afk, (away from keyboard) text so you could pick for example, having dinner, or away to the shop, or busy in real
just so people see that you are afk, and this will show above your head.
or type /afk to be afk?
or have a auto generated (away) message show on top of player heads when there is no controller/keyboard input for lets say 5 minutes?
i got many times i’m making dinner or away for a bit and people start talking to me or ask questions and i feel being rude.
Happens to me all the time too. I’ll get back and see a bunch of waves and salutes in world chat
IMO /sit is enough to indicate afk. I’ll wave to someone who’s sitting, because they’ll see it later, but I don’t wait around for a reply.
If you see me sitting on top of my build, I’m afk.
I have a spot labeled “afk” at my build
I let my character sit there to receive messages while I read books, watch tv etc. that way I don’t have to deal with buggy PMs quite so much.
Is it just me or is PMs even worse than before?
i like to bump this
I often return from being afk and find myself in a completely different spot, often in caverns downward. Not because of controls or bugs, but because my friends like to see how far they can pull me.
…Sometimes it’s impressive…
If they know sooner that im afk, they will be able to pull me farther…idk if I like that.
Helps to grapple to something if you are going afk… though that doesnt stop them from building boxes around you.
Glad somebody else knows my pain/confusion.
if you have a low end grapple a higher end grapple can break your connection to the ground.
example: gem grapples can break titanium grapple connections to the ground.
Might not work the first time but persistence means it will work eventually.
If i know I will be afk for a while I try to remember to jump into sanctum so i don’t get anybody waiting for a response from me etc.
edt: Just realized that jumping into sanctum prevents me from dying to mischievous grapples by friends. hmmm.
This is literally my life. I come back and i’ll see some one came to visit… I work on call so I am afk alllll the time,
With a big arrow “this one is afk” 
.
It would be nice if everyone could see if someone is afk. Simply because you automatically know than there is no point in asking questions or talking to someone because they are not there.
Especially if a “noobie” is has a question/problem and doesn’t want to wait on help chat.
(Remember the time way back when going to a planet and just shouting “where do i find this color” as i was to lazy to check my phone. chat takes way to long)
Hmm… I was thinking to help the servers out, after 30 or so minutes your character isn’t rendered in on the server and just appears as a wooden pole (just a cylinder with a wood texture) with your name and AFK over it.
Your screen turns black and says the message "You’ve been AFK for too long with 2 buttons. Return to sanctum and Resume gameplay. Resume Gameplay puts you where you last left off. Basically where the wooden pole is put. Return to sanctum brings you back to the sanctum.
Resume gameplay does an animation where you pop up from a warp conduit from above the pole and you take the pole. Return to sanctum makes the pole disappear with an animation as if the pole was taken with an animation as if the elder took it. When you go AFK, the animation just has your character being replaced with the pole and a broken block particle effect
You can interact with the pole being able to send a message that they’ll see when they’re back on the server (but not as broken as private chat)
Oh and also
(playername) you are AFK, I’m gonna take your plots away!
AFK status would be great, I don’t think it needs to be elaborate, just make player auto sit and add AFK tag next to their nickname after 5 mins of no input or typing /afk (can have cooldown if abuse is a concern). Being in AFK can have the following effects:
I think being grappled, boxed in, or having someone dig below you while AFK shouldn’t be an issue in the first place (only happens if you AFK somewhere unsafe or have bad friends), so a countermeasure to those isn’t necessary.
AFK status will be lost if the player moves or use an item, moving the camera should be fine.