More on Crime Sprees

The Customer Support page has just been updated to include this information:

Crime Spree and Secret Stash Removal

Updated 10/20/2011 at 21:19

Mafia Wars has recently removed the Secret Stash and Crime Spree features from the game due to the feedback from our players, as well as the very low amount of participation that these features received.

We're making these changes to improve the performance of the game, and the overall experience for our players.  We know that some of our players will miss these features, but don't worry because we'll have new and exciting features for you to enjoy coming very soon!

This Secret Stash has been...REMOVED!

Part of my usual morning routine involves that moment of annoyance when, having completed the other many tasks associated with keeping up in Mafia Wars, I finally get to the business of running out accumulated energy and stamina and then have to decide if I want to bother with that stupid Secret Stash.

I almost didn't even notice when that moment never happened this morning, until one of our other admins commented about it.

A quick glance confirmed the Secret Stash is no longer located under the Bosses tab, either.

And I say Good Riddance!

The Secret Stash has a long and contentious history. They used to litter our walls to the point that many of us blocked our friends from posting on our Facebook walls at all. It was definitely abused by Click Monkeys.

Then some players took it into their heads that you weren't really their friend if you didn't let them post on your wall. That's right, people defriended each other because others could no longer stand the wall spam.

Then there were the error messages. Where the hell did Zynga come up with those error messages?? This stash has already been found ...Your friend got the bonus ...it only took a few paranoid idiots to kick off the great Gamers Unite Divide.

Ignorant people making assumptions decided to educate other gullible players into believing that evil, dastardly scripts were really the problem. Let's never mind all the other countless errors Zynga serves its players. This one SAID someone else took the stash, it must be right!

More specifically, Gamers Unite and its Snag Bar came under fire. Misinformed players started defriending and attacking their friends for even liking the Gamers Unite Facebook page, which in no way remotely indicated Snag Bar usage as the new 'experts' proclaimed.

Facebook pages and groups and independent websites sprang up, all for the purpose of spreading propaganda and identifying "cheaters". It really was quite stupid, because it took barely 5 minutes of actual research to determine that these were nothing but ill-founded lies.

All this, because of a Zynga error message.

This past summer, when the new fight module started rolling out, the fight secret stashes disappeared. The new Secret Stash was introduced, and met with rather lackluster reviews.

You got this

a lot more often than you got this.

Will anyone actually miss this feature? I somehow don't think so. I think this was a long time overdue.

why can't we close unwanted Secret Stashes?

I'm sure I'm just nit-picking here, but why can't I close out stashes that I have no intention of asking for help on?

While I've had more Secret Stash successes lately, more often than not the stash is unsuccessful. Then you have the option to ask friends for help stealing the stash. Sometimes it's something good, like the Savannah Patroller that I collected in the above screen shot.

But that other item, the Ice Climbing Gear? Those are terrible stats, imho. Not only would I not want to bother my friends by sending a request to help me get that item, I really just don't want the item. And so they sit there, and sit, and sit, until they finally expire.

We need a close button!

Are the Broken Secret Stashes Finally Fixed?

I prefer to play my game in an unframed window, not necessarily because I run scripts but because I always get those little Facebook notifications and they bug the heck out of me when I am playing and fighting. Because I choose to do this my Secret Stash was always 'broken' and had that weird guy who I couldn't move to a slot.

Funny how when I play in the Facebook framing my Secret Stash will work just fine. I wish that everything in the game that works while framed would work unframed. I am hopeful that this has since been fixed while playing unframed because this morning I got a Secret Stash pop-up while unframed and I was so shocked that it worked I wasn't able to get a screen shot of it.

If you are one of the many I have seen saying that you haven't had a Secret Stash pop-up for you, first check your settings in the game and make sure it is check marked to drop for you while doing jobs or robbing or fighting or all three. If one of them is already checked, then head over to your operations tab and take a look at the Secret Stash area. If you have 3 of them in your queue, even if they are expired you wont have one drop until you click to view your Secret Stashes which will then clear out your expired Stashes and open up a slot for a new one to drop.

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.

Secret Stash Success post still broken

This must be a glitch :D

 I actually finally got one of those stupid secret stashes, and won a headless Tundra Commando.

Of course, Sharing your success still does nothing. You can generate this post to your news feed, but it does absolutely nothing when your friends click on it.


*thanks Karin C. for helping me verify the stash post is still broken

fight Secret Stashes, may they rest in peace

I've had the new fighting system since June 1st. A couple days later, I realized something: there are no secret stashes in the new fight module!!!!

Now several days since the initial release, I've still yet to see a single secret stash, and others are starting to notice the same.

There are now at least 3 "stash" variations in the game, but most players think most commonly of the controversial secret stashes that are posted from fight result screens, directly onto your mafia member's wall.

Sadly, since their introduction well over a year ago, those secret stashes have returned a number of errors, issues, bugs, mysteries, and controversies.

Even more sadly, the wording and persistence of these error messages created some serious rifts between players. At some point, the website Gamers Unite came to be touted as the source of a terrible, cheating tool called the Snag Bar. Rumors began circulating that the Snag Bar was somehow stealing the loot contained in those Secret Stashes posted to an individual player's wall. Status message rumors flew. Players started attacking each other. It goes on to this day, with multiple websites, Facebook groups, and fan pages dedicated to the views of one side or the other.


I cannot possibly describe how much I will not miss the fight secret stashes. They rarely worked and caused a metric a$s ton of controversy. Good riddance.

If anyone has seen otherwise, please let me know.
mistyfiedmafiawars@gmail.com

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!

sending Secret Stash requests

If you have noticed that you're sending mystery bags instead of secret stash requests, you're not alone.

I found this thread about it on the forums, accompanied by the above image. I believe this is the screen you see when you fail to get a secret stash, but can then send requests to your friends to help you loot a different loot item. It seems that instead of sending out the request for help, it's sending Blue Mystery bags.

This is the first I've heard of it, so I'm guessing something get screwed up since they introduced the X-Men stuff yesterday.

There's also this thread about the same problem. It sounds like this is happening to a lot of people, going by the concurring responses on these threads.

new secret stashes appear...and disappear

The new secret stash feature is appearing for a few players...and then disappearing again for some. My guess is they may be starting to roll this out, or will be doing so soon, so be on the lookout.

This is all I get when I clicked on the posts that I saw. "This feature is not available at the moment".

Gamers Unite: A Challenge

The debate on Gamers Unite and the infamous Snag Bar has now raged on for nearly a year. Which is really stupid, because it takes very little effort to learn the truth for yourself. That's what I did, very early on in this melee, and that's what I'm doing again.

That's right, I have the snag bar installed right now, and it's snagging away merrily. Well, actually, it hasn't snagged sh*t yet. It's not the magical tool that many people seem to think it is. But, if people want to keep trying to tell me it's stealing their stashes, I wanted to see if it's true, so I downloaded it and installed it.

The past few days have seen not only a resurgence of rumors about Gamers Unite and the snag bar, but also a new wave of people claiming that "there are posts th[a]t confirm GU DOES INDEED WORK ON MW" (an actual quote).

"GU" does not in and of itself "do" anything, so the originator of that statement has already shown a clear lack of knowledge of the topic. "Does indeed"? Orly? I must not have the same snag bar as you, because mine most definitely does not indeed.

See that? It snags for Farmville, Cafe World, Frontierville, and Cityville. No Mafia Wars.

Although, the snag bar's snagging functionality isn't quite as awesome as some people think, because it ONLY snags items that are already posted to the news feed by other players for their mafias to claim, and it's not even very efficient at that. So even if it did snag for Mafia Wars, it wouldn't be touching the secret stashes that get posted to your wall, it would only be looking for items published to the news feed for the taking.

Ugh, the things I do for the sake of staying informed! I even unblocked Farmville, Cityville, Cafe World, and Frontierville in order to take a fresh look at what the snag bar's capabilities are, and so I'm flooded with requests from those games, lol.

So, as I sit here actually running the snag bar, I'm telling you, you're wrong.

My challenge to you is, if you're certain that it steals stashes, where is your proof? I want to see it.

mistyfiedmafiawars@gmail.com

some thoughts on Secret Stashes

by Feature Contributor Nick Greig

Despite the fact that yes, these things are still amazingly glitched (thanks Zynga), I would suggest that it is always worth trying to open them, as the loot could potentially be well worth it. Stuff like Golden Poison Frogs, Toxic Gas Scrubbers and Tainted Blades, for just 2 clicks? Yes please!

 Here are my thoughts on things worth bearing in mind when both posting and opening them though ;)

You can only claim 10 per day, so don't post more than 10 to the same person in 24 hours. I woke up to 9 from the same person on the day I wrote this note. It's all good, but it means only 1 other person can get stash loot from me on that day. Personally, I try and spread the Mafia love and limit myself to one stash post per person per day.

When you click on the "Tell your friends about it", that reply goes into the feed, not to the original posters wall. Odds are they'll never see it, unless they happen across it on YOUR wall. Strangely, just replying to the post doesn't always give you a notification either. What you should do, to cut down on the number of feed posts (like we don't have enough with the spam events!) is:

• Hold down the CTRL key when clicking on "Open Secret Reward", so it opens in a new tab (you can use this for any other link as well)
• Collect (or not, if Zynga decided to glitch it) and copy the text by highlighting it and using Ctrl+C.
• Go back to the stash post in the first tab, and "Like" it. This will trigger a notification.
• Paste the text into a reply, so the other person knows what you both got.
• Ideally, the other person will "like" the reply, and the post can be removed. Less clutter ftw!

One less post in the feed and they know you opened it ;) Feel free to share with your Mafia, this note can be viewed by everyone.

Secret Stash fluke

Those Secret Stashes are worth opening! ...sometimes.