As a disclaimer, this has nothing to do with any type of marriage, adoption, etc. None of that... It's relating to the new guild changes.
Many people have complained that the new limit to only joining 5 guilds has restricted them from accessing multiple groups of their friends and chatting with them. In response to that, I posted:
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If you guys really utilize guilds as friend storage or some form of group chat then iClassic should legitimize the old/dead families trend (like how I uselessly tag Enguard in my name).
It could be like a guild except it just appends something to your name (or not?) and has no additional effect other than giving you another chat stream where you can talk to all of them, similar to guild chat. Can only join one family. Wouldn't even have to be a limit to how many people are in each family since there's no real benefit other than social purposes. IDK. I'm sure this would remedy needing to be in 15 different friend guilds when you could just put them all in a family.
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So, that idea is broken down as:
- Create a family
- The family offers no other functionality in game other than offering you another chat stream and (optionally) displaying your family (either in name or in profile)
- Leaders have the ability to invite an infinite number of other people to the family and kick members
- Members have the ability to disable family chat and leave the family
As you see to the left of guild chat in that screenshot, it'd give you a chat stream at all times that you're a part of the family. As mentioned in the list before, there could be an option to turn it on or off (since we aren't always in the mood to read through spam). I'm not sure how cluttered this would be on certain devices.
As for how families are displayed in game, there is quite a lot of open profile space:
The cross-stitched area above would be just fine to display something like "Family: Enguard". Clicking on the family name could simply bring up a list of the members? That's just fluff, not even necessary honestly. Alternatively, it could display in player names with some distinct effect to differentiate that it's an official "family tag" rather than just text appended to the name, like:
That's probably not the best or most distinct text effect to give it, but you can see how the family name glows a bit and sets it apart from just standard nickname text. It wouldn't need to be mandatory that this is shown in your name.
There are a lot of other ways you can fluff this up, but I don't really see the point in overdoing it. It'd give people access to chat with their friends without relying on the guild system and it'd be something you can easily turn on/off. Families would essentially be nothing more than a group chat, way to show yourself as a part of a group of friends, and a new distinction for social guilds without imposing any gameplay limitations.
I don't think it needs to be anything complicated or crazy. Anyway, post what other ideas you have.