***Before and while reading this, please take into consideration Beachheads replies, and that Elite is a work in progress and the replies given may change and to not "Laywer" Beachhead as they are giving us the best info they have at the time. I honestly believe they are here to develope and comunicate a relationship with us the consumer gamers. -Fatal Vision***

First of all thanks to Beachead for taking an active roll in communication with the community!

Second of all, I think we have to realize that task at hand that Beachead faces in delivering Clan Support to we the Elite Community.

I have seen alot of questions, and have raised quite alot of questions and concerns myself with asking about Elite Clan Support.

I try and stay informed on the Clan Support process so I can relay any info I find to my clan mates from the clan I have started.

So I have been gathering alot of replies from Beachhead that concerns Clan Operations. So here I will post (and I hope Beachhead doesnt mind)

a list of comments written by Beachhead concerning our inquiries about Clan Operations.

So I have compiled several posts written by Beachhead answering our concerns when asking about Clan Operations.

These arent all the post but a great few.

So if your asking about Clan Operations, I hope this helps, and hope this helps Beachhed as well.

Thanks again Beachhead for your continued communication with the Elite Community.

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FROM BEACHHEAD......

Our first January build is going to have a massive amount of bug fixes and functionality tweaks. It should address a lot of small problems the Community has been having. This is a build we have been itching to push live, but as best practice, you don't push a big build like this Live during a holiday break because we want the full team around to support it.

To be totally clear: this first January build will not have Clan Operations.

Clan Operations are something we intend to roll out soon. It's our highest feature priority next to other Clan and Operation enhancements that are underway. A lot of this prioritization has been based on community feedback.

I don't know if you had a chance to see the massive Clan Operations thread (it got a little bit heated, but there's good information in there). One of the things I revealed is that there are a number of interconnected systems that go into Clan Operations. For example, there is a front-end web component that the community will use to see the feature, there is backend statistical tracking, there are automatic processes that sort and award winners, there are administrative tools, etc. I'm painting a picture here of a pretty complicated system.

Presently we are wrapping up work to link all of these components together into their final feature. The individual components are tested as they are worked on, and then tested as they are joined together, and then "real world" tested as a user would interact with them. Our testers are part of a special group that regular users can't see, this lets them test the Operations in the "real world" without disrupting your experience with (potentially) buggy features.

When Clan Operations enter this final "real world" testing stage, we will be sure to let you guys know. At that point, we'll be able to project a release timeframe with a good degree of confidence. It's still possible we'll hit a showstopper issue at that point, but we're going to try to be open with you about that as well.

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As we began to finalize ELITE, it was clear that some features had to wait. We had to make a decision: do we launch Clans so that Clans can get organized? Or do we hold back on Clans until Clan Operations is completed?

We made a decision to launch Clans. We were then sidelined by security and performance issues associated with launch. In hindsight, we would have held back on the Clans feature until it was ready. There are other features we did hold back on, and we'll launch those as soon as we can, too.

One new thought I'm hearing here is that you guys aren't happy with the level 50 reward for Clans. I'll speak with the designer on the feature and see if there's anything else we can do.

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Why we can't just turn on Clan Challenges:

Clan Challenges can get pretty complicated. For example, let's say there's a challenge where a Clan has to have every Clan member in a single match score at least a 3.0 K/D ratio (minimum 3 Clan members). We then need to go through every match the Clan ever plays until the challenge is completed. Testing this is atrocious. We're working on the feature, but it will come AFTER Clan Operations.

We want more than 2XP for maxing our our Clan:

We'll get back to you about it -- can't give you a quick answer, but are hearing you loud and clear.

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Clan Operations are still in development. I'll post an update when it enters the final stages of testing, when we have everyone banging on it. At that point, I'll be able to give you a really specific estimate as to when we expect it to go live.

We're glad to hear so many requests for it. It's an important part of the overall ELITE clan experience, and we're excited to launch it.

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Beachhead on Clan Leaderboards….

It will be coming, although it's more complicated then you think it would be to make a leaderboard which ranks large groups of people against large groups of people.
One of the senior executives here is a big competition guy and has been pushing all of us to implement ways for people to compare their performance against each other. We'll have more to tell you about this in later January. In the meantime, if you guys have any cool ideas for ranking/laddering/leaderboards we're always willing to hear you out.

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Clan Challenges will follow after Clan Operations.

Our priority order for Clans is as follows:

1. 1. Clan Operations
2. 2. Clan enhancements (miscellaneous features to help everyone organize better especially Clan leaders)
3. 3. Clan Challenges

As soon as I can give you a date on Clan Operations, I will move on to talking about Clan Enhancements. Clan Challenges will follow on the heels of that.

Since Clan Challenges are the only ways free guys can contribute to a Clan, it is a definite focus for us. We want to give Clans a reason to bring in free guys.

No ETA right now as we're focused intensely on Clan Operations.  We'll keep you posted on the development of Clan Challenges after Clan Operations and Clan enhancements (misc. features that help Free and Premium members organize better) have launched.

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Clan Operations:

I have spent some time with the engineer who is working on this. The design is done, it looks good. The development is reaching the final stages before it enters test. Once it enters test, we have a ton of guys who will bang on it until we feel like it is solid. Our goal is to get Clan Operations rolling in January.

More Clan features: we have a number of features also slated for January. I'll debrief more information on this in a future post in the ELITE sub-forum, which will go live today.

Beachhead

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As we began to finalize ELITE, it was clear that some features had to wait. We had to make a decision: do we launch Clans so that Clans can get organized? Or do we hold back on Clans until Clan Operations is completed?

We made a decision to launch Clans. We were then sidelined by security and performance issues associated with launch. In hindsight, we would have held back on the Clans feature until it was ready. There are other features we did hold back on, and we'll launch those as soon as we can, too.

One new thought I'm hearing here is that you guys aren't happy with the level 50 reward for Clans. I'll speak with the designer on the feature and see if there's anything else we can do.

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Clan Operations are still in development. I'll post an update when it enters the final stages of testing, when we have everyone banging on it. At that point, I'll be able to give you a really specific estimate as to when we expect it to go live.

We're glad to hear so many requests for it. It's an important part of the overall ELITE clan experience, and we're excited to launch it.

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Yes, Clan Challenges and Clan Operations will both level up a Clan.

Example XP values:
Winning a Clan Operation is worth upwards of 2500 XP.

Completing a Clan Challenge might be worth 500 XP.

It's a big bummer not being able to level up Clans. We did not anticipate that you guys would have to wait this long. Per some of the other Clan discussion threads, I'm going to see if we can do anything special for you guys once Clan Operations arrive - like some big prized Operations. I'll come back to you on this.

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The build during the first week of January is going to be a bug fix build. It will fix a ton of issues, some of which you may have noticed and some of which will improve performance or security. This build is in testing right now which is why we're willing to say it will happen during the week of Jan 2. We'll post up everything that has been fixed when the build goes Live.

Clan Operations is not part of that build -- it's a big feature. We expect it to enter testing in January and we'll give you a date for release as soon as it is near completion. Additionally if it hits a major snag (say we discover a cheat or exploit), we'll let you know that as well.

Our new goal over here is to give you guys a lot of transparency into our processes, but not make any specific date commitments until the work is nearly complete with testing.

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For Clans specifically:

1. Clan Operations will come first.
2. Following hot on its heels will be something we're calling "Clan Enhancements" -- this is a ton of work around Clans to make the feature better and more functional.
3. Then Clan Challenges.

At Beachhead, we work in strike teams. We'll be pushing a bunch of other fixes and improvements in early January -- these will be unrelated to Clans.