Introduction to Groups
Overview
The AccelByte Gaming Services (AGS) Groups service allows players to gather to chat and play together. They can also form a group or clan, and collaborate to achieve common goals. This social aspect of having a group or clan can boost interactions between players and can lead to increased overall player retention.
By implementing this service, you can allow your player to create, join, and invite other players to groups. Players can also be assigned to specific roles such as a group admins or members. Each role will also include a specific ability that game developers can set. For example, the ability to manage join requests, and add or remove members from their groups.
Key Concepts
To make sure you can have seamless integration with the service, it is important to understand some of the key concepts that will be used throughout the documentation.
Group Configuration
Group configuration provides you a way to define what kind of group that can be formed by the players such as open, public or private groups as well as defining the group member roles and number of members for each group.
Group Configuration Code
Group configuration code is a unique human readable string used to identify a specific group configuration.
Maximum Group Members
The total number of players that join the group may vary depending on the game use case. Some games may have a limit of a few players, while others may allow for hundreds of players. With this maximum group member, you can set the limit of maximum players that can belong to a group.
Group role
Every group member has roles assigned to them, which can be used to restrict or allow access to features such as inviting a member, or kicking a member. Every group member will automatically be assigned to the default member role that is defined in the group configuration. This can be either an admin group role or a member group role.
Role permission
With Role permissions, instead of only using the default group admin and group member roles, developers can create custom roles by defining permissions for the actions that are allowed in accordance with the needs of the game. This will allow group admins to delegate some group tasks to other group members. For example group experts, or group vice leaders.
Group custom attributes
Group custom attributes provide a way for the game client or developer to put additional information or metadata for each group. With custom attributes, you could hold the customization information for the group, such as custom group background, or motto.
Group types
There are many different types of groups that group service can support. Each type of group has their own unique characteristics and requirements.
Open group: Open group is a type of group that is searchable and does not require any approval to join. A player can search for the group using the Group Name or Group Region, and then join the group without waiting for a group admin to approve their request.
Public group: Public group is a type of group that is searchable, but requires permission to join. When a player tries to join, they must first wait for a group admin to approve their request. These groups often have membership requirements, such as only allowing players with an Matchmaking Rating (MMR) more than 100 to join the group.
Private group: Private group is a type of group that can't be searched and requires permission to join. Players can only join these groups if they've been invited by an admin.