I'm happy to announce Patch 472! It's our first official release in a long line of system/functionality updates to come in order to make BattleDex more playable and social.

-Added a Friends List system. Access it via the Chat button at the bottom right. You can Add, Remove, and Chat players via the system. Adding friends does not require approval from the person being added (dagnor and I decided on this for a couple reasons, though if later down the road the community doesn't like it, we could always change that)
-Added a Service Status window (seen on the right of the SinglePlayer menu)
-Added a Notifications bar (seen at the bottom of the menus)

We are turning the SinglePlayer screen into not just the SinglePlayer screen, but also the Home screen -- in other words, service status (if we know of a bug and are working to fix it, for example), news with links to patch notes, announcements, etc, and more. We added the Service Status now because it's more important than the News thing, given the state of the game, its many bugs (some more serious than others), and the communication related to it.

I'll also detail the notifications plans a little (as far as i understand). Some notifications -- such as being invited to a game (next up on the table!) -- will pop up in a small window. However, over notifications -- such as a friend coming online, or other things that could be potential spam for the small window -- will appear in the black box always seen at the bottom of the menus.
When friends log on/off, the relative message will be displayed in the black box. Likewise, when you log in (if you have friends online), it will tell you that you have x friends online. Soundbytes for these and more are soon to come, along with several additions to the Options menu, such as choosing whether you get notifications or not when friends come online, go offline, etc.

So what do you think? Any feedback is always helpful Hope yall enjoy the friends system, and feel free to add me!

There was one button in the testing version that didn't make it to the patch release, but it was small so i didn't notice it until now, so i edited that out of the OP, along with adding some more details. Edited portions are bolded

Thats good news. Such system is necessary when there are more players. For now player finder works as well (well the notifications are an upgrade) I will test the system around tourney.

I think there should be a way to click on someone and add to friends list. Its not always easy to type someones nickname.

And show up on saturdays tourney finaly

In chat? That may be a ways off, however we are adding an "Add As Friend" button in the player finder (probably) next patch, along with multiple other fixes/updates to the system.

As mentioned above, many of the notifications already work -- mainly the ones related to the friends system.
The next patch (due in a day or two, if all goes according to plan) will see several updates, fixes, and additions, centered around the Friends System.
The patch after that will introduce the rest of the notifications, along with Game Invites. So stay tuned, and hope yall enjoy the new features

One comment on the friends list...

I have added five friends. Currently two of them are online and three are offline. When I look at my friend list, its difficult to quickly tell who is online and who is offline because the words are very similar, they are not listed in order of online or offline, and there is no color indicator.

Example of what it could look like:

Player 1 - Offline
Player 2 - Online
Player 3 - Offline
Player 4 - Offline
Player 5 - Online
Player 6 - Online
Player 7 - Offline
Player 8 - Offline
Player 9 - Online

The size and type of font can make it easier or more difficult to distinguish, but it would be better to list all online players at the top and possibly change the font color of "online" and "offline" so they are not the same.

A very good point! And in fact, I talked to dagnor about this about a week ago, and this is one of the main reasons we're making one patch to improve the friends system before we tackle game invites Here's exactly what I sent him:
"The friends list doesn't put online friends at the top of the list by default. You can sort it by that but since offline and online look similar, it'd be pretty easy to open it up, think everyone's offline though one guy mixed into the bunch is online, and not sort to check. Could we maybe color-code Online and Offline to make it easier?"

We're also adding several other small additions to the system, such as when you click Add (Friend), it doesn't currently select the window. You have to move the mouse to it, click, THEN start typing. This'll be updated, and hitting Enter will be like clicking Okay. Stuff like that