New Bookmarklet's from GuessX

GuessX is back with a couple of cool bookmarklets.

First up is iNeed. iNeed does an inventory scan of what you have and tells you what you need and even shows you the Gain you will get by getting these items. It even breaks it down into different tabs so you know what you are looking for. It also shows you the stuff you do not have and how many you are using and how many you need.

Next up on the list is iCollector. If you are a loot collector, you will really like this tool. This basically does a scan of your inventory and list all the loot that you do not own. It creates a list that is sorted by Item ID,Item Name,Item Stats and if its Giftable. If an item is giftable, then it will be highlighted and show a Giftbox at the right of that line. If you want to add the item to your wishlist, you just need to click on the giftbox(of course your wishlist has to have room).

You can find these bookmarklets and a few more we will review later here

I Am A Cheater

TLDR alert! :D

I'm pretty vocal about the fact that I don't really give a fig newton who's cheating and who's not, as it rarely affects my game. I'm also pretty vocal about the fact that I think people spend too much of their time worrying about who is cheating, especially about the war loot exploit thing. That being said, it's also no secret that many people are very worked up over the subject, so regardless of my personal opinion, even I reached out and asked Zynga to do something about the problem.

The only time those dastardly Scrubbers annoy me is when they use the script to join operations, which they won't complete until the next time they happen to actually be at the computer and in the mood for some ops action. I get rid of those players because of how they affect my game and that of my friends. It sucks waiting on stalled operations.

The issue with Scrubber and the war loot is now common knowledge, but trouble with it has been brewing for a long time. One of my former friends and admins made the issue a personal crusade of his, and he was unhappy that I didn't 'support' him on the matter.

"Misty, . . .why don't you make a public statement that you believe in cheating and glitch exploits? We can pigeon-hole you next to MWLL then."

Ok then, I will, because I know he's not the only one who's wanted me to speak openly about similar topics.

You can try to pigeonhole me all you want, but as others have already found, making assumptions about me and my game made an ass out of them. That person is well aware that I didn't NOT support him, that it simply was not a personal issue of mine.We all have our issues with the game, and war loot exploits was not one of mine. That certainly doesn't mean I didn't recognize that there were others that shared his opinion.  Because I think people are too overwrought on the subject doesn't mean I approve of "glitch exploits". Me saying that people should spend less time b*tching about what others are doing and more time playing their own game does not translate to I "believe in" the war loot exploit.

I have always made it a habit to stay familiar with many of the scripts out there. I do use some scripts personally, and keep track of several other scripts for documentation and research purposes, as well as to answer the questions I frequently get asked about them. I am aware that this is against Zynga's TOS, but I don't consider this cheating. You'll never get Zynga to give blanket or specific approval of third party scripts, but I don't think even Zynga considers me to be a cheater. They've publicly said that they are aware that there are beneficial scripts.

In the years I've played Mafia Wars, I've gone through different levels of script usage. I remember back when I first discovered MWAP, I spent days fine-tuning and running it. Days at a time, sometimes. I've also done some underground script testing in the past. I'd guess those are probably my two biggest Mafia Wars transgressions - that I did at one time fully automate, and that I have used an underground script (don't ask 'cause I ain't tellin'. it was over a year ago anyway).

Automation is boring, though, because I generally like to be very involved in my game. Firstly, because I just really like playing Mafia Wars, and secondly, because I'm always posting about the game so I want to know what's going on. That's sorta the same reason I grew out of my E-ho phase. Doing the same thing over and over isn't as fun, and you give up a lot of variety in your game play because all your skill points went into energy and/or stamina.

That brings me to another area of "cheating" - multiple accounts. Oh yes, I have them, ::gasp:: My original account was all disorganized because I had no idea what I was doing when I first started playing Mafia Wars. So I made a new account, and as any of my friends and disappointed family can tell you, I started playing exclusively on the new account. Do I still have the original account? Yes, as I have all my friends and family there, but I remember to check the account maybe once a month, if that, and I can honestly say I never play Mafia Wars on that account for any reason.

I do have a "baby fighter" account, which I play with varying degrees of frequency. Since I'm trying to be completely honest, I also have various alt accounts which were and are sometimes still randomly accessed for testing or other purposes. They aren't played, and I usually only check them when I'm looking for a new feature that hasn't hit my account yet. Most of them were around before I ever played Mafia Wars, when they were used for similar purposes for another game I used to play called Knighthood.

My second account is the one where many of you first remember me from. The big level 5k+ E-ho. As I previously said, I eventually tired of the E-ho game path, and started over again almost a year ago. As most of my friends can attest, I no longer play the old E-ho account. I do sometimes access it for documentation purposes - it has 24k energy and 8k stamina, so it's great for drop rate studies.

I also dusted off the old account for the Death By Ice event. I'm told that some of the forum creepers wanted to know what my thoughts about the {ASS} debacle was, as it's no secret that I was originally an {ASS}. Oh I'll be happy to tell you - the whole situation seriously pissed me off. I was hugely annoyed that certain clan players decided that new redtag groups were "fake", alleging that the formation of such groups was an insult to the game. I disagree - I'm not in a clan, but I thought the idea of a group put together specifically to compete in the Death By Ice event sounded fun! I thought the Assassin-a-nators group name and tag were funny. I have no problem with people using Assassin-a-nator, and I use it some myself.

image from MWLootLady

It never occurred to me that other players would actually organize pages against the {ASS}es, that people would virtually lie to my face, and exaggerate about things that were being said and done. While a lot of people didn't like the {ASS} or similar groups for various reasons, the big hullabaloo was the machination of only a few instigators. I was so thoroughly disgusted with the behavior of other people that I just stopped playing. That was the first night of event. I was later told that I was removed from the group since I wasn't playing, and that was fine by me.

As to all the things that followed, I can't really speak specifically about them, as I wasn't involved in it. Setting up auto-healing minis wasn't an idea that occurred to me and likely isn't something I would have bothered with. I can understand why some people were upset about that point.

I'm sure I would have used Assassin-a-nator some, but as others have tried to prove and failed, I don't do a lot of automation. I do a lot of fighting manually, and also use Assassin-a-nator to run out my stamina, depending on my inclination. I don't leave scripts running overnight or even for extended periods of time, and I don't consider my moderate use of such scripts to be cheating. I don't really care how much or for what purpose other people are using scripts, as long as it doesn't affect me. And it usually doesn't.

So there you have it, all my dirty little secrets. Enjoy. I hope you're happy now.

rewatching Mafia Wars Live...

I finally sat down and took the the time to rewatch this past Wednesday's third broadcast of Mafia Wars Live. The broadcast is just under 40 minutes long, and if you didn't want to rewatch it in its entirety, feel free to read along for the highlights. These are just my notes, impressions, interpretations, and paraphrasing. If you have a question or want clarification on something you read here, I'd encourage you to watch the portion of the broadcast that I commented on.

With Nate this week was Jeff AKA Month. Cole was MIA this week - missed ya, Crazy Dragon! Jeff is part of the team that worked (and is still working) on the fight changes that are currently being rolled out.

He reminded me a lot of the character Spencer Reid from the TV Criminal Minds. He even kinda sounded like him!

This was the most widely-viewed broadcast so far, I believe. I noticed there were around 4,000 viewers at one point. It had been rumored that upcoming fight changes would be discussed during the broadcast, I'm sure that accounts for some of it.

The fight changes were in fact the first thing announced, as most of you now know. Jeff told us it would take about a week for the fight changes to roll out to everyone. To that, I said "BOOO SLOW ROLLOUTS!" and Jeff replied with "Who doesn't love the slow roll outs?" He was being facetious, of course :D

The upcoming Worldwide Meetup Day on June 25th was talked about. Another Worldwide Meetup Day is already in the works, planned for sometime in early October to celebrate the three year anniversary of Mafia Wars. October 8th was a date that was mentioned, but nothing is set in stone yet.

It was mentioned that the X-Men event had been well-received by players. I'm not sure that's entirely the case, though. Having to decipher a code was a neat twist, and the 7 item loot drops and mastery item were fine too. What I really didn't like about it was all the freakin' confusion, and the big annoying blingies on my homepage. I'm really ready for it to go away at this point.

But I digress - Nate indicated that they would look to make future codes harder to break. It took me several minutes to break the code, I actually liked that part, but I dunno if I want it to be harder. Maybe there should be more steps to take in which codes need to be cracked, instead.
 

 One of the questions from the forum inevitably had to do with scripts. "Which scripts are allowed? Referring to the sanction for the mock war that happened this past weekend?"

Nate's gotta be sick of being questioned about scripts and I wouldn't blame him. His response was brief. He said that there has been a lot of internal discussion about scripts, and to refer to what he said about scripts during the 2nd Mafia Wars Live broadcast. He said scripts are not sanctioned, however Zynga likes to promote positive community events.

Some people didn't like this and referred to it as double speak. Personally, I feel that Zynga acknowledging that there are scripts which are useful and beneficial to players is a step in the right direction. And so is promoting community events like mock wars, despite the involvement of war scripts. 

Nestor got a shoutout for his newly-acquired tattoo which mentions Mafia Wars and the clan/family he belongs to. I think he deserves Reward Points for that!

Jeff told us that there are no plans to expand fight mastery levels. In fact, they are looking at completely revamping that system in ways that complement the fighting update.

Stamina refills came up more than once during the broadcast. Jeff said "Words have been spoken of stamina refills as potential rewards." In no way has this been decided, but it is currently under discussion. Late in the broadcast, he said again that it's being looked at as far as how it could be implemented into the game, and hinted that there could even be 'multiple instances' of stamina refills showing up in the game.

"Best water in the whole office"

 Other topics that were covered:

• Why so many events have been released at one time recently. Nate says it's due to schedule crunching and also that they're testing out different types of events on us that happen during normal gameplay, and that they are trying to find a good balance of how to release the events.

My note: There is no balance! It's been one thing after another on top of another right after another event lately. It needs to slow down again.

• There are no plans currently for improvements to the mobile system.
• We can expect to see an expansion to Brazil and probably a new city after that.
• No new non-event missions anytime soon. "Maybe in the next few months."
• More loot items will be made giftable in the near future.
• The hitlist has not been a high priority for an update.--I don't think they understood this question. The question was, "can the hitlist be revamped to make the monetary achievements attainable?"
• No plans to exclude players from being attacking while in a boss fight, due to the potential for abuse. Jeff mentioned an idea of a separate health bar for boss fights. I like that idea a lot, actually.
• War wins and losses are not determined the same way as fight list wins. There is a set percentage chance that you will win or lose, similar to robbing.
• It was asked when the next generation of FHEL would be out. Zynga is currently looking at updating other areas of loot (such as robbing rewards, etc).
• I think we might have gotten the point across that we don't like Mystery Animals on the Free Gifts page :) Hopefully those wastes of a click will go away soon.
• It was asked "Why are there limits on helping people per day?" I wasn't happy with the explanation that it's so they can make rewards better. I'm not sure they really understood the question. It is a royal pain in the ass being limited to getting helped by only 5 people per day per property, and only being able to help out 5 other people in return. Yes, the limits on helping in jobs sucks too, but I believe the question was geared at building help requests.
• Next broadcast in two weeks on June 15th, time TBD.

I wanted to know why the icing event wasn't extended, as was asked for by many players. Jeff explained that it was actually an early roll-out, all those people that got the event 4 days ahead of the rest of us. The icing event was 'a bit of research'. To see if people liked it, and how many ices we could actually get. It was really supposed to be a 7 day event, he said.

Ok, I get that it was an experiment, so allow me to tell you exactly how pissed off I was at having to wait FOUR DAYS after a lot of players got the event and some had even finished it!

At the very end of the broadcast, Mistyfied FC Rebecca Read asked a very good question: when will fight secret stashes be fixed? In fact, I think that was quite possibly the best question of the broadcast. "What does that mean?" Nate asked. It seems they were somehow unaware there was an issue there. After some explanatory comments from users in the Ustream chatroom, Nate and Jeff said they would follow up on the issue.

And I will personally follow up with them about the issue. The controversy and conflicts over "stolen" secret stashes has been going on for over a year now, and I'm flat-out sick of it.




And of course I had to have a little fun with photo editing. Nate just makes such a good subject, with his mannerisms sometimes...it's his version of the Vogue :P

strike a pose, there's nothing to it!