Zynga Union Hall Survey

With the rollout of Union Hall comes not only a convenient place to collect all of your properties, but also finally, the option to collection Brazil properties separately - and thus have more control over when we use the extra stamina and energy we collect.

This IS on a slow rollout. I have seen plenty of people saying they don't have this. I myself don't have it yet either.

Soon we'll be able to use Rob Squad boosts to collect additional cash and consumables when clicking the Collect All button in Union Hall.

You can also ask for and send "Super Shipments" from the Union Hall. When you Ask for all parts and people click your post, it says you will receive "up to one for each of the construction properties you can own (the Chop Shop, Weapons Depot, Armory, & Private Zoo in NYC, the Black Market in Brazil, and the Port in Italy)".

Zynga has another survey for you, this one about the Union Hall. You can go HERE to take the survey.

Personally, I think it was stupid to put out the survey when many of us don't even have the damn feature yet. If Zynga's usual style holds true, we're pretty much screwed until they get around to finishing the rollout next week. We play the game over the weekend, but Zynga doesn't bother to accommodate that. 

Zynga's Q&A: #9 Reduce Property Build Clicks

Zynga's Q&A #9 Reduce Clicks for Building in Properties

Next up from Zynga's big Q&A deals with the amount of clicks it takes to get to the item you want to build in your properties. You can visit this thread to tell them what you think.

9. It takes way too many clicks to navigate over to the Chop Shop & Weapons Depot items I want to build!

This is one of the many items already on our To Do list. It will take quite a bit of development time, though, so we plan to include changes like this in a bigger project in which we reexamine chop shops, weapons depots, and all other properties as a whole. Currently, we do not have this scheduled for the near future, but as one of a number of properties changes coming later.

I can't wait until they finally put this higher on their to-do list. The Chop Shop takes 19 clicks to get to the end, Weapons Depot takes = 16, Armory = 15 and the Private Zoo = 12. Every click scrolls the selection by one item.

By the time I get to the end of all four properties in New York my clicker finger is already needing a rest.

New York properties are not the only properties that could benefit from an update. The Port in Italy also scrolls by one item per click and takes 14 clicks to get to the end. I would hate to think how many clicks this would take if they ever felt like upgrading it like they do to NY properties.

It seems like in Brazil they actually got something right (just don't them that). Both the Black Market and the Workshop scroll by three items and only take 2 clicks to get to the end of the list.


All in all that is a lot of clicks just to build a couple of items. I was astounded when I counted for this article how many clicks it takes, 80 total, if you were to build the very last item in each property.

There are so many options that they could choose in order to improve this. I don't want to keep feeling like my finger is going to fall off or have to replace my mouse because I broke it by over clicking. For a brief period of time, the item view in properties defaulted to start with the last item, but was later changed back to start with the first item. Most of us build items toward the end of the list, and so it takes more clicks to get where we're going. 

That would be a simple enough solution, just reversing the first item shown. What are some other ways to improve property build navigation?

New Zoo & Armory Levels: Worth the hassle?

With the recent addition of new levels in the Private Zoo and Armory, many players are asking whether the new items are worth the pain of collecting all the parts needed for the upgrade. When my buddy Michael J asked this question on the Mistyfied Mafia Wars fan page, it made me think "that's a good question!"

He wrote: 

Sorry to hog the feed! I'm curious as to other opinions concerning updating Zoo and Armory shops from level 10 to level 15. It seems to me the only advantage is extra parts to collect, but the buildable items don't do anything better than the current ones available at level 10? [Assuming you build Shark for +3 attack, and Full Body Armor for +1 attack and defense, I guess?] Your thoughts will help me decide how important it is; I thank you in advance!

Personally, I utilize these property builds for the items that increase my permanent skills. As you can see, the original +3 attack item, the Tiger Shark, only requires 28 animal feeds and 1 exotic animal feed to craft. The new item requires 44 animal feeds and 4 exotic animal feeds. The new Coconut Crab has slightly better stats equipment-wise than the Tiger Shark. Meh to the eh. 

Same story with the +3 defense items. A significant increase in the needed animal feed and exotic animal feed, and a slight improvement in equipment stats.

 

For the +20 health item, it's again the same story: higher cost in animal feed and exotic animal feed, slight equipment stats improvement. 

For me, animal feed is not a problem. The exotic animal feed is a different story, but I still never have a problem obtaining them. I just post a free gift link for it to my news feed and a few minutes later enough players have taken that free gift and returned it.

As for the item stats, I suppose they're ok. It's fun to have all the "best" equipment, but since skill points account for the majority of your character's strength, I'd suggest building the items that add to your skill points.

Since all of the new Private Zoo items supply equal skills to items that we were already able to build, the trade-up is in the loot stats. Some players care about loot, others don't. I suspect many will just continue with building the animals they were already building, if they were only after the skills.

 As with the Private Zoo, the Armory also saw a couple of items added which do not give you any permanent skill increase when you craft them. 

These skills were available with pre-existing builds:
+10 Health
+1 att / +1 def
+2 nrg / +2 stam
+1 att
+1 def
+1 stam

If you're after skillz, then building the Desert Eye is silly, because there's already a better item +2 energy / +2 stamina that can be built for fewer parts.

Where we do see an improvement is the addition of the +3 attack and +3 defense items, which is considerably better that what is given by the pre-existing items.

So to answer your question Michael J, the armory upgrades do provide better opportunities for building skill points. The Private Zoo offers only better equipment stats, for the same skill increase :)

New armory and private zoo levels to upgrade

Nifty. It's crossed my mind that we could use some property levels added. Hopefully the benefits are interesting....let's take a look!

Basically what this is, is an upgrade of loot for the available skill rewards. I'm good with this, I like this.

For the armory, again we see comparable rewards, and this stacks slightly in our favor. It's nothing drastic, but it is more opportunity for additional attack and defense skill points.


I'm off to get building :0)