Suggestion for a metaverse "league"

This is an interesting idea that deserves consideration. I think the best way to go about this is for people to indicate their interest and form a "pool" of available players. From this we can decide how many teams to have and pick "captains" etc., etc.

I think this should be a totally seperate thing from the official empires. I think it's best to leave them as they are but have this as something additional. I think we could incorporate this into the AltMeta. Of course, Kryo's opinion of how difficult this may be to implement would be a very useful piece of information.

That way no one would have to "leave" their current empire to be able to participate in this which is what would be pretty much required if we tried to implement this within the "official" metaverse.

Yes, sounds interesting. I too have noticed a seeming imbalance due to the effects of popularity/politics as opposed to just a simple comparison of sorts. Playing in a league, like say the west v. east baseball or football leagues could be a lot of fun too!

I'd be willing to create a third character for league play. The initial rules proposal by ghostwes sounds like a good basis for a start. Maybe we could even have a forum for league players eventually, depending on how many want to participate.

One thing I am trying to get a handle on, is how to concentrate tips and help in a single place. Usually, less formal and competitive venues like leagues help spread the wealth around to newer players more than the fierce competition of established clubs.

Great Idea Ghostwes.   . I would definately be willing to participate.

Oh man, I like this idea. I'd be up for it, totally.

A question/clarification though
The teammnames would have nothing to do with your PLAYED race, correct?
ie if I was on the Drengin Dodgers I could still play Yor or whatever.

Yes, that's right. The names will just be to distinguish teams from each other and will have no impact on anything else in the league. In fact, we could dispense with those names entirely and just use something else, but that adds the additional problem of deciding who picks names, etc. Easier, I think, if we just go with these for now.

Given the underwhelming response to this thread, though, I wonder if we'll get enough people to start this up.

No, don't give up yet. This is a great idea and maybe it needs the finer points hammered out and then with everything ready to go the players may take more of an interest.




The 12 teams represent the 12 races, i'd like to see games only by those whom race you represent. IE, if i am a member of Team Yor then i only play as the Yor..etc..etc

Forgive me if this strays from your original concept a little Ghost but i see it this way,

I don't think that a new character would be needed nor a empire created for it, though yes that would be the better way to go about it, but there a number of players who might be interested in this that do not have a spare character to participate with. Perhaps using the Wyndstar Tournament method may work? Though if everyone interested is a spare slot or is willing to delete and use it for the league, then by all means use the empire method.

5 players per team with randomly selected game types to be played selected from this pool,

Tiny map
- Military
- Alliance
- Influence
- Tech

Small map
- Military
- Alliance
- Influence
- Tech

Medium map
- Military
- Alliance
- Influence
- Tech

I deliberately left out anything larger than medium, cause could you imagine doing a 12 round competition using military victory type in DA on a gig map, this would take a year!!!

- No one team plays a game type twice.
- There is a weekly limit for each round.
- For every player that records the nominated victory condition on the designated map receives two points for their team. For every loss they concede a point to their opposition.
- Every player must submit a game even if it has to be a resigned game. This would be seen as a defeat.
After all points are tallied the team with the highest tally wins and their team is awarded 10 league points.
- In the event of a draw 5 league points for each team.
- After 12 rounds the team with the most league points as in they are top of the league ladder is delcared the champion.
- In the event there is more than 1 team on top with the same points a play off would occur.

I will give an example of a game, and the names are first i could think of,

The Drengin Swamp Lizards VS The Torian Green Machine

The Drengin team is represented by,

Neilo
Ghostwes
Mumblefratz
Iceciro
Wyndstar

The Torian team is,

Dethadder
ElWhopO
Macmatt
Kryo
MottiKhan

they are playing a small map shooting for a tech victory

Neilo - loses in a military defeat - 1 point to the torians
Ghostwes - tech victory - 2 points to the drengin
Mumblefratz - tech victory - 2 points to the drengin
Iceciro - tech victory - 2 points to the drengin
Wyndstar - resigned - 1 point to the torians

half time and it's 6 to 2 for the drengin

Dethadder - tech victory - 2 points to the torians
ElWhopO - loses in a influence defeat - 1 point to the drengin
Macmatt - resigned - 1 point to the drengin
Kryo - loses in a military defeat - 1 point to the drengin
MottiKhan - tech victory - 2 points to the torians

And it's a win for the drengin 9 to 6.

After 1 round the League table might look like this

Thalan -- 10
Drengin - 10
Yor ----- 10
Terrans - 10
Altarian - 5
Arcean --- 5
Korx ----- 5
Drath ---- 5
Torian --- 0
Iconian -- 0
Krynn ---- 0
Korath --- 0

Wow this is developing into one long post...anyway..

The only problems would be what difficulty level to play at maybe the time frame.

And what bearing does or would the actual game score have. To make it fair i see it as being mute. Levels the playing field if all were interested in is if it's a win or a loss.

Again just my thoughts but what do you guys think?

Neilo.

(please just deal with grammer/spelling i'm too tired to proof read that post )

Great concept, ghostwes, and well thought out rules, ghostwes and neilo! I'd love to play in a tournament where an impartial Ring Master hands out the assignments like that. The win/loss scoring idea is nice too, since it would really level the playing field.

I'd also say, play within one level of your regular difficulty. For instance, I play suicidal. It wouldn't be particularly fair if I decided to go cakewalk for the tourney. I'm not sure what difficulty would be one step below suicidal, but that seems like a good minimum to keep things fair.

I'd add just one more randomization to the mix, if I may. Alignment. Imagine having to play an Alliance game as the Drengin, but having to align Good. Seems almost impossible to me, but a true challenge would be like that. As long as it's really randomly selected and assigned, it would be interesting.

Anyone could decline the assignment and request a new one, but that would result in a defeat for that game.

The team thing sounds REALLY good to me. Tell me if you ever get it started.

A few thoughts though:
What happens when the 21st century interferes - real life sometimes just suddenly appears out of nowhere?!
May I suggest that only the best 3 or 4 out of the six scores are counted towards the end result and then there could be some option to take a week off or so without you completely ruining it for your team. This is still a game, as my wife keeps telling (is that spelled with a "y" at the beginning?) me. She may even be right.

I agree that this has some possibility but I echo thebutterfly's concern about real life.

One of my main issues with the tournaments as they've been implemented so far is one of timeframe. Clearly neilo's suggestion of limiting the galaxy size alieviates this to some extent. But not totally so. The reason I play long slow games is that if I played small games they still would end up being slow. Of course not as slow as a gigantic but still slow on a comparative basis. That makes me naturally gravitate towards the largest game possible. If I'm going to be slow anyway then the biggest game gives me the biggest bang for the buck.

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The other issue is that I see utility in adding all these kinds of features, be they a Mod Metaverse, Metaverse Scenarios or Tournaments, into the framework of the AltMeta and have a more formal game submission process other than just posting a screenshot to a thread on the forum. I view this league concept as an extension and/or variation on tournaments. While I think the tournaments organized so far by Wyndstar (and the latest one by Purge) are a good thing, I think some kind of permanance of rank/score based on the results of these would be a tremendous boost to thier popularity. This is why I'm looking towards Cari's endgame.xml as a way to get these added more formally into the AltMeta as a solution to this entire class of activities.

As it is now however, there are some unknown changes expected in the endgame.xml anticipated with v1.7 so it's probably premature to realistically start thinking of a "universal" solution to all these things. I guess that means that I'd be in favor of pursuing something along these lines if only to get the feel of how they will work and then have a better idea of how they could more formally be introduced into the AltMeta.

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It seems to me that neilo has given some of the details of this the most thought. Also it was Ghostwes idea to begin with. I suggest that we arbitrarily assign Ghostwes and Neilo as "commisioners" of this league to be. If folks agree (or disagree) with this arbitrary assignment they should respond to this thread saying so.

Also if I were to say that I'd be willing to participate I'd need to know what I was commiting to. It seems from neilo's proposal that I'd have to commit to play a game a week (although a small map size) for 12 weeks. That seems like a bit too much of a commitment. I would suggest that instead of an arbitary 12 week limit that this could be treated as an on-going event with published results at the end of each "round" and let it go for as long as there is interest.

I like the idea of a size limited game (although I've never played anything smaller than huge myself). I think having one 1 week round per month certainly suits my schedule better. I think it's also a good idea to pace this so that it's not so all encompassing. I think this would cause people to actually look forward to it and avoid getting "burnt out" on it.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the matter. I'd like to hear what others think about these proposed commisioners. If there seems to be agreement then these commisioners could define how this league operates (with the input of anyone that choses to give it of course). Once that is done then people can decide if they want to put their name in a hat and how many teams as can be supported by the number of folks interested can be formed and play can begin. Does this seem like a reasonable plan?

Making the races go against each other is really not fair, however.

Drengin versus Krynn? That's a really lopsided match.

Yes this is a good point. I guess i forget at times that i have extra time on my hands, as i am lucky enough to be able to play the game at work too. 1 round of play per month sounds fine to me, in fact it may work to our benefit. If we do not have quite the number of players we need, we may be able to double up players if they are willing. By then having the schedule take a bit longer that would allow them time to compete in the extra events without any scheduling conflicts.

As to the issue of the AltMeta, the reason i thought this one could exist outside of it for now, was the incoming 1.7, plus the possibility of excluding players from competing due to not having a character spare to devote to a new empire. This way they can use any of their existing characters. The main reason though was the score, in the above example i made it could be possible that the torians may have out scored the drengin even though they had fewer winning games. And what would become of the conceded games (defeats/resignations) it would not be possible to have those scores recoreded for anyone but the player themselves.

Of course it is only an idea and if we can come up with a scoring system that allows us to have an AltMeta compatible league, than all the better.

I think it sounds fine, just hafta find some players. Build it, and they will come  

Lots of info - still need to re-read to remember it all. Looks like it will work, and there is some interest obviously. I have two thoughts to bring to the Stoa (a Stoa was a "painted porch" in ancient Athens where teachers would mingle and discuss philosophy) -
One, we still need to see how many people wanna play.
Two, To get newer players in we prolly need to have a way to play smaller maps at lower difficulty levels (don't forget memory/ctd probs on bigger maps).
Three, mixing the matching of difficulties fairly seems to be dependent upon who wants to play at what difficulty level - But some might be willing to play lower than their normal difficulty to fill a slot and round out the roster.
Four, I would suggest Good v. Evil, but I'm not sure we have any Good people here when it comes to winning?

neilo and ghostwes can do it, I know they can.

I have Godzilla all ready to go, and he's swimming around off the coast punching out nuclear subs even as we speek. I'm up to challenging level, and can play any size map. Once a month should be no problemo.

P.S. - That was more dan two? oh well ... back to Ms. Summertop's math class ... (oH-No!)

My Year 7 maths teacher was Mr Winterbottom!! Perhaps they should get together.

Seriously it was.

As to the difficulty level. If we follow the route of only the win matters not the score, then the difficulty level is of no real importance. I would say that each player plays in the league at the level his MV medal states.

One thing to address would be the game stats. Do we leave things like star cluster, anomolies, tech rate etc. to the player or set an exact game format. And if we did how would we know that it was addhered to.

Further more the AI. Do we set an amount of AI in the game or should it be a one on one against the race who's team you are playing against that round.

Personally, i don't think much of any of that matters if we only care about a win. Most of those are score multipliers and would have no bearing on the outcome be that win, lose or resign.

A further thought, we could combine empires and races to get our teams. A couple of example's might be,

The Galactic Diplomat's Torian Terror's

The Gerontocracy's Arcean Assault

The High Command Hegemony's Hive of Thala

The Tyranny of Evil's Demonic Drengin

Just a thought, but this would need no new characters, just play as a character aligned within that team and also would make processing the league into the AltMeta a little easier.

Comments???

I'm still interested in the league - but I looked at ghostwes starting point again which was that success of an empire was related to the number of members.
The easiest solution for that is to work out an alternative formula.
The obvious one:

points/members=Empire success points

has an obvious drawback though: Superplayers like Wyndstar or Mumblefratz might not be willing to work together with "loser" members (like me) as we would only spoil their scores.

So if this is only about scores, I'm sure there is some formula that works, something like

Empire success points = points/members + c * members
c would be a constant everyone had to agree on.


Well, ghostwes, there is a Math solution to your problem - but the league solution may be more fun! And I'm here for the fun - not for the Math.

If the league thing works out, we should push for a new medal to be added to your sig. So along with 1st place empire or whatever, you could have a 1st or 2nd place tourney medal. Which you could defend, and keep or lose, at the next tournament.

First off, the superplayer tag is not quite deserved. Secondly, no one is a loser here and I'm sure there's a place for everyone that wants to play regardless of difficulty level or whatever.

I think that one of the points of this league as opposed to empires is that there would be a chance to pick up “sides” and therefore the teams would start out a lot more even than the empires are at the present.

As far as scoring I’m really not sure what’s going on. Neilo’s proposal implies that at any one time only one team is playing another and each player gets 2 points for a victory and gives the opponents 1 point if they lose. I would expect under this set of scoring rules that all matches would result in a 10 to 10 tie assuming 5 members per team.

I’m not quite sure what the benefit of team A “playing” team B would be. I would think that you define a set of games for that round equal to the number of members in each team. The explicit settings for each of these games (galaxy size, abundancies, tech rate, all victory conditions enabled, etc.) should also be specified. The team could divide up these games among members as it chooses. Each member that wins the game in the defined manner gets two points, a win in the wrong manner gets 1 point and a loss or resign or no game submitted within the allotted timeframe gets 0 points. Additionally for each game type the person that scores the highest among all teams gets an additional 3 points, the person scoring 2nd gets 2 extra points and the person scoring 3rd gets 1 extra point. Of course you have to have won the game in the defined manner to get any of the extra score related points. Then the scores of all teams for that round can be listed. There’s no real need for team A to “play” team B. All teams are simultaneously playing all other teams. It might even be a good idea for teams to have an “extra” player that could rotate in and out of the lineup or perhaps could play a backup game that could be submitted if one of the other members defaulted. Of course this reserve game would be unlikely to have met the explicit game conditions so would probably only count as a 1 point wrong victory win.

I would think that the individuals choice of race, abilities and techs and/or super ability would be left up to each players discretion. As far as level I think that people should play at the same level as their most recent metaverse submission. I don’t think it should matter if someone is playing at tough or at suicidal, however I don’t think that someone that’s been playing suicidal should drop down to tough just for this league play.

Actually that brings up another point, I would guess that these are assumed to be DA games? I don’t know if that limits anyone. I currently have yet to download DA but I did pay for it back in November (good example of procrastination).

Was that an objection? I thought about that aspect of it too ... maybe I can help cut through the minor stuff and suggest that the Primary Objective seems to be (to me anyway) providing a less formal venue which would be (possibly) less intimidating for new players (or those intimidated by being late-comes through no fault of theirs). -->> The Secondary Objective seems to be -->> The Third Objective seems to be -->> The Fourth Objective seems to be -->>

Prioritizing objectives is next. My intuition (i'm an intuitive-intelligence kind of guy, case you didn't notice) tells me that getting this idea more widely public-sized and marketing the idea (strictly impartially) and obtaining the necessary base of players should be first on the Agenda.

Not to trivialize any og the great suggestions made in other areas, but I might point out that many leagues already have a base of players to organize when they begin, is it not so? While the idea of gaining valuable experience appeals to many players on the informal level, they still have to be there to start with.

Any ideas how we can accomplish this, all you spiftacular organizational geniuses?

Hmmmm? I will play with all the "loser" players, as Mumblefratz says, there are no loser players. Good vs Evil, I will play either. However I have three characters already. I think one of each, hopefully that will not exclude players such as myself  

Good point. We really need to see if there is interest enough, and it would seem that based on what we talked about, 50 to 60 players, we are dead in the water....

We only have 20 posts including this one and many of them are from the same person. This does not indicate that we would get anywhere near the numbers needed.

Perhaps if we can hammer out a agreed set of rules and game play aimed at say about 20 to 30 people, and then when all the talk is over and we are ready to go, post a new thread announcing the league will be starting and hope the players join then.

As for the scores, interesting points Mumble. I had not considered that every player would be victorious which would lead to draws all the time. Perhaps placing a time limit based on galaxy size might help this. Say maybe 3, 4 or 5 years and if by that time you have not meet the game requirements it's a loss.

I think the amount and size of teams can be adjusted to compliment a smaller number of players to start out. Adding players would then have to be worked out(draft?), if trying to add them during the "season". I would think for max participation DL and DA should both be allowed. If the point system , or variation there of that Mumble suggested was used then that eliminates the main difference in the two games, DA's potential to score higher.



Just had to put my 2bc in here. I personally despise time limits  

Smaller team sizes would probably work out well, especially in the beginning. I'm sure the rules will evolve as team play becomes more and more popular.

Time limits are an interesting thought. I can go along with them. They could be adjusted as the league matures.

I can see committing to a league, but it would have to include those of us who play DL as well as those who play DA. (I've been reading the stuff about the new 1.7 .xml file at the core). If my scores are lower because I play DL, I think the league can live with it without compensating me for my playing choice. I'm also sure that whatever team I'm assigned to would take it into consideration before they drafted me.

Oh, as for "loser players", I agree that there's no such animal. Any of us would play alongside whomever would play beside us. I'm pretty sure that's universal.

I wouldn't hold out for 50-60 players to start out with, I don't think these kinds of numbers are realistic. I think the 20's are perfectly sufficient to get started and once started I think this could easily gain momentum.

Therefore I think any system that we come up with should be one that can continue with players constantly coming and going. Having a core set of 4 teams would probably be sufficient to start. Say a minimum of 3 players per team would mean that 12 people would be sufficient to start with. I do like the idea of having a "spare" player per team as well. Let's say the minimum would be 16 people to start. This would be four teams of four and we could have three defined games per round, leaving one player in reserve.

As more people decide to play they could first be used to add to existing teams and then form new ones.

The idea that this could be a continuing/evolving thing is another reason to not use the head to head competition model that was initially proposed. I do like the idea that merely winning the game in the proposed manner is the bulk of the scoring but with a minimal rank ordered contribution of final score to add some flavor.

I think part of the interest of this would be to kind of "force" people to play games of a different type than their normal game. Keeping the (real time) commitment of this light is a good idea as well. It should be no great burden to knock off a game that fits the defined category.

I also would like the idea of being DA/DL agnostic. It allows for greater flexibility and participation. Perhaps we could have variations in "assignments". For example we could have a DA small galaxy tech win, a DL medium galaxy influence victory, and a DA tiny military victory. Of course, we should also spec out the number of opponents, the tech rate, and all abundancies. The level of the opponents and the players specific race and abilities should be left up to the individual. Or we could leave the DA/DL determination as a player choice as well.

It would be the responsibility of the "commissioners" to define the set of games to play for each round. I previously suggested that Ghostwes and Neilo be appointed commissioners, I haven't heard people respond to this suggestion one way or another.

I think we should move forward on this based on the response we've seen so far. I would say that on the assumption that these would be limited to relatively short type games and restricted to one week per month, I would be interested in participating.

Sometimes (perhaps even most times) the only way for things like this to get off the ground is for someone to strap on a pair of balls and make a decision. Otherwise people end up standing around like a bunch of kids on summer vacation saying "I don't know, what do you want to do". Having heard no other suggestions to the contrary, I hereby declare that Ghostwes and Neilo are the commissioners of this Metaverse League and are tasked with defining the rules and regulations of said league. They only remaining task is for folks to say that they’re willing to participate (I am) and then let the commissioners take it from there. All in agreement say aye.

Aye

We absolutely have to make the league DL and DA, i see no arguement here. As to the scoring issues, perhaps we need to decide right of the bat two things,


Will we A) Be using new empires to act as the team.

and Are we implementing this straight into the AltMeta now.

Point B will light the way for us in determining how to score the league. Be it actual scores or some form of win/loss as described earlier.

A possible scoring system,

All teams are randomly assigned 12 different challenges. Each team has 4 players .
Team A has drawn the medium military challenge.

Player A wins with conquest - 2 points
Player B wins with alliance - 1 point
Player C wins with conquest - 2 points
Player D looses - 0 points

Players A and C have the 2nd and 3rd highest scores so a further 3 points for the team.

Tally 8 points.

Now all the teams scores are checked by the game referee and it may look like this

B - 11 points (4 wins + highest score)
A - 8 points (3 wins + 2nd & 3rd highest scores)
F - 8 points (4 wins)
C - 7 points (3 wins + 1 alternate win)

you get the picture...Then we can assign league points. How about a simple,

1st place = 3 league points
2nd place = 2 league points
3rd place = 1 league point

in the event of a draw in the challenges, see teams A and F, the team with the highest combined score wins.

We could also have a bonus point (or two) for any team that manages a clean sweep, as in 4 sanctioned wins plus the 3 highest scores...

The non changeable settings might be,

All Victory's enabled
Allow Surrender's
No Mega Events ( to level the playing feild between the DL players and the DA players)
No Super Abilities (see above, i don't like it either, but it makes it fair)
Galaxy Size
Tech Rate
Star Density
Anomolies
Minor races on or off
Number of planets
Habitable planets
Number of stars
Intensive algorithms on or off
Asteroids
The challange victory condition

All else is up to the player and they must play the same level as the last recorded MV game with that Character. If it's a new character then the last game of any other characters they have. If it's a new player, then they are free to choose.

What do ya all think guys?