Oh please... (Destiny)

by kapowaz, Thursday, August 21, 2014, 08:09 (3547 days ago) @ PackLeader89

But just to pick your mind, because I am freaking curious today, how would you do that?

If you had Bungie designers in front of you, how would you apply a function to gameplay that allow you to spontaneously communicate with players around you?

I am curious because I don't believe in complaining without providing solutions. No one answers to that. What are your actual solutions for that problem you perceive?

There's a common misconception amongst non-developers that the idea is everything, and that once you come up with a great idea all you need to do is build it and you'll have something great. That's simply not the case — ideas are worthless on their own, and even when you think you have a good idea, there's a good chance it won't work. Former-Blizzard lead systems designer Greg Street tweeted something the other day that I think is very relevant here:

Sage words from a friend/colleague: Game design is 10% ideas, 10% implementation, and 80% figuring out why your implementation didn't work.

So, with all that in mind, the simple answer to your question is: I don't know. I have a bunch of ideas, but none that I'd be 100% confident would just work, so I'm certainly not going to give you a satisfactory answer here, because I'd have to sell it on the idea alone, untested and unproven.

But some ideas I think would be a good starting point: proximity voice chat. Flagging yourself as being in a ‘sociable’ state, which allows other players in the same state to chat directly with you. A richer system of emotes and gestures. In-game message-boards where you can look for a clan to join, or recruit new members.

All of the above have to be very carefully considered, though, because the flip side to more free-flowing communication is the risk that antisocial players will abuse those tools. But just because there is a risk of abuse doesn't mean there's no happy medium, and throwing your hands up and saying just let players communicate outside of the game is a cop-out, because you sure as hell aren't preventing abusive behaviour if it's completely outside your control.