One of the major focus points of Pantheon is social gameplay. Having a robus friends list/social panel with useful features is a good way to encourage soscialization and lower social barriers. One nice feature that was put into Path of Exile is the ability to write a status update which is displayed by your account name in the friends window. Sometimes you'll see people list something that they've accomplished, vent about something, or ask for help finding an item or completing a task.
For reference: Path of Exile Social Panel
Status updates have the benefit of being less transient than in-game chat where messages often scroll by at a blazing pace. Give a shout out to a friendly player and have it be seen by all the people in your network, not just the ones that happen to be glancing at the chat in that moment. If you need help, worry a bit less about having to spam your request over and over. Frankly, I think all online games should implement PoE style statuses at a minimum. What I envision for pantheon is that (similar to social media platforms like twitter) player status updates would be archived in a feed that players could scroll through and search. Furthermore, the social status tech could be piggybacked on to create the looking for group feature. Not only would you kill two birds at once by sharing the same underlying technology, but it would be pretty cool to have the LFG system integrated with the social status system.Some details:
One or two people that I discussed this with expressed concerns that social media can already be exhausing, and bringing it into the game might be too much. However, think drawing a direct parallel to people's use of social media doesn't necessarily make sense given the in-game nature of this social status system. I don't think players would spend significant time browsing the social feed in the game, posting memes, and arguing like you might on twitter/facebook. And if a handful of people went that route, there's always mute.
Mockup of how the LFM and status updates would work
This sounds alot like battle.net and their integrated friends list. (If your not familiar with it go take a peek).
You allow either a friend to be added via character name or account name depending on how much you want them to see.
You are able to post "shouts" that all of your friends can see and you decide what's placed there and what isnt.
This also allows you to quickly send messages to a friend regardless of what server or character (and in blizzards case "game") they are on.
I dont necessarily know if you need to include the "social media" aspect of it.. but I would love a much better designed friends list.
Agreed that the idea echoes a lot of what the battle.net system does. I also agree that in a game that wants to stand up on the strength of its community, we need well-thought out ways to connect with friends and other people.
I liked battle.net's broadcast function. Sometimes I used it for silly messages. Sometimes it was to tell people, "Hey I'm doing X for the next few hours; hit me up if you wanna join!"
I'm not sure how isolated VR wants their server communities to be (if we even have separate servers), but keeping players connected is a good way to encourage social structures.
Not a fan, but that's mostly because I don't dig social networks, or "account names" of some sort. I prefer to have a friendlist tied to a character and only this character. Pushing further was the terrible design of GW2 and ESO with everything tied to your account and none to your character, but well that's an other slippery slope.
I'm fine if it's done, and won't use it simply.
MauvaisOeil said:Not a fan, but that's mostly because I don't dig social networks, or "account names" of some sort. I prefer to have a friendlist tied to a character and only this character.
Totally get that. Best is to have both options of adding someon as an "account friend" or just a friend on that character. My close friends I like having as "account friends" because then they can see when I'm on no matter my alt (or vice versa) - makes it easier to do stuff together and keeps my friend list uncluttered. Other acquaintances I generally just add on a per-character basis.
Naunet said:MauvaisOeil said:Not a fan, but that's mostly because I don't dig social networks, or "account names" of some sort. I prefer to have a friendlist tied to a character and only this character.Totally get that. Best is to have both options of adding someon as an "account friend" or just a friend on that character. My close friends I like having as "account friends" because then they can see when I'm on no matter my alt (or vice versa) - makes it easier to do stuff together and keeps my friend list uncluttered. Other acquaintances I generally just add on a per-character basis.
I get that this will be a point of contention, but my preference is to have everything on the account level for everyone. This makes things simpler. If there are legitimate issues people have with being account level communication, perhaps seek solutions to the individual issues. For example, I would be down for an "appear offline" option for people that want to play on an alt without getting spammed by requests for this or that. But there are some good reasons for not allowing people to be account-anonymous. I feel people will be more accountable for their actions if they can't hide behind a specific character.
Just curious, but what are the specific issues that you have with communications being at the account-level?
zoltar said:Just curious, but what are the specific issues that you have with communications being at the account-level?
Sure. Mostly it's personal privacy and wanting to curate who has access to me and when. I may want to add some people I run a dungeon or do a raid with to my friend list for future reference, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want them to have unrestricted access to me during my playtime. It's not relevant to them that I'm playing on X alt or whatever. That I reserve for my good friends who I know and trust.
Naunet said:zoltar said:Just curious, but what are the specific issues that you have with communications being at the account-level?Sure. Mostly it's personal privacy and wanting to curate who has access to me and when. I may want to add some people I run a dungeon or do a raid with to my friend list for future reference, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want them to have unrestricted access to me during my playtime. It's not relevant to them that I'm playing on X alt or whatever. That I reserve for my good friends who I know and trust.
I guess I'm just not seeing the need for privacy in that situation. What is it that you're afraid they will do with "unrestricted access to me during my playtime."? Bother you by asking if you want to do something together? I don't see the big deal there. My though is, there's as good a chance as any that I would appreciate the offer and would want to go back and team up again. And if not, all I have to do is say "sorry, I'm into something on this character, maybe another time".
I can see a situation where a person who is often inundated with requests from many people might want to play on an alt without getting bombarded with messages. But an option to appear offline seems like a perfectly reasonable solution.
I really appreciate the value of /anon -- when it comes to character/account status, I would prefer to see them separated. Privacy isn't something that people need to justify a need for. If someone wants privacy for any reason they should have it. Implementing layers into the character/account status would allow folks to decide who gets what and that's reasonable. I would rather not see the account status on a friends list at all if it had to be universal.
oneADseven said: Privacy isn't something that people need to justify a need for. If someone wants privacy for any reason they should have it.
I completely disagree with this. No doubt privacy has its place, but there are often instances where it's in the public's interest to not have privacy. For example, allowing monetary gifts to politicians or judges without disclosure empowers the corrupt to take bribes or be unduly influenced. Decisions regarding privacy must always weigh the greater good against the potential impact to the person.
The privacy to log into the game without everyone being notifed that you have come online is, I think, easily justifiable. However, the privacy to keep your identify secret on certain characters is a lot more difficult to justify. One of the principles of the game is that your reputation and actions should matter. Allowing players to mask their identity by switching characters undercuts that principle IMO. The impact of removing this privacy option on the player seems very minor and is as likely to be positive as it is negative. That's why I view it as unnecssary.
zoltar said:I completely disagree with this. No doubt privacy has its place, but there are often instances where it's in the public's interest to not have privacy. For example, allowing monetary gifts to politicians or judges without disclosure empowers the corrupt to take bribes or be unduly influenced. Decisions regarding privacy must always weigh the greater good against the potential impact to the person.
This is neither of those. We're playing a video game, and we deserve to be able to control our privacy.
What the hell. Did you some how just turn us wanting to keep out alts private from out mains into an analogy about politicians taking money.. like... what.
It doesn't matter why people want to remain private. Maybe they want to be alone for an hour before work. Maybe they want to hide from their guild on a raid night. Who cares.
Why should you be able to add me as a friend and see all my alts without me allowing it. And if I have to allow it... why do you think anyone who is going to garner a bad reputation would just allow you to be on their friends list.
I really understand your thought process, but its just silly. If someone is a jerk on 1 character they will probably be a jerk on them all. They won't just be turning off a switch when they log onto an alt.
Account level information is fine if the player gives that kind of access and can take the access away at any time. But account level information without that consent - heck no!
Sabot among others hit it on the nose here.
The only thing that should be account wide is /ignore if someone wants to ignore an entire account. A lot of good reasons for that functionality not least to make it harder to be a douche with one character without ramifications for your others.
Porygon said:What the hell. Did you some how just turn us wanting to keep out alts private from out mains into an analogy about politicians taking money.. like... what.
It doesn't matter why people want to remain private. Maybe they want to be alone for an hour before work. Maybe they want to hide from their guild on a raid night. Who cares.
Why should you be able to add me as a friend and see all my alts without me allowing it. And if I have to allow it... why do you think anyone who is going to garner a bad reputation would just allow you to be on their friends list.
I really understand your thought process, but its just silly. If someone is a jerk on 1 character they will probably be a jerk on them all. They won't just be turning off a switch when they log onto an alt.
That's the way analogies work...you draw comparisons between two unequal things. Actually, it wasn't even an analogy. It was a counter-example. People saying privacy never needs to be justified, I provided an obvious example where it does have to be justified. At no point did I draw an equivalence between bribing a politician and playing a videogame, so I'm not sure why you guys are acting shocked.
Anyway, I think you're understimating the cunning of trolls. If reputation truly does matter in the game, players will no doubt use any amount of privacy to minimize the impact of their behavior. This is like saying that if someone is nice to you, there's no way they could be a jerk to other people. Of course they do. Especially online where they can hide behind anonymity.
I mean, I could say that I want the ability to log into the game and be totally anonymous, so that players can't even see my real character name. I could probably come up with as good of a justification for wanting a complete anonymous mode as the ones you guys are listing, but based on what you're saying, I don't even need to do that. Who cares? It's just a game, and I should have any level of privacy I want, right?
Sabot said:I also may want to be in different guilds with different characters and dont want either of them to know i am in the other.
Then join guilds that allow players to have characters in other guilds. If a guild want to have a policy of exclusivity, I don't see why the game should protect your ability to violate that agreement.
zoltar said:I mean, I could say that I want the ability to log into the game and be totally anonymous, so that players can't even see my real character name. I could probably come up with as good of a justification for wanting a complete anonymous mode as the ones you guys are listing, but based on what you're saying, I don't even need to do that. Who cares? It's just a game, and I should have any level of privacy I want, right?
I think you're taking things to really unnecessary extremes, to the extent that you're reaching logical fallacy territory. Having both individual- and account-level friending is not a new or unusual feature in MMOs.
I know some folks are fond of account names. I'm not one of them (and no, it's not because I troll or anything on alts). I have my own reasons for such that I want delve into but on the lesser note they make character names irrelevant and sometimes a fella just wants to log into an alt and enjoy some crafting and maybe meet some newbies without getting bombarded with tells from friends and guildes. Love my guild, love my friends, but I''ve had days where I've logged on and spent the first 2 hours answering tells about a myriad of things. But we all have those days where we might just want a little alt quiet time. And account names make that impossible. I know this because I tried this in a few games like Guild Wars 2 a few times with their invisible and folks still tracked me down. Those systems are always flawed in some way.
Rather than account names I'd rather just have the option to import my character's friends list to a new char. But that's just me.
As for the OP, you have some good suggestions. Augment it to be character-based rather than account-based and I could get on board with some of that.
So, I like account names in the sense that there are *some* friends that I'm ok sharing my account name with - ie, you guys I trust enough that you are able to find me anytime, anywhere. However, the majority of people I would probably only share my character name with.
It sounds like the best option here is simply to make it an option? Have it default to tracking only character name and allow people to choose whether they share an account name instead? Since we're talking about a friends list/LFG tool, there's presumably no negative interactions where we would need to worry about accountability.
That said, I could see the case for making the block/ignore list work against entire accounts. But that's a different discussion.
Kratuk said:I know some folks are fond of account names. I'm not one of them (and no, it's not because I troll or anything on alts). I have my own reasons for such that I want delve into but on the lesser note they make character names irrelevant and sometimes a fella just wants to log into an alt and enjoy some crafting and maybe meet some newbies without getting bombarded with tells from friends and guildes. Love my guild, love my friends, but I''ve had days where I've logged on and spent the first 2 hours answering tells about a myriad of things. But we all have those days where we might just want a little alt quiet time. And account names make that impossible. I know this because I tried this in a few games like Guild Wars 2 a few times with their invisible and folks still tracked me down. Those systems are always flawed in some way.
Rather than account names I'd rather just have the option to import my character's friends list to a new char. But that's just me.
As for the OP, you have some good suggestions. Augment it to be character-based rather than account-based and I could get on board with some of that.
I get your motivations, but if an appear offline feature is 99% effective at letting you avoid interacting with people, shoudn't that be good enough? In the 1% of cases where someone "tracks you down", what's the worst that happens? I feel like the vast majority of people are going to respect your boundaries and not even try to track you down. And if they do, what's the big deal with just telling them "Sorry, I'm not able to help or talk right now, which is why I'm set to appear offline"?
Just doesn't seem like a circumstance where being 100% effective is absolutely essential all that important. You can set yourself to appear offline. The game will also likely support setting a "do not distrub" message. So if someoen tracks you down while you're appearing offline, and ignores a reasonable DND message, either it's a legit emergency in which case you'd probably be glad they were able to reach you OR it's a issue of someone blatantly disrespecting your personal space, which you shoudl be able to handle with a discussion or ultimately /ignore.
zoltar said:I completely disagree with this.
Your stance only reinforces my position. Account information is a privilege, not something that everybody should be entitled to. Again, if I can pick and choose who gets that information, I would be fine with it. If it's universally accessible, I want nothing to do with that feature in this game. There is no way you or anybody else will ever be able to convince me that this information should be accessible to the masses. If someone gets a negative reputation on a specific character then I think it's reasonable that they would have to start over after hopefully learning their lesson. If we can just blackball entire accounts then there isn't really a reason for people to start over and improve their behavior. We don't need to reinvent the wheel on this. I definitely see value in being able to grant account information to specific friends but that should be the exception rather than the rule.
