@Arci it was just an example which happens quite often.
All those listed chat clients allow you to be invisible, maybe it is a better approach to ask how privacy and transparency helps?
I have no doubts this function can be useful when a team was together for a longer time and trust each other, just like how we give forum moderator, reservation rights to every alliance member in premade teams or after a few weeks to newer members who seem to stick with us, but I would personally disable my online status visibility on new worlds / unknown team...
Generally, only in-game abuse can be based on online time knowledge, so no damage is done to one's privacy outside the game itself.
How many players switch alliance on same server, join opponents etc. - intel is crucial part of the game, you don't want to make your online status public for anyone nor let founders do that over your head.
If players could give consent to share their online status it would authorize founders and leaders to share these rights with more players for example with those who also gave consent and make the best out of this new feature without worries that anyone would blame them or Innogames for their invaded privacy, even if it's just ingame privacy which I believe you would disagree with if you got overnight pings after this feature debuted however you never had such attacks before...
As someone with founder experience I would not give this right to all alliance members as it is now... that again questions how useful it is if others think alike.
What is the idea behind this new funktion?
That's a very good question. We don't really know yet how reliable it can be... but we all know statistics show only minimum 1 hour or longer inactivity so this feature can potentially help alliances to be one step ahead within that 60 min time frame.
Lost trip
~15min ago enemy killed your trip / sentinel, you check member list and see...
... the player was online ~10 minutes ago = you don't have to worry, don't have to send harbor check, can spare the message, don't have to ask others what happened... just replace trip.
... the player was online ~50 minutes ago = you have to take necessary steps to prevent losses.
Less friendly pings
Pings from alliance members can be just as annoying as enemy attacks.
if you see online players who can help then you won't bother alerting the rest of the team for no good reason just to get someone online
Imagine how cool it would be if all members
with consent could use this feature when a trip was killed and would not have to rely on founders / leaders, pings anymore...
It should have never been a founder / leader decision who can see the online status and a privilege to know which players got this right.
Players should be able to set online status visible for all members / for leaders / no one.