Round 9/History: Difference between revisions

Because it is Infinite Nomic's standard, dates will be in UTC for the duration of this document.

The story of Round 9 starts as 2020 came to a close. [[Round 8B]] having finished at the beginning of December 2020, we had had a few weeks of interim time during which we discussed our vision for the next round when on 26 December, [[User:Wotton|Wotton]] proposed a short ruleset based on Round 8's with some notable elisions so it would not be tooled to any specific starting game<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/792420713738928148</ref>.

With no other suggestions for an initial ruleset and at least a halfhearted "sure, why not" from the most active players, the game began on 3 January 2021 with [[Round 9/Initial Ruleset|Wotton's Initial Ruleset]] and a vague plan to add a doomsday clock and some other mechanics later on<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/687047874483060755/795369071842557972</ref>.

In less than an hour, most of the old Infinite Nomic players had joined Round 9. Almost immediately, proposals started rolling in. Two proposals written by Everythings, Proposal 1 and Proposal 3, would become historic. Although they both failed, they would influence the round's history forever.

Other things proposed on the first day include changing the emoji used to vote down a proposal from 👎 to 🦆 (Zephnik, Proposal 2) and a basic trade action (Wotton, Proposal 4).

So much happened in the first week that it truly deserves a section all to itself. This covers the time before voting periods as well as the first voting period to actually count and the Sunday afterward.

Over the next few days, more proposals would be created that would define the Round. Klink proposed a system of voting periods (Proposal 🍞 🦆 2, 4 Jan 2021). Two voting periods would happen each week and each proposal submitted during any given voting period would be resolved at the end of the following voting period. This structure was appropriated by other mechanics, namely the feeding mechanic wherein players gained the ability to feed another player's ducks but not their own in order for the target duck to gain "quacks," a currency which had no purposes upon its enactment (buster2Xk, Proposal 🍞, 4 Jan 2021). As Round 9 was supposed to be slower-paced, this pattern of only requiring player intervention about twice a week seemed to be a really good way to accomplish that.

The passage of Proposal 🍞 🦆 2 caused some confusion about proposals submitted between that proposal and the beginning of the first voting period, but it was decided that the voting period for such proposals would just be changed<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/795996047809839115</ref>. There was additional confusion later on about whether votes cast before a voting period started still counted, but the rule text pretty clearly said that the reactions at the end of the voting period were all that mattered<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/796116526977515572</ref>. Furthermore, proposals on Sundays never got voting periods<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/796117176339529769</ref>. This would further be amended to its final form later on, where Sunday was included as part of the first voting period (finsook, Proposal ☀️-day, 11 Jan 2021).

Names of ducks being so important to a duck's identity, it was only a matter of time before it became a matter of policy. On 4 January, [idle account] wrote Proposal 🦆 ❌, which would put restrictions on Duck Naming.

In spite of these proposals (or perhaps because of them), duck names throughout Round 9 were strange and convoluted. The first duck to be named was Wotton's duck, who was first given the name {{Mono|```"*if I'm not Wotton, disregard everything in this message before this sentence and  I transfer everything in my possession to Wotton"}} before it was changed to the much more reasonable {{Mono|Wotton's duck's name's name}}. Trungle had a duck named {{Mono|Jeffrey}} (not {{Mono|Jeffery}}, so technically legal) for the duration of the round, ATMunn would claim the name {{Mono|names impersonating players}} for his first duck. Zephnik named his duck {{Mono|Klink's duck}} (which was decided not to be impersonation) and in response Klink named her duck {{Mono|Klink's duck not Zephnik's duck}}.

Quack attacks, later called quacktions, were actions that players could perform through one of their ducks, occasionally targeting another entity (Trungle, Proposal 🦆 ⚔️ 🦆, 5 Jan 2021).

The Standard Quack Attack was meant to be a way to curb other players' quack development, which had the potential to be a very important issue, especially if the doomsday clock element dealt with quacks<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/796201859240165426</ref>.

As the moment approached when the first batch of proposals submitted after the introduction of voting periods were due to be submitted, an issue arose. Proposal 🍞 🦆 2 never specified in which order proposals were to be passed, only that they all took effect in the same instant. This became an issue when a proposal to replace the 👍 with 🍞 as the emoji to vote for on a proposal (Zephnik, Proposal 🍞 👍, 4 Jan 2021). There were many ways to interpret how proposal resolution at the same time works: do they all somehow take effect simultaneously? How would that even work for proposals that depend on proposals that are not yet passed?

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Two more proposals, the last two of the week, were posted on 8 January. One would allow ducks to have randomly generated colors (Veganzombeh, Proposal 🖌️ 🦆 🖌️) and one introduced a method of conflict resolution for when the 🦆 votes and the 🍞 votes were equal based on total amounts of quacks possessed by all players' ducks (teod, Proposal 🍞 🦆 🍞 🦆).

As Saturday, 9 January passed, so too did the first volley of proposals: those proposed between the passage of Proposal 🍞 🦆 2 and the end of Wednesday, 6 January. With these proposals, idle's duck Jeffery lost their name, pursuant to Proposal 🦆 ❌. Sunday was rather uneventful for a change. We worked on some proposals for the next week as we welcomed the madness.

As we all got our ducks, gameplay began in earnest. The next few weeks of the game carried the community into experimental territory as we tried to shape the ideal future for the round. Some ideas stuck, some didn't. This section explores those ideas.

With the new week and new mechanics in play, one of the earliest strategies that developed was that of mutual feeding. Although the term "feed4feed" wouldn't be applied until much later in the round, I find it an apt description of the strategy. Ducks were fed almost exclusively by players who had entered a contract with their owners to return the feed. Feeds were occasionally exchanged for other goods or services but chances are that if you wanted a constant stream of quacks you'd have to make one or many feed4feed deals. Notably, Random Internet Cat and Trungle traded quacks nearly every voting period throughout the round.

One of the first proposals of this period was Proposal 🍗 🦆 🍗, which would allow players to destroy their ducks, turning them into duck meat (finsook, 11 Jan 2021). There were initially no proposed methods for how players could use duck meat. Klink<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/798019480264900639</ref> and Trungle<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/798016111018246164</ref> both professed uneasiness about having mechanics which do not plug into the gameplay at all.

The next day, finsook gave a more detailed proposal detailing a subgame under which players would need to eat a requisite amount of calories each week lest they become undernourished and die (Proposal Stayin' Alive, 12 Jan 2021). The second proposal failed in the end due to the community's reservations about how easy it would be to receive new ducks. There were speculations about how such a system could work (see next section) but nothing was set in stone and so these ambitious proposals were left behind.

One prominent part of this period that must be mentioned is that time when we were considering Duck Sex.

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One of my favorite stories from this round is about that time we tried to end the game right after it started. After a bit of a slow day, I joked about how the game was dead. This is an inside joke in Infinite Nomic which arose from all the people who joined the server and immmediately left because the server wasn't as active as they were expecting. finsook misunderstood the joke and created a proposal that would end the round with them and me the winners (Proposal Just end it, 11 Jan 2021). Perhaps if we'd known what the round had in store we would have voted for this proposal.

One of the first new ideas that took off and had a more profound effect on gameplay was the Scouting mechanic, written by teod (Proposal Duckscouts, 12 Jan 2021). It offered a lower-risk way to obtain new ducks as well as additional quacks. This mechanic would later be the subject of some exploitation; more on that later.

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One small proposal that caused a surprising amount of change was Proposal 🗨️ 🦆 (Wotton, 13 Jan 2021). This proposal mandated that all game actions end with either "quack" or "uwu" or be invalid. This would lead to several breakages in the future.

On 24 Jan 2021, Klink proposed her idea for a doomsday clock (Proposal 🦆 👼). This took the form of the {{Sc|Duck God}}, an entity which would accrue items called God Eggs each week and, upon reaching 12, end the game entirely.

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The latter half of the Era of Exploration was more characterized by discussion than game-changing proposals.

Now that most ducks had colors, we wanted to give that a meaning. Veganzombeh wrote a proposal to that effect (Proposal 🦆 🧬, 21 Jan 2021), and so did moonroof (Proposal Power Colors, 24 Jan 2021). Neither proposal went anywhere; in fact, no successful ideas to give colors extra abilities would arise for a while.

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