Unfair Scoring Change

I think the the devs are planning to (sooner or later) pass all the old scores through the new calculation prog. Then all the scores will become normalised but lower, like your new score.

Elrikk


~SDC~

Well 3500 on Tough vs my 3700 on Masochistic isn't that fair too IMHO (both with new scoring system)

~SDC~

From what I understand, the Metaverse scores are supposed to favor the faster kind of victories. It got adjusted because too many people were milking the scores. Personally, I'd say let them. That's part of the game mechanic. If I had the upper hand, I'd go for the most points I can. That's the whole reason they're there for.

What'd I'd like to see happen is that the speed of victory take into account the type of victory pulled off (generally tech victories will take longer than military) But I've seen lower scores on this new version.

Also bear in mind, your metaverse score if I remember correctly is the sum of scores/ square root (games played). Basically this means the more scores you submit, the less the amount of games you played effects your score. By the time you hit 64 games, you'd have to submit another 17 scores before your sum of games goes from being divided by 8 to divided by 9. So submit all the games you want. Your score *will* go up.

SeanB

Don't worry about it, though. The game is a lot more fun with the new mechanics. I don't think the score should be so important that you're willing to play an inferior version for the sake of getting a higher score.

Not to mention that the satisfaction of the higher score will be temporary. All metaverse scores are going to be run through the new algorithm and retroactively adjusted once they get the system automated to do so. The most likely effect of staying on a lower version to get high scores is that you'll be lulled into doing some of the things that give you higher scores (nursing population, holding back on the kill for a military victory, etc.) and once the score is adjusted it will actually be even lower since these behaviors are penalised in the new algorithm.

Blue Ocean, I fail to see how being pushed to finish the game as fast as possible is more fun, nor do I get any more fun from having the +10 PQ techs removed from the upper end of the tech tree. Please explain to me the better mechanics of the last 2 patches? There have been few additions to gameplay lately, in fact what I'm seeing lately is a reactionary patching effort: see what the players are doing better than the AI and make a patch so they can't do it as well. This is starting to feel a lot like EverQuest, where Verant spent all its time doing much the same till they'd alienated most of their original playerbase. The elimination of the +15 PQ and it's replacement with lesser bonuses was the last nerf I agreed with, as some simple math showed it was clearly overpowered vs. its attribute point cost.

Hopefully this is just a temporary phase, but it seems to be getting worse and not better. I certainly can see -no- reason for the elimination of those +10 PQ picks, they only showed up at the end of a game anyway, every race had equal access to them, and since the metaverse now punishes anyone who doesn't end their game as soon as possible how could their existence hurt anything? They were a nice reward for those of us who like to build a big giant civilization with a fully developed infrastructure.

When I patch a game I don't want to end up with less than I started with, and I'm betting I'm not alone in that feeling.

By the way, your new algorithm (1.03A.057 patch) not working.
I got a score of 3734 in 99Jul (not sure about Jul, maybe up to Aug) and it showed a score of 5646 in 202Jul in the same game.

~SDC~

Good grief guys, you know, you'd think we woudl get a little credit by now for knowing what we're doing.

It's not a matter of finishing as fast as possible. It is about providing a balance between winning the game effectively versus winning the game after running up the score.

The guy who wins in 5 years with a fairly crummy empire is going to have a lot lower score than the guy who wins in 30 years with an incredible empire.

What has changed is that it does look at how much time was involved.

Otherwise, players could just turtle themselves into a corner with star bases and go for beyond humanity. Why should that player get a higher score than the guy who slowly builds and expands into teh galaxy conquering it over time?

The issue isn't extreme. It's about dealing with an extreme: Why should the guy who milks the score up for 200 years be rewarded above the guy who won in 50 years?

We do know what we're doing.

But frankly, I suggest those who are becoming obsessed with the Metaverse to chill out and take a break from it. This isn't progress quest.

Posted by Vorlin:
> I certainly can see -no- reason for the elimination of
> those +10 PQ picks, they only showed up at the end of
> a game anyway, every race had equal access to them

Join the club on the head scratching for this one. This is the first mechanics change that I am 100% against and ticked off by, and lords know I've spent a lot of time arguing *for* previous mechanics changes to the disgruntled.

Brad gave some reason about how it led to too much micromanagement of planets in the endgame and all I can say is BS to that. It reduced micromanagement by a huge factor: morale went up so the people were happier, production went up so you could finish off that last social project or two before you didn't even need to build anything else and could devote your money to research and/or military, taxes went up so you could spend more and speed up the endgame, research increased as a result so you could speed up the endgame, and so on and so on.

The costs for the techs that used to give this useful bonus are still the same but we get nothing worth what they cost, they are nothing more than speedbumps and as much as I admire Stardock, Brad and everything they've done, in this case, no, I do not think they know what they were doing.

If I sell you a set of rare antiques for $1,000,000 but later on decide that I'm going to keep the most expensive piece for myself, you would expect me to reduce the cost accordingly. If you're going to take away the PQ bonus to these techs, then the costs of those techs should be cut by 70% or more as a small bonus to military production and hitpoints isn't even close to being worth what these techs cost. It really just seems like a kick in the teeth telling us to only bother going for Excalibur or Final Frontier when no other options are available because otherwise there's sure no good reason to research past Overlord tech.

Thank everyone for their responses. The fact that the old scores are going to be run through the new scoring system is all I needed to know. (I mentioned that if everyone used the same system it would be fine.) As long as everyone plays by the same rules, competition is fair.

I agree with those that said the game is becoming more balanced and challenging with each patch. Are there readmes posted somewhere where the changes are summarized? If I had seen the information about all the scores being run through the same filter I never would have posted.

Frogboy, I understand your frustration with what looks like unwarrented criticism from some of your otherwise very supportive fans. Like you said, after watching the patching process for the last month, as well as your personal support and response to the forums, I should have given you guys the benefit of the doubt, and I apologize.

As for your final comment, I wouldn't qualify my attitude toward the metaverse as obsession, though I can't speak for others. That being said, you should and probobly do understand that competing with others is a strong urge in many gamers; hence the popularity of multiplayer games. The metaverse is a great way to allow some measure of competion in an otherwise single player game. While I don't consider it the primary reason for playing this game, it does add something.

Oh, and all week I've been looking forward to getting some serious game time in, so there will be no break for me!

Thanks Again,
Redshift

Redshift, I believe if you use stardock, if you click on Galactic Civlizations you'll see a window on the left side populate. I think there's a history link where you can get what each patch is doing as it goes.

1. So.....click the Drengen.net tab
2. Click on Galactic Civilizations. You'll see information on the left size.
3. Click the history link on the left to see your patch history

Hope this helps
SeanB

Brad--

I want to preface all this by saying that I'm acting in part as devil's advocate here.

I understand how you don't want people to obsess over the metaverse scores and enjoy the game and trust your changes. But I think you're finding out what the EQ, Asheron's Call, DAoC, et al people go through when they maintain their game.

Whenever you have a high scores list, gamers can and will get competitive. There are some that will want to rifle to the top of the list. This is quite analgous to the powergamer in the MMORPG who races to be the first to level 60 or whatever the level cap is. If you didn't want this obsession, then there shouldn't have been a metaverse as we know it in the first place.

Just like the MMORPG, when something gets nerfed, the people who are impacted by it are going to complain because suddenly the edge they had is lost. People are loathe to change or want to change how they do things. So if I were in your position, I would just come to accept that there are people that aren't going to be happy with some changes, even if the changes are "For the good of the game". You're bumping up against human nature and unfortunately, they aren't going to chill :-/


Codemonkey, and Vorlin. I know you guys aren't happy about the changes, but ride them out at least. Give suggetions or feedback and let the programmers run with it. They might reinstate some things as they did with the Planet Quality selection (allowing +7%). Remember this isn't a game and highscores aren't everything (like I have alot of room to talk sometimes). But if you ever delve into online roleplaying games, these sort of things are the rule and not the exception...which is probably the only reason why I'm used to it and am largely ambivalent (sp?) to the changes.

SeanB

Correction to last post, last paragraph. Second to last sentence should read:

Remember, this is JUST as game and hiscores aren't everything.

Sorry for the typo (wishes there was an edit post for things like this)

Well put Frogboy. Well put.
Everyone else: Do you know how the score was to be milked? I figured it out (at least one way) in my second game. Didn't post the game, however (my only game not posted) because it was cheesy. Play Gigantic, Low ai intellect, Sitting around hitting turn for 50-100 or so turns all the while deliberately not winning so your population could build to incredibly huge numbers. So in effect, to get huge scores involved not playing the game as was intended but what amounted to turning a light switch on and off for 50 turns or so. Then going ahead and getting your tech victory. Now I know some got lucky, got a good empire early and got alot of pop without the cheesy tactic, but once everyone figured it out, all the games where you didn't get lucky would either be a) dumped or b)end up using the cheese tactic. I think it stinks that to get a high score, I should be board out of my goard for over an hour just to run it up (actually I wouldn't do that since I don't care enough about my metaverse score for me to be board an hour) Certainly that isn't the intent of the programers. And quite frankly, once everyone finds out, it ceases to be fun because everyone is doing it anyway and your scores won't look relatively better. All this does is "Add in the concept of # of turns and lesson the impact of pop to eliminate cheese and make it more fun with multiple paths to high scores. Now I'm sure if turns were made too important, an adjustment can and will be made at that time scaling it back. It's all just in fun anyway..

I never got to play the +15PQ so I really feel cheated. But that's life. It's way too powerful a pick. 5-7 is fine as per the 3 version. And you can get some of em up 30-40 if you like killing the giant worms, bugs, and the like. HEHE.

Of course the official evil empire of G.R.O.S.S. knows this is a mere feeble attempt to foil our galactic conquest plans on the part of you do gooders. It will fail.

That having been said i'd like those +10PQ back at the end. We might indeed get em back once Frog and the gang see how the new specs affect things as games come in. Just like PQ was added as a pick then scaled back when it was found to be too powerful.




But a rule change is simply a change in strategy. Nothing more, nothing less. It's still the same game. And he with the power wins.... From the original Rollerball.

My post was neither panicky nor abusive, and I've certainly given credit to the Stardock team in numerous postings in several different forums. I've defended the game against criticism I thought were unjust, and have recommended this game as one of the best 4X games I've ever played. I did state my views, and I stand by them, that the patching lately has been focused more around reacting to what players are doing than adding things to the game.

I am not 'loathe to change', but I'm very much against trying to swim upstream against a patching process that becomes hostile to the players of the game in question. I'm not saying GalCiv has reached this point yet, what I pointed out is that it seems to be heading that way, and it seemed a good idea to me to point this out. If it's not, then there's no need to pay any particular attention to this post.

I've played many muds and online games over the years, and it's not rare at all for implementors and developers to get into this kind of relationship in a high-feedback enviroment, and the end result is usually a game that has had all the fun wrung out of it. Because doing spectacular things is the fun part of gaming, and when spectacular becomes synonymous with 'exploit' or 'cheese' then you can have a big problem.

Forceinfinity: my dissatisfaction of the dropping the PQ bonus from Near Omnipotence and Galactic Creation have nothing whatsoever to do with score. I play the best game I can without cheese and have done pretty well score wise because I'm a builder type player - if the new changes reduced my scores because of that, so be it. No, my crankiness with this change is that the change makes no sense, does not at all address what Brad said it did (reduce micromanagement and increase game balance - I personally think it makes both of those issues worse), and in this case something very significant was taken away with nothing given back.

Near Omnipotence sounds pretty impressive, and it should be, it costs 94,430 research points. On average it takes you a couple of years to get. It used to be that it was worth that wait; your near omnipotence gave you the ability to make your worlds closer to paradise with the global PQ bonus. Now, what do you get for a couple of years of research: +10% HPs, +10% Military Production - there is NOTHING nearly omnipotent about that, in fact for the cost I'd call it Completely Impotent.

Galactic Creation is an even bigger kick to the groin. It also used to grant a global +10% PQ bonus for its obscene cost of 94,200 research points. Now for that amazing expenditure you get, get this, only +10% HPs.

Those "bonuses" are ridiculous for the costs. Reinforced Hulls does exactly the same thing as Galactic Creation and costs 220 research points, that's a 42,818% increase in cost for not one thing extra. Tri-Strontium Allow and Large Scale Building accomplish more than what Near Omnipotence does for a mere 1500 research points, again we see a 6,295% increase in costs for less benefits.

-----

As an analogy, consider the recent rebalancing to the Battle Hammer. Human players were "overusing" the BH relative to the AI because we could see something that the AI couldn't see with its evaluation algorithms. It took a couple of tries, but the current stats actually give it a defined role and the costs are representative. However, if they had taken the same approach to fixing the BH as they did these techs they would have left the costs as they were and reduced it to a 0A/0D/1HP and kept the 6 maintenance.

More important IMHO to think that players will do after one or antoher change than to think that is going on now.
Also, i have a good article (author - Zileas, shambler.net) about game balance. It may help. Hm better to post it in suggestions tread.

~SDC~

Code Monkey: Those are pretty good arguments. I'll bring them up at the next balance meeting internally.

Brad, thankyou. I look forward to seeing things actually balanced

The production bonus for High Density Metals and Tri-Strontium Alloy aren't recognized by the game however. In that respect, Near Omnipotence does have a slight advantage

IMHO, the easiest counter-milkng solution for Metaverse is only take in the account the difficulty and starting positions (of human and AI players). Then everybody can follow their own path to the victory. The worse the start one won from, the higher score he'd get, no matter what path he's chosen.

Alex.

I am really glad that we have the metaverse around. Mostly, I use it to gauge how well I'm doing compared to my earlier games. Sadly, I haven't been able to submit for a few tries, including my 6500+ game after getting used to 1.03, but still. It's nice to feel like I'm learning new tricks--then to have the numbers up there for me to see my own playing trends.

It's hard to fight the temptation of climbing the ladder. Most of us are pretty competative (gamers, that is). At least I can pretend that I don't care, hehe.

Remember one thing, Frogboy. If people are still whining, it means they care. I can't even count how many people on MMORPGs whine constantly, but they never seem to leave the servers. I think for some people, the nit-picking is part of the fun. (I might be one of those people, hmmmm).

One other thing. Almost every patch so far has made the game better, at least for me. That is harder to do than it sounds. I'm damned impressive. If only I could get more of my friends to play 4x games, darn it.

Now, the real question related to this thread: what is the estimated time until the older metaverse scores are adjusted?

I just submitted my first score post "score nerfing" and it was 1/10th what my earlier scores were playing similarly. This means that I can guarantee that every game I submit until the adjustment goes through is going to keep dropping me down the ladder no matter what I do. It also means that if the world's greatest GalCiv player starts playing tomorrow, there's still no way he'll even show up on the ladder against the older "inflated" scores.

As some others have pointed out, it's not that we're playing the metaverse, but it's a fun element of the game. However, the longer it remains in a state of disarray, the more likely that many players might just give up on it altogether which hurts your development.

I'm eager too for the scoring changes to be applied to old metaverse scores. If it turns out for some reason to not be possible, I'd even be satisfied with a complete wipe and a fresh start. Heh, imagine the complaining then. It would be worth it though.

I've been playing a lot lately in 1.03 and while I wouldn't say I'm a very good player, it is annoying to be getting better while at the same time steadily sliding DOWN the ladder each time I submit a game. My score is getting worse.

And yes, I do like that efforts are being made to prevent milking. And yes, I do enjoy playing the game in and of itself regardless of Metaverse. Just would be happy to see the old scores fixed soon.