hey everyone! this is an old idea i wrote out a long time ago that i want to finally share, in light of KI's expressed plans for enhancing socialization in upcoming updates. i'm really looking forward to this initiative, so i hope this little idea can add something worth considering for it!
IDEA: player statuses (social/friends list feature)
think of all the times you've needed help, either for a dungeon or a hard boss or etc. you ask an online friend for help -- but they never respond, or they respond 20 minutes late with "sorry i was afk." what can you do? you have no way of knowing your friend's availability, and can usually only guess by prompting "teleport to friend" to see what it says.
currently in-game, the only "friend status" we have is "activity status," which is only how recently a friend logged in. this may be useful to know long-term how often your friends play the game, but doesn't do anything socially.
so, the idea of (actual) friend statuses is, essentially, players can put on activity statuses that tell friends what you're doing, your availability, or even fun things like your mood!
you could set your status either in the expanded friends list OR in the new social tab -- whichever works better. then, there would be a button that you would click to bring up a text menu (similar style to housing signs) that you pick your status from.
you can view a friend's status directly on your friends list with an extended hover telling the status -- displayed as "STATUS: _____" OR "ACTIVITY: _____" or whatever makes sense. friendly players in the social tab could also have their statuses displayed there in a similar way.
perhaps, if possible, there could be an option to either keep your status persistent across login sessions or have it clear every time you log off.
examples of possible status options
questing -- could be choices for "solo" or "open" or "with others/in a group" (full example: "questing: in a group")
farming -- could be choices for "open" (need more players) or "full/closed" (no other players needed)(full example: "farming: closed")
AFK/away from keyboard/idle
busy
available
game activities -- pet training, gardening, fishing, events (beastmoon, deckathalon, etc.), & so on
moods -- happy, sad, bored, helpful, tired, friendly, etc.
and possibly more!
now, obviously, this feature would be optional, and people may not notice or use this feature. but that's natural, and i feel that adding it would still be a net positive. the people who do use this feature will reap the benefit, while those who don't are still the same as before. and alternatively, i mean, if someone wants to put their status at busy and leave it that way forever, then fine -- but at least you'll be able to see that, and know to not try asking them for help, instead of whispering them in vain and getting hit with the awkward silent treatment -- not knowing if they don't like you, or are afk, or didn't see your message...
so yeah! please feel free to share your own thoughts on this if you want to. i hope something like this is possible and even could happen some day. thanks everyone for your consideration
Hmm, some may find all these features valuable but I feel like the entire system falls apart if some people aren't careful to constantly update their statuses. If my friend is farming I would just ask them if they have a spot, not check their status which may or may not be current, and isn't going to tell me "we will have a spot for you in 10 minutes when the other person leaves".
The only status I personally need is afk. This is 2021 and we shouldn't get logged off if we afk for a few minutes and then it's a few minutes longer than we expected. We should be able to choose afk and then not be logged off for about an hour. Maybe half an hour at peak times, and longer at non-peak times. Put an afk icon over our head and an afk indicator on our friends' lists so they can see that we are afk.
It would also help to have some kind of message system so that when our friend is playing pet games instead of us getting a message that our friend is busy and did not receive our chat, it would be our friend is busy and our message was left. When the friend becomes available, they get "these messages were left for you" and then they see the chats. And the same for when we return from afk, so we won't miss the pms among any other chats that occurred while we were afk.
