Dark Forest: Competitive Balance and Expectations

This was written during v0.5, but the sentiment is evergreen.

The intention behind Dark Forest right now is to showcase new technology and simply to have something that works from end-to-end. In that sense, it’s delivering on those intentions very well! We’re all having a blast playing, and we’re on the forefront of this new technology. I personally view this as the single best blockchain game out there right now, and I don’t see any surpassing it.

What I want to address is the fairly high level of competition that we’ve seen this round. Competition is exciting, and the leaderboard and prize pool definitely contribute to that competition, but it’s easy to then let that competitive spirit detract from what the game’s true intentions are. There are a recurring number of complaints that I’ve been seeing, like:

• I got a key so late that it doesn’t matter anymore
• The people who have coding skills have better plugins so its unfair

This is Dark Forest version 0.5. Not v5, but v0.5. Not even v1.0 yet. These are testing rounds, and the small prize pool is an incentive not only to play, but to show the devs how people are playing. Dark Forest is not balanced to be competitive, but it’s competitive to eventually become balanced. Think about that. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the tools are currently being invented by players who are competitive. In that sense, it may look unfair to the rest of the players who don’t have some of the tools. But wait. You actually do have those tools, you just don’t realize it.

There are three important factors that can contribute to you moving up on the leaderboard:

• how much time you have
• your programming skills
• your communication skills

You can succeed with any combination of these things. I don’t have a programming bone in my body, but I’m currently rank 2. How is that? I had time over the holidays, and I had communication skills. I kept up with the plugin discussion and I became friends with those who made the plugins. I also actively reached out to users who were nearby me and made deals and alliances. I’m mostly non-aggressive in-game.

If you want to thrive, you should be using the plugins available at plugins.zkga.me, you should be diplomatic and create alliances or strategic partnerships, and you should use your time wisely. You CAN AND WILL thrive by doing these things.

Aside from all of this, I want to reiterate that the game is not balanced.

You might be as efficient as humanly possible but still not able to get to the top of the leaderboard simply because you got a key a week after the game started. This is purely because we have a history of taking down whichever network that the game uses, and these rounds act as stress tests. If you were around in v0.4 and now in v0.5, you’d be astounded at how many more players have been able to play this without issues. This will get better over time. Dark Forest is not intended to be completely competitively balanced at this point in time, and if that upsets you, I urge you to look at your priorities for playing.

Dark Forest is for fun, not for compensation.

At least not until the game is actually balanced and there are million dollar prize pools..