The jack asses at Zynga have yet again defied logic and reason, and have "given" us ANOTHER limited time property. DO NOT BUILD IT. By building it you are voting YES to more and more of these things.
I am sick and tired of two things.
FIRST: I am sick and tired of Zynga's inability to comply with the demands of its players. I am fairly confident 90% or more of players hate the limited time properties. They are stressful. They offer items with such impressive stats that one almost feels compelled to get to level 15, for fear of falling behind the curve. Zynga does not listen to the complaints and continues to push out these things.
SECOND: I am sick and tired of people whining and moaning about these properties while still caving in and filling the feeds with parts requests. JUST SAY NO. I realize that may be an unpopular thing to say, but somebody has to say it. This new property disease has gone way beyond insanity. Every time a new property comes out people actually quit playing. The only reason there is a bump in the DAU is because people log in to their mini accounts to click part links. Well NOT ME. Screw'em. I will offer Zynga zero positive reinforcement for their idiotic behavior regarding these damned properties. In fact, I will prolly contact CS and scream at them, as I hope everyone else will do. Hopefully PAC 2.0 is screaming their heads off.
ANYONE who hates these properties should follow 4 simple steps:
The latest Mafia Wars PAC has come under fire. Who's surprised??? It's also come up in discussion with some friends, as well as a couple emails I’ve gotten, not to mention some PM discussions with supposedly "anti-PAC" community members—so I thought I’d take a moment or three to discuss my own perspectives regarding PAC 2.0.
Some of the opposition to PAC has to do with how and who is representing PAC, which many members of the original PAC have failed to reflect on and react to accordingly--including at times, myself. Many of the so-called 'anti-PAC' players simply object to being represented in any way by particular known PAC members. PAC in general isn't their problem at all. And when PAC rallies to defend themselves, it further fuels the assumption that it's a clan or a clique.
Others don't like the idea of 'representation' by someone they can't access, as a voter would his senator or congressman, although PAC has said all along that is not their intended purpose. Still, others strongly feel that PAC should be accessible. Having mostly-successfully taken some giant steps back from my own emotional involvement in all this, I now understand most of the complaints. Not to say that I agree with all views, but I respect what motivates them. It might behoove Zynga to give consideration to such a model.
As far as I know, this model of PAC is following Nate’s original statement to us of what PAC 2.0 would be, when he discussed this with us several months ago prior to his departure from Zynga. It generally sounded ok to me, but as usual, the employing of the plan has left doubts and much to be desired, and no obvious changes to inspire faith.
Firstly, I was a member of PAC 1.0 and I remain generally supportive of our efforts there. I am not a member of the current rotation of PAC 2.0, and to be honest, I’m not sure I’d admit it if I were. My feelings aren’t hurt about it, because Mafia Wars has at last been introduced to the farthest back burner of my life. But based on public, semi-public, and private discussions I’ve had and seen with various members, I can tell you that not everyone is pleased with how this was handled, including some PAC 1.0 members.
There was, as per usual, no communication, no thank you, no fvck you, just…here’s this new team, including a well-known clique of players whom some have grown to resent. How’s that strike your fancy? You betcha, it does not sit well with some.
No offense to some in that clique I’m referring to, but it shouldn’t have happened that way. In fact, there’s some very hurt or disillusioned feelings on the parts of some players and former members, and I agree in principle. Not to mention some long-standing voices in the community have a decided and valid problem with it that is being ignored. It is not trust or faith inspiring.
I have seen some players insinuating (or just bluntly saying) that these community reactions are "jealousy", which frankly amuses me. Such assertions are childish, false, and yet again fuels the perception of a clique.
Zynga has failed to listen, again presenting PAC as a popularity contest which alienates many.
And now we hear that existing PAC members will be able to nominate other members; it could be conjectured that no one will be nominated unless they support the agendas of existing PAC members and otherwise offer no perceived 'competition' for them. In fact, that very sentiment has been proposed to me.
And this new team at Zynga that’s being lauded by some? I am not deluded. We had the same hopes when we formed the original PAC, but we were left disappointed. Oh, I don’t doubt that at least a few of them might be interested in giving it a go and making something of the mess that Mafia Wars has been for a long time—but let's not forget how hard Nate tried.
The efforts will not be received well by Zynga’s upper management, who make the final decisions. Such was the case during my tenure of PAC 1.0. What we found were developers who were willing to talk to us, some who directly sought us out for opinions and feedback. But it was obvious that our feedback was being channeled to upper echelons who didn’t know jack about the game, put their corporate spin on our ideas, and were principally concerned with making money and feeding those temporary number spikes which frankly made a lot of players lose interest, including myself. And, we see how quickly they turn loose of the developers that care about their product quality over quantity.
Some players appear to be defending Zynga as a for-profit business. There’s nothing wrong with making money and there’s nothing wrong with seeking profit. The problem is Zynga’s blatant grabs for our money without regard for decent customer service, without regard for our feedback, and without regard for fixing much of anything in the game, and no desire to stop the dam of players quitting the game as a result. It’s not the developers and programmer’s faults, it’s not the fault of the mods or the community managers, it’s the fault of those who develop business plans while being ignorant of how gamers play games. I can't see how any of that has changed, and so I remain skeptical of PAC 2.0, irregardless of the new team that's leading it.
The point is, Zynga really just needs to determine if they’re going to listen to ANY of the players, or not. Or better yet, listen to their community managers or not. Or listen to their forum moderators or not.
So, my summary? I am not at all fooled into being overly optimistic. Much has already been handled wrong, yet again. When Zynga listens to ME, I'll believe THEM.
by BarryKash on the Mafia Wars Forums where we learn the PAC2 members will be sharing with the Zynga team the issues (which issues?) that are affecting a majority of players (how is this determined?)
I posted this yesterday as a guest on the Mafia Spirit blog. Be sure to check out their blog! We would love to hear your ideas and feedback.
Have you ever thought “I’d love to change ___ about Mafia Wars”? I know, I know, silly question. Of course you have! Today I saw the DAU (daily active users) has fallen below half a million players, according to App Data. I’ve never seen it that low. Players continue to get bored or sick of what some now call “Mafia Chores”.
Hi, I’m Misty, an author of the Mistyfied Mafia Wars blog and fan page. We’ve been around for 2 years this April. I’ve been playing Mafia Wars for 3 years this May.
On the Mistyfied blog, some of our admins have posted a series of articles regarding items they would personally like to see changed about Mafia Wars. I give you my personal list of things I would change, for all you Mafia Spirit fans. These are my ideas of how Zynga should handle Mafia Wars and certain game features. Somewhere along the line, Zynga took the wrong garden path and followed number spikes instead of loyal players, and now here we are.
Firstly, I would reinstitute some form of means by which Zynga and Mafia Wars programmers, designers, and community managers have an open forum with the players. The forums don’t work. PAC didn’t work, although not for lack of trying on our parts. After the exit of 2 community managers who worked with us, we slid off of Zynga’s priority list. Get Satisfaction didn’t work, either. Believe it or not, many Zyngons who work with Mafia Wars and other games want to hear player feedback, but Zynga's business model of the Almighty Dollar doesn't give heed.
Cut the event fatigue! There's just too much going on in the game at one time. Zynga is too focused on their “metrics”, which unfortunately mean nothing in terms of player enjoyment—that silly little thing that keeps us coming back for more. They like their number spikes, and don’t concern themselves with the following valleys. It makes no sense, in terms of business or gaming, but Zynga refuses to listen.
We need a game that isn’t so frenetic that, if we’re forced to be away for a few days, we don't run away screaming when we log in and see everything we're behind on. I faced this situation personally just two weeks ago, after the death of a family member. I had to be away for several days, and on top of all that I’m a college student with a sizable class load. Mafia Wars has now fallen by the wayside, sad to say, because I couldn’t keep up, lost interest, and honestly? I started dreading logging in.
So let’s talk game. One of the first things that comes to mind is those help limits. “You have already helped 5 people today.” How many times have you cussed at your computer monitor over that? I could start counting…but I’d fall asleep! I understand why limits are in place, truly I do, but 5 or even 10 helps per feed is just too low. I thought this was a social game! Something more realistic that would keep us online and playing longer would be 25 or so, similar to job helps. Or make it 5-10 helps per 4 hours.
Mission events shouldn’t detract so much from our regular game play. Some of the requirements involve multiple thousands’ worth of energy! For a balanced player like myself, that can slow me down for days, and cause me to make no progress in other areas--which is frustrating. Then again, many players have the energy and time, and will be proclaiming their boredom within minutes of an event’s release, so maybe another approach would be to scale the energy cost of a mission-required job to a player’s overall ability. I would like that much more.
Lastly—let’s get rid of that ZMC pop-up every single time we enter the game! Is that really necessary? It slows the overall loading of the game, and for those of us who jump between the game and our news feed regularly, it’s a pain. Especially when the ZMC is empty! Ever miss out on a good Daily Take post because the ZMC loads over the Daily Take pop-up? I know I have!
I know we all have our own ideas about how to better the Mafia Wars experience for everyone. These are just some of my thoughts that come to mind. We at Mafia Spirit and Mistyfied Mafia Wars would love to hear YOUR ideas. If you liked these ideas, please share this article with your Facebook friends, we would appreciate it!
Those of you who like to give a listen to community pod casts have probably heard of the Facebook & Zynga Podcast. This evening I was asked to be a guest on the show to answer a couple of questions about PAC by one of the co-hosts. Well, Tre didn't really give me much choice in the matter, but that's aight :D
This was actually the first time I've participated in a podcast, so admittedly I was a little nervous. Melissa asked some of the questions that she has heard/been asked and/or had herself, about the PAC. I'd like to thank the hosts of the Facebook and Zynga Podcast for having me.
To me directly, Melissa asked when the PAC was put together and what we do, and how much contact we have with Zynga.
As I answered on the show ~ the PAC, or Player Advisory Committee, was put together in February of this year. It is a group of players that Zynga sometimes taps for feedback and testing, and I am a member. We communicate with Zynga on an as-needed basis. There aren't regular meetings; they reach out to us, and we reach out to them as a group, or in groups, or as individuals to different Zynga employees, as needed. Some of us use Getsatisfaction.com (in fact, we've been encouraged to promote Getsatisfaction). I "talk" to "Zynga" on Skype and by email. The method of contact and the frequency just depends on the urgency and what is going on.
Another question I was asked was how I specifically came to be on the PAC. I did know about the committee and that they would be considering players who applied, and I meant to apply. But being very engrossed in my 1st semester of college, I completely forgot about it. In late February, I got a message asking if I wanted to be on the PAC, and I said yes. Someone suggested me, for which I'm still grateful, and I really didn't have much time to deliberate -- my flight to San Francisco was booked that same hour.
I think what people want to know is that the PAC isn't a top secret organization that governs the game and gets special privileges.
I feel kind of bad for those members of PAC who were chosen because they were indeed regular players, regular players who expected none of this scrutiny.
We are players of the game. Only a few of us are bloggers. Only a few of us have fan pages. Only a few of us are scripters. Some of us don't even use scripts, or like scripts; some of us are decidedly anti-scripts. Those of us who do use scripts, have wildly-varying views on 'acceptable script use'. We're not all in clans; or families, or groups. Those of us who are in clans, aren't all clan leaders. Not all of us have huge mafias. We are different players with different levels and methods of involvement in the game. We do not always agree. We are not all hunky-dory with Zynga. We argue with Zynga. In fact, as predicted would be the case, we often resent that we aren't listened to more.
Our 'visibility' as a PAC member has been left to our personal discretion, which I feel is entirely appropriate.
That's just me, on a couple of limited subjects though. Melissa had some other very good questions, some of which I've been asked myself. Questions such as why do some PAC members not want to be revealed? and how did PAC members get chosen? and what is the worst thing about being on PAC? and does Zynga listen to what PAC has to say?
-to name a few.
Load up an energy pack or a stamina pack and listen to the show yourself! You'll hear a bit of me - I'm the quiet one :0)
Join in tonight as The Facebook & Zynga Podcast hold "PAC Day" with LIVE questions and answers of several PAC members including our own Mistyfying Misty Dady!!
Head over to the show's BlogTalkRadio site for the call in number before the 8 PM Eastern start time... you don't HAVE to call in... there is a chat feature as well...
You may recall Misty kicking off a series of articles recently, related to a list of issues that PAC put forward to Zynga. Having started off with Pop-Ups during fighting, and then Event Fatigue, we now move on to #3.
3. It’s not cool that the fight page sometimes jumps to the fight or rivals list and back again when I am fighting, which often causes me to miss out on icing other players.
This has been fixed with the release of the new fighting system. We are very excited about the new Mafia Wars fighting experience, but it still has a few bugs that we must fix before we can extend it to everyone. We are working to get it out to every player as soon as possible.
Well, this issue has largely been made redundant by the fact that there is a new fight module on it's way out (slowly rolling of course) which appears to not have this jumping issue. Of course, it has another effect that causes the same problem, that is when someone else "steals" your ice, you get a pop-up for each attack carried out after the target was taken down. This means you then have to close each one or switch to a new tab to carry on fighting.
So Zynga still have some work to do to in order to smooth out the fight process. How badly has the screen jumping during fighting affected you before? And if you're on the new module, what ways have you seen the process slowed down?
Item number 2 on Zynga's Q&A list from the PAC has to do with the frequency and type of events ~ a subject near and dear to many of our hearts. To air your opinions on this topic, go to this Getsatisfaction thread.
2. There are too many events, especially spammy gifting events. The pace is exhausting and all that gifting is obnoxious!
Since receiving this feedback, we are now, more than ever, building events around activities that you already enjoy doing: fighting, doing jobs, robbing, etc. There will always be some element of asking for and sending gifts, but we are moving away from the random requesting of gifts that do not contribute to game play. Our goal is to create events that enhance the gaming experience and we are always open to suggestions and ideas. Please share your feedback regarding Events & Gifting.
Heck yeah, this is a big issue. It's fair to say that this was a heated subject for the PAC. I used to go out of my way to finish every single event that came along, it was almost an achievement. But then they started piling on the events thicker and faster, it got really ridiculous there for awhile.
These days, Zynga has slowed it down a bit, and has stayed away from the gifting events specifically, players were especially tired of those. Personally, I'd like to see them slow it down with the events even further, and even give us a break here and there. If you agree (or even if you don't agree), please chime in.
The Mafia Wars blog has posted an update that I'm looking forward to reviewing. Following is a list of 22 of the the many items that PAC has taken up issue with Zynga over the past few months. Look for my review a little later, but here is what they have to say, along with links to Getsatisfaction threads on which we want your feedback.
The Mafia Wars Team takes player comments very seriously and looks for every opportunity to improve the game. As we make positive changes, we understand that there will always be areas upon which we can still improve, and we want to hear from you, the player community, to better understand what you think is most important. To that end, we recently asked the Mafia Wars PAC (Player Advisory Committee) to compile a list of issues currently frustrating our player community. Below, we provide a status update on each of those and links to where you can go to continue the conversation with us regarding each individual issue.
PAC’s List of Player Complaints
1. Popups during fighting (except for ice/kill popups) are making me miss out on icing other players! Grrrr!
3. It’s not cool that the fight page sometimes jumps to the fight or rivals list and back again when I am fighting, which often causes me to miss out on icing other players.
6. I don’t see many players on my fight list or they are all dead/iced. What gives? Also, sometimes a player shows up as active on my fight list, but no "Attack Again" button appears after the first time I attack them. What’s going on here?
7. When fighting a boss, my health sometimes decreases because I’m also being attacked by other players. Please make it so that other players can’t attack me while I’m fighting a boss, as it can prevent me from being able to ice the boss.
11. Whenever I level up, my energy, health, & stamina points refill, which is cool, but I lose any points I had remaining, which is not cool. My existing points should just be carried over and added!
13. I’m sick of the gifting page popping up whenever I enter the game. I know how to gift and if I have gifts waiting for me. I don’t need this annoying reminder!
15. Is it a bug that, unlike with energy, I can't get up to 125% stamina, which causes me to miss out on stamina points received via boosts in mystery bags and from stamina-producing Brazil properties?
We want to hear your feedback! Please share what you think via the Mafia Wars GetSatisfaction page. And, if someone has already raised your question or issue, please be sure to comment or "Me Too" the topic so that it raises to the top as a hot issue that deserves our attention. Thanks for helping us to craft a better Mafia Wars!
