Hey everyone, _ClulY_ (aka Scott) here with my first Dev Jam since joining the Robocraft team late last year. For those that don't know me or know of me, I was a long-time player and member of the Robocraft community prior to joining the dark side (game development). So, what do I do here at Freejam? I lead the 'Silence of the Jams' team on original Robocraft, and it's my job (along with the rest of the team) to make Robocraft the best darn "built it, drive it, fight it" game on the market.

Rewards in Robocraft

Before we get into the 'how' of the Dev Jam, I first wanted to give you a bit of background on the 'why'. Why are we releasing a new feature? It won't be a surprise to know that Robocraft attracts different types of players. There are those that like to solely battle, some like the social aspect of teaming up with their mates, some like to spend a bit of time building and a bit of time in battle. There are those that don't like to battle at all; instead preferring to spend hours creating amazing artbots or battle-ready robots for their friends and others to play with via the CRF (Community Robot Factory).
[House For Sale by Prometheus_Robotics] Robocraft rewards you for your battle efforts and it rewards you when others download your robot creations from the CRF and play them in battle. But what about those that just like to build? What do they get for building? Currently zero. And that's something we want to address.

Rewarding the Builders

In short, what we want to do is reward players with XP when they build. The new Building XP system simply allows players to level up while they are in build mode, generating an amount of level experience as if they were in Battle. As long as you're actively building, and not just sitting in the edit mode, you'll earn XP. Your player level and XP will be represented by a new level meter located in the top-left of the screen (as shown in the image below).
The more time you spend building, the more XP you'll earn. If you level up while you're building, you'll be notified and a level up reward crate will be waiting for you when you return to the garage screen.

Testing the new feature

Before we roll this out to everyone, we're going to be running an A/B test; something we often do as a way of learning more about how our players interact with the game. We want to ensure that the new feature is stable, working as expected and not negatively impacting our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as retention and monetisation. What we're going to do is give 50% of the new players the new feature and the other 50% will not see it. We'll then run this for a few days and compare the data between the two sample sizes. We will of course share our findings with you whether good or bad. Thanks for reading and remember, we always welcome your feedback.

[ 2018-01-24 17:10:42 CET ] [ Original post ]