Friend Activity Spam Unmutable

Bug Report
1

tl;dr: How do we mute/disable the “{friend} has come online” spam?

Issue Background: I decided to give Hearthstone (PC version) a try again after a long hiatus. It’s been a very confusing and stressful few days as there is an overwhelming amount of content and tasks to deal with. The whole time I’m trying to focus on things I need to get done or difficult battles, I’m met with constant distractions from friends going online/offline repeatedly. I was dismayed to find that there seems to be absolutely no way to mute both the notification sounds and/or the popups in-game. It’s the only Blizzard game/product I’ve tried that is like this.

Things I’ve tried:

  • Toggling settings in-game
  • Toggling settings in the Battle.net app
  • Searching through every text/config file I could find on my PC that is Blizzard/Battlenet/Hearthstone related
  • Ignoring that it’s happening

I can only ignore it for so long before I hit my limit and just log out completely. Is this really unavoidable or am I missing something? I don’t want to resort to muting all game sound because it kills the experience for me. I also would still see the annoying “toasts” in game. I don’t understand how this is a thing. I truly hope that you all will consider that people may be struggling with things like anxiety, ASD, PTSD, etc. Maybe people don’t have those struggles but feel they should be able to opt out of these spammy notifications because that’s what a proper user experience would allow. I’ve been pruning my friend list because some accounts will just go off and on several times in minutes. It’s absolutely maddening and it makes me less likely to add and keep friends on here.

PS: I’m not certain if this is the right place to post this but the other feedback category appears to be only for the “website” stuff rather than the actual game experience. I also tried Googling and searching on here for answers only to find none. Finally, the “Your topic is similar to…” popup to the right of what I’m typing in is as hilarious as it is abhorrent in regard to the relevancy of what it suggests.

2 Likes
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Have you looked at the friend notification settings in the battle.net app? The settings offered by Hearthstone itself are very minimal. The battle.net app offers a lot more options.

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Yes. I mentioned that I tried toggling the settings in the Battle.net app already. Unfortunately, those settings don’t translate to the in-game Hearthstone experience either. If you’re able to turn them off then perhaps I’ve overlooked some area of the app where it may be located but I’ve tried every menu I’ve come across with no luck. I actually just un-docked the social pane to make sure there wasn’t some hidden menu but that settings button opens up the same menu as the regular one in the battle.net app. I appreciate your effort though, thank you.

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I clicked “Friend Settings” (the square icon in the upper-right corner that has a picture of a person’s head and a gear icon).

From there I clicked “Friend & chat Settings”.

Then on that menu I clicked on “Notifications” on the left menu.

On this screen, there is a checkbox to enable/disable battle.net notification toasts. This checkbox doesn’t do what you want?

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Correct. Those settings appear to be only for the Battle.net app specifically (as I’d expect). The In-game settings doesn’t have a way to opt-out of being notified of your friends logging in, logging out, getting achievements, etc. It’s super obnoxious. I’m actually amazed I can’t find anyone complaining about it when I look for solutions to it so I’ve been assuming I was doing something wrong.

I just don’t find those notifications useful at all. If I want to know what my friends are doing, I manually go to my friend list and/or check whatever activity they’ve chosen to display. This experience translates to me like: “LOOK WHAT THIS PERSON IS DOING! LOOK AGAIN! THIS IS WORTHY OF PINGING YOU WITH SOUND EVEN!”. I’m being dramatic of course but it’s really that frustrating and bewildering to me. :expressionless:

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I get the lovely pleasure of the game giving me all the notifications of whoever is on on my buddy list (not even in HS, but all online) as in game notifications that they have “logged in” as if they werent already on and I was the one logging in. Each time I load Hearthstone Im greeted with about 30 or so of these little popups on the corner of the screen in that blue text going off all in a row. Happens on mobile too. I have all my notifications and toasts and so on disabled in the app, and no other blizz title or app does this to me. But HS is special it seems. I know the pain you feel OP.

1 Like
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SOLUTION BELOW, but first, some discussion. :grinning:

You’re not the first one, there’s this:

Turning off notifications in game.

I can completely understand you, no excuses needed, and I must add that those notifications are truly irritating.

I don’t find this dramatic at all, your description is rather apt.

Indeed.

However, I’ve got good news for you: there is at least a partial solution to this problem. You’ve got to engage the ‘Busy’ mode (status) in the drop-down menu, just under your BattleTag, in the top right corner, where the (docked… or un-docked? Alright, it’s docked, apparently) friends panel is also located. I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s bugged and doesn’t work properly, that is, some notifications (‘toasts’… perhaps those are the infamous disguised ones :grinning:) about a friend going online are coming through (restarting the Battle.net app regularly seems to help, although it’s uncertain), however, it takes away most of the regular annoyances and the worst offenders. It mutes the in-game chat, too (including the obligatory annoying message sounds), but you can still type there (without seeing any replies or messages in-game) or use the app to chat while this solution is engaged.

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It’s a bit bittersweet that you’re also feeling this but comforting to know I’m not completely imagining it. Thank you for speaking up and sharing! It really means a lot to people who fight an uphill battle for these things. I think I also get re-spammed when my internet gets sketchy on wifi now that you mention it. Usually when I login it’s toasts and pings for-seemingly-ever. I only logged in to change my merc training for the day which is already a struggle enough for me right now.

Thank you for your kind reply and insight! I don’t believe I’ve tried “busy” specifically as I went from my usual “away” to “offline” hoping it would do something. I’ll give that a try and see what happens. I would ideally like to keep the ability to chat in game but I’m willing to sacrifice that and just tab-out to reply to people if need be. I’ll report back if I find a solution to it so it’ll probably be tomorrow (too burned out today so binged some shows instead).

PS: I had to edit in my reply to SparkElf because I kept getting a message to “let others participate before replying again” or something like that. I get that it’s probably to keep post counts down but I feel it’s unnecessary and awkward for discussions because many people might not know how to deal with that. The “reply” function works very well and should be an exception to that as it keeps replies tidy.

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There is a way to successfully double post tho I wouldnt over use it. I know I have lol. But you can reply to the individual posts, and you can reply to the ending of the thread’s posts. The big one at the bottom is gonna stop you from a double post every time. But if you reply to an individuals post by hitting reply on their post (the small reply button) it will allow you to keep replying to people. Im sure there is a limit even to this but its helpful when you want to update or reply and the last person was still you to post lol.

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Like this. twenty characters

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No problem.

I think it might have been fortunate that this topic was brought to my attention by the forum at all… I remember searching for it back then, and I don’t think this solution would be found online — I figured it out myself experimentally, which speaks once again about poor documentation of many things by Blizzard, as I have lamented multiple times.

Yeah, and I don’t know why one should reply with multiple posts, when you can make a big one, quoting the parts that you reply to.

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Now that you mention it, I do recall being able to do that. I probably should have mentioned this is my alt account (trying to avoid trolls on main) so it also doesn’t have the forum “rep” or whatever it’s called that my main does. I’m thinking that may also be one of the reasons since it would prevent people from spamming on new accounts and whatnot.

I feel that is also a valid approach. It’s just that my experience with forums and social media is biased toward threads and sub-threads (ie: Reddit/FB comments) since people can focus on specific things they want to react to. The all-in-one approach is nice but it also presents the situation where someone may want to react to your comment for one specific reason rather than another. It is a steeper learning curve for new users imo but it’s not really an issue since both options are available.

I’m certainly glad you found it and have participated. I tried it out yesterday and a bit today. It seems like I’m getting less spam but I do get the notification sounds and toasts in-game still. I’m trying to keep track of it while in-game but I’m still struggling to level with mercenaries so I’m constantly tabbing out to hunt for information or guides and whatnot. I really hope they address this so I don’t have to permanently be unavailable and/or visible to people. That and I’d be spamming them with my activity as well. Kinda feels like some super-meta, Hearthstone social mechanic tbh:

  • “When you login, notify all of your friends that are also logged in.”
  • “Change your status to busy. You are immune to in-game chat and you receive (2) less notifications.”
  • “Change your status to invisible. You still receive notifications from friends.”

(I think I’ve been reading too much game mechanics heh)

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I could say a few unkind words about various internet dumpsters, but that’s probably off-topic.

Suffice to say, good forum practices, such as avoiding duplicates and so on, were developed long before those… other platforms became a thing — and for a good reason, rather than on someone’s whim. They’re not friendly to some characters — for instance, the self-centred, hyperactive ones, who also don’t like reading much — and thus probably unpopular nowadays, though.

As for multiple posts, though, sometimes their prohibition is incovenient if you want to post muptiple updates in a sequence — but I suppose, if the purpose of the forum is discussion, it makes sense.

Yeah, told you so — I still haven’t established a pattern of what exactly triggers some notifications still coming through.

Anyway, that’s the best that we’ve got so far to my knowledge.

Incidentally, Mercs is my specialty, so to speak, so feel free to ask anything if you want to (in an appropriate topic or something like that).

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There are various social platforms and forums that I also loathe for various reasons even if I partake in them for whatever reason. The two I mentioned in my previous example aren’t exactly favorites of mine but they were the first that came to mind when I thought of platforms that have threaded comments with reactability (I find it useful to echo sentiment or demeanor). If it’s a platform I use for information and discussion, I 100% prefer threading because I can easily skip the off-topic stuff and focus on the more interesting bits or I can have a contextual side-discussion that doesn’t derail the main topic. I’ve found a lot of interesting discussions due to this and feel it’s absolutely worth it for that alone. It just seems like a natural evolution in the “mediascape” rather than a whim but it’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution by any means.

Indeed. It was more to confirm what you’ve mentioned alreadt along with my observations up to that point. It’s truly a bizarre phenomenon but I’ll take it if it means less spam.

This is good to know and thank you! Right now it’s just frustration with the time it’s taking me to find and process the info I need to get through dailies and whatnot so I can focus on the mercs I actually want to use. That and I keep getting quests for stuff I haven’t unlocked yet which means it’s a wasted slot if I can’t clear it before they reset or I abandon it. Will def post a thread if I need help though.

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Like this. I want to specifically react to just this part of the discussion. However if I continue to make

And just reply to them peace meal

looks a lot like a TLDR or like one of Bobafett’s rants or willful misunderstandings of what they are quoting. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Speaking of which — this is another reason why minimal online discipline has been invented for a reason in the first place.

I’m only partaking in it because these forums are sadly an unmoderated dump as they are, and, moreover, reading skills in general are lamentably low, so it’s not like this’d cause a major issue for others anyway.

You probably mean visitor tasks? Those shouldn’t be your focus as a beginner anyway (I might have posted this elsewhere, but, oh well)… Task chains, i.e. regular task, on the other hand, are — and nowadays they are more readily available than ever (used to be you’de have to farm for them). Doing story quests gradually is also worth it… Then you’d wanna work on getting ‘decent’ PvE parties. I could name a few budget and full-cost ones to progress in the game, but another time, perhaps, if needed…

As for guides, the only other more or less decent source is Old Guardian’s channel. I wouldn’t take it as a source of absolute truth, nor would I agree with or recommend every single guide there, but there’s a lot of decent or useful material — in fact, sometimes I use it for a quick reference myself if I need to look something up.

PS Oh, and there’s the wikia (Fandom), of course.

Quite fine, if you ask me.

This itself is quite symptomatic, in my opinion… Yeah, those reading skills again.

Did you really have to bring this one up? :grinning: Besides, you seem to confuse form with contents here.

As for this character, though… I dunno, at some level, it’s one of those I even like, since it’s at least someone with IQ higher than a trogg, unlike your typical FRUSTRATED poster with their own particular ‘opinion’, and a personality — maybe not even a bad person, in fact, at least to the extent that shows on the forum via writing. On the other hand, I find a major portion of his stuff to be most irritating and nonsensical rubbish :grinning: , it’s like he’s… completely barking up the wrong tree with the persistence of a zombie, better applied elsewhere — maybe it’s even an actual aspie case or something, almost like some Greta Thunberg on testosterone (instead of those infamous steroids): ‘Stop barking up trees for their bark! Give the lion’s share back to the lion! Thanks, Blizzard, for the results of someone neglecting to use a toilet brush in a public toilet, stay classy and bla-bla! :crazy_face:’ — that’s your Boba in a nutshell. :grinning:

PS Oh, there’s also the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ factor. :grinning:

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Thank you so much - It is frustrating :woozy_face: