The Altmeta is better, especially if it is expanded. Give it a forum where people can post just on metaverse topics or tournaments. You have already suggested medal and bracket changes. Have it host tournaments. Basically, although the game doesn't have multiplayer, you want to design an area that 1) takes minimal effort from a casual player to access, 2) promotes natural interaction between players in some way, 3) provides an additional sense of accomplishment over what can already be gained through the metaverse.
All excellent points. I certainly have to admit that your points about the Core are valid. There are many other things going on there besides Metaverse or even GalCiv2. For a focused experience that's GalCiv2 Metaverse only without being confused by other things, having a separate AltMeta forum is a great idea. I don't think this has been previously suggested but it's something that will definitely go on the MVC's agenda.
Ultimately, I think you will need some assistance/support from Stardock to make that happen.
I’m kind of using your quote out of context here, but what we're trying to do has many layers. The first layer is to accomplish as much as we can without any help from Stardock. The reason for this is that if we can do it ourselves, the odds of actually getting something accomplished go from virtually impossible to realistically possible.
For that reason it will be sometime before we would approach Stardock with any requests for in-game changes.
I'm not saying that Stardock is unresponsive to player desires, however the metaverse player is just a subset of all galciv2 players and even then their desires aren't necessarily homogenous. As I've mentioned many other times and places Stardock can't respond to every good idea supported by a few folks that pops up every now and then for a few days before being forgotten about.
The goal of the MVC is to prove we're capable of accomplishing something that provides a positive benefit for the community and to prove that as a group we represent the common desires of a larger subset of the community than just ourselves. With those things proven I feel it's much more likely to get assistance/support from Stardock. Even so it will always be better and quicker to get things done by ourselves if at all possible.
However, I believe that the implication that Stardock's assistance is required drive interest to the AltMeta is incorrect. As far as the numbers that certainly remains to be seen, but certainly there are far more than a dozen folks posting games to the Metaverse. If only a hundred folks are interested I would consider that a success. I would expect the potential to be probably closer to 500. Heck, if it takes off it could far exceed these modest expectations.
The impression that I get from posts like this is a sense of impatience. I certainly share that impatience but these things do take time and the only way to get anything done at all is to finish something before moving on to the next thing. Impatience here can be very counter-productive. As I mentioned, Macmatt has been in discussion with Cari in regards to an endgame.xml file that will never be supported in the ‘real’ metaverse but is probably the best chance of supporting metaverse mods, metaverse scenario’s and metaverse tournaments. Clearly you’ve shown that you can conceivably hold tournaments without this function but to be able to formally submit such games this kind of function is required. In any case we’re going to finish what we start before going on to the next thing. If the MVC isn’t appearing to move fast enough for some then I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing I can do about it. Real change takes time.
