Metaverse - a joke?

from Stardock Forums
Does anyone else feel that the Metaverse is just one big joke anymore? :notsure:

I mean, the ranking is soley based on playing alot of games and posting them. Where is the skill? :(

Simply put, you can not possibly catch up to players with huge scores and lots of high score games already submitted. I just do not have the "TIME" to compete with them. Yes, time, not skill. If you submit any LOW scores, you hurt yourself(and please do not reply with the usual "I dont care about scores, or any other blah, blah, blah). If you have a competition set up ranking players,
1.give everyone the low down on how it works(what scores big, low and all inbetween, etc),
2.do not lump sum half dozen game sizes in one list, 3.make claims you are not a galciv player if you play for a score when you promote a top player list as a sell point for the game(anyone submitting a score is into the ranking or they just wouldnt do it; anyone who says they do not care, is either: high ranked already or on the way, or knows they can never catch up).

Why is there a lump of all the game types in one list, they are completely different playing experiences.

Check my scores out, it doesnt even calculate correctly for 8 games(last I checked). I checked several other 8 game players, some calculated right some not. I wonder how many others are not calculating right, but at 8 games it is messed up. BTW, one of my scores, the 86, I DID NOT submit. You can see I progressively submitted higher scores, I would never have submitted a simple level game score of 86 after the two I had in the hundreds. I did have a 800 some point game I submitted, that does not show.

The system is SERIOUSLY FLAWED. It should be addressed IMMEDIATELY before anything else, such as patches, or future expansions. The next best game is coming someday and some will move on when it does if there is no reason to compete here, but I had hoped to play a single player game with a posting competition spirit. That spirit is dead.

I mean, you are putting out all these patches and adding content, but the scoring/ranking is still seriously messed up.

Metaverse is one big joke. :notsure:

Suggest(You need rules in ANY competition/ranking):
1. Ranking for every different galaxy size played.
2. Cap points given for pop size at each of these levels, maybe even cap score at each planet size, period.
3. Limit submissions per wk, maybe one galaxy size per wk.
4. the square root thing of number of games played is bizarre; get rid of it; rank top 3 games(a total) in each game size for each player; that would eliminate the no lifers advantage of flooding the ranking, especially with gigantic crippling games one day right after the next(which I think is impossible to do without exploitation of game somehow, just time wise it seems impossible with all the ingame tasks per turn)
5. Put the current Metaverse in a museum as the way it was, and start over with a firm set of rules/standards.
6. Finally, do it, change the BS Metaverse.

Great and fun game, but for me, the next best thing to come out will take me away if the Metaverse is not completely overhauled. ;)
1,548 views 84 replies
CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm not too worried about score. It would be nice to know just what the points actually mean ("okay, I got 420... hmmm, how high could I get at cakewalk?"). Since it takes me a while to finish a game, I'm well aware that I'll never get top 20, even at higher difficulties.

What I do think Metaverse is good for is updating the AI, and planning for new strategies... not to mention the future integration of downloading top-player strategies from it.


~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, having the square root in the formula addresses your first complaint. It limits (to some extent though not completely) the additive effect of more games played. I too would like to see each size ranked as I don't think there is an "adjustment" that could be even here. You'd inevitably favor one size over the other. But I don't think I'd like top 3 games. It introduces too much of the luck factor.

But lets get real here. The Metaverse is simply a fun humorous thing. It doesn't (and even with the changes you propose wouldn't) really mean anything. That having been said G.R.O.S.S. will rule it. Join now or be steamrolled. LMAO
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Pontius.... I believe you're incorrect. If they take the sum of the scores, divide it by the square root of the games played, then as the number of games goes high, the dampening effect on the scores goes down. That means, the more scores you submit, the more of an impact those scores have since the divisor isn't changing as much... For example, the ramp up from 2 to 10 is huge, but the ramp up from 50 to 60 is small
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
By the way Chriton...you may not have submitted what you thought was a 69, but metaverse scores were recalculated from the Stardock end, so yours probably got recalc'd lower
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh and I'd also like to have humorous awards such as the Adam Smith best economist ranking, the Ghengis Khan ruthlessness ranking and such. Would be a hoot. Which is all it really should be anyway.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
The current system has flaws, which are: Submitting a game may lower your score. AI/difficulty is badly (if at all) taken into account. The formula for scoring is unknown.
Scoring per map size and/or per difficulty would be interesting. Knowing the best score for a single game would be interesting too. Factor that per map size, difficulty or both...
Time will always be a factor, because to get a big score, you have to farm your population, typically you would want to turn cultural victory off and spend half a day growing your population and researching techs, then submitting. Face it, the system will be imperfect whatever you do.
Still, the metaverse has a role, which is to submit strategies, that allow the developpers to see how to improve the game. Even without scores, I'd submit just for that reason.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Also, forceinfinity, check submitting a low score into your scores, and you drop in rank. So the whole Metaverse is about putting in higher and higher scores(more and more scores also). It was a fun idea ... at first, but it is a broken system that will be easier to address sooner than later.

Only counting the top X number of each players games, completely addresses the ranking system, especially if you divide the ranking of the Metaverse out into the different galaxy sizes. This is especially true if they make(or had made) a scoring system that was based on skill, not population/tech.

There just seems no clear structure to the Metaverse other than just submit, submit, submit, to get players to connect with the GalCiv website on a regular basis.

Any changes, other than starting it all over with a clear structure will not change much, since the foundation of many players is solidy placed in the rankings. New players have no hope of catching up without playing the pump the score up and only submit huge scores game.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
The following are a list of number of 1000 point games submitted, to the right of that is the metaverse score:

1 1000
2 1414
5 2236
10 3162
20 4472

So you can see that the metaverse does reward volume of play. That's not right or wrong in and of itself, what you value on a scoring list is purely subjective. I think what the metaverse needs (as I mentioned in another post) is more sort criteria. That way people could sort it according to what they considered the most important. For instance, most of Crichton's issues would be solved if the list could be sorted by Best Single Game Per Player, since just one brilliant game could send any given player to the top of that list.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
The more important function of the Metaverse (in my opinion) is that it allows Stardock to tweak the A.I. One very effective way (for good or bad) to severely limit the effect of time on scores is to limit Metaverse ranking to only your highest SINGLE game score. I say this limits the effect rather than eliminates it because some people will always have more time to work on playing that better game than some other people. One problem is that people might not submit as many games, taking away from the other more important function of AI tweaking. On the other hand, it generally means that only the "better" games were being submitted for analysis. I mean, I'd guess there was nothing Stardock learned from my 73 point game. :) For scoring purposes, it would put people on a more even playing field with regards to time.

~SDC~
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Force: All I was pointing out was that scores were not additive. Two scores of 9000 do not add to 18000. They add up to 18000/1.414 in your example. That's all I was implying. The square root formula makes them somewhat less than completely additive thus lessening the chance of a high score merely through games played vs a mere arithmetic addition.

I am aware that the square root would make more games submitted have more an effect than the mere artithmetic mean (what would happen if you removed the square root from your divisor as someone suggested) Though this would seem to be a better measure of skill it truly isn't. It lends itself to other abuses. For example, stopping at one great game played could theoretically get you number one. One great game is not a measure of skill. It is a measure of luck.

Thus, I beleive the metaverse should be somewhat in between the pure additive formula and the pure arithmetic mean formula The square root formula accomplishes this. There are other formula's that might reduce the additive effect of more games played than the square root formula, and I'd probably be in favor of one of them. But I definitely think we should not merely use the arithmetic mean.

I do think more games should account for something (after all the goal is to get people to play the game) and pure skill should account for something also.

But I do think they should rank each size rather than lump em all together. I just don't think any tbs game I've played ever adjusted scores for size of board all that well. Too many variables. You'd always favor one over the other.






Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Crichton's response was similar to mine, perhaps better. I still don't think that eliminates the time issue though. Some people will always have more time for gaming than others will.

~SDC~
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
LDiCesare,

Explain how submitting scores helps the developers with the AI. Was there a comment sometime by Frogboy that they can improve AI based on our submitted scores? I thought they just addressed AI based on the commments on the forum and their own continuing playtesting.

Thanks :)

The time thing is tough with the game, sometimes you want to build up just because it is fun and you are not at war with anyone, so why not let em beat eachother to death, the AIs, while you grow.
Perfect example, the Torian and another AI allied then declared war on me cause I had the lowest moral score(45, oh boy am I evil, lol). I was focusing on tech, wonders, and trade goods. So, the Fundalmentalist(spelling?) had arrived on a planet and there was another minor who had 3 planets and something like a 700 military ranking, but did nothing with it; soooo, I paid em both with tech and trade goods to beat up on the Allied AIs who declared war on me and sat back. I sent a few missiles to help out(btw, I had alot of battles overall by the end of game, but at that point extending the game was strategy due to the fact I had a below 100 rated military fleet compare to the Allied AIs, and had to protect myself, plus I was jumping well ahead of everyone in tech, wonders, and trade goods).
The separate rankings per galaxy size would address this nicely, since a tiny galaxy would not have as big a population as a gigantic, so it wouldnt matter how big population grew due to a particular player strategy, even though end game exploitation of not finishing the game but building pop would still be there(although, influence can sometimes take care of this in earlier versions and the new feature in the latest version is suppose to give the AI the ability to see they have no chance of winning and surrender also could address this.

I think another nice feature would be to only allow one event type per game. So, for example, the planet quality could only happen once for you. This would eliminate the exploit of reloading before colonizing until you get the 40-50% planet quality bonus, again and again for lots of your planets.

Oh well. :D
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Crichton, you have lots of good points.

The Metaverse is a sports competition, and what a sports competition needs is clear rules (and same rules for everybody -currently rules are totally stacked against new players!). The Metaverse is very, very flawed. A good idea, but it doesn´t work. (:(
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
And they could have done more with the ranking system. Make winning a game on certain high difficulty levels a prereq for higher rankings ie commander, captain, commodore, etc. That would have been cool too. That would give incentive to play harder games.
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Ahh coffee, but we can shred it up with the empire scores. Now I better get busy so I can submit my next bloated Gigantic easy game score. :) Thay take a long dang time.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
Crichton, again you are only partially correct. If I say submit 3 3000 pt games and then submit a 1000 point game, then yes, my score is going to drop since your 9000 / sqrt of 3 will yield 5196. With the 4th game being only 1000, your score will become 5000.

Now lets further say that you have 30 submitted games for a total of 10000. If you submit that 1000 point game for the 31st game, your score will actually go up (though a little bit). Now lets further say you have a metaverse score of 10000 on 40 games but again you submit 1000 for your 41st game. You'll end up with a 10333.

Now keep in mind this is assuming in the above scenarios that you're submitting an average score of approx 1800 and 1600 respectively. This is also further assuming you happened to submit a score that was lower than your usual. So instead of thinking short term pain (as alot of people in the US seem to do for some reason), think long term. It pays off in the end.

SeanB
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
The Metaverse if you find a joke you can ignore.
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
"Still, the metaverse has a role, which is to submit strategies, that allow the developers to see how to improve the game."

This particular aspect will never work. LOL

I know some of my own decisions are so complex motivated that I would have a hard time even explaining them. Never could just a few numbers submitted allow anyone to see what I was doing. To really see what I was up to, you would have to watch the entire game, turn by turn.

It´s all in the details. You could do very similar things as I, and totally get screwed by a small mistake in your timing. :)
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
forceinfinity,

naw, the score of 86 was always 86 from the first time I noted it. Also, at that point I was a rookie, prob still am, but was real green then and did not know the in and outs of the game(population and tech counting toward score and such). I would not submit a simple game at that point anyway, especially after getting good enough to submit two games in the hundreds, the 483 and 341. I am wondering if somehow Stardock auto uploaded that score from some previous game I did not submit(prob not possible, but maybe I logged in after finishing that game and some feature of stardock auto uploaded?????) I seriously do not even remember playing a simple Medium game, period. Even if I had, like I said, I would not submit such a god aweful score(an 86) after submitting the 483 and 341. Plus the fact if you calculate my scores now, it is comes out about 1000 points too high.

So something is not right. ;)
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
Technician: Your own ranking among top50 with *no* game played above Beginner/Simple is the *POSTER EXAMPLE* of what´s wrong with the Metaverse. Sorry, but it´s true. LOL
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
These sections from the manual could be informative:

"GalCiv is also capable of downloading strategies automatically from the net. Submitted scores include basic information on what strategies were employed (what technologies were researched and in what order, what ships and improvements you built in what order, your style of playing, your moral strategy, the type of strategy employed overall, etc.). The GalCiv AI can then download this information from the Metaverse to improve both the quality of the AI and the humanity of it.

Eventually, Stardock hopes to allow players to literally choose a player from the Metaverse to play and simulate that player (roughly speaking) in a game. The only thing missing would be the time waiting for others to move and disconnects!"


"Scoring
How many points you get on a game is dependent on these factories:

1) Did you win?
2) If you won, how did you win?
3) How long did it take you to win?
4) How many people were born into your civilization per sector?
5) How much technology did you amass?
6) What version of the game did you use?

These six factors are combined together to generate your score and submitted to the Metaverse at GalCiv.com.

Some notes on scoring
Your total scores are divided by the square root of the number of games you play. The more games you play, the higher your score becomes but there is a slight consideration of how many games you’ve played so that the top player isn’t merely the person who has cranked out the most games.

Additionally, scores age. Each month, your scores from previous months will lose a small part of their value."


My personal view is that ultimately no scoring system is going to be near perfect. As long as the rules are clear, everyone should just play by it. How many times do you walk into any other competition and insist that everyone plays by your rules? :)
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
forceinfinity,

Yeah, I realize that progressively as you noted in two posts above that over time you can raise it, but the

"So instead of thinking short term pain (as alot of people in the US seem to do for some reason), think long term. It pays off in the end."

is only true if you have the time, like I said to submit, submit, submit....again, and again and...

"We are the Metaverse... you will be assimilated"
will not happen to me! :D

Make it a real ranking system. Change it.
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
"As long as the rules are clear, everyone should just play by it."

But the rules aren´t clear. >:( And the score formula changes with every update, usually resulting in lower scores, meaning gamers that joined later are screwed. >:( >:(