Our ability to meet and make friends is a major factor in how long a player stays a game. Systems like LFG and Clans play a significant role in this experience. I run a pretty good sized clan- it started out as a handful of friends but over time we picked up cool people from raids, the crucible, and more. Our members began bringing in their friends and family, as well as others that they met along the way. Eventually, we maxed out the 100 member clan due to its size limitation, but we had more demand. People wanted to play with the friends and family- with whoever they wanted to play with. So we created a second clan, adding a "I" to the original clan name and putting a "II" on the second. The cycle continued and we went on to create a third, and eventually a fourth division. All of it organized through Discord so that rosters in each Division have access to everyone in the overall clan structure for help, LFG, etc. Since we intentionally grow slowly, it allows people to develop close relationships. Many new friendships have been made, some of those spilling over into life outside the game. People meeting up- in fact while I'm currently visiting Germany I intend to meet up with one of our newer members in Cologne. Since Forsaken launched, triumphs and bounties were added that required people to play with members in their clan in order to complete them. This complicated life for us- because previously it didn't matter which of our Divisions/Clans a member was in- but now they had to start switching to join with people on their own playing schedule/habits. This change somewhat forced a "clique" system to form that cost us some of the open and shared experience. I see many fantastic things happening since Forsaken, through Year Two's Seasons, and in particular with Shadowkeep. The following is in hopes that the proposed changes are small enough to get on the docket if they are deemed as useful by other Clan Founders: [b]1. Remove Clan Size Limitations or Drastically Increase Them: [/b]I know my clan has greatly improved the Destiny experience for our members- and the friendships established kept some of these folks around through population size issues and some of the other issues D2 has had along the way. I want to offer this same experience to EVERY adult Xbox player (hopefully soon even on other platforms!)... but in order to keep growing I must continually create a new Division, seed it with players from existing Divisions for proper PVE/PVP balance (all of it tracked on spreadsheets), and trust someone else to lead it and others to administrate it, and all of them to properly maintain it, recruit for it and the standards of conduct and ethical gaming we hold. Every new Division comes with a risk of member loss, and now I have to worry about whether I am placing people with others they usually play with due to the clan-based triumphs & bounties. I do so much roster and activity tracking for our additional Divisions to ensure the overall health and activity of our Clan- spreadsheets and records and so forth- let me have just one single place where I can easily do this and lessen my spreadsheet use dramatically. We are already getting around the clan size limitations by creating additional Divisions - so just removing them would greatly increase the ease of management of our communities and help us stop dividing our own communities by letting everyone play with everyone they want to play with more often. [b]2. Remove or Increase Clan Name Limitations:[/b] Those of us with great clan names :D find ourselves in a debacle once we expand into multiple Divisions. For example: Order of Burning Light I Order of Burning Light II Order of Burning LightIII Order of Burning Light IV As you can see- we are one character short of having roman numerals greater than a character count of 2. So when we reached Division 3, nobody wanted to be in it simply because of how awful that looked on people's emblems. And we all know Guardians are picky about their sense of style. Literally we lost members due to this small complication, until Division 3 fell apart and was absorbed by the others. If we must be forced to bypass the Clan Size limitations by creating other Divisions- could you open up the Clan Name Limitations by even just a few characters to help us have the Clan Name we want to display. To solve this we had to do this: Order of Burning Light Order of Burning Light I Order of Burning Light II As you can see, trying to avoid a third division at all costs and having to create a Division Zero of sorts to do so. But soon we will be ready to open this back up. [b]3. Clan Vanity Titles & Colors:[/b] Allow Clan Founders and/or Admins the ability to create titles and assign them to our members for roles beyond Founder/Admin. For example, allow us to display who our Sherpas are for raids, who our Game Guides are for weapon quests/missions, who our Crucible Experts are and so forth. Not only does this acknowledge the efforts and accomplishments of our members, but it helps others know where to get help with specific game areas or knowledge. It also gives members something to work toward as we create "requirements" similar to in-game Triumphs and Titles that keep players engaged for longer as they try to meet the bar and achieve title/color statuses they enjoy. Currently we have to use a Discord role system for this. [b]4. Time Away Status Setting: [/b]Allow Founders/Admins to set an Away Status for our members, and allow members to set it for themselves. Many times life takes a player away from Destiny and gaming, other times other games take a player away from Destiny, and so on. As a Clan leader I have the responsibility in keeping an active roster for our membership to draw from- but I also don't want to remove people who intend to return. What if the loss of their beloved clan and friends is enough to make them quit altogether, etc? If we had a setting like this, we could see that someone is away temporarily and not make the mistake of booting someone who wants to stay long term. And we can also communicate this to the larger clan body so they know the dormant ones are only temporarily so. Right now this consists of tracking away players on spreadsheets, keeping track of time away by last activity played, etc. This setting could ideally tell us all of that information for each of our members and allow us to better manage the health of our active rosters. [b]5. Clan Merge Process: [/b]We have had instances where we needed to reabsorb players from other Divisions. One time an entire small clan wanted to join us, so we absorbed them into what used to be Division 4 (now 2, thanks to the naming issues with Division 3). As always, moving large amounts of members is a major hassle and ask on them, our admins. We have to track the movement on spreadsheets to minimize loss, ensure where people want to end up, make sure they are with their friends they like to play with, etc. If we had a Merge Process where a Founder of one clan could "Propose" a merge to another Founder, everyone is in agreement and indicates which is the Clan that will remain (merge identity 1 with identity 2 = keep identity 1 name/founder)... this would again help us so much and minimize the major efforts of tracking individuals, babysitting them to accept invitations, and possibly losing folks inadvertently in the process. And it would create an easy avenue for a small clan to join with a larger one. [b]6. Create Partner/Sister/Fraternal Clan Alliances:[/b] Barring the ability to expand clan sizes, allow us to get around this by creating relationships through alliances. The idea is we would be able to see, in-game, the rosters and active players of our allied clans for easy access. Anyone we game with through the Alliance system would give us credit toward clan based triumphs and achievements. This would be a great solution for clans with multiple Divisions who want to play as a single entity without focus on "where" a member's home Division is versus another's. No more members getting switched around constantly and the resulting spreadsheet/roster adjustments the leaders have to make as a result. [b]7. Clan Message Notifications:[/b] Allow a message section for the Clan tab in the game menu where messages from the clan can be displayed. Again, this is currently something we have to lean on Discord for- and if members are busy actually playing then it's tough for them to see those Discord messages from fellow members asking for help, looking to fill out a group, or looking to help others. It would be nice if there was a visual cue that a new Clan Message was received, and the player could then go find it as they see fit and see what it is. Perhaps LFG messages could be separate from Founder/Admin announcements (clan news, welcome to new members, etc). Perhaps the messages themselves (in particular LFG) could be set up in the Bungie app and then zipped over to the game. Thanks for sticking with me and I hope these make sense to the community and to anyone in charge of shaping the Clan experience in Destiny. As you can see- we have to use separate, cumbersome processes and third party tools to get around the current systems in order to have the group experience we want to have. By instituting some or all of these you would go a long way into helping us focus more on the fun aspects of managing our own communities and take away much of the tedious management tasks and roster tracking that we have to do today. I welcome any and all discussion around this and thanks again for reading :) <3 VL6