Friends System

[Rated B for Banana]

Am I the only one who thinks the friends system is really annoying as it is. I would like to add friends for my account not per character. I'd say they should just copy the Guildwars friends system, and copy the guildwars chat system while at it. I do really like Hellgate and I guess the updates will fix all this. In a way all these flaws are good, as Hellgate isnt as addicting as it could be atm.

[Eternalchaos]

:) yeah the friends system is like that in alot of games. WoW uses the same friends system (just you can add pepole while they are offline)

I wouldnt' worry to much about it. The system will work its way out in the end. However; as it stands now it honestly is a pile of crap. You can't add people when they are offline, and you gotta add em name by name. They also need to create a unique color for whispers from friends vs whispers from strangers.

[Spearthrower]

It's a bit of a conundrum.

1) What if your friends have characters they want to remain anonymous to you?
2) What if you want to make a character unbeknownst to your friends?
3) What about RPers?

Sorry - never seen the GW system.... I've only played EQ and WoW of MMO's

[Eternalchaos]

Well, in GW the friends system was account wise. If you went on someone's friends list or in a Guild, all your characters will appear on the friends list (the char you were invited to the list on is the main.. when logged off THAT NAME will always show up.. when logged on to a random char that name takes its place). Say you invite EternalChaos... but I then log onto my char TheHealingBagel. Your friends list will look like TheHealingBagle(EternalChaos) your guild list will just list Healingbagle. I log off, it shows "eternalchaos" is now logged off.

For GW it worked well because all your characters became part of the guild which allowed for balanced PvP. Tabula Rasa originally took this approach but changed it to how WoW and HG:L is now. This is insta FAIL in my book and they quickly patched it to fix the giant PvP flaw. I'm in Guild A... :) because it is individually listed, I can create a s2nd character in hiding.. join Guild B .. Now I can act as a spy for guild B on what guild A is doing.

TR did it at first and it caused PvP to be an attrocity. Now when in a PvP guild, you can only join that guild, or none at all. I perfer the WoW system of restrictions; however I think the GW add all their chars to your list (integrated) is the best. I mean wtf.. you wanted to be added to the guys friendslist, why hide a character?

** An option could be that when adding the person to your friends list.. it prompts that person if they wish to be added or not **

[Sp3tSnAz]

Yeah Im not a fan of the character based system that it is now... same for the guilds...

I would much rather an account based system....

[lockwoodx]

It was account based back in beta. There is still one guy I added long ago who logs on himself or any of his alts and the game tells me. The new ones.... not soooo much.

[the_wolf]

Never played much MMO before, and in EVE (at least up until the last time I logged in) they use per-character system but an account-based system looks like the one making most sense.

Furthermore, HG:L is not the kind of free-for-all game when it comes to PvP. I can understand the reason EVE uses character-based friends system. It's simply because the EVE universe's politics allow it (backstabbing, spying and such) and it's simply free-for-all; which is not the case in HG:L.

EDIT: The discussion in this thread doesn't sound like a PoD at all.

[lockwoodx]

EDIT: The discussion in this thread doesn't sound like a PoD at all.

http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/3858/11263107884743sh9mccw1.gif (http://imageshack.us)

[Spearthrower]

I mean wtf.. you wanted to be added to the guys friendslist, why hide a character?


Why not? I guess I'm from the older generation of MMO players where you had characters IN a guild, characters OUT of a guild, maybe some PvP chars, some RP chars etc etc... why the hell would I want someone to track what I am doing all the time? They meet me as "Spearthrower", the thrower barb or equivalent.... why should they be able to know I have an alter-ego of "Sharon the Stripper Gnome" at the weekends?

None of you have mentioned roleplay! :p

[lockwoodx]

None of you have mentioned roleplay! :p

And why would we want to? /shivers

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/8744/otakon043ih2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Hellgate can't have role playing unless it is in a very strict guild. The game is just too instanced and population too fragmented to make anything else work.

they kept telling me the glasses were ruining it but I was too busy doing my happy dance

[Spearthrower]

And why would we want to? /shivers


I dunno.... maybe because it's a RPG ? :o :D


See? Just no point to interacting with other people when they don't even want to play along! :-P

SP rocks! :cool:

[Molehs_Mum]

If they had it such that any character name that "I" add to one of my chars should populate to all, so that if I don't know your specicif characters name then I don't have it in my friends list, but if I know that Yewman_Jones is a freinds of my char Sparky, that Yewman_Jones will be a friend to all of my chars...

[backfir3]

Why not? I guess I'm from the older generation of MMO players where you had characters IN a guild, characters OUT of a guild, maybe some PvP chars, some RP chars etc etc... why the hell would I want someone to track what I am doing all the time? They meet me as "Spearthrower", the thrower barb or equivalent.... why should they be able to know I have an alter-ego of "Sharon the Stripper Gnome" at the weekends?


Then perhaps an option to create a character in different channels? The channels would act as different accounts as the characters do currently. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to implement.

Something like this would also be pretty forward thinking as (as far as I'm aware, and please correct me if I'm wrong) every game before has chosen either account or character based communications strictly.




None of you have mentioned roleplay!

Stripper Gnomes I've no worry about, but serious RPers (for some unkown reason) give me the shivery creeps.

Please, if you're going to use talk like this then open another forum account for the purpose so I can ignore it ;)

[Eternalchaos]

Well.. see if they do it so you can hide a character; PvP is just going to be ruined. It will be so easy to create moles and spies to scatter all over. You don't like the team that is your rival.. set upa mole to have em infiltrate their guild :)

Whiel this is how reality works... I doubt many of you would want a mole inside your guild who could possibly fubar the guild. Imagine guild storage... some guy with access tot he storage ends up being a mole.. steals the goods and leaves the guild giving the gear to his true guild ^_^ you'll be crying for account based then. TR almost immediately locked out all players from joining 2 PvP guilds when within 1 week of official PvP beta testing, people had set up spies and were tracking people .

In fact, when in a PvP match you were restricted to add "friends" to your list if that friend was currently in a Clan War with you. People had been using it to spawn camp and stalk players. To get around this people created alts who weren't in the PvP guild (becaue TR hasn't forced all your toons into a PvP guild) and they added players that way. Dude the guild I was in.. all officers had 2 alts 1 for storage purposes(until guild storage) and 1 for tracking. We fight a guild and log their names.. they add em to their non guild alt..then they sat on the alt and told us where everyone was and we'd gank em. :) Soundsl ike total BS dont it? Pro Clans in that game went by stalking tactics where we knew where you were.. and we swarmed. A large guild could easily hit 7-10 members of a guild at once :P ... well HG:L might end up that way.

While yes this is a SP game; if FSS wants to create a solid "guild based" PvP and Guild war system, they can't allow you to join multiple guilds, or spy upon other guilds by creating a nonguild toon. GW did this becasue it creates PvP harmony. The observation mode remember was 20mins delayed becasue it prevented guildies from joining observation mode and giving away strats and positions. You were always 20mins out of sync with the fight. Only thing you could tell was what skills the enemy was using (but by 20mins if you didn'tknow the build you just shouldn't be in PvP :P )

What FSS ends up doing with the Guilds and Friends is going to be a sign of how they should treat PvP. You can't hold serious, hard core Guild vs Guild raid style matches or large scale PvP if you can easily join other guilds at the same time, or create tracker characters. Look at GW.. they let you originally pick who you wanted to fight for rank.. within a month it was so abused they made it random :) and then randomizing it was so abused they had to limit randomization to within X rankings of your team because rank 2's were fighting rank 3000 teams :P (mind you they kept the ability to pick who to fight available, it just no longer holds ranking potential)

[backfir3]

Well.. see if they do it so you can hide a character; PvP is just going to be ruined. It will be so easy to create moles and spies to scatter all over. You don't like the team that is your rival.. set upa mole to have em infiltrate their guild :)

Whiel this is how reality works... I doubt many of you would want a mole inside your guild who could possibly fubar the guild. Imagine guild storage... some guy with access tot he storage ends up being a mole.. steals the goods and leaves the guild giving the gear to his true guild ^_^ you'll be crying for account based then. TR almost immediately locked out all players from joining 2 PvP guilds when within 1 week of official PvP beta testing, people had set up spies and were tracking people .

In fact, when in a PvP match you were restricted to add "friends" to your list if that friend was currently in a Clan War with you. People had been using it to spawn camp and stalk players. To get around this people created alts who weren't in the PvP guild (becaue TR hasn't forced all your toons into a PvP guild) and they added players that way. Dude the guild I was in.. all officers had 2 alts 1 for storage purposes(until guild storage) and 1 for tracking. We fight a guild and log their names.. they add em to their non guild alt..then they sat on the alt and told us where everyone was and we'd gank em. :) Soundsl ike total BS dont it? Pro Clans in that game went by stalking tactics where we knew where you were.. and we swarmed. A large guild could easily hit 7-10 members of a guild at once :P ... well HG:L might end up that way.

While yes this is a SP game; if FSS wants to create a solid "guild based" PvP and Guild war system, they can't allow you to join multiple guilds, or spy upon other guilds by creating a nonguild toon. GW did this becasue it creates PvP harmony. The observation mode remember was 20mins delayed becasue it prevented guildies from joining observation mode and giving away strats and positions. You were always 20mins out of sync with the fight. Only thing you could tell was what skills the enemy was using (but by 20mins if you didn'tknow the build you just shouldn't be in PvP :P )

What FSS ends up doing with the Guilds and Friends is going to be a sign of how they should treat PvP. You can't hold serious, hard core Guild vs Guild raid style matches or large scale PvP if you can easily join other guilds at the same time, or create tracker characters. Look at GW.. they let you originally pick who you wanted to fight for rank.. within a month it was so abused they made it random :) and then randomizing it was so abused they had to limit randomization to within X rankings of your team because rank 2's were fighting rank 3000 teams :P

Then perhaps they could restrict it to one guild per game mode (normal, elite, hardcore) but also allow optional channels for guildless and annonymous players.

[lockwoodx]

I dunno.... maybe because it's a RPG ? :o :D


See? Just no point to interacting with other people when they don't even want to play along! :-P

SP rocks! :cool:

I'd say HGL is 1000% more a OFPS than a RPG any day of the week. The only role you truly assume is "loot farmer".

[Ave]

Think b4KF!я3 could have something there.

I am not a fan of non-account based guilds/friends for a plethora of reasons, main one is the problem Eternalchaos laid out. But also theres griefing to remember. Some idiot irritates you endlessly you ignore him, he goes plays alt and sits there whispering you, you ignore, he creates another alt etc etc
Not hugely likely granted but possible, and annoying.

So why not have the friends system account wide, but just give each account the ability to part of only one guild. So you could have all your alts in it, or save one or two for solo play.

This may satisfy both camps then.

That said id prefer account based, its builds better guild dynamics as you tend to interact more than you would when only one alt is a member.

[lockwoodx]

Think b4KF!я3 could have something there.

I am not a fan of non-account based guilds/friends for a plethora of reasons, main one is the problem Eternalchaos laid out. But also theres griefing to remember. Some idiot irritates you endlessly you ignore him, he goes plays alt and sits there whispering you, you ignore, he creates another alt etc etc
Not hugely likely granted but possible, and annoying.

So why not have the friends system account wide, but just give each account the ability to part of only one guild. So you could have all your alts in it, or save one or two for solo play.

This may satisfy both camps then.

That said id prefer account based, its builds better guild dynamics as you tend to interact more than you would when only one alt is a member.


I said earlier it used to be account wide. It's only a matter of them switching it back. Hell I remember when /ignore worked too and didn't forget who was on your list every time you loged on. I still have two people from beta who it remembers to ignore every time I log in and I just sigh wondering where it all went wrong.

[backfir3]

I said earlier it used to be account wide. It's only a matter of them switching it back.

Nono, no going backwards! Onward and upward only please!

My suggestion is fine; These ARE the droids you are looking for!

[Alex]

Yeah I'd like a buddy chat.

[Eternalchaos]

Nono, no going backwards! Onward and upward only please!

My suggestion is fine; These ARE the droids you are looking for!

rofl !!!

but yeah your point was a good idea. One guild per game type. a Hard Core character can't really interact with normal character; and Elite can't interact with others. So you got 3 guilds.. Normal/NM/Hell HC Elite

That would work fine. It might be complicated to code so that when you make a new char for normal/hm/hell it auto joins the appropriate guild.

btw: I am your father Lockwood

[Mercurio]

Why not? I guess I'm from the older generation of MMO players where you had characters IN a guild, characters OUT of a guild, maybe some PvP chars, some RP chars etc etc... why the hell would I want someone to track what I am doing all the time? They meet me as "Spearthrower", the thrower barb or equivalent.... why should they be able to know I have an alter-ego of "Sharon the Stripper Gnome" at the weekends?

None of you have mentioned roleplay! :p

GuildWars is not character-based but player-based, and about PvP, you create a new character every time your Guild/Team change its strategy, or when you want just to experiment. Character based Guild/Friends list in GW would be a total mess ^^''

About RolePlay, I think the account-based friend list doesn't affect it. (I've played paper RP with different characters but with the same friends ;) ), but, the account-based guild system doesn't allows guilds to be "RP entities" (i.e: a guild of Paladins).

(anyway I'm not saying account-based friend list is the best for HGL or every game. If you have few character you don't need account-based guilds, and HGL hasn't a fully-developed PVP mode yet...)

[Wobbley]

They should give the ability to base friends on accounts aswell. It was like that in the beta and alpha, no clue why it got changed.

[lockwoodx]

Yeah I'd like a buddy chat.

Awww do you need a hug?