Level Up Your Family FAQ

Q:  What is 'Family Progression'?

Updated 08/26/2011 at 22:54

A:  Family Progression is a feature which allows Families to level in a way similar to individuals.  For each level, the family is awarded a special perk that benefits all the family members.  Experience towards family level progression is gained by family members completing actions in the game.  The same core actions that help you level will benefit your family!
Q:  Is this a permanent feature to the game?A:  Yes!  This is a new feature that you can expect to enjoy for awhile.
Q:  Do I need to be in a Family in order to participate?A:  In order to participate in this feature, you will need to join or create a Family.

Q:  How do I join or create a Family so that I can participate in this event?A:  Instructions on how to join or create a Family can be found here:  

http://support.zynga.com/CP_ArticleView_WebFull?custlayoutid=1&layout=WebFull&lay

outtmpl=Tmpl_WebFull_1&lang=en_US&gameId=43&Id=kA160000000GooHCAS

Q:  How do the timers work?

A:  The timer in the top right corner of the window lets you know when the current period ends and the next period begins. You have until then to maximize your contribution to your family's collective experience.

Q:  What happens if I don't collect my perks before the timer runs out?

A:  If you do not click the 'Collect' button prior to the clock running down, you will lose all progress and will need to repeat all of the tasks.

Q:  How do I help my family out?

A:  You can contribute to your Families progress by earning experience points for in-game activities that you already do every day.
Q:  What are the in-game activities that will apply to the Family Progression?A:  There are four areas which will apply to this event

1. Helper:  This experience is awarded for showing loyalty to your mafia.  When you earn enough helper experience you can collect a reward bonus of Helper experience and Family experience.

2. Jobs:  Doing Jobs in any city will give you the experience that you need to earn your reward bonus.

3. Ices:  To ice an opponent you will need to drop their health below 20.  By icing enough players player you will obtain the bonus experience needed.

4. Property:  When you craft weapons, armors, vehicles, and animals in New York you will earn experience.  The higher your property upgrades, the more experience you can collect.

Q:  Are there Mastery levels for these activities that I can progress through?A:  Yes!  There are Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels.

Q:  How is the feature tracked?A:  When you visit your Family tab you find the progress bar.  This will show you which level you are on as well as what your current mastery. This will also show the Leaderboard for each of the four contributing activities.

Q:  How many levels are there?A:  There are 10 levels that you can complete.

Q:  What is the Leaderboard?A:  The leaderboard will show the top member of your Family who contributes the most for each of the four categories.

Q:  What are Family Perks?A:  There are ten perks associated with Family Progression and each one:

Q:  How do I know which perks my Family has earned?A:  This information can be reviewed by clicking the 'Perks' button on your Family page.

Q:  What happens to my Family Perks if I change Families?A:  The perks are linked to the Family.  If you decide to leave the Family, the perks that were earned there will be lost.

Q: What happens when I join a new Family, will I get the perks they have already earned?A:  Yes.  If you join a new Family, the perks that they already have will be applied to you as well.

War Loot Issues Resolved?

War Loot Issues Resolved

Many players have reported that finally Zynga has gotten the rewards associated with the Declare War feature squared away. How could we forget the deplorable war loot roll back incident. To make it worse, nobody was getting their 5 war help items per day as intended. After the roll back, you always got the message that "You have already helped in five wars today and will not be eligible for the helper reward" even if you hadn't helped in any.

For the fist time since the roll back, I finally got 5 helper rewards for the day. I wasn't alone as I saw quite a few posts pointing this out. It's too bad that almost all the war loot sucks now. Maybe they should open up the next tier of war loot to celebrate getting it right.

HOW TO KILL THE SPINNING BULLETS

Close Your Spinning Bullets Compliments of Team Spockholm

Nothing is more irritating than getting hit with the spinning bullets. Refeshing, closing or unframing your game usually gets rid of them but it's always a toss up between waiting it out or taking action.

If you have installed the Spockholm Toolbar, you will notice your spinning bullets have something more to offer than the suggestion of refreshing.

Zynga

Team Spockholm

That's right, there is an option to close them. Just click on "close link" and you can move on and go back to playing the game. It works every time!

If you haven't installed the Spockholm Toolbar, what are you waiting for? In addition to providing an easy way to get rid of your spinning bullets, there are many other features that you will love. For an overview of the Spockholm Toolbar and instructions on how to install and customize it, go here.

This addition was added recently and Team Spockholm wanted to see how long it would take the community to notice. It was hard for me to not post about something so cool. Within a few hours, our friends over at the Mafia Wars Maniac and Mistyfied Mafia Wars & Pimping posted about it. Hayden gave kudos to Zynga and Misty thanked them. Little did anybody know that Team Spockholm was responsible. This is yet another example of Team Spockholm providing us with options that Zynga won't.

Family Battle Change - 1 Hour Battle

Goodbye 48 Hour Battle...Hello 1 Hour Battle

If anybody cares about the Family Battle feature, the 48 hour Battle option has been removed and replaced with a 1 hour Battle.

The help page has also been update to reflect this change.

Family members now have to join the battle by clicking the "Join the Battle" button and have the option not to if they don't want to participate. Admin are automatically thrown in whether they want to battle or not. The time synchronization is a little off but ices will start counting as soon as you join the battle.

On the Family Leaderboard, the Skirmish is the 1 Hour Battle and the Battle is the 4 Hour Battle. Zynga really needs to fix the backward buttons. If something is highlighted then it should be displayed, it's ass backwards. They should also bother explaining these changes and how the scoring systems work.  There is nothing on the Official Mafia Wars Blog or Customer Support.

Something appears to be wrong with the scores as well. You will notice that the overall family score s much lower than the individual scores. Enter New Name of the AssHat Family has a individual score of 65,250 but the total score is only 5,333. This has been confirmed on other accounts as well.

Chicago City Mission Walk Through

Chicago City Mission

Here are all of the Chicago Missions. You can see they are quite pricey to buy off so you might as well pace yourself. There isn't a timer so you have from now until Mafia Wars or Chicago shuts down. I was told there are only 9 Missions. I can't verify that because I'm stuck with a bug on the 9th Mission and Live Chat s no where to be found.  I don't know if more Missions will be added once new districts in Chicago are released.

Mission #1

The Shootin'

Mission #2

Cut The Crap

Mission #3

Duck And Cover

Mission #4

Smuggling

Mission #5

The Job

Hint:  The second task states to "Do jobs in order to find some weapons to defend yourself with." in order to acquire 50 9MM Pistols.

You can buy these from the City Store for 900 Clams as they don't appear to drop very well by doing jobs.

Mission #6

Rum Runner

The last objective requires that you loot 20 Michiguns by doing jobs. After spending thousands of energy, I could not get one of these to drop. Customer Support completed the task for me.

Mission #7

Dodging Dogs

Hint:  The last objective requires you to win 10 wars. You can get credit for winning a war f you are the last person on the winning side to attack. If you respond to a war help request and get the option to attack the head shot, you will get credit.

Use the Operation War Helper by Team Spockholm to decrease your searching time and hope you are the lst to arrive. Of the 9 wars shown below, 5 of them were head shots and I breezed through this objective with 2 more scans.

Mission #8
Break-In

Mission #9
Take Care Of The Bodies

Facebook Feed Change Draws Negative Feedback

Facebook Made A Few Changes Today And Facebooks Users Are Thrilled. So Thrilled They Shared Their Thoughts Today. Take A Look At What Was Being Posted. 

 





 

Concrete Shoes On Sale - Nice When I Can't Get Into Chicago

Zynga Is Adding More And More Insult To Injury. They Have Decided To Place The Concrete Shoes On Sale In The Marketplace At A Rate Of 20 For 9 RP.  

These Concrete Shoes Are Used In Chicago. Possibly For Building Propertys. I Truly Have No Idea What I'd Be Purchasing These For.  

Since I Can't Get Into Chicago Because I Haven't Paid For The Early Entry Why Should I Care?.   

Information accessed by games in Google+

Information accessed by games in Google+

Many games in Google+ need access to some information about you in order to work. When you click Playto start playing a game for the first time, you will be told what information a game is requesting from your Google account. Please read the request carefully. If you choose not to grant the game permission, your information will not be shared and you will not be able to play the game.

All the information shared with a game developer can only be used by the developer to improve your experience within a game. It cannot be used for any other purposes such as advertising or attracting other users.

Below are a few examples of how games may use the information that they request:

• Name, profile URL, and photo: Typically used to create your game profile, personalize the game for you, and help your friends find you.
• Country, language, and timezone: Typically used to tailor the game you’re playing to your location and language.
• Gender and birthdate: Typically used to customize text that refers to you.
• E-mail address: A game may want to directly send you game notifications, updates and special offers.
• Ordered list of your people in your circles Google gives the developer an ordered list of people from your circles. This tells the game developer the people you are most likely to want to engage with in the game. The order is based on your interactions across Google. This information could be used by the game to present you with people to play the game with, including to invite to the game, and to send gifts and messages.

If you choose to play the game and later decide you're not comfortable with the permissions you’ve granted, you can remove the game's access to your account. Any future updates you make to your account won't be accessible to the game developer.

You can review a short summary of the permissions you have granted the game on the page linked above. To review in full information that a game is accessing, you'd need to remove the game's permissions, then attempt to play the game again so that the permission dialog re-appears.

ICE SEASON 10 REWARD CHANGED (UPDATED)

Zynga's Nerf Monster Was Quite Active Yesterday. Ice Season 9 Closed And No One Could Collect Their Owl. No One Could Begin Ice Season Ten. 


Once Ice Season 10 Did Open The Reward Was Posted As An Arctic Fox. 


Then Zynga Said;

And Replaced The Arctic Fox With A Slightly Better Loot Item. The Sky Manta.

Google Opens Social Network

Google Opens Social Network to All Users, Adds Features

September 20, 2011, 5:38 PM EDTBy Brian Womack

Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., which started its Google+ social network in June as an invitation-only service, is opening the site to all users and rolling out new video-chat and search tools to attract more members.

The company is making its Hangouts feature, which enables group videoconferences, available on mobile phones and for live broadcasts on the Web, wrote Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering, in a blog post. Mountain View, California-based Google also is adding new search capabilities to the social site, which had about 29 million visitors in July, according to ComScore Inc.

With the changes, Google has boosted the number of Google+ features to 100, an effort to woo users and compete with Palo Alto, California-based Facebook Inc., the biggest social network, with more than 750 million members. Google unveiled an online-game service last month with developers such as Zynga Inc., maker of the Facebook game “FarmVille,” and Rovio Entertainment Oy, creator of the hit “Angry Birds.”

“For the past 12 weeks we’ve been in field trial, and during that time we’ve listened and learned a great deal,” Gundotra wrote. “We’re nowhere near done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups.”

The new search service will find content such as photos from within Google+ and around the Web, he said. More than 1 billion items are shared daily on the site, he said.

As part of the improvements to Hangouts, the company is planning to enable new ways to share content. That includes showing friends what’s on a user’s computer screen, such as photos or lesson plans; sharing drawings on a digital sketchpad; and incorporating Google Docs, including word-processing documents.

Google fell 5 cents to $546.63 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has declined 8 percent this year.

--Editors: Jillian Ward, Nick Turner