Revamp the social system

It's all well and fine that people can have 4 characters per account. But it's hella annoying for actually conducting business as a guildmaster. Guildies often message me from an alt, so I would add their alt to my friend list, which results in a friend list several times longer than necessary, and now I have to go through and try to remember CompletelyUnrelatedName is the alt of VeryNormalName.

On the flip side, when it comes to blocking pesky people who apparently think it's OK to keep messaging after you've blocked them on their main character, it gets pretty darned annoying too. I think most of my ignore list is actually just one person.

What I propose is a revamp of the social system. Depending on how much time developers want to invest in the revamp, there are a multitude of possibilities that can improve player experience to varying degrees.

• Display the player account name in brackets. So for example, my character's name is Snowbunnie, by account name is silverseas. It would show up as: Snowbunnie (silverseas). Then my alt would be: Lingeringsnow (silverseas). And so on.
• Allow us to add friends/ignore people on an account level. This would mean that the account name would be displayed as the main name in the friend list, and when you click on it, you would be able to see all their characters.

I realize that depending on how this is implemented, it may impact the number of guilds a person can be in - whether joining guilds now becomes an account-level thing, or a character-specific thing... well, I leave that up to debate. It doesn't matter to me either way.

 

+ an offline messaging system and improvementes to group invitations (do not dissapear when you change maps and show group integrants before accepting (sometimes its just 1 person inviting you to his 1 person group))

some people may want to stay incognito, also that could be so much information on screen, imagine high concentrations of players, it would be a lot of text

 

By the title name ... i thought you are talking welfare.
Dammit ... no free chocolates here ...


BTW ... your suggestion is against the laws, especially against EU laws protecting personal data.

Still no chocolates?
Dammit.

 

As a GM, I have a spreadsheet where I have the main name and a column for their alts. This makes it easy to find out who that alt actually belongs to.

As for those that seem to have an issue with me (and I'll be danged as to why but whatever), I put them on my "friends" list. Then, when they change their name trying to hide from me or pretend to be someone else (always entertaining), I can see that this "new" name is on my list and make some assumptions. When I find their alts' names, they get added as well.

I agree that it would be nice to ignore an entire account but I also understand why it might not be doable.

 

+1 for this. I understand that it may require some moderation (I distinctly recall a certain game involving pets had folks who modded your mail and you could get banned for sending bad stuff, ehe) and therefore a lot more work than simply implementing it.

Come to think about it, maybe that's why we can't PM on the forums either. Oh well.

There is a fairly easy solution for this. Keep the current display as it is - character name only. The account name would only be displayed if the two of you exchange/accept a friend request. It would be kind of like Facebook. You can set your security settings, but if you add someone as a friend, they suddenly can see all your embarrassing photos.

There is chocolate in my fridge. Come to Canada... the airplane ticket would probably cost you 1000x more than the chocolate. xD

I am not familiar with EU laws. Can you explain?

It's hard enough tracking people as it is. I have one guy who thinks it's funny to change his Discord name every day (sometimes several times a day). In another guild, I used to be an officer, and we did the whole spreadsheet thing, but it just fell to the wayside because nobody maintained it.

As for people in my friend list changing their names... I just delete them if they don't talk to me after a week or two. I don't know who you are, and you didn't think I was important enough to contact after the name change = no need to be friends.