Formation Changes

New formations are active.

Major good news: you can share the same card in multiple formations.

Major good news: you can switch formation #2 to be main (attack); main then becomes defense or reserve.

Minor bad news: the attack values of cards in the formations look too high. Card #5 shows 11995 attack, but "change" and look at the same card in inventory shows 7464. Only Card #5 appears wrong.

Major bad news: You see the "attack formation", but you attack the "defense formation", at least if you arrive at the page thru comments etc. I don't know about attacking thru the battle page, that's too hard to test.

Who-cares bad news: Even in the battle log, you see the attack formation, not the formation you fought (obviously it's the same if you were defending: if you attacked though, clicking does not show the defense formation.)

Summary: Awesome! Love it! (Except for the horribly broken aspect of not being able to see what you attack, which I totally hate.)

Me: Hell yeah, I got my Scarlet Fairy hangin' out, lookin' all vulnerable & shit. Too bad there's a BP event on.

This is a nice change for using event progs. Now you can keep them in a leadership position throughout an event and not have to worry about being attacked. Now going after a weak team isn't a definite win.

Deathblob wrote:Minor bad news: the attack values of cards in the formations look too high. Card #5 shows 11995 attack, but "change" and look at the same card in inventory shows 7464. Only Card #5 appears wrong.

Maybe it's including combo bonuses when in formation?

More good news: you can have two reserve formations and a main formation (defense == main in that case).

larry378 wrote:Im going to build a combo-less form of sexy and funny monsters for my main form

Lets see...
The 5m download chick reg (AA hotter than AA+)

you just like where the arrow points.....

Love Your signature deathblob lol

okee! my 5 golem team will be on display as soon as I get home

so i guess the ranking screens will show the main too, huh?
That might look interesting before too long

so far all single monsters ive attacked has just been a single monster, and most of the time im still receiving decent to good honor points. cant say for certain, but in my limited experience it looks like what you see is what you fight.

Janus, there are just more dead bodies than you think. You need to poke them and make sure they jump before you go randomly attacking C forms.

I got one bite so far on my Fairy form. +29K, woo hoo!

I wish they'd edit it so that when you're in the event you can choose from a dropdown menu which formation you want to use, rather than having to switch out the formation. Granted, having the "Reserve" form set is a lot faster than searching inventory, but still.

Soooooo. One year anniversary changes:
Help players too lazy to change out their progs
Mix the 50k active formations in with the 4.9million inactive formations
Next week, remove battling from game because it takes resources away from soul points store.
Rename game: cards with numbers

So it's been a little bit, anyone have any thoughts on this formation change now that you've been a able to play with it?

Overall I'm kinda meh about it. Had a few people attack my 'main' and get killed by 'defense' but it is really no different than before.

Overall it looks like this was a change made just to stop honor point farming, since you can't tell who is actually 'quit' and laying a trap.

So how does this improve game play? Just wondering.

It's not going to stop honor point farming, it'll just make you do a little more work. Rather than just blindly attacking a form that looks like it quit, you'd have to look at the person's page to get more clues. And if it turns out you're wrong, just make a note and don't attack that person again.

I have to say I like this update.

It accomplishes several things which could otherwise be accomplished by neurotically switching formations manually.

Tired of people attacking your progs? this fixes it
Like to use a different offensive and defensive formation? this fixes it
Like to display all of your favorite monsters, but they don't make a good combo so you don't want to fight with them? this fixes it

etc... (also I've been getting a considerably greater number of defensive wins since this update, and a surprising amount of gold too! I'm not sure why people are going around attacking people when they are carrying a ton of gold, I never log out or attack anybody with over 10k gold in my inventory since I have things I need to max, and facilities to fund)

as far as honor farming goes... I can see how this might make it a little more difficult for someone trying to get onto the rankings, but for higher ranked players, who essentially attack the very same set of people day in and day out, the whole "lol most of the formations on page 1 overall are led by Cs" doesn't mean much if you already have a working knowledge or approximation of who precisely you had been farming on a daily basis. And really, it's not that hard to remember when you're higher ranked since you don't even need to recall a full day's worth of usernames, just a handful since you run out of >1hp battles pretty fast and need to spam random battle for the better half of the day anyways.

but even for folks trying to make it onto rank, I've heard of a pretty clever little trick where you can use a 1bp to 'probe' someone's formation if you think it looks fishy before attacking, and then use revenge with your real formation if you like what you saw with the 1bp

I have found one glitch.

I am not in constant contact with my all my allies. I can no longer tell if someone is active or not if they have a bait monster up. In addition, I have noticed a drop in combined attack power with battling raid bosses. It is no big deal with the first few bosses, but the higher ones are a pain if I have to waste a lot of energy fighting them.

I guess it is just one more hurdle. . .

-Xcalibre

That is a good point... if everyone on your ally list puts up a SoE as their main/bait form, and you attack a raid boss, I guess combined attack power will suck...

Doubtful this is a 'problem' according to ATeam, they would expect us to hit up every single ally and tell them to switch formations for us...

Yeah, this isn't a glitch at all. If you hit a raid boss, it makes sense that it'll use everyone's attack formation, not defense formation.

True. It makes sense that the game would use the Attack formation and not the defense. But it is still an issue. when you NEED the attack force of your allies.

Yes, it's an unintended consequence, but not anything A Team needs to address. This is an issues among allies. If people want to screw around with fake bait formations, there ought to be a downside anyway.