Orange status was a step in the right direction, but it needs work.
Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, there is a social cycle I think everyone is bound to go through:
  1. Wanting to make more friends
  2. Making more friends
  3. Having more "friends" than you realized you can deal with
  4. Sticking with one small niche group you've grown attached to
  5. Permanent orange status
In addition to hud fixes like friend list sorting & filtering, or being able to tell if a person in orange status is in an actually potentially joinable type of instance, and notifications appearing in your menu instead of hud while on red...
Let us have a list of friends who can join on you even if you're in orange status. They see you as green and everyone else sees you as red or orange.
That's the general concept, but the implementation could be different.
Give us options for specific "friend categories" and make more friend categories than just 3, those categories could have settings that apply to all friends in that category. Like with Steam's friend tagging. I have other cannies for better friend list management.
An improvement like this would also open the door to having a toggle-able "join request sound" like a discord ping, that you could turn on/off per friend-category.
With 1500+ "acquaintances" on my list and me only having the social energy to be around 5 of my close friends, I can at least say there's room for improvement.