A Theory about Turning Acquaintances into Friends...

[Mew King]

So I have a theory about turning acquaintances into friends after empirically noticing it myself.

Essentially, you have to alternating either trading or battling with one another.  So, for instance, if a Passerby asks you to trade, you accept, trade a little, and exit.  Then YOU ask him to trade, if he accepts, you trade some more, and exit.  I noticed that that seems to prompt the adding a friend option.

I haven't done much battling, but it just happened with me.  I traded with some passerby who was collecting Vivillon forms (if you were wondering, she had mine).  I offered to trade some more with her.  Then after she challenged me to a battle (that I literally won with only one hit until death), the prompt to adding her as a friend appeared.

I'm wondering if you guys noticed that too.  This was killing me for a while about how to get it done until like recently.  It'll be hard to test this, given the nature of humans and their own motives, but it's a theory worth attempting to test.

[Webby]

There's an ingame notice on the PSS page that says that interacting with someone once makes them an Acquaintance, and interacting with them a second time gives you the option to make them a friend. It doesn't matter who initiates the second interaction, and it doesn't matter if it's a trade or a battle.

[Mew King]

Well, the thing is I tried initializing the trade with someone a few times and nothing happened until I accepted something from the other person.  That's what brings up this theory.

[Shaymin]

i traded with this german dude like 20 pokemon and afterwards it was like "you wanna be friends" and i was like nah

[Mew King]

I always end up accepting everyone.  Even this random Japanese person (I think it's a guy, but the console's Mii looks like a girl).

Some people I regret though like this one guy that keeps trying to trade with me every 5 minutes he's on.

[DragonOfTheDepths]

ill have to test this theory with my not-yet-registered-as-a-friend friend.