User blog:Wanda56/How many friends is the right number?

I saw a post a few days ago where someone was looking to “refresh” their Friends List and find the “perfect 100”. This started me thinking about what is the right number of friends, and what levels should they be at, what Talents they should have. This is one of those questions which has many answers all of which will the right answer for someone. I have seen posts asking for friends with quite specific qualifications in terms of playing style, gifting habits, talent and levels.

I have about 80 friends of which 5 are second games of friends and are not active friends, so lets call it 75. A few months ago the number was 120. When I started having friends from the wiki I reduced my number of friends because someone made the point in a discussion thread that it was difficult to be a good friend to a hundred or more people. At the 75 – 80 friends level I find I notice who is playing actively and who has gone missing without the need to record any information routinely. Although when I'm planning to delete a few friends to make room for new ones I do make a note of the names of those I think may have stopped playing and score their name off the list if they send a thank you, a gift or if they visit. If the name is still on the list after a week then they are my candidates for deletion. What if they are just on vacation you cry? Well if I considered them to be a good friend over several months I wouldn't have put them on the list in the first place, and if they changed their name to indicate they were away they also wouldn't be on the list. This approach has worked well for the past few months but is now coming to the end of its useful life. I went to make “the list” this week and could only come up with two names and one of those was a Ranger. Hence the rethink of the right number of friends and their characteristics.

Clearly the perfect 100 has its appeal and the poster seemed to be looking for 100 active daily players, who visited daily and were generous gifters. The maximum number of friends you can visit per day is 100 and the maximum number you can send gifts to is also 100. So more than 100 will mean you can't visit or gift them all on the same day. If you have more than 100 either you need to rotate your gifting and visiting which seems like hard work to me, or the excess over 100 are just there for you to use for Hiring and maybe get the odd gift from them. That only seems ok if they are Zombies (players no longer playing so won't miss the visits and the gifts you are not sending). So for me the maximum is probably 100 plus any Zombies (some players still have some Zzz players on their friends list) and plus any second games where my friend has said visits and gifts are not required. However, I have a friend with 291 friends and several more with over 200 friends, they are from my point of view, all valuable friends in no danger of going on “the list”, but they can't be being a good friend to their whole list (can they?), and the more friends you have the more you have available to hire.

However you only get the visiting bonus for a maximum of 50 friends, so the return from the first 50 visited it higher and is a better use of scarce time if you are short of time. So my minimum number of friends is probably 50, I get a significant number of passes from the visit bonus as well as coins and experience points I wouldn't want to lose.

I said above I didn't want to put one friend on “the list” because they were a Ranger (increasing my chances of finding a collection item when I hire them). Initially I hired more Jokers than anything else for the reduced energy cost, then I migrated to Keepers who give me more experience points and I reasoned 10% more experience got me to the same point as 10% less energy with less plays. Now I go for Rangers since I have been getting good results from hiring a Ranger while running an Eagle Eye and saving precious Seekers Stars. So should Talent be a criteria in adding or keeping friends? Well since there is no way an arbitrarily system chosen Talent can influence whether the person will be a good friend I will continue to ignore it in adding friends. I will probably save my Ranger for the moment though since I still haven't answered my initial question – how many friends is the right number of friends for me?

Or have I – maximum 100 – minimum 50 – I think I can be a good friend to 70 – 80 but I see many requests for friends I would like to respond to especially from the Newbies. Ask me how many friends I have in 3 months and I guess we will know the answer for me.