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.