Hello Mafia Community Members,
I’m writing this address today because we have several important issues currently that affect many of you and we’d like to take some time to give you an update on our progress as a team. One of the more recent complaints from community is a lack of communication from us and I’m letting you know that this responsibility is on the shoulders of me and my team. We are taking big steps in the right direction to ensure you get your messaging from the development team quicker and in multiple viewing locations.
My team is on the forums daily and one thing we have been great at is delivering your messages to the team, a major kudos go out to Al Catraz and Bandilero our Super Moderators and their moderation teams for staying in constant communication with us at all hours of the day. Also a huge kudos to you, our forum community for working with us to catch issues early after release so we can stomp them out faster. I’ll be addressing several topics which I have highlighted in bold so you can read the portions that you are most interested in hearing about.
COMMUNICATION: Part of our dedication to opening our communication is a promise to deliver release notes to the community. We are ramping up this process now and you all should see our latest notes delivered in easily accessed locations this weekend or early next week. Our Developer Section is full of authorized developers and designers, these folks have been having active discussions with members of our community since that forum was opened in February. If you haven’t stopped by, please visit and see what the latest hot topics in the Developers Section.
GIFTING: Gifting is a natural and fun part of the social sharing within Mafia Wars. Many of you have requested the ability to send more gifts daily. We are working on solutions to this request. We have some changes coming to our system that we hope you are going to enjoy and that make your life a little bit easier. We’ll be able to share more specifics about these changes with you early next week as we get final approval and testing on the things we have been working on since Vegas was released and Myspace was updated. In June we made some changes in the system that slowed down gift sending and we removed some items that were previously giftable to a non giftable state. These decisions were made at a high level because some users were exploiting the systems and duplicating items. Slowing down the gifting program and removing items from the gift list was a temporary solution for us so that we could build in some more sophisticated exploit management tools and detection alerts. As we implement these systems you will see us open up the gifting world again and place more items into the lists again. If you have an item in the game that you would really love to see on the gift list, please visit this thread and make your suggestion. Gift Suggestion Thread
CHEATING: From checkers to chess people will find ways to cheat in a game when you aren’t looking. Mafia Wars is no exception. Earlier this year, our Mafia Wars Executive Team made a commitment to the community that we would crack down on cheating and exploiting in the game. While the evidence of our success may not be obvious to everyone, we have made tremendous progress decreasing the number and impact of cheaters and exploiters in the game. We have a dedicated effort composed of members of our CS, QA, Community, Security and Development Teams working together to fight this fight. Playing against a cheater is a frustrating and non enjoyable experience and we have a serious commitment to eliminate the areas where people can cheat against other honest players.
3rd PARTY TOOLS & PROGRAMS: Are against the rules. We are currently assessing many of these programs and finding out how they interact with our systems to prevent them from causing game imbalances. Furthermore, installing any unverified software can be dangerous to your own system, from both a virus and security standpoint. If you are using a tool or program for some aspect of the game please understand you are doing so at the risk of being flagged for investigation. Investigation on accounts could lead to more serious action or the removal of items or points if it is determined that those items or points did not come from legitimate sources. If you are involved in player to player trading you cannot always be certain that the goods you are receiving are legitimate. We are working on solutions to combat this issue.
3rd PARTY LOOT & POINT SELLERS: Are engaging in fraudulent & illegal activity often obtaining their goods using stolen identities and credit cards. Purchasing points or loot from these sources could leave you at risk within Mafia Wars and within the real world. Before you purchase make certain you are purchasing from an authorized vendor of Zynga and Mafia Wars. Many groups and individuals are good at making fake virtual store fronts. If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is, so be careful to protect you, your account, and your credit score. Make a dent in real internet crime by not supporting unauthorized sellers.
BOYCOTTS & THREATS: These tactics are not necessary to get our attention and often end up ruining relationships that can be constructive rather than destructive. Our forums are the best way to get our attention on matters that are important to you. Mafia Wars community consists of millions of people that play our product daily and tens of millions that play monthly. That’s a lot of people who have a lot of wishes and desires for improving the game. Help us keep our communication lines open. While many of us work long hours, we are required by law to take some down time. This means we must prioritize and schedule the time we do have to work on the issues and features that will bring the biggest impact and improvement to the game and community. With millions of people wanting things from us we are in a constant state of adjusting our road map and resources to meet the most needs fastest. While we understand some issues are more important to you than others our ultimate eye is providing the best social crime game in the world. Any time we have to focus on a boycott or threat from our community this effort takes resource time away from our end goal. Do all of us a favor and keep us working on the things we should be working on. If there is a problem or project you think needs attention use our Customer Support system, forums, or email feedback@mafiawars.com
Mafia Wars has a very bright future and we want all of you to be part of that future. We have some new announcements coming up very soon about features and designs we have been working on and we will to share those with you. We currently are still very much involved in the Las Vegas launch and are looking forward to when our game reaches 10,000,000 visitors so we can blow up the Armored Truck. We also have a few more prizes and promotions surrounding Vegas so keep your ears on for more news on this coming this weekend or early next week. Help us maintain the lines of open, constructive communication and we will respond.
Thank you all for your contributions and supporting us by playing the game. We hope you enjoy the boss event and some other goodies we have ready to go during the continued promotion surrounding our most recent Las Vegas launch and we look forward to bringing you some new and hot announcements very soon about some new features we’ve been working on that we hope will blow you away.
Best,
Jonezie Malone
Senior Community Manager Mafia Wars
"This is being shared as a courtesy for Zynga Game Network Inc."
A constructive dialog needs to take place if any middle ground is to be found. Bots that allow people to fight or do jobs while they go to sleep, are cheating...and give those that use them a competitive advantage. The argument that I have too much stamina or too much energy to use manually doesn't make sense. People made the decision to overload on energy or stamina because they were planning on using a bot to burn it. I'm against anything that allows you to gain experience on auto pilot, however, I am against restrictions on what I can give to friends and I think switch is definitely a great tool for communication between players.
ReplyDeleteWhy not set up gifting as to allow people to send gifts like they buy inventory items,in increments of 1,5,10,25,50,and 100? This would eliminate the need for such scripts as the chucker and still allow trading among players,and allow those of us in clans to help out our members.
ReplyDelete'Mafia Wars has a very bright future and we want all of you to be part of that future. '
ReplyDeleteThe recent changes in the game have been conflicting with this statement of yours. Players whose level are higher than 500 will most probably need bangkok items to improve their attack/defence stats and by making those items un-giftable, you simply made gifting a useless feature. and as far as contacting you through forums is concerned, zynga has mastered the art of replying without giving out any useful/satisfactory information.
I agree with the replying without giving any real info. Canned answers suck.
ReplyDeleteBullshit response
ReplyDeleteWords mean nothing unless you are willing to follow through with actions..
ReplyDeleteThis is a joke of a statement that makes it clear that Zynga has an EXTREMELY short memory, because VERY few of the promises made when there were horrendous issues with the game at the end of last year have actually be kept. And a lot of the same platitudes offered then are being offered now.
ReplyDelete@Anon #1, I can appreciate your viewpoint to a point. I have never chosen to use MWAP for similar reasons. HOWEVER, your view is also naive. Game mechanisms in place for most of the game's existence allowed people to basically beat the game and serial level. Since receiving skill pts from leveling is one of the few things that have not been nerfed, there is a big incentive to level frequently to build your character. There are only so many places to put skill points. So, as players continue to level they are 1) going to continue to put points towards XP generating stats, i.e. stam/nrg. 2) as they start to hit a high level, e.g. over 1000 no matter what type of character you build you are going to have a high amt of stam/nrg or both. So, your thesis that people shouldn't add to those stats unless they have the time to run them down manually doesn't hold water when Z didn't think ahead when initially designing the game.
What harm is a script that does what I would do without me having to waste a couple of hours? I'm not creating fake items or energy, stealing RP, or anything else. If my computer clicks through the same series of actions I would, what is the harm. Suppose I was handicapped, and needed some assistance to play the game, would it be fair to inhibit me then as well? I don't like cheaters, but scripts that do legitimate actions are just fine.
ReplyDelete