Friday, August 19, 2011

Nerf & Turf: New Ratios and Loot Stats

Zynga just can't seem to get the exp/energy ratios for the Smuggler's Haven right. Maybe if the people who chose the ratios in the first place and those who updated them played their own game they would have said "Hey something's not right in SmellsVille". Here are the ratios along the way.

Original

Super Cool

1st Nerf

Not Bad

2nd Nerf

You Suck

Here is the same data for the Ruby Level in chart form.

Job	Original Ratio	1st Nerf Ratio	2nd Nerf Ratio
1	4.73	2.37	2.24
2	4.46	2.22	2.22
3	4.65	2.32	2.32
4	4.72	2.35	2.21
5	4.42	2.21	2.13
6	4.76	2.38	2.21
7	4.66	2.33	2.22
8	4.38	2.19	2.24
9	4.72	2.35	2.21

This isn't as bad as it could have been. The best job now is "Help Defend The Haven From Police" and has a 2.32 exp/energy ratio. The great part is it doesn't require consumables. The old best ratio was "Intimidate A Local Thug" and that ratio was 2.38. Hopefully they are happy now although I was surprised to see a ratio above 2.2. I hope it wasn't an error as this job didn't change to what it was before. Would they nerf this thing for a third time and make themselves look even worse? We shall soon find out.

New

Old

To make up for all the bullshit, Zynga has increased the stats of the 4 loot items that drop in the Smuggler's Haven as well as the mastery item. Here is the breakdown.

Loot Item	Stats Before	Stats After	Difference
Ballistic Bliss	160/74	170/74	10/0
Army Cargo Carrier	75/51	83/57	8/6
Ebon Severer	52/78	56/84	4/6
Basking Shark	82/52	88/55	6/3
Fire Breather	54/96	60/98	6/2

Here is a closer look at the changes. All of the items you already owned will also be increased so you should see some improvement in your equipment stats. All 4 of the items that drop in jobs are now active in my inventory and the best ratio job costs less energy so the drop rate will most likely show a little improvement as I can do more jobs with my energy.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Smuggler's Haven: Nerfed Again!

One of the things that makes Mafia Wars so much fun is that it is a living, evolving game. We work hard to release a lot of exciting content and extensively test every feature and event prior to release, but sometimes imbalances don’t become apparent until those features are in use by millions of players. Unfortunately, the XP/energy ratios of the Smuggler’s Haven Secret District is one of those cases and we have determined that they need to be adjusted again this afternoon to preserve the balance that keeps Mafia Wars fun for everyone. The ratios will be closer to those found throughout the rest of Brazil. We want to apologize for the inconvenience, so as a consolation, we will be increasing the stats of the loot received in Smuggler’s Haven. We hope you enjoy the better loot! blog.mafiawars.com

OMG! According to the Official Mafia Wars Blog, they are nerfing the experience/energy ratios of the Smuggler's Haven jobs once again. They call it "balance tuning" but we all know what it really is. Here is a reprint of their lame attempt to try to make us understand. The same message can also be found at Customer Support and Rinzler breaks the bad news on the Zynga forums. There is no indication that any accounts will be rolled back so don't be irresponsible and put out bad information or start false rumors until there is an official word from Zynga. For now it looks like all that is going to happen is the ratios will be adjusted.

Thanks For The Update

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast.

Double Loot; CHARGE Fight

For 2 Days Double Loot From Fighting Is Now Available. Put Up Your Dukes And Get To The Fight Page. Show 'Em Who The Boss Is.

Zynga Updating Servers

Today, 07:04 PM

calle13jr

Super Moderator

Join Date: Apr 2011

Location: San Francisco

Posts: 651

Hello Mafia Fans,

We will be updating our servers today, 8/19/2011 starting at 1pm PDT. This should be complete in about 4 hours. During this time you may experience load delays and slow game performance. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you,
Mafia Wars Team

Facebook Begins Rolling Out The Ticker To More Users

Posted by Nick O'Neill on August 19th, 2011 1:33 AM

While we haven’t confirmed whether or not the move is permanent, Facebook appears to be in the process of rolling out a live feed ticker to the homepage of all users.

What’s most significant is how this could impact the platform as we’re expecting this to become a communication channel for all applications.

The live ticker is a way of giving users access to real-time information while separating the main feed, the stories of which are now called highlights.

It’s an interesting format, but it’s slightly distracting as the real-time ticker follows you as you scroll down the page. Those users who enjoyed the real-time feed as their primary news source will be disappointed.

While the new feed is hard to adjust to, the ticker is an interesting feature with an interesting interface as well. As you scroll over various stories, they pop-over the main feed, making commenting possible.

The ticker first emerged in test format a few weeks ago, but the feature appears to be rolling out for more users.

I’m guessing that this is part of a much broader part of Facebook’s strategy to combat the increasing competition from Google Plus.

The current battle is over developers, many of which already have plenty of their own scars if they’ve been operating on the Facebook platform for the past four years.

Plea To Developers

Just last week Facebook announced adjustments to the patform that provide dramatic improvements for developers looking to obtain exposure.

Most significant is that users can now post on an unlimited number of friends’ walls through platform applications. Facebook realized that arbitrary limits weren’t useful for developers, but more transparent monitoring algorithms are. If developers abuse the newly opened channels, Facebook has made it pretty clear that apps could be shut down.

In order to prevent that from happening, Facebook stated, “We highly encourage limited use of this functionality and continued review of your app insights to ensure that users are responding positively to all Stream stories generated by your app.”

While Facebook hasn’t publicly stated that it feels threatened by Google, actions make things pretty clear. Facebook wants developers to continue building on the platform, and more importantly, those who have left, should also return.

While it’s only the beginning of Facebook’s latest efforts, I strongly believe that the new ticker feature will soon become an open channel for developers, partially, if not fully reviving the growth opportunity previously lost when Facebook pulled notifications from the platform last March (yeah, it has been a while).

With this channel, plus the highly buzzed HTML5 mobile platform expected to launch this year, Facebook hopes to provide a compelling offering to developers.

It’s the exact same audience that Google will begin lobbying to as it expands the Plus platform. Just today the company announced the hire of blogger Louis Gray as an evangelist”. My guess is that he’ll become part of that lobbying effort.

For social app developers, things couldn’t get much better. Facebook’s increasingly fearful of Google’s desire to do anything to be big in the online social market. Competition among platforms is good for developers and theoretically consumers as well. Now all we’ll need to wait and see is how long this new phase of opportunity lasts.