New Fight System Review

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Now that I have the new fight system on my account, I can go over some of the good, bad and ugly (and unnecessary). Please keep in mind that it's currently in beta testing and things can be changed. It's up to us as the players to provide feedback to ensure Zynga can get it right. The fightlist looks the same and nothing has changed there.

You will see the changes once you attack somebody. The simple fight module that used to look like the image below, got a whole lot busier.

There are many cool features that I will go more into detail about . The screen will look more like a Boss Fight and you and your opponent will have health meters and the damage given and taken flashes underneath them for each attack. Your top 4 offensive equipment items and your opponents defense items are shown to the left and right of the attack/heal buttons. If other players are attacking the same opponent as you are, you will see the damage they are doing in addition to your own. There is now an option to control if you want your attack boosts to be used. The loot drops are displayed similarly to what we see in Brazil. They appear at the bottom of the module and slide over to the left when the next attack is made. Victory Coins and Capo bonuses drop and slide in the same manner. If you choose to leave a fight, you have to click the Run Away link or X out the fight to get back to the fightlist.
(click image to enlarge)

After attacking and arriving to the Fight Module, one of two things will happen. You will either find your target is still alive and you can continue attacking or your target is already iced. I wish they could warn you before you waste stamina. Often targets appear to be living on the fightlist but they were iced before you attacked. We knew with the old Fight Module that a player was iced if there wasn't an Attack Again and/or Power Attack button. Most new player don't really know that but there is no question about it with the new Fight Module. It says in big letters "Too Late! Player Got Iced".

The great things about the Fight Module is there is no screen jumping. There are no page loads between attacks so the screen stays put. The thing I like best is the ability to heal without scrolling to the top of the page. Simply click "Heal" right from the Fight Module and the Hospital will appear without the need to scroll up and then back down to continue fighting. You can do this at any time your health timer permits. It's great for players who are under continual attacks. It would have taken me much longer to get these screen shots without it.

There is a new ice popup and the addition of a kill popup. They have a cool frosty border that takes up most of the page. Each popup will list your total number of ices and fights won. The kill popup clearly states that kills count as 2 ices. This was actually changed with the Put 'Em On Ice Event and has been that way ever since.

The kill popup clearly states that kills count as 2 ices. This was actually changed with the Put 'Em On Ice Event and has been that way ever since.

You will notice that the post generated states ices instead of kills.

It looks like they are properly adding up on the requests. During the event they weren't.

The big to do about these new popups that has anybody who participates in family/clan wars all fired up is the timer they added as to when you can post your next ice. During a time of war or in icing contests, it's not uncommon for players to post their ices within seconds of each other. The initial timer was set at 8 hours and after the uproar it was reduced to 5 minutes. This is still too long and the PAC spent a lot of time explaining to Zynga why. You can't blame them too much because wars are a community drive concept and not part of the actual game. Hopefully we did a good job and they will remove the timer all together.

When attacking, we all go for the ice or the kill. Some players get annoyed when their ice is stolen. We can now take revenge out on those who do it to us. I'm not sure this is a necessary addition. How can you get mad at someone for playing the game just like you are? If a player is on the fightlist, others will be attacking them and they aren't doing so out of spite towards you. The one benefit to this is that the player is most likely alive and if you can beat them, you will get an ice. The popup has blood splatter all around it and is kind of creepy.

When you click on Attack from the popup, you will get the person who stole your ice and you can teach them a lesson. This just seems funny to me. Why can't players who are assholes get flagged so we can get a popup for them?

The ability to control when boosts are used to make them more valuable is something I recently wrote about (1). Now we have just that.

Your boost settings are located under the attack and heal buttons. There are two options, on and off.

Once you turn your boosts on or off they will remain on that setting until you change them. You can see below my boost option was turned on. I turned it off and then found another opponent and it remained off. I was a little worried we would have to do it for each fight and was happy to learn we didn't.

I always test new features out as sometime they don't always work. I started out with 100 Hollow Points and 100 A19 Riot Shields.

To test the defense boost, I waited about 20 minutes once they showed up in my account. I checked my player updates and saw that I was attacked plenty of times.

I went back to my boost page and none of my defense boosts were used.

When you have attack boosts, the best ones will be used first. You can see I have a few attack boosts of lesser value than the Hollow Points in my boost inventory but only the Hollow Points are selected on the Fight Module.

Your best attack boost will show up in the boost box and there will be a counter to tell you how many you have. When boosts are turned on, the one that was utilized during the attack will appear to the right of your profile image.

Boost On

Boost Off

What's kind of annoying is that a boost will be used on those occasions where your target shows up as alive on the fightlist but is already iced before you attack.

One problem I encountered was that I ended up repeating attacks when I lost. The Fight Module is very busy and it's new. With the old fight module, we are trained to know we lost when we see red and won when we see green. When you lose a fight not many will continue to attack. It says you lost above your name as well as in the lower right corner. For some reason I didn't notice right away and kept attacking. I'm sure I just need to get used to it. What is interesting is that we now get experience when we lose as well as Victory Coins. You can also see Capo bonuses saved me half the cash and damage.

You will see lots of Capo bonuses dropping in the new Fight Module.  They also showed up at the bottom of the old Fight Module along with the loot items that dropped.

One that is missing from the Fight Module is an easy way to view all of your opponents defensive equipment items. The old Fight Module had the option to click on a "Show Items" link and only equipment items used in the fight were easily displayed. In a post I made yesterday, I showed you the defense items of a suspicious account. This was easy to do and many families/clans use this for defense checks.

The only way to view your opponents equipment with the new Fight Module is to click on the link of the person you attacked.

Scroll down to the bottom of their Profile Page and view their items.

You won't get the numbers of each item and you will see every piece of loot they own.

You can also look at their loot graphs to compare your strength to theirs. You won't know what items they are using unless they don't have their Inventory Page set to private. If they don't, there will be a "See Items" link to the right of the bar graphs.

Now you have to scroll through pages to see what active items they own. This is a lot of work and most will have their inventory private. Hopefully we can request they put the other option back.

I prefer to play Mafia Wars unframed even if I'm not using a script. I found when doing this that whenever I clicked on attack, I would get a massive popup. The work around to this is obviously attack when unframed or go to mafiawars.com and unframe from there.

In review there are many good things about the new fight system. I like that there is less scrolling, no screen jumping, health meters, boost control and experience and Victory Coins for fights lost. The three major problems are the 5 minute timers between ice posting, the lack of an easy way to see your opponents equipment items and the lack of a more effective way to leave a fight. If they player is already iced, we should just be directed back to the fightlist without having to click something. The coders are hard at work and I'm sure we will have some type of fighting script soon. For now if you can't stand to fight manually, go rob.

Thanks to Joel, Lynne and Kari for going over some of the fighitng basics in the PAC room. We hope to see some positive changes happen soon.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law