Can you resolve wether or not your degrading the score
or the weight?

What is the point of comparing 1.02 scores to 1.05 scores? They were accomplished under different rules, and it makes no sense to recalculate 1.02 scores to the 1.05 algorithm.

StarDock should just completely reset the Metaverse when they release a new version and post a list of the leaders from the previous version. Of course, this would mean that they could only accept submissions from gamers using the current version, but that seems perfectly reasonable given the original intent of the metaverse.

RE: degradation

T-Man posted the following schedule for scores decaying in the Metaverse problem sticky thread:

00-30 days = 100% original value
31-60 days = 90% original value
61-90 days = 80% original value
91-120 days = 70% original value
121 - 150 days = 60% original value
151 - 220 days = 50% original value
221 - 290 days = 40% original value
291 - infinity days = 20% original value

@Staffa, that's as official as I've seen, and that is why I wrote what I wrote. Your understanding of what weighting meant in relation to the scores is what was off, not my explanation so don't accuse me of insulting you.

@Brad, the above decay schedule is fine except for one issue: the 20% basement. Max the decay at 40% original value and there is no problem whatsoever with favoring the new player over the old, nor is there an issue with unfairly favoring the old player.

No, what weighting means is what weighting means, you
dont understand the concept and apparently neither
does T-Man.

I flatly said they were very different(weighting and
devaluing scores) you said that I was flatly wrong
and that they were identical.

Your still wrong, they are not weighting the scores at
all.

Just cause a game is 6 months old doesnt mean that
someone who scores half as many points is equally
good. Which is what this system is doing.

If you want to devalue games over time, you do it
through weighting games played more recently more
heavily(via the method I outlined above)

Which doesnt penalize anyone, ever, under any
circumstances, and you do it to a 100% devaluation
and its pretty simple. Here I will run some numbers
through excel for you.

Plephart,

I have had some problems with a 1.044 game (I said 1.040 earlier, but now I'm not sure). Cultural victory doesn't seem to be working properly. I've been trying to figure out if it is something buggy with my save or if that and some other problems (like peculiar behavior with refreshing of time to completion in the planet list) are due to 1.05



To CM and Staffa,

Guys try to keep it civil. You're both valuable to the community and I'd like to keep both of you around for a while


I understand what Staffa is saying. If the score of games is reduced over time, but the weight of those games in the denominator is not reduced, then it effectively penalizes people for sticking with the metaverse over the long haul, rather than simply encouraging continued participation.

As an extreme exaggeration of this effect for illustrative purposes, imagine that the score eventually dwindled to zero, but that the number of games in the denominator was unchanged.

Suppose you have 5 old games, then don't play for a long while, then play 4 new games. If the old games are not counted in the denominator, your average score is divided by 2. If they are counted, your score is divided by 3, effectively reducing your score for those new games by a third over what it would have been if you were simply a new player.


This might be a silly example, but the effect (if this is, in fact, what is happening) is not trivial. In effect your new games are devalued because you have old games on your scorecard. If that were the case, you'd be better off if those games were just expunged after the same period of time (removing them completely from both numerator and denominator).
[Message Edited]
[Message Edited]

So, because you've chosen to insist that your version of weighting is somehow THE definition of weighting everyone else is wrong? Staffa, you've blown this one way out of proportion, all weighting means in any system is that more or less value is assigned to an element based on some assigned factor.

In T-Man's system, less and less weight is given to older scores. It's pedantic semantic arguing to try and say that isn't a weighted system.

And, having already run some numbers myself, all you need to is not throw the baby out with the bathwater (what you want to do) but just set the basement at 40% and there is no problem.

I appreciate what a weighted system of the variety you would like to see can accomplish, but it's not going to work with something as simple as (Sum of weighted scores)/(Sqrt #Games). If you want to keep things as simple as possible (I know I do), set the bottom decay at 40% and you get a curve that levels off for the players who keep submitting but still does climb, and if they stop or slow down on submitting, decays to less than half of its former value within months.

I would say that the max decay should be around 50%.

@Bearcave and your dwindling comment: I know, that's exactly my point. If you stop the decay at 40% original value, your score will never decrease and always increase so long as you continue to be active at the same pace in the metaverse. However, it's rate of increase levels off around 1 year of participation. Simple and works without trying to figure out how to make a sliding weight system like Staffa wants.

Here's a different point of view, for what it's worth. As someone who plays the game the way I want to and not to achieve any specific rating, I would have to agree that decaying the actual scores on the Metaverse over time would be somewhat annoying. Decaying the weight of the scores is good, to boost the overall rank of people who play regularly. In that regard, score weighting should probably be made clear, with the games that are fully weighted showing up on the individual player's list as a different color, for people who care about such things. But degrading the score itself over time makes the Metaverse less useful to the casual player.

Overall, I use the Metaverse as a high scores list of my games over time; I've played maybe 5 games that aren't on my list, primarily when I just started. I like to compare what sort of games I've played, how well they worked out, and occasionally try a different style of game than I'm used to. I have neither the time nor the inclination to play enough games to stay near the top of the list, so the chances of my games ever being used as the developers improve the game AI is rather slim.

Although it's easy to think that one's own playing style is the most important, I suspect that there are rather a lot of other players who use the Metaverse the same way I do: to keep a list of their games and scores, show them off occasionally to friends, and help out whatever Empire they're in. Degrading the actual scores would tend to make that less useful, since it makes it more difficult for a casual player who only submits a few games a month to compare games that are even from the same version. (Granted, the ever-changing scoring system has tended to do this as well, but at least that's easy to see based on game version.) Degrading the weight of the scores would be useful for shaping the overall Metaverse ratings, without changing how one's own scores compare to each other.

Incidentally, it must be said that the fact that so much attention and effort is being paid to even the parts of the game that are less important to the majority of GalCiv players, such as the Metaverse, speaks volumes about the tremendous support that Stardock has been giving to this game. It never ceases to amaze me and other gamers I talk to, to see the amount of post-release development going into this game.

(Falls off couch, hits head, comes to, and re-reads screen to make sure he read it right)

Weighting includes the denominator, period, it makes
no sense to speak of weighting without taking this
into consideration.

Your version, T-mans version, do not adjust
the denominator accordingly, its just pure devaluation.

50% sounds fine. Me thinks some people obsess too much about scoring. Me also wish devs quit nerfing the scoring. Me also wish for a million dollars but that's not going to happen Peace and love everyone

I'm going to try and help out Staffa's explanation some. The current formula is for the scores to be added up and divided by the square root of the number of games. I'm going to show the results of a few proposed changes based on 2 (very contrived) examples.

Player A bought GalCiv way-back-when, played 50 1000-point game, and quit. Then he dusts it off and plays another 50 1000-point games in 2 days.

Player B just got the game and has played 100 1000-point games in the last few days.

Now, both players are equally skilled, and under the current system recieve the same score, 100,000/sqrt(100) = 10,000. However, we'd like to make it so Player A's old games don't count as much, without totally ruining his score.

Suggestion A: Make player A's old games disappear. Now he has a score of 50,000/sqrt(50) = 6509.4, and could easily make up the difference by playing another 50 1000-point games. Not a terrible choice.

Suggestion B: Make player A's old games 500-point games (50% value). Now he is at 75,000/sqrt(100) = 7500. A higher score than with suggestion A, but to make up the difference, if he played 50 more games, he'd end up with a score of 10206...but it would be MUCH harder for him to improve that score than the it would for the new guy to improve his.

Suggestion C: Make player A's old games 500-point HALF-games (50% WEIGHT). Now he is at (50,000/2 + 50,000)/sqrt(50 + 50/2) = 8660. With only 25 more games on his part he'd be on an EXACTLY level playing field with the new guy...this seems to be the best option to me.

The difference between devaluation and weighting is the difference between B and C...and you can see that 50% VALUE and 50% WEIGHT have very different results.

I'm not terribly concerned either way, but thought I'd try and clear the waters a bit.

-EtherMage

EDIT: fixed numbers.
EDIT 2: stupid random <BR>'s
[Message Edited]

Well, just look at the record of a simple, middle league player like myself. I started with v1.02 on simple, and just finished 1.04.059 on tough. Look at some of the old scores: 52, 51, 34. The newest ones? 1600 on up to 3990. An old 1.35 game reads challenging, small, culture conquest: 34 points. The latest game reads tough, small, military conquest: 3990 points. Now I am going to have feelings of inadequacy when some killer 1.05 noob comes along and posts 10,000 points on cakewalk on a small map...

I am happy overall with the Galciv team. They are really trying hard and I appreciate that a lot. But I am also proud of my meager accomplishments. I would not want to start over again just so that I can remove the chains that are weighing me down compared to someone who does not have the old baggage. But, in the end, it is not my call. I will go along with whatever the deal will be, it just that I do not feel this situation is right.

Weighted sum is total of k(i)*x(i), i=1,N, where k(i) are constants. Current metaverse score is not described by it even without decay. You would need to make k dependent on N.

Without decay k(i) would be power(N,-0.5). Depends on N, but not i. With decay it becomes k(j(i)) = a(j(i))*power(N,-0.5), where j(i) constant for any i played on the same version and a(j(i)) are decay coefficients. I have no clue how this contruct might be called. Maybe Brad is the first one who came up with such a sequence, so he's entitled to name it ;>