By Misty Dady
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.
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!
All of these are only part of the reasons why I now have Mafia Wars blocked.
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