I've noticed in my own subcommunity that there's never as many people on and playing together as there is during Iron Banner. I think part of the reason for that is because it's easy to see if people are looking to play Iron Banner by the emblem they're using.
Maybe Bungie has a plan for this kind of thing in TTK, but part of the barrier for getting together with other players is the communication barrier. It's unwieldy to exchange messages, and when receiving an invite from a friend, it's difficult to anticipate what they're going to want to do and whether that's something you feel like doing. Certainly, it's impossible to decipher what random players who are spamming invites in the Tower want.
If we had some kind of banner or flag system that indicated to other players on our friends list and in the area that we are looking to do a certain activity, are up for anything, or are content to just fly solo right now, I think it would be a huge benefit to getting players together. I don't know that it should replace emblems, but it could be an icon or notification in the roster.
Microsoft tried something like this with beacons for Xbox Live, but most players just forgot their beacons were telling their friends that they wanted to play a game that they hadn't played in six months, so this kind of thing could be a problem.
Overall, with such a social game, communication needs to be better. We need to be enabled to coordinate if we are going to form groups, and right now, Destiny relies on the console OS entirely for that function. I'm not sure what the Playstation experience is like, but on Xbox, it's pretty unwieldy, and a lot of times, it's just such a pain to try to get players together that I opt to just not worry about it and fly solo.
Thoughts?
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This is a great idea. Like you, I sometimes end up solo because I look to see what people are doing and assume that they want to continue doing that thing.