For being advertised as so overly community-friendly, the game is anything but this. I won’t go into kingdom-related grievances anymore, that’s done from my side. And the screenshot shown is the best proof that the system is broken at this point and has probably been ignored for weeks/months.
But as described in the topic, the friends function is absolutely worthless except for the fact that you can explicitly invite them for coops; beyond that there are no advantages at all, neither for players nor for the accepted ones:
No online function
No PM/separate chat window option
No trading possibility
No profiting by (invisible) selection like with minions → percentage of resource loot gained (this would especially benefit new players who have just discovered the game for themselves)
On the last point, I’m sorry to say wisely that many newbies aren’t accepted as friends in the first place because there is NO benefit for either side. However, it’s not obvious at first glance to anyone who asks, and I can imagine that something like this can often lead to personal misunderstandings.
With my personal experience, I can definitely expect service to the (hopefully wanted) community from a so-called live service game.
I have often also wondered what is the real point of this ability? It doesn’t really do anything that is worthwhile. I am just going to be honest and say that when I get friend requests I deny them because it is really of no use.
Being a gacha/lootbox style game at its heart, a bunch of those functions are never going to happen (such as trading between players). Devs don’t allow PMs in their other live-service game, and are not going to allow them here either.
That said,
I’m in full agreement with you. The whole co-op/friends concept is still back-burnered and there is no compelling reason to run co-op today. The introductions of Seasons and later the Archive eliminated the primary reason to run co-op mode. The only currently offered incentive to run co-op mode (and invite your friends) is bonus XP… but co-op offers bonus XP against the worst XP tables in the game.
It’s all so outdated currently, and it shows in-game. I’m hoping that the next roadmap shows that the devs are planning to focus on co-op/friends and the game’s currently lackluster social system. Until then, well, anti-social in-game I remain.
Its as with chat and PvP.
Its there that they can say … we have it.
Its total crap, but its there and can be advertised.
What ppl think about it you can see in Steam reviews and rating.
Worse then 98% of the games there.
But without a much better chat and more options to Coop or a real PvP, any friendsystem makes no sense anyways …
