PC vs. console (Destiny)

by kidtsunami , Atlanta, GA, Thursday, July 24, 2014, 05:16 (3786 days ago) @ kapowaz

I'm confident that those channels are going to be the companion app and bungie.net. I can't think of a way someone could recruit in game without being annoying outside of fireteaming up over the corpse of a spider tank.

The problem with those is they're outside the game, and that kind of social interaction really ought to happen inside the game. Viewing stats and having lengthy written conversations make sense as things for a companion app or website, but clan recruitment is one of the pillars of social interaction in a game like this.

People putting up clan banners could get out of hand right quick.

Requesting voice conversation? Just fireteam up while exploring.

If you're already in a fireteam then it makes sense you might talk about recruitment, but the idea with these is that they're something that can happen in the quieter downtime between action in the field; the Tower is perfect for this (especially as there's so little else to do in the Tower anyway!). I'm not sure banners would get too out of hand — The Tower already limits how many people appear at any given time (check your radar vs how many other guardians you can actually see). Also if you have to stay within a short distance of your clan banner or it disappears I'm sure that could help encourage correct usage.

Still, I'm spitballing here — I'm sure there are even better ways to do this.

Edit: forgot to mention; the other purpose of the clan banner is that it reverses the usual recruitment process — rather than catering to players who want to join a clan, it's a mechanism for players who want to recruit people to join their clan. I think the game needs both.

I wonder if this could be resolved with a bespoke place outside of the normal path in the Tower (like the couch basement area). You walk up to one of a few available stands and press 'X' to recruit. On a screen behind where you'd be standing it shows your Clan Name, # of members, and provides you an interface for managing voice chat. Then someone can walk up and press X to engage you and you can start chatting. The recruiter can subsequently silence anyone to keep people from just harassing others interested in joining a clan.

Given how ridiculously slick everything else in Destiny is, I imagine this is a tough problem for them to solve appropriately.