VOTE for Universe Theme & Scoring Function in the 🎊 Dark Forest Community New Year’s Round 🎊

After several days of thoughtful discussion, dfdao & friends are proud to announce the three community proposals that have been selected for the voting period of our Dark Forest New Year’s Community Round. From now until December 15 at 11:59pm EST, the community can vote on which round proposal they would prefer to play in January:

1. 💀 Death of the Universe 🌍
2. ✨Illuminate the Dark Forest✨
3. 🦑 Fight of the Giants 🦑

Before going over the details of these proposals, we have a couple of reflections and reminders to share.

Brainstorming as a Community

We are so grateful to everyone who shared an idea for how to structure the community round, gave feedback on other players’ ideas, participated in the general discussion in our discord this week, and joined our server in anticipation of the upcoming round.

It was really rewarding to consider all the unique pieces of what makes up a round of Dark Forest and use our collective experience as players to envision different possibilities for structuring the universe and scoring mechanics. It was also inspiring to see just how imaginative our fellow players are. This is something we already knew about the DF community, but it was fascinating to have our suspicions confirmed; this game draws in some seriously creative individuals.

We have assembled a public list of ideas for other community rounds to explore, and encourage anyone in the community to make use of it! There are some incredibly cool new mechanics that can build on top of each other, such as decreasing production from asteroids and artifacts merging for new powers.

Notes on Proposals and Voting

As promised in our announcement article, the next step towards building this community round is the voting phase. Any player who scored at least 1 point in Dark Forest v6.4 will be able to vote. This is true even if you did not participate in the brainstorming process.

Here some key reminders about this voting process:

1. The player vote will decide on a round theme and at least one of the scoring functions for the round.
2. Voting will be conducted via Snapshot. Every player who scored at least 1 point in Dark Forest v6.4 will be able to vote. Your vote share will be weighted based on how highly you scored in v6.4. Each player will receive log2(score) votes and can allocate them to the proposals as they see fit.
3. We may propose and vote on additional scoring functions (like score = points / gas used), but will keep the scoring function of the winning proposal intact.
4. We reserve the right to do some modelling and play-testing to figure out the best universe parameters that fit within the structure of the winning proposal.

• For example, if the 💀 Death of the Universe 🌍 proposal wins and we realize that destroying a planet with 2x of its max energy creates uncrossable chasms, we would test the rule with 3x energy instead.
• This will ensure the spirit of the vote is still implemented, but the gameplay experience remains smooth and exciting for all.
• If you are interested in play-testing the winning proposal, join our Discord.

Proposals:

💀 Death of the Universe 🌍

Description: Compete to salvage silver out of a dying universe.
Required parameters:
Universe:

• Players can Black Domain (destroy) an enemy planet by sending 2x the planet’s max energy cap.
• Planet range grows over time to account for planets being destroyed.
• The universe will not expand. It will either shrink or stay constant.

Scoring function:

• Silver withdrawn

Playtest parameters:
Universe:

• Should the universe shrink or stay constant?
• Should planets grow in defense over time?
  Scoring function:
• Should players get points for destroying a planet?
• Should these points be in proportion to the score of the planet’s previous owner?

✨Illuminate the Dark Forest✨

Description: You can only score by capturing broadcasted planets.
Required parameters:
Scoring function:

• Players score x^planet level points for owning a planet that they have broadcasted.
• Players score x^planet level points / 2 for owning a planet that another player has broadcasted.
• Similar to v6.3, scores will be assessed at the end of the round.

Playtest parameters:
Universe:

• Should universe grow / shrink / stay constant?
• How often should broadcasting be allowed? 1 hour? 3 hours?
• What value of x makes the most sense based on planet distribution in the universe?

🦑 Fight of the Giants 🦑

Description: Farm silver (PvE) or fight for the bigger planets (PvP)
Required parameters:
Scoring function:

• Players score X^(planet level) * Y points for each planet owned higher than a certain level.
• Players also score silver as normal.
• The scores are split in 2 leaderboards the same with the prizes, 31 for PvE and 31 for PvP.

Playtest parameters:
Scoring function:

• What values of X and Y make sense for planet scoring?
• What levels should be the used for the planet owned score?

Universe:

• Should universe grow / shrink / stay constant?

As a reminder, these proposals were chosen based on the following criteria:

1. Popularity among all players who contributed to discussion in the Discord. Thumbs up/down Reactions were an indicator, as well as tone and enthusiasm of the conversation in #round-discussion.
2. Feasibility for the developers. We have limited time in which to build the round when the scoring mechanic is chosen. For this reason, the planning committee made the final selection of the top 3 proposals based on a) what is most technically feasible in the timeframe and b) our team’s expertise.

How to Vote

1. Go to the Snapshot proposal link.
2. Connect to the wallet that played in Dark Forest v6.4 (if you have are using a wallet in a browser extension like Metamask, make sure you have also switched your account to the burner wallet in the extension itself).
3. Allocate your log2(v6.4 score) votes amongst the proposals as you see fit.
4. Sign the message confirming your vote.
5. Voting will occur from now until December 15, 11:59pm EST.