Time to cut the fat!! Identifying Inactive Friends

A lot of people use this strategy so I'm posting to let n00bs know about it and remind the rest it's about that time!

I'm always looking for easy ways to identify inactive players in my friends list, and by far the easiest way to spot them I've found is by waiting a while after an update and deleting anyone who is still out of date.

I generally try to wait a full week but sometimes will kill some after a few days if I don't recognize their names. Today is one full week after the last update, so it's the perfect time to start weeding out the junk players that are causing visiting road blocks and wasting your time when you're trying to find friends to request gifts from.

I've shrunk my friend list down by about 60 players in the last week or two, and I'm already finding it much easier to manage. Because I'm being careful about who I delete, I haven't noticed any real decrease in the amount of gifts I'm receiving... and I'm enjoying the benefit of having a smaller list where I can make sure I gift more evenly among them.

TA DAAAAAA Happy deleting!

I just spent the last three hours deleting friends that hadn't updated. I'm pretty sure I got all of them. Well, all of them but one. I figured I'd give Admin a bit longer to update :p

sfinley ibrahim wrote:I just spent the last three hours deleting friends that hadn't updated. I'm pretty sure I got all of them. Well, all of them but one. I figured I'd give Admin a bit longer to update :p

Yep, same here. Although, another mmuff friend, Jillll, hasn't updated in quite awhile. I remember she had a job where she could only play on weekends, but it's been a long time. Does anyone know if she's still playing?

Trekker wrote:

sfinley ibrahim wrote:I just spent the last three hours deleting friends that hadn't updated. I'm pretty sure I got all of them. Well, all of them but one. I figured I'd give Admin a bit longer to update :p

Yep, same here. Although, another mmuff friend, Jillll, hasn't updated in quite awhile. I remember she had a job where she could only play on weekends, but it's been a long time. Does anyone know if she's still playing?

JIllll is my friend, too. We PMed each other a couple of times. She is in a grad program and was taking several classes this summer. I know she commuted from her home to live near school during the week and then back home on weekends. It is possible that the workload is too much right now to have time to play. I decided to keep her because she was a good friend, not just a gift and run person....
Because I have just 110 people, a couple who are inactive at the moment, it is easy to just go around her when visiting. I've memorized the order of friend's manor, so I know who to visit and gift next.:-) I guess I'm hoping she will return after the summer school session..... :-)

Still trying to get to 500 for the achiebvement, but am mega excited about the big prune that will follow.

Mbstr8k wrote:

Trekker wrote:

sfinley ibrahim wrote:I just spent the last three hours deleting friends that hadn't updated. I'm pretty sure I got all of them. Well, all of them but one. I figured I'd give Admin a bit longer to update :p

Yep, same here. Although, another mmuff friend, Jillll, hasn't updated in quite awhile. I remember she had a job where she could only play on weekends, but it's been a long time. Does anyone know if she's still playing?

JIllll is my friend, too. We PMed each other a couple of times. She is in a grad program and was taking several classes this summer. I know she commuted from her home to live near school during the week and then back home on weekends. It is possible that the workload is too much right now to have time to play. I decided to keep her because she was a good friend, not just a gift and run person....
Because I have just 110 people, a couple who are inactive at the moment, it is easy to just go around her when visiting. I've memorized the order of friend's manor, so I know who to visit and gift next.:-) I guess I'm hoping she will return after the summer school session..... :-)

Hi Jillll is my friend too. The last I sent her a pm was a few weeks ago but got no response. She must be busy with school. I am not going to delete her. She is a good friend!

hippolyra wrote:Still trying to get to 500 for the achiebvement, but am mega excited about the big prune that will follow.

Me too, going for the big friend-pile prize, will definitely enjoy thinning for all reasons listed.

ycul wrote:

Mbstr8k wrote:

Trekker wrote:

sfinley ibrahim wrote:I just spent the last three hours deleting friends that hadn't updated. I'm pretty sure I got all of them. Well, all of them but one. I figured I'd give Admin a bit longer to update :p

Yep, same here. Although, another mmuff friend, Jillll, hasn't updated in quite awhile. I remember she had a job where she could only play on weekends, but it's been a long time. Does anyone know if she's still playing?

JIllll is my friend, too. We PMed each other a couple of times. She is in a grad program and was taking several classes this summer. I know she commuted from her home to live near school during the week and then back home on weekends. It is possible that the workload is too much right now to have time to play. I decided to keep her because she was a good friend, not just a gift and run person....
Because I have just 110 people, a couple who are inactive at the moment, it is easy to just go around her when visiting. I've memorized the order of friend's manor, so I know who to visit and gift next.:-) I guess I'm hoping she will return after the summer school session..... :-)

Hi Jillll is my friend too. The last I sent her a pm was a few weeks ago but got no response. She must be busy with school. I am not going to delete her. She is a good friend!

Oh, I have no plans to delete her, she is a good friend. I was just hoping someone had heard from her.

Yes, I'm going to cut down my list in the next few days. After having the 150 Achievment, I just can't see me going any further. I don't loke having too many friends and not being able to care about them all.
Strangely enough about 2/3 of my helpers are inactive now, so there is going to be a big shift - and I'm going to loose many of my Explorer friends, which is a shame, but "I just can't stand the silence anymore" )

@Trekker you are probably going up in the ranks of my friends: You are going to be my helper! Prepare for long nights

I finally got my achievement for 500 friends and have started cutting down on friends. I'm surprised how long it is taking me to go through my list. I'm starting with the inactive players first and then will cut more from there. Not sure what a managable number is but it is definitely not 500!

I finally got to under 250 last week, and decided to cycle through a "visit" to each one today, gifting all those that had items in their wish lists that I had multiples of. I tried to be very generous, especially to those that were obviously active today. Found a couple more non-updated folks, and two or three others that were prime candidates to delete for different reasons. I sat there doing it pretty much all afternoon, working for about 7 hours straight on it while I "watched tv". I ALMOST got through the whole list before I accidentally gifted out too many collection items for realsies to continue. I think 200 might be the sweet spot for that type of work. From there I'll narrow the list down to the most active and generous type. My intention is to narrow my friends to a group that play as intensely as I do. When I choose to slow down I'll add a bunch of new friends and spread the wealth when I do gift.

I finally reached the 500 to get the achievement so it is now time to cut it back. One method I am using is to see if friends return requested items. I still have about 500 pilgrim chests left so I am sending one to each of my friends. I keep track of who returns them. Those that don't become candidates for deletion. I don't base it solely on that but to me it's an indicator of how active the player is.

I am torn about whether to cut friends or not. I have over 600 at the moment, and I kind of like the idea of getting as many as I can. It came in very useful during the recent events, where lots of charging items were needed plus, I like to feel like I am helping lots of people! I also know that even inactive players might one day become intense players like me - I took a break from MM for about three months as I hadn't really got into it, but then I started playing again and got into it big-time and now I'm pretty addicted. I'm grateful for those who didn't delete me during the time I wasn't around. However, it is really annoying having to scroll through so many names trying to find a particular person. Plus there are a few who probably should be removed - never sending thank you gifts, or returning favours. Hmm...

I live in hope that MM will release an update where the friends are organised by name or level or the friends list has a search function. Until then, I probably will keep my big list and just spend the extra time scrolling if that ever happens, I'll have an easy way to keep up to date with my good friends and I'll still have lots of others to help/request items from during events etc.

I edited my friend's list this weekend and I am below 150, which suits me as I like to visit and gift friends on a regular basis. While having a large number of friends was handy during the events in order to request charging items, I found that having too many friends was too cumbersome as there are only so many friends that you can visit and gift. With 150 friends I can visit everyone every 3 days or so.

Hate to say it, but one of my main criteria on choosing whom to delete was to delete friends that had over 500 friends, especially if I did not recognize the name - I figured that they wouldn't even notice I was no longer a friend.

carfar wrote:Hate to say it, but one of my main criteria on choosing whom to delete was to delete friends that had over 500 friends, especially if I did not recognize the name - I figured that they wouldn't even notice I was no longer a friend.

I was about to say that, too. I just wrote a reply to the post above yours and it didn't post so here's a quick rewrite: After the second time going through my entire friend list gifting everyone (with 235 down from 315, multigifting most of them, all off of their wish lists), the results are still the same... an atrociously low amount actually reciprocated. I'm going to start a 'keep' list and put only friends from this forum on it and my active gifters... I started to do this last week and gave up for some reason, but really, why should I be gifting 150 people who won't even send me one item from my wish list in return? Once I have a nice list of active people who reciprocate when gifted and proactively gift as well (in addition to friends from MMUFF), I'll just delete anyone who's not on the keep list. It's getting tiresome!

The biggest problem with people who have over 500 friends is that they never make it around to you to proactively gift you and hardly see it when you multigift them because they get so many gifts. If you have only 50 that you know will always repay you in kind, you're spending your gifting time much better and will be able to gift them every day.

Carfar, you look to play about the same way that I do. Wanna be friends?

Soozicle wrote:
I was about to say that, too. I just wrote a reply to the post above yours and it didn't post so here's a quick rewrite: After the second time going through my entire friend list gifting everyone (with 235 down from 315, multigifting most of them, all off of their wish lists), the results are still the same... an atrociously low amount actually reciprocated. I'm going to start a 'keep' list and put only friends from this forum on it and my active gifters... I started to do this last week and gave up for some reason, but really, why should I be gifting 150 people who won't even send me one item from my wish list in return? Once I have a nice list of active people who reciprocate when gifted and proactively gift as well (in addition to friends from MMUFF), I'll just delete anyone who's not on the keep list. It's getting tiresome!

The biggest problem with people who have over 500 friends is that they never make it around to you to proactively gift you and hardly see it when you multigift them because they get so many gifts. If you have only 50 that you know will always repay you in kind, you're spending your gifting time much better and will be able to gift them every day.

Carfar, you look to play about the same way that I do. Wanna be friends?

My only comment is that yes, if you gift me something and don't leave me a message, I'm not likely to scroll through my friend list to try to find you. However, if you're generous to me and leave me a note on my wall saying you left gifts or tips, I'll always visit your manor and repay the kindness. So, if you're not getting a response, maybe you should just try leaving notes to people so that they can find you more easily. I think the problem may be more to do with the atrocious friend management of the game than with the players.

Ha. I never even considered that people might remove me for having a big friends list. The thing is though, I always reciprocate - if someone leaves me WL items or tips I ALWAYS do the same and leave thank you messages too. I even pay to reset my counters if I need to although that doesn't happen often as most of my friends aren't very 'intense' players. I have a smaller list on paper of the people I want to visit every day, and they visit me every day too.

One of my friends leaves me multiple WL gifts at least a couple of times a week but has over 800 friends! I guess like me she maybe has a smaller list somewhere of her 'favourite' friends who she visits regularly.

I don't really feel like anyone is missing out because if someone makes an effort to help me I always do the same back. However if all 600 friends were big players and helping me out every day, then I guess I would run into a problem..! At the moment it works out fine though...

tatteredlace wrote:...
I don't really feel like anyone is missing out because if someone makes an effort to help me I always do the same back. However if all 600 friends were big players and helping me out every day, then I guess I would run into a problem..! At the moment it works out fine though...

That's exactly my goal... I just want my friends list to reflect people who play like me because that's the best way for me to get back what I give in while simultaneously streamlining my game. At least I know now which two or three will return the favor without having to post anything on their wall. I meant to start doing that but forgot... honestly it's just another thing to have to do that slows me down when I'm trying to get to as many people as possible in a day. I guess I kind of figured that if you suddenly get 25-30 gifts from me it would be enough to make you stop and go, hey, I need to go repay this! I've said it before that I needed to start making wall posts but for some reason I hate doing that

Having 500 give or take a few of friends is helpful but it is also hard to gift everyone... I do return gifts to those who gift me! I take extra time to bless those who bless me! And every couple weeks I go thru my list n delete those who I never hear from... But I luv meeting new friends all the time! And I make sure to appreciate the friends who visit my manor daily!

sfinley ibrahim wrote:I just spent the last three hours deleting friends that hadn't updated. I'm pretty sure I got all of them. Well, all of them but one. I figured I'd give Admin a bit longer to update :p

Hah!! My brother has my iPad now. I thought I was up to date.
I'll update tomorrow when I get my iPad back. Thanks for your patience

Admin wrote:

sfinley ibrahim wrote:I just spent the last three hours deleting friends that hadn't updated. I'm pretty sure I got all of them. Well, all of them but one. I figured I'd give Admin a bit longer to update :p

Hah!! :D My brother has my iPad now. I thought I was up to date.
I'll update tomorrow when I get my iPad back. Thanks for your patience :face:

?

You have a lot of loyal friends! I bet you had a bouquet of flowers waiting for you when you got back!:-)

Yes, I am embarrassed!

engineer wrote:
My only comment is that yes, if you gift me something and don't leave me a message, I'm not likely to scroll through my friend list to try to find you. However, if you're generous to me and leave me a note on my wall saying you left gifts or tips, I'll always visit your manor and repay the kindness. So, if you're not getting a response, maybe you should just try leaving notes to people so that they can find you more easily. I think the problem may be more to do with the atrocious friend management of the game than with the players.

That is a really good point. I often gift some1 something from their wishlist....they'll obviously see it was from me, so I didn't see a need to post something on their wall...but you are soooo right,when someone posts something to my wall, I always immediately visit them if I had not done so that day already.
Posting that you gifted is a really easy game mechanic reminder for the person to visit you back. Tysm for posting this.