Gifting and Your Friends

Have you actually taken the time to log who you send what to and how they respond (or if they respond)? I'm interested to see other people's study in how, in general, your friends were gifting you.

I have a collection of random friends I've already pared back some to just under 300, and on Monday I went through and got rid of out of daters, and logged what every friend's base stats were at the time, logging every one of my friends (it took all day, whew!). I visited a good 1/3 of my friends list yesterday verifying they had leveled up since Monday (they almost all had), tipping, and left each as many gifts as I could. 24 hours later, the results are disappointing. Out of that 1/3, this is what I see:

A very small percentage will reciprocate with an equal gift out of your wish list; I see more people gifting random collection items that I didn't need. Lots more are just accepting the item and letting it drop without reciprocating with anything except the thank you gift, no matter how needed the item was or how many times I sent it. I don't think there's a single one of us that can reciprocate every gift, so this is not terribly surprising. What was surprising to me is that many have not even picked up their gifts (or didn't bother to send the thank you gifts), even though I know almost everyone I gifted is active daily.

Do any of you make it common practice to close the 'gifting console' window out without sending the thank you gifts? I wonder why this is more common than I thought. If so, is it just because of the pause you have to wait through when you do tap the send button?

What would you guys think if we had a way to rate our friends? My suggestion yesterday was to have a section on the manor visit screen to show what you've recently gifted that person and what they've gifted you back. If you could rate them in terms of interactions and such, I'd bet people would be a lot more conscious of how they play with their friends!

I realize there are some players who don't bother to gift back and just take what they can get from others and I'm not speaking for them, but some of us try very hard to do the best we can as far as gifting is concerned.

I work 60 hours a week, have some medical issues going on, and would like to spend five minutes a week with my husband on top of the housework etc I have to do. I have only 20 minutes to play some days. I logged on today and have 54 requests on my wall and that takes a few minutes to fulfill.

I try to visit every one of my friends but it takes forever to load someones manor. Then I have to look at their wish list, go back to my manor and find that item on my gift list and then go back to their manor to gift. If I try to scroll from their mansion my finger hits the wrong thing and I gift something I don't mean to. The game doesn't give us a good system to find friends so I have to scroll to find that person that sent me a gift. It would help if people would post on your wall to so you can visit and gift them as well without having to scroll through hundreds of friends.

Sometimes I visit high level people like you (over level 100) and I'm low level enough that I don't have anything on your wish list so I have to scroll through you collection to find something I have that you don't already have 75 of and that takes time.

Sometimes it's hard to tell who sent me what because the avatar with the white dress hides the friends name and I have no idea what it says.

You talked about leveling but by the time I look for people and gift them I barely have time to explore five rooms so that makes it pretty hard to level fast enough.

Sometimes I'm so stressed from work I just want to cry and barely have the energy to get my gifts out much less do all of the above so I tell myself I'll get them as soon as I can which may be on the weekend and by then I forget who sent me what so then I may leave the gifts so I can remind myself later who I need to gift back so thats why someone might leave it in the gifting window without removing it right away. <---(longest sentence ever?)

This game is the only fun thing I do and trying to gift everyone is so stressful sometimes but I really do the best I can.

I agree we need a system for weeding out the people that never play or update or never sends gifts even thank you gifts, and I'm sorry for rambling, I just hope some of you realize this game can eat up a big chunk of your time and some of us don't have as much time as others.

I know this is not the answer you're looking for and this is not aimed at you Soozicle or anyone else, just want to plead for some understanding for those of us that are time deficient. I have spent a lot of diamonds opening level 99 charging items as well as trying to make up for it in other ways.

Am I the only one that has this problem?

I admit........ I am a lazy friend. I try to visit and gift but I refuse to stress out over a game when my real life is stressful enough. I do however always send the thank you gifts (dust bunnies anyone??) and answer wall requests. If you ask for something on my wall you are gonna get it. I have some really great friends from here who help me out even though I'm a pretty sucky friend ( you know who you are!). All you can do is try, and some days even that it too much.

Misato don't stress about it. If you want a sucky friend you can add me and I will send you what you ask for on my wall with no expectation of anything in return;)
You don't have to go back to your manor to gift from a friends wishlist. Just tap the picture at the top of the gift screen of what they want and a confirmation screen will pop up. Hit send and it will send the item. This WILL remove the collection item from your inventory..

Misato wrote:
I try to visit every one of my friends but it takes forever to load someones manor. Then I have to look at their wish list, go back to my manor and find that item on my gift list and then go back to their manor to gift. If I try to scroll from their mansion my finger hits the wrong thing and I gift something I don't mean to.

Ahhh... you've not caught on to what the numbers in the wish list mean then! This should help you out immensely ... those numbers aren't the inventory of the user you're on, they're how many of those items YOU have! If you tap on an item that doesn't have a number on it, nothing will happen because you don't have any of that item (even if it's a charging item that you can gift freely from the "gift console"). In case you didn't know, charging items never get deducted from your personal inventory when you gift, so whether you gift them from the wish list or gift console, your number of those items will not drop... collection items however do get deducted. To make sure you can always gift charging items from the wish list, just make sure to always leave yourself one spare one to use for that purpose... gift away with it, it never gets deducted.

I certainly don't claim to return each gift, by any means. That would make keeping track of gifting a stressful chore, you're both right on that. Now if it's someone who's gone out of their way to multigift me something(s) off my wish list I will generally make sure to go gift them back in a like manner. While I'm there I'll probably go ahead and visit their "neighbors" and multigift them, too. I'm always fishing for generous multigifters. People who only ever send me things I don't need and didn't ask for don't get anything but the thank you gift and are generally at risk of being removed from my friends.

You have to modify your "friend strategy" to suit the way you play the game. I'm lucky enough to have a job in IT and no kids. I quite literally sit around all day waiting for something to break, someone to need help, or for my boss to assign me maintenance work. Even if I'm busy at work I'm still going to be on the game several hours a day, because I can leave it open on my ipad out on my desk at work and not get yelled at. When I'm NOT busy I'm active on it constantly. I'm going to get burned out sooner rather than later... but not yet With the way I play my game, I'm constantly pushing forward, wanting to get things accomplished yesterday. Lately I'm focusing more on using my friends to help me finish quests when I can rather than beat myself up trying, and I get impatient waiting for someone to respond to a request for an item I need to finish it. Due to this, it's in my best interest to narrow my friends list to people who play in a more similar way to me. You'd benefit more from having lots and lots of friends who play more like you. Let me take out my prescription tablet... here you go, one bottle of 'add everybody you can find to your friend list and try not to feel bad when people you're not able to keep up with drop you off'.

I must admit I am one of the more relaxed players. I do try to repay favours, I have very generous friends, but I am one of those with super fast wifi and rarely am able to multi gift and this makes me feel bad sometimes. I always send the 'thank you' though. I can't understand why you wouldn't.

Your observation about accepting gifts interested me. It's something I've started to notice recently with the high volume of gift requests. I receive 100s so I expect 100s of mystery gifts on top of that I get masses of gifts from super-generous friends. I go to my gifts and I have pages of gifts to accept. I have noticed that if I accept a load and then go back there are changes. Sometimes a whole different set have appeared! I am wondering if there's a memory limit on the gift screen just like there is on the wall - it took me a whIle to realise I needed to delete messages before the hidden ones appeared! Maybe this is why some of your friends didn't pick up their gifts? Just a thought.

Debinapril wrote:
Your observation about accepting gifts interested me. It's something I've started to notice recently with the high volume of gift requests. I receive 100s so I expect 100s of mystery gifts on top of that I get masses of gifts from super-generous friends. I go to my gifts and I have pages of gifts to accept. I have noticed that if I accept a load and then go back there are changes. Sometimes a whole different set have appeared! I am wondering if there's a memory limit on the gift screen just like there is on the wall - it took me a whIle to realise I needed to delete messages before the hidden ones appeared! Maybe this is why some of your friends didn't pick up their gifts? Just a thought.

I wondered the same thing. When I accept gifts, I usually accept all in that window (multiple pages). When i go back to My Gifts one more time, there are usually more gifts to accept but that is where it stops. On the second try, no more gifts to accept.
This might be related to the frequency of playing, but I'm not sure.

You can scroll the gifts to see all of them that you have before you start accepting. I also notice there's discrepancies with what I actually get... I mentioned this elsewhere last night but I noticed yesterday a friend gifted me something to complete a collection and off I went to happily charge it after I got the gift... But it wasn't there!! At least I know the friend tried.

Soozicle wrote:You can scroll the gifts to see all of them that you have before you start accepting. I also notice there's discrepancies with what I actually get... I mentioned this elsewhere last night but I noticed yesterday a friend gifted me something to complete a collection and off I went to happily charge it after I got the gift... But it wasn't there!! At least I know the friend tried.

Hm that's never happened to me I don't think. At least not with collection items. As we all know there were issues with Mystery Gifts before, though.

I read a warning tonight on a friends wall. She said to not Thank her for any gifts because they are monitoring the number of thank yous received and a friend of hers was sent a warning for too many thank yous. Anyone else hear about this?

It would be nice if someone took a screenshot of this warning and posted it.

Debinapril wrote:I must admit I am one of the more relaxed players. I do try to repay favours, I have very generous friends, but I am one of those with super fast wifi and rarely am able to multi gift and this makes me feel bad sometimes. I always send the 'thank you' though.

As far as I'm concerned, you have nothing to feel bad about. You've been very generous and I appreciate all your help!

Oh thank you, that's so sweet of you!

I also have very fast internet and am rarely able to multi-gift. I feel so bad because I have several supergenerous friends who give me many gifts nearly everyday. All are at higher levels than I. I do visit their manors everyday and leave the maximum number of tips I can, check their WL for something I may have and personally write a quick TY on their walls every single day. Even if I don't have time to play!

As I child, I was never allowed to use a gift until I had written a thank you note to the giver. Now I don't let myself accept the gift until I've written a thank you on my friends' wall.

Soozicle wrote:What was surprising to me is that many have not even picked up their gifts (or didn't bother to send the thank you gifts), even though I know almost everyone I gifted is active daily.

Well I can say that I don't pick up my charging items at once if I run on empty on one of them. I try to amass a bunch of them in my "inbox", requesting every day, before taking them out and - of course - always hit the "thank". Although I have to admit to my Internet being quite spotty sometimes, so sometimes the mystery gift doesn't go through (I can't do anything about it, really and it DOES have advantages sometimes... )

other than that, I try to gift while doing my visiting rounds every day, and only send out "blind" ones if it is really late or I don't have much time.

As to thanking on walls - I try to do that if someone sends something I really need or had on my wishlist, but here as well I have to admit - some players are REALLY generous, so sometimes I loose count.
I hate that the friendslist is not in alphabetical order, because with all that clearing the list it is now completely mixed up and it takes AGES to finde someone who is not on my wall right now

I must admit, i gift quite differently. I try to keep to only 100 friends to make my gifting easier, and i also have a note on my wall adking people to leave a note if they drop by so i can visit them first when i do my daily rounds!

I start my gifting with those people, and then move on to the friends i call my 10. These are my friends i have a long standing gifting relationship with, and are friends whove helped me level up with gifts and tidbits of knowledge! Without them i would still be on level 35 so this is my way of showing them gratitude and i gift them everyday, resetting my counters to do so if necessaru. Finally i either start top to bottom or bottom to top of my friends list and gift 50 either way, so everybody receives something from me every other day. As much as i can is by wishlist.

On average gifting takes me 3 hrs a day lol! But its my favorite part of the game

recently on this game, not speaking fluently english, i would like to know how i CAN send more than one gift to à friend

Essex girl wrote:I must admit, i gift quite differently. I try to keep to only 100 friends to make my gifting easier, and i also have a note on my wall adking people to leave a note if they drop by so i can visit them first when i do my daily rounds!

I start my gifting with those people, and then move on to the friends i call my 10. These are my friends i have a long standing gifting relationship with, and are friends whove helped me level up with gifts and tidbits of knowledge! Without them i would still be on level 35 so this is my way of showing them gratitude and i gift them everyday, resetting my counters to do so if necessaru. Finally i either start top to bottom or bottom to top of my friends list and gift 50 either way, so everybody receives something from me every other day. As much as i can is by wishlist.

On average gifting takes me 3 hrs a day lol! But its my favorite part of the game

That's the sweet spot I want to get to. I currently have about 235 friends, and am adding more only from this site, deleting those that are playing the game in an obviously much different fashion than me (random gifting on a regular basis but nothing from my WL, always fully charged and nothing on their walls, never returning MG's). My ideal dream MM world would have 50 closest friends who all MG and are consistent daily players.

Soozicle wrote:

Essex girl wrote:I must admit, i gift quite differently. I try to keep to only 100 friends to make my gifting easier, and i also have a note on my wall adking people to leave a note if they drop by so i can visit them first when i do my daily rounds!

I start my gifting with those people, and then move on to the friends i call my 10. These are my friends i have a long standing gifting relationship with, and are friends whove helped me level up with gifts and tidbits of knowledge! Without them i would still be on level 35 so this is my way of showing them gratitude and i gift them everyday, resetting my counters to do so if necessaru. Finally i either start top to bottom or bottom to top of my friends list and gift 50 either way, so everybody receives something from me every other day. As much as i can is by wishlist.

On average gifting takes me 3 hrs a day lol! But its my favorite part of the game

That's the sweet spot I want to get to. I currently have about 235 friends, and am adding more only from this site, deleting those that are playing the game in an obviously much different fashion than me (random gifting on a regular basis but nothing from my WL, always fully charged and nothing on their walls, never returning MG's). My ideal dream MM world would have 50 closest friends who all MG and are consistent daily players.

EG, I gift just about the same way as you. I only have 91 friends so it makes it easier to keep track. I try once a week or so to gift all my friends. It takes a lot of time and I used to really stress over it. Now I just do what I can.

Laventosa I too hoard certain charger items on my gift wall. Notably flaming skulls because you need so darned many to charge any collection items. Also if I open them all right away I am not able to request anything on my friends manor walls. With my usual 13 hour time difference its tough to reach anyone when I am in dire need of a charge item.
I will be sad when I go back to GMT+7 next week. Laney and Pauline glad we are only an hour different.

hanepe wrote: recently on this game, not speaking fluently english, i would like to know how i CAN send more than one gift to à friend

there are a lot of threads regarding this just look around in the various sections - although it is something that is discouraged by Admin to be discussed in this forum, so most of us refrain from doing so
Try asking someone per PM (Personal Message) who writes about it if you cannot figure it out.

Well my fiancé thinks I'm crazy cos I went out and specially bought a mm notebook and a mystery manor pen. But wait the pen is special cos its one of those where u can pull the thing down and have different colours. I went from 700 to 200 friends. This sounds really crazy but it annoys me so much when I multi gift someone(which I see as my special power) and they either send back something really pointless or they don't even visit my wl. When I didn't know how I was always really amazed and visited them to tell them how great they are.

Thank god for my special mm notebook and pen lol

Princesscjm wrote:Well my fiancé thinks I'm crazy cos I went out and specially bought a mm notebook and a mystery manor pen. But wait the pen is special cos its one of those where u can pull the thing down and have different colours. I went from 700 to 200 friends. This sounds really crazy but it annoys me so much when I multi gift someone(which I see as my special power) and they either send back something really pointless or they don't even visit my wl. When I didn't know how I was always really amazed and visited them to tell them how great they are.

Thank god for my special mm notebook and pen lol

Well multi-gift doesn't work any more, so if you're not getting any gifts back, it's because you never actually sent some!