I'll live, too. I'm just a bit puzzled as to the resistance to recalculating old scores according to new algorithms. Particularly when there is 'score inflation' present in these updates, it just plain makes sense to do the recalculations.

It hurts nothing and gains the good will of the masses. I mean, is there a good reason not to do the total recalculation? If the situation was reversed and older scores were magnitudes higher than the newer scores there'd be riots throughout the Wardell system as to how the failure to recalc was letting players like Sergey and Staffa sit on the top for the next few months without doing anything.

If I had to work during my vacation for a bunch of unappreciative folks like us, I know I'll get a lot more cranky than Frogboy did

I have a sneaky feeling that it would not be the last change to the Metaverse scoring though. Let's give the new system some time.

That's pretty much my point. Overall score is meaningless because to actually do any sort of comparison you need to remember such things as if population milking worked in such and such a version.



Unless there's no automated way of doing it, they should do a total recalc every time they change the algorithm. Sure, it might make for some interesting turbulence in rankings, but it's a much more fair way of handling the ever changing scoring systems.



I personally love the new scoring system itself and think Brad is a bit of game design god for getting this out the door already while on vacation.



Oh well, once again my praise goes unnoticed, but a relatively minor critique is received poorly



[Message Edited]

No, what I am saying is that the metaverse tinkering budget is exhausted.  In 6 months all this stuff will be meaningless anyway.

Odds are it'll be the same people at the top 6 months from now as today because it takes a lot of skill to win at the very high levels and no "newbie" is going to be able to come on and do that.

And the fact is, the old scores shouldn't be worth as much in my opinion. When people were winning at high levels due to cheese or exploits or whatever. At least now with 1.05 winning at masochistic level really means something.

I won't harp on this further, it's your game, you ultimately get to do what you want with it.

I will, however, once again note that somehow me and Brad will see the same thing (exploits were easier in some of the older versions) and come to completley opposite conclusions of what that should mean

LOL.

That's a relatively easy one to solve. Firstly, only Dregnin.net subscribers can make Metaverse suggestions. Secondly, they would need to send in US$10 to Stardock for every post made in a scoring suggestion thread.

Do you mean: surely it will all be worked out in six months; or, no one will be here playing the game in six months; or, the metaverse will be down in six months?

Hey, don't think anyone posted up the changes in 1.05 yet.

Tweaks/Features
+ colony stats are now recalculated right before end game screen comes up
+ before the end game screen comes up, the game is saved
+ added command line parameter for showing framerate (add framerate at the command prmopt c:/>galciv framerate)
+ planet list refreshes if open when domestic economy screen refreshes
+ when the AI beats you to a wonder/tradegood and clears that social project, now it uses the governor.
+ added mousewheel ability to newsscreen
+ METAVERSE submissions now bring up a dialog telling you that it has successfully submitted the game.
+ AI now can determine dedicated defenders and ships who are defending purely because they're in orbit.
+ Score algorithm changed.
+ made it so that I League can't turn undead (don't ask)
+ Governors screen polished (nicer looking)
+ AI better at handling "Rushes"
+ AI targets transports more at higher intelligence levels
+ Technology screen now uses list boxes to show future techs and new improvements and such.
+ Scoring system tweaked.
Prep work for the Expansion pack.

Bug Fixes:
- fixed crashes on domestic/foreign stats
- fixed gnn crash
- Fixed bug in AI diplomacy (go to war treaties) calculation.

I'm really dont worry about newbies, but the new scoring system punish those top players who have more games submitted. For example let all top 10 players submitted game with score 10000 (its not difficult with 1.05), then for some of them it will be worth roughly 3000 overal score increase, for some 2000, and for me ( with 41 games already submitted) only about 1500.

I'm thinking that if this situation will not be changed, I can just make new registration, loose all my old submissions and after 9 games with score 10000 have overall score 30000.

My two cents,



Frogboy, great game none the less. Everyone seems passionate about it which brings out the coulda/shoulda comments. In other words the fact that people care about scores, metaverse, etc. indicates that the game is loved.

Not sure what you meant by the six months comment, but typically user base falls way off and dies in that time frame which is what I figure you mean. Hopefully your concept of free expansion pack will keep it alive and growing!



Thanks


[Message Edited]

Its not 'newbies' that present a problem for vets
its 'new' players who are at the same skill level.
They have a pretty powerful advantage starting from
zero games. I will NEVER be on a level playing field
with them, for about a week my old games will be improving
score, but come the 5-6th game they will
be dragging down my score, and this will only get
progressively worse as time goes by.
in a week I will wish that all my old masochistic games
that were such a bitch to win were not even on the
metaverse anymore cause they will be _lowering_ my
overall score.

[Message Edited]

For the benefit of an ignorant old game player who just wants to play the game and have fun. How about someone giving a link that will take a person to a location where one can download version 1.05, which is what I thought was the subject of this thread?

Most everyone here is talking about how great/bad version 1.05 is, but no one is informing us poor peons how to find a place where it can be downloaded.

I know that makes me sound dumb, but I am smart enough to download the new(est) version if I could just find out where it is located. If it is in the download link to the left, it is not yet listed as version 1.05! Could someone PLEASE aid an ignorant old gameer?

You have to get it from stardock online for now. Later they will release it as a standalone patch.

Brad,
people are not asking that old games count as strongly as new games. Old score currently degrade over time and everyone is happy with that. What people are upset about, is the fact that they are better off starting off a new metaverse player and would get much higher scores than if they submit the same scores to their current id. This is all associated with the reducing of the score by a factor based on number of games submitted. A point which has been repeatedly raised since beta stage.

I understand that you didn't want a straight addition of scores, so that good games count more than mass submission of poor games. Unfortunately the current system punishes established players whenever changes are made. It also leans against players who play smaller galaxies (but that's a different issue). I do agree that it doesn't really matter though, as we can all just ignore our old scores, create new ids and start from scratch. Also as this is the last envisaged scoring change the problem should not repeat itself.

The people who are being upset are only a small minority of players, but they are the very minority who are creating the metaverse gaming environment (running empires, encopuraging players to join) which will help sell future games and build the community. Perhaps allowing them reset their scores and start from scratch would help.


Paul.

~SDC~

Hmm.. I was reasonably certain that your Metaverse account was tied to your SN#, so I doubt the restart fresh thing is an option.

Although, hopefully my jumping 20 spots to 3rd place this morning will highlight why recalcs should be done for all games, every time, for everybody.

Not everybody. I think the 20% basement for degrading scores is too harsh as it means that without exponentially increasing your scores and/or submission rate after the 10th month that your score will start droppingm and that even if you continue to play and score at the same rate you have been, it will take you until the 4th year just to regain that 10 month peak.

There's no reason to have scores degrade so far. A 30% basement causes them to level off and only gradually increase after the 10th month, and 40% or even 50% basement would keep the old farts from constantly climbing markedly higher while still letting the active players feel like they were progressing.

If I understand what you mean by score degrading, then
its done competely wrong.

The way you describe it, score degrading is done to
punish old players for having played some time ago.

The way score degrading should be done is to remove
the effect of old games, which means degrading the
weight that old games have, not degrading their value.

They are not the same thing, in fact they are very
different.

While I know the Metaverse Scoring has become the hot topic in this thread, I just wanted to chime in and say that we are working on a fix to the Governors issue.  Hopefully we'll be able to get a patch out the door by the end of the day   Sorry for the inconvenience.

~SDC~

Staffa, there's really no difference between weight and value (i.e. it makes no difference if I say your game is weighted at 20% of its initial value for purposes of calculating your overall score or if I say that it degrades to 20% of its initial value). The only issue is what the metaverse will display. I'd prefer it if it showed the original score and only used the degraded score for calculation purposes.

The problem with the 20% basement is that it makes the accumulation of older, degraded games (no matter what semantic spin you use ) a bigger negative effect on your overall score than you can overcome with any reasonable effort.

I ran some simulations (you can find the program I used in a thread called "Metaverse Decay: what you want to know") and it's clear that it's more punitive than it needs to be. I'd look it up and link it but I'm feeling lazy.

Setting the basement at 30% results in small and short dip, but still allows for consistent improvement (albeit very gradually). 50% may be a bit too lenient, but 40% causes your increase to level off at about 1 year of play and an additional year of play at the same rate and scores (very, very unlikely for the majority of players) only nets you an additional 25% gain to your overall score.

I have no objection to decaying scores/weights, but the basement of 20% is far too low to be fair to long term players.

Thanks for the update Scott.

Maybe ready in time for a game this evening

Paul.

~SDC~

You know CM, you would think that you and I have 'discussed' things enough for you too maybe consider thatim not an
idiot.

There is a difference between degrading the value
and degrading the weight.
The most concise why I can explain this is by this.

Reducing the value of the game is simple, you reduce
the value of the game.

so a 1000 point game reduced by 20% is worth 800

This is what you implied is going on(i havnt seen
anything official)

Reducing the weight of the same game by the same amount
means that the value is dropped to 800 but the amount that
the score is divided by when accumulated with other
scores is also reduced to .8
So if you have 3 games of 1000 points each and one
is reduced in weight by 20%
its 2800/sqrt(2.8)
not 2800/sqrt(3)

thats the difference.

Eventually you can degrade the weight of a game to 0,
in fact I would, this basicily removes older games
from having any 'weight' at all.

This is actually how its done in gaming communities
that want to remove inactive players from their lists.
It has zero effect on active players, as it should.

I suspect this is actually how it is being done and
your just confused.

But if your actually right, then this actually needs
to be addressed.

Btw, another effect of degrading weight rather then
score is that it will actually help players with older
games that are inferiorly scored, as the dead weight
of those lower score games will matter less over time.

[Message Edited]

Just a simple question here. Is it possible to patch an existing 1.044 game up to 1.05 without problems? Disregarding the whole gov issue which sounds like it will be fixed today.

Yes, my posted 1.05 game was originally started in
1.044

What about 5% degradation each month rather than 20%?