Anet -- ten years of 'friends, contacts and blocks ' are all in the same database -- please allow us to RESET each one separately.

[Rebuke.3176]

Quality of life issue after ten years of names added to contacts or blocks.

The biggest problem is not being able to reset contacts or blocks -- and if you have been in the game a very long time there are far too many blocks which also impacts the 'friends' list -- when the block  list is full, you may not add any friends.  The database for 'friends' and 'blocks' is not differentiated - if one is full, the other is as well.

I've been undoing the blocks -- but from what I can see it would take over a year to delete them all one by one as Anet's servers are slower than snot in deleting and refreshing any 'page' one is in.

Anet, please allow us to reset  OR BETTER YET mass mark entries in both 'friends' and 'blocks'.

Thanks!

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

I've been in the game since beta and I have zero people on my block list. What are you doing that causes you to have unmanageably high numbers of people blocked? 😂

[MarzAttakz.9608]

2 minutes ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

I've been in the game since beta and I have zero people on my block list. What are you doing that causes you to have unmanageably high numbers of people blocked? 😂

sPvP?

Block to whisper in WvW (does it still work)?

Block to remove trolls?

There are many applications but that's besides the point.

OP is asking for a simple QOL update that any decent UI developer would have realised was necessary if they ever iterated on their systems. Similarly a backend developer would have realised the same when comparing where the data is stored and the procedures to manage that data.

A legacy issue from 2012 I presume?

Multiple single updates to records are surely less efficient than a bulk request unless they're purposely doing so to keep their AWS costs down.

[Serp.3264]

28 minutes ago, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

OP is asking for a simple QOL update that any decent UI developer would have realised was necessary if they ever iterated on their systems. Similarly a backend developer would have realised the same when comparing where the data is stored and the procedures to manage that data.

 

Or they could see that this only impacts a handful of people and it isn't worth the effort? I am almost certain that the amount of players with a full blocked/friend list is an extremely small amount (like .001% type of territory) of the overall player base. There is no need to iterate or invest in a system that may only have issues for a extreme minority of players.

 

NOTE: I have no data to back this up, but neither do you so I am just playing devil's advocate here.

[MarzAttakz.9608]

42 minutes ago, Serp.3264 said:

 

Or they could see that this only impacts a handful of people and it isn't worth the effort? I am almost certain that the amount of players with a full blocked/friend list is an extremely small amount (like .001% type of territory) of the overall player base. There is no need to iterate or invest in a system that may only have issues for a extreme minority of players.

 

NOTE: I have no data to back this up, but neither do you so I am just playing devil's advocate here.

Fair point, and I appreciate a devil's advocate for sure!

My comment stems from being a UI developer myself. As such the odds are good that their listing pages are scaffolded on an underlying class, which if extended would offer bulk functionality to all other UI components based on that class. So with some effort you'd be improving your entire user interface. Smallish effort, large gains. Even taking into account the technology of 2012, in my opinion, not programming for bulk deletes is a large oversight.

Anyway, back logs and sprints are very rarely in the hands of the developers themselves so we have to put this in the "nice to have" bucket.

✌🏼

[Khisanth.2948]

8 minutes ago, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

Fair point, and I appreciate a devil's advocate for sure!

My comment stems from being a UI developer myself. As such the odds are good that their listing pages are scaffolded on an underlying class, which if extended would offer bulk functionality to all other UI components based on that class. So with some effort you'd be improving your entire user interface. Smallish effort, large gains. Even taking into account the technology of 2012, in my opinion, not programming for bulk deletes is a large oversight.

Anyway, back logs and sprints are very rarely in the hands of the developers themselves so we have to put this in the "nice to have" bucket.

✌🏼

That makes sense from a programming perspective but not as relevant for normal person perspective. Broadly speaking friends list are people you like and block list are people you don't like. Under what circumstance would someone suddenly decide they no longer like any of these people or that these people are not so bad after all?

There is the multi-select option but that will involve more than just a bulk delete on the backend. Still not a lot but definitely more work.

The total size is also over 300 from a rough counting of my own lists.

[Zephire.8049]

It's not just blocked and friends that share the pool of total accounts you can have in your contact list, followers take up the same space as well. So you could do nothing but still hit the cap because you it's not up to you if someone friends you or not.

Granted the cap is high so most won't even notice it, but if you're a content creator or your name is out there for doing events, HP runs, raid/strike training, etc. you could hit cap through no fault of your own. If that happens, you get thrown errors when you try to friend people and it impacts things like gemstore giveaways because of how the gemstore works.

Considering it's an old system with many complaints over the years, it deserves a look at. At least split followers from the cap and/or add bulk removal of followers if it can't be removed from the total.

[Fuchslein.8639]

27 minutes ago, Zephire.8049 said:

It's not just blocked and friends that share the pool of total accounts you can have in your contact list, followers take up the same space as well. So you could do nothing but still hit the cap because you it's not up to you if someone friends you or not.

Granted the cap is high so most won't even notice it, but if you're a content creator or your name is out there for doing events, HP runs, raid/strike training, etc. you could hit cap through no fault of your own. If that happens, you get thrown errors when you try to friend people and it impacts things like gemstore giveaways because of how the gemstore works.

Considering it's an old system with many complaints over the years, it deserves a look at. At least split followers from the cap and/or add bulk removal of followers if it can't be removed from the total.

The fact that all three list are Counted as one Just showes even more how Bad gw2 Manages the friendlist system ...

But as Always, the only comments you get on something Like this is that the Person himsekf is the Problem, and Not anet who did go again the easiest way possible to Not Put any effort in it.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

3 hours ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

I've been in the game since beta and I have zero people on my block list. What are you doing that causes you to have unmanageably high numbers of people blocked? 😂

So there's this issue with the lists that if you have too many on any individual list (Or interact with them in any fashion like adding or removing names too fast) that the login server will bug out.  It's kinda terrible.  I cleaned out my block list (Removed all the obvious bot names) then labeled everyone on my follower's list with a unique ID (ASD3245 or something like that) right after being able to remove them, blocked everyone on my follower's list, and finally removed those from the block list.  I've yet to run into that error again, I ran into it a lot during this process.

There's also just weird behavior.  If a list is too long, deleting someone may have another person randomly show up in that spot in the list.  Sometimes, if the list is too long, it won't sort properly if at all.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Andifulated.3482

[TheNecrosanct.4028]

1 hour ago, Zephire.8049 said:

It's not just blocked and friends that share the pool of total accounts you can have in your contact list, followers take up the same space as well. So you could do nothing but still hit the cap because you it's not up to you if someone friends you or not.

This can be managed, though. Granted, it's a two-step process (block them and then unblock them; they won't be in any of your lists anymore), but it's not out of our control.

I've played this game since release and back then there were a lot of goldsellers who whispered you. The majority of my blocklist consists of those accounts. I also don't manage my followers and never remove anyone from my block list (if they're on there, it's for a good reason). And after almost 11 years I didn't even know there was a cap to the cumulative number of people that can be in your lists until I read this thread. It's purely anecdotal but it feels like this is barely a problem.

Edited February 21, 2023 by TheNecrosanct.4028

[Zephire.8049]

11 minutes ago, TheNecrosanct.4028 said:

This can be managed, though. Granted, it's a two-step process (block them and then unblock them; they won't be in any of your lists anymore), but it's not out of our control.

I've played this game since release and back then there were a lot of goldsellers who whispered you. The majority of my blocklist consists of those accounts. I also don't manage my followers and never remove anyone from my block list (if they're on there, it's for a good reason). And after almost 11 years I didn't even know there was a cap to the cumulative number of people that can be in your lists until I read this thread. It's purely anecdotal but it feels like this is barely a problem.

It's out of your control in that you have no control over whether or not someone follows you. You can remove them in a convoluted way but you can't stop it from happening in the first place, and you need to be vigilant about it/aware that friends, blocked, and followers all same the same limited resource pool.

Which, again, isn't likely to be a problem to most people but has a huge negative impact on content creators (AKA people marketing GW2 organically) and people who do large community events. If the developers have to pitch the idea of creating a small program to go through someone's follower list for them to delete said followers because it would take ages to do it manually (and would fill up pass the threshold quickly after doing it) there's a problem that needs to be addressed. It may not affect most people but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

6 hours ago, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

sPvP?

Block to whisper in WvW (does it still work)?

Block to remove trolls?

There are many applications but that's besides the point.

OP is asking for a simple QOL update that any decent UI developer would have realised was necessary if they ever iterated on their systems. Similarly a backend developer would have realised the same when comparing where the data is stored and the procedures to manage that data.

A legacy issue from 2012 I presume?

Multiple single updates to records are surely less efficient than a bulk request unless they're purposely doing so to keep their AWS costs down.

Block to whisper in WvW? Never even knew about that, I remember the good ole days of join party to talk haha

[Linken.6345]

55 minutes ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Block to whisper in WvW? Never even knew about that, I remember the good ole days of join party to talk haha

You block enemies to find out the account name then unblock and whisper.

[DarcShriek.5829]

The OPs request seems reasonable.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

On 2/21/2023 at 8:38 PM, Linken.6345 said:

You block enemies to find out the account name then unblock and whisper.

I thought that was report enemies to find account name. Something I used to do regularly and it has definitely been fixed lol

[cyberzombie.7348]

On 2/21/2023 at 9:37 AM, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

I've been in the game since beta and I have zero people on my block list. What are you doing that causes you to have unmanageably high numbers of people blocked? 😂

You def never had to deal with gold seller spam. 

[Taclism.2406]

On 2/21/2023 at 6:37 PM, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

I've been in the game since beta and I have zero people on my block list. What are you doing that causes you to have unmanageably high numbers of people blocked?

Getting "semi afk farmers" killed, and their raging PMs was enough to fill mine.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Taclism.2406

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

4 hours ago, Taclism.2406 said:

Getting "semi afk farmers" killed, and their raging PMs was enough to fill mine.

Really? Their furious whining is absolute music to my ears, the last thing I would ever want to do is block that 

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

13 hours ago, cyberzombie.7348 said:

You def never had to deal with gold seller spam. 

Yeah man I had gold seller spam and they were absolutely hilarious, especially the really Engrish ones. I even kept some of the messages from back then despite the limited mail capacity. One of them said "I love you" and that made me laugh so hard I never deleted it

[Firebeard.1746]

On 2/21/2023 at 9:37 AM, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

I've been in the game since beta and I have zero people on my block list. What are you doing that causes you to have unmanageably high numbers of people blocked? 😂

Have you played spvp lately? Getting harassesed after matches is fairly common. Or was like a year ago when i still did it alot. 

 

Also i block comms who do nasty things in lfg.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

1 hour ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

Have you played spvp lately? Getting harassesed after matches is fairly common. Or was like a year ago when i still did it alot. 

 

Also i block comms who do nasty things in lfg.

Yeah dawg that's been happening since the beginning, the way I see it if you want to whisper me and tell me what you think of me and how I play, that's your right. I think competitive trash talking is great for personal growth, developing a thicker skin. Take the advice of Epictetus: "Do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He must have been ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone."

Edited February 23, 2023 by Elricht Kaltwind.8796

[Fuchslein.8639]

13 hours ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Yeah dawg that's been happening since the beginning, the way I see it if you want to whisper me and tell me what you think of me and how I play, that's your right. I think competitive trash talking is great for personal growth, developing a thicker skin. Take the advice of Epictetus: "Do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He must have been ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone."

You Talk about their right to insults and Trash-Talk. Yet, you belittle the right that people also can Just use the Block function for what it was Programmed.

Funny.

Man who Made mistakes in Elevator is on so many Levels wrong - confucius

[Ashen.2907]

On 2/21/2023 at 1:11 PM, Fuchslein.8639 said:

But as Always, the only comments you get on something Like this is that the Person himsekf is the Problem

And yet there are comments supporting the OP.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

1 hour ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

You Talk about their right to insults and Trash-Talk. Yet, you belittle the right that people also can Just use the Block function for what it was Programmed.

Funny.

Man who Made mistakes in Elevator is on so many Levels wrong - confucius

Exactly, it's their right to trash talk me and it's my right to trash talk others. That is consistent.

[Fuchslein.8639]

8 hours ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Exactly, it's their right to trash talk me and it's my right to trash talk others. That is consistent.

So a troll who supports trolls, good to know. Thank you.

The problem still stays the same, because luckily most people like their piece but still want to play wvw or pvp :).