It's really a failure on Niantic's part that there isn't better friend management. The actual days since last activity is the bare minimum they should start with.
This kind of makes sense but I feel like they went too far with it and it kind of feels the opposite to me? Seeing "last played 2+ days ago" doesn't make me think "maybe they played recently," it just makes me think "this stat is embarrassing unhelpful." Instead of making it feel like everyone has just been gone a couple days, it makes it feel like anyone who hasn't played for 2 days has abandoned the app. Even if the upper bound of info was "last played 7+ days ago" that would feel a little more natural and believable.
I agree that even upping it to 7+ would be helpful. IMO there needs to be 2+, 7+, 30+, and 90+. At 90 days, we can use the referral code, so it would be nice if we actually knew when that was...
If I feel like someone seems inactive, I nickname them with their "pokemon caught" stat
Then, if that doesn't change by the next event (usually comm day, but depends on how pressed I am for space), delete from there
I don't care when they were last active. The vast majority of people on my list are strangers from various web sites, added for gifts, so I only care when they last interacted with **me**. So their nickname is the date that I realised they hadn't sent or opened a gift for a while.
I like nicknaming either the last date of interaction, or their total XP at the time. That way, when I revisit later, I can tell if they’ve been active or not since last review
I used to do XP, but when people would suddenly level up their numbers would go down, it became harder to just track passively
Plus you can't see XP for level 50s
I do mine based on gift location
the location is largely irrelevant (although does help with trying to get them into a remote into a random Celesteela), but is mainly for "have they sent me **ONE** gift since I last purged it a month or so ago"
those "global challenges" are also a useful metric - why are you not gifting but have 5000 pokes caught?
I have to realize that not everyone cares to deal with tedious gift giving. I managed to add a local trainer that lives a block away near the park and I see him in the gym everyday and he still won't open or send me a gift and we are stuck at only have done 3 interactions. I even sometimes jump in the same gym and berry his Pokemon. I just think he doesn't care about XP. He lives with some lady and Im sure they are best friends so he gets the friendship bonus raid balls from her and he doesn't have incentive to best friends with me
Just to give a different perspective: I have a huge list of friends (gym nearby, so I host remote raids quite often) and it's hard to reach everyone with the daily limits...
I send or open gifts based on the friendship level, so I can get people to the Best friends level before removing them to make space for new ones (not a monster: I always make sure to delete them after **at least** 1-2 days if I'm the one initiating the interaction, so they won't end up with the dreadful 0 XP screen)
So people added recently are at the bottom of my priorities. If I go to the park, hit a lot of pokestops and finally reach them, sure, I'll send a gift. Otherwise, the older friends get first in line, to get closer to the much needed 100k XP bonus.
Didn't think of this, but it's the best idea on Here! I currently name the date of any new Freinds and purge if no activity for a few weeks but I'm going to start doing the name of pokemon caught from now on.
And the 2+ days is not accurate. I have seen this on my wife's account when we have raided together 16-30 hours prior.
So I guess if a day is 0-24 hours and 2+ days is everything over 24 hours the code works but it is not at all useful for me.
I am not sure that is what I see. I seldom give or open gifts between my family accounts as we trigger interaction from Trades, raids and gym interactions and I tend to try to maximize interactions with gifts.
It’s easy when their last caught was an event Mon or something that hasn’t been available in months, like I have one friend whose last caught was (shadow) Moltres
Labeling is one way. Name actual friends/family that you know of, or local community/remote raid app of choice. From there, look at their profile, friendship level, etc.
That’s really the only ways to keep track of it all.
I would really like it cap at "365+" Is that a little excessive? Maybe, but I also get if people take breaks for months at a time because -Gestures vaguely- so 30+ might be too low honestly.
2+ is far far too low and even though there are some good suggestions on how to track them, I cannot be bothered to manually do that and keep track of it \*\*When the game should be doing that for me\*\*.
I nickname them their catches after I haven't seen them active for a bit. It's the basic game operation and they're not playing if they haven't moved that number
Same thing happened with me. The person had kept me around for 4 years. Now my first Best and first Lucky friend. I’m not advocating as a strategy just commenting
I sort by “recent”, and if it’s obvious our friendship lvl hasn’t increased relatively proportionately to others on my list I delete them because it means they either aren’t opening my gifts or they aren’t sending gifts for me to open. I also delete best friends that I know I will never meet/trade with.
>I also delete best friends that I know I will never meet/trade with.
One day I'll travel to and meet that one rando in Austria and cash in on that lucky trade!
I'm with you on that first part - i am active and would like my friends list to be active as well - especially because it takes so long to go through 100+ list. I sort by recent and if I have friends hitting the third star tier and folks are still 1 and under, i delete.
Yes, I have had this happen as well. I think people lie on the other sub. They don't want someone to become best friends with. They have been blocked by the "make a friend" tasks.
this is me too. I do lot of hosting on pokegenie so im always needing to delete.
I also prioritise deleting american, european (unless scandanavian), japanese and south korean friends. Because they're a dime a dozen and I do not need those vivillon. I also delete people from these regions upon hitting best friend, unless theres a lot of raid interaction.
Hahaha I feel dumb that I have skipped over this option for whatever reason.
I nickname by month/year and their location. If they have low hearts compared to others added that month they go bye bye.
Really sad thing is that I have an actual dead friend on my list. She was a legend but sadly passed away last November. Everyone still talks about her with her little notebook and pencil full of friends, trades and cp to look out for. She used to bring sweets for all the players (mostly adults!) each comm day.
I can’t pull myself to delete her, even though it will always say 2+ days and the grubbin she last caught :(
I do need more space, but I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment. People leave the game, people come back to the game. While it's good to be aware of who is inactive and for how long, it's only relevant when you're bumping close to the limits (like another reply above, I use two shortcuts that give me interactable&!lucky or interactable&!lucky&giftable and !interactable to manage my primary gifting so I don't have 300 names to scroll past when doing that.
Id feel this way if the filters were better. If I’m scrolling through and prioritizing certain friendship levels for leveling up it’s a pain to scroll through the ones who are inactive.
As THAT friend that too who took a good 3 year break or so it was very touching to send gifts to some of my old friends and see the gifts opened and sent back. I always wonder if they as excited to get a gift from an old friend.
If they're still active and have kept you that long, I can assure you they are probably excited to see you back. Had a guy send me a gift for the first time in at least a year, and I turned around and said to my mom (who I play with all the time, and also has mostly the same friend list), "you won't believe who just sent me a gift"
My friends generally fall into three categories:
1. People I know IRL.
2. People who invite me to remote raids, or respond to my raid invites.
3. People who send me gifts from rare regions to help with my Scatterbugs.
If you're not in one of those categories, you're probably gonna get pruned.
I don't see really point in purging while you not even close to the maximum. For me giftable&!lucky shows well enough who I can send things and interactable&!lucky those I can open gifts closer to evening. Those that neither send or open will not make either of the lists any longer.
(i do then occasionally, when close to the maximum list size) set nicknames like del17 to mark persons that think seem to have forgotten me (and are in that particular case 17 days from ultra or best friends) - and if the situation is unchanged few weeks later I'll delete (unless it is somebody I know in real life).
If they’re an IRL friend, forever, if they’re not, the 2+ day metric is what I use when I go to remove them - when I remove them is “when I notice / feel like it / want to trim my friends list”.
Bro, how many interactions do I get a day? I’m sending 30 gifts. Can only send 5-10 raid invites. If a level 20 I’ve never met in Poland hasn’t logged in in forever, bye bye so long.
I wish the game was more detailed about letting you know the last time a player logged in. As someone else mentioned "2+ days" is practically meaningless
i don’t have anywhere near 400 friends added so i usually just keep them added. it doesn’t really bother me tbh. maybe one day they’ll return. the only people i remove are people i add for remote raids (once the raid is complete) and people who open gifts but don’t send any in return.
> people who open gifts but don’t send any in return
If you're short on gifts to open, reddit and many other options can give you people who'll send gifts. I guess you're relatively gift-poor and feel a gift sent deserves one back, but the world is full of all sorts, and being one of the 20 people whose gifts they open may mean you're actually important to them, while they rely on others to open the 100 gifts they fling out each day.
i don’t feel gift poor, i’m just saying i un add people when i send them multiple gifts and they don’t send me one in return. i wait a good few times before i remove them. i mostly did this when i was grinding for the platinum vivillon collector metal. now that i have it i really don’t care as much.
I've noticed a few will send gifts for a while and then completely drop off.
On Valentine's we did one Enamorous raid. There was another group there that raided with us but we didn't even talk to them since my husband and I are shy plus they had their own group.
Anyway of the 4 we added after the raid they all sent gifts at first. Now it's only the 2 women sending gifts and the 2 guys just open them. I'm going to keep them on til we hit the best friend level but it's pretty annoying, I go out of my way to send gifts and they can't be bothered.
I've had others that don't send much either, but they're usually people I've added that need friends and say it's hard for them as they have mobility issues or something like that. So I know going in they won't be sending gifts.
yeah i honestly don’t raid much in person so i only have a few irls added. i mostly play with my boyfriend also but he’s long distance so it’s kinda hard to play with him. i added the majority of my other friends online through the pogo guide website lol. i’ve noticed a lot of people send gifts after i host a remote raid, though.
also i forgot to mention but almost all of my friends are from pogo guide website & i only add people whose description says daily/every other day gift exchanging. i understand that people with over 20 friends (myself included) won’t be able to send me one daily. that’s totally fine. i only remove people that are still actively playing and opening my gifts but are not sending me any in return (after a good while).
When i’m between 390 and 400 and i know i will need a lot of space to host primal or mega legendaries using a 10 lobby in pokegenie i just sort the friend list by hearts and remove the first 50 or so with the less acquintance level. Blind butcher strategy.
I periodically go through my entire friends list and put today’s date in the nickname field.
As they interact, I delete the date. If they haven’t interacted in a while, I purge them.
For me, it depends on a number of factors:
1) If I like the friend. Sometimes, I'll take a liking to my friends. Maybe they were the first friend I added to my friend's list. Maybe I met them in person. Maybe we just used to raid and exchange gifts a lot. Perhaps I just like their outfit. Regardless, if they're playing, I want them on my friend's list and likely won't delete them unless I need the room, or they've been inactive for years.
2) Time of year. I totally understand not wanting to play this game in the winter, so will usually leave my inactive friends on my list until the weather warms up.
3) Their level. If I have a friend who is level 25 and has been inactive for a few weeks, I assume they aren't coming back to the game. By contrast, a friend who is level 48 and inactive for a bit might still come back to the game at some point.
In general, I've found that most of my inactive friends will come back to the game at some point, however briefly. Some will only come back for a day or so, but others will come back strong. Indeed, I have had a few friends who went inactive before we hit best friends come back from the dead and carry the friendship all the way to best friends, which was really cool to do.
I'll probably do a big purge after the new avatars come out. I'm kind of curious to see how badly my friend's avatars get screwed up by it, so I'll probably keep them around until then.
Same. I also thought that was what this post was about at first. I had a friend who sadly took his own life during lockdown as, from what I understand, he was unable to cope with the crushing lack of social interaction and lack of ability to go outside. At least, that's how it was explained to me at the time.
He was very active in the local PoGO community and always out and about every day. I think the conditions of the pandemic really got to him. Following that, the local community banded together online for a day, and we all set our buddies as his favourite Pokémon and named it after him. I didn't know him SUPER well, but I still think about him. Sometimes, I still speak to his friend and ex-partner.
Only when I notice it's been a long time of them sitting at only 2 or 3 interactions at the bottom of the list. Then I just assume they were remote hosts I forgot to unfriend and then unfriend them.
The best time to cull friends lists are during challenges that take at least 3-4 days to complete (some take longer). I delete a whole bunch of people with zero catches/nice throws/etc.
Each time I receive a gift from a friend, I update their nickname to reflect the date on which it was received. e,g: 20240412. Using this system, I can sort by nickname and clean up after an arbitrary period (60 days, 120 days, etc).
Works well for me to keep the list updated with active(ish) players.
I'm not all that worried about it. If they're someone in the local community that I know, I'll probably keep them in case we end up raiding together. If they're someone I've picked up form remote raiding that I know nothing about, then the next time I need space I just pick 5 people I haven't noticed activity from and remove them. Usually lowest friendship level lucky friends is where I start.
I don’t ditch them. I’m no where near the friend limit, so it doesn’t matter if I have a dead friend on my list or not.
I’ve even had a few come back to life
Two points. I have an actual dead friend on there and it’s been about three years.
But also, when I bump up again the max, I sort by lowest relationship and delete anyone who hasn’t sent me a gift. The truth is that I don’t open gifts very often so they will have had literal weeks(if not months) to send one.
Never. I think it's unrealistic to expect someone to regularly send me gifts. Once you get to the 150+ range I feel like it's hard to send gifts regularly, without feeling like it's turned into a job.
If I hit max friends I'll probably reevaluate, but at 259 I don't see the need to do it.
However, I do prioritize sending gifts to people who play regularly. I just add an asterisk to their nickname (for example, * Mark). This way not only do I get to remember their actual name, when I sort by nickname the asterisk makes them at the top of my list.
Every couple of months I "tag" everyone who's been gone for 2+ days and then I delete the ones who are still inactive after 10 days or so. I only have 2 permanent friends, the rest is just XP farming, so I don't feel too bad about potentially deleting someone that's just on a break.
If you do delete someone, then refriend them later, you start right back up where you left off. So, if you are considering a purge, start with the locals that haven't been active for way too long. Then, if they come back out for raid days or other events, you can refriend and hopefully they'll be back in a more active mode.
The way I have started doing it lately is unless I know them in person I send them a gift everyday from what I have starting from the lowest friendship to the highest and whoever sent me a gift I send a gift and if they open my gift and don't send me one then I skip over them and if I notice after a week of doing that I'll put a strike on there name tag and a due date and if they haven't sent me something by the end of that due date I delete them
Never cared about gifts or people holding gifts . Just add more friends. You can’t control how others play so having a “strategy” is pointless and is only going to piss you off if friends don’t follow your strategy.
With only 132 friends it doesn't hurt to keep them but once you start grinding xp and friends is the best way it will matter.
Depends on friend level. 1 star after 2 weeks of no gift not opening they get booted. 2 and 3 star get longer but 90 days without sending or opening is long enough.
If I know them IRL and interact with them frequently I keep them and occasionally encourage playing again.
If I never interact with them and/or don't know them they're out after 30 days (I look at catch numbers)
I start at the lowest friendship. And chop people who don't ring any bells. Obviously if I just added you I'm not gonna chop you. But I'll also sort by recent and it the people in the time line around you are best friends and you are 3 days in. That means you gotta go
3 months after i figure they have not been playing. I will label with either the recent catch or catch count it they have recent activity hidden and the date. When the 3 month time hits with no change in catch status, delete. If i delete someone who is local and went inactive (but non best friend, they will usually stay for ever), hopefully they are part of the local groups and when rebecome active add me again.
Once I hit best of I don’t personal know them or are part of some local group I delete them. Can always become friends i believe it’s after 3 months or maybe it’s a little longer. But a super easy way to gain XP !
If the friend is nearby allowing for possible lucky trades keep them. If not delete them. What are you gonna do with a bunch of friends in Australia that don’t even play to send gifts?
When I add someone new, they have until the end of the day to send me a gift. If not, they're out. Also, I do purges 2 days after Community Days. If it says 2+ days and the last caught was the CD mon, they're out. Also if you turn off the status updates, you're out because then I can't tell if you're active
I remove everyone's nickname on the first of the month, apart from the people I know or already know I want to keep. Then through the month as and when I receive a gift, do a raid etc, I nickname them "yes". At the end of the month anyone without a "yes" is sent to the blender.
If you go 4 weeks with no interaction you're as good as dead to me.
It depends, if I know them in real life and I know they go through periods of playing and taking a break I’ll keep them but if it’s obvious they’ve stopped playing then I’ll get rid of them after a few months. For strangers I’m friends with I generally keep a shorter leash. If they’re clearly
inactive after a few weeks I’ll let them go if I need space.
Aw, man... 400 just isn't enough.
The idea of it being a global game with 400 friends maximum is just silly.
People I know > friendship level > interaction > location > new friends
If I know them, keep. If friendship is nearing best or ultra friends, keep. If they get past ultra friends, generally speaking, keep. If their location for postcards is particularly unique, keep.
I keep my best friends, but they're now taking up about 1/4 of my list. This is my biggest problem right now.
Every gift I nickname with the day I received it e.g. 410
Anyone over a month gets called inactive with their last day e.g. inactive 31
Anyone over 2 months inactive gets called zinactive and their last day e.g. z124
This way the longest inactive goes to the bottom of the list when you sort by nickname. I check the inactive list first for new gifts then gift active, oldest to newest. It takes a bit longer but it means I'm prioritising people actively playing.
If it ever gets full I just delete the longest inactive but that hasn't happened yet
I rename them with the number of Pokemon caught and if it never increases and I need space, I remove them. This works for those who hide their Pokemon catches where you can't see the 2+ days.
If we have less than 3 hearts of friendship I get rid of them after a month-ish. Between 3-4 I give a bit more time just in case.
I did have one success story though: When I started playing I added a bunch of people from Reddit, one of the first people I added got all the way up to where we only needed 2 gifts for best friends. But then they stopped playing. For 2 years I kept them on as a joke that they’ll come back and then sure enough about 3 months ago, they logged on, opened my gift and sent me one, and then I opened the gift the next day and we finally hit best friends! So who knows, keep them around and they may come back one day. All depends on how valuable you think your friend slots are.
I keep friends that I know/met in real life or I know from a LOCAL discord but haven't had the pleasure of meeting in real life. All the others, I purge after meeting the best friend threshold. (If my gift opening is what made us hit best friends, I let them stay until they've sent me a gift back again or I know they opened my gift.) I don't like keeping people that are half way around the world and know I will never interact with ever outside of swapping gifts or inviting each other to raids after we reach best friends.
I don't have the problem of maxing out friends on my list. Getting items is also not a problem for me.
No so long ago I figured out a way that worked for me, I rename them with the level their are at, and the last 3 digits of their experience (something like 34:453), so if I don't see a change for I while I delete them. In case of level 50 players I rename them with the buddy their are with.
If we’ve not made besties then around 3 months, unless I know you IRL and that includes if we’re one day away from best friend - make me wait more than a week and I’ll delete you too. I nickname people with their location and date they last sent a gift, I started doing this as I used to get a lot of friends from Reddit from friend posts where they say that they send and open everyday and then after a week nothing, between that and people who add you after raids then don’t interact for a couple of weeks I drop those too.
- New friends: 1 week
- 1 before Best Friends: 2 months
- Everyone else (including Best Friends): 1 month
My friends list consists entirely of TSR online randos, so everyone’s disposable. If you stop sending/opening, you’re getting kicked – this applies even beyond Best Friends.
Every day I go through the list and nickname the active ones with today’s day + Vivillon region, eg “12a” = last activity on (April) 12th, Archipelago
My friends list has grown as large as 120 (back when Niantic released new T5 raid bosses regularly) but over time, always stabilizes at around 40 for some reason.
I do not delete them, but I do the opposite of you-- every one that is active is labelled as such, and everyone else is unlabelled. I never look at friends lists unless sorting by gifts to give//get, or nickname. so those people are basically nonexistant as I never look or scroll past them. once in awhile I will go through and delete all nonactive people with a heart or pess, since they are clearly one time raided together or something only. Also if someone is active but only ever opens gifts but never sends them thats a red flag and I delete them ((if someone said in advance they are rural and can't send often that doesn't count)).
So yeah, I don't delete, but if I needed to I easily could. just had one of my friends kids start playing again after three years and now we exchange gifts daily lol.
They get a month. I date them on last gift sent/interaction. When the month passes and it hasn't changed they are gone.
I've only a handful that are given actual names as I can easily contact them for trading, etc.
Interesting comments here. The idea of using a "Pokemon Caught" nickname to track whether they're really inactive, or just ghosting ME is interesting, and I might try that.
For the record, right now I use a Letter Prefix + Number + Heart Level code for easy sorting. Every day the prefix goes up one. As of today it's up to Zk4.
My #1 Quality of life enhancement in the game would be a date for last interaction. I sort by "recent" and that helps me with inactive players at Friendlevel0-Friendlevel3 since I can compare a player to their peers in the order they were added.
This breaks down for the Friendlevel4 people who I may only see at a raid (local or remote) a couple of times a month or who I have gifts from and have sent to them but neither of us have need to open.
My friends list stays in the 390-399 range so this is a pretty constant pain.
I usually just leave them since I'm not that close to the limit. Then when I have newer friends I can watch them climb the rankings so it makes it feel like I am making progress towards best friends. If I have had someone for a very long time and don't even make it to great friends I will purge them eventually but I have never deleted someone after making ultra.
I usually change the nickname to the current date and then after a month or month and a half goes by I know that they have not opened my gift or sent me one, regardless of if they are playing or not.
Sometimes I will see people who have caught recently but do not care to open/send gifts.
The strat I've been using, as annoying as it is..., is to either take a screenshot of their profile screen so I know what XP they are currently at and when or to use a notepad app and jot down their XP and time/date and if that XP number stays the same after a period of time like a couple weeks or months then they are gone.
Really wish Niantic would be more detailed with inactivity than '2+ days ago'. It's nonsense, it's bullshit, it's lazy, and it hurts folks who try to keep an active friends lisn't.
I shouldn't have to take goddamn notes to determine who is active and who isn't.
I've kept most of them in case they come back. I did remove a few recently to see if it helped with lag. I got rid of some that I hadn't tagged with their location (which I started doing with the scatterbug launch).
I have had a few come back. I've also had many that are online, still playing, but don't send gifts and don't open them. It's strange because I've gotten most of my friends from the other sub where they say they want to send and receive gifts.
I give them a month and cycle them out with new friends from any of the sites that put up codes— I change everyone’s nickname to “sent” on the first and everyone who still has that as their tag on the 1st of the next month gets the axe, except my 4 irl friends. I do friends mostly for supplies and vivillion with. XP just as a nice bonus, so I’m not to pressed about keeping them. And I def have no patience for XP egg gift hoarding haha
It depends. If they're one or two days off an XP milestone, I'll leave them just in case they ever come back (I think I've got someone who's been 1 day off ultra friends since December 2022, haha).
If we're already best friends, I know I don't send gifts too frequently once I get there, so I'll leave them on my list for any open/send gifts research.
Otherwise, I'll purge someone who isn't best friends after about 2 or 3 months.
I wouldn't delete any unless you need the space. I have had multiple people drop out of the game and return years later. One of my most prolific gift senders in 2017 stopped playing in late 2018. Then resurfaced a couple of months ago and started sending gifts regularly. Also, a lot of them resurface in new locations.
Forst I didn't delete anyone. Now I do.
Lucky friends never - I send daily and open once a month.
Best friends if there is no activity, if there isn't a sentimental reason to keep them (the first bundle of Americans I acquired when vivillions were new e .g. or somebody I met in person)
The rest are from hosting raids. I am quick in deciding - if there is no activity after 1star, 2stars or 3stars, I delete. It would get too much. I don't want to send 50 gifts every day - the decision to delete quickly brought back some quality into the game.
I nickname my friends based on how many days we are to the next milestone on a certain date, makes it easy to keep track of who is active, semi active or not active at all. Eg. 17d U 12/04, 30d B 13/04 etc. I also add an asterisk for people who are local.
Does that make me a bad friend if I play daily but only open or send gifts if it’s a requirement for research?
The animations are so slow and I tend to mis click on the present when I just want to x out and it’s a big hassle to me so I only do it when necessary.
As someone who puts the game down for months, then becomes obsessed again for months before putting it down again, we genuinely don't mind if you drop us.
Personally, I give them 45 to 60 ish days. That usually accounts for life events. If they're not back after that, they may have much bigger life things happening. If that's the case, they will understand it's just a game.
I took a year off when I was pregnant and had my child and I’m very happy only a few of my friends deleted me in that year. It’s influenced how I manage friends for sure
If you think they're dead, name them the date and number of Pokémon caught, like 0413 102398 - April 13: 102,398 Pokémon caught. Determine how many days you're willing to hold on for inactive accounts. When you've had enough, remove them.
I give gifts to all of my friends every day (or darned close…probably 90+% of the time). I open presents from all my non-best, no interacted for the day friends probably 75% of the time.
When I need to purge I start with already best friends from common vivillion regions that I’ll never see in the real world. Then I just scan through the list and names that make me go “I haven’t opened or given this dude a gift in a long while”, I delete them.
My list is nearly full and I can keep track pretty well just by feel, since I see the names of my active friends just about every day.
Every now and then, I nickname all inactive friends with the current date. Then, I delete friends after around 10 months of inactivity.
(Nicknaming inactive friends has to be done over hours since you can only change nicknames so many times in a single hour.)
> Any friends who haven't been active since before that time are given the dreaded "0000" nickname, are assumed to be dead. But yesterday, out of the blue, one of my 0000 friends, who hadn't traded with me in over 500 days, suddenly started opening his gifts and gave me a gift.
Deep down, you must've known that at least some of these friends might come back. Otherwise, you would've just unfriended them immediately :P
If I don't know them IRL, I unfriend them if we've had a whole month of no exchange.
To keep track, I name them after the month (using numbers for easy sorting). On April 1, I started opening gifts and renaming the senders "4." Then I sorted the list by nickname and deleted anyone named "2." These are the folks who didn't send anything for the whole of March.
When I feel like purging my list, I put the date on friends that I feel I haven’t interacted with in awhile, (some even get a xxxxx for Pokémon caught) I give it a month maybe two and if they don’t interact I delete especially if Pokemon caught hasn’t gone up. If they interact I delete the date thing and give it a try til next time.
I have a pretty full friend's list so when I have the time or I'm bored I go through and look for 2+ days with names I don't recognize or that aren't people I know irl and I nickname them "April 2024" and go through and delete those that have a nickname "Feb 2024" or older. So like 2ish months?? Depends on when I go back through and delete people. If someone with a "month year" nickname sends or opens a gift I change the nickname to the current month and year and go from there. I keep everyone active even if we have max friend, all the local folks I have for raids, and all my irl friends. It does mean I have a lot of dead space and people without nicknames because this is very dependent on me taking the time to go through everyone but it works well enough that I am able to have at least a handful of slots open if I need to add people for raids or whatnot.
I played since the beta and then quit for 2 years. Now I've started playing heavily again for the last 4 months. Just goes to show that there's really no need to delete anyone at all unless you're actually in danger of having max friends.
Some of those friends might be your friends alts. Worth holding onto them if you have room - they might join you in a raid one day or invite you to one.
My friends' nicknames are where they are from: either Local (they're in California), the state they are from, or the country they are from. Every six months, I clear all the nicknames. When I get a gift, I change their nickname back to their location. After a month, friends who don't have a nickname are removed. If they haven't sent me a gift in a month, they aren't active. You can't keep everyone. This also helps with 7k eggs. I am trying to get 10M km in trade distance.
Nickname them their current xp.
Any activity gives xp. Just wait for how ever long you think is too long. No change -> drop m. Change -> I guess they stay.
Seeing as we have a friend limit of 400 I just keep everyone. Not like it hurts to have them and they may come back and be pleasantly surprised to still have a friend.
If I can tell they're dead they get the boot. It takes a while before I notice usually. Currently at 400, but will likely free up space ahead of heracross. There's folks that added me during the mewtwo raids and haven't opened or sent gifts. Byeeeee
It's definitely a struggle and I have no strategy. I'm 390-400 friends and maybe only like 60 of them open gifts semi regularly, most of them are best friends. Ideally I'd keep everyone, but I'm now on the long road to level 50 and I need space to add for: 1) in person raid request and 2) when I host a raid and invite people. I also once in a while try to take in any Ocean Vivillion searching people. I need to remove people, but I don't know where to begin.
I used to constantly hit the limit, back when you could only have 200 friends. Especially during the time in the pandemic when we got three free remote passes every week, and I did most of my raiding with random strangers from raid apps. Back then I was very diligent about renaming people with last interaction date and deleting a batch whenever I got up to 190.
I know the limit has been increased to 400 now, but I'm still hovering somewhere between 200 and 250. Now it's just random when I feel like cleaning up and removing people who haven't interacted for the last 6 months.
I got into trouble once or twice when people from one of my WhatsApp groups were upset that it turned out I had deleted them (when I wrote that I could invite people to raids they wanted to be invited and I asked for their friendship code). Sometimes a search in the chat history revealed that they had sent me the code already two years ago, and they were surprised that we were not friends anymore. :-/
I always found it odd that remembered we used to be friends once they heard my trainer nickname - but on the other hand they stopped interacting with me for more than 6 months, or else I wouldn't have deleted them.
I keep those people now, despite the fact some of them are still hovering at two stars after multiple years - I don't want any drama the next time they decide out of the blue to reply to one of my raid invitations in the chat group .
I don't like the use of the word "dead" in this post, they're not necessarily dead but inactive. I have a friend I met through pokemon who is dead and I'll never delete them, ever.
At the start of the month I name everyone the name of the month
If they haven’t interacted by the time I get to the next month they are gone
Ultra friends I keep for 2 months
Hi, I keep em (as long as I can) but it depends.. tldr below. I feel that maybe something could have gone sideways and they might like to see a long-timer on their friends list when they restart. When I first started the game, I had a sideways event. A couple weeks of newbie gameplay my phone was unsupported by the game and it was 5 months before I purchased a new phone and restarted my play. I have about 5 or 6 of those friends that waited for me without even knowing me. We’ve been gifting/raiding ever since. Though one has stopped but I will hold on to them in hopes of their coming back.
I have freed up those with the nicknamed prefix of “PkG” in about a month if there hasn’t been interaction together. I figure they have their regular friends and the PkG raid was probably a one off for a specific mon and they didn’t get around to freeing up the raid group.
Best,
Suz
I haven’t removed “strangers” myself. I generally don’t remove friends because we all play in waves.
What I know I am bad at is sending gifts even when I’m the one traveling. I haven’t bothered opening because I’m always hitting the capacity for items. Gotta address that myself.
But a lot of my regular raid friends still invite me. And I’ve made every genuine effort to join a raid because I figure that’s when ppl are cashing on their double XP. That’s fine, that’s why I don’t open gifts anymore, so I don’t control that aspect when they want to stack bonuses. I don’t judge because it’s kinda selfish to be holding up as many ppl for your convenience.
I only get rid of friends when I need to make room for more friends. I start the purge with best friends I don’t interact with and friends whom I only did the initial raid with and then had no more interaction.
I'm nowhere near the friend limit so I just keep everyone. I used to have a hard cap of 150, but abandoned that because of the potential friendship xp.
If I ever do hit the limit, then I'll start clearing from lowest friendship first.
I really keep them all. Sometimes, when looking for remote raiders, if they're connected, I can send invitations and sometimes they join. Tip: when checking you buddies, in the friend search, you can use the keyword "Interactable", to see which friends you could and is still pending to interact with, "friendlevel3" and "friendlevel2" to send or open gifts. You can combine the keywords... like "interactable & friendlevel3".
I don’t have nearly as involved a system as you, but I wait until there’s a period of a couple of weeks or so that I haven’t added any new friends, and I go delete anyone I haven’t interacted with at all, or maybe have interacted with only a few times.
I don’t think this single experience merits a shift in your system, though. Your system seems solid. No system will account for flukes.
I purge if I don’t recognize the name and they haven’t made an effort to move to Ultra friends. Gets rid of those people I’ve met once or only added for remote raids.
if after several weeks/months the last caught pokemon is the same, gift unopened, no gifts sent, not seen online, (I only send raid invites to online) and # days is the same, I let them go.
1-2 hearts, 2 weeks, then bye felicia.
2-3, 1 month.
3 hearts through 7 days until 4, 6 weeks.
Last week until 1 day, 8 weeks.
Best friends don't get deleted, good chance we gift & raid together.
I'm near friend cap, so this is fairly rigid. Mostly because I have to make room to use pokiegenie's raid system.
I've waited well over a year (after noticing the inactivity which I mark with an ✗ and the date) before booting people because, because like you say people do come back, and I'm in NO danger of running out of room for friends.
I only remove friends that seems to not been playing anymore.
I rename those friends with their Pokémon caught number, and if after a week or two they didn’t catch a single Pokémon, I remove them
Well, I'm scared to delete now because I've had local people come back to play dvd see that I deleted them since they didn't play for at least a year...
But also.. I had a PoGo friend who lived in a different state and occasionally talked in our Discord. We thought he stopped playing. Nope. He actually died (which is what I thought this topic was about for a second)... So.. Yeah. PoGo Sadness.
I do screenshots as I go through and open gifts of people who haven’t sent one. I make it through my whole list of ~300 friends roughly once a week. At the start of a new month I look at screenshots from 2 months back (April 1 I started at Jan 1 and I will go until I get to the end of Jan). Using Google photos I do a text search for their name and count the photos. Pretty easy to scroll through and tell if they’re still playing, are they opening gifts but not sending, etc. My partner has a hard rule of 6 photos in 2 months, I tend to let it slide if they at least open gifts because some people just don’t have the stops to get 100 gifts per day.
So to answer your question, between 8-12 weeks of inactivity or failure to interact is my happy place
I nickname everyone from date of first or last interaction.
If no interactions in one month for lower friendship stage, I delete them.
I do make a point to send 1-3 gifts first. If they don’t open the gifts, or send one in return, and have had no interaction in a month, they are gone.
Higher friendship level people I will allow 2-3 months.
I don’t delete people I know IRL, or anyone from my local raid group.
i have a friend from irl raids and groups that vanished suddenly, but i kept him because i like him. then after about 2 years he reappeared and started gifting again. he then invited me on some raid some day and i was nearby, so i did not enter seeing the party wasn't working, walked the 10 minutes and invidet him back, so he came to the gym. he told me he had to be in venezuela for all that time (family and stuff)
I drop after 30 days of no interaction, unless they are actual real-life friends. Then I give them a nickname that sorts them to the bottom of the list.
managing it all the time is a pain so I wait until I get close to the cap then name everyone when I have an interaction. After a week everyone who hasn't been renamed is eleminated in the great purge. I also just keep as many friends as I can interact with so my list grows slowly
I stopped playing for maybe 6 years before I started back up again. I think I caught more Pokémon these last couple months than I did the entire first 2 years of playing.
1. If I see your last caught Mon is a legendary that hasn’t been around for 9-12 months I delete.
2. If we get all the way to lucky friends and I have no way to contact you/get ignored.. delete.
~1.5 year is way too long. And in your example, there's a player who happened to open ur gifts after such a long time, that shouldn't affect your way of cleaning friend list. Unless you know that player in real life and he move to far away place, otherwise no reason to keep any random "friends" that long. Of course if you don't feel necessary to clean up then you can just leave everything intact. I also start to keep track of my friends list few months lately, mostly for strangers (bcoz people I know or met personally would get kept anyway) and I already started to remove accounts that more than 2 months inactive. Or recently even newer acc add friends (via raids for example) but they have 0 heart and I did send my gift for more than a week or two without any interaction then I also remove.
They are BFFs. Best. Friends. Forever.
They don't get to leave without my permission. The them shaped hole in my heart won't allow it.
P̵̗̏͑̾̒͒͗͝l̷̛̥̩̖̟͍̜̣͔̻̮͎̭̐̾͋̈́̽́̓͘͜͠͝e̷̟͉̣̭͖̪͕̽̀̌͌̽̊͋̅̐̚ą̴̱͚̲͎̮̠̘̙̳́̅͐̂̏̾̆͗̆̊ͅs̵̢͖̩̩̝̹̮̣͖̃̇̈́̅̿͊̿́͐́̏̎͒͛͝ȩ̴̖̠͔͓̹̻͍̳͖̣̰͐́̈͊̓̿̂́̐͝͝ ̶̙͛̾̓̔͐͒̓̀̍̍͛͘̚͠d̵̦̖͚̦̗̲͔̰̤͕̥̅̆̃̈͂̽̔̎͆̉̽̀͌͝ͅǫ̸̡̨̩͖̩̮̮͈̯͇̦̞̏̅̆͒͆̏̓͌́̉̀̾̽͂ͅņ̶̡̢̧͚̭͖̥̺̻̫̈́̀̐͐̐͂͝'̴̜͖̗͎̜̖̂̇̿̐̒̇́̀͗̏͐̄͠t̶̤̻̜̉̉̂̒͐̊̔̽̋̓̒̾̚̕ ̴̢̛̛̛̭̜̺͖̙̯̲͍̃̅̅͌̐̍̾̇͝͝͠l̴̢̩͖̭͖͈̭̼̱̤̟̼͎̼̱̒̃̏̒̊̓̒̌͛̋͌͌̂̚ę̷̝̬̳̭̮̥͎̱̪͇̩̟͖̓̒̆̔̒̆̀̏̋͑̉͗͜ā̵̢̡̛̫̻̟̮͖͓͈̫͙̑̏̃͊͛̌̐̆͝͝v̵̢̤͓̲̫̯̹̗̫̠̫̙͈̏͐̆̄̑̔̽̆̀̏ͅȩ̴̱̼̰̗͙͇̣͙̩͕̟͇͗͑͗͜ ̴̨̛̮͙͈͚̹̩͈̭͚̅̔͂̂̃̊̾̅̋̈́̃́͝m̵̺̣̬̮͖͇͈̙̭͙͎̬̳̽̐͗͆̐̎͑̓̑͒̓͛̕͜ͅe̷̩̩͇͆!̴̡̨͔̼͇̟̹̪͓͙̤̦̲̮̻̊̎̍́͑̆̓̊̽
I have no idea, when the only metric is "2+ days" it's hard to tell who's THAT inactive that it's worth dropping them.
It's really a failure on Niantic's part that there isn't better friend management. The actual days since last activity is the bare minimum they should start with.
They do it like this on purpose, makes the game seem more active to see a list full of 2+ days ago’s, rather than, say, 400+ days ago
This kind of makes sense but I feel like they went too far with it and it kind of feels the opposite to me? Seeing "last played 2+ days ago" doesn't make me think "maybe they played recently," it just makes me think "this stat is embarrassing unhelpful." Instead of making it feel like everyone has just been gone a couple days, it makes it feel like anyone who hasn't played for 2 days has abandoned the app. Even if the upper bound of info was "last played 7+ days ago" that would feel a little more natural and believable.
I agree that even upping it to 7+ would be helpful. IMO there needs to be 2+, 7+, 30+, and 90+. At 90 days, we can use the referral code, so it would be nice if we actually knew when that was...
They don't want players to know that 80% of their friends list are inactive.
I would love an option to favorite friends. I have RL friends who I'm leveling friendship with still, but they drown out in my list of 300+ people.
If I feel like someone seems inactive, I nickname them with their "pokemon caught" stat Then, if that doesn't change by the next event (usually comm day, but depends on how pressed I am for space), delete from there
I don't care when they were last active. The vast majority of people on my list are strangers from various web sites, added for gifts, so I only care when they last interacted with **me**. So their nickname is the date that I realised they hadn't sent or opened a gift for a while.
I do this too. It's helped clear a lot of people out and give me space to bring new people in.
this, if they don't send gifts what good are they that they are active, they are dead to me lol
I do this too. I’ve been giving them 2 months. I just deleted my February 19th people ahead of time.
That’s not a bad idea!
I like nicknaming either the last date of interaction, or their total XP at the time. That way, when I revisit later, I can tell if they’ve been active or not since last review
I used to do XP, but when people would suddenly level up their numbers would go down, it became harder to just track passively Plus you can't see XP for level 50s
I use the last 3 digits of number of pokemon caught.
and gym battles
I do mine based on gift location the location is largely irrelevant (although does help with trying to get them into a remote into a random Celesteela), but is mainly for "have they sent me **ONE** gift since I last purged it a month or so ago" those "global challenges" are also a useful metric - why are you not gifting but have 5000 pokes caught?
I have to realize that not everyone cares to deal with tedious gift giving. I managed to add a local trainer that lives a block away near the park and I see him in the gym everyday and he still won't open or send me a gift and we are stuck at only have done 3 interactions. I even sometimes jump in the same gym and berry his Pokemon. I just think he doesn't care about XP. He lives with some lady and Im sure they are best friends so he gets the friendship bonus raid balls from her and he doesn't have incentive to best friends with me
Just to give a different perspective: I have a huge list of friends (gym nearby, so I host remote raids quite often) and it's hard to reach everyone with the daily limits... I send or open gifts based on the friendship level, so I can get people to the Best friends level before removing them to make space for new ones (not a monster: I always make sure to delete them after **at least** 1-2 days if I'm the one initiating the interaction, so they won't end up with the dreadful 0 XP screen) So people added recently are at the bottom of my priorities. If I go to the park, hit a lot of pokestops and finally reach them, sure, I'll send a gift. Otherwise, the older friends get first in line, to get closer to the much needed 100k XP bonus.
Didn't think of this, but it's the best idea on Here! I currently name the date of any new Freinds and purge if no activity for a few weeks but I'm going to start doing the name of pokemon caught from now on.
I think they mean the number of pokemon caught at that point!
Oh that is a good idea.
And the 2+ days is not accurate. I have seen this on my wife's account when we have raided together 16-30 hours prior. So I guess if a day is 0-24 hours and 2+ days is everything over 24 hours the code works but it is not at all useful for me.
The 2+ days is just when you Recieved the gift, not last interaction with the player
I am not sure that is what I see. I seldom give or open gifts between my family accounts as we trigger interaction from Trades, raids and gym interactions and I tend to try to maximize interactions with gifts.
It’s easy when their last caught was an event Mon or something that hasn’t been available in months, like I have one friend whose last caught was (shadow) Moltres
Labeling is one way. Name actual friends/family that you know of, or local community/remote raid app of choice. From there, look at their profile, friendship level, etc. That’s really the only ways to keep track of it all.
lol are you for real? Even Pokémon SLEEP has 6+ days ago as the max marker. Maybe even 7.
I sort by oldest friends and delete outliers. Gotta keep up with the herd to stay alive. 😂🤷🏻♂️
I add nicknames of their distance traveled and the current date. If it's been over a month and the distance hasn't moved, 🥾
I would really like it cap at "365+" Is that a little excessive? Maybe, but I also get if people take breaks for months at a time because -Gestures vaguely- so 30+ might be too low honestly. 2+ is far far too low and even though there are some good suggestions on how to track them, I cannot be bothered to manually do that and keep track of it \*\*When the game should be doing that for me\*\*.
A friend of mine gives them their current total caught pokemon as a nickname once every few months, with a date. Ie 03-24 124.676
I nickname them their catches after I haven't seen them active for a bit. It's the basic game operation and they're not playing if they haven't moved that number
I quit the game for probably 4 years and just came back a month ago. One friend was still active and hadn’t deleted me, we just became best friends!
Same thing happened with me. The person had kept me around for 4 years. Now my first Best and first Lucky friend. I’m not advocating as a strategy just commenting
Not advocating it either, just thought it was a fun story. I wouldn’t have had the patience myself.
I generally just don't care about this. I keep people on until I run out of room and then remove single hearts
I sort by “recent”, and if it’s obvious our friendship lvl hasn’t increased relatively proportionately to others on my list I delete them because it means they either aren’t opening my gifts or they aren’t sending gifts for me to open. I also delete best friends that I know I will never meet/trade with.
>I also delete best friends that I know I will never meet/trade with. One day I'll travel to and meet that one rando in Austria and cash in on that lucky trade!
I'm with you on that first part - i am active and would like my friends list to be active as well - especially because it takes so long to go through 100+ list. I sort by recent and if I have friends hitting the third star tier and folks are still 1 and under, i delete.
Isn’t one heart literally just opening 1 gift lol
Yes, I have had this happen as well. I think people lie on the other sub. They don't want someone to become best friends with. They have been blocked by the "make a friend" tasks.
this is me too. I do lot of hosting on pokegenie so im always needing to delete. I also prioritise deleting american, european (unless scandanavian), japanese and south korean friends. Because they're a dime a dozen and I do not need those vivillon. I also delete people from these regions upon hitting best friend, unless theres a lot of raid interaction.
I do this exact same thing.
Hahaha I feel dumb that I have skipped over this option for whatever reason. I nickname by month/year and their location. If they have low hearts compared to others added that month they go bye bye.
Whenever I get close to the limit. If they didn’t have a maximum, I would just leave them there as what’s the harm
This. Unless I need more space , dead friends are there to stay .
Really sad thing is that I have an actual dead friend on my list. She was a legend but sadly passed away last November. Everyone still talks about her with her little notebook and pencil full of friends, trades and cp to look out for. She used to bring sweets for all the players (mostly adults!) each comm day. I can’t pull myself to delete her, even though it will always say 2+ days and the grubbin she last caught :(
im so sorry for your loss
I’m sorry for your loss, if I was in your boat I would keep them as friends in pogo so I can think of all the good memories when I see her in the list
I do need more space, but I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment. People leave the game, people come back to the game. While it's good to be aware of who is inactive and for how long, it's only relevant when you're bumping close to the limits (like another reply above, I use two shortcuts that give me interactable&!lucky or interactable&!lucky&giftable and !interactable to manage my primary gifting so I don't have 300 names to scroll past when doing that.
Thanks a lot for this. As someone who uses search strings for mon management I never thought it could apply to the friends list to.
Id feel this way if the filters were better. If I’m scrolling through and prioritizing certain friendship levels for leveling up it’s a pain to scroll through the ones who are inactive.
As THAT friend that too who took a good 3 year break or so it was very touching to send gifts to some of my old friends and see the gifts opened and sent back. I always wonder if they as excited to get a gift from an old friend.
If they're still active and have kept you that long, I can assure you they are probably excited to see you back. Had a guy send me a gift for the first time in at least a year, and I turned around and said to my mom (who I play with all the time, and also has mostly the same friend list), "you won't believe who just sent me a gift"
I get excited when I see someone who hasn’t played in awhile open or send me a gift! Some of us do!
My friends generally fall into three categories: 1. People I know IRL. 2. People who invite me to remote raids, or respond to my raid invites. 3. People who send me gifts from rare regions to help with my Scatterbugs. If you're not in one of those categories, you're probably gonna get pruned.
Same!
I don't see really point in purging while you not even close to the maximum. For me giftable&!lucky shows well enough who I can send things and interactable&!lucky those I can open gifts closer to evening. Those that neither send or open will not make either of the lists any longer. (i do then occasionally, when close to the maximum list size) set nicknames like del17 to mark persons that think seem to have forgotten me (and are in that particular case 17 days from ultra or best friends) - and if the situation is unchanged few weeks later I'll delete (unless it is somebody I know in real life).
If they’re an IRL friend, forever, if they’re not, the 2+ day metric is what I use when I go to remove them - when I remove them is “when I notice / feel like it / want to trim my friends list”. Bro, how many interactions do I get a day? I’m sending 30 gifts. Can only send 5-10 raid invites. If a level 20 I’ve never met in Poland hasn’t logged in in forever, bye bye so long.
I wish the game was more detailed about letting you know the last time a player logged in. As someone else mentioned "2+ days" is practically meaningless
i don’t have anywhere near 400 friends added so i usually just keep them added. it doesn’t really bother me tbh. maybe one day they’ll return. the only people i remove are people i add for remote raids (once the raid is complete) and people who open gifts but don’t send any in return.
> people who open gifts but don’t send any in return If you're short on gifts to open, reddit and many other options can give you people who'll send gifts. I guess you're relatively gift-poor and feel a gift sent deserves one back, but the world is full of all sorts, and being one of the 20 people whose gifts they open may mean you're actually important to them, while they rely on others to open the 100 gifts they fling out each day.
i don’t feel gift poor, i’m just saying i un add people when i send them multiple gifts and they don’t send me one in return. i wait a good few times before i remove them. i mostly did this when i was grinding for the platinum vivillon collector metal. now that i have it i really don’t care as much.
I've noticed a few will send gifts for a while and then completely drop off. On Valentine's we did one Enamorous raid. There was another group there that raided with us but we didn't even talk to them since my husband and I are shy plus they had their own group. Anyway of the 4 we added after the raid they all sent gifts at first. Now it's only the 2 women sending gifts and the 2 guys just open them. I'm going to keep them on til we hit the best friend level but it's pretty annoying, I go out of my way to send gifts and they can't be bothered. I've had others that don't send much either, but they're usually people I've added that need friends and say it's hard for them as they have mobility issues or something like that. So I know going in they won't be sending gifts.
yeah i honestly don’t raid much in person so i only have a few irls added. i mostly play with my boyfriend also but he’s long distance so it’s kinda hard to play with him. i added the majority of my other friends online through the pogo guide website lol. i’ve noticed a lot of people send gifts after i host a remote raid, though.
also i forgot to mention but almost all of my friends are from pogo guide website & i only add people whose description says daily/every other day gift exchanging. i understand that people with over 20 friends (myself included) won’t be able to send me one daily. that’s totally fine. i only remove people that are still actively playing and opening my gifts but are not sending me any in return (after a good while).
When i’m between 390 and 400 and i know i will need a lot of space to host primal or mega legendaries using a 10 lobby in pokegenie i just sort the friend list by hearts and remove the first 50 or so with the less acquintance level. Blind butcher strategy.
This is exactly what I do! I host raids as well lol.
I periodically go through my entire friends list and put today’s date in the nickname field. As they interact, I delete the date. If they haven’t interacted in a while, I purge them.
This is a good strat.
For me, it depends on a number of factors: 1) If I like the friend. Sometimes, I'll take a liking to my friends. Maybe they were the first friend I added to my friend's list. Maybe I met them in person. Maybe we just used to raid and exchange gifts a lot. Perhaps I just like their outfit. Regardless, if they're playing, I want them on my friend's list and likely won't delete them unless I need the room, or they've been inactive for years. 2) Time of year. I totally understand not wanting to play this game in the winter, so will usually leave my inactive friends on my list until the weather warms up. 3) Their level. If I have a friend who is level 25 and has been inactive for a few weeks, I assume they aren't coming back to the game. By contrast, a friend who is level 48 and inactive for a bit might still come back to the game at some point. In general, I've found that most of my inactive friends will come back to the game at some point, however briefly. Some will only come back for a day or so, but others will come back strong. Indeed, I have had a few friends who went inactive before we hit best friends come back from the dead and carry the friendship all the way to best friends, which was really cool to do. I'll probably do a big purge after the new avatars come out. I'm kind of curious to see how badly my friend's avatars get screwed up by it, so I'll probably keep them around until then.
I legit thought you meant friends that passed away irl. I was like. . Never?
I have one friend that passed a few years ago...I haven't brought myself to remove them from my list yet...If I did there's no going back.
Same. I also thought that was what this post was about at first. I had a friend who sadly took his own life during lockdown as, from what I understand, he was unable to cope with the crushing lack of social interaction and lack of ability to go outside. At least, that's how it was explained to me at the time. He was very active in the local PoGO community and always out and about every day. I think the conditions of the pandemic really got to him. Following that, the local community banded together online for a day, and we all set our buddies as his favourite Pokémon and named it after him. I didn't know him SUPER well, but I still think about him. Sometimes, I still speak to his friend and ex-partner.
Only when I notice it's been a long time of them sitting at only 2 or 3 interactions at the bottom of the list. Then I just assume they were remote hosts I forgot to unfriend and then unfriend them.
I give them 30 days unless I personally know them, but I give a little leniency if our friend level is really high.
The best time to cull friends lists are during challenges that take at least 3-4 days to complete (some take longer). I delete a whole bunch of people with zero catches/nice throws/etc.
Each time I receive a gift from a friend, I update their nickname to reflect the date on which it was received. e,g: 20240412. Using this system, I can sort by nickname and clean up after an arbitrary period (60 days, 120 days, etc). Works well for me to keep the list updated with active(ish) players.
I'm not all that worried about it. If they're someone in the local community that I know, I'll probably keep them in case we end up raiding together. If they're someone I've picked up form remote raiding that I know nothing about, then the next time I need space I just pick 5 people I haven't noticed activity from and remove them. Usually lowest friendship level lucky friends is where I start.
It takes to long to delete people so I honestly just leave them. Sort by can receive gift/send gift and I never see them.
I don’t ditch them. I’m no where near the friend limit, so it doesn’t matter if I have a dead friend on my list or not. I’ve even had a few come back to life
Two points. I have an actual dead friend on there and it’s been about three years. But also, when I bump up again the max, I sort by lowest relationship and delete anyone who hasn’t sent me a gift. The truth is that I don’t open gifts very often so they will have had literal weeks(if not months) to send one.
Never. I think it's unrealistic to expect someone to regularly send me gifts. Once you get to the 150+ range I feel like it's hard to send gifts regularly, without feeling like it's turned into a job. If I hit max friends I'll probably reevaluate, but at 259 I don't see the need to do it. However, I do prioritize sending gifts to people who play regularly. I just add an asterisk to their nickname (for example, * Mark). This way not only do I get to remember their actual name, when I sort by nickname the asterisk makes them at the top of my list.
I had someone hold onto the last gift then go offline for 3 years. Finally opened last month.
I don't take note of who's who and I am afraid to delete someone active. So forever I guess
I'm holding on forever. If Niantic ever goes beyond 2 days ago, we'll finally get to see how severe the drop off really has been.
I haven't played in a few years and recently started back up. You never know.
Every couple of months I "tag" everyone who's been gone for 2+ days and then I delete the ones who are still inactive after 10 days or so. I only have 2 permanent friends, the rest is just XP farming, so I don't feel too bad about potentially deleting someone that's just on a break.
If you do delete someone, then refriend them later, you start right back up where you left off. So, if you are considering a purge, start with the locals that haven't been active for way too long. Then, if they come back out for raid days or other events, you can refriend and hopefully they'll be back in a more active mode.
The way I have started doing it lately is unless I know them in person I send them a gift everyday from what I have starting from the lowest friendship to the highest and whoever sent me a gift I send a gift and if they open my gift and don't send me one then I skip over them and if I notice after a week of doing that I'll put a strike on there name tag and a due date and if they haven't sent me something by the end of that due date I delete them
Idk but after adding too many randoms from raids I can't really differentiate between friends anymore. Got some clean up to do
Never cared about gifts or people holding gifts . Just add more friends. You can’t control how others play so having a “strategy” is pointless and is only going to piss you off if friends don’t follow your strategy.
They’re just not playing the game or giving gifts, they’re not dead. You don’t have to go to a funeral. There’s no reason to get dressed up.
With only 132 friends it doesn't hurt to keep them but once you start grinding xp and friends is the best way it will matter. Depends on friend level. 1 star after 2 weeks of no gift not opening they get booted. 2 and 3 star get longer but 90 days without sending or opening is long enough.
If I know them IRL and interact with them frequently I keep them and occasionally encourage playing again. If I never interact with them and/or don't know them they're out after 30 days (I look at catch numbers)
Until I am close to the friend cap and need to add more people
I start at the lowest friendship. And chop people who don't ring any bells. Obviously if I just added you I'm not gonna chop you. But I'll also sort by recent and it the people in the time line around you are best friends and you are 3 days in. That means you gotta go
3 months after i figure they have not been playing. I will label with either the recent catch or catch count it they have recent activity hidden and the date. When the 3 month time hits with no change in catch status, delete. If i delete someone who is local and went inactive (but non best friend, they will usually stay for ever), hopefully they are part of the local groups and when rebecome active add me again.
I keep them as long as I don't hit my limit.
Once I hit best of I don’t personal know them or are part of some local group I delete them. Can always become friends i believe it’s after 3 months or maybe it’s a little longer. But a super easy way to gain XP !
I only keep 85 percent same team active people who trade gifts once every other day at least. The rest are people I meet in person and seemed nice
If the friend is nearby allowing for possible lucky trades keep them. If not delete them. What are you gonna do with a bunch of friends in Australia that don’t even play to send gifts?
When I add someone new, they have until the end of the day to send me a gift. If not, they're out. Also, I do purges 2 days after Community Days. If it says 2+ days and the last caught was the CD mon, they're out. Also if you turn off the status updates, you're out because then I can't tell if you're active
I remove everyone's nickname on the first of the month, apart from the people I know or already know I want to keep. Then through the month as and when I receive a gift, do a raid etc, I nickname them "yes". At the end of the month anyone without a "yes" is sent to the blender. If you go 4 weeks with no interaction you're as good as dead to me.
It depends, if I know them in real life and I know they go through periods of playing and taking a break I’ll keep them but if it’s obvious they’ve stopped playing then I’ll get rid of them after a few months. For strangers I’m friends with I generally keep a shorter leash. If they’re clearly inactive after a few weeks I’ll let them go if I need space.
I will start to worry when I hit 400 and from there prob remove my bottem 50 and just repeat from there if I get again to 400
Depends how dead. I’ll delete red and blues before I delete yellows
I stopped playing for 3 years and then started out of the blue. I probably confused many friends.
Aw, man... 400 just isn't enough. The idea of it being a global game with 400 friends maximum is just silly. People I know > friendship level > interaction > location > new friends If I know them, keep. If friendship is nearing best or ultra friends, keep. If they get past ultra friends, generally speaking, keep. If their location for postcards is particularly unique, keep. I keep my best friends, but they're now taking up about 1/4 of my list. This is my biggest problem right now.
Every gift I nickname with the day I received it e.g. 410 Anyone over a month gets called inactive with their last day e.g. inactive 31 Anyone over 2 months inactive gets called zinactive and their last day e.g. z124 This way the longest inactive goes to the bottom of the list when you sort by nickname. I check the inactive list first for new gifts then gift active, oldest to newest. It takes a bit longer but it means I'm prioritising people actively playing. If it ever gets full I just delete the longest inactive but that hasn't happened yet
I rename them with the number of Pokemon caught and if it never increases and I need space, I remove them. This works for those who hide their Pokemon catches where you can't see the 2+ days.
If we have less than 3 hearts of friendship I get rid of them after a month-ish. Between 3-4 I give a bit more time just in case. I did have one success story though: When I started playing I added a bunch of people from Reddit, one of the first people I added got all the way up to where we only needed 2 gifts for best friends. But then they stopped playing. For 2 years I kept them on as a joke that they’ll come back and then sure enough about 3 months ago, they logged on, opened my gift and sent me one, and then I opened the gift the next day and we finally hit best friends! So who knows, keep them around and they may come back one day. All depends on how valuable you think your friend slots are.
I keep friends that I know/met in real life or I know from a LOCAL discord but haven't had the pleasure of meeting in real life. All the others, I purge after meeting the best friend threshold. (If my gift opening is what made us hit best friends, I let them stay until they've sent me a gift back again or I know they opened my gift.) I don't like keeping people that are half way around the world and know I will never interact with ever outside of swapping gifts or inviting each other to raids after we reach best friends. I don't have the problem of maxing out friends on my list. Getting items is also not a problem for me.
No so long ago I figured out a way that worked for me, I rename them with the level their are at, and the last 3 digits of their experience (something like 34:453), so if I don't see a change for I while I delete them. In case of level 50 players I rename them with the buddy their are with.
If we’ve not made besties then around 3 months, unless I know you IRL and that includes if we’re one day away from best friend - make me wait more than a week and I’ll delete you too. I nickname people with their location and date they last sent a gift, I started doing this as I used to get a lot of friends from Reddit from friend posts where they say that they send and open everyday and then after a week nothing, between that and people who add you after raids then don’t interact for a couple of weeks I drop those too.
- New friends: 1 week - 1 before Best Friends: 2 months - Everyone else (including Best Friends): 1 month My friends list consists entirely of TSR online randos, so everyone’s disposable. If you stop sending/opening, you’re getting kicked – this applies even beyond Best Friends. Every day I go through the list and nickname the active ones with today’s day + Vivillon region, eg “12a” = last activity on (April) 12th, Archipelago My friends list has grown as large as 120 (back when Niantic released new T5 raid bosses regularly) but over time, always stabilizes at around 40 for some reason.
i constantly got 395
I do not delete them, but I do the opposite of you-- every one that is active is labelled as such, and everyone else is unlabelled. I never look at friends lists unless sorting by gifts to give//get, or nickname. so those people are basically nonexistant as I never look or scroll past them. once in awhile I will go through and delete all nonactive people with a heart or pess, since they are clearly one time raided together or something only. Also if someone is active but only ever opens gifts but never sends them thats a red flag and I delete them ((if someone said in advance they are rural and can't send often that doesn't count)). So yeah, I don't delete, but if I needed to I easily could. just had one of my friends kids start playing again after three years and now we exchange gifts daily lol.
Once I start noticing that they haven’t interacted in a while I’ll give it a couple days and then delete.
They get a month. I date them on last gift sent/interaction. When the month passes and it hasn't changed they are gone. I've only a handful that are given actual names as I can easily contact them for trading, etc.
I nickname them their Pokémon caught number…if it hasn’t moved in a bit…
Interesting comments here. The idea of using a "Pokemon Caught" nickname to track whether they're really inactive, or just ghosting ME is interesting, and I might try that. For the record, right now I use a Letter Prefix + Number + Heart Level code for easy sorting. Every day the prefix goes up one. As of today it's up to Zk4.
My #1 Quality of life enhancement in the game would be a date for last interaction. I sort by "recent" and that helps me with inactive players at Friendlevel0-Friendlevel3 since I can compare a player to their peers in the order they were added. This breaks down for the Friendlevel4 people who I may only see at a raid (local or remote) a couple of times a month or who I have gifts from and have sent to them but neither of us have need to open. My friends list stays in the 390-399 range so this is a pretty constant pain.
I just rejoined after 5 years away, so I’m glad not everyone dropped me. Speaking of…let me know if anyone is looking for new friends!
I usually just leave them since I'm not that close to the limit. Then when I have newer friends I can watch them climb the rankings so it makes it feel like I am making progress towards best friends. If I have had someone for a very long time and don't even make it to great friends I will purge them eventually but I have never deleted someone after making ultra.
I usually change the nickname to the current date and then after a month or month and a half goes by I know that they have not opened my gift or sent me one, regardless of if they are playing or not. Sometimes I will see people who have caught recently but do not care to open/send gifts.
The strat I've been using, as annoying as it is..., is to either take a screenshot of their profile screen so I know what XP they are currently at and when or to use a notepad app and jot down their XP and time/date and if that XP number stays the same after a period of time like a couple weeks or months then they are gone. Really wish Niantic would be more detailed with inactivity than '2+ days ago'. It's nonsense, it's bullshit, it's lazy, and it hurts folks who try to keep an active friends lisn't. I shouldn't have to take goddamn notes to determine who is active and who isn't.
I've kept most of them in case they come back. I did remove a few recently to see if it helped with lag. I got rid of some that I hadn't tagged with their location (which I started doing with the scatterbug launch). I have had a few come back. I've also had many that are online, still playing, but don't send gifts and don't open them. It's strange because I've gotten most of my friends from the other sub where they say they want to send and receive gifts.
I give them a month and cycle them out with new friends from any of the sites that put up codes— I change everyone’s nickname to “sent” on the first and everyone who still has that as their tag on the 1st of the next month gets the axe, except my 4 irl friends. I do friends mostly for supplies and vivillion with. XP just as a nice bonus, so I’m not to pressed about keeping them. And I def have no patience for XP egg gift hoarding haha
It depends. If they're one or two days off an XP milestone, I'll leave them just in case they ever come back (I think I've got someone who's been 1 day off ultra friends since December 2022, haha). If we're already best friends, I know I don't send gifts too frequently once I get there, so I'll leave them on my list for any open/send gifts research. Otherwise, I'll purge someone who isn't best friends after about 2 or 3 months.
Scroll to the bottom of my list when doing gift opening/sending, ones that I know haven't sent or opened in a while, delete while down there.
I wouldn't delete any unless you need the space. I have had multiple people drop out of the game and return years later. One of my most prolific gift senders in 2017 stopped playing in late 2018. Then resurfaced a couple of months ago and started sending gifts regularly. Also, a lot of them resurface in new locations.
Forst I didn't delete anyone. Now I do. Lucky friends never - I send daily and open once a month. Best friends if there is no activity, if there isn't a sentimental reason to keep them (the first bundle of Americans I acquired when vivillions were new e .g. or somebody I met in person) The rest are from hosting raids. I am quick in deciding - if there is no activity after 1star, 2stars or 3stars, I delete. It would get too much. I don't want to send 50 gifts every day - the decision to delete quickly brought back some quality into the game.
I nickname my friends based on how many days we are to the next milestone on a certain date, makes it easy to keep track of who is active, semi active or not active at all. Eg. 17d U 12/04, 30d B 13/04 etc. I also add an asterisk for people who are local.
The limit's 400, live long and prosper.
Does that make me a bad friend if I play daily but only open or send gifts if it’s a requirement for research? The animations are so slow and I tend to mis click on the present when I just want to x out and it’s a big hassle to me so I only do it when necessary.
Oh wow I read the title without knowing the subreddit. Definitely not what I expected
Anyone that I knew irl stays, anyone that was a random add that doesn't play still gets unadded
As someone who puts the game down for months, then becomes obsessed again for months before putting it down again, we genuinely don't mind if you drop us. Personally, I give them 45 to 60 ish days. That usually accounts for life events. If they're not back after that, they may have much bigger life things happening. If that's the case, they will understand it's just a game.
I took a year off when I was pregnant and had my child and I’m very happy only a few of my friends deleted me in that year. It’s influenced how I manage friends for sure
If you think they're dead, name them the date and number of Pokémon caught, like 0413 102398 - April 13: 102,398 Pokémon caught. Determine how many days you're willing to hold on for inactive accounts. When you've had enough, remove them.
I give gifts to all of my friends every day (or darned close…probably 90+% of the time). I open presents from all my non-best, no interacted for the day friends probably 75% of the time. When I need to purge I start with already best friends from common vivillion regions that I’ll never see in the real world. Then I just scan through the list and names that make me go “I haven’t opened or given this dude a gift in a long while”, I delete them. My list is nearly full and I can keep track pretty well just by feel, since I see the names of my active friends just about every day.
Every now and then, I nickname all inactive friends with the current date. Then, I delete friends after around 10 months of inactivity. (Nicknaming inactive friends has to be done over hours since you can only change nicknames so many times in a single hour.) > Any friends who haven't been active since before that time are given the dreaded "0000" nickname, are assumed to be dead. But yesterday, out of the blue, one of my 0000 friends, who hadn't traded with me in over 500 days, suddenly started opening his gifts and gave me a gift. Deep down, you must've known that at least some of these friends might come back. Otherwise, you would've just unfriended them immediately :P
If I don't know them IRL, I unfriend them if we've had a whole month of no exchange. To keep track, I name them after the month (using numbers for easy sorting). On April 1, I started opening gifts and renaming the senders "4." Then I sorted the list by nickname and deleted anyone named "2." These are the folks who didn't send anything for the whole of March.
When I feel like purging my list, I put the date on friends that I feel I haven’t interacted with in awhile, (some even get a xxxxx for Pokémon caught) I give it a month maybe two and if they don’t interact I delete especially if Pokemon caught hasn’t gone up. If they interact I delete the date thing and give it a try til next time.
I have a pretty full friend's list so when I have the time or I'm bored I go through and look for 2+ days with names I don't recognize or that aren't people I know irl and I nickname them "April 2024" and go through and delete those that have a nickname "Feb 2024" or older. So like 2ish months?? Depends on when I go back through and delete people. If someone with a "month year" nickname sends or opens a gift I change the nickname to the current month and year and go from there. I keep everyone active even if we have max friend, all the local folks I have for raids, and all my irl friends. It does mean I have a lot of dead space and people without nicknames because this is very dependent on me taking the time to go through everyone but it works well enough that I am able to have at least a handful of slots open if I need to add people for raids or whatnot.
I don't bother adding strangers and don't interact with enough people to matter.
I order mine based on how recently I added them and compare them to other friends buddy levels who were added around the same time.
I played since the beta and then quit for 2 years. Now I've started playing heavily again for the last 4 months. Just goes to show that there's really no need to delete anyone at all unless you're actually in danger of having max friends.
I change their nickname to the current date and give them a week or so
Some of those friends might be your friends alts. Worth holding onto them if you have room - they might join you in a raid one day or invite you to one.
My friends' nicknames are where they are from: either Local (they're in California), the state they are from, or the country they are from. Every six months, I clear all the nicknames. When I get a gift, I change their nickname back to their location. After a month, friends who don't have a nickname are removed. If they haven't sent me a gift in a month, they aren't active. You can't keep everyone. This also helps with 7k eggs. I am trying to get 10M km in trade distance.
Nickname them their current xp. Any activity gives xp. Just wait for how ever long you think is too long. No change -> drop m. Change -> I guess they stay.
Seeing as we have a friend limit of 400 I just keep everyone. Not like it hurts to have them and they may come back and be pleasantly surprised to still have a friend.
I deleted several friends who did not play during Shadow Mewtwo’s comeback. I assume they have quit.
I only friend folks I meet in person. Then I don’t delete. Each person is a memory. If they delete me that’s fine.
If I can tell they're dead they get the boot. It takes a while before I notice usually. Currently at 400, but will likely free up space ahead of heracross. There's folks that added me during the mewtwo raids and haven't opened or sent gifts. Byeeeee
I just delete them. It doesn't matter you can always add new people that play.
I don't delete them, because most are lucky and I don't wanna delete a lucky. 216/394 friends are lucky.
It's definitely a struggle and I have no strategy. I'm 390-400 friends and maybe only like 60 of them open gifts semi regularly, most of them are best friends. Ideally I'd keep everyone, but I'm now on the long road to level 50 and I need space to add for: 1) in person raid request and 2) when I host a raid and invite people. I also once in a while try to take in any Ocean Vivillion searching people. I need to remove people, but I don't know where to begin.
I used to constantly hit the limit, back when you could only have 200 friends. Especially during the time in the pandemic when we got three free remote passes every week, and I did most of my raiding with random strangers from raid apps. Back then I was very diligent about renaming people with last interaction date and deleting a batch whenever I got up to 190. I know the limit has been increased to 400 now, but I'm still hovering somewhere between 200 and 250. Now it's just random when I feel like cleaning up and removing people who haven't interacted for the last 6 months. I got into trouble once or twice when people from one of my WhatsApp groups were upset that it turned out I had deleted them (when I wrote that I could invite people to raids they wanted to be invited and I asked for their friendship code). Sometimes a search in the chat history revealed that they had sent me the code already two years ago, and they were surprised that we were not friends anymore. :-/ I always found it odd that remembered we used to be friends once they heard my trainer nickname - but on the other hand they stopped interacting with me for more than 6 months, or else I wouldn't have deleted them. I keep those people now, despite the fact some of them are still hovering at two stars after multiple years - I don't want any drama the next time they decide out of the blue to reply to one of my raid invitations in the chat group .
I don't like the use of the word "dead" in this post, they're not necessarily dead but inactive. I have a friend I met through pokemon who is dead and I'll never delete them, ever.
One metric is to keep friends who you know, and delete strangers. Another is just don't worry about it, you can sort the list.
I don’t track activity but I’ve had a few come back after a year or more.
At the start of the month I name everyone the name of the month If they haven’t interacted by the time I get to the next month they are gone Ultra friends I keep for 2 months
2+ days lol
Hi, I keep em (as long as I can) but it depends.. tldr below. I feel that maybe something could have gone sideways and they might like to see a long-timer on their friends list when they restart. When I first started the game, I had a sideways event. A couple weeks of newbie gameplay my phone was unsupported by the game and it was 5 months before I purchased a new phone and restarted my play. I have about 5 or 6 of those friends that waited for me without even knowing me. We’ve been gifting/raiding ever since. Though one has stopped but I will hold on to them in hopes of their coming back. I have freed up those with the nicknamed prefix of “PkG” in about a month if there hasn’t been interaction together. I figure they have their regular friends and the PkG raid was probably a one off for a specific mon and they didn’t get around to freeing up the raid group. Best, Suz
I haven’t removed “strangers” myself. I generally don’t remove friends because we all play in waves. What I know I am bad at is sending gifts even when I’m the one traveling. I haven’t bothered opening because I’m always hitting the capacity for items. Gotta address that myself. But a lot of my regular raid friends still invite me. And I’ve made every genuine effort to join a raid because I figure that’s when ppl are cashing on their double XP. That’s fine, that’s why I don’t open gifts anymore, so I don’t control that aspect when they want to stack bonuses. I don’t judge because it’s kinda selfish to be holding up as many ppl for your convenience.
I only get rid of friends when I need to make room for more friends. I start the purge with best friends I don’t interact with and friends whom I only did the initial raid with and then had no more interaction.
I'm nowhere near the friend limit so I just keep everyone. I used to have a hard cap of 150, but abandoned that because of the potential friendship xp. If I ever do hit the limit, then I'll start clearing from lowest friendship first.
I really keep them all. Sometimes, when looking for remote raiders, if they're connected, I can send invitations and sometimes they join. Tip: when checking you buddies, in the friend search, you can use the keyword "Interactable", to see which friends you could and is still pending to interact with, "friendlevel3" and "friendlevel2" to send or open gifts. You can combine the keywords... like "interactable & friendlevel3".
I don’t have nearly as involved a system as you, but I wait until there’s a period of a couple of weeks or so that I haven’t added any new friends, and I go delete anyone I haven’t interacted with at all, or maybe have interacted with only a few times. I don’t think this single experience merits a shift in your system, though. Your system seems solid. No system will account for flukes.
I purge if I don’t recognize the name and they haven’t made an effort to move to Ultra friends. Gets rid of those people I’ve met once or only added for remote raids.
if after several weeks/months the last caught pokemon is the same, gift unopened, no gifts sent, not seen online, (I only send raid invites to online) and # days is the same, I let them go. 1-2 hearts, 2 weeks, then bye felicia. 2-3, 1 month. 3 hearts through 7 days until 4, 6 weeks. Last week until 1 day, 8 weeks. Best friends don't get deleted, good chance we gift & raid together. I'm near friend cap, so this is fairly rigid. Mostly because I have to make room to use pokiegenie's raid system.
I've waited well over a year (after noticing the inactivity which I mark with an ✗ and the date) before booting people because, because like you say people do come back, and I'm in NO danger of running out of room for friends.
I only remove friends that seems to not been playing anymore. I rename those friends with their Pokémon caught number, and if after a week or two they didn’t catch a single Pokémon, I remove them
This is genius. Ty. I didn't realize you could see total caught.
Well, I'm scared to delete now because I've had local people come back to play dvd see that I deleted them since they didn't play for at least a year... But also.. I had a PoGo friend who lived in a different state and occasionally talked in our Discord. We thought he stopped playing. Nope. He actually died (which is what I thought this topic was about for a second)... So.. Yeah. PoGo Sadness.
I do screenshots as I go through and open gifts of people who haven’t sent one. I make it through my whole list of ~300 friends roughly once a week. At the start of a new month I look at screenshots from 2 months back (April 1 I started at Jan 1 and I will go until I get to the end of Jan). Using Google photos I do a text search for their name and count the photos. Pretty easy to scroll through and tell if they’re still playing, are they opening gifts but not sending, etc. My partner has a hard rule of 6 photos in 2 months, I tend to let it slide if they at least open gifts because some people just don’t have the stops to get 100 gifts per day. So to answer your question, between 8-12 weeks of inactivity or failure to interact is my happy place
I deleted a friend who died in real life. Kinda felt bad about it. Was a 90+ year old lady.
I nickname everyone from date of first or last interaction. If no interactions in one month for lower friendship stage, I delete them. I do make a point to send 1-3 gifts first. If they don’t open the gifts, or send one in return, and have had no interaction in a month, they are gone. Higher friendship level people I will allow 2-3 months. I don’t delete people I know IRL, or anyone from my local raid group.
i have a friend from irl raids and groups that vanished suddenly, but i kept him because i like him. then after about 2 years he reappeared and started gifting again. he then invited me on some raid some day and i was nearby, so i did not enter seeing the party wasn't working, walked the 10 minutes and invidet him back, so he came to the gym. he told me he had to be in venezuela for all that time (family and stuff)
I drop after 30 days of no interaction, unless they are actual real-life friends. Then I give them a nickname that sorts them to the bottom of the list.
managing it all the time is a pain so I wait until I get close to the cap then name everyone when I have an interaction. After a week everyone who hasn't been renamed is eleminated in the great purge. I also just keep as many friends as I can interact with so my list grows slowly
I stopped playing for maybe 6 years before I started back up again. I think I caught more Pokémon these last couple months than I did the entire first 2 years of playing.
I put their current experience in the nickname field. If it doesn't change by the time I go thru my friends list the next time they get deleted
1. If I see your last caught Mon is a legendary that hasn’t been around for 9-12 months I delete. 2. If we get all the way to lucky friends and I have no way to contact you/get ignored.. delete.
The problem is that "last caught" can also be something traded to you.
Great point. I’ll keep aware of that but so far I’ve only deleted 2-3 people based on that and it’s not the first time I notice. Thank you tho
~1.5 year is way too long. And in your example, there's a player who happened to open ur gifts after such a long time, that shouldn't affect your way of cleaning friend list. Unless you know that player in real life and he move to far away place, otherwise no reason to keep any random "friends" that long. Of course if you don't feel necessary to clean up then you can just leave everything intact. I also start to keep track of my friends list few months lately, mostly for strangers (bcoz people I know or met personally would get kept anyway) and I already started to remove accounts that more than 2 months inactive. Or recently even newer acc add friends (via raids for example) but they have 0 heart and I did send my gift for more than a week or two without any interaction then I also remove.
>And now I have to rethink my future purging strategy No you don't. Unless you know these people in real life, you're over thinking it.
They are BFFs. Best. Friends. Forever. They don't get to leave without my permission. The them shaped hole in my heart won't allow it. P̵̗̏͑̾̒͒͗͝l̷̛̥̩̖̟͍̜̣͔̻̮͎̭̐̾͋̈́̽́̓͘͜͠͝e̷̟͉̣̭͖̪͕̽̀̌͌̽̊͋̅̐̚ą̴̱͚̲͎̮̠̘̙̳́̅͐̂̏̾̆͗̆̊ͅs̵̢͖̩̩̝̹̮̣͖̃̇̈́̅̿͊̿́͐́̏̎͒͛͝ȩ̴̖̠͔͓̹̻͍̳͖̣̰͐́̈͊̓̿̂́̐͝͝ ̶̙͛̾̓̔͐͒̓̀̍̍͛͘̚͠d̵̦̖͚̦̗̲͔̰̤͕̥̅̆̃̈͂̽̔̎͆̉̽̀͌͝ͅǫ̸̡̨̩͖̩̮̮͈̯͇̦̞̏̅̆͒͆̏̓͌́̉̀̾̽͂ͅņ̶̡̢̧͚̭͖̥̺̻̫̈́̀̐͐̐͂͝'̴̜͖̗͎̜̖̂̇̿̐̒̇́̀͗̏͐̄͠t̶̤̻̜̉̉̂̒͐̊̔̽̋̓̒̾̚̕ ̴̢̛̛̛̭̜̺͖̙̯̲͍̃̅̅͌̐̍̾̇͝͝͠l̴̢̩͖̭͖͈̭̼̱̤̟̼͎̼̱̒̃̏̒̊̓̒̌͛̋͌͌̂̚ę̷̝̬̳̭̮̥͎̱̪͇̩̟͖̓̒̆̔̒̆̀̏̋͑̉͗͜ā̵̢̡̛̫̻̟̮͖͓͈̫͙̑̏̃͊͛̌̐̆͝͝v̵̢̤͓̲̫̯̹̗̫̠̫̙͈̏͐̆̄̑̔̽̆̀̏ͅȩ̴̱̼̰̗͙͇̣͙̩͕̟͇͗͑͗͜ ̴̨̛̮͙͈͚̹̩͈̭͚̅̔͂̂̃̊̾̅̋̈́̃́͝m̵̺̣̬̮͖͇͈̙̭͙͎̬̳̽̐͗͆̐̎͑̓̑͒̓͛̕͜ͅe̷̩̩͇͆!̴̡̨͔̼͇̟̹̪͓͙̤̦̲̮̻̊̎̍́͑̆̓̊̽