up or was it trying to complement me by stressing that all my replies are advanced?

Don't answer this. I was just ruminating and I do not want to spoil the working atmosphere in here.

the issue at hand is that we have a rule against double posts. personally i don't think it's a problem. if a team cannot remain in open communications, it's their own fault. still, i wouldn't want anyone to feel put off by this possiblility.

let's take a step back and consider this in light of the (newly implemented) average team submission bonus. as i understand it, this bonus was designed to:

1) provide something to teams whose players submit official games early in the round;
2) complicate "score scouting," (that is, waiting until other players have submitted games in order to give yourself a concrete goal to beat);
3) provide an additional type of bonus point to take some focus off score and game speed as the primary means to earn bonus points (especially since earning the correct victory type seems to be a no-brainer at this point in the league's development).
4) create a bonus point where the team strategy and communication are the primary substance behind the point--that is, the bonus point is not awarded based on submission to the metaverse, but official confirmation with the MVL, so as not to reward players with fewer RL commitments but rather teams who are willing to risk less competative scores and speeds in order to secure earlier submission confirmation.

did i miss anything?

as i see it, the question of whether individual players or team captains have to execute the official submission bears most directly on how each team is managed. comapring my experiences on team A in round 3 and team C in round 4, the captains had very different team management styles. FB sorta reminded me of a drill sargeant at first (no offense intended FB ) whereas DA seemed more a hands-off type of leader. this isn't to say one style is better than another, not by any means. i would want to encourage diverse leadership style as much as anything else.

looking back on precident, individual players have had to submit their own games. all things being equal, it seems to me that we should continue this paradigm: i think it would be least disruptive to how things already work. giving captains primary submission responsibility, i think, could leave players feeling a little robbed. i think for many of us, posting our scores into the round submission thread it one of the most enjoyable parts of each round--even when our game stats are nothing special.

still, the points raised about players going incognito mid-round are worth consideration. i'll describe now what i think is the best solution to these considerations--kryo, please tell me if something i propose is impossible or more work than it's worth.

1) each (Alt)MVL character (such as mine, "The Blind Bandito") is assigned a password, and under normal circumstances, each player will have to "log in" to the league space on the AltMeta when they wish to confirm a submission that round.

2) after selecting a game within the correct time frame for the round, they'll go to a confirmation screen; it'd be lovely if this screen could warn them if they, say, picked a game with the incorrect victory type.

3) in the event a player goes missing inexlicably, that team's captain may select a qualifying game for that player, but only at the end of the round. this will disfavor anyone who suddenly and totally loses internet access, but personally, i really dislike the idea of a captain lording over his/her team's scores and calling all the shots. this should be cooperative, and in that spirit i think power and responsiblity should be more spread out, not less.

4) if the captain's passwords could be set up such that they could submit on behalf of another player at the end of the round, without losing the ability to identify that someone else is submitting on behalf of a player, it would be great.

4.5) (i'm assuming there would be some sort of tracking screen for the round in progress, where players and teams could turn to see who's submitted what so far and on what team. it'd be nice if the new software or whatever we'll use could correlate the password used to submit a game to something of the identity, so if i confirm my submission for "The Blind Bandito" with my personal password, it could display "Submitted by: player" but if i broke my face and FB had to do it as team captain, it would display "Submitted by: team captain".)

5) co-captains could be assigned for each 'season,' and they can take over captains' responsibilities in the event a captain goes missing.

6) should a player have some means to electronically contact his team captain to say something like "i can't submit to the alt meta because my dog's on fire, could you pick one of my games for me?" the captain or co-captain may submit on that player's behalf immediately rather than at the end of the round, but only after forwarding or showing the message to neilo, FB, Silver or Mumble--some member of the league-wide leadership.

...okay, sorry for the rediculously long post. perhaps it will spark a more lively discussion from the league as a whole.

Good summary and interesting 6 step proposal on game submissions.

Two points in response. I totally agree with dystopic's summary about the submission bonus except for one subtle point that I think is very important to make.

I agree that the 2 point base score for a victory of the correct type has become a no-brainer but I want to caution folks about taking this for granted. IMHO there are a number of goals of the league. Game improvement, camaraderie, competition, taunting and the list goes on. However, don't forget that everyone in the League is commiting to play a game of randomly selected settings, which are most likely not settings that they would normally choose, and commiting to play those settings to a randomly selected victory condition that also may not be of their prefered type, while all other conditions are enabled. Let's not lose sight of this fact because I truly see each victory as exactly that, a credible victory worthy of merit. The point of having the bulk of a teams score consist of base score with a few, small bonuses that can be added is to highlight the worth of the basic victory of the correct type. This is the true victory. The fast games, the high scoring games or whatever future criteria we may add for bonus are just gravy. The true victory is the simple win with specified settings and victory type.

It's clear that dystopic was by no means belittling the simple victory by calling it a no-brainer, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to make what I think is a very important point.

As far as dystopic's 6 step plan it certainly seems well thought out and also is basically an attempt to merge the best parts of both plans. In this case it's based on the individual plan that then allows captain oversight. The other case of captain password access shared with the team is predominately the captain plan that allows individual participation. Both have merit, however it seems to me that the simpler of the two is certainly a single password that grants access to a teams submission page with that password being shared among the team.

This plan (shared captains access) is both flexible and simple, and allows different teams to treat it in different manners. If a team wants the captain to deal with all the submissions then they can do so. If a team wants to do it individually then they can do it that way as well. They would simply have a rule that no one should submit for anyone else. Actually the flexibility is pretty complete because if one member wants to submit his own scores and another member doesn't want to bother then this method accomodates both.

One point I would make regarding this is to make the point that there is nothing magic about any one person being the captain. A person is captain only because his team allows him to be captain. If a team doesn't like a captain's style then they are certainly within their rights to replace him. Basically the point is that the League itself did not choose the team captains, each team choose their own captain and the true power resides with the team, *not* with the captain. As Neilo can attest, being in a position of authority is more like being a servant than it is like being a king, at least if it's done correctly.

Anyway with all of that said I truly do like the idea of a per team password that grants access to only that teams submission page with the password sent via PM to the team captain which is then shared with any member of the team that wants it. This is what I think is the best of all worlds. It gives individual access to those that want it and captains access to the degree that the team desires.

Another couple of notes. One is that KzintiPatriarch's idea of having a designated 2nd in command is an excellent idea, it pays to be prepared for everything.

The other point is I don't think we need to be too worried about having the captain perform an "emergency" submission. I do think we should have an automatic submission policy implemented by software in play. Clearly if a single game that fits the criteria has been sumitted within the round's timeframe and the round ends then that should be the submission. I think there's little to argue about this.

The real question comes up about what to do with multiple games that fit all the criteria. Kryo has suggested that software could automatically figure out which game would be optimal for the team to submit but this is bad for a couple of important reasons. One is that people could simply play a fast game and a high scoring game, or multiple of each game types and then submit none allowing the software to maximize the result. I think this defeats the concept of submitting early and encourages no one to submit until the end. It also bypasses an important part of team strategy that should rightfully be left up to the players. Finally, this software would actually be quite complex because which game would be best to submit depends on other teams score which in turn may include the automatic selection of games as well. This is because one team may get a bonus dependent on which of another teams games are selected and vice versa. Anyway I feel any automatic selection that attempts to optimize a teams score is a very bad thing to do.

I suggest a very simple way to choose which game to use. Simply use the last game submitted that fits the criteria. Clearly if the player were satisfied with an earlier game then they would have submitted it and be done with it. This is simple, prevents against inadvertant non-submissions and does not attempt to optimize a teams score. This also eliminates the biggest reason for a captain to do a last minute submission simply because he didn't know the player had a blockbuster that he just finished up.