I'm not quite sure what you mean but I do want to.   


I don't know what you mean by an apposite (opposite still doesn't make sense to me) post. Could you please explain?

To clarify the MVC position it's definitely true that at some point in the future the MVC may want to ask Stardock for changes to the "real" metaverse or even possibily to the game itself. It is also the MVC's desire to be supported by many. I am interested in your suggestion but I'm not quite understanding it. I suspect that English may not be your primary language. Could you please explain further?

Create a new post where the people can write a simple note to show their support to the MVC; create such post now so there will be a lot of time for people to see it and decide what to do.
It will be better if everybody just write in it only one time, it will be also useful to keep it "sticky" so will not disappear.
Soon or later the MVC will, maybe, ask to Stardock to make some change, at that time could be helpful show them that MVC is speaking on behalf of many players (it seems to me that Stardock try to follow the suggestions given in here when possible).
I hope this time i make myself more clear, if not maybe is better just forget it.  
As you said Mumble enlgish si not my languaga, I'm italian.

OK thanks. I understand you now.

I have been hoping for a few things to happen before coming to the forums and asking folks to support the Metaverse Council. Foremost among them is that I want to have something to actually show folks that the MVC has accomplished. So far there's been nothing concrete to show.

Most of our initial effort has gone into making rules about how the MVC goes about it's business. All this is very unexciting and very boring. The main thing that we've been dealing with that should be of wide interest is the definition of AltMeta Brackets.

The idea is that we want to divide up the types of games based on their scoring potential. That way if someone prefers influence victories in medium galaxies they can compete with folks that prefer similar types of games having similar scoring potential.

The MVC has been discussing this topic now for close to 6 weeks. We've come up with a number of ideas and are fairly well along with what we want to propose. One wrinkle that turned up is that our initial definitions of the brackets resulted in a lot of the same folks appearing in the top ten in multiple brackets. This really pretty much defeated the purpose of instituting brackets in the first place. For the last couple of weeks we've been discussing how we can get around this issue. I think at this point we're pretty close to resolving this. We still then have a way to go to come up with a complete solution.

There are a number of things in the works that should have a positive impact to metaverse players. Ideally, we're trying to generate interest among those to not currently interested in the metaverse.

I guess the bottom line to your request is that the MVC most certainly does intend to try and gain a wide level of support among the GalCiv2 community, but that we want to be able to show that we can actually accomplish something before doing so.

Eloquently put, Mumble   

Well, I have a few suggestions.

As has been stated elsewhere, one of your goals is to increase interaction and activity among the "metaverse community". To do this, you need to drive users to place which supports this interaction. Stardock doesn't do an especially good job of this currently - the metaverse manager links to a page that is an insular list of your accomplishments. Even if you join an empire, you only get interaction with other players if there is an independant empire website set up. There are no links from your metaverse profile to the metaverse specific forum threads that stardock hosts.

You need to get casual gamers into an arena where they interact with other people in connection with the metaverse. The best way to do this, in my mind, will require a small change from stardock:

and that is to add a link to an "interactive area" right from in the game. (very rough mockup pictured above)

This link could be to the Altmeta or to the Core. The Core does not strike me as an especially good place to support your idea however. The layout is confusing, it requires a lot of information to get signed up - Both times I tried to activate a new account I had problems, and I am not exactly the least tech savvy guy out there, ultimately Alex Atticus had to manually activate one of my accoutns. There are rarely a lot of people on, and there are links to too much content that isn't metaverse related - not a bad thing on it's own, but bad if it is going to be a metaverse community specific boosting location.

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.

Personally I think tournaments are the best way to promote interaction, because it offers a way to turn isolated, single player accomplishments into something which matters against/with other players. But you need to be able to drive traffic and advertise so that you get more than the few dozen people who already spend all day hanging out on Stardock's message boards. Ultimately, I think you will need some assistance/support from Stardock to make that happen.

Just a suggestion.

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.


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.

No, I'm not impatient, I had just never entered a suggestion before. I guess my point with getting an in game link is that it is hard to tell anyone the Altmeta exists unless they visit this website. If they are only playing the game, they would never know something else existed. Adding a button with a link to an external site would represent like a five minute programming resource dedication, so it isn't going to be labor intensive. Of course, I'm not asking stardock myself, just suggesting it is something you might want to think about asking for eventually.

I'm impatient about tournaments, because I have a lot of ideas. I decided to run a few without going through "official" channels because it seemed like something that could be done for immediate effect. I'll be happy to pass them over some day if you get to the point where you want to host them on the Altmeta.

And you know, I just noticed. I always play Dark Avatar, and yet the text on that metaverse page says Dread Lords. Stardock must have forgotten to update the graphics on that page.

This was more of a general statement that was not necessarily directed at you. It may even be a matter of externalizing my own impatience rather than the impatience of anyone else. I see all these potentially neat things to do and we're still struggling with the same things that we've been discussing for months. There's only so many times you can respond with "yes that's a great idea, we'd like to do that sometime in the future".

I know that if I was outside looking in, I'd be thinking "what are these guys doing, they keep talking and nothing ever happens". The thing is that the MVC can actually do very little. The game is Stardock's, the AltMeta is Kryo's. All the MVC is, is a representative group of metaverse players. All we own are our own opinions, all we can accomplish is what can be done by motivating others to do what we want. It's like trying to push a rope. Try it sometime.

That's why I get impatient and why I sometimes color the motivation others with impatience. Sorry.

Well, we are making progress.

We all knew the first few months would be a very difficult time. But I think that with Altmeta Brackets soon to hit the public eye it will be a lot easier for us to communicate and encourage others to contribute to the community, as well as help us in future projects because with the Brackets we will gain stability and hopefully some PR.

This will show how ignorant I am when it comes to computers, but how do you get that AltMeta box that can be displayed just above the medals when you post? I've seen the page on the AltMeta where you can copy a link in 3 different formats. I have no idea which one to use, and I haven't been able to find how to set it up so that it will be displayed when I post.

Thanks, and sorry this isn't entirely on topic. I just assumed this would grab the attention of some of the most savvy people on this forum. And the more people display those boxes, the more PR the AltMeta will get.

Just copy the one that says SD Forums and paste it in at the end of each post you make (no way to do it automatically, unfortunately). If you use Firefox I'd recommend the Clippings addon, which makes this much easier.

Thanks, Kryo! This is a test of that.

This is in regards to previous mentions of holding more of the Council's discussions here on the GC2 forum. Most of our past discussions have taken place at The Galactic Core.
I believe we could start a dedicated thread for a topic of discussion(ei. Metaverse Mods or Tourneys). If another idea that requires more in depth discussion comes up, it gets it's own thread started. Several active threads with their own topics can give people the chance to give their opinion where their interests lie and keep the discussions moving along. Maybe use 'MVC' at the beginning of each topic name so people know it's an MVC related discussion.

Everyone will get to not only see what we' have been up to, but can(and encouraged to) participate. Everyone should keep in mind, a lot of getting these ideas hashed out into doable form involves compromise and being open to others ideas.

Just a few thoughts on getting started, feel free to critique.   

I think maybe the Metaverse league thread could fit that description. If of course it becomes a project of the MVC and if it is AltMeta related. Of course with Ghostwes's blessing and permission, it is his idea of course.

I do however highly support having as many of the MVC discussions here on the GalCiv forum as possible. Of course keep the chambers at the core, some need of privacy is required, but i am all for having as much here as possible. The Core is'nt the most friendly noob place around, and the active players here are far higher than of that at the core....actually i'm assuming a little here but it seems that way.

Perhaps a Metaverse Council Senate, could be created as a sub section within the Metaverse forums and then all the MVC disscusions and the AltMeta thread could be located in there?

Is that possible? Kryo?

Unfortunately that's not really something we can do.

I also think that it's not all that necessary either. For good or ill the Metaverse forum has less activity than the GalCivII forums. It would be nice to have more activity in these forums but the lack of it means that any Metaverse Council threads are easy to pick out.

Also there's no real doubt that if we have something interesting to discuss that we will get sufficient attention regardless of where the thread is physically located.

A subsection wont be necessary, we would just divide traffic.

Just put MVC in as the first 3 letters of the title and I think it would be clear enough.

Yes we should all do this since it makes threads easy to find in a search.

Metaverse Council


To the Councilors of the Metaverse Council:

In an attempt to revive the Metaverse Council (also noted as "MVC"), I am putting forth for your consideration, the following proposals. Please note that some of these proposals may fundamentally change how the MVC is operated. Since I am not a member of the MVC, I present these to you to hear your feedback and ask for your timely action on these.

Thank you for taking this time,

Silverbeacher



Proposal 1- Council Member Organization

The Council has no minimum or maximum number of seats. It will be comprised of two kinds of officers as follows:

The Council will be made up of democratically-elected representatives from active empires. An active empire is considered any empire that has at least ten members and has active posted games on Kryo's AltMeta. Each active empire would be solely responsible for nominating and electing its own representative. Each active empire may not have more than two representatives.

The Council will also have At-Large Seats open to any individual not in an empire, or in an non-active empire. A non-active empire is any empire that has fewer than ten players and/or does not currently have active games on Kryo's AltMeta. An At-Large Representative requires the support of five players that are not currently represented by an individual already on the Council.

All members of the Council are required to have at least one metaverse game submitted to be eligible for representation.

The Council will select amongst itself a President to be its head. The President will be a non-voting member except in cases of a tie. The position that is vacated by that Representative will then be open for election.


Proposal 2- Promoting Inter-Empire Tournaments

Unlike the Metavese League where each player's personal contribution is important to how the League functions, I propose using the Tournament Scenario system to foster friendly competition amongst the Metaverse Empires. A Tournament would be set up, and anyone can participate.

The main difference is that only the top game per empire would be given points. Further expansion can be decided upon on a later date.


Proposal 3- Sticked Metaverse Empires Thread

This stickied thread would have in its OP a brief list of Metaverse Empires. The icon shown for each empire would be a clickable link to the respective home page of that empire. This thread is to showcase the various empires that are available to new players, and also a singular place for friendly taunting, banter, and discussion can occur.


Proposal 4- Supporting the AltMeta, ModMeta, and the Metaverse League

Not quite a proposal as more of an objective. To continue to expand on and renew interest in the AltMeta, ModMeta by MacMatt, and the Metaverse League. To continue to work and communicate with the developers about the inclusion of a Metaverse or similar function if a Galactic Civilizations III is released at a future date. And finally, to continue to fulfill the role of the MVC as the respected conduit for player concerns and ideas to reach the developers in a coherent and managed fashion.

Proposal 5- Public Disclosure

For future growth and viability, I strongly support full public availability of any future MVC undertaking. That is, I promote, keeping all MVC related information directly here on the GalCiv forums.

I thank you all again for taking the time to look over these proposals and I await your replies.

Sincerely,

Silverbeacher

Proposal 1 -

Meh. I don't really enjoy long talks about organization... it reminds me too much of my day job. I see no real reason in breaking up slots for empires and non-active members. I see no reason for non-active members to have input. If all the reps for the MVC came from the same empire, what would it hurt? How does over-representation for one empire really matter if the people involved are focused on the task at hand?

Proposal 2 -

A good idea, but I'm especially partial to expanding the number of tournaments run. To the best of my knowledge I ran the first two tournaments ever for Dark Avatar, perhaps for GC2 overall. Inter-empire tournaments support the empire infrasturcture, although, again, it seems fine to me to just allow individuals to compete.

Proposal 3 -

Not a bad idea, if Stardock agrees. They are the ones in charge of such things.

Proposal 4 -

I don't think the active MVC members ever really lost site of these goals...

Proposal 5 -

Again, I'm fine with it. I've never been a huge fan of the Core. I wasn't an MVC member when the smoke filled back rooms were being used a lot though, so maybe there was a time when this is necessary? This is the sort of thing where I would defer to Mumblefratz' judgment on the value/necessity of continued secrecy.

My input,
~ Wyndstar

thanks for the input Wyndstar!

Proposal 1 was basically a continuation and modification to the way the Council was set up before (with its members culled from the active empires).

A more inclusive Council to me would be:

No minimum or maximum seats but any person seeking to be a Representative must 1)have the support of some minimum amount of other players. I suggest at least five personally. 2) Have at least one submitted MV game and 3) be willing to work, good attitude, all that fun stuff.

Council selects amongst itself a Council President, just to keep things organized.

Basically, I'm thinking of a setup more reminiscent of how the MVL is arranged. You have your more vocal members but all in the MVL are in equal standing.


As for Proposal 2: I haven't done any tournaments, so that's your expertise not mine. Its something I would like to look into and expand upon though.

As for Proposal 3: Making the thread is easy enough. Getting it stickied is just asking really really nicely. And sending cookies.

As for Proposal 4: I didn't mean to imply that they had, only that the MVC has been...quiet...for a while.

As for Proposal 5: I'm a BIG fan of openness in government. I also like when the average player feels that something like the MVC is accessible and easy to bring ideas to.

I'm not sure there's any necessity to revive the MVC per se nor is it necessary or even beneficial to have a formal organization with democratic elections, at large members, dedicated empire representatives or presidents.

The point of the MVC was to accomplish a goal. While we did actually accomplish the stated goal for which it was formed we quickly became overburdened by the tedium of keeping it together.

Basically I came to the conclusion that organizations do not accomplish anything, only individuals that are willing to do the work and willing to keep on pushing until a particular goal is achieved will ever accomplish any goal.

The only potential benefit of a formal organization is that it confers some legitimacy and implies a broader base of acceptance beyond the few people that actually participate.

Basically none of this really matters. If there are specific goals then the way to accomplish them is to simply do them and not try to define some bureaucracy with a set of vaguely defined goals and assume that this will magically accomplish the task.

The task will only get done if firstly it is well defined, does not require any grandiose intervention from God (or in this case Stardock) and most importantly a few set of motivated people are actually willing to do all the work necessary to accomplish said goal. A bureaucracy only gets in the way of accomplishing something.

Anyway, I am all for supporting endeavors that attempt to increase popularity and participation within the metaverse it's just that in my old age I've become far less enamored with formal councils, senates of other fictions of legitimacy.

Basically we get our authority by willing to speak up and be counted and for being willing to put forth the required effort to accomplish a goal. No one really needs more elective authority than that.

Hmm let me mull this over and get back to you. I really like the idea of bringing tournaments up again.

I'm inclined to agree with Mumble. Tournaments sound good as Neilo pointed out but I'm not really feeling a new organization. If one is desired so be it but I primarily here for gaming and a little friendly banter.

Vuk-