Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer, Product Owner of the US PU Feature Team

Yeah, that's the whole point of it. So if you haven't used it yet, basically what happens is, there's a contacts window and a notifications window, and there's buttons to open and close them. What happens is, as you add new friends through the contacts window, it'll pop up an add window. You can start typing a name. There's two names that show up in there: there's your nickname and then your handle. You can type either one of them, but it does need to be from the beginning of that name. Once you get them in your contacts list, you just right-click, add to party. When they accept the party invite, you'll see a party window pop up. So your group, your party, is now there for you on display. You can see who the party leader is. You can transfer party leadership. You can still do party launches, as I mentioned earlier. So again, this whole effort was to just make this easy and understandable for somebody who is just trying to get into the game quickly. Am I grouped with them? Yes or no? Cool. If they're in your party, they're a different color in your contacts list. So as you're scrolling through up to maybe 800 names, right? Do I want to add this guy? Did I add this guy already? One thing we ran into in the 50-man playtest was, oh crap, who's in the party? You go back to the party, and that's where we're like, oh, we've got to color code these so we can easily tell who's in your party and who's not. Presence is another thing. You see if they're in menus, or if they're just online, which means they're only on Spectrum, or if they're in the game somewhere, in the PU or game modes. Make it easy. Who can I invite? Who's quickly available? Get them in and go. So TL;DR, yes.