Improvements to Social Aspects

I am posting this thread for the purpose of adding some suggestions for improving the current social infrastructure. I primarily use Henchies because I find it hard to find decent players to play with among the masses of spamming in the local chat and I'm sure others feel similarly to me.

1. Reduce trade spamming in the local chat by automatically transfering text with the sequences of WTB, W T B, WT B, WTS, selling, etc.. to the trade window. There are always new tricks players find to spam within the local window, but something needs to be done to reduce this.

1.5 Adding an "Auction House" I've always thought was a good idea. There may be issues with this if blizzard has the technology copyprotected, but there are other systems that would work just as well, that could be implemented in game to reduce players from having to sell their wares in a trade window.

2. Add a search and find feature. I played with a fun, cool person a few weeks ago, but ended up disconnecting before I could add them to my friends list. I knew the first name and the general essence of the second name, but through my 2 hours of trial and error, came up with nothing. If I could have simply searched by partial first name, I probably would have found them. Personally, I thought this technology was a given in todays games, but hopefully it's simply on the backburner waiting to be completed.

3. The current system of searching for people within mission areas works alright, but it would be better if we could simply have a list and see who is what. If your group needs a warrior, simply pull up the local search of who is in that area and is available, then click on them and send an invite. An individual can set their status to LFG or GLF and have the number of their current party members displayed next to it.

4. Allow guild allies to see who is online within another guild. Make new friends from other guilds and play with people who will have like interests as yourself.

5. I think an RP server is a great idea. I play games to get away from real life but it becomes difficult to immerse myself in a story when the local chat is constantly filled with "ZOMGIPWNDDATBIOTCH." I simply want to play with people who will play as their characters and act in character in a general chat window.

6. Allow players to see where and what district a friend is in within their friends list. I find it simply annoying when I have to ask where a friend is in order to go there and switch districts in order to form a group. If there were a toggle where the map would display the number of districts on a clicked city, then people could go right to the exact district the first time. Or, better yet, simply right click on your friend within your list and bring up a menu where you can choose to fast travel right to their location and district. Fast, efficient, and fun for those who have very limited amounts of time to play.

7. Of course there should be privacy controls. The current ones are sufficient, but they could always be better. I dont really have suggestions for this until some of the previous suggestions are fulfilled.

8. Finally, an ingame voice program. This could help to streamline the bandwidth that is used by having 2 different programs active simultaneously. I've seen forums where this is requested, so I thought I'd post it here.

This is a simple list, but I hope others will add to it. This list is formulated on the PvE side of things. I have not played PvP myself, so I dont know how those systems are in terms of quality and functionality.

Please feel free to add to this post and let us and Anet know how we feel.

/signed

Millara Centropy

Something like this already exists; if you click on a town on the map a window appears with a drop down box with a list of districts. Still, I've personally always wanted to see where a friend is exactly on the friend list as well. I like the other ideas too .

/Signed

I would recomand looking into the system in Dungeon&Dragon:Stormmach. I am very impress of the vocie chat, the LFG menu, and the action house they have.

Also I would hope to add more to the chat system... making it more like a AIM window instead of command line type of thing....

oh.. and add to that... could/might also add a Tarven district (can call something else), where would be a space that is design more for social interaction. The major town, outposts, and mission area don't seem to full fill that role too well. (would be like a smaller outpost.. but in-side of the town)