I'd like to suggest a few rather easy changes to both .squelch and how the requests to join your plane work.
.squelch:
AH _really_ needs the ability to both keep the settings you set and then load them on login. This is extremely easy to do and quite common with other online games. The entire thing can be run out of a simple text or ini file and loaded every time you log in. This allows two much needed features. First, I don't have to type .squelch 6 and .squelch 1 every time I log in. The first 100 times it an annoyance. After that its a royal pain in the butt.
Second, one needs to be able to add players to this squelch list as well, not just channels. There's people in my own country that I regularily .squelch once I see them login. This should be done automatically. I wouldn't see it as being that difficult a feature to implement, and it would be VERY handy.
Requests to join your plane:
This one is nuts and is driving me to drink. Part of the problem is my handle...0Vortex0. It means I'm usually at the top of the roster and, accordingly, every dweeb in the game sends me requests to join my plane. Without fail I get 1-2 of these a flight...always, every night. I wouldn't really care though if it was something that came up in the text window and I could simply type .yes or .no when convenient (or preferably just ignore the spam entirely). However that big GUI screen that pops up is a killer. Getting that in the middle of a furball or when on final approach is at the very least a huge annoyance, at the most deadly. Its a great tool for folks to grief you with as well, and I've had that happen too when asking people nicely not to send me anymore join requests.
There's several things that can be done here. The easiest would simply be to allow me the ability to disable plane invites entirely on my end. I rarely fly buffs anyway so I don't need to have the option open 99% of the time. On the rare occassion i do, I can enable and then disable as needed. This might force some folks might to show a modicum of courtesy and ask first before spamming the populace with their join requests. I don't see that as a bad thing however. Alternatively move the function to the comms window, or allow that as an option in conjunction with the above (i.e. use GUI, or use comms based invites) and require some .text response to accept. Perhaps that latter part is already in place even, I dunno. That GUI screen HAS to go though...or at least give me the ability to toilet it.
Both of these are pretty simple changes that would add some very handy features to the interface. Heh, I've been around these games long enough to realize the likelyhood of either seeing the light of day is probably nil though. Accordingly does anyone know how I can change my handle? The ingame command only allows case, which does me no good. I need to get off the top of the roster list. Paying to be griefed ain't my idea of fun.
Vortex
[ 01-05-2002: Message edited by: Vortex ]