Urk answers lots of post-beta questions on IGN (Destiny)

by Tails , Across the Pond, Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 20:31 (3557 days ago) @ kapowaz

So; the routes to adding somebody as a friend are:

1. You see me playing and want to add me to your friends list; you add me by character name
2. You already know my platform tag (or I'm a friend of a friend) and so you add me by platform tag

Something to remember about the "friends list" in the Blizzard games you refer to later is that it is actually two logical lists managed via the same in-game interface. When I come across someone in World of Warcraft, I can add that character as a friend, in which case we only see each other when we're online on those two specific characters, or I can add someone as a Battle.net friend in which case I can see them whatever character they're playing (or indeed if they're playing Starcraft 2 instead).

So in your first example, I added you by character name. Hang on a second, I didn't want you to see me logging on to my other character to play with my other friends or watching My Little Pony on Netflix, I only added you on that character! So do we begin maintaining per-character friends lists in addition to the platform-wide one? I'd imagine this to be a pretty large chunk of engineer time, not to mention all the extra UI/testing/certification involved.

So let's say we just ignore that expectation of friends added by character name being per-character, maybe it's not even an expectation at all for many people (I've no idea). When I added your character "Dave the Warlock", "kapowaz" shows up in my friends list. Hang on, who the hell is "kapowaz" again? I recognise you as "Dave the Warlock". Perhaps I was notified when I added Dave that kapowaz was the gamertag behind him, and perhaps we add character name into console rich presence - e.g. "kapowaz playing Destiny as Dave the Warlock (level 15)". Though of course this doesn't work when you're playing another character (or heaven forbid, not playing Destiny at all). And what shows up on the in-game friends list? I recognise some people by their character name and some people by their platform-wide name (or even their real name). Perhaps again we display "kapowaz - Dave the Warlock"? But remember that presumably, all that displays in-game is "Dave the Warlock" above your head? Either we display the connection between Dave and kapowaz somewhere readily accessible or I have to keep that connection in my head, easy for someone I just added but less so for someone I met in a strike 3 months ago and never saw again. And none of that helps when you log in to "Barry the Titan" and I can't see "Dave the Warlock" anywhere on my in-game list at all, online or offline.

And all this is without exploring other implementation details, like whether character names are unique worldwide or not? Because if not, when I add "Dave"... which Dave do I add? How do I tell who's who? And even if they are unique, would you lock names even after they're deleted? Because if you delete Dave and someone else grabs the name, I'll actually be adding someone other than who I thought.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done. It's definitely arguable a few of the problems I outlined above are even problems at all. I'm just suggesting that the analogy of the Blizzard friends list doesn't fit perfectly (Diablo 3 on consoles would be a slightly closer analogy - what does that do? I've no idea myself) and that some of the sacrifices you'd be prepared to make at the expense of simplicity may not be ones the devs agreed with :)

Disclaimers:
1. This is all off the top of my head. I have no more knowledge of this specific subject than you do.
2. You may or may not have named your Warlock "Dave" and your Titan "Barry".