Feedback talk:User/Tennessee Ernie Ford/Hero formation presets

Other alternatives

Loose / close formation, alternative would be a "custom formation" toggle button. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ander01 (talk • contribs) at 19:45, 29 April 2011 (UTC).

Yeah, that's what I was going for. Thanks for the idea.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:13, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

If I'm correct, isn't the current format also placement based on professions? Either way, imo, custom would be too much work so not feasible, and I'd say only 4 formations should be done (all of which affected by profession, weapons, and health - in said order of importance), so that it's just a duplicate of the current all-1-2-3 flags. What I'd like to see is basically a drop-down menu added and when pressing said dropdown menu a second row appears underneath the all-1-2-3 flags. The formations I'd chose would be:

• close box (current - PC in middle, casters in the rear, ranged attackers on side, melee up front)
• loose box (same as above but further out)
• line (horizontal - PC in middle, monks in between PC and ends (1/4 into the center), other casters between monks and PC, and attackers on ends (they're most likely to aggro outside PC, and have highest armor))
• wing (player in center - melee attackers next to PC, then ranged attackers and non-staff/wand casters, then monks, then other casters - monks being closer so they have reach to melee and wouldn't be first targetted if the sides aggro)

The "follow the leader" idea is, imo, unnecessary - too aggro worthy when still and that's how it turns out when moving anyways. It holds no value as well. -- Konig/talk 01:16, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The current format? It seems to me all the heroes cluster around the player before combat begins (which is terrible, tactically). After combat starts, melee profs obviously move closer to use their skills; that's not formation, that's simply a brownian-like motion due to the AI following its general strategy.

I am sure you are right that true customization is probably more work than Stumme et al should devote to any feature at the moment. I like your other ideas (although, obviously, we differ about follow the leader; I think there are plenty of PvE uses for it). In any case, the main point is to give the dev team the concept; I trust them to come up with a decent number of presets that are useful 80% of the time for 80% of the players.

With your permission, I'll also add/modify to include close/loose box, line, and wing.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

"After combat starts, melee profs obviously move closer to use their skills" And that's going to continue no matter what, even if you add these formations. The only difference is that being able to switch between them will literally interrupt the h/h's actions to fulfill that new formation and then go into basic attacking AI again. Even NPCs which have formation scripts into them (EN charr for example) do this - they'll go into their formation and then break apart.

The only way to change this fact is to redo AI coding from the ground up (or at least rework a lot of it) rather than build upon it like your suggestion. Your situation of "add formation flags" will not fix this and to fix it requires far too much work with too little monetary profit for Anet to bother. -- Konig/talk 02:43, 30 April 2011 (UTC)