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

[Samhayne]

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 :love_heart: 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!

[wvhills]

I was trying to see how many friend requests I could accumulate but I heard that lots of them could cause lag so I cut mine down to people I know through forums or know in game. I also heard that being in a big guild increases lag. I suggest setting it up so that friend requests automatically delete after a week. If you set it up to where you could only have 1000 friend requests and then can't recieve any more after that then you may not be able to recieve one from someone you actually want to be friends with (although you could just decline a few to free some slots up). I would think a friends list of 500 would be big enough for anyone but some people may want more. I'm not sure what you can do about guild size though...

[Growwle]

I only add real life friends, guild mates or people I frequently group with and of course devs (so it is easier to find them when they have goodies ;-). This makes my list much more manageable.

[Elyseon]

I try to keep my friend list low, its mainly just ppl I would actually chat with, Personally I find all those spammed game invites annoying, so I have quite a few friend requests stacked up.

Maybe an ignore requests option, also still hoping for an ignore guild invite option.

[Roc]

My friend list is pretty small as my criteria for friends in-game is like the one in real life: if I won't talk to you every now and then, how can we be friends? However, then there is the group of people whose games I join and they "friends" in the sense that we level up together, which leads me to thinking that if you have categories of friends, and the game only displays one category at a time, then you'll never have to see all 1, 000 or something friends at a time. I guess this is like Google Plus's "circles." (then there's the issues if you just want to see everyone at once...which brings it all to square 1!)

[adidaman]

You still never accepted my friend request Sam o.o I feel bad now

[Elyseon]

You still never accepted my friend request Sam o.o I feel bad now

Clearly he hates you, maybe you should buy more plat xD




Btw that was sarcasm if it sounds rude

[StompArtist]

Roughly 20.

[Walkhardd]

Not sure if this can be done. It would be cool if when you wanted to cut down your friends list, for it to show your entire list in alphabetical order. (whether their online or off) my friends list is bigger than I want it, but deleting ppl is such a beating for me because of the screen jumping.

Did that make sense? O.o

[Mageprodigy]

2000 friends list, and maybe when upgrade tier from guild hall cap also raise? Tier 1: 50 members, tier 2: 200 members tier 3: 500 members?
Anyone like this?

[Elyseon]

2000 friends list, and maybe when upgrade tier from guild hall cap also raise? Tier 1: 50 members, tier 2: 200 members tier 3: 500 members?
Anyone like this?

Guild sounds good, but i would keep friends at like 500 as well, if you have more than that you are wierd cuz theres no way u actually talk to that many ppl. And you really dont need all those friends just so you can annoy them and spam invites.

[MasterNaora]

i know exactly what you mean walk. I end up not deleting becase of the jumpy list thing. Something I would personally love to see would be sub-categories in the friends list. i.e. pvp friends list, pve friends, top 10 friends.

i see no problem putting a cap on guild size and friend list size. I mean, is there really an advantage to having 1000 friends or guild members?

[StompArtist]

I cannot understand how anyone would need 500 friends. Might as well not add anyone and just join PUGs.

[Gluttony]

200 friends list, and maybe when upgrade tier from guild hall cap also raise? Tier 1: 50 members, tier 2: 200 members tier 3: 500 members?
Anyone like this?

I liked that suggestion, but edited the friend list number to and now I love it. 200 friends is more than enough to me as I have less that 20 at any given time (and whenever I get over that I trim the fat).

One thing about the friends list is it's pretty unreliable as it is; the list shifts when someone creates a map, continues on to a new map, logs in/out, all of which means if you choose the wrong opportunity to try to join a friend you could end up elsewhere. I voiced all my concerns sometime last year, and though the ignore all function was added I'd still like to see some of the other suggestions implemented. Read my "old" thread HERE (http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?25963-Friend-List-Q-amp-A).

[zeusabe]

Strictly speaking, it's impossible to have 500 friends unless you're a Hollywood Star. KozMedia News actually conducted a poll on Real Friends vs Social Networking Site friends. They concluded that users aged 18-24 had an average of 17 real friends but 301 on Social Networking Sites. That means your "actual" friends, based on statistics, is only 6% of the total number of friends you have in a social networking site. Let me quote on how they qualified "actual friends": "The term “real friend” here refers to someone who is not just an acquaintance, colleague, or “friend of a friend,” but a real friend in the real sense of that phrase". If I would make a parallel analysis, even if PL is a game, it also has a pseudo social networking effect. What I'm saying is, STS can make use of existing studies similar to what I quoted and apply it in the game, maybe not strictly 6% but near that figure. Given that PL has been running for almost 2 years now, I'm positive that STS can collate substantial data to know the average friends of each player. Apply the Rate (6%) and I think you will get a reasonable figure. Even 500 friends is a little too much, again, I doubt anyone has that much real friends unless you're a Hollywood Star. I think Friends list in PL should be used for its purpose, listing your "friends". I will quote another line from that study once more: "The more “friends” you have on Facebook, the more glamorous your life becomes", that trend is actually happening in PL (in my opinion), which is taking its toll on the system and must be controlled. This is a logical way of controlling it since it will have actual basis. So if I had to apply 6% on the guy who has 6,000 friends, he probably only has 360 real friends. Of course, I know 6,000 is an exaggerated figure, I'm positive that the average friends of each player in the game is way lower than that. If I had to project, I'd say 100 is the magic number (more or less). For the guild cap, there must be a reason why it's capped to a certain number, and players should be able to expand that number either by buying platinum or leveing up the guild (I made a whole thread on this on suggestions and feedbacks), there must be a mechanic on this and not just cap it because it causes lag, I think that will become a controversial issues. There should be another reason for capping the guild aside from the system lagging, such as introducing a new guild mechanic (in order to cover up the actual reason and turn it into something innovative...) where each guild only starts out at 10 members and will increase as you buy platinum or level up the guild (something to that effect)...even then the max number should be limited...this is where guild alliances come in to compensate for limited members in each guild. For guild members, my magic number is 50 more or less. Anything more than 50, in my opinion, is chaotic anyway. I'm a GM of about 300 members so I know what it's like to handle that much...it ain't pretty. That's my humble opinion. Thank you.

[Chickenrunnn]

I liked that suggestion, but edited the friend list number to and now I love it. 200 friends is more than enough to me as I have less that 20 at any given time (and whenever I get over that I trim the fat)..

I don't agree about 200 friends... i would say Max friends to 600...

About the guild members, I disagree about 2 things
1st The fact to make more slots of members for Tiers... It's awful! they already paid the guild making, have to nuy hall and they have restriction about members? This would be awful
2nd the fact to make a low limit.. It would ruin the fun and increase hate.. Imagine u boot someone from the guild saying "sry... someone else wanna be in".. try to put max 600.. There are only a very very few guilds which reached 600 members..

Here is my opinion! :) Cya!

[Chickenrunnn]

Strictly speaking, it's impossible to have 500 friends unless you're a Hollywood Star.

I've 3k friends and I'm not hollywood star yet xD..

[StompArtist]

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?

[Urqui]

I'm like Elyseon & only accept people i talk to on my main:)
But since I started playing I never denied a request & I only have 1,100 pending requests
So I'm guessing only Samhayne can max out his friend's list lol
But the limiting the guild members to tiers is a great idea:)

[Martin Tander]

Maybe if u make friendslist flip pages...like 50 per page))) less lag then)))

I got also nearly 500 friends...well u join a game/host a game,and either u add the host...which makes +1 in fl or if u host ppl add you which is usually +3 ppl in fl....

Guild members cap...well guildhall can fit ONLY 25 ppl at once...

I think 250-300 ppl per guild is ok...timezones and etc...its too rare that all members r online simultaneously :)

[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 :love_heart: 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 :-)
:love_heart:

[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.

[Zeosar]

i have 500 friend requests and only likw 20 friends :O

[Luvaria]

Not sure if this can be done. It would be cool if when you wanted to cut down your friends list, for it to show your entire list in alphabetical order. (whether their online or off) my friends list is bigger than I want it, but deleting ppl is such a beating for me because of the screen jumping.

Did that make sense? O.o
I agree, I hate it when that happens, I keep joining/inviting/deleting the wrong ppl xD

[Luvaria]

i know exactly what you mean walk. I end up not deleting becase of the jumpy list thing. Something I would personally love to see would be sub-categories in the friends list. i.e. pvp friends list, pve friends, top 10 friends.

i see no problem putting a cap on guild size and friend list size. I mean, is there really an advantage to having 1000 friends or guild members?
It's true that you wouldn't remember who most of them are, but i guess it's so you can spam invite? lol

[pocketlegendshq]

250 max

[pocketlegendshq]

or as you level up add 10 more spots to add people

[Buddyf97]

Oh no! This worries me because I have over 4,000 people on my friends list! :O
But I understand limited guilds but I am worried about the friends, o.O

[Jugernugett]

I don't have trouble. But I only really have like.. 700 friends and buddyf I'm not being mean or anything. 4000 friends? All I can say is 1. No and 2. How is that possible?!
If its true u must stay up all night to require that many xD

[Buddyf97]

I don't have trouble. But I only really have like.. 700 friends and buddyf I'm not being mean or anything. 4000 friends? All I can say is 1. No and 2. How is that possible?!
If its true u must stay up all night to require that many xD

I counted all my pages and multiplied by the 6 per page on the iPad. Took me 5 mins, xD
It's also been almost 2 years since I've started playing... 7-8 friends a day?

[MrKrone]

I have never gone past ten friends. Ten just seemed to bulky on the list, but after seeing some people have THOUSANDS of friends.... oh my.

@Skeletonlord, i like your /join idea. I too have joined the wrong character, multiple times.

[pocketlegendshq]

Oh no! This worries me because I have over 4,000 people on my friends list! :O
But I understand limited guilds but I am worried about the friends, o.O

But I bet you don't even talk to 3,500 of those 4,000 friends...just adding people for the heck of it is pointless lol...

[Buddyf97]

But I bet you don't even talk to 3,500 of those 4,000 friends...just adding people for the heck of it is pointless lol...
But these people arnt pointless. For example:
Hey! I got my cash on another character! Add me!
Hey! I'm hosting exp runs! Everyone in the group add me!
Hey, Buddy! This is my twink! Add me so you know when I'm on.
Hey! I want to buy your items, but don't have the cash. Add me and I'll tell you once I get it!
Hey! I got a quick question! *** Thanks! Add me! I'll ask you another other questions I got!
AND MANY MORE!
Devils advocate... I could delete them after a few days but... How do I keep track!?

[pocketlegendshq]

But these people arnt pointless. For example:
Hey! I got my cash on another character! Add me!
Hey! I'm hosting exp runs! Everyone in the group add me!
Hey, Buddy! This is my twink! Add me so you know when I'm on.
Hey! I want to buy your items, but don't have the cash. Add me and I'll tell you once I get it!
Hey! I got a quick question! *** Thanks! Add me! I'll ask you another other questions I got!
AND MANY MORE!
Devils advocate... I could delete them after a few days but... How do I keep track!?

Lol same with me, but I delete once I'm done with them...

[mafiainc42]

nvr to big

[rockmayhem]

Hmm, I never knew that a large friendslist would cause more lag, guess I'll be cleaning it out some. My problem is that I'm to nice and don't like to turn down requests, yet i rarely send a request.I also look forward to friend request from new players and spending time helping them lvl and learn the neuances of the game, be kinda sad to see this resricted. At this time I'm not sure how many friends I have but its large, to large most likely.
With this in mind if ones friends list is only causing himself lag then its his to deal with and clean out as he wants. If somebody wants to have 10k friends with a ping matching it then so be it, it his choice.

Guilds on the other hand are a more touchy subject. As mentioned by others to put a cap on it would mean having to restrict members and remove some to make room for new and that just doesn't seem right then again nor is getting lag for the size of your guild. There is also the fact that somebody purchased said guild so it should be his to run as he sees fit but then again is it fair to the members who join his guild hoping to increase the enjoyment of his game play. Also there is the question, what do you do about the guilds that already exceed the cap that is put on. Do they get grandfathered in, or does the master have to sit down and figure out who stays and goes. I can see this problem arising in my guild as we are well over 1500 strong. (Freaking nuts, I know)

Anyway that's just some stuffs to think about, but I really have no idea how to handle it, but I'm headed into PL right now to delete friends I never see in game.

[Sciazaratek]

I have 415 friends and 240 guildmates . But i only accept lvl 65/66 requests and never add someone by myself . In my opinion too many friends are annoying when 10 people invite you to somewhere.

[BloodyBearJR]

Love ur idea RoC!!

[RaptorBlitz]

Please, no limit on guild members. Our guild has almost 2k members and it's not gonna be pretty if the cap becomes 500.

[Livemau]

I have few friends. If you are on my friends list feel special (I feel special to be on your friends list though, its always an honor) but I have like 40 friends and most of them are aoas, devs and super moderators :). I have like 25 of my friends as not one of those positions

[Phoenixking]

I have few friends. If you are on my friends list feel special (I feel special to be on your friends list though, its always an honor) but I have like 40 friends and most of them are aoas, devs and super moderators :). I have like 25 of my friends as not one of those positions
I feel special o.o
i have like probably 19 friends in my fl

[Xionskull]

Ooops lol, I have around 50 friends that are always on so yea I have a lot.... But it works cuz there is always someone to help, be helped or help with!

[Actionhank]

I would say 100-200 friends maybe 250-500 for guild?

[Docvoodo]

Samhayne, is that your actually name in game?

[Docvoodo]

I would say 300 Friends and 500 Guild Members. You could pay 2 platinum for example to have an additional 10 friends on the list but you could do this only for a limited amount of times. Like 3 time for regular people and 5 for Elite.