I'm totally behind what's been discussed so far. The idea of representation to work out a better scoring system sounds especially appealing. One reason I don't play metaverse games more than I do is that I hate being almost forced to go for a military victory, especially as I often tend to go for influence or diplomacy. I was tremendously shocked the first time I scored an influence victory in a metaverse game and scored a whopping 4000! It would have been very simple for me to go ahead and conquer everyone, probably scoring over 10x that amount.

However, whatever people want as a group, as shown to Stardock via representation, would be cool with me.

Good work and good luck! Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

Honestly, I viewed the Metaverse as a dumb concept. I'd rather the resources have been spent on things that are enjoyable. You can't really compare two games, and all it rewards is min-maxing, and it is part of the reason the game hasn't really been modded.

I actually think GC2 would be better off without it. Of course, I'll admit to being pro-MP as an option instead, but I'm willing to wait for it.

I just played my first DA game.
It was a relief to be able to experiment and then finish it quickly, when I wanted and not be tempted to 'milk' the score.

"open" a new site for a new MV

There currently is an "Alternate Metaverse" that uses the data from the "real" metaverse and then provides a different method of calculating and depreciating the total score over time.

It's not directly sponsored or supported by Stardock and is therefore potentially more able to be changed in various ways based on player desires.

Currently it provides a bit more information graphically about the size and types of games played. One of the possible items being discussed would be putting in "brackets" that would actually be the sorting of the data based of different criteria. This would allow, for example, for a ranking based on medium galaxy tech victories. This would show who scored best on that specific type of game. So if that's the kind of game you play you could monitor your ranking within that specific category and not be compared against people playing gigantic galaxy military victories.

Anyway I can't seem to put in a Web Link or smilie at the moment so here's the link to the "AltMeta".

http://altmeta2.thegalacticcore.com/

At this point we're trying to contact as many folks as possible and discuss the potential interest of such a metaverse council within each active empire. We also have interest in contacting metaverse players that don't belong to any empire.

The exact specifics of the representation have yet to be worked out, but I'm sure we want them to be selected as democratically as possible and to include those not in any empire as well.

I'm sure if we do form this metaverse council and we are sucessful in increasing interest and participation in the metaverse, that Stardock will at least consider potential changes that seem to have universal appeal.

The biggest issue is as I said in the other thread. We have a hundred good ideas that are supported by at least a handful of people, but what we need are a handful of good ideas that are supported by hundreds of people. I think the most reasonable way to achieve this is through some for of representative council.

I got your back Mumble!

Thanks. I apparently had a funky boot where only 14 processes started. Not exactly sure which were missing or why but a reboot fixed it. Oh well. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Well, I'm not sure how "official" this thread is  , but I wanted to reiterate my sentiments in the other thread and Thank everyone for their support. As a unified body I believe we can accomplish a lot.

btw I thought I'd share a little of my motivation behind this. I do not desire to be on the council. There is others much better suited than me for that. I am supporting this for the simple fact that, Some months ago I had stopped posting to the meta for the same reasons others have stated. I prefer med/large maps and don't play on that high a difficulty. After a few submissions I realized my prefered way of playing would never get me far on the meta and chose not to post any longer. Only after joining the Diplomats did my interest in it get renewed. I feel like others would also show renewed interest if they felt they were justly rewarded for playing the type of game that is fun for them. This is my attempt to give back and help a community that has helped me a lot. One person probably can't make that big a difference(unless it's FrogBoy  ) but as a whole we can accomplish great things and give everyone a reason to use the metaverse option on the main menu. Just a little background mixed with a few random thoughts. Long live the Metaverse.

Here you go...Altmeta (I got your back Mumble!)

(I hope the link transferred!)

For those who haven't checked out the altmeta site, I highly recommend it. Just looking over some of the extra details made me look forward to playing DA in the metaverse. It's even interesting to see your own stats the way they're broken down there.

I will throw my support in here as well. Anything that ranks me as #1 can't be all that bad.   

I'd like to think the Meta is what keeps folks playing long after a game would normally have run its course and been shelved for something hot off the press. I agree with most that the current Meta does not do alot to support continued playability but the AltMeta, because of the way it scores can. Especially if/when it can be altered to display new/different information.

What I'd like to see is brackets that have been discussed before. One page that will show groups of stats based on insert preference here. Displayed like the Meta does now just more groups. But what would the group be based on? Difficulty? Type win? # games played (AltMeta already does this one)?

Just my 2 bc.

Thanks to all again for replying to this growing movement. I am glad to anounce that there is positive movement within most of the top 10 active empires. As soon as we get a general agreement from them we will proceed to form a representation system. Any ideas are very much appreciated and welcome, and everyones would be put into consideration.

I think that the changes to the Alt Meta would first be sorted by victory types. Then in a subbracket by difficulties, map sizes, races, alligments ect. Or we could try to calculate what influences the scores the most and then decide in what order to put them. Thats just my idea, objections welcome.

If Kryo will help in the changes to the altmeta. It is his creation and he has more knowledge of the data the metaverse uses than anyone outside of the devs. If you wouldn't mind Kryo, let us know how difficult you believe these things will be to implement

Figure out what you guys want, then we'll worry about getting it done. Probably the worst part of any of it will be calculating all the extra rankings (as I've noted elsewhere, what little is already done rankings-wise as well as the figuring of the atlmeta scores has to be done in advance each day due to the load involved). It's already pretty sluggish getting the data and processing it all, so we'll just have to see how it goes adding more. It might need to stagger the updates out over a few hours' time so we don't get the Core kicked off its hosting

Thanks Kryo. You are the man

Indeed.

It's good to know what can be done, but let's first make sure most folks support the concept of a metaverse council. Then we can figure what we want to do. Only then we can worry about implementation.

However with that said I'll jump the gun myself and throw a couple of ideas out there just to get the thought process started.

First off we want to keep things as simple as possible, we want the rankings to be clean and understandable. I think we want more than just being able to sort on defineable criteria. The current metaverse has a sort. If you want to see the rankings based on tiny galaxies then the current MV can display that. In my mind this isn't enough.

If the MV council decides that it wants a tiny galaxy bracket then that should be displayed right alongside the unlimited rankings. If you're #1 in tiny galaxies then you don't want to have to actively select a sorted ranking because you know the next guy looking at the rankings isn't going to do the same sort just to see you #1 in tiny galaxies.

Whatever the brackets are determined to be, the top ten of each of those brackets should be displayed in equal prominace on the first page of the AltMeta. If you want to see beyond that then you have to select the bracket you want and scroll through it. But at least the top 10 of any bracket should be relatively equivilient.

As far as the brackets themselves they should be broken down into categories such that it's reasonable to get equivilent scores from any type of game within that category.

One possible divison of categories would be based on size. It could be two groupings but I think three groupings would be better. Gigantic and Huge, Large and Medium, and, Small and Tiny. These games could be further divided into Military Conquest or Non-Military Conquest. This gives six different brackets which may be a bit many, but I think it's workable and has a bit more variety and fairness than the 4 categories that result from breaking size into only two categories.

This is by no means totally fair, but I think it goes a long way in the right direction. You can argue that tech wins should be further seperated because they score differently than influence wins for example. The problem is that this would end up with nine categories and be just to confusing to deal with.

Also I think being able to sort on any desired criteria is a useful feature. I just don't think that a sort alone is sufficient to put a greater emphasis on game types that have been pretty much negelected in the MV.

Anyway these are just some strawman ideas to break the ice and begin the discussions. I'm by no means married to any of them.

Its nice to see you on board for this Kryo. Your support is very appreciated.

Yes, it is what we are looking for. Hopefully we will acomplish something from this, any general improvement or spark of interest will be welcome. Right now we want to spread the word, and we want everyone who wants to improve the community to participat. If you have an empire go ahead and propose to them, althouh we have generla agreement in the top ten we wish to get as many people as possible. And if you dont have an empire, think of yourself as equally welcome amongst this thread and all the others that will hopefully follow.