Dear Community, (Original Post: http://forums.fredaikis.com/index.php?/topic/2827-devblog-5-friend-system/ ) It's been a while since our last developer blog and even though I (Sven) have been doing some smaller preview video's from time to time we feel like it's important to pick the line back up and share more developer blogs with you all. While developing and managing new z input from our community stands central and therefor it's important to sometimes give you guys a heads up about what we're working on to get feedback as early as possible. Our goal is to make more developer blogs, not only video's, where we explain you guys what we're working on and why we're making certain decisions. This developer blog is about the reworked and improved friend system. Now, a lot of people might be like "Why are they wasting their time on this" and I'm sure there also people reading this that already know but just to make everything as clear as possible I want to explain the whole story and decisions we made around the new friend system. Our initial goal for the past months has always been aimed at our community: "What are current problems and how to fix / improve / prevent those", "What does our community want" and "What can we do to grow our community". Now, over the past months and looking at future plans we always try to mix those things up where we do a little of that, a little of that and a little of that. This time one big thing was the rework and updates of the friend system. Playing with friends is one of the most important things in games. We think it's important that players have the ability to easily play with their friends without going through too much trouble. At the same time we are an open world online game and it's important for players to easily play with each other. A little bit less than a year ago we introduced the original friend system. Back then the system didn't really had any "function" and at the same time we faced many problems back than resulting in us turning off the whole system from time to time. In the end no one really benefit from it. Players could invite each other as friend but the system didn't really work properly how we and the players wanted it anyways. With the new friend system we have reworked and upgraded the entire system. The good thing is that this "project" hasn't taken much of our time and now we're finally at a point where we are more satisfied with the system. A lot of work has been done "behind the scenes" where we've optimized A LOT and at the same time changed the system in a way of where it allows us to keep improving it live, without going through too much trouble. Now, with this new friend system, players can add each other as friend easier and have more options. Here's a short list to give you an idea of the new friend system's features: - Friend system will work better overall, faster and easier. - The system is more advanced. Players can now also invite their friends into a party. By being in a party players can join servers together and spawn together and play together. This goes for all game modes. - The party system is advanced. When "accepting" a game players will even be asked what character they want to join with. - Players can see in their friend's list who's online, offline, playing, playing where and who's idle. - Players also have the o ption to turn on / off if they want to show what server they're in. We have reworked the friend system not just because we weren't happy with it but it was pretty much useless in the old state. Players weren't really using it and it didn't really "change" much. With the new friend system we will result in: - IF problems start happening we are able to easier fix them + we will be able to turn on and off the system live. - NEW PLAYERS have a huge benefit from this. Learning the game is the easiest with friends and this will help them a lot. - CURRENT PLAYERS will be able to play much easier with their friends. The system can even be used to "spawn together" because one of the big annoying things in the game right now is that when your friend is playing in Boulder City and you are playing at the airport you would have to go there in your private server first. This whole new system "removes" that because you will be able to spawn in with your friends directly. - The system is also made for Battle Royale. This was requested by players a lot and this new friend system allows players to play in groups again in Battle Royale's. - The system will be a fundament for other upcoming game modes. When working with lobby's and inviting players / friends it's important players have a way of inviting their friends. This system WAS needed also in our progress to the competitive game mode. There might be stuff that we forgot to explain / address and therefor we recommend you to watch the video below where you can see a little bit how the system will work and looks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YNuStehQlI Also, keep in mind that this is work in development so things you read / hear might change towards the patch. Keep an eye out for the upcoming patch notes where we will explain everything more simple and again. Thanks for reading this developer blog! See you all in the next one! // Sven // The New Z - Staff Team