5 Things I Would Change About Mafia Wars, by Mr. Wizard

Mr. Wizard is a longtime Mafia Wars friend-turned friend and Mr. Fix-it. He dabbles in scripting and modding, most of which is now done behind closed doors, turning out toys for Mistyfied and other Families. You don't see him often, but his fingerprints are also all over this and my other various blogs :) These are his thoughts.

What would I change about Mafia Wars? This is a hard one. I started playing years ago, yes years ago. I've been part of Mistyfied Mafia Wars and Pimping since before it even had a Fan Page. I remember the early days when people like Misty Dady and Jinx did a weekly Pimping List. There were so many new players that it was always hard to find someone who would stay connected on Facebook and be able to help you play.

There was so much to learn back in those days, it seemed like so much going on when you were new. Only 1 city to play in, New York. Wishlists had 5 slots and you only used 3 types of equipment (Weapon, Armor, and Vehicles). Top Mafia Bonuses actually counted and were worth 15%/points in each spot. No one knew where the leveling cap was because even the E-hoes had not had time to max it out yet. It was a great game back in those days.

You got 5 skill points per level up, 1 per achievement, 1 per completion of job, that was it, no building properties to obtain more skill points, no way to obtain any others unless you spent 14 RP on 4 skill points. Needless to say back then you had to think long and hard on how to place your Skill points to make the account do what you needed to do. Now days you can do anything with your skill points and it does not matter because of speed building and reallocation.

I would not change much of the game itself. This view point is from someone who has seen this game from the start. I started playing Mob Wars first (it was the first one out), back then it was Farmville and Mob Wars, then a new game started called Mafia Wars by the makers of Farmville, the idea seemed nice and I liked how they set up Farmville so I gave it a try. Next thing I knew I was telling people about Mafia Wars and how much better it was then Mob Wars.

Needless to say, I loved it. Now I can't say that anymore. Now I am forced to admit the truth: I only play because I have already invested so much into the game I refuse to just walk away. I do what I can when I can to help out my family, but when it comes down to it I'm playing Mafia Wars because of all my friends within my family that still enjoy the game. I just focus on the few scripts I have out for my family to use, I write scripts as my family needs them and just keep them maintained.

I work a full time job (40+ hours a week) have a life and family in real life to look after I just don't have time to invest like I used to. Mafia Wars requires one thing above all else, TIME and that is the one thing I don't have to give anymore. And that leads to my 5 things to change. All 5 a focused around what I now do. SCRIPTS and TIME.

To Zynga:

1) Zynga should change their stand point (or at least make it clear) what they allow from scripts. Just saying NO clearly isn't working. I play World of Warcraft these days because it is less demanding then Mafia Wars. They have add-on support within the game. If a pay to play game can allow user modifications why can't a free-to-play game? It's simple; they can and the ability to do such is actually a lot easier then one would think. They just need the right wording in their documentation. Allow approved Scripts only. Host these scripts via the game client and allow all to see the scripts and enable/disable as they choose. By making the scripts approved you can do a quick run over the code and see if it will effect the game servers and thus remove any chances of it damaging the server or game. You also get to know what the scripts will and won't do. Just allow/disallow as needed. If Zynga needs a full writeup on how this can be implemented all they have to do is ask, Myself and many others would be more than willing to help them get Script Support.

2) As I stated in the first one. In game support for Add-ons/Scripts. Allow us to actually host the scripts within the game itself for user access. I would actually like to see where Families were able to host their own scripts for their family only, kinda like family secrets you would have in real life. I could write a script that was actually designed for my family and have it available for them only via the Family section of the game. That would be nice, and it would save me the domain/server fees for hosting the script myself. There are a lot of options opened based these ideas and the maintenance would be on the script writer themselves so no extra work for Zynga at all. Just get the system set up and let it go.

3) Clean the code. By this I mean have someone go over the code that the game uses and clean it before you plug it into the game. As a scripter I have viewed the code and style sheets to see how things work so I can make the scripts work and it is a mess. You have styles laid out in more then one style sheet plus on the code itself. You have conflicting code all over the place most of the problems within Mafia Wars seem to be from the fact that the game can not figure out what to use to do what needs to be done because two people have wrote the same piece of code and placed it within the game without it being double-checked to make sure that it is there only once. This is actually a common problem for places that run with more then one person but most other companies have someone to "babysit" the code to make sure it never makes it into the live version that way. Streamlining the code and simplifying it will actually make the game run smoother and more effective and give less strain on the servers. This by itself will go a long way to reduce the bugs within the game.

4) Events. Less Events more Fixes. "If it's not broken don't fix it" works great when things are not broken, but in this case it is broken and you're not fixing it. Instead of releasing new events and everything every 2 days let them all die down and fix the broken code, get the game stable again and then release the new stuff and make sure it is stable before going live, if it goes live and breaks, then fix it and offer something to the players as a way to say sorry for it not working. If you do a timed event and has a slow roll out (understandable in some ways) then have a slow roll in when it stops, if one person has 2 weeks to do the event and everyone else has 3 days because they were at the end of the list how is that fair? Instead when you pull it from the masses pull it the same way you released it. It's not that hard to figure out.

5) Less involvement. Less is more actually and works great for this game. The game's basic design has plenty of content to keep people busy, we don't need a new special event all the time to keep us playing, we're already hooked. You're actually running us off by making us play 24/7 to keep up. Make the game more casual so that someone like myself can put in about an hour a day and keep up. I would keep coming back for that. Don't make everything require 500 gifts from your mafia done on a time line and require all your energy and stamina to be burnt just to get the daily function completed. If E-hoes complain about not having jobs to do well, tough, it's what they get for putting all points into Energy. If fighters complain about not being able to complete job requirements well, tough, it's what they get for going all Stamina. You should have it mixxed up a bit, E-hoes find the job side too easy because they are set up that way, Fighters find the fighting side to easy because it is how they are set up. You need the stuff to be able to be completed by the balanced accounts, and the others will just have to deal with it. Make sure it is not focused for the super powers of one side only.

Those are my top 5 changes, there are about 100 things I would change if I could, but I was asked for 5 that were important to me personally. This is Mr. Wizard signing out! Happy Hunting/Jobbing and above all else, remember, it's just a game, get out there and have fun.