Hey guys, I’m not here very often these days, so I’m not sure the problem I’ve just developed is happening to anybody else. I looked back a week or so and I see some folks are apparently having gifting and friending problems as usual, but nothing like this. I lost about a third of my Game Center friends overnight. They’ve just disappeared from my Friends tab. Several of them are still in my Gifts tab, waiting for me to return pending gifts, but the gifting buttons are disabled. This includes some of my daily friends as well
Is anybody else seeing this?
Did you upgrade to ios 11?
When I upgraded to ios 11 on Friday (Trying to fix a ringing problem), I lost the ability to gift to many of my friends.
Hi all. I have noticed a lot of you are losing friends which also happened to me yesterday.
The only thing I had done was turn Game Center off in Settings/iCloud/apps using iCloud on my iPad, Once I turned this back on my friends came back. Not sure why Game Center now uses icloud as I have always said no! My iPad Air is on V 11.0.1.
I also tested this on my iPhone (6s - V 11.1.2) and the same thing happened.
I hope this helps some of you
Sadly this didn't help, but it did get me thinking more about the problem. In my situation I use a different Apple ID for Game Center than I do for iCloud. Apple provides different APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for developers to use depending on the services they want to take advantage of. There are Game Center APIs, iCloud APIs, email APIs, bluetooth APIs, etc.
If Game Center's relationship with iCloud has changed (as suggested by your observation that you had to start enabling iCloud for GC when you didn't have to previously) then it may be that Apple made an error in how those two services share data, or that BFS is using both GC and iCloud and is making bad assumptions about where data is living, or one company or the other made a one-time error moving data from one place to another, or something like the above.
Whatever the problem, I can no longer trade with many friends that I've been exchanging gems and treats with for years. Very depressing. As others have noted, this could all be fixed if BFS does the right thing and takes ownership of their own friend mechanism.
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
When I upgraded to ios 11 on Friday (Trying to fix a ringing problem), I lost the ability to gift to many of my friends.
I upgraded to iOS 11 back in September when it first came out, and I updated to a newer version several weeks ago, but everything was stable and fine for weeks until the issue occurred the other day. As far as I know nothing had changed on my iPad for a good while when it happened (I have all automatic updates turned off so I can theoretically prevent this sort of thing!). As part of my effort to fix the problem I did update iOS to the very latest release yesterday (I'd been ignoring the update until now) but it didn't help.
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
Hi all. I have noticed a lot of you are losing friends which also happened to me yesterday.
The only thing I had done was turn Game Center off in Settings/iCloud/apps using iCloud on my iPad, Once I turned this back on my friends came back. Not sure why Game Center now uses icloud as I have always said no! My iPad Air is on V 11.0.1.
I also tested this on my iPhone (6s - V 11.1.2) and the same thing happened.
I hope this helps some of you
that didn't help me, and I'm still running 10.3.1. I guess Game Center is just dead. Sad to see, and I know a bunch of people have emailed BFS so we'll see what they say.
Hi all. I have noticed a lot of you are losing friends which also happened to me yesterday.
The only thing I had done was turn Game Center off in Settings/iCloud/apps using iCloud on my iPad, Once I turned this back on my friends came back. Not sure why Game Center now uses icloud as I have always said no! My iPad Air is on V 11.0.1.
I also tested this on my iPhone (6s - V 11.1.2) and the same thing happened.
I hope this helps some of you
Tried this, didn’t work. Skitch described this as: friendpocalypse! I had 300+ friends and am down to an even 100 after counting them. Can anyone else who lost friends count them and see if GameCenter is now limited to 100? It would not be so upsetting if the 200+ that disappeared were inactive players. Instead it seems like most of them were the most active. Really disappointed in BFS for dragging their feet on in-game friending.
Arkynos, It is so bizarre that I can no longer gift you but you are still able to gift me. Please feel free to gift others on your list that are able to reciprocate.
Unfortunately I have no way to communicate directly with my long time trading partners, BunnyMom and MayTroi, to let them know I can’t return their gifts. Hopefully you’ll both read this. To all the players who are always so generous gifting to me (especially during events): Your gifts are coming through but I have no way to return the favors. Thank you for your generosity but if there are other players you can gift to, please do. ~Cyn
I never had a huge number of friends. I just counted 39 on my current list. Thankfully, it includes my active friends. The short list makes things like the arena and coop breeding a challengs because I have a very limited selection of friend’s dragons to choose from (In Dragonvale World I’m down to 3 active friends).
I’m running ios 11.2.2 on an iPad Air2. I do not run icloud. And I don’t have Facebook or Twitter accounts.
I’ve written to them about in-game friending since the initial loss of friending through Game Center. I’ve even sent them examples of game that have successfully implemented in-game friending. The response back depends on who the tech is that gets the communication. Brandy is particularly un-sympathetic on just about any request or issue. The others sort of give a non-committal response that they’ll submit the suggestion for consideration. And there it ends. The top of the friends screen says to login “below” (Facebook or Twitter) if you’re missing friends. They must be getting some kind of kick back.
I have to admit that I’m getting irritated with BFS at this point. The events require the purchase of additional currency (berries or whatever) to even get the just the new dragons and pedestals. They’ve eliminated the advantage of banking overflow in gifts from friends and changed the exchange from food to dragon coin.
They expect us to pay more money for a “free” game (and I do know that some people only play it on the free level). But they don’t seem willing to put any effort into improving the playability of the game.
We as a family only have each other as friends. 3 of us do not update our devices in fear of losing friending of each other through game center. We are on version 9 on two and version 10 on another. The other member updates as soon as an update is released and so far so good for DV although they have lost many apps and games due to the last update and things have been wonky, battery worse, etc... so sick of apple trying to force updates, force icloud, make batteries worse etc... so sick of companies trying to force facebook upon you. None of us have any facebook accounts and don't plan to in the future. Not interested. I really hope BFS creates an in gaming friend feature. I would love to add more people from here, but not going the facebook route.
As far as customer service goes I have only had one good response in about 5 times of contacting them. The last response of the game glitching and deleting my social berries from one user and them not replacing them or making it right really leaves me bothered. It would not have affected their bottom line at all. I can only pull 1,000 berries out and the dragoncash is not that much a conversion, but it was the point that they didn't fix a problem when I needed them to, but some people got ten gems just for complaining abut a second gift. I also contacted them right before they made the making of the rift eggs able to be a pedestal or to be released about turning one of my social rift dragon eggs to a pedestal. I was told no it can't be done and then someone reported they asked the same thing and was gifted a pedestal. It seems customer service is not consistent. I am always very polite in my requests and never demand anything. I am not one to expect more than I should get, but I do want to be treated fair and have an equal response and or solution as someone else.
Cyn I'll redistribute your gifts as requested, but will keep the daily slot free for you if/when the problem is fixed.
Dropping to exactly 100 is interesting, it seems unlikely to be coincidental. I retained all my friends, but only had around 80 beforehand. I hope that other affected people can confirm this. Identifying if, as you suspect, everyone is now limited to a random selection of 100 of your previous game centre friends would likely be helpful to BFS to fixing the problem. Or at least determining if the issue is on their end or Apple's.
Either way, this just highlights how vital the development of an in-game friending solution is for the future of the game. Please, BFS, you are our only hope.
Cyn I'll redistribute your gifts as requested, but will keep the daily slot free for you if/when the problem is fixed.
Dropping to exactly 100 is interesting, it seems unlikely to be coincidental. I retained all my friends, but only had around 80 beforehand. I hope that other affected people can confirm this. Identifying if, as you suspect, everyone is now limited to a random selection of 100 of your previous game centre friends would likely be helpful to BFS to fixing the problem. Or at least determining if the issue is on their end or Apple's.
Either way, this just highlights how vital the development of an in-game friending solution is for the future of the game. Please, BFS, you are our only hope.
Unfortunately the only force that seems to be flowing through BF right now is the Darkside. 😉
(been watching Star Wars with my kids and your last line sounded like Princess Laia)
With the demise of game centre I just started in FB to be able to friend people from this forum and join in on the fun. Please message me if you want to send a friend request so I know to watch for you😊, I never check FB otherwise. I'm deleting random requests way too many of those 😮.
I had 300+ friends and am down to an even 100 after counting them. Can anyone else who lost friends count them and see if GameCenter is now limited to 100?
Well, that's interesting, I didn't bother counting until you suggested it... I had probably around 150-ish friends before the friendpocalypse, and now I, too, have exactly 100 (not counting Nogard). If this is true for others then it seems much more likely that it wasn't just a random database failure. Either it was an honest error (i.e. maybe a developer doing maintenance copying friend lists from one structure to another accidentally wrote a loop counter of only 100 instead of say 10000), or else Apple or BFS is imposing a 100 friend limit to save on resources during app execution.
I've gone from sad to mildly infuriated!
Edit: if the intent was to save on resources then they should have sorted the list by last activity and removed friends that haven't been active for years. I lost daily friends. This is really unacceptable.
I had around 240 friends. I just counted the leftover friends and i come to exactly 100 friends! Thus, there is a plan behind this. Of course, a great number of those gone were regulars since years. I am very very disappointed and upset.
Thanks for your email! We have talked about this, but it would be a pretty massive undertaking at this stage in the game's development and we don't have plans for it at this time. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and have passed your feedback along to the DragonVale team. Best Regards, Mike
I wonder if we have techy valers who could offer to assist BFS?? I mean I have no idea how difficult this is... Just a thought, if developing things like in game mechs is something some of you love... Otherwise, prepare to be herded down the chute to FB land 😱
Last Edit: Jan 16, 2018 15:13:08 GMT -6 by Kiwichris
Kiwichris Very unfortunate. That makes for uncomfortable reading, especially the phrase "at this stage in the game's development". Not helpful for my paranoia about the game's remaining supported lifespan. (Speaking of, that line in the Party dragon's flavour text about 'thinking it might be his last chance to see a new dragon discovered'? I get the reference, but that still set me off big time anyway.) I've been thinking about the GC issue. Back when it was functional, if you removed a friend from your list, would it automatically remove you from their list? If so, the fact that I can still send gifts to Cyn suggests that everyone's friends are still there and that either Apple's database isn't supplying the data properly or the issue is on BFS's end.
If there was another game that relied on GC for friending that we could find, if they were also suffering from dropped friends it'd be easy to tell which end it's at...
If anyone used both GC and Facebook and had over 100 friends across them it'd be interesting to see how many you have remaining. Might expose something about the nature of the problem.
More confusion: I received iceberries from the arena from Maris, a GC friend since years. BUt ... Maris is one of thise who disappeared from my friends list. So ... it means I did not disappear from her list but she disappeared from mine. That s nuts.
Last Edit: Jan 16, 2018 17:00:39 GMT -6 by viviane
More confusion: I received iceberries from the arena from Maris, a GC friend since years. BUt ... Maris is one of thise who disappeared from my friends list. So ... it means I did not disappear from her list but she disappeared from mine. That s nuts.
Same situation for me.
I still receive gems/food from a regular gifting partner, but I cannot send them back. I am also still able to send gifts to another partner, but they messaged me saying they cannot send them back to me.
All my friends/neighbors in Smurfs' Village were friended through GC only. I can see, visit, and gift them all in SV, no problem. None are missing, either.
Some of my Smurf friends play (or played) DV, too, so they appeared in my DV friends list... but, now they are greyed out and have been for a few weeks. Those are my only DV GC friends and all are inaccessible- I can't even visit their Parks.
I have less than 100 friends in GC and FB, combined. [Edit: after doing a count, I actually have 113 total friends(!). 35 GC and 78 FB. 79 of the 113 are DV players... so I don't know if that still counts as "under 100?"]
Forgot to add: All my active DV friends are FB neighbors and my GC friends have been greyed out in the Social menu for a few weeks. A couple days ago, I entered the Arctic Amphitheater and NONE of my friends appeared- not even the FB ones. I checked the Social menu and the DV app had somehow logged itself out of Facebook. I hadn't changed anything in-game or with my device that would cause this. In fact, my device was still logged into FB. It was easy to fix (I just tapped the FB log-in button in the Social menu) but it was weird- especially in light of the disappearing GC friends.
All my friends/neighbors in Smurfs' Village were friended through GC. I can visit and gift them all in SV. No friend problems at all in that game.
Some of my Smurf friends play (or played) DV, too, so they have always appeared in my DV friends list... but, they are now greyed out in DV. Can't even visit their Parks anymore.
I have less than 100 friends in GC and FB, combined.
Forgot to add: All my active DV friends are FB neighbors and my GC friends have been greyed out in the Social menu for a few weeks. A couple days ago, I entered the Arctic Amphitheater and NONE of my friends appeared- not even the FB ones. I checked the Social menu and the DV app had somehow logged itself out of Facebook. I hadn't changed anything in-game or with my device that would cause this. In fact, my device was still logged into FB. It was easy to fix (I just tapped the FB log-in button in the Social menu) but it was weird- especially in light of the disappearing GC friends.
Oh bother, said Pooh, that blows the 100 friend cap theory it would seem...
have those who who have lost friends tried re-linking their park ?
I'll see if I still have the 'how to' in my tips c&p back soon... Here 'tis
Missing Friends: When friends disappear, and only the FB ones remain: go to GC, logout and back in. Make sure the button is tapped in Settings. Or Try a hard reset/reboot; hold both buttons on device down until apple appears on screen. Release buttons. Count to 10 slowly, re-activate device ( how to hard reset android I don't know)
MORE
From BFS: "If some of your Facebook friends are not appearing in your Friends list, or you are unable to return their gifts, it is likely for one of the following reasons: They have not yet updated to DragonVale 3.9.0 or higher or Their park is not "bound" to Facebook Prior to the DragonVale 3.9.0 update it was possible on iOS devices to be signed into Facebook to add friends, but it was not possible to actually save or "bind" your park to a Facebook account. After updating to DragonVale 3.9.0 or 3.10.0, iOS players will need to bind their park to Facebook in order to appear in their friend's parks. To bind a park to a Facebook account: Open DragonVale and tap the "Social" icon. Tap the Facebook button to sign out of Facebook Tap the Facebook button again to sign in and bind your park to Facebook You should receive a prompt asking if you want to associated the park with Facebook. Tap yes. The park should now be bound to Facebook. IMPORTANT: You must use the Facebook button in the Social menu for these instructions. Using the Facebook button in the Switch Parks menu will not work to bind the park. If one of your Facebook friends has updated to DragonVale 3.9.0 or higher and is not appearing in your friends list, please have them bind their park to Facebook using the above instruction".
Aaaand that's all I got folks.... Koala that some of this helps some folk...
Last Edit: Jan 16, 2018 22:27:16 GMT -6 by Kiwichris
Kiwichris Very unfortunate. That makes for uncomfortable reading, especially the phrase "at this stage in the game's development". Not helpful for my paranoia about the game's remaining supported lifespan. (Speaking of, that line in the Party dragon's flavour text about 'thinking it might be his last chance to see a new dragon discovered'? I get the reference, but that still set me off big time anyway.)
Arkynos , just to further your Xfiles paranoia, do you think the buy out is faltering? Cos DVW is tanking, from the participation reports here and in my three DVW park friends time logs. Do game like this have a limited lifespan? It's my first, so I'm not very up on this type of thing; I guess I thought/hoped it would keep on going as it seems to have such a large following, but maybe it's all (most things seem to be) about the bottom line?
Last Edit: Jan 16, 2018 22:40:28 GMT -6 by Kiwichris
Oops- I just did a head count and I actually have 113 friends, total, in GC and FB. 35 GC and 78 FB (who the heck are all these people?!?) But, most of my GC friends don't play DV. I have 79 friends in my DV Social menu (including the greyed-out GC people, but not including Nogard)
Does that still qualify as under 100??
I'm shocked to realize I have so many DV friends! I thought I had like *maybe* 40, max. And then about 30 or so old GC friends for my Smurfs- at least that one was a close estimate.
Post by ChemNerdTwin on Jan 16, 2018 22:57:03 GMT -6
Panicked and added probably 200 Facebook DV people. Over half of them are dv only fake profiles. Pm me for Facebook account
GCID chemnerd 99 (You need a space) TEAM Hidden Bolt
Looking for party hat friends. Pm me for Facebook Id.
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