Board Game Arena

I have a lot of friends, some are relatives and others of whom I play particular games with.

It would be nice to be able to create custom categories to group friends. It would also be nice to add a Nick-Name that replaces or is in addition to the player name so I can replace player name with real name and easily identify/recognize who players are. These enhancements would be easy to implement and would really enhance the user experience.

The group thing is possible. If you go to your profile and click on groups, you can create a group by clicking on create a group on the banner, set it to invite only, and then invite a particular person to it. I have a group for real life friends.

Not sure about the nick name thing, that may not be possible

To keep track of physical/screen names, I use personal notes about players. This note is displayed during table creation, so it's a quick automatic reminder.

Although the "group" and the "note" features can accomplish this, they are not as smooth as what I am suggesting/asking for. Having to click on a player's name to "lookup" my notes is not as quick as having a Nick-Name replace the username. If you are familiar with Discord, you will know what I am asking for and how nice this feature is. Likewise, BGA's "group" feature isn't exactly what I am asking for either. BGA's group feature requires an action on the part of my friend to join a group. I do not want to have to rely on them doing this. I should be able to assign categories to my friends and group them.

Here is another way of looking at it. You have a list of email addresses that are difficult to decipher on their own, so you have an address book to link names to addresses. When you get an email your email program looks up the email address in your address book and instantly displays the name for you. You, not the sender gets to decide what name gets displayed. Once set, the name shows up instantly instead of or in addition to the email address. Likewise, most email programs allow you the ability to assign labels to your contacts so you can sort and group them how you want, and you can also assign a contact to more than one group.