“Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.” – Lewis Grizzard Jr.
I doubt that Mr. Grizzard, who was an American sportswriter throughout the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s would have ever expected his quote to be used in an article about Digital Race Horses; but here we are.
March 2022. The end of Q1. The biggest month for Zed.Run yet.
Why?
Well, here’s some things that are on the table as potential updates to the Zed.Run ecosystem during March:
Token Airdrop
This is probably the biggest single thing that can bring a lot of “hype” and joy to the table immediately for Players. There are 31 days left in Q1 (the announced Timeline back when Zed published their 2022 Roadmap) and Zed has published absolutely no details since that Roadmap post on December 31st.
The lack of details doesn’t necessarily bother me, because I would assume that this has to do with the actual act of creating a Token and keeping things under wraps, even potentially for legal purposes.
The Twitter team has been teasing a look at the actual design of the Token itself; but that’s not going to do much for most players.
This Airdrop itself represents “free money” for Players depending on how Zed allocates it.
As I mentioned, that’s going to bring a ton of hype – but it’s going to cause hurt feelings as well.
There’s no way to design this allocation to account for Breed Types, Legnth of Ownership, Playing Activity in a way that’s “fair”. And even if they do nail that formula in a way that feels “fair” to most – there will still be players who are going to be upset that their Stable didn’t get the “correct” amount.
Zed would do well to not listen to whiners – as long as they take careful consideration of who they want to reward.
For now, we’re stuck watching the Twitter ask for Retweets as we’re left to wonder who will receive what from the Airdrop.
Most players should do well to think of this initial Token as a Bonus as opposed to something that will “make or break” their Zed experience. It’d be great if the Zed team was setting some expectation management here too.
A successful Token Launch that rewards Genesis holders, active players, and can spread some funds to new Stables would be an enormous social media / “buzz” boost and could create in a big boom for the game itself.
Since the Zed team has intentionally held back from their Marketing efforts, this could represent the biggest influx since the initial Genesis Drops of 2021. Considering how those went, this could leave a much more positive taste in everyone’s mouth too.
If the Token Launch does result in an influx of new players – Zed will have to deal with some aspects of onboarding that are less than ideal right now including teaching Players that losing their first 10 Races is probably the ideal result, creating 2 Stables gives you the cheapest way to Breed your own Horses, and the general idea that Small Stables don’t have a great path to income.
Token Racing
Obviously, there can’t be Token Racing without an initial Launch and Airdrop, however this is a feature that is also listed as “Q1” on the timeline.
Since it has the same Timeline as the Token Airdrop, it is expected that Racing for “ZED Token” will follow quickly upon Release.
While Racing for Tokens instead of WETH doesn’t seem like a big deal; it could fix one of the biggest pain points in Zed.Run today.
The Lobby has been a disaster for the past 8-ish months.
The Zed team has recently announced long-awaited improvements to the Race Scheduler; however the best thing for the game would be if Paid Volume could really increase. The idea here is hopefully that Polygon is the thing holding them back, and the Token would fix those “volume” issues.
This is pure conjecture on my part – however I don’t think the team would’ve allowed the sad state of Paid Racing to continue as it had if they had the ability to stop it. PLEASE PLEASE tell me they wouldn’t have allowed this to go on.
Anyway, even if we are just racing for ZED Token instead of WETH, at the very least this is a change that shouldn’t be a negative & could very well open up the Team to more formats, more availability, and improve Racing overall.
Incentivizing Class 1
This goes hand in hand with the Token Racing system.
The biggest problem that the Zed Team had when they spent 6 months developing their “Dynamic Class System” is that they failed to do anything to address the rampant down-classing in their game.
They did make it more tedious to down-class, however that has pretty much led to everyone trying to lose all the time in a boring slog as opposed to incentivizing winning in a fun way.
That’s not great; however it’s expected that the Token will give Zed a “supply” to use to motivate Runners to get to Class 1.
This is something that multiple team members have mentioned many times, so you can be assured that this will be coming to Zed.Run in some form.
Whether the incentives are enough to motivate Horses to move up remains unseen; but this will be the team’s best bet in terms of fixing the disastrous Class System that has plagued Racing while being changed back and forth over the past 6 months.
Breeding Algo Change
The Breeding Algo change actually had a Target Launch of Late February, however as you can tell by this post being published on March 1st, the team has missed that deadline.
It’s unfortunate that they didn’t bother to announce a new Target Launch date or explain why this Target was missed, however this is definitely an update that we do NOT want the team to rush.
This change is designed to add a bit of skill to Breeding and allow large and small Stables alike the chance to control their bloodlines a bit more and that could certainly lead to sharp players improving their status in the game.
If it works as intended, it’s going to be an extremely positive change for Zed as players will be able to “fall down the rabbit hole” even further, so to speak, and will be able to spend more time in the lab cooking up Bred Horse formulas that may actually matter as opposed to the RNG controlling the game right now.
The downside is that a failed Algo Change could lead to devastating results. That’s why it is so important that the team gets this right – if the Algo is easily solvable or if the newest Bred Horses immediately dominate the gameplay, Zed is going to suffer harsh and quick consequences.
A double-dip on Breeding (Zed has announced they’ll be resetting Breed dates) with a new level of strategy could invigorate the Community as they hunt for the best methods and see what new (and reasonable) monsters get created during the month. That’s what the best-case scenario provides and is certainly my hope for the game in terms of Breeding.
Community Hype
Rumor has it is that there are some really fun Community events planned for the month of March…
(Insert Zook.GIF here)
And if Zed can land the changes above in a positive manner; it will only energize the existing Community further than ever before and give Players confidence that I think they have lacked since the initial drops in 2021.
I think there could be a rush to get in from people who have been watching as Zed prices have remained relatively sideways over the past few months and saying ‘Well, maybe I’ll get in when they figure it out’.
There’s no FOMO with Zed right now in any way. The Community is critical from the outside-looking-in, but deservedly so.
Outside of the hardcore Community; there hasn’t been much movement at all or any kind of mass adoption even trying to take place. That’s only logical because the new user has a lot to deal with in terms of onboarding right now with the struggles listed above.
Execution, of course, remains the key. If Zed is able to implement their Launches and Changes in a positive way – watch out!
The month of March could start them down the path to new users coming and being onboarded every day to boost this game to the popularity that I feel it deserves.
Come back to Twitter and let’s keep the conversation going! What do you think March 2022 will bring to Novus Earth? Reply to our Tweeted Link @ZedGuruOfficial.
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