Hello, Archon. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I ask you not to use Caps Lock in your further messages. 

well, in reading the original post i would think one would gather that one improvement would be to make it so the bar doesn't flash and revert back to the very beginning of your list when you're half way through your hero tour; forcing you to have to scroll back through to where you were (if you remember where that was and if you can get back there before the very same flash and revert happens to you again).  that would probably take care of 90% of the angst that i find myself and other friends having.  

beyond that, another improvement would be to give us customization of the placement of friends within the bar.  so that if i spy on a friends city, they don't become an enemy in red and then get tossed to the top of my list where i do not want them because they are a friend but not in my coal.  but that would be icing on the cake and not too important. 

another would be to have inactive people who haven't logged in for x amount of time to show up with, say, a red border around their avatar or something.  that would be highly preferable. 

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no capital letters were harmed in the making of this post.  we did slightly abuse one irreverent and rude semi-colon but will be glad to follow suit of institutions of higher learning and provide a "safe space" for whining, fragile millennials and others who cannot cope in society unless their fragile feelings are catered to in every possible facet.  on with global, societal political correctness!!!  

Caps Lock....

Anyway, agreed if you are 20 pages deep, you have to go back 20 pages again after you have selected a candidate for hero status which is almost as annoying as mixing 100 elixirs, 2 at a time with a popup that lets you know you just mixed two elixirs that you have to manually close every single time. 

Funny he's worried about caps lock and fails to read the actual message.  Then asks for ideas which are clearly explained in the message.  Here is an idea get off your rear end and actually read the posts instead of worrying about the dreaded caps lock.

I totally agree with the "troller".  I thought my original post of the problem adequately implied the solution as well.  

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the complaint is about the friends bar randomly zipping back to the top while you're at the middle or end of it, that one solution would be to STOP the friends bar from doing that.  

Perhaps I'm wrong.  Can Plarium hire a rocket scientist or two to manage the forum?  

P.S. - I didn't use the caps lock in this post for the word stop.  I held down the shift key.  Sorry for the easily maligned.  Here's your spoon full of 'get over it'.  

You're right.  My angst is showing.  

But, its understandable when the answer to the question the admin is asking is in the first post, even if indirectly.  And it has been a little while since any official peep has been heard about why the friends bar must do what it do.  

I don't know of a single player who wants it to do that (revert to the top of the list while you are in the middle of it).  

Biggest - and I would think, the EASIEST fix - the game needs as I see it.  

So I will chill....

Just someone in "managemen":  please tell us why it does this and why it is necessary!

trust me when I say all the mods here are players of the game and we share your pain with the friends bar! 

I have over 300 friends who play sparta and not only is it frustrating when it zips back to the start when you are merrily doing the rounds of coalition members but also is a pain in the proverbial trying to find someone to send them res or reinf and I often have to resort to asking for their coords 

this has been fed back to the Dev's and if we could all make suggestions as to how the friends bar could be better managed in a way that would be most convenient to us as players that would be really useful to them 

I'll kick off with the following 

a way to either sort friends bar alphabetically or a way to search your friends bar 

stopping the friends bar going back to the beginning when the game refreshes (suggested by Rbradburke)

ps I am not a rocket scientist but I do have a masters degree, does that make me qualified enough for you? ;) 

morteeee said:

trust me when I say all the mods here are players of the game and we share your pain with the friends bar! 

I take this as a bad thing as it means it's likely not the first time they've gotten the complaint and just can't or are not going to do anything about it.  

I find this very sad.  I see no real advantage to leaving it as is.  

actually I think it is one of those things that a lot have been thinking but as most games of this genre have a friends bar at the bottom that is like this it has just been put up with until someone spoke up! 

I know it has frustrated me in the past and I haven't said anything about it until now

please, make suggestions and I will get it mentioned with the Dev's and get an answer for you as to if it can be changed and how it can be changed, I cant give you time scales on how fast I will get an answer but I will get one 

Agree... realy annoying.... same with the tab Statistics.

Well, it seems that the bar goes back to the beginning every time a action is completed ( spyreport, troops are home again, galleys comes home/arrives, raid landed etc icons left bottom corner are the cause)

Beside of the why, it is indeed a anoying mechanic what needs to be adressed.

Being a programmer and trying to figure out why it's like that, I wanted to draw your attention to the fact the bar also reflects some information about the player status.

For instance, I have lots of old friends having left the game who are still in my list. They're now obviously used as farms. As such, some of them are displaying the red "ennemy" background on the top ight corner icon displaying their city level.

They're also displaying the level itself and their coalition logo : all 3 information (including the color) can be subject to changes, and the color one is probably the one that would change the faster, depending on what you last did to the city.

Plus new friends can be added on the go (someone having just accepted your friendship request, for instance).

All this means the bar has to be refreshed to show these changes (for instance if you send reinforcements, liberate, etc., which can be done from the city you're visiting).

Rather than doing so in real time (though maybe it does at given intervals), they apparently chosed to do so only when refreshing the bar, wich apparently occurs only when you display your city or any other you're visiting.

I agree they obviously chosed the lazy way, i.e. refresh the bar by displaying it back from the start, but it's most probably the reason for this behavior.

I mean they didn't do it that way just to bother you, but because they it was simpler like that and they didn't get back to enhancing it since then...

To change this, they would have to store the leftmost city displayed on the bar before refreshing, so they would display it from this point after it's been updated.

However, don't forget the bar allows continuous scrolling, meaning you can see only half of a city portrait if you scroll the bar that way... So which one would they pick ? The next one to its right ? The one that's cut in half ? I think they thought something like "oh, nevermind, we'll address this later" and forgot about it. ^^

OK, so now griefs have grown public about this, maybe they'll have to work on it.

Anyway, I can certify you have been heard. I can't promise when they'll do something about it in a near future, but now you've got more chances they'll do. :)

Many thanks for your post, ThatBloke.  I did realize the player info changes and the refreshing, however the only time any changes are made to my friends bar is a refresh of the entire browser window.  It will not update in-game, even though it seems the friends bar is "refreshing" upon the flashing.  I have to cycle the browser to see any new friends added or other changes.  

As to your post, Opacus, I too thought that the friends bar cycled due to a completed action as a way of notification to the player.  I don't think that anymore - at least it isn't the only thing.  There have been times where it has cycled multiple times in seconds with no action being completed at all.  I've looked and looked for any notifications and more times than not, nothing has actually occurred.  If the bar does cycle upon a task completion, I would recommend making that a setting that can be turned off, much like other selections.  I don't need it to be notified.  

Hopefully, they'll do something about it sooner rather than later.  As it takes me about 45 mins. to do all I have to do going through the friends bar and hero tour, collection of tribute, etc., there are some times I just quit playing and come back later either due to frustration or not having enough time to fight with it.