Playing With Friends, Groups, and Teams: Mechlab Social Button

Mechlab Social Button
In the bottom righthand corner of the mechlab you will see a light blue button that says Social, this is what I am calling the Mechlab Social Button.



If you click on that it will open up an panel where you can add friends, create and join groups, and block people. It will have the following tabs: Friends, Invites, Groups, Ignore.



When in the social area the appropriate tab will flash so that you will know that there is something there that you need to attend to.

Invites Tab
This tab will list all of your friend and group invites for you to accept or deny

Blocked Tab
This tab will list all of the players that you have blocked/ignored.



Friends Tab
Adding Friends: At the bottom of the Friends tab you will have a button that says Add Friend. Click on that and a text field will come up. In order to add friends you will need to know the exact spelling of their MWO username, since there is no user search (or autocomplete) function yet.



''Bugs/Annoyances: The current operation of this field is currently quite quirk-some so be prepared. I think that when a status of someone in the friends/groups tabs changes it will clear out what you are typing in the invite field. Very annoying, so type quick.''

Blocking Players: When you are in the friends tab you can click on them and you will have the option to block. Just click on block and then they will show up in your blocked tab. I am not sure how that if that affects your ability to drop with them or chat with them or what. Hopefully, someone can confirm the specific results. (this needs clarification)

Player to Player Chat: When you are in the Friends tab you may double click on a member and a small chat window will come up.



Friend Status: Each person will have a color status icon:


 * Green: online
 * Orange: in a game
 * Red: not on line

Groups Tab
Once you are apart of a group you will most likely want add everyone as a friend to make it easier to form groups later on.

Create a Group: Any person can create a group here and then invite people to the group. At the bottom of this tab you will have the option, when you are not currently apart of a group, to create a group. You click on the Create a Group button at the bottom, and the group name will be [Username]'s Group, and then you can start inviting people to your group.

Add Players to Group: The group leader can invite people to a group by one of 2 ways, either by clicking on their name in the friends tab and then clicking on the Invite to Group in the context menu, or in the group tab typing in their name at the bottom of that tab in the Invite Friend box.

Random Group Leader ??: When the person who created the group leaves the group there will be a single random person who is assigned as a group leader. They will then be the one who can send invites to the group. If the leader leaves the group then another random person is designated as the group leader.

Group Membership: Once your group is formed you will then want to show that your mech is ready for drop. You do that via the bluish Launch button in top right-hand corner of the screen. It will say ready and then the group leader can launch the group into a game. The Group Leader can launch a group even though you have not selected ready.

The status icons on the left for group members are as follows:


 * solid green bust - ready for drop
 * green bust with red/question mark - not on your friends list
 * star - group leader

On the right side it will say ready or not ready for your drop ready status.

Opposing Dropgroups will be selected equally by mech class: for every light in your drop group there will be a light, for every assault there will be an assault. A natural by product of this experimental group formulation may result in having organized dropgroups paired against pugs a little more often, since organized groups may or may not have similar compositions, although they may. Something to look out for.

''Bugs/Annoyances: Your ready status resets itself on occasion even though it may still say Ready on your Launch button. The status shown in the group tab will be different than what is shown in your Launch Button, which will most likely happen if you select ready and then are playing around in the mech/pilot labs.

On occasion the group will drop without certain members. To fix this have everyone leave the group and create a new group

(this seems to be fixed with the Aug 21 patch)''

Currently, since there is a lot of disconnects with this last patch (Aug 24) there are uneven groups dropping. =(