Pokémon GO will significantly increase the number of friendships you can have in the game. However, trainers have noticed that a further important change needs to be made for this to work well.
What is changing? Pokémon GO is significantly raising the maximum number of friends. Currently, you can gather 200 simultaneous friends on your friends list in Pokémon GO. In the future, that will double, allowing for 400 trainers. Niantic informed trainers managing their children’s accounts about this change.
Initially, the feature will be tested with selected trainers. It will then be made available to everyone. However, with more friends, Niantic should also rethink its limits on gifts, players say.
Niantic’s friend system is being revamped
What is happening? The account trdf53 shared an email from Niantic on Twitter. It states that an update is currently rolling out that is revamping the friend system. It aims to simplify staying connected with friends across multiple Niantic games. Specifically, friends from Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Pokémon GO will be linked.
The following things will change:
- If you add or remove a friend in one of the games, it applies to all games.
- Existing friends from one game will now also appear on the friends lists of other Niantic games.
- The maximum number of friends will increase from 200 to 400.
When is it coming? Niantic wrote on Twitter in the early morning hours of March 19 that the rollout of the update has begun. Once that is all completed, they plan to adjust the friend limit to 400.
These issues are known: Niantic’s support has already stated on Twitter that the increased friend capacity will be available soon. However, during the update, it may happen that your friends lists have already exceeded 200 friends while you still cannot add any friends.
The developers point out that you will only be able to independently add over 200 friends after the rollout of the update is complete.
What disturbs the trainers?
This is what players say: The increase in the friend limit is being well received by a large number of players. Trainers are commenting on this on Twitter and also on Reddit. However, they demand that Niantic should also increase the gift limit.
You can send gifts to players on your friends list. One gift per player per day, with a maximum of 20 trainers. You receive the gifts by spinning PokéStops.
If your friends open the gifts, they receive important balls, potions, berries, or even eggs.
Currently, you can send a maximum of 100 gifts to friends daily and open 20 gifts. If the friends list becomes larger, but you cannot send additional gifts to friends, some trainers would be dissatisfied.
On Reddit, trainer Maijnrobin writes, “It would be great if we could open and send twice as many gifts then.” Trainer One_Study1691 writes, “Going from 200 to 400 is pretty pointless if you don’t change how many gifts we can open per day […]”.
But what does the increase bring? Currently, during the corona crisis, Pokémon players are raiding using remote raids. This allows players to not have to meet in groups on-site. Only one player needs to be near a raid and can then invite players from around the world to fight in that raid via the friend system. However, first, they must add each other as friends.
Especially when these are just one-time raids with these friends, and nothing else is done together, the list fills up quickly, and trainers have to delete others to make space. With the increase to 400 slots, it now takes twice as long for the list to get filled up.
It remains to be seen whether Niantic will listen to player feedback and increase the gift limit. While that remains unresolved, you can keep yourself occupied with many events in the coming days. You can see all events in March 2021 for Pokémon GO here.
