Tuesday 29 June 2010

Last call for CW V1.2 ideas

Spot & I have come up with a list of features and changes to be made to V1.2. It will be the FINAL beta run, which means any changes are to be made now. So if there is something you want to see or anything tweaked head over to the forum and suggest it, or you'll lose your chance to contribute.

Remember that the special plasma pack 3 & 4 will come with 10% extra until the special ends on July 9th.

Thanks,
Ash

Monday 28 June 2010

Suggestions needed for Coven Wars V1.2 & plasma special extended



 2010-06-26 05:34:51 - Orior Supra (3,334,850) VS Stormhaven (3,248,600) - Winner: Orior Supra

Damn that's close!

I'm happy to say that V1.1 was a success, no major bugs, positive feedback and some good wars. That's exactly what I like to see.

Because we squeezed out *most* of the issues of 1.0 in 1.1, we're not really sure what else to improve. We've got a pretty solid war system now which the majority of players love. So we want YOUR suggestions on how to make it even better and create V1.2. We want to do at least 1 more beta run with extra upgrades before launching it fully.

Think you've got an awesome idea or think something should be changed? Click here to join in with the forum discussion. We want to make it even better!

Due to the amount of requests that I've had I have decided to leave the Plasma special on until the world cup ends on July 9th. And from now on only, get 10% extra plasma when you buy pack 3 or 4 until the special ends.

Thanks to everyone taking part in the coven wars, can't wait to let it out into the wild!

Oh, for the people who saw the England game yesterday with that disallowed goal... i'd have to agree with the refs decision that...






















... it didnt go in! Haha.


Enjoy the week guys,
Ash

Friday 25 June 2010

Coven Wars V1.1 BETA now live!



A big thank you to everyone taking part in the beta testing. I now announce version 1.1 with some radical changes. I'm confident this will please more of you.


We've taken the key issues people had and worked to compromise them. The main problem that was being faced is that smaller covens have an "advantage" over bigger covens because they'd have more targets, in theory is correct, but the system we built would actually not make people want to do that. So we've enhanced the penalty and also added a Score Tax (see explanation below)

Our goal is to create fun and competitive battles...

2010-06-23 19:55:54 - House of the Fallen Raven (36915) VS Faith of the Fallen (34493) - Winner: House of the Fallen Raven

Perfect example. That's exactly how we want every war to be. Within 1 or 2 tier battles that are fun close & exciting. If you have a coven of 20 going against a coven with 1000, the 1000 coven wouldn't have much chance... BUT with the amount of exp that gets taxed, it wouldn't be worth doing, people seem to ignore that fact. You'd get the people saying "We killed the top coven haha" then would probably avoid doing it again because they'll get so much more exp fighting in similar tiers. This whole small vs big advantage is a fact in almost every game. Take Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, always has connection problems so sometimes your team of 6 is only again a team of 2 or 3. They have the advantage because there are more of us to kill, it's the same here, except here you can lose up to 95% of the exp you would have got if you attacked someone your own tier and lose 0%.

An interesting yet relevant quote for Spot, "These covens are all so different it's almost impossible to come up with figures that suit everyone". Please keep this in mind with what we've come up with.

We've spent hours and hours discussing and coming up with new ideas which help make it MORE fair. It's impossible to create a complete compromise. Our goal is make it so unattractive to attack covens way out of your league.

You can now declare a war in the next 24 hours, after that you will not be able to declare another war until this beta run is over.  The wars will last 48 hours this time.

Here are the changes to V1.1

# New war exp system that works off coven exp rather than blood
# You can only surrender in the first 24 hours
# Buy extra white flags. (Cost = level  x $20,000).
# Only receive 1 white flag a month, with the possibility of buying 2 more
# Surrendering you only lose 2.5% of your max coven exp (instead of the current 5% when surrender [10% if you lose the war])
# Covens have to be 1 week old before they can participate in wars
# Tier 1 can only attack Tier 1
# You can only attack tiers +/- 5 tiers away from you
# 7 day lockout to return a coven you have been kicked from or left (Only locks you out of the coven you quit/were kicked from, you are free to join a different coven)
# every 6 hours the winning/losing sign is updated on the coven page (after the first 24 hours when you can no longer surrender)
# You can now hide the red war box on the home tab, but be aware you'll have to regularly check your coven page to see if you're in a war.
# 24 hour protection. When a coven war declared on you ends, you have a 24 hour protection period before you can be attacked again.
# Players under 7 days old battles do not add to their covens war exp totals
# Tier 1 covens are protected from Tier 2 +

Now onto the next bit, in order to create competitive battles we've come up with a war exp system.

In version 1.0 the war exp was made up from the blood you got from battle, this is no longer the case. It's now worked out based on coven exp.

War exp = coven exp x (100-tax)

We have put in a score tax system based on coven tiers. If you attack a coven which has more members than your own coven, the exp you gain from the individual battles will be taxed and you won't get the full amount of exp added onto the final score. This is to balance out smaller covens having an advantage over bigger covens simply because they have less people to attack. The further above your tier they are, the more you are taxed.  This only applies if you attack a coven of a higher tier than you.

Here's the breakdown for curious people:
# 0 tier difference = 0 tax
# 1 tier difference = 5 tax
# 2 tier difference = 14 tax
# 3 tier difference = 25 tax
# 4 tier difference = 37 tax
# 5 tier difference = 50 tax
# 6 tier difference = 90 tax
# 7 tier difference = 95 tax
# 8+ tier difference = 100 tax

So for example, if you're in a tier 1 coven attacking a tier 5 coven & attacking a level 50 vampires (coven exp=enemy rank).

War exp = coven exp x (100-tax)
War exp = 50 x (100-37) = 3150

If you attack the same person but they're in the same tier coven as you 

War exp = coven exp x (100-tax)
War exp = 50 x (100-0) = 5000

This means more work is needed to get war exp by attacking a higher tiered coven. There a 5 tier cap, but for example, they get more members or kick members out and they drop +/- 6 tiers away... they'd get 100% tax because they've gone out of reach (meant they'd get 0 war exp against you). 

We've also added more tiers!

Tier 1: 1-10 members
Tier 2: 11-25 members
Tier 3: 26-50 members
Tier 4: 51-75 members
Tier 5: 76-100 members
Tier 6: 101-150 members
Tier 7: 151-250 members
Tier 8: 251-500members
Tier 9: 501-750 members
Tier 10: 751-1000 members
Tier 11: 1001-1500 members
Tier 12: 1501-2500 members
Tier 13: 2500+ members

This is for the upgrades of version 1.1 - Go declare some wars so we can anaylse the results further and make any other changes and tweaks to the formulas. I think we've done good this round. These changes are to support the game going forward, active covens benefit from this. If you have inactive vampires in your coven which you think may cause a disadvantage in these wars, you may want to remove them if you care about your outcome in the wars. Over time the covens will evolve to fit this new way of life, so if it seems "unfair" now, it'll even out over time.

Again, please click here for the forum thread made about this update to give us more feedback & report any bugs.

The world cup special lasts for another week, so get some cheap plasma whilst you can!

Enjoy,
Ash

Thursday 24 June 2010

Coven wars BETA 1.0 over

Thanks to everyone who took part in the recent coven battles. We've got the data we want and will implementing and releasing (hopefully) tomorrow version 1.1 for another round.

I wouldn't go on what you've seen today (blood-wise) as changes will probably effect the results in the next battles.

We'll be addressing and making compromises to some of the key issues as well as adding new features & fixing the bugs that came up this time round (enjoy the free exp). Further explanations of the compromises will come tomorrow.

Thanks again for taking part & we look forward to giving you an even more more fun in V1.1

Thanks!
Ash

Wednesday 23 June 2010

24 BETA notice on current active coven wars

It's good to know when you work hard at something and people like & enjoy it. A big majority love the new coven war system and I'm so glad you guys like it.

We've read the feedback, Spot & I have spent hours discussing formula tweaks & extra features. We'll be adding them into a v1.1 we'll beta release this week.

Sorry to say a glitch appeared... Which has now been fixed, but its forced me to reset all current active wars. All coven wars will end 24 hours from NOW! All blood has been set to 0. We need to get and analyse the results ASAP so we can make any extra changes. No more wars can be declared until the 1.1 beta. The winners of the current active wars will get the same exp they would fighting the full 72 hour war.

It's BETA! Anything can happen...

Enjoy & thanks for helping squeeze the bugs out to make this an even more awesome feature!

Ash

P.S Click here for the forum post discussion on the blog.

Go battle battle battle!

Monday 21 June 2010

The biggest and most complicated update RoB has ever seen has arrived.



I'd like to thank you all for your patience with this. Spot & I have been working very hard over the past few weeks, from setting up formulas to coding to testing. I'm really excited to get this rolling and hope you all like it.

It's been a feature which has been lightly suggested for a while but we thought if we're going to do something this big and game changing, we'll do it right, and do it well, and do it with depth. Yeah, we like depth.

It's funny because few weeks ago when Spot & I were on the drawing board with this thing loads of forum posts started popping up about it... we thought you were all onto us, he was giving me shit for telling people about it! (Complete lie btw, i love secrets). I imagine some of you could have guessed the feature, but here it is.

I present a brand new coven war system.

It will replace the current coven "battle system" which is a lazy mans way to get coven exp, i know lots of you like lazy, but lazy doesn't do your health any good.

If you don't want to read how it works, just skip past the italic text.


With the new Coven War System, it is no longer based on a coven's total attack and defence; it is up to the members of the coven to win the war. Each week a coven is given 1 War Declaration. The coven chooses another coven it wishes to declare war on. Only the coven owner will have the option of declaring war. Once war is declared, both covens are involved in a war that lasts 72 hours. In that time the members of each coven kill the opposing coven's members as much as possible. The coven who has drained the most blood at the end of the 72 hours will win the war. If you win the war, you will receive a large amount of coven exp based upon the opposing covens level, average member level, and their total members. If you lose the war, your coven will lose coven exp. Your coven exp will not go below 0/XXX,XXXX and you will not go down a coven level if you lose a battle and the amount of exp you lose is more than the amount of exp you had. Up to 3 covens can declare war on your coven a week (it is only possible for one coven to declare war on you at a time), so you will have to fight off other covens at the same time you are fighting the one that you declared war on. This means your coven may have to make a strategic decision whether to focus its members onto one battle, or to try and fight all of them at once. Not all covens are equal to each other, so we have designed a Tier based system.

Covens are assigned a tier based upon the amount of members they have in their coven.

Tier 1 = 1-50 members
Tier 2 = 51-100 members
Tier 3 = 101-200 members
Tier 4 = 201-500 members
Tier 5 = 501-1000 members
Tier 6 = 1001-2000 members
Tier 7 = 2000+ members
(includes both active and inactive members in the coven)

What tier you are in does not matter; It only matters what tier your opponent is in. You can declare war on covens that are not in your tier, however, to encourage more competitive battles, you receive the full amount of exp for defeating an opponent in the same tier as you, a slightly less amount for defeating someone who is in a tier that is +/-1 tiers from your coven, a less amount if they're +/-2 tiers from your coven, and even less if they are +/-3 tiers from your coven, and so on. The disadvantage applies to if they are further below your tier or further above your tier. This means the further the opposing coven is from your tier, the less exp the winner will receive. You will have to choose either to have an easy battle of a coven that is in a different tier and get less exp for winning, or take the risk to get the full exp and battle a coven in your own tier. Clicking on the info link will display that covens tier. You cannot attack the same coven twice in a row.

Members of both covens will be notified if their coven has declared war or has had war declared on them via a notification displayed when the players log in as well as a notification in the coven news log. Due to the resulting lag, it is not possible to automatically send out mass news or BL notifications to all members to alert them of the war. I am sorry. Please do not request this.

During the war, the scores (the amount of blood you drained) are not displayed to either coven. You won't know whether you are winning or losing. After the war is over, the scores is displayed to both covens on the archive pages.

A coven can surrender a war that is declared on them by another coven, but cannot surrender a war they started. Covens are given 2 white flags a month, they reset each month and are not rolled over. When a coven surrenders, the other team is automatically declared the winner, and you lose a much smaller amount of exp than if they were to continue the battle and lose. If the other team surrenders, it will still count as a win for you, however if you surrender, even though you still lose exp from it, it does not count as a loss, it is displayed as a surrender. The other coven only receives half of the experience they would have won if the other coven surrenders & you will lose half the exp you would have lost if you fought and lost. You can be attacked more in a month than the amount of white flags you receive, so the coven owner will have to decide carefully when to use their white flags. 




Coven owners will see a link to the above guide on their coven pages if they want to read over it again.
- The "info" link on the coven hall now shows that covens tier
- Coven search page has been improved slightly as it'll probably be used more now
- Added a player guide to FAQ system (search "coven wars")
- Updated coven stats page to show war system results
- Update coven leaderboard pages too
- Added active wars & archive in the Dead City

Below is a video I made which basically explains it in action:


I'm not the errr best err speaker but i explained with my current 1.2mb internet (damn sky) an overview. Between the video and the above intro it should cover everything. Couple thing missed from the video, including surrenders, you get 2 white flags a month and can be used at any point during the war. Also that you can search any coven in the archive but it only show you the blood results if your coven was involved in the war.

This is the core of the new system, we've spent a lot of time working on this, the actual workings are so complicated and complex that we're not going to explain the inner workings of them. All you need to know is what's in the guide above.

We would love feedback on this, good or bad. I've setup a forum post where you can discuss feedback and we can reply to it.

I'll be tweaking the layout of the pages throughout the day, so you may see some small changes being made.

I hope you enjoy it, we've worked really hard on it!
I'm reading for the hatin' ....

Ash

Friday 18 June 2010

World Cup Plasma Special & Double Points Weekend!





Due to a ridiculousl about of requests I have decided to run a plasma special, and this time it's themed around the world cup. All special packs purchased gives you a football (or soccer ball as some people seem to call it) icon for those who like the chat.  The special will probably last until the end of the month.

This weekend only I'm giving double points on all the points offers on points company 1 & 2. If a point offer says you'll get 20 points, when complete you'll get 40 added to your account. This will last until Monday morning.

Me & Spot have been working on a pretty huge feature over the last couple weeks... it's gonna be pretty big and change (for the better i hope) the way we do things. Scared? Excited? So are we. We'll be releasing the beta of this brand new big feature on Monday and run it for a while, get feedback and see how it progresses. I'm really excited to get this rolling, it'll make people get off their ass!

More story quests soon too, promise.

The blood letter auto deletion etc will start next week.

Thanks & enjoy!
Ash

Wednesday 16 June 2010

Players wanted to help create help Videos for RoB! *Updated with example*

I wrote a blog this morning about wanting someone to help with creating help videos for ReignOfBlood, which will hopefully make it easier for people to get into the game. Click here to view the full details.

I bought some software for like $10 and it works pretty well, so I created an example of what it should (kind of) be like. I'm currently getting 1.1mb of internet at the moment (paying for 20mb) so I'll have to not do anymore when everything is slow for me. Whack it up to 720p for best quality, I think needs to be zoomed in a little more, but this is just a first tester and a bit of fun.

Click here to open it up full screen in YouTube





(The big 1 at the start is a mistake on my part lol) Buzz buzz buzz.

Any questions? Let me know. Make sure you read the blog as linked above for full information, had some interest so far which is good :) We should hopefully get a good team on this, let me know if you're interested!

Thanks,
Ash

P.S just to clarify... the video is a joke, you can't actually do that.

People with video skillz wanted to make getting into ReignOfBlood easier

If you have not seen the blog about the automated blood letter and news deletion, you should have a read over it.

Every month I spend a lot of time and money marketing and advertising RoB to get new players to join the game. That's the easy bit! The hard bit is getting new players into the game. People signup go ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh and leave because it's too much to comprehend, and I agree, it is. Is there a way to get around this?

Last year we were toying around with video introductions. Simple 1 minute videos that show different aspects of the game. People don't like to read through guides and introductions because it's boring, its not untrue. Having some visual introduction through a video I think will get people into it more.

I would like to have an introduction video for when you first login it shows you the very basics of the game. Then each key feature of the game (covens, gym,hunting etc) will have their own short video. I think it's much more fun watch a feature being played on a video and you getting into it yourself.  The video will be linked to that page as well as a dedicated video page on the help part of the site.

The videos will be embedded with Youtube (which will help with advertising across Youtube too).

What do I want?
- 1 or 2 people to join the staff team to develop these videos.
- The videos must use any software that can capture screen movement, software that does this.
- Either text captions of what's going on or voice overs (not sure which would work best) If you use voice overs you'll have to speak clearly and not too fast.

A good way to start would to think to yourself "What could I have seen to get me into the game easier?" Video needs to be using the new in game layout, not RoB-Lite.

If you're interested in this then please let me know your interest by blood lettering me (ID 1) and then you'll be required to do a test video to test out your skillz.

There are plenty of free and paid software to do this, if you're already a video editor then this may be for you.

Thanks!
Ash

Tuesday 15 June 2010

72 hour notice for blood letters & personal news

I've read over the feedback from yesterdays blog about the auto deletion of blood letters and personal news (this does not include coven news yet). If you missed it, click here to read over the blog.

I've decided to do the following
- Increased the amount of saved blood letters can you have.
- Allow you until Friday night to keep or copy over any blood letters you want to keep.

Friday night the auto deletion script will be put in place so any blood letters that over 3 weeks old (Read or not)  will be deleted. As well as all news items will be deleted after 7 days of you recieving them (This includes battle news & demeters).

More details when it's done, I'll let you know if there is any further delays or problems, and I'll give you a full update of what happens when it's implemented. A couple changes to the other news, coven invites etc will be made (not bad ones).

Thanks
Ash

Monday 14 June 2010

Blood letter & news clearout




As of right now there are over 3.5 million blood letters in the database & 7 million news items. That's quite a bit, not that it's a huge problem but as it grows even more those pages will start to load more slowly with people accessing it all the
time.

This is a 24 hour warning as to a new automated script being created to delete blood letters and news items every night.

News will be deleted after you've had it for 7 days, and blood letters will deleted after 4 weeks whether you've read it or not.

This will hopefully go into effect tomorrow night and I'll blog again letting you know exactly what will happen. Doing this will help keep the database clear and make the site run as fast as possible.

I suggest for the blood letters you want to keep, SAVE THEM NOW!

Let me know your feedback and thoughts of the time periods I've suggested.

Ash

EDIT: I have increased the amount of blood letters you can save to 100, see game updates.

Saturday 12 June 2010

Server move complete & reset fixed

As I said this morning for those who missed it, the servers needed to be moved a couple racks down, the downtime was only 4 minutes which is good but everything should be back to normal now. There was a problem last hour with the resets not working, I have manually run the resets & they should be working fine now.


Oh, setup a new blog layout too!


As for the World Cup match today... go England!



Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Ash

Server move complete

As I said this morning for those who missed it, the servers needed to be moved a couple racks down, the downtime was only 4 minutes which is good but everything should be back to normal now. Please let me know if theres any problems.

Oh, setup a new blog layout too!


As for the World Cup match today... go England!



Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Ash

I know about the reset not working this hour, no need to report it :)

Downtime this afternoon

Within the next 8 hours (currently 10:20am game time) the server will be offline for 15-30 mins as they move the server from one rack to another.


Have a good weekend!
Ash

Wednesday 9 June 2010

Xbox Competition winner, June competition announced & trade your gems!





Hey all,
I wrote a small algorithm to pick a winner for the xbox 360 competition.
The winner is:
 Lord Haku Blackheart (348619)

2nd and 3rd prizes of 10 plasma are:
PlasmaDrainer(347626)
Rez (153767)

Congratulations to the winners and a big thank you to all who took part.
Now how about a competition for June? The reason why I'm so late in announcing it is because I was going to do a World Cup based competition, but as that would just be a gamble type competition, it won't work too well. So i've decided (as suggested) to run a competition creating a competition. In other words, this months competition winner will get a prize for suggesting the best competition for July! Head over to the forum post to post your ideas. (One post per players), you can submit as many ideas as you like in your post. The best competition that I pick will win:

 1st place - 25 plasma, 100 VIP Days, 50 VIP+ Days
 2nd place - 15 plasma, 50 VIP Days, 25 VIP+ Days
 3rd place - 5 plasma, 25 VIP Days, 10 VIP+ Days

2nd and 3rd place prizes are given to two more ideas that I like also and might use in the future. Good luck.

As for those gems you've got stashed, head over to the gem store in the  Dead City to cash them in. Some layout changes to the underground to accommodate these gems will come about soon.

Thanks & enjoy!
Ash

Thursday 3 June 2010

May Competition results, VIP+ changes & Non-VIP ad problems solved.



Thank you to everyone who filled out the survey yesterday, some really great feedback on how things are going is always good to here. I have noted down all of the possible suggestions that were made, so your idea may be implemented in the future.

First thing, changes to VIP+
- Packs are now a full month (31 days) rather than 21 days as before. Current players who bought them at the 21 day rate I have compensated with some extra free days. (please remember though VIP+ is in BETA so changes can be made where i don't have to compensate because changes are expected, I'm just too nice).
- Tried to reduce the text on the page as people seem to be confused by the concept & updated the layout of the page a little bit.
- Got rid of the 100 day VIP day minimum for it, it is now possible to have 1 VIP day and 1 VIP+ day, but you still cannot have more VIP+ days than VIP days.
- You can now trade plasma for VIP+ days

Now onto the may competition, thank you for everyone who took part, here are the results:

6866 gems - Loki Black (333226)
6754 gems - Grand Duchess Gabrielle (233579)
6703 gems - .hack//Shhac.̢㢠(1893)

And the below top members will get a free plasma for taking part:

6665 gems - Rez (153767)
6320 gems - Raven Oleander (157479)
6176 gems - Ileene Ryu (197369)
6063 gems - Tancman (248616)
6002 gems - Akroma (260038)
5974 gems - Jane (222557)
5963 gems - Moon Raven (311006)
5900 gems - Lady Aestolia Silverfalls (172014)
5837 gems - LSD (89035)
5767 gems - Moriha Raven (89607)
5736 gems - Xiola (212025)
5730 gems - StarLitFire18 (205042)
5672 gems - Redeemer Shadowblade (209605)
5672 gems - Shar Atreides (275708)
5651 gems - °Kinky Sookie° (272511)
5586 gems - CrimsonLust AKA Mrs X (45459)
5579 gems - ädriel -¤OuP¤- (217745)
5559 gems - Dark August Night (85300)
5551 gems - Gabriella DeathWish (216733)
5498 gems - Sanguine.Lullaby (193268)
5373 gems - Elocin (157293)
5276 gems - ~Morgana DeathSpirit~ (283916)
5221 gems - Constantine DeathSpirit (96705)


Trading off your gems will come soon & the June competition. Thanks to everyone who took part.

I have been using an ad company which fills in ad views when the big ad companies have no ads to show. These are generally low paying ads but they fill in the empty inventory, I've heard some complaints about popups etc going on with them, so I have completely removed those ads. When there are no ads to show (non vips) you'll see a text ad advertising VIP. I don't want to annoy members with popup ads that get snuck in for the ad companies profit and without my permission. I'd rather get nothing and have happy players than low paying popup ads which i didn't want in the first place. So hopefully you non-VIPs shouldn't have anymore problems with that.

The xbox 360 competition will close on Monday where a random winner will be chosen, please get your last entries in now!


Oh, and the random person to get $50 pack for the survey is.....Gabriella DeathWish (216733)

Have a good evening,
Ash

Wednesday 2 June 2010

Complete a small RoB survey and win a $50 plasma pack



Good evening,

Few small updates today...

- New story quest "Search For Survivors".
- Added small descriptions of each cities use at the Dead City portal.
- Added another VIP+ feature & made the pack 30 days worth
- When a coven forum post is deleted, the reply amount is reduced by 1 and the last poster gets updated.
- Coven staff can now give/lend coven funds by inputting an ID instead of choosing from drop down menu.

The gem competition will end MIDNIGHT TONIGHT, so that gives you just over 6 more hours. I will record the results at midnight and report them & give out the prizes tomorrow.

I have created a small feedback survey for RoB...

[[ Thank you for everyone who has completed the survey, it's now closed. ]]

One random entry will win a free $50 plasma pack. Thank you for your feedback and please answer all questions as full as you can.

Have a fun evening.
Ash

Tuesday 1 June 2010

May competition EXTENDED!

I'll be honest with you, yesterday I went to this horse racing show thing (not my prime choice of an afternoon) but I was standing around for 7 hours. Needless to say my feet were aching pretty bad by the end of it, so when I got home in the evening I just went to bed. So I couldn't finish the may Competition last night! Again I'm fully pre-booked tonight so I'll be ending it Wednesday night at midnight game time.

Get your last load of gems in boys & girls!

Click here for the real time leaderboards.

Ash

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