Social interaction in DCS

[darklanov]

Hi

It would be great if there was a form of social interaction. In other games it is easy to make friends, you like playing with someone you add him and then you can play together. In DCS it is very hard to find a wingman. Flying alone is fun, but  having a wingman on your side would double the amount of fun, and I am really struggling to find one. If only there was a mechanic that allows you interact with people.

[upyr1]

I have asked for a friend's list.

Edited November 28, 2022 by upyr1

[glen.a.williamson]

Perhaps you might want to consider joining a Squadron, ... or creating one of your own with some of your friends.

You also may want to checkout the DCS folks on Discord ... that is kind of a social network, with lots of very friendly, helpful people.

 

 

[Kang]

Uhm, there is good old-fashioned in-game chat as a start? If you keep frequenting the same servers at similar times you will be bumping into the same people sooner or later.

[cfrag]

Many of the suggested solutions are IMHO merely stop-gaps to mitigate an obvious short-coming that's holding back the game. DCS is a phenomenal MP game, and I believe that if ED were to better leverage integration of social features, this could increase DCS's popularity and MP crowd. I found that flying with a friend is much, much more fun than solo-ing, yet only a small part of all players are MP-ing. So there's a lot of room to grow.

So what do I think are some bare-bones social features that could help make DCS more popular in the MP arena? I'd like to float the following simple ideas:

• A 'Friends Online' list. Simply show everyone who is on my "DCS friends" list when they are running DCS (solo or MP). That's enough for me so I can contact them (using any method I deem suitable, does not have to be integrated in DCS) and ask if they want to go to where the air is rare together. 
• Integrate User-Submitted missions (as already hosted by ED today) into the "Missions" part of DCS so I can discover and instantly download and play missions that other users have created. This social part of DCS is woefully under-used, there are tons of fantastic missions waiting to be discovered on ED's servers - but many people simply don't know how nor where to look.
• Integrate submitting (and updating) missions to ED's User Files into Mission Editor, so people can easily submit and maintain missions. Make it easy for people to share their work. The current system hosted by ED is, umm, sub-optimal.

That alone should make it much, much easier and also more interesting for people to engage with each other, and make DCS even more attractive.

Edited November 30, 2022 by cfrag

[upyr1]

While I don't go online much, I can state here is what I would like to see

• friends' list -
• built in voice chat
• An in mission mode where all coms outside of a mission are shut down
• A squadron registry