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Friends count in social bar gets out of sync with count in friends window


Jerba

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There are two positions where the number of online players from your friends list are shown:

1) At the top-left corner in the social bar, e.g. "Republic Fleet: 175, Friends: 7, Guild: 6"

2) In the top-right corner of the friends window, e.g. "6 Friends online"

 

For a few months now, I have seen a bug where the friends count in 1) is different from the count in 2). In all cases, 1) is larger than 2). For example, after midnight, 1) would show six friends online, while the friends window 2) in fact only shows one friend online.

 

I believe that this bug happens because in some part of the player logout procedure, the event is not propagated to the social bar. In other words, a player will log out but the social bar receives no notification of this.

Maybe this happens when a player uses Alt+F4 to quit the game instead of going to the options window and selecting logout or quit game, but this is just a theory.

 

I hope I could provide enough information about this bug. If other players have seen this bug as well and no more about it, please share. :)

Edited by Jerba
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I asked another player to test this. Both logging out via the options menu, and pressing Alt+F4 will update the count in 1) and 2), so my theory that Alt+F4 causes this bug to happen is wrong.

The other issue I can think of would be the 20 minutes AFK timer where you automatically get kicked from the server, or a disconnect. I'll see if I can test those another time.

 

In all cases, you can fix the friends count in 1) by either pressing Ctrl+U, or relogging, but it would be better if you can fix this bug so that the count always stays correct.

 

Edit: I found an older post describing the same problem: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6412385. Interestingly enough, there 1) was 2 and 2) was 3; the other way around than what I was experiencing.

I asked two guildies about this and they could confirm this bug; they have seen it multiple times but did not bother reporting it.

Edited by Jerba
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  • 2 months later...

I just got this bug again today so I have some additional information. Once again, a player on my friend list logged out but the friends count in the social bar did not change. In other words, the social bar said "Friends: 1" but in the friends window it said "0 Friends online".

 

New information:

- Whenever this bug happens, you also do not get a chat notification. Usually, the chat would say something like "... is now offline" but whenever this bug happens, the chat just says nothing at all.

- Usually, in addition to the chat notification, you also get a notification in the "Social Notifications" part of the UI close to the chat, and the game will play a short ping sound. If the bug occurs, this notification and the sound also do not get played.

 

Because of these symptoms, I am assuming that there is a bug with the online/offline notifications. Sometimes, it seems like the notification that a friend logs in or logs out does not get reported to the client, which is why the friends count stays the same.

 

Based on experiments with other player, this has nothing to do with whether someone closes the game normally or with Alt+F4. In this case, the player who caused the bug to happen closed the game normally with Options - Exit Game.

Therefore, there must be some other factor in play to decide whether this bug occurs or not.

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So far, there are two separate bugs where the social bar does not match up with the friends window:

1) The number in the social bar is higher than the number in the friends window; e.g. "Friends: 11" and "8 friends online"

2) The number in the social bar is lower than the number in the friends window, e.g. "Friends: 1" and "2 friends online"

 

As explained in the previous post, 1) always occurs when a "Player logging out" message does not get sent to the client.

Fortunately, I now found out when 2) is happening. Also, I found steps which should hopefully allow you to reproduce this bug. :)

 

Issue description:

When a player is added to the Friends List, the number of online friends in the social bar is not increased.

 

Steps to reproduce:

1) Take a look at the social bar in the top left corner, e.g. "Republic Fleet: 175, Friends: 7, Guild: 6" and remember how many friends are shown to be online.

2) Add a new player to the Friends List who is currently logged in.

Expected behavior: The social bar should now show "Friends: 8", since one addtional player is now a friend.

Actual behavior: The count in the social bar stays the same, it still shows "Friends: 7"

 

I am like 75% sure that this was not bugged when the game launched; back then, you always got a "... is now online" message when adding someone to the friends list, but I may be wrong.

If you can fix this bug, this will alleviate half of the issue. I will keep an closer eye on the other half and hopefully be able to pinpoint it someday.

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Hitting control-u twice seems to always fix it. However I've had to do that more and more lately, including once recently where I leveled (animation plus could add to tree) yet couldn't train skills until reloading the UI, and the label next to my portrait didn't update until after as well. Also, I've sold items and not had my total credits update until reloading the UI.

 

I usually don't bother reloading the UI just for the friends list, though it is kind of annoying. The other things actually disrupt playing though.

Edited by chibiseira
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  • 3 months later...
Mine will say, for example, 1 friend online, but nothing in the Friends pane to tell me which one. If I don't see the message that one has logged in, I have no idea who it is. Or, the Friends pane will show someone is online, but there's nothing in the top bar that says "1 Friend". A few days ago the pane showed two friends logged in, but one was an alt of the other, and not logged in at the same time, obviously. It's really broken.
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  • 1 month later...
Mine will say, for example, 1 friend online, but nothing in the Friends pane to tell me which one. If I don't see the message that one has logged in, I have no idea who it is. Or, the Friends pane will show someone is online, but there's nothing in the top bar that says "1 Friend". A few days ago the pane showed two friends logged in, but one was an alt of the other, and not logged in at the same time, obviously. It's really broken.

 

So much, all of this

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  • 4 months later...
  • 2 months later...
necroing this old thread because apparently it's still an issue as of 3/15/2015. currently, i have 5 friends online, and yet none of them are shown as being online in the friends window, so i can't discern them from those who are offline. the only way i know they are online is because they are talking in chat or actively playing with me. also, sometimes friends will have logged off, and yet it'll show them as being online.
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  • 1 month later...
The counts are basically random and have always been wrong since pre-release beta. I don't know why they don't at least disable the count since it's obvious they will never look into fixing it. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to figure out how long a list is ... it's like CS 101.
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  • 5 months later...

/signed

 

this used to be on the "known issues" list and it was actually purposefully taken off. But, the issue wasn't resolved?

 

I mean. I literally can't tell if my friends are online. Sometimes even the friend list doesn't work at all and it will say 0 friends online when I'm in voice chat with a friend or see them on the fleet. It's really bad. Seems like you absolutely have to be in the same guild as someone in order to stay connected.

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