While it's understandable to place a limit on the number of pending Requests, limiting the number of total Friends to 50 is impractical, inconvenient, frustrating, and very discouraging to the point of being infuriating. I'll TRY to put emotions aside and stick to facts....

1) When I try to "Send" an artifact to a fellow player, the "Friends" list is at least sorted by Level. The "Legion" and "Trade Pacts" lists are unsorted and unsortable. I can use Ctrl+F and type in the name, but then I have to do tons and tons of scrolling on the "Legion" tab ... Maybe make those sorted or sortable, or make a "Filter by: _____ " field for all 3 tabs, for ease of use?

2) I like adding legionmates as friends, because I like seeing (Facebook Name) next to as many as possible when I click on the Legion tab. I had a convenient at-a-glance way of seeing who's new, or who sent me a facebook message, etc.
*** I also don't feel like I should have to justify not adding them as a Friend... just because they're in my legion.
*** I also don't feel like I should have to justify not adding them as a Friend... just because their legion has a trade pact with my legion.

3) I like having inactive or somewhat inactive players as friends -- because I used to try to drag many of them over when new missions or new seasonal events began.
*** I also don't feel like I should have to justify not adding them as a friend... just because they're not as active as they used to be...
*** I also don't feel like I should have to justify not adding them as a friend... just because I don't trade with them as often...

4) It's bad enough that "Send"able artifacts are no longer part of any new missions, this friend limit even further discoruages bringing back inactive players AND discourages bringing in new players.
*** I also don't feel like I should have to justify not adding them as a friend... just because they're a new player...???
*** The very idea of inviting a friend to play, then trying to explain why I can't add them as an in-game friend ... ?? Let's put it mildly and say I don't like that idea at all.

5) After almost 5 years of gameplay I had over 400 Galaxy Legion players on my friend list .. and over 330 were showing as friends. Now I'm limited to 50, and I have to explain to friends why I have to refuse their in-game friend request... There's simply no reason for such a restricting limit on the number of total friends.

6) Even in my high range (rank 2702 and rising faster than I want to), I'm still finding more than enough non-friends in range. Anyone who wants less friends for battle tab reason or for any reason - they can just click "Un-Friend", it's unfair to force me to unfriend with the strict limit...

7) Removing that 50 friends limit, or expanding it to 1000+ would actually bring in some inactive players, IF the active ones bring them instead of worrying about their "limit".

It's more convenient for us older players AND gives us an excuse to try to get some of the inactive folks to come back into the game!!!
Best case scenario - a few extra players come back from inactivity - some will stick around long enough to get and spend GP.
Worst case scenario - some of the loyal and active players can have a few extra friends on their list - no harm in that anyway!

So again, keep the Pending Requests restriction, but please please PLEASE expand or remove the total friends limit.
*** Fingers crossed -- as I compose this, I'm down to 48 friends and got 3 pending friend requests
*** I'll reject if I get a request from a total stranger and/or a very easy battle tab target (heh) ... but PLEASE don't leave me with the useless inconvenience of making excuses for friend refusal from FB friends! ***
Facebook friend limit is 5000, can't we please at least make in-game friend limit the same? Or 1000 or at least 500??? Please? *fingers crossed*

As Leopard mentioned, one of the biggest helps for me is having as many of my legionmates friended as possible, so their name shows up next to their ship. That alone is around 50-60 people I need to have on my friend list, plus leadership of closely allied legions. My preference is to also have ships I trade with frequently in my friend list, and also any ships that are useful for negotiations (even if not necessarily allied).

In short, 50 is significantly less than I need. 1000% a fan of the game update, and the system looks very good -- the cap needs increased, though.

why do you need to have every legionmember friended? you don't have to be friends to send stuff. And not everyone wants people to know their real name in a game

+1 Dont really see the reasoning behind having a limit on how many friends you can have. Sort of the same line of thinking as to whether you choose a SSB, MSB, or LSB. Having a ton of friends has it's pros and cons. It's all about the style of gameplay you want.

+1 why have a limit, unless......

Perhaps there's more to come?
Dont get mad, but there may be a friend market coming. I forsee sending out daily requests for boosts or energy or special mods, which wouldnt be so bad in my opinion

Oh God I hope not....

Eww, I also hope not! ... UNLESS... you can still easily limit the sends, requests, whatever those things are -- without limiting the total number of friends! So even IF that's happening, there's still no need to limit friends!

It all does come down to preference.
If someone does NOT want to have a lot of friends, it would be unfair and unreasonable to force them to have tons.
If someone DOES have (and wants to keep) a lot of friends, it's unfair and unreasonable to force them to have less...

I don't want to reject FB friends and I don't want to leave them pending. I really hope the 50 friend limit is removed (or greatly expanded) soon.

The actual change isn't the problem. It's the impact behind. Of course, there is no impact, but Dan must think otherwise or he'd never have imposed a limit in the first place.

It's not even a "no impact", as I said in my post, there's only positive impact to allowing us more friends. And Dan DOES listen, I have recent PROOF too:
Very recently, a new rank 1201+ NPC was added - Stryll Genosynth - http://galaxylegion.com/wiki/index.php/Stryll_Genosynth. At first, Dan "imposed" a 1 hour cooldown on the GeoScan ability, but then changed it 1 minute. That thing is still tough and annoying to kill, but he removed the unreasonable part.

So yes, Dan won't obey your every desire, but he DOES listen --- all you need to do is ask politely, state your reasons, and also... hopefully it will help if there's enough people that agree with your request! My request being -- to please either remove or significantly increase the 50 friend limit. Hope enough people agree with that, to get Dan to do it. *fingers crossed*

50 is the limit on most online games and with many of those you have to be VIP to increase that limit and it increases as does your VIP level.

Where did I say Dan wouldn't listen?

Where did I say that YOU said Dan wouldn't listen?
Don't "put words in my mouth" about "putting words in your mouth" which I didn't! LOL

Anyway, 50 requests max is fine, but 50 friends max limit is way too restrictive. I had 330+ in-game friends added, when 400+ of my FB friends were playing.
That friend restriction feels like an undeserved punishment for me, and for everyone with over 50 friends ...
AND it sucks for some of the people who have less than 50 friends -- because now that folks like me can't accept their requests, they have even less friends!
Please Dan, please remove the restriction or increase it significantly... sigh

as someone who does webdev: there would most likely be a performance impact if he raises the limit. depending how exactly everything is stored in the database it might have a larger effect or not. At the very least there is storage and accessing the data, the more data the longer it takes to do searches and fetch the needed data. it also expands as the list of friends is just a list of numbers (i assume, that's how i would store it) but then those numbers need to be 'translated' to ship names, real names, legions, ....

i do have one sugestion: allow players to change settings so they can configure if people can see their real name (i know some who don't want others knowing their real name) and to chose if they can see your legion when you are not yet friends, this allows 'stalking' of people, if someone leaves for whatever reason you can now know exactly where they are at all times by just searching to add as friend

First of all, in ALL the Facebook games I've ever seen -- you must be friends on Facebook to see someone as an in-game friend.. IF someone didn't want their Facebook Name seen by someone else, they wouldn't have sent and/or accepted friend requests through Facebook.. And IF there ever is a person that somehow doesn't want their Facebook Name seen by their... Galaxy Legion friends who are non-Facebook friends (?) - please let that person start their own thread and request or suggest it there. PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU. This thread is a "request to raise or remove the 50 friends max limit".

As for "performance impact" - there's no significant impact to having that 'list of numbers' (aka game IDs aka Facebook IDs) 'translated' into name, rank, legion, etc. When I click "Send" on an artifact and see the list on "Trade Pacts" tab - it's HUGE and there's no impact. Back when I had 330+ friends, the Send button was never slow either. And in the Legion tab, this new "Friends And Blocks" button still has most of my FB friends as Suggestions, so it's definitely not about the impact of listing. Blah.

I... am... so... tired... of... backspacing... I can't even say just how much this new friend limit upsets me, because I can't do it calmly and politely. A part of me is still hoping it's an accidental oversight and Dan will fix it.