Zynga can't count

I keep seeing amusing status messages in my news feed today; it seems that many players are starting to realize that Zynga can't count! There were a couple of times last night that I thought some ice numbers repeated, but it was hard to tell since I don't really keep track of my ices. Later on, I saw this blog post, and realized that I hadn't been going crazy after all.

It is kinda funny, Zynga can't count, although I hope this isn't cheating us out of ices.

Ice Mastery Challenge reward: Talking Stalk

It makes me mad to already know what the ultimate mastery item is for this icing event, before they even roll the event out to me personally! (Not your fault, but Zynga's!) But here it is: the Talking Stalk. This particular screen shot was sent to me by Sudesh Kumar Agrawal, and it matches what I have seen reported by a handful of other players so far.

Clarification on ice counts

There's been some question today, brought to light by the new icing event, that seemed to indicate that kills (or 'whacks' if you're looking at your Mafia Wars profile page), are also counting as ices.

Supermoderator Cerulean Master made a post on the forums a short while ago that should help clarify. According to him, kills ARE now counted as an ice, but will count as two ices -- and also makes a blatant suggestion that this hints at future fight changes. We already know fight changes are imminent.

He also indicates that feedback on the event is wanted ~ constructively of course, I would imagine.

Additionally, CM addresses the infamous slow rollout, saying that it's still being worked on. He wants to know if anyone does NOT have the Ice Mastery Challenge in their game by Monday.

Cerulean, I'm hoping I don't have to wait til Monday for this event, or it's not just you that's going to be hearing from me ;)

Cerulean says:

Kills are counting as an Ice, but it is set to count as two. We know that kills are harder to get and usually there is only a one line message once you achieve one. This was our first step at making them worth more than an Ice. <---- Hint to the future?

If you do not have the event yet, please do not worry. The team is working on getting it out to everyone. If we still have players missing when I return Monday, getting an update will be my first priority... after that, I'll be looking for the extension thread, lol.

This event was put out there with your feedback in mind, so enjoy it. Hopefully the positive reactions can cause these to happen more often.

Thanks Jennifer for the heads up :0)

Zynga forums temporarily down

If you've noticed that the Zynga community forums are down, you aren't the only one! I tried to access something I had bookmarked, and got the above error message. All I know is that they are aware of the problem and are currently looking into it, so stay tuned.

kills counting as ices?

Are kills now counting as ices? If you look, you can see the "You killed your opponent" message behind the iced message. I noticed this earlier today, and someone else mentioned it in a chat room.

Time to start keeping count!

New: Health left percentage beta to some accounts

As some players are now noticing, including Feature Contributor Le Trainspotter, a health percentage is being shown on the fight results screen. As I understand it, this is beta, so not everyone will have it. This just started rolling out, and I noticed in my game that sometimes it shows the percent and sometimes it doesn't.

some Ice Mastery screenshots

The ice mastery bar is on the homepage module, and it is from there that you will collect your mastery reward for each level.

 You can post the mastery as a special iced post to your news feed.

 Regular ices have gotten some new wording as well, I noticed.

 Here is the mastery table. 10 ices for bronze mastery, 30 ices for silver mastery, 100 ices for gold mastery, and 200 ices for ruby mastery. Each of those gets the Tundra Tiger an upgrade in stats. I haven't gotten to the mystery prize at the end yet :0)

new Iced pop-up for event

So the pop-up IS a new one for ices during the Ice Mastery Challenge. Good luck finding live targets on the fight list right now!

 The event will be visibly-located on your Mafia Wars home page module when it arrives in your game.

Ice Mastery Challenge FAQ

The 411/FAQ about the upcoming Ice Mastery Challenge has been posted here. 

 According to this, there will be an "ice mastery bar", and there will be mastery items. The starting date is today's date, so we can assume the previously-mentioned slow rollout has already begun, and the end date is May 31st. That's Tuesday after next, so we'll have nearly two weeks with this icing challenge.

 

There'll be 5 levels of mastery. The FAQ mentions "there will be a pop-up each time you ice someone". I'm not sure if there will be a new pop-up, or if they are referring to the regular ice pop-up that we already get. 

This Tundra Tiger will be the mastery item for the first 4 levels. The stats will increase with each level of mastery. It's unclear, but sounds like the single item will just get an upgrade in stats, not that we will receive multiples.  

You'll be able to replay the event for 60 reward points, up to five times. 

Put Em On Ice event announced

An announcement regarding a new event called "Put 'Em On Ice" was just posted on the official forum. Supermoderator Rinzler says

"Hey mafia wars fans!

Are you a fighter, or someone who loves to ice? Or are you still kind of not into that sort of thing, and looking to get started icing people?

Look for the new event, Put 'em on Ice! As the name implies, it will be centered around icing.

This will be a limited time event, so don't be shy about going out and picking a fight during this time."

So something that will center around icing. Hmm.... This will be on a slow rollout over the next few days, so be watching for it.

skill point reallocation options in marketplace

There's a new option in the marketplace that many players are probably going to be interested in.

For 50 reward points, you can reallocate 50 of your skill points, or 10 for 10.

Here's the normal RP cost of 4 skill points.

Notice it says, "You can only reallocate one stat per day".  I'm told by a couple of players that they were able to use both the 10 and the 50 point allocation for the same stat. 

On this screen you will choose which stat to pull skill points FROM, and then you will go to your profile page like usual to reinvest the skill points where you want them.

I think it's going to vary widely from player to player if this is an option worth investing in. I know a lot of people have been asking for something similar to this, as they allocated skill points prior to really understanding the game or deciding how they want to play.

You be the judge.

More info on Crack The Safe ending

The Mafia Wars blog has added a little information about Crack the Safe ending that should be good news for many players.

The date of next Wednesday, May 25th, is the last day to crack the safe.

"Don't worry if you are unable to crack your safe before then, however, as we promise to find other ways for you to obtain the valuable items currently hidden behind the vault doors."

Review of Roughhouse Rafael Boss Fight Event

 

**republishing for archive purposes, due to blogger's recent mishaps**Zynga has been trying some new types of events lately, probably partially in response to the enormous player outcry over constant gifting events, so I thought I would dissect this latest new boss fight event a bit. I'll try not to editorialize, and just point out what I liked and didn't like about it.

First off, I'm not aware of many bugs in relation to this event, which is an improvement.



There is, though, the major issue of many players such as myself completed the event prior to being able to earn the achievement. For me, Zynga's customer support was very quick and willing to resolve my customer support ticket on the matter; I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately though, a lot of players don't realize that they CAN contact customer support about this, so I think Zynga ought to award the achievement to all players who complete the event prior to the quest for the third combo, without them having to ask.

 

Something that I think definitely made this event bland for me was the lack of interaction with my mafia about it.  Just because we don't want to rely on gifting and Facebook requests constantly doesn't mean we don't like to interact with each other - in fact, that's the best part of the game for most of us. 

Comparing this boss fight event with old boss fight events (Beat The Feds, On In San Juan, Rumble In Russia, etc), I like those old boss fight events a lot better in general, minus the host of bugs they had. With those events, we were really helping our mafia when we attacked the bosses they were trying to beat. It was fun to try and out-do other helpers. It was fun to see how long we could whittle down a boss before getting crushed. It was fun to keep track of the progress each of us made in boss fights - not just our own, but our friends' too.

I liked that there was an achievement associated with the event. That's a plus.





 

While gifting was involved, at least it was only for one of the items. However, collecting the other items was a bit of a pain. Drop rates for the ammos were absolutely terrible. Awful. Atrocious. Icky-yuck.

As far as the combos, I'm kind of "meh" about them. Since there were only 2 combos to be found through "self-discovery", all of the news feed posts about them were the same thing, over and over again. There either needs to be a lot more combos to make those news feed posts worthwhile, or the news feed posts for the combos need to be eliminated since they were redundant and therefore Spam.

 

Even though the issue of the achievement was resolved for me, I still don't get to take part in the "quest" for the third combo, so I can't review that although I hear it's coming soon. Which kind of sucks, but it was my decision to go ahead and finish the event. 





All in all? Not a bad event, but not my favorite.

feedback survey on Roughhouse Rafael

On your Mafia Wars homepage module, you should now see this survey that Zynga wants us to take on the boss fight event just passed. I have a lot of feedback!

 They want to know if we enjoyed it. I only answered yes, because there was no "it was ok" option... I didn't hate, but I can't really say I enjoyed it, either. Anyway, moving on.

 On the next page, they're a little more specific. As you can see, the only option that I selected as for why I "liked" the event was that it was different. On the next question, you can select things you think would make it better. I thought the level of difficulty and how long it took me to finish it was ok, no need to make it harder, but I felt it was lacking in a lot of other areas.

The last question wants to know in our words what other comments we had about Roughhouse Rafael. I pointed out that I still like the old boss fight events better. I appreciate some variety in the game, I guess, but I don't get why they didn't set to work on fixing the bugs of the old boss fights since so many players have stated how much they liked them.

Vanity Fair article on Zyngon Playboy Pincus

If the image doesn't say it all... "liquid brown eyes" and "Lady Gaga"... "private yoga instructor"???? Wait, "Life Coach"??????

So there you have it. Throw money at it. There's lots of interesting fodder in this article.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gamification/vanity-fair-farmville-zynga-born-from-mark-pincus-8217-obsession-with-8216coaching-8217/401

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/06/mark-pincus-farmville-201106
And guys? I'm still thinkin' Gaga wasn't such a coup.

Thanks Julie Johnson for posting this to us :0)

Crack The Safe ending soon

One announcement that came from this evening's Mafia Wars Live session is that Crack The Safe is ending soon. Game Designer Cole told us that it is 'scheduled to go away sometime next week', and Blue-Eyed Nate said there would be more information forthcoming on the Mafia Wars blog.

During the first Mafia Wars Live session, the guys found out that players were getting blocks and bans from Facebook for sending too many friend requests due to this feature, which I imagine is a major reason behind this getting pulled.

Many players will get a little anxious over this news. If you aren't close to finishing Crack The Safe, and you know others are and already have finished, you may feel that this will leave you at a disadvantage, loot-wise. One player in the Ustream chat during Mafia Wars Live already cried foul against players (like me) who used the 'Crack The Safe trick' to finish already.

Bearing in mind that there is a 100 item cap on the loot you can get from cracking the safe, I have to wonder how Zynga will balance this one!

wars updated again...slightly

 What's with these dots? That was the first thing I noticed.

 Upon closer inspection, it's supposed to help you decide who you should attack, based on how difficult they say the target is. So far I haven't had much trouble beating "hard" targets, so it's hard to say yet how accurate this is or what it's based on.

And as Feature Contributor Mike Shay found,  you can also now use reward points to declare another war, in lieu of having to wait 8 hours before having the option again. Personally, 12 RPs for a war is pretty expensive in my opinion. I can't see myself utilizing that.

One thing I noticed that is definitely an improvement is how war links are sent through the Facebook chat option. Previously a tinyurl was used. I pointed out that spammers and scammers would have a field day with that though, and suggested that they use their own URL shortener like how they use "zyn.ga" for the free skill points. This works too though, it's just the war link in long form, so that we can actually see what we're supposed to click on.

Mafia Wars Live v2

Mafia Wars Live just wrapped up, and you can watch it right here.

Once again Nate and Cole were onhand, and we also got to see Cerulean Master, supermoderator from the official forums.


I'll have to go through the broadcast and take better notes now that I can utilize the pause button, but here's some things I jotted down:

Announcements: 

1. Nate's getting a hair cut
2. 'healing aspect' will be added to wars (previously announced)
3. icing mastery coming up, 'mastery achievements' for so many ices within a certain amount of time.
4. a new boss fight
5. crack the safe gets killed, ending sometime next week, more info to come on the blog
6. war chat getting killed?
7. no straight answer on the error pigs, cole will investigate
8. crime spree loot being looked at
9. fight club "in general" being tied more closely to icing instead of victory coins
10. how to reincorporate old cities that have been removed. hasn't gone beyond idea phase.
11. there will probably be a power attack on the hit list
12. will consider readding the send all energy button
13. do not support or condone scripts, but understand that there are helpful scripts and damaging scripts, no shout outs to script writers but know some wonderful tools have been created. Legally, TOS does not support it.
14. gamecards being used in the trading market, looked down upon, security cracking down on those kinds of trades
15. june 1st, next broadcast, same location

Stand by for Mafia Wars Live v2

Going live in about 30 minutes!

The Ustream channel is here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mafia-wars-live1

If you'd like to submit a question, do so in this forum thread: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?t=1026848 

I'm already logged into the chat over there, see ya!

Mafia Wars Gods raffle open to the public!

The Mafia Wars Gods group has been around for a long time. It is a place where players over level 1000 can share their achievements and swap strategies. With recent changes to group formats on Facebook, they've decided to start a fan page in addition to the group - and the fan page is open for players of all levels!

For several months now, loot raffles have been one of the membership perks of the group. For the first time ever, in celebration of the new fan page, the current raffle is open to the public. And the prizes are impressive!

To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment on the raffle thread here: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=199990573371599&topic=342  

-one entry per person
-Drawing is on Monday May 23 at 2pm Eastern

I know the fans of this page love a good giveaway, so head over there and leave a comment now :0)

New: Smoke and Mirrors mission event

 One event ends....

...and another one starts right away. *sigh*

This does appear to be on a slow rollout.