Topic

Staff Topic

New Limit on the number of Friends you can have

Hey friends! Nothing's better than having a lot of friends, right? 

Nothing, at least, except having just the right amount of friends.

Now, no-one likes having to impose limits on the things people can do, but for various technical reasons we've just rolled out a limit to the number of in-game friends you can make.

The limit right now is a generous 1,000 (which, for reference's sake, is nearly 7 times the supposed number of friends you can meaningfully have), and even if you're gregarious enough to reach that limit, you will still be able to add more if...

 * They have previously added you as a friend
 * You invite brand-new players to the game via email (you'll be made buddies when they sign up, just like always)

There are only about 30 people who've already surpassed this limit, so we're hoping that by acting now we won't be adversely affecting too many people.

So, why the limit?

Well, every friend you make requires a little bit more work to be done by our servers whenever certain things happen. Here are just 3 examples of things which become just a tiny bit heavier with each friend you add...

 * Populating activity feeds when you or your friends do, status-update, or snapshot something
 * Populating the list of your online friends when you sign into the game world (and also updating their lists of who's online)
 * Any place you have to choose from a list of existing friends - sending mail, for example

An individual friend added by a single player moves the needle on these things imperceptibly, but if thousands of players each have thousands of friends then the extra load becomes extremely noticeable (and ultimately causes extra delays and lag for every player).

In addition, scaling these kinds of connections doesn't tend to be a strictly linear thing. In our past experience, things tend to work OK right up to the point where they quite suddenly don't work at all. Friend 3,999 might not have any noticeable impact on your game playing experience, while friend 4,001 might inexplicably break your ability to even sign into the game.

So, this cap is designed to head things off at the pass - enacting a limit which most of you will never reach, whilst ensuring that we can continue to build out the game without running into bottlenecks which are no fun for players, and which distract us from building new and shiny gameplay while we fix them.

Coming Soon: Helpful-er Tools

If you're at or near the limit, in the next few days we'll be rolling out some extra features on your friends page which will make it easier to find less-active friends, and remove friends quickly from that single list view.

Posted 99 days ago by hitherto Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

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  • Here's a bug (or useless new feature?) which showed up a few days ago: if you click on the nickname or avatar of a player who has you blocked, you used to only get the Block/Report verb, but now you also get the "Add to Friends" verb, which either does nothing or causes an error message.  If you already have 1000 friends, the verb is greyed out, and hovering over it causes a message saying that you already have the maximum number of friends.
    Posted 98 days ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree, the number is too "normal"... it should be 1001 or 1111 or 1011 (1000 and 1 for each god)
    Posted 98 days ago by UXRoot Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Gotta be 1009!
    Posted 98 days ago by NightDraconis Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Or 997.

    --Me
    Posted 98 days ago by SchWM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • is there any way(other than manually counting) to find out how many friends u have?
    Posted 97 days ago by Kristabel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Kristabel

    Yeah, just go to your profile page. As of now, you have 425 friends. 
    Posted 97 days ago by Rook Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ty!
    Posted 97 days ago by Kristabel Subscriber! | Permalink
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