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Introduction

Disclaimer: Some small changes may be made to benefit accessibility on mobile. Some of these suggestions have already been made before, but I believe I've done my best to either expand upon or alter them to be unique in comparison.

Clans have existed in Lioden since 2015. They were a wonderful beginning for Lioden players to form their own organized communities, but Clans were left in the past. Since Clans were created, they’ve had few updates excluding some bugs that were fixed. These updates include:

- Raising member limit & Transferring Clan Threads to new owners in October 2015.
- Clan Invites, Privacy, Blocking & Bank Access in December 2015
- Clan Hoards, Raffles & Future Raffles including Lions in January 2016
- Clan Chat in March 2016 and reintroduction in 2022.
- Admin Fees & Expansions, Pending Membership removal in May 2016
- Blocking Users from Clan Hoard in May 2018
- Clan Activity Logs & Paginated Hoard in August 2019
- Clan FAQ Updated in March 2020

I will include genuine mockups of what these changes could look like.

A vast majority of these suggestions were written before I was made aware that some are Wolvden Features. If these features are planned for Lioden’s Recode, I’m sure the public would love to know!

Table of Contents:

Suggestions List

Search:

By Description
Allow users to search through the Clan Search by the content of the Clan Description and Summary. This could function similarly to how threads work, where you could filter by Clan Name or uncheck a box to filter by all content on the clan's home page: Clan Name, Summary, Description and Tags (below).

By Preset / Custom Tags
To allow for an easier time filtering through clans, it may be beneficial to introduce Tags. Whether Lioden Staff deems it necessary to introduce Preset tags, Custom tags or both, it would allow for users to search for tags. This could be implemented instead of searching by Description. I'm not sure what effect scanning individual Clan Pages' content would have instead of by tags, so this could be a nice alternative to that if it could cause lag or other server issues.

Link Ownership

Allow Clan Owners to link their Main / Side accounts to the Owner title. Users with more than one account swap between which they rollover with, so managing a clan becomes incredibly difficult.

Sharing / Linking this permission would allow both accounts to:
~ Transfer Ownership (If the other Account doesn’t own a clan)
~ Close Clan
~ Add/Remove Admins
~ Edit/Switch Clan Thread
~ All Admin Permissions

Partners

Having Clan Partnerships and Sisterhoods brings communities together. It introduces parts of the community to each other under a niche common interest. Near the bottom of the Clan Page, similar to how “Clan Memberships” work on an individual user’s den, could be a “Partnered Clans” table.

[Den] Membership Appearance

Featured Clans
On an individual’s den page, being able to set Featured Clans on your den page in order to reduce the amount of space clans take up would be a valuable addition. Some users are in multiples of clans and while clan memberships are displayed at the bottom of your profile, being able to reduce which ones are immediately visible / advertised on your den would be a lovely way to reduce the amount of space that’s taken up on a screen.

Change Clan Order
Being able to set the sort order of your listed clans would be a wonderful little feature as well. I don’t see a reason to not allow just a little more customization to how our profile appears to others. This could also apply to Clan Partners listed above.

[ADDED] Apply Correct Filter Across Pages

We can search for clans based on name, invite-only, memberships open etc. However when we search by Accepting Memberships, the filter miraculously gets wiped from results if we change the page we're looking at. As someone who owns a clan I check for new and pending clans on a weekly to bi-weekly basis to look for partnerships or to give shoutouts to help them grow. The feature to filter by Accepting Memberships is useless if it doesn't apply to more than the front page - which is already the most populated clans on Lioden.

Polls

Allow Clans to host Polls for their members. Lioden Staff can already host such a feature, but it would be wonderful if this extended to Clans as well. For some of the larger clans, getting answers from their members can be a tedious job that’s often hosted offsite. However, getting people to go off site for polls can be risky. Potential to require emails, ip address locks, and risking clicking on shady popup ads offsite is unnecessary when the base functionality is there.

Forums / Links

Forum Editing Rights
Allow users to add editors to their threads. This would be especially useful to Clan Owners who try to post events, raffles and other news on their forum posts. Editors cannot delete a thread or add/remove other editors. It’d probably be too much, but having a “Save” point for the owner to clean up any messes their editors make would be super beneficial in case any information or HTML is deleted when it shouldn’t have been.

Forum Links on Clan Pages
Clan Owners and Admins often rely on people going beyond their Clan's Home page into their Clan's Forum Thread for all of their needs - but everything would be easier if Clan Owners were allowed to have multiple "Official" Hot Links that are top, front and center to whoever views their Clan Page. These links could be custom-named like how Bookmarks are so any longer names can easily be shortened. I would suggest only having five (5) custom links in addition to the Main Clan Forum Thread. Setting this limit ensures that new clanmates and peers aren't bombarded by content but encourages some exploration into the clan's other activities and topics.


Dedicated Clan Forums
Dedicated Clan Forums within the Clan’s Page. These forums are exclusive to members of that specific clan. Clan members can be set to Forum Managers to allow those users to Edit, Move, Hide or Delete threads. Hiding and Deleting Threads would allow a message to be sent to the poster requesting changes or explaining why the thread was deleted. Clan Admins / Forum Managers can add new Forum Topics and Forum Sup-Topics to expand on the Forum as a whole. In addition, allowing specific roles to view threads would allow for some form of record keeping. For example, a Private Thread for all the Clan’s Image resources or Suggestions that Staff can go through privately.


More Clan SubForums
An alternative to Dedicated Clan Forums… General Threads, Advertisements and Miscellaneous Clan stuff all goes into the same forum within Watering Hole. Having a dedicated Main and SubForum would give clans the space they need to advertise comfortably and not second-guess where they can post ads.
In the mockup below, Clans & Families still exist. Devs could either Rename & Move this SubForum to “Official Clan Forums” under Clan Chatter to preserve all existing threads, or create a new SubForum for users to move their threads to and then delete/archive the old one.

Hoard Adjustments

Cooldown on Hoard Item Claiming
Sometimes there's planned drops for various aspects of the site. Chased NCLs, Fodder Cubs, Adol/Cub Drops and Giving Tree hoard dumps have been a thing for a long time. All of these features have cooldowns or limitations implemented to some extent. Chased Lionesses have a 50% chance to be outright deleted and if they show up, it could be a full 24 hours or more after they were chased. Fodder, just like any other lions on trade, have their own cooldowns until they can be chased, killed/reserved, traded or abandoned. Giving Tree only allows one item per hour and one cub a day to be claimed.
Introducing a time limit or cooldown on when items can be beneficial for Clans to ensure fairness among their members getting nice items when a drop to the hoard happens. Owners and Admins never want to block someone from the hoard, but it’s becoming almost a necessity to ensure fairness.

Hoard Stacking Option:
Introduce a "Stack Items" checkbox below the Clan Hoard. Not sure if this could be a user-side toggle or a clan-owner toggle. Whichever is easiest?
Potential Problems:
- The game becomes "confused" at one item being taken from a stack, and instead transfers the whole stack of items.
Solutions:
- Disallow anyone to take from the hoard while items are stacked.
- Display a popup that requests the user to disable stacked items to take from the hoard.
- Or it works fine and there's no issue. It subtracts only one item from the stack as intended.

Hoard Donation Widget:
Change the Donations Box in the Clan Hoard to be more like that on the Trading Center and Hoards. I'm not quite sure why the Widget is different, maybe the TC was updated previously to be more intuitive like this.. but this is a feature that's long overdue for Clan Hoards. Introducing separate tabs like how our Personal Hoards have for Applicators, Amusement, Food etc would also be a very convenient feature.


Blocking /Limiting Items in Hoard
Blocking or Blacklisting items that members can put in the hoard would allow clans to keep a more organized stockpile of items that people won’t think of as junk. I don’t think I’ve met one person who actually wants that Aloe Leaf from the Clan hoard. It’s junk and takes up space. It’s better to get rid of the possibility of new unwanted items being added to the hoard by blacklisting it entirely.

Messaging

Separate Clan Inbox & Outbox
Membership Request Received, Outgoing clan messages clog other outboxes.

Clan Message Notifications
The ability to Mute Notifications would be a wonderful ability, but that’s not for this topic. Allow users the ability to toggle receiving notifications for the following:
~ New Raffle Created
~ Clan-Wide Message Received
Maybe these notifications can be toggled through a Clan-to-Clan basis based on the member’s wishes. Of course, a global toggle would work as well. Some clans send messages more frequently than others, so muting certain clan notifications would be nice.

Clan Raffle Won
A notification that gets sent to your Clan Inbox that says the title of the raffle you won, the prizes added to your hoard / den & name / link to the Clan.

Branches

Introduce Branches to Clans. Anyone can "raise funds" to donate to clans by selling things, but it would cut out the middleman to be allowed to host branches on a Clan Page. Any bought items would result in the currency going to the Clan's Hoard. There could also be a new search checkbox introduced to branch listings for clans exclusively. I do not have a mockup for this, but it would be what individual users have on their den.

Raffles

Multiple Raffle Tickets
Allow multiple tickets to be bought at once like how regular raffles allow.

Set # of Tickets
Allow the Raffle Creator to set a limit on tickets. If Clans want to allow their members an equal chance at getting a prize, that’s a choice that should be respected.

Raffle Item Widget
No idea why current raffles are so difficult to work with. Integrating the regular Raffles widget would be a VERY welcome convenience.

Multiple Currency Prizes
Allow for multiple bundles of currency to be raffled as prizes within one raffle. Like previous raffle features, I’m not quite sure on why this wasn’t included in the past to begin with.

Allow Open or Closed-to-Clan Raffles
A new feature that might be nice to see is the ability to make a Clan Raffle Open to the Public or Clan Members Only. This opens a Clan’s options in order to fundraise and cuts out the middleman for Raffles hosted on TC on a Clan’s behalf. Clan members would no longer need to just trust that owners will put gained tickets into the Clan Hoard.

Dens / Featured Lion

“Mascot” or Featured Lion:
Allow the Owner to set one of their lions to be the “Clan Mascot”. This could either feature a lion from their own den, or a lion from the Clan Den (below). Some individuals take pride in working towards an achievable design for projects such as their kings, queens or hybrids. This doesn’t take away from clans who host wardrobe contests or use the wardrobe itself rather than an owned lion, but it would be a nice little feature for people to see the clan’s “Official” mascot.

This lion could either be linked from the clan to their direct page, or they can be placed into a “Clan Den” as a Featured and unclaimable lion.

Additionally, maybe clan members can interact with the Clan Mascot in some way on a daily basis. The mascot could train a cub once a day, offer your adolescents some guidance on their way to adulthood (training), or offer small trinkets or things for nesting / small food items. We can already interact with other clan members’ lions to boost their mood, so allowing the clan members to interact with the clan’s dedicated lion could boost their attachments to the mascot and by extension, the clan.


Clan Dens / Donated Lions:
Lots of users host Adoption Centers on the Forums or in their own dens. Clan Dens would serve as a place to store lions dedicated to clan purposes. Clan Mascots would be unable to be taken. “Locked” Lions cannot be taken by members, but can be used for raffles or transferred to a user by an Admin as a prize - such as for contests.

“Welcome to the clan den! Here is where the clan's lions can be viewed, taken or added to. Clan admins set a daily limit for how many lions can be taken and donated to the clan's den by members each day, though this limit does not apply to admins. Clan Mascots cannot be taken by members and lions can be "locked" to use for raffles in the future. Please note that once a lion is deposited into the clan, it is now owned by the clan. Lions will continue to age based on the server's rollovers and must be fed, entertained and cared for by the Clan members. Lions in the Clan Den cannot be bred to or nested. Should the clan be closed down or expire, all of the lions in the clan den will disappear with the clan.”

Accepting Memberships

Open - Accept anyone and everyone who wishes to Join.
By Application- Send a Request to join the clan. Clan Staff can view the applicant and Approve / Deny entry on an individual basis.
Member Voucher - Allow members to invite their friends to the Clan. Staff can see which member invited this individual and accept/deny.
Invite Only - Staff can send an Invitation to a user to join the clan, which the individual can approve or deny.
Closed - Memberships are currently closed. Nobody can join.

This topic is in fact so long that it continues on this post below.