How big of a Friend's List is too big?

[Skeletonlord]

What i do know is that i have a lot of friends, including you sam, and mostly all the forumers.

There is also the issue where you join the wrong friend, which has been brought up a few times. I suggested a /join (friend) to solve this, didnt get a very big response.

[octavos]

Could it be that friend lists are artificially inflated by people's ALTs?

For example if I friend Drewcapu and his 57 alts, that is 58 friends right there. Perhaps the game should friend accounts instead of ALTS?

I agree with stomp, its our alts that compose our friends list. I have 3 mains and 22 alts on SL.

[Noodleleg]

It takes me like... 30 clicks to get pass all the people that are online for me lol!

[Shellkaz]

I agree that friends lists and guild membership should be capped. However I don't see how it could be set at say 500 characters. Some guilds are over that number already. They would either have to delete members, or some sort of mechanism would need to be put in place to prevent them from adding new members until membership dropped below the maximum level. Alternately a secondary or sub-guild, could be created and the GM could move inactive members there.

The reason I suggest this instead of just arbitrarially removing idle members, is because I have lived through a guild griefing. The guild had a lot of younger players, and I can still see them asking why they were deleted, and asking what they did wrong to just be removed.

My suggestion would be to have a warning in place at the time of signup that if the account remains unplayed for more than a specified period of time that the entire account will be deleted. My thought is that it would be 6 months, and also that sts send an e-mail to them warning that their PL account will be deleted in x amount of days if the owner does not log into the game.. This would also serve the purpose of freeing up names.

Yeah I know that this is controversial but come on folks if you haven't logged in to that account in 6 months it's a shame. It only takes a few seconds to log in visit a town n log out. It is also part of being a responsible player. If you can't manage multiple accounts you don't need to have them.

On to friends lists, aargh is all I can say. The constant jumping as people log on and off, enter or leave an area makes it difficult to accurately manage my friends list. I can't begin to count how many people I have accidentally removed because the list jumped. I have re-added one friend at least 3 times due to the list jumping.

I like a smaller list but I just gave up on managing it because of this. I would think that if we could "lock" the list for management or have a management option most of us would probably keep our lists trimmed to around 500 names or so. And for those who think that collecting friends is fun they will just have to quit lurking at spawn points and inviting every one who enters town to be their friend.

Thanks for listening

[Sryyoulose]

I have accepted all friend requests... Is this bad? I counted the pages of friends 123 which equeals 492 friends... Probs only know know like 50 of EM....

[Fyrce]

I have toons that have been around a long time that have old friends who might not log on regularly. I do not really want to remove friends or want old friends removed, because once in awhile, one drops in.

So how about partitioning the friend list into: Online, Active, and Inactive?
Online = Those friends currently logged in.
Active = Those friends who have logged in in the last 3 months (or 6 months)?
Inactive = Those friends who have no logged in in over 3 months (or 6 months)?

The inactive list could be a list that generally does not display. It's a button that one can press to load the list but is otherwise inactive. This list would only update when one logs in/out of the account, not just switch toons. Or maybe only updates once a day, since the likelihood is Inactive people will stay inactive.

[Kiwihawk]

Recently we came across an issue with some un-capped lists: Friend's List, Ignore List, Guild Size, stuff like that. Right now, we don't cap the upper limit of how many friends you can have, or guild members you can have. In general, this works out pretty well, but, like a lot of things in life, there are those few edge cases. You know, the guy that sends friend requests to anyone he sees and has like 6,000 friends. Or, the silly developer (me in this case) who accepts any friend requests (cause I you all!) and winds up with even more friends.

This becomes a problem when the list size is soooo huge that when trying to access it (like open your Friend's List) it basically lags your game out. Even worse is the huge Guild List - trying to open it becomes a problem and using it is even worse.

We have our ideas of what needs to be done - we're always looking out for the best interest of the game and our players. However, we wanted to put this issue out there to our fans and get your feedback.

• How big of Friend's List do you expect?
• What do you think about an upper limit to Guild sizes?

Please let us know what you think. As always, we appreciate your support!

We all love you to Sam :-)

[Slant]

2000 friends at least, thats the lower limit
just using twitter as an example, donno why, seems appropriate though, I cant keep up after about 1400-1500 follows
cant say for guild, but if this is about an actual list, it starts become cumbersome around 200 names so it could definitely do with some more sorting options (level/class)
how about the list not loading offline friends at all unless you really want it to, this should definitely help a lot in guild and friend list

[Swords]

there should be a number on the guild page saying how much members u have in the guild: Active/Total-- 50/300?

MAX guild size:500
MAX friends list: !,000
MAX friend requests: 200

[Yyujj]

Why dont u put in à query when list longer then x...with à show all button, textbox "part of name", lvl filter and online filter.
Solves The lag problem and offers search.

[Ardon]

Maybe add things likely
sort by:
Last log in
High to lowest lvl
Lowest to highest lvl
Online

[PatsoeGamer]

200 would be enough, but I can understand a lot of players wanting more

But I'd also like STS to look at 'Starring' or 'Tagging' friends in the friends list so they always appear at the top of your online and offline friends lists. That would be very useful indeed I know its been suggested, but it would really help with the social part of the game and improve the gameplay; logging in and chatting/joining friends to play.

[StompArtist]

It would definitely help to have 2 lists. Online friends and offline friends...

[dugantale]

Well what if ee have friends all ready and u lower the number then would it remove ppl?

[n00b13st]

I'd accept a limit if required (and not be happy about it) but I'd rather have the limits be on how many friends or guild mates you can interact with/view at once than on how many friends or guild members you can have.

For messages, etc., having the limit be the number of people that can be in an area/world. Guild chat only goes to guild members in the current world/area.

Bringing up a list of friends/guild mates gets segmented into manageable chunks - 25 at a time perhaps? (To make it easier for the user, have the sections of the list quick linked - so you can jump to names starting with a given letter - then a given second letter, etc.)

Seems like "segmenting/partitioning" like this would avoid the lag (and unnecessary server impact) caused by trying to load the whole list at once.

We do this for many services at my employer for similar reasons. (I work in IT at a large company. Large accounts/lists/etc. is a recurring issue.)

[Swimmingstar]

Or, the silly player (me in this case) who accepts any friend requests and winds up with even more friends.
ME!
I stopped counting pages at about 5,000 I think pagesx4 (4 friends on each page)

And guild cap... hmmm

[OvigorothO]

I completly delete my friends list every once in a while lol. Try it

[Zombiemurder]

Well for a friends list I accept ppl who I play with in game and r kind I think though if u have a friend who hasn't been on in like 2-3 months there should be an either auto delete friend thing or ask u if u wanna keep them on with them being that inactive.

As for guild size idk because I'm in a guild of only 100-125 ppl most ppl r lower levels asking for help we help them to a good level and they either stay to help others or leave and join another guild ik many ppl who have gone to other guilds because were not the best for a high leveled person but the gm doesn't mind that he's likes us all happy.

If u want a laagy game cause of a too big guild or friends list u can decide to fix it or not I don't lag but I only have like 100 friends maybe a little more there's ppl with 500 which is like Sam said pretty pointless. Just my ides and comments

[shanmarie33]

Capping the friend list around 500 seems reasonable to me. Capping friend requests, well, sure, why not. Capping ignored, maybe at a very, very high number, or just leave it alone. Now, as for guild capping...should not. Real people paid real money to purchase plat to buy their guild hall. Some gms have spent countless hours recruiting, friending, managing, and building a good guild. There was not a cap at the time of purchase. Seems unfair to do it now. I suppose, if you looked at the largest guild, added another 200 to that, it would not affect anyone at this time and have a cap in place for the future.

[Wonkering]

Let's be reasonable. Most "friends" on PL are not even ones you will remember in one weeks time. Plus you probably added them just for the occasion as I like to say. It's like facebook; you aren't true friends with like over half of them most of the time. Guilds are a different story. People join them as a result of similar interests, not necessarily to know each and every one of them. I propose a 100 friend list limit and up to 250 guild members per guild.