This & Next Week 7/1

The Mafia Wars blog has published the third edition of weekly news. You can read it in its entirety HERE. I'll skip what happened this past week, because I think we've all had enough of that. Nothing major in the bug fixes, and what's awesome about this coming week is what's NOT listed - a ton of events! I know I've started grumbling lately about the need to slow down events again. There will be the now-customary weekly  mission event, and those mystery boosts that never made it out this past week. I suggest we show our appreciation of the slowdown by spending more time PLAYING the game, so Zynga doesn't think events is all that keeps us coming back!

This Week's Major Bug Fixes
BUG: Kills, which count as two ices elsewhere in the game, were not counting at all toward ice counters in "Ice X opponents" mission tasks.
FIXED: Kills now add 2 to mission task ice counters. <I noticed this>
BUG: Friend names were not filtering correctly while one typed in the "Start Typing a Name" box on the Free Gifts page and the Inventory Gifting page.
FIXED: Name lists now filter correctly in response to what a player types.

Coming Next Week*
*As far as is currently scheduled, but things can change.
New Mission: Jackpot
Join Michelle Paulis and do anything to win in a mission to rig the lottery in your favor.
New Mystery Bags
Boosts are coming! Send friends the new mystery bags and they could get a crazy amount of rare fighting boosts. The combined strength of these boosts would make Popeye trash his entire supply of spinach!

Fight module rollouts and rollbacks

There are suddenly a lot of players reporting that they got rolled back to the old fight module. A couple people said it on the Mistyfied page, and I've seen it said in groups that I'm in. I checked, and I'm still on the new fight system. According to this thread on the forums, everyone should in fact now have the new fight module. Thank god, I can finally stop saying "new fight system"!

The last time the did fight module rollouts, there were also some temporary rollbacks which occurred and were later corrected. That seems to be the case here. If you got rolled back, it should be corrected soon.

What's in a Name?

The other day I was going through my collections to see what I could re-vault and what I had to give to others and it struck me at how many times in the game names or titles of things have been essentially recycled. It may be nitpicky but I really thought it was interesting to look at.

Mystery Bag Collections have been around for a while now. There are three different sub-types but essentially they are all still Mystery Bag Collections.

Then we have our Slot Machines. These two often become confused with each other in conversations. The Lucky Stash requires RP to play, but you can get at least four free spins on it in a 24 hour period. The Las Vegas Slots are found on a player's profile. You can spin 20 friends' slots per day and it is linked to an Achievement.

Do you remember when the last set of new Operations came out? Zynga, in their infinite wisdom, named one Take Out A Rival, funny enough there was already one by that name. This caused a lot of confusion when players were looking for the new one in the feeds.

Of course I can't forget to mention Secret Stashes. The new Secret Stashes are found when doing your first job, fight or rob after midnight. This replaces the two old Secret Stashes where one type was found doing jobs and the other while fighting. The old type of Stashes caused so much confusion that I have to say it is a relief that we have the new type despite how nauseating it is to have to try to get friends to fill slots so you can get the loot. I'm just surprised that I am still seeing some people with the old fight Stashes being posted to walls.

What I vote for as the most confusingly named parts of the game Boss Fights. I understand that a Boss Fight is a Boss Fight and there really isn't any way around naming it the same, but just look at all the different ones we have! I can see why Customer Support gets easily confused when they are flooded with issues surrounding them. You could easily be talking about a City Boss, or a Mission Boss and they are thinking you are talking about one of the Limited Time Bosses.

I have to say I do hope that the powers that be over at Zynga try a bit harder to come up with names that make it easier to differentiate from what has already been or currently is. I think that might help the players, the developers and the Customer Support agents.

Where is the Crime Spree Pop-up?

Have you ever accepted a Crime Spree and that pesky little pop-up hasn't appeared? I know I have and it didn't matter if I accepted it from my Facebook game requests or via a friend's posted link.

I found that all you have to do is refresh the tab (F5) and it will appear, sometimes I have to refresh it more than once or twice.

Also, if you find that you are having a hard time getting friends to send you Crime Sprees and you are in need of them you can find which of your friends are wonderful enough to post links to their Sprees by doing a Facebook search for Crime Sprees and selecting 'See more results for...' then selecting posts by friends. If the links are not clickable simply highlight them and right click on the highlighted portion and open the link that way.

Red Hot and Blue items in marketplace

Limited Edition "red hot and blue" items are available now in the marketplace. 

 

I couldn't help myself, I thought the Fireworks Barge was pretty, so I bought one lol. 

Here are some of the other items available:

Junior

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of truthiness.

119 Attack 71 Defense 

Liberty Shield

Got a little Captain in you.

119 Attack 68 Defense 

Sparkler

Watch your fingers.

70 Attack 120 Defense

Steal of the Summer ends

The Steal of the Summer marketplace sale ended last night. That was actually a pretty decent sale, with the energy and stamina refills at 50% off, and even some decent loot. Too bad they couldn't have a sale like that over the holiday weekend!

Friday, 7/1: Tank Splitter

Friday, 7/1
Tank Splitter
(73/135)


Today is the last of the limited edition items. This one is the Tank Splitter, and there should be 5,000 of them available in the Marketplace starting at 9am Pacific. Grab one! Last chance!

Friday, 7/1: Tank Splitter

Friday, 7/1
Tank Splitter
(73/135)



Today is the last of the limited edition items. This one is the Tank Splitter, and there should be 2,000 of them available in the Marketplace starting at 2am Pacific. Grab one!

Freedom Fighters gifting event

There's a new event in town, and this one smells suspiciously like a gifting event - with a twist. The gifts that we have to send and collect are special boosts. The American Dream boost is +150 defense skill, so at least it's a decent reward and not a useless pig to collect. As with previous gifting events, collecting them counts toward item mastery levels, and there are three that you can get.

 You can't miss it, it'll be in your news feed when your friends ask for the special gifts to be sent to them.

 It'll be on your Mafia Wars home page.

 The boosts can also be sent from the free gift page, and collected as free gifts in your Facebook requests and ZMC.

 The boosts that will be send are the American Dream, Flag Bearer, and Fireworks.

I got a few of the American Dream, and they give +150 defense skill.

Mastery Reward

Star Shield

45 92

51 100

53 105

The Star Shield is the reward for American Dream mastery levels.

Mastery Reward

Parade Leader

47 93

52 98

53 106

This reward item will come from collecting Flag Bearer boosts. 

Mastery Reward

Firecracker

97 41

101 53

108 54

We'll get Firecrackers from Fireworks boost mastery. 

Grand Prize

Freedom Eagle

(151,114)

The item for mastering all three is this, the Freedom Eagle. 

 Looks like we'll be able to master the event three times, but I'll hafta look for a FAQ next.

Sick of Being Stuck in Stalled Operations

Awhile back Misty wrote up a blog post about the getsatisfaction thread I had started trying to lobby for the option to remove ourselves from stalled operations. I'm thinking that perhaps Zynga needs a few more visual examples of why this is needed, especially in light of all the new operations that have been released.

Currently when we go to join in on an operation this is what we see. We can't see if the operation belongs to our friend or one of their friends, nor can we see how far along each section of the operation is.

It isn't until we choose which spot we want to have and join it that we can see who the op owner is and if any of the taken spots are done. Luckily for me all the spots on this one were already completed and I have a good chance of not having a stalled operation in my queue.

But then I came across this one. If I had the choice and could see what is currently only seen once joining, I wouldn't have joined this operation at all. Who knows when or even if the joiner is going to start and complete that job. The longer it takes the fewer operations I can help on. The one highlight of this operation is that the owner who joined it finished their part. (Even though it is a complete waste of their stamina/energy for the same loot they would get even without joining it.)

Unfortunately not all operation owners who join their own operation actually do their part. If I had been able to see this prior to joining I again would not have joined. If I had the option to leave this operation before it expired I would have done so. Having 10 operations stalled in my queue is not a pleasant experience.

Granted operation owners are able to manage their operation by removing any person who has not completed the job, not all do. There are some people who believe in having operations done ASAP and there are others who believe in giving plenty of time for the person who joined to complete it. Both sides have very valid reasons for managing the way they do.

The argument can be made that the joiners are able to publish a reminder post the operation owners wall for them to check on the op. This is a good feature and I utilize it when necessary, however, this can't be done if the operation owner is not on my friends list. I also shy away from sending a personal message to a person who is not on my friends list because that message can be reported to Facebook for unwanted contact and that could jeopardize my Facebook account.

For a time operation owners who joined their own operations were not able to manage their operations and remove campers/slackers. Since that has changed I wonder if people realize it can be done, I also wonder if people are even aware that they can remove incomplete positions and fill them with somebody that will get it done.

I can't stress enough how important it is to those who concentrate on operations to have control over being able to leave an operation or even be able to see the progress of an operation prior to joining it. The amount of stamina and energy wasted because they expire is asinine. If an operation is going to expire anyways I might as well be able to vacate my spot and open up a slot in my queue for a person who is willing to manage their operation.

ZMC Mafia Invite Not Quite Right

Not quite sure what to make of this, but I am pretty sure that it isn't supposed to look like that. The Send a Free Gift Back button still works as intended.

Mistyfied redtag is full

Hey guys, we're getting a lot of requests from people wanting to join the Mistyfied redtag Family for the current icing event. We appreciate it! Our group is already at the 100 member limit, unfortunately, so we will not be able to accept anyone else until Zynga gets off their butt and does something about it. And we won't be swapping out members for the event, either, as we have no plans of reorganizing into a "clan". At most, we are a social group, and many of us are friends via our fan page. Come hang out with us there :0)

yet another way to send gifts

As if we aren't encouraged enough already to send gifts and send more gifts every time we attempt to play the game, I just noticed this gifting option has now been added when accepting mafia members via your My Mafia/Recruit tab.

Unfortunately, clicking Send Gift to do as instructed only brought me to this page, graced by an apparently-indefinite RBD. And, since I just accepted that mafia member and have not yet seen their wish list, it's unlikely that I'm going to blindly send them something from my inventory. Maybe it would make more sense if the Free Gifts page popped up instead, when you click the Send Gift button after accepting a mafia member. As-is, I don't see this being a feature I will use much.

Iced pop-ups missing for some players

I'm seeing many players reporting that they are not getting the iced pop-up if they are not part of a redtag Family. Based on what limited testing I was able to do, this does seem to be a problem. Players with a redtag still get the ice pop-ups and have no problems posting their ices, this is only affecting non-redtag players from what I understand. When attacking and icing other players, they simply are not getting notified of the ice by a post-able pop-up.

Thursday, 6/30: Latin Rebirth

Thursday, 6/30
Latin Rebirth
(131/72)



Today's limited edition item is currently available in the marketplace. It started with 5,000 available, and is down to a little less than 4,000 left available. 

Turning Secret Stashes On/Off

Have the new generation of Secret Stashes become an annoyance you can live without? Or do you only want to activate them when doing jobs, and not when fighting? Or maybe you haven't seen them yet and want to know where to check your settings?

Here's where to go in order to do so.

In case you didn't know, these stashes are triggered by the first click after midnight on any of the actions that you have ticked in your settings. Personally, if you are going to bother with these, I'd recommend only having Jobs or Robbing enabled. Getting a pop-up with a 15 second delay built in when you've just healed up to fight isn't a great idea.