search

ValveSoftware / steam-for-linux

Issue tracking for the Steam for Linux beta client
4.23k stars 174 forks source link

Invite multiple friends at once #4025

Open rkfg opened 9 years ago

rkfg commented 9 years ago

Ok, this is not really a Steam for Linux enhancement proposal, but I've struggled long enough to find anything to implement this feature by myself and failed.

So, the main idea is to allow inviting several friends to your game at once. It may look like an anti-feature that's easy to spam and abuse but consider the following first:

  1. There could be an ability to opt-out from this mass-invite so you won't see these invites at all except when someone invites you personally. Also a filter could be implemented so you can opt-out from some popular games (like Dota 2 or CS:GO) and still be available for inviting to your favorite but not so popular game. Or you may disable mass-invites for some of your annoying friends.
  2. The opposite way: this feature may be disabled by default so you should opt-in instead to become available for such an invitation. There may be a whitelist for games that you accept mass invitations for and a blacklist for friends you don't want to be invited to.
  3. Such invites are only visible if you bought the game AND have it installed. Otherwise they're filtered out for you. Many people have only several games installed and they wouldn't want to be invited to something they have but don't even play.
  4. Inviter can cast the invites by tags, not just to everyone. Or select several friends manually with Shift/Ctrl and invite them at once.
  5. Another option is to invite only those who're already in this exact game OR are online and available (not Busy, Away, Snooze etc.) AND NOT playing another game.
  6. Don't know if it's easy to do but invite only those who're NOT playing with you already. I guess it's maddening to invite people who're already here. The invite feature seems to be working only for games that support Steam Server API so it's sufficient to query IP:port and compare it to those of yourself to exclude already connected players. For now if I want to invite new players and don't annoy already connected I have to manually check on what server they're playing before inviting. This could be filtered out on the receiving side as well.
  7. If you already received an invite to the game for a server, other invites to the same server and the same game are discarded. This is to prevent flood from players on that server.
  8. Optionally, discard invites to the same game regardless of the server after receiving the first invite until you close or accept it. First invite wins your attention.
  9. If nothing helps you can always unfriend the abuser and never see them again.

I really look forward for this to be implemented, I belong to the Natural Selection 2 community and often we need to fill up a server. Inviting 50 online friends that may be ready to play is quite annoying. And what's worse I should close the popups ("Invitation to %friendname% was sent") after that.

Based on these threads that deserved more attention than they've got:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3273888 http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1034496 http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1088335 http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3249448

I hope here on GitHub this issue would be at least reviewed. Crossing my fingers.

sizeofbool commented 9 years ago

Create Steam Community group and invite your 50 friends and\or more players. Create event notifications when you want to gather players and those who want to play will see them and come in game or at least join group chat. This solution is working already for many games with weak multiplayer playerbase, like Strike Vector for an example.

rkfg commented 9 years ago

@sizeofbool we already have a group but your proposed solution requires actions from all players. They have to join the group chat each time they start Steam, I doubt anyone would bother. There may be several games I'm interested in, it's not convenient to join many chats or groups. As for events, not everyone can create them in the group, they don't allow easy joining and they're not personal. I, for instance, tend to ignore such annoying popups and just close them. Invite is something much more appealing.

It's not that the game has weak playerbase, it's just sparse. We play every evening, there's no need to create an event, but repopulating a server is a tedious task.