Public Testing This Week

Continuing on from yesterday’s Roboclans ALPHA, Social Deep Dive, where we explained that it’s part of an overall suite of changes that we’re putting into Robocraft to enhance the social experience of the game; today we’re going to look at the new Clan functionality. Please remember this is the first phase of Clans in Robocraft and we’ll be expanding and improving them as we move forward after the initial release. Now, you may have noticed the subtitle “PUBLIC TESTING THIS WEEK”. We decided, at the very last minute, that we wanted to do a public beta test with some of the community in order to iron out the kinks before we release it to the entire Robocraft player base. We’re setting up a full beta test environment with a view to doing that test later this week (if all goes to plan). Once we’re happy that the test has gone well enough, we’ll release it to the wider audience. So, what are our plans for Clans? Well, in this Deep Dive we will talk a bit more about Clans in Robocraft and how they’ll work.

What are Clans in Robocraft?

• A social group of players that are persistent (even when offline) in Robocraft
• Clans can be any size from 2-50 members
• Clans can have their own Clan Avatar which is displayed everywhere in game
• Clans have their own persistent Clan chat channel
• Clans members earn Robits together during a ‘season’*
• Compete in Clan Leagues together during a ‘season’*

*Feature planned for a future Clans Mk2 update

Creating a Clan:

The Clan functionality is accessed via the ‘Clan’ button which is to the far-left of the ‘Chat Widget’. As you can see from the mock-up below, creating a Clan in Robocraft is very easy and any player can create one. NB: There are no Premium features in Clans. Anyone can create them and upload avatars etc.

• To create a Clan you click on the Clan button and select the ‘Create’ tab
• Choose a Clan name that is unique (max 16 characters) and uses the same rules as usernames to determine what characters are allowed
• Add a public description of your clan in the Clan info box
• Define whether the Clan is ‘open’ or ‘invite only’
• Upload a Clan avatar and click ‘Create Clan’

If you are in a Clan you will also have a Clan chat channel allowing you to chat to your Clan mates who are online Note: The small number in the white box on top of the Clan button shows how many of your Clan compatriots are online at the moment.

Searching for Clans:

Just like creating a Clan, searching for a Clan is super-easy. Simply click on the Clan button and then the ‘Search Tab’. Then use the text entry box to search for a Clan.
From the list of Clans you can click on a Clan and go inside it to see its members, who is online and see the Clan’s info. In Clans Mk2, we plan to add advanced search functionality which will allow you to search Clans by location, league ELO (the rating system used to determine your skill level), Season XP, by number of members etc. The advanced search option will be designed to help you to find Clans that suit you best depending on your preference. Another Clans Mk2 feature will be that The Clan list will show the League and ELO of each player and the current season XP (more on that below). Clan ELOs and Clan XP are also things that will not be present initially and will only come into play in releases that follow the Roboclans ALPHA release.

My Clan:

When you are in a Clan, the ‘Create’ tab becomes the ‘My Clan’ tab and allows you to interact with your Clan and its members.
The My Clan tab offers you a number of different features:

• View all of your Clan mates
• Sort by Clan Rank, ranks are Leader, Officer and Member
• Leaders can kick anyone and invite people to the Clan
• Officers can kick Members and invite people to the Clan
• The status column shows if Clan mates are Online, Offline or Invite Pending

You’ll notice that the next column shows the League rank of each player, and the current season ELO (more on that below in Clan Leagues). The last column shows each player's Season XP (more on that below). Both of these features will launch in a later release that will follow the initial Roboclans ALPHA. A right-click menu allows you to be able to interact with other players, i.e. view their Profile (battle stats, etc.), Whisper, Add to Party, etc. Again, this feature will be added in a later release of Roboclans and will not be available at initial release.

Roboclans Mk2.

The initial Roboclans ALPHA release is designed to allow Clans to form and socialise together and display in-game which Clan they are in. Future releases of Clans will add the ability to ‘earn Robits’ during a ‘season’ as a Clan and compete in ‘Clan Leagues’ (see below)

Clan XP and Robits:

• All players in a Clan will earn XP each month
• The total XP earned by all Clan members will be used to determine an end-of-season Robits reward
• XP earned will be displayed more clearly in-game
• Seasons will last from the 1st of a month to the last day of a month

This feature is designed to encourage Clan Leaders and Officers to increase the size of the Clan with active players, and is designed to reward all players who are active within a Clan with extra Robits. We are aware that Clans will have players that are more active than others, however, as everyone is contributing to the Robits reward, everyone will receive the same reward amount. It’s worth noting that the more members you have in your Clan, the more Robits you will earn. So, Clans of 50 in size full of active players will earn the most Robits and we aim to heavily reward these types of Clans. At the end of each Season, players are reset to zero SXP (Season XP) and the next Season will begin. So there’s a major incentive to be in a Clan, and to build Clans full of active players. The larger and more active the clan, the bigger the reward at the end of the season.

Clan Leagues:

Alongside Robit rewards for Clan members, we plan on adding Clan Leagues to Robocraft; a mock-up of which you can see below.
Here Clans will compete in seasonal League competitions to determine who is top dog! The Clan League will utilise a revamped version of the existing Leagues game mode in Robocraft. I think you’ll agree, This is pretty exciting stuff! But remember, these Mk2 features will not be present in the Roboclans ALPHA release but will follow soon after. We’re still fleshing out exactly how they will work which is why we’re not saying much about them in detail here. Now, get your Clan names ready!

[ 2016-08-23 15:43:49 CET ] [ Original post ]