Hello everyone!
It has been almost 3 years since the release of Idle Clans and the game has developed quite well, but there have been things that held us back from significantly ramping things up. This update aims to address those issues. It's a monster of an update behind the scenes and it took much longer to complete than usual updates do, so I apologize for the unusually long length between updates this time around.
The biggest thing to tackle was our back-end infrastructure, which wasn't designed from the start to scale very well. Idle Clans started out as a side project I worked on for fun with no expectations of anyone playing it, so scalability wasn't something I concerned myself with too much. Luckily, the back-end infrastructure has been robust enough until now but it has forced me to be pretty modest about our growth as there would've eventually come a point where the infrastructure just couldn't support the growing player base anymore. I've held this off or a long time since I knew the required changes would take a long time to do and that would be time not spent on making content that you can actually see and feel. But, it was something that had to happen, and I'm very happy that we're done with it. Things are now significantly more modular and scalable and we should be able to accommodate any number of players that come our way.
Another thing I spent a lot of time on was the UI and UX in the game. I hope you'll find things more responsive, more pleasant to look at and easier to navigate. This is an on-going project but a lot has changed already.
With things looking better on both the back- and front-end, I'll soon be looking to move us away from early access on Steam. All of our growth has been fully organic until now and I'm going to start experimenting with real marketing this year and see where it takes us. I'm hoping to host some fun community competitions and activities as we head into full release on Steam to build some hype there. What exactly those will look like, I don't know yet. I'll get back to you on those.
As said, this is a massive update and it touches more core systems than any other update before it. I would be very pleasantly surprised if nothing caught fire - but I fully expect there to be some issues, so please bare with me over the next few days as we settle into our new infrastructure and ensure everything works as intended.
Let's get into the changes. There's a few.
Visible changes stemming from the new multi-server infrastructure
There's a now server selection menu at the bottom left of the main menu. You shouldn't need to interact with this as the recommended server is automatically selected for you, but you are able to switch servers here if that's something you want to do
To do group content with other players, you'll need to be on the same server as them. When being invited to group content you'll be prompted to transfer to the inviters server if you aren't on the same server. I've tried to make this as seamless as possible and I'm quite happy with the results, the server transfer should only take a few seconds and the accepted invitation will automatically process once you connect to the target server.
Your selected server is remember and used as long as it remains available (not full)
You'll now be able to see exactly how many players are online on Idle Clans at any given time
Note that won't always be multiple servers available. A single server is able to handle the current load we get so we'll likely only be starting out with only our old and trusty one
Clans
Clan experience no longer updates in real-time. Servers will record their progress and broadcast their recorded experience every few minutes
When inviting your clan to do group content, the response now tells you how many members were invited
You're now notified when a player declines a clan invitation
Contributing to daily clan quests now only takes a single click and the entire required amount is contributed at once. You can't contribute if you don't have enough items to complete the quest
Fixed your clan tag not being set in the corresponding input field in the Management tab even when you had a tag set
Clan activity scores calculations have been modified to make it easier for low level clans to achieve high activity scores
Clan page visual overhaul:
PvM stats button removed, PvM stats are now always on display
House moved from the property page to the landing page. Vault is now bigger and shows more items at once.
Member entries now show more information without needing to go through player profiles, such as active tasks and join dates
Changes to clan member entries sorting
Clan leaders are always shown at the top of the list (same as before)
Online members are shown next
Finally, offline members are sorted by their offline time
Item withdrawal box tweaks
Ironmen and group ironmen previously didn't receive notifications when receiving tokens from other players. Everyone will now be notified when receiving any item from any player on any server
The Item withdrawal box will now always show a notification on it when logging in if you have unclaimed items
Due to some related optimizations, these changes aren't backwards compatible and you see a notification of items in your item withdrawal box up until this point. When you receive an item from a player for the first time from now, it'll start working as intended
Holiday events
Ironmen and group ironmen can now receive and donate holiday currencies during events
The holiday event button no longer sticks around for a hardcoded amount of time after an event ends but instead will be hidden when the supply reaches 0 (may require a relog)
Holiday event ending stages should now be automatically announced on Discord by Idle Clans bot. The first one being when the event timer ends and the wind down phase begins and the second when the supply is fully depleted and the event fully ends
The minimum holiday event donation amount is now 1 million
Clan cup
Clan cup results are now broadcasted to Discord by Idle Clans Bot
Winnings are no longer automatically credited to your clan at the end of a cup. Instead, you can now view your past winnings and claim them via the "Claimable rewards" button in the clan cup
Fixed IM & GIM not receiving clan credits
API changes & fixes
New endpoints have been added that show detailed information of how your clan and its members are performing
View how much experience your clan has gained in the past week, both total experience and experience in individual skills
Check how much experience individual players in your clan have received
Check how your clan is performing against other clans, either by total experience or a given skill
Fixed the "IsRecruiting" toggle always defaulting to true in clan recruitment centre queries
Fixed using the "Category" field causing no clans to be returned in clan recruitment centre queries
Fixed a discrepancy in the rankings displayed in your leaderboards page vs your actual rank, caused by leaderboard profiles not handling tiebreakers correctly
Profile page
Full overhaul in order to present more information in a neater and more compact way. A large range of tweaks but the more noticeable ones are:
Skills now have a small progress bar to easily see where you're standing. Additionally, at max level you'll now see your current experience compared to the experience cap. And finally, fully maxed skills (500m experience) have a distinctive orange progress bar
Objectives tile to easily see and interact with quests and clan events
Active boosts tile improved in looks and in clarity
You should now be able to click the "Current activity" bar during every activity. Additionally, your current activity's icon is now shown and there's a timer showing you how long you've been doing your current activity (resets on log out). When idle, your activity text is an ominous red to grab your attention
Shop unlocks renamed to "Token unlocks". Unlocked and missing tokens are now shown in a more informative way
Item hover popup
Consistently used everywhere when hovering item icons anywhere in the game
The item info layout was slightly tweaked as well:
Combat fields are now hidden if there are no relevant stat differences
Item description is now included
Now shows the amount you have of that item in your inventory
Player market price now includes the highest buy price and the lowest sell price
Combat page rework
Displayed skills now use the same prefab as profile and clan skills for both consistency and to take up less space as the previous level entries were unnecessarily large
UI placement in the combat view is now more intentional, more spaced out and more responsive to scaling
Your displayed food at the bottom of the combat view is no longer limited
Slightly modified the positioning of player and enemy elements and improved their animations on a technical level. This should also fix the issue where these elements can move around the screen from resolution changes
Combat entries in the combat menu
Tweaked to be more compact, removed the attack speed text and we now hide stats if they're at default levels
Every entry now has a DPS button, allowing you to more check how you'll fare against different enemies without needing to go into combat. You'll need to have killed bosses at least once to view their damage calcs against them outside of combat
The Valley of Gods
The door has been graphically updated and now has 3 state dependent variations
Access text is now green if you have the required green, light red if not
Your inventory key count is now displayed
Damage calcs popup
Visually improved
Damage calcs popup now has shows estimated loot in player market value as well as the existing base sell value
Calculations are now more accurate and faster
Max hit calcs in the damage calcs popup no longer use randomization, meaning that your absolute max hit is always shown
Skilling task stats popup
Loot sell value estimates now include player market values as well
In the case of tasks with item costs, material losses include player market values as well and profits are now shown for both base values and player market values
Timers now use a simpler format for better readability
Visually improved
Header
A background panel was added
Button roundness toned down
Some new icons
Navigation section on the left
Now more compact, more entries can be shown at once
New icon for the collapse/expand button
Technically improved. Should support different resolutions better
Other
Cosmetics have been updated to use a simpler glow instead of the fairly broken looking shaders. If you prefer the old ones, you can toggle on the "Use legacy cosmetics" option in the settings popup
The player profile popup is now used when clicking other players in clan bosses and clan events
The info button was removed here, clicking anywhere on the player will now open up their profile
The inventory item interaction popup was modified to be more compact and provide more info on items. It uses the same layout as item hovering does. Credits and thanks to Uraxys, I am shamelessly copying his much better designs here. One thing that is bothering me with the current design is that you aren't able to view the raw stats of items, just how they compare to your currently equipped items. I'll do something about that in a future update.
Tasks with item costs changes
Item costs now use the hoverable item prefab rather than plain text
Task item cost entries are now clickable and open up the inventory item interaction popup
Moved the amount text in Farming tasks from the top left closer to the reward item icon. This text now also gets hidden behind the "Task unlocks at level x" panel
Improved the combat offline progress section of the login popup
Also fixed an issue where sometimes displaying a ton of items would cause the popup to be resized incorrectly for a few frames
Clan properties popup
Updated to be more compact and display all available properties without needing a scroll view
Your current property is now highlighted
Daily boosts popup modified to be more compact and have less dead space. Contents weren't changed.
Clan boss entries and lobbies received the DPS button as well
Active task progress is now preserved when logging out
Enchanting tasks hadn't been updated to turn visually turn green when you have available Exterminating scrolls. Fixed
You'll no longer receive notifications about tool collection log unlocks from the Plundering Skilling Party event
Reckoning of the Gods ultra rare drops are no longer hidden behind a question mark, I think the mystery has dwindled at this point
The generic UI hover popup was improved and is now consistently used for all simple information hovers. This fixes various clunkiness, such as the hover popup being shown way out of position when hovering your skills in combat
Combat invitations are no longer deleted if accepting an invitation fails
Tasks are no longer instantiated client side all at once when you load into the game scene. Instead, they're only loaded when you need them (entering the relevant task page). This should make the login process a bit smoother, especially on lower end devices
Visually tweaked the General section of the settings popup
Excess boss pages would be lost if attempting to create more than 1 Book of Kronos without the Boss hunter perk unlocked. Fixed
Bulletin board character limit raised from 500 to 1000
The "Show us the money" upgrade's description was modified to state that the upgrade works on any enemy marked with the upgrade's icon. Currently that is Sobek, Kronos and Mesines
Mesines is now a part of the clan cup
Updated clan quest skilling entries to use the usual item prefab to make it easier to tell if you have the necessary resources to complete the quest and to make the item hoverable
Fixed clan upgrades showing the gold cost of the previously viewed local market store entry (visual issue)
Modified button layout in the chat popup
Slightly reduced the spacing between inventory items in order to display more items at once
Combat particle effects are now hidden when leaving the combat view
Food entries in combat made slightly smaller, amounts are now formatted to KMB and added a background panel
Enchantment scroll now have more informative descriptions
Enchanted jewelry descriptions now mention the amount of boost that jewelry type receives
You'll no longer see a gold cost in the Exterminating crate purchase popup after viewing local market entries (visual bug)
The "Boosts available" hovering notification can now be pressed to open the daily boosts popup
Tweaked the Daily Boosts popup
PvM stat entries everywhere can now be clicked to quickly enter combat boss fights, clan boss fights and raids
Boosts in profile now use a scroll to view show all boosted skills rather than just the first 5
The "Loot and stats" popup in combat has a new button to view a monster's drop table during combat
There's now a safe area on mobile devices with a notch so that UI elements (most importantly the navigation menu) don't appear under it
Item creation task level requirements are now red if you don't meet the requirement
Fixed local market upgrade entries with tiers not having the currently interacted amount correctly reset to 1 when closing and reopening the window, leading to a slightly inconsistent and buggy look
The team leader will now always be credited loot when killing Mesines in a group, following the same pattern as Kronos and Sobek
Fixed an issue causing offline combat to give more experience than it should when a daily boost was active and you didn't use all of it during your offline progression
Displayed offline progression time when logging in is now exact
Fixed the max purchasable amount of local market store entries being 1 unit less than you could actually afford
A ton of other small UI/UX tweaks across the board