I dream of mini energy packs

Well, it was pretty to look at, while it lasted :) 

some thoughts on Secret Stashes

by Feature Contributor Nick Greig

Despite the fact that yes, these things are still amazingly glitched (thanks Zynga), I would suggest that it is always worth trying to open them, as the loot could potentially be well worth it. Stuff like Golden Poison Frogs, Toxic Gas Scrubbers and Tainted Blades, for just 2 clicks? Yes please!

 Here are my thoughts on things worth bearing in mind when both posting and opening them though ;)

You can only claim 10 per day, so don't post more than 10 to the same person in 24 hours. I woke up to 9 from the same person on the day I wrote this note. It's all good, but it means only 1 other person can get stash loot from me on that day. Personally, I try and spread the Mafia love and limit myself to one stash post per person per day.

When you click on the "Tell your friends about it", that reply goes into the feed, not to the original posters wall. Odds are they'll never see it, unless they happen across it on YOUR wall. Strangely, just replying to the post doesn't always give you a notification either. What you should do, to cut down on the number of feed posts (like we don't have enough with the spam events!) is:

• Hold down the CTRL key when clicking on "Open Secret Reward", so it opens in a new tab (you can use this for any other link as well)
• Collect (or not, if Zynga decided to glitch it) and copy the text by highlighting it and using Ctrl+C.
• Go back to the stash post in the first tab, and "Like" it. This will trigger a notification.
• Paste the text into a reply, so the other person knows what you both got.
• Ideally, the other person will "like" the reply, and the post can be removed. Less clutter ftw!

One less post in the feed and they know you opened it ;) Feel free to share with your Mafia, this note can be viewed by everyone.

Arachnophobia ends

I just realized, the Arachnophobia "event" has ended, and they're giving players a few days to cash in on the spiders that they collected.

This leaves me wondering what will be thrown at us next, and your guess is as good as mine.

Yesterday, images of new inventory items surfaced and one of the items refers to an event called "Death and Taxes". Well, here in America at least, the deadline for people to file their annual taxes was this past Monday, but since our taxes are now well behind us, it's hard to say what Zynga has in mind for these items. I guess we shall wait and see...chances are, we won't have to wait long.

Refilled Energy Packs?

It seems some are now seeing that their energy packs have been refilled, myself included. I had previously only accepted 2 energy packs via existing Facebook requests, just to see if I could. Now I have 5.

It seems some others are noticing this as well.

More feature rollouts

If you haven't yet completed Vegas, be sure you take advantage of the 3x mastery event this weekend and coming week. The 3x mastery event will end before next weekend.

Yesterday, we saw that many more players were finally receiving the Crack The Safe feature. Today, when the fight loot event was kicked off, it looks like another large batch of players were given the the feature that they've had to wait weeks for.

 Additionally, I'm seeing that a few more players have gotten the golden promotions.

If you are one of the players still waiting, the good news is Zynga seems to be speeding up the "slow rollout" so hopefully you won't have to wait much longer.

Another energy pack snafu?

I'm not sure what's going on yet, but suddenly several people are reporting that their energy packs have been reset to zero. I checked, and this is the case with me as well. Earlier today I had 4. Thanks to Rob Fowler for the heads up on this!

Double Fight Loot Event kicks off

It seems like this is going to be a good weekend to play Mafia Wars. As seen first at Mistyfied from Feature Contributor Le Trainspotter, the double fight loot event kicked off a couple of hours ago. While there are probably plenty of players out there who are already maxed out on fight loot, this event should be of benefit to many of us, myself included.

The double loot event is based on existing fight loot drops. Many players are seeing much higher than 2x the rewards, while for others it seems to be sporadic. I'm guessing we'll all see a few fluctuations over the course of the weekend.

I've gotten some silly stuff like this. 10 Bio-Monitors, just what I needed! Yippee!! /sarcasm :0) But it's not all bad - someone on the Mistyfied Mafia Wars fan page reported receiving 10 Brazilian Timbers. I'll take that!

I've noticed previously that fight loot (and even secret stashes, for that matter) seem to be scaled according to level. My poor baby fighter is getting things like this.

She's not suffering too badly, though :)

I'm particularly glad for any extra Brazil building parts I can get!!

SMS achievements

If you, like me, live outside the USA, I strongly advise you to ask Zynga Customer Service to grant you all 3 SMS achievements, since you are most probably unable to sign up for it.
I finally wrote Zynga an email with a little screenshot today & was nicely surprised to see the 3 SMS achievements and 3 skill points have been added to my MW account after only 47 minutes after sending my email!
I guess, simple issues like those are being usually corrected by the CS team, and can be fixed straight away - for the trickier stuff they pay you off with some RP while it's being passed on to the development team and the Mafia Gods help us when those might get fixed...

a Zynga "Customer Support" story

 A few days ago, I ran across this note by a friend in my news feed. It's a story of her recent experience with Zynga customer support, and if you've ever had to contact customer support for any reason, I rather suspect you'll find the story very familiar. Sue recounts that she contacted customer support about bosses regenerating health during boss fights, and was initially happy when she got this response:

Hello Sue,

Thanks for contacting Zynga Customer Support!

My name is Milton, I am glad to assist you, I apologize for the previous delay and I am really sorry for the inconvenience, since that you have experienced issues with the Boss Fight. I am a daily player and I understand how frustraiting this can be when you can not complete the Boss Fight, sometimes there are tecnical issues that may affect the game.

Because you are a important customer, I already checked your Mafia Wars Profile and I noticed that you have completed the Boss Fight Capitão Tinto. I am happy to inform you that I have awarded with 10 of each Consumable Boss Fight Items and 15 Reward Points as a one time courtesy, in order to give you a chance to Refill your Stamina, I would appreciate if you could check your account to confirm that it was updated sucessfullly, as previously you had 0 Reward Points and your new total should be 15 Reward Points.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. If you have further issues don´t hesitate and contact me back.

Have a Nice Day Sue!!

Kind Regards,
Milton R.
Zynga Customer Support

Now doesn't that sound familiar?

Sue was really excited about this at first - after all, being compensated with a few reward points is a nice thing for them to do, but she quickly realized that her problem had not really been addressed at all. In effect, she was paid for her silence. She quickly wrote back to Milton.

Hi Milton. Yesterday when I received your e-mail I was happy to have a response in such a small time frame and even more happier when you gave me the Rps and Fight consumables. But then this morning I did another Boss fight and the exact sa...me thing happened. At that moment I realized nothing was fixed, I was paid off by Zynga to just "let it go" Although I appreciate your generosity I would like to know what if anything is being done about this. There are others in my mafia who are going through the same and we are all getting very frustrated. It is not fair to me but also to my mafia members who have helped in the fights and used their own stamina and/or consumables to help me out but then to have the whole thing re-set and back at square one.

 

Milton did respond nicely enough, but still nothing at all was really resolved.

Hello Sue,
Thanks for contacting Zynga Customer Support.
My name is Milton and I'll be more than happy to assist you in this matter. I truly apologize for all the time without receiving a response to your incident on not being able to complete the Boss Fight.
I was checking your Boss Fight issue and found that there are other accounts affected with this inconvenience. According to the development team, the resolution is in progress, I would like to ask you to please bear with us while we resolve this.
Because you are a valuable Player, I am happy to inform you that I checked your Mafia Wars Profile and I have completed for you Let the Pros Handle It: Task: 3 - Win 1 War. I would appreciate if you could check your account to confirm that it was updated sucessfullly.
At Mafia Wars support, we admire your exceptional gaming skills and we believe that real Mafia Wars is about people like you. Just like the Godfather, I got your back!
Your understanding is greatly appreciated for us to keep working to make Mafia Wars as enjoyable as we can. I'll look forward to hearing from you again!
Kind regards,
Milton R.
Zynga Customer Support

We aren't getting customer support, we're getting placated (if we're lucky) and nothing's getting fixed, so it's more like a customer crap-shoot. Tell me I'm wrong. 

Do you have a similar story? Post it on the Mistyfied Mafia Wars fan page wall or email me at mistyfiedmafiawars@gmail.com

Cheater Crackdown?

The Mafia Wars blog has posted yet another update (hey, they're getting better about that!) and I found this one rather interesting:

Scoundrels be warned: We’re cleaning up the streets! Our dynamite enforcement team has turned monitoring daily game activity into a science, and we’re taking action armed with the bulletproof evidence they have been uncovering since mid-March.

We have since banned over 6,400 accounts for abusive botting and handed out over 1,000 penalties for lesser offenses.

While we can’t reveal the details of our banning process, know that we are cracking down, so cheaters beware! For the rest of yous, play by the rules and we’ll get along just fine, see?

 This post makes me really curious as to what's really being targeted, because I'm fairly certain it's not your average bookmarklet user. There's a really good chance that if you haven't heard from anyone from Zynga about bots and third party tools, then your current use of them is most likely within an acceptable range. Notice they didn't say "using bots", but "abusive botting".  I for one am not worried about it.

spinning bullets status

According to this post on the Zynga support site, a fix should be coming soon to a Mafia Wars account near you:  http://support.zynga.com/CP_ArticleView?Id=kA160000000GoSpCAK&gameId=43&loc=en_US 

my bad

I wrote yesterday that the limit for accepting Free Gifts had been lowered, but this appears not to be the case. Today I was able to accept all of my gifts up to the 200, which was not the case yesterday. Apparently this was tied to a timer change at Zynga, and although I hadn't accepted anywhere near 200 gifts from day before yesterday and yesterday, it gave me the message that I had hit the limit pretty fast. At any rate, today I had no problem with the gifting limit, although I didn't get a single wish list item.

At least in this case, I spoke wrong - sorry, Zynga. I was really ripping them a new orifice over that!

I still think the new Mystery Bags suck -- and I'm sticking with that story! :0)

Waiting like a Vulture...

I’m still waiting for my Golden Promotion, Zynga!
This new ‘feature’ is now nearly 3 weeks old and most of us still don’t have it.
I would like all those skill points, Mystery Shipments, loot items in their 70s in stats and even RP, too – all those simply for levelling, which I do every day, several times a day.

I feel like having to sit over the News Feed like a little vulture, trying to fetch the left-overs posted by some of my lucky Mafiosos.

I’ve also noticed my skin colour is turning slightly green, the colour of Envy … and HULK!

Not fair, not fair at all Zynga – same goes for the Crack The Safe, but at least players will be able to catch up on the goodies since you can repeat it 'only' 100 times, unlike the Golden Promotions!
While others can improve their stats massively, 2/3 of my fellow mafia & I have to simply 'be patient'?

Well, Zynga here is a pic for you =P

what happened to wish list items from Mystery Bags??

Yesterday, we realized that a number of things had been severely nerfed and labeled as "improvements", among them, our mystery bag rewards. Up until yesterday-ish, the frequency of wish list items dropping from mystery bags was just over 5%. As far as I can tell, they are now well under 1%. Most players are not even getting a single wish list item from opening dozens of mystery bags.

I still blame this partially on the fact that information was published about how to send unlimited Mystery Bags in such a manner that prompted a higher return rate, and therefore a higher amount of wish list items. I was well aware of the "glitch", but refrained from publishing it, and even asked one of our Feature Contributors to hold off on posting the info when I was asked about it. We've seen in the past that when a glitch or trick or exploit is published, Zynga will find some way of plugging it, and that may very well have been the case here too.

But mostly, I just blame Zynga for being an as$ about it and crippling the entire mystery bag system and calling it an "improvement". Exactly WHO is it an improvement for? I find it quite a bit more frustrating, annoying, and useless, personally. The whole thing, nerfed, over a rather benign exploit. It's not like any of us were really making out like bandits on mystery bag wish list items, let's be real.

I also noticed last night that I was unable to help on anyone's crew requests, because apparently some genius decided that joining someone's crew was the same thing as accepting a free gift. I got the message "Sorry, you cannot open any more Free Gifts today...". I'd like to know how that even makes sense.

And probably what's going to happen now is, Zynga will raise the frequency of wish list items by just a notch, and then claim they were listening to player outcry, but it's going to be a far lower rate than it used to be --- in other words, still nerfed.

Crack the Safe - update?

If you were one of the many who did not have the Crack The Safe feature, there's a good chance you may have now or will be seeing it soon. Many players are reporting finally getting it.

This particular issue has been a bit of a personal crusade of mine. I've had Crack The Safe since it was first rolled out, and yes, the loot is pretty good. While I hear there's a cap on how many you can ultimately get, so those just now getting the feature should be able to catch up with those of us who already had it, it still really sucked for those players without the feature to watch the rest of us cracking our safes all this time.

Zynga's excuse was that it was a "beta" feature and on a "slow rollout to ensure stability". I'm sorry, but that's a bunch of crock. I can understand a slow rollout taking a few days, but not a few weeks. It's an excuse to do nothing about it, knowing that thousands of players were getting really pissed about the issue.

I've been nagging and flat-out bitching about the issue for over a week now. I didn't think it was unreasonable for me to ask "What is the cause of the delay in some players receiving the feature?" and "When can they expect to get it?"

Am I finally getting an answer? Keep me posted.

Italy 3x Mastery Oops & fight loot event

 The Mafia Wars blog contained a better update today. We have seen today that Zynga accidentally added 3x Mastery for Italy, as well as Las Vegas. Instead of correcting this mistake right away, and rolling everyone back as they wont to do, this time they're going to leave it in place for a short time. Make use of it while you can.

Also, a double fight loot event is scheduled for this weekend -- FINALLY, an event that doesn't make us want to pull our hair out!

As Blue-Eyed Nate mentions, this was something that was suggested by several PAC members. While I'm glad to see this, I'm still mad at you Zynga for the mystery bags, reduced gift acceptance limits, and nixing the minipacks.

Speaking of those controversial energy packs, I couldn't help but notice that several of the comments players have left on this Mafia Wars blog post have been in protest of mini packs being pulled.

Mafia Wars KopyKats closing up shop

GuessX of Mafia Wars KopyKats is closing up shop. Nothing to be alarmed over, as he is doing so for personal reasons. KopyKats hosts several bookmarklet scripts that had been modified in some way, plus some of their own.

A few days ago, GuessX contacted me and gave me some information about what was going on. He was looking for new 'homes' for some of their scripts, so that players who used them would not have much interruption from his departure. Brawler Lite is one such tool that was based on the original Brawler, by Arun at Code Outpost, and GuessX has given over its care to our Mr. Wizard and it's now hosted here.

GuessX, we wish you all the best in your future endeavors!

So who is this Mr. Wizard, anyway? Does anyone know? ;)

More on "Vegas In The Red" -- Seriously, Zynga??

More on the Vegas In The Red crap... 

 

As I suspected, there's a new timed mission attached.
Just over 8 days on my timer.

This corresponds with some new items found on the servers recently.

So what do we have? A timed event mission AND a loot drop event?

So yeah, I don't know what to tell you. Zynga "heard your cries", and mine, and gave us -- wait for it: more events. Because that's exactly what players were bitching about. 

Jesus. 

They aren't listening to ME, that's for damn sure.

Vegas In The Red?

Another 'event' in the making, I'm assuming, is what this is. I see references to the "Neo Imperium" in the news paper text, so it's probably just another mission event.

I haven't even opened one of these timed mission events since the first one, and I didn't even complete that one. I have no interest in yet another thing to do in Mafia Wars. We're drowning in crap already.

The inevitable question will be "Is Vegas going to close??" and the answer is quite probably No.

We have already been told that there are no more plans to close other cities in the near future. Of course, they also told us they were hearing our cries about gifting events, and we know how that turned out...

The Not-so-mini Debate Continues

Here's a forum thread that poses a very good question: WHY didn't you like the mini packs?

As I have felt all along, as seems to be reflected in this thread, the key issue was that players had to send requests to receive them, then sit and twiddle their thumbs until someone bothered to go through their requests. That's a problem with implementation, which I was TRYING to get changed. I proposed a news feed post to collect the minis, similar to the regular e-packs. A few days ago, a small test group got that precisely that, and ironically, I was not one of them. And, it worked just fine from what I was told by a few players that had the option.

Zynga wants to represent this change as being done in favor of player outcry against the minis, but methinks they missed the boat or are deliberately misrepresenting their motives. 

Just sayin'.

Bye Bye Minis

If you were lucky enough to still have the mini energy packs, there's a good chance you'll find them missing now. I'm getting many reports that people are getting rolled over to the new packs. This, of course, after at least two Mafia Wars media sources reported being able to get unlimited mini packs due to a coding change. It figures that they can roll out a quick damn fix for something like that, yet Crack The Safe is still in beta and I can't even get a straight answer about that from anyone at Zynga.

At least the post to collect energy packs has been re-implemented. I'm not sure if each post will only collect one (I believe this was the case with the posts for original e-packs). Either way, a news feed post asking for it, which will get a much quicker response from online mafia, is better than having to freaking send requests and wait with your fingers crossed.

Mafia Wars Blog "Update"

The Mafia Wars blog has been updated, and it's so silly that I don't even know where to start.

Ok, that's a lie. Let me get started.

"It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superhero Collection Mystery Bags! Coming soon to cities in which you are obstructing justice (because the only justice worth upholding is MOB justice), these new Mystery Bags come in two varieties, each containing a range of super rewards! Opening up a Red Mystery Bag sent by your fellow mobsters or dropped from random jobs can reveal anything from XP to stat points, LE Items (such as the Liger), Superhero Collection Items, or any number of additional extraordinary rewards. A Blue Mystery Bag may include skill points, RP, Wishlist Gifts, LE Items (such as the Tiger Tank), or a Superhero Collection item, among other superb loot!"

I guess TinaC isn't the only one who remembers an old Super Man quote. Here's her article from yesterday: http://mistyfiedmafiawars.blogspot.com/2011/04/superhero-collection.html

Then of course there's the fact that this was just published on their blog touting the "new" Mystery Bags as "Coming Soon". They've been out for almost 24 hours now. 

I couldn't help but notice lately that they've put back in those crap "Limited Edition" items. This isn't "news", as they sneaked that back in sometime well prior to this release, although it seems they added some LE items with this update. Their idea of "Limited Edition" typically refers to sub-par items that don't help anyone's stats. While at 18,48, the Tiger Tank may not suck quite as viciously as some of their previous "Limited Edition" garbage, it's still irrelevant to many players. At least in the case of the Tiger Tank, it's giftable, so we can get rid of them by Chucking them to a known garbage collector. 

A garbage collector is a Facebook account that is used to 'store' unwanted loot. 

I love how they call these "extraordinary rewards". More like, "extraordinarily nerfed", since they seem to have reduced the frequency of receiving wish list items. We get crap like Tiger Tanks and useless boosts instead.

The blog update goes on to say:

As if these items weren’t exciting enough, both the Red & Blue Mystery Bags can contain a lotto ticket, which gives you a chance to win the grand prize: 1,000 Reward Points! The more Mystery Bags you request, the greater your chances to receive any of these super rewards. With items this sweet, you can be sure that your superhuman gifting efforts will be handsomely rewarded!

 Exciting enough? Sure, I'm breathless with wonder. That lotto ticket that can supposedly win you 1000 RPs - does anyone even KNOW anyone that's heard of something that's won that? I sure don't. I've always assumed it's a myth.

And the "the more Mystery Bags you request, the greater your chances" ...to run into the lowered gifting limit.

That's just moronic.

Mystery Bag/Free Gift Nerf(s)

Zynga Does It Again!!

 You cannot accept any more Free Gifts today. You can accept more in 11 hours.

It appears that the number of Free Gifts has been further throttled, allowing us to accept fewer Free Gifts per day. Which is extremely asinine, since we have to use our requests for all the various "exciting" "features" that Zynga keeps slogging at us.

Oh, but that's not all!

I've seen some people mentioning in my news feed that they haven't been getting wish list items from their Mystery Bags, so I opened up all that I could (until I had that idiotic limit). I did get one wish list item, but it seems Zynga has also reduced the frequency of this bonus occurring.

I rather suspect that this is at least partly the fault of recently spreading information that unlimited Mystery Bags can be sent. I hope you all enjoyed it while it lasted.

If, like me, you don't like these changes, I encourage you to go to the Mafia Wars fan page, access the Feedback tab, and tell them what you think, and also forward your feedback to "Customer Support".

Superheroes in Daily Take

It was nice to see that we have a chance of getting the Superheroes via the Daily Take!

Tuesday Night FFA (Free For All)

Gonna be up for awhile? Check out the Tuesday Night FFA, hosted by the ╬βφ'a╬ clan family. It looks like an active place to be right now if you like friendly fighting! It's happening for several more hours - leave your tags at the door and check in.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124515220894982#!/group.php?gid=124515220894982

****************Rules of War********************
****We will fight with loyality, honor, and respect****

** No Hitlisting
** No Asking Mafia to Attack
** No Sucker Punching
** Any Obscenties posted will be removed and that imember will be subected to removal from the page and disciplinary actions will be carried out.
**No Wimpering
**No Whinning
**No Posting Links on the Wall



We do not ask for your poor, or your hungry.
We do not want your tired and sick.
It is your corrupt we claim.

It is your evil that will be sought by us.
With every breath we shall hunt them down.
Each day, we will spill their blood till it rains down from the skies.

Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal, these are principles which every man of every faith can embrace.
These are not polite suggestions, these are codes of behavior and those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost.

There are varying degrees of evil, we urge you lesser forms of filth not to push the bounds and cross over, into true corruption, into our domain.

For if you do, one day you will look behind you and you will see we three. And on that day, you will reap it.
And we will send you to whatever god you wish.
That our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be.

 Be sure to abide by the page's rules, have fun, and meet new peeps!

Brawling in Brazil

That's the best Brawler run I've had in Brazil since the first week...usually it's 0,0, so this was nice for a change!

The Superhero Collection

It's a bird, It's a plane, no it's "THE SUPERHERO COLLECTION".
This is a new game feature that is definitely welcome.
Collections are one of my favorites in Mafia Wars.

Here's what the collection looks like

It's the same as all the rest, collect the 7 pieces then vault the collection to claim the your prize. And the prize is 20 SKIL POINTS.  YAY!!!

I was orignally alerted that there was something up when I saw this pic.

So I created a new pic from a couple of screenies and posted this on the MMWP page.

Thanks to the tip off from Patrick, I found out that there's this new collection.

So Here's the scoop.  To find collections go to your Mafia Wars Home Page and get into your Inventory.

Click collections and then click on special.

Scroll down to see the new SUPERHERO COLLECTION.The loot items for this collection drop from Mystery bags. so lets get busy and send some out. As shown in this pic just click on Mystery Bags to get the pop up to send out MB's.

Now you land on the gift sending page.  You can select up to 32 friends at a time to send to.

Once you send to the first 32 friends, repeat the process and send to 32 friends again as many times as you like.  Keep in mind you are only allowed to accept 200 gifts per day.

Hopefully your friends will be "faster than a speeding bullet" in returning your gifts.

I somewhat suspect that one item will be difficult to find, assuming Zynga follows suit as this has been the case with most preceeding special collections.


Well that's a wrap.  Time to go get those MYSTERY BAGS.
~TC