Invisible mode or alternative friends list/white list

[Rafau]

Hello!

I would like to touch the subject of the topic ongoing in steam users mind for almost a decade if not longer, the invisibility mode.

Being invisible is almost essential if you have a lot of contacts in your list and want to play.... and you can't, because a lot of "friends" are storming you with messages so frequently, you can't focus on gameplay. The "sign off" option maybe works if you're a solitude worshipper, but what if you want to play multiplayer games with selected group of your friends? You can't, cause you are offline and becoming online for a second just to send an invitation is more like a stopgap than actual solution. Second problem lies within the messaging system, you may want to remain offline and chat with your (selected) friends in silence, but you still can't do it conveniently. as a person being signed off from a FL, you can go to a friends profile, click "send message" and whatever you write will instantly pop up at your friend's side, but if a friend will respond to an offline person, the message will not appear in chat window (despite it is opened and in front of a face), but in unread messages section, where you have to close your chat window or else it will not update it.

This is how i'm imagining invisible mode to work:

Invisible person can see other people same as in other online modes, he can send invitations, chat and watch broadcasts, everything same as being online, but being displayed as offline for your friends, your friends on the other side see you as offline and treat you as offline, which is, invite options are just greyed out as usual. It means no way to to join invisible person's game or watch a broadcast till the invisible side will send one. I would at least appreciate being able to message in realtime with pop up and notification sound at signed off person's side (not looking into unread messages).

Second mode - alternative friends list or whitelist

I think this one would be even more interesting and easier to incorporate than just being invisible and it's just as simple as having an whitelist for people you want to be visible as online, away or busy, then just having a switch to select if you want to be online using whitelist or not. It would solve a lot issues of several distractions caused by torrential rain of messages.
I alone don't have such problem, but i experienced the issue while playing with a friends with "popular" profiles, they tend to get lost in what they're doing, also being unable at times to play at all.

I'm looking forward to hear steam platform developers thoughts about mentioned issue and sink into deliberations about problems that can occur during implementating features.

[Rainwatcher]

Another possible implementation for something like this would be akin to G+'s 'circles' system. Have user definable sublists for different people that can have their statuses defined seperately. If I'm playing, say for example, DotA, I can have the DotA list set to Looking to Play if I'm looking to play DotA, but the Ark list set to busy, or offline if I'm not in the mood to play Ark.

G+'s Circles system is actually quite an interesting piece of design BTW, not everyone wants to deal with all their friends all of the time. Sometimes you just want to talk/play with your IRL friends, sometimes you just want to hang with your clan, sometimes you want to do both, sometimes you want to do neither. And currently I can't think of any other messageing service or social palyform that allows you to do this.

[Rafau]

Quite nice, but propably too complex and would create overall mess with people getting lost in the process of managing such list. Not sure if this would be perfect, but having an option to open a second temporal list where you're "dragging" only those you wish to be with ATM would be great, then you're signing off from global list and you appear only online for those in temporal list. All others can be offline for me too, but this would require for Valve to fix also accesibility of friends profiles while being signed off.

[Rafau]

Escrito originalmente por Start_Running:

The lengths people go through to avoid their 'friends'. :P

This time i have to admit that there is a fraction of truth in your statement, there are just times when you just want to avoid your 'friends' without explaining everybody why for whatever reason you can came up.

[Rainwatcher]

Hmmm, perhaps...although it could be just as simple as you describe. Have a global list like the friends list is now, then the ability to make these temporary lists as you describe. Then have the abiltiy to save those temporary lists for later use, and have more than one of them running at a time.

With this method, one could set their 'global' list to offline, then click their 'IRL' list and select online to be online to that list, then click the DotA list and select Looking to Play. And since the frineds list maintains its state between logouts, these sublists could do the same.

Any unsaved lists would be temporary, clearing themselves on logout from a given device.