As an example, perhaps I want to invite a bunch of stragglers at a zergfest. Having to painstakingly invite them one by one is tedious, and slow. But, having the ability to send out mass invites in a large radius around you, would make this way easier. And to cut down on the potential for 'invite spam', make it so that you can only use the 'mass invite' option once every few minutes or so. Hell, that could be a new leadership certification line or something. I'd be way more willing to lead, if this was a thing.
Oh, and before people start whining about the potential for 'cancerous invite spam' (like the first 3 replies on Reddit did), take note of the in-game options menu, and notice the checkbox that reads "Auto-Ignore Squad Requests". If you don't like receiving squad invites, then use that checkbox.
What if I want to receive requests from players I know or those who specifically single me out to join a squad but not be spammed constantly by lazy randos? The system isn't perfect but at least it works as is, in my opinion.
The system 'as is', is incredibly tedious when you don't have an already-established outfit, and have to try and assemble a public squad on your own. Edit: A possible way to fix the spam issue occurred to me: If the auto-decline feature was further refined, so that you can set it to only decline invites from certain groups of people, then that might help, yes? Example: 'Auto decline squad requests from people not in your outfit', and/or 'auto decline squad requests from people not on your Friends list'. And the currently existing option gets relabelled as 'auto decline squad requests from all players'.
That only goes so far. Personally I'm not in an outfit and don't want to be, and I often join squads with players I don't already know and others not already on my friends list. I'd want to retain the option of joining squads I'm specifically invited to, especially if the squad is small. There would have to be an AOE-specific invite toggle to really be even considered in my opinion, but it still seems unnecessary to me.
