Don't Make the New Friends' List Worthless

[Dragonhyde]

Eh sometimes you want to be anon from people who have you on their friends list as well....

[Idahe]

The problem with the survey was that the two responses were:

1) I want to be anonymous and 2) I want to keep track of my friends

These two options are all about what the respondee wants, and are not equivalent. The second response should have been: "I want my friends to know when I'm on". At least then both responses would pertain to the respondee having gone anonymous. The survey results are meaningless due to the insanely low responding population and by virtue of the fact that the responses are unequal in value. I think they knew that going in, the survey was just there to provide the appearance of customer participation. Or if there were overwhelming sentiment to keep tabs on other people who want to be left alone, they may have gone that way.

That being said, they made the right choice. You go anon when you don't want to be bothered, by anyone. If YOU want to contact a friend, go ahead, send them a tell. That will be the choice of the person who went anon. Sometimes I want to hide from my guild or my brother or buddies. Maybe I want to jump on quick to check the auctions and do not want to get dragged or guilted into going on a 3 hour run of quests, when I really wanted to sit down and watch Heroes later...

This type of implementation gives the individual player the freedom to choose with whom he wishes to interact as the result of a very minor change to the system. All those clamoring for the ability to keep tabs on thier friends and associates, or who want convoluted and complex changes to the friends screen appear to be selfish.

Player MeMeMe: "I want to know when my friend ClericX is online even when she wants to be alone because she's my friend and we love eachother so much that I can not imagine a situation when we shoudl ever be apart because I added her to my Friends list!! And I need heals."

ClericX: "Uh, no. Who are you again?"

Anonymous should be anonymous unless you choose to /tell someone you are there. This is fine, this is good, this is the correct choice.

[Mad_Bombardier]

2 check boxes.

/anonymous = name off the who list, but visible to friends/guild.
/invisible = shows you as offline.

[ChaosTheEternal]

2 check boxes.

/anonymous = name off the who list, but visible to friends/guild.
/invisible = shows you as offline.

Perfect. Caters to both groups, and it probably wouldn't be too hard to implement as they already have one option of it done and likely have plans on how to change it to the other option (if it's not already done an in QA).

[Coldin]

The problem with the survey was that the two responses were:

1) I want to be anonymous and 2) I want to keep track of my friends

These two options are all about what the respondee wants, and are not equivalent. The second response should have been: "I want my friends to know when I'm on". At least then both responses would pertain to the respondee having gone anonymous. The survey results are meaningless due to the insanely low responding population and by virtue of the fact that the responses are unequal in value. I think they knew that going in, the survey was just there to provide the appearance of customer participation. Or if there were overwhelming sentiment to keep tabs on other people who want to be left alone, they may have gone that way.

That being said, they made the right choice. You go anon when you don't want to be bothered, by anyone. If YOU want to contact a friend, go ahead, send them a tell. That will be the choice of the person who went anon. Sometimes I want to hide from my guild or my brother or buddies. Maybe I want to jump on quick to check the auctions and do not want to get dragged or guilted into going on a 3 hour run of quests, when I really wanted to sit down and watch Heroes later...

This type of implementation gives the individual player the freedom to choose with whom he wishes to interact as the result of a very minor change to the system. All those clamoring for the ability to keep tabs on thier friends and associates, or who want convoluted and complex changes to the friends screen appear to be selfish.

Player MeMeMe: "I want to know when my friend ClericX is online even when she wants to be alone because she's my friend and we love eachother so much that I can not imagine a situation when we shoudl ever be apart because I added her to my Friends list!! And I need heals."

ClericX: "Uh, no. Who are you again?"

Anonymous should be anonymous unless you choose to /tell someone you are there. This is fine, this is good, this is the correct choice.

Saying it's selfish to want to know if people can be true. But so is wanting to be completely hidden from the world. They're both selfish.

You say that if you want someone to know you're there, you'll send a tell. Well that's all fine and good if you don't want people to know you're around playing the game. But other people would like some people to know they're playing, they just wouldn't want every Joe and plat farmer on the street to know they are there.

The thing is, if they implement the Friend's List with anonymous, everyone that doesn't want to be hassled by people outside their friends will have to /tell everyone they know that they're on. That defeats the whole purpose of the Friends' List. There might as well be no Friends' List, because a sheet of paper would do just the same thing.

This shouldn't be all black and white. We should have to decide between invisible to everyone, or visible to everyone. We at least need a third choice. Invisible to Who List but not to Friend's List. There's no reason that wouldn't be hard to implement either. That's what they already have in place, and they're already working to get the other system in place too. So just give us the option to do all three.

And one more thing to the people who are afraid that plat farmers and annoying people will go list every cleric in the server. There's a limit of 150 people that can be put in the Friend's List. That will stop the plat farmers from abusing it, and should stop most people from making a habit of listing all of one person's alts. And you can always squelch someone if they /tell you repeatedly when you log on.

2 check boxes.

/anonymous = name off the who list, but visible to friends/guild.
/invisible = shows you as offline.

Yes, that would be a good way to please both crowds.

[Idahe]

2 check boxes.

/anonymous = name off the who list, but visible to friends/guild.
/invisible = shows you as offline.

or, 1 checkbox
/anonymous = shows you as offline

You type in gulid chat: "Hi Everyone"
Guild member: "Oh I thought you were offline"
You "Nope just /anon"
Guildie "want to run some quests"
You "Sure, that is why I typed in gulid chat despite being /anon, I wanted to interact with those in my guild, but not others"

Or, you log on and check your friends list.
You "Hmm, FighterY is usually on now, wonder where he is"
/tell fightery You there bud?
System: FighterY is unavaliable
FighterY: Hey, I'm /anon, was sick of BardW's attitude last night, want to join my group?

Wait, thats exactly what they are doing. Its an easy, effective change. Its not too much effort to get in touch with people who want to talk to you. If you get no response, either they are offline or want to be left alone. Adding additional checkboxes to prevent maybe 10-15 sec of search time on the part of players to find thier friends would be wasteful and not a good use of development time.

[Ghost_Aeon]

I have an idea. How about a general anonymous button and a friend anonymous button. Maybe sometimes I want to be seen by only my friends. Maybe sometimes I want them to have to look for me on the who list. Maybe sometimes I don't want to be seen by anyone, which means we need a guild anonymous button.

Hmm... I'm confused. Am I being sarcastic or serious there? I meant to be serious, but I think it came out sracastic.

[Kisaragi]

Although the new features might not show your level, class, and such, it will show notes for each. So while I can see where your concern comes in, you can always type something like the following into your notes;

Lv/Class/Build/Rating for each person to help you keep track, and then send them a tell anyway.

Strictly speaking I don't tend to PUG much anymore, a single person can destroy a entire mission. I tend to only do missions with guildies, and people they trust. Often times we run parties as just the guild. I'm not too worried about my friend's list. It'll be nice to see what level/class everyone is, yet I'm not worried about people not wanting to be listed.

I believe it will list if your friends are online/offline, you just won't see them from the whois list. I could be wrong though.

[Ghost_Aeon]

I believe it will list if your friends are online/offline, you just won't see them from the whois list. I could be wrong though.

No, that's what it currently does now. The problem is plat farmers and other people you'd rather not group with are friending you to see when you're on any time all the time.

[Xalted_Vol]

This is a social game and if you do not want to be social you do not have to be. I put people on my friends list that I would not want to group with so I remember thier names it would suck to ask permission just to put a name on a list we are not the NSA-----or are we

[jaitee]

This is a social game and if you do not want to be social you do not have to be. I put people on my friends list that I would not want to group with so I remember thier names it would suck to ask permission just to put a name on a list we are not the NSA-----or are we

i also do this, i put people on my friend list for a not to group with kinda deal, and add a comment beside it, if you want to know if your friend is on, ask them to take anon off, i once had a friend who all of a sudden one day turned on anon, all i did was ask her, can you turn it off? so i can know when your on, and she stopped using it, but now i use it 24/7

anon means completely invisible, except for LFM/guild, so that bob doesnt bug you, because you owe him a good night kiss

[Coldin]

Ack, my thread was necroed. Are people just looking for months old threads to post to?

Btw, I still say there at least needs to be various levels anon. At the very least anon to everyone, and anon to who's list only.