Saturday, June 27, 2015

Changelog for 2015-06-27

First, once again, apologies for the delay with the update.

Also, as announced previously, due to the changes to the Payout system, any uncompleted Payouts created before this update will no longer be editable or completable. As always, existing Payouts can still be viewed, so completed Payouts are unaffected by this change.

On to the changes.

Unlinking Code Types and Payouts

Up to now, Code Types were at the core of determining Pay for Payouts. If you wanted to do something simple, like creating a group bonus for Field Commanders, you would need to create a new Code Type that would never be entered, and really served no purpose sans adding another value to the Code Type Payout.

This terrible system is gone.

Code Type Payouts have been replaced with Pay Groups and the associated Pay Rules. For Codes, Clan Battle, Match, Group Bonuses, and (the newly added) Stronghold Reward Rules, instead of selecting a Code Type which linked the Reward Rule to zero or more Code Type Payouts, you now select a Pay Group which links the Reward Rule to a Pay Group and zero or more Pay Rules.

What this means is that instead of needing to create a new Code Type just to be able to have another set of Code Type Payouts now you just create another Pay Group right from the Payout creator/editor where it doesn't clutter up unrelated parts of the site.

Switching Over

Migrating your old payout settings to this new system is easy; create a new payout using an existing payout (that has your preferred settings) as a template. The system will automatically convert the existing settings to the new format.

If you don't have an existing payout with the settings you want, you can click "Load Settings from Code Types [Not Recommended]" near the bottom of the New Payout page. This functionality will be removed in the future, so do not rely on it as a long term solution.

Removed Settings

Being that a key part of this change is detaching Code Types from being linked to the other reward rules (for Clan Battles, Matches, and Group bonuses), those tabs along with the Code Type Payouts tab have been removed from the Creator and Editor for Code Types. For the time being, if you really want to view (or modify) the existing Code Types you can click "Display Outdated Settings [Not Recommended]" near the bottom of the Edit Code Type page. This functionality will be removed in the future, so do not rely on it as a long term solution.

Additionally, the "Default Payout Loads Code Type Variables" setting in Clan Settings was removed, as has the choice for this option when selecting 'Use as template' for a payout.

Stronghold Industrial Resources Tracking with Payout Support

Thanks to Gyarados, I stumbled upon what I needed to load per-a-player industrial resources [IR] earning totals.

Clan Tools loads the total earnings per-a-member each day and calculates the change since the previous record; thus the system tracks the daily delta of IR per-a-member. Recording started on 06/22.

This solution is much more flexible than relying on WG's past week value when calculating Payouts because it allows each clan to determine when they do payouts (you don't have to rush to calculate a payout before the window for what counts as the past week changes) and how many days any given payout covers.

You can view the data Clan Tools has recorded via Clan Home > Stronghold, and you can configure pay based on Stronghold IR earnings via the Stronghold tab in the Payout Creator/Editor.

As an aside, I'm aware that there's now also Influence that's earned in Strongholds for CW 2.0, however that doesn't seem to be available for viewing anywhere, let alone some place I pull it.

User to User Debit/Credit

User to User Balances (debit/credit) have been added; administrators can add a balance for any two users (or between the clan and a user) either through Clan Home > Balances or a User's Profile > Balances (both go to the same place).

Additionally, Clan to User balances are also handled through Balances, rather than the Debit field used before. Note that Clan to User balances work the same as before, and users always pay the clan back before any users. The moving of members' balances with the clan is purely to allow for a unified interface.

Any existing (so, non-zero) player balances with the clan have been automatically converted to this new system.

Other Payout Changes

Member's balances with the clan are no longer a separate type of "pay" and instead are under (static) Gold, thus removing a column that was generally full of zeros.

As a result, User Credit to the clan in the Cost Breakdown is now just part of Static Gold Costs; User Debit to clan is still listed separately simply because it could lead to confusing data otherwise (negative value for static gold cost).

Other Changes

  • All settings are now available when creating a new code type, rather than some being unavailable only when editing an existing Cod Type.
  • Major setting for Code Types is now on the General tab, rather than hidden in advanced settings, because it is a very useful and powerful setting that I don't think was being highlighted nearly as much as it should be.
  • Renamed Deprecated to Obsolete as Deprecated is not a commonly used word and was causing confusion.
  • Added list of clan members who are a member through their Clan Role when viewing an individual group.
  • Added "More" menu item, with Blog, Help, and Contact items.
  • Added missing links for some Menu Items in Clan Management Help Overview.
  • Added "smart" help prompts on the Matches and Codes listing pages which prompt users to create a Match Type or Code Type (respectively) if none exist for the clan.
  • Switched Match Type Creator/Editor over to tabbed interface.

Fixes

  • Fixed Indebted users count not always being accurate.
  • Fixed Primary Group not showing actual primary group if it was "manually assigned" (rather than by rank) under specific conditions.
  • Grammatical errors in CMS Help
  • Misalignment in Matches list between Matches with Replays columns and Matches Without Replays columns.
  • Notes icon for Matches not appearing when a Match had a note.

As always, if you run into any issues (or have any questions), please contact me.

No comments:

Post a Comment