Family Battle Issues

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We all know the Family Battle feature is there. You can't miss it on the Home Page as it's been there since September 16th!

This feature is not very utilized because there is no real incentive to participate. Sometimes Zynga will bribe us with high end loot rewards and that's when most non-warring families participate. I have a feeling their reason for this is to compare data with and without rewards. Eventually Zynga will see that rewards drives players to certain features and make this a permanent rather than a limited time thing.

Choosing who you go to battle with is an important aspect of the Family Battle feature. Zynga doesn't make it easy on family admins because the battle requests don't offer an easy way to size up the family that wants to battle with yours. Thankfully Team Spockholm took care of that by adding family profile links and descriptions of battle types but not all families use scripts.

Zynga Battle Request
-No Family Info or Battle Type

Spockholm Toolbar Battle Request
-Profile and Family Rank Links + Battle Type

Normally you would want to battle with a family that has stats similar to your own. If you battle a much weaker family it's not fun when they are all dead and the Safe House is done. All you can do is wait for the timer to run out. If you are the much weaker family, it's not fun either because you'll get your ass kicked as soon as you heal. A few days ago, the {ASS} Family got a Battle Request from [RYfG] which is one of the strongest families in the game. We didn't need to look up any information to know how this battle would end. When you see something like this in your ZMC, you kind of hope it will go away on it's own. Flat out rejecting Battle Requests seems lame as it lets the other family know you are scared. 

The {ASS} Family decided to give this one a go. I thought it would be cool to post an ice on someone from [RYfG]. That never happened but some very interesting things did. I decided to fight this battle manually because it's much faster than using scripts. I saw first hand some serious problems. With most attacks I made, I got some type of processing error.

Even worse, I got many warnings throughout the battle. In battles, you need to be fast. To get an ice, you need to click as fast as you can or one of your family members will steal it or your opponent will heal. This is what makes fighting fun. Fast clicking in hopes that you can outrun one of the two above mentioned events from happening is a rush. Getting warning messages takes away from the thrill. Not only does it scare you a little but you need to close out the game and reenter to make them go away.

On a few occasions, one warning wasn't enough and Zynga gave me two. If they are going to create a feature that requires fast clicking then they need to stop calling it "irregular behavior" and fix it. Not only does it get in the way of the task at hand, it discourages players from continuing.

The ultimate failure also resulted from this battle. Chakk from the {ASS} Family found his account was temporarily suspended from fighting and gifting. This happened as soon as the battle was over. The suspension disappeared within 24 hours but really? It seems there is more risk involved with doing manual battles than there are using scripts. I honestly don't make this stuff up for dramatic effect. It really happened and Chakk was more than a little concerned about his account.

The outcome of our battle wasn't pretty but most of us had a good time. I really wanted to get a red ice and post it on the RYfG War Page but I couldn't make that happen. The players from RYfG are too strong and have too much health. 

The result pages from both families didn't really provide much insight into how the battle scoring works. I really wish Zynga would post something to let us know how it works. In this battle, the Safe House was not touched on either side as there was always somebody alive. Our collective scores added up to 400 but our battle score was 100. I was never able to ice any players but still had a personal score of 100.

The [RYfG] score card looked much better but nothing useful can be gathered from the data. 

When battle rewards are available, you get them even if you lose a battle. Since I was the third top scorer, I got a superior item. It's a shame that Zynga takes offers and takes rewards away at will. I don't see why giving players who participate in battles one piece of loot is something that should be special. We get 4 items for the Family Boss Fight. The Family Battle feature is fun but most aren't interested because there is no payoff.

Thanks to the [RYfG] Family for requesting this battle. Without it, I may have never seen first hand all the battle problems that need to be fixed. Thanks to [RYfG] Scream MY Name for helping me organize this and for verifying that these battle issues are not just happening to me. Thanks to the {ASS} family for being great sports about this battle and to Chakk for sharing the details of his temporary account suspension.

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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