The Q and A Session today went off without a hitch. Although, there were a few questions that were off topic most who participated did so with great admiration and respect. We would like to thank Zynga and the Mafia Wars team for allowing us the opportunity to pose some of our questions and concerns directly to them. If you want answers it is ALWAYS best to get them straight from the source.
The Q and A Session opened with the following post;
LIVE CHAT - Dev Q&A Session
Heya Mobsters!
Our developers are here to answers your questions! The thread is now officially open for you to ask our developers question that you have regarding the game. But remember, the topics for discussion today are fighting and mission events.
Please read the guidelines once more before asking your questions.
The thread will be open for 2 hours after which will close the thread and will not take any more questions. We will try to answer one question per person so that all players can get a chance.
List of participants from the Mafia Wars team today:
Angrybulb (Game Designer)
Month (Game Designer)
Zodus (CS Lead)
James Clone (Product Manager)
Dr.Kvasir (Software Engineer)
Rebellious Rogue (Software Engineer)
BarryKash(Community Manager)
Angel Fiona(Community Manager)
Melissa Y (Community Manager)
So go ahead, keep your questions simple and relevant to the topic given.
The Mafia Wars Team
There were about 20 - 30 or so active participants who asked questions or made comments during the session. We, here at Mafia Spirit, asked only 2 questions. Both of our questions we answered promptly and with direct, to the point answers.
Our first question was;
Since we have the family module, Will we ever see a family mission or quest where different members within a given family will have different tasks to complete separate from other family members but all contribute to the same family mission?
And was answered by angrybulb with the following response;
Hi,
That's a fantastic idea. Families are a very important aspect of the game for us. We have been thinking along similar lines. Can't promise you a timeline/ release date for this feature, but stay tuned. And help us make the game better!
Your friendly neighborhood game designer!
The issues that Zynga faces with this kind of suggestion are many and include the variances in family sizes to progression levels to levels of individual players. It can likely be coded and implemented into the game but it would be a great undertaking for the developers. If they can pull this off it most certainly would prove their worthiness as game designers. Especially if they can succeed at designing such a feature that would have no flaws, glitches, work-arounds, or ways for some to cheat the design.
The second question we asked was this;
Will the Boss Fights return to Mafia Wars (like Lily 'o The Valley)? In addition, will the top rewards (w/ 200+ Att/Def) become more achievable? Too many players have never witnessed anyone in their family ever receiving one.
And was responded to by Month (Game Designer) with this comment;
yes, we are trying to do something fun for the next one. I Requiescat that you stay tuned
-jeefef
We can take this as an official confirmation that the Boss Fights will be back. Therefore, those of us who enjoyed them can begin to get excited about what just may be coming our way with the Boss Fights. Many fear, however, that the next Boss Fight will have something to do with The Raven. I say if the next Boss Fight (Raven or not) is in a similar format as the old ones (minus the ability to buy through it unlimited times a day) and ties to the, currently unachievable, achievements for The Raven that would be o.k. with me.
Here are some of the other questions and answers that we (Mafia Spirit) found interesting and worth highlighting;
Originally Posted by Impending Doom
Question regarding mission events here. When Return to Cuba was on many questioned if it would happen to Moscow and Bangkok either. For at least 2 months I know of now there has been a new Cuba mission logo in the servers and one for Moscow and Bangkok ( Them 2 never even had missions before )
Are these events going to be released in the near future? It will be nice to have the old places back even if just for a limited time.
Don't trust what you scrape from our servers. :P Everything that's on the servers isn't necessarily released into the game.
Originally Posted by JAFIO
What about under populated / empty fight list??
Are there any plans to get the free player back in this game or is it going to pay to play only?? [Deals with players available for fighting]
Answering your first question, we are aware of this issue and we are working on populating the fight list with more valid targets. For the second question, we understand that our player community has reduced over the years, we are working on enlarging our player base, payers and non payers alike.
Originally Posted by SlayerAlex
Any possibility that hitlist could get a refresh? One hit a time there is pretty lame.
like adding a power attack button???? might that be something that we are working on??? hmmmmm...
Originally Posted by cxoa
Was the effect, of the VIP program, on fighting really thought through? The difference in mafia attack and defence from those that are able to pay and those that are not is ever increasing, making those unable to pay less competitive and more likely to just quit.
They do have an advantage, but it is not insurmountable.
Originally Posted by Impending Doom
You would be right in guessing I've played this game for a reasonably long amount of time. I was around before achievements or gifting. :P
So would another solution such as giving people health insurance work? Like an in game auto heal option for everyone. DR takes an extra 10% on top and it can be left on regardless if the player is logged in or not. When people quit they aint gonna be bothered in most cases to log in one finial time to turn health insurance off. That should really get the place populated again.
we actually had to make sure this doesn't happen. otherwise, players would be continuously attacked when they are sleeping or at work, and unable to retaliate. but in my opinion, this is easily the biggest problem in the game today, so the sooner we can fix this issue, the better.
-jeff
Originally Posted by Impending Doom
Great thanks for the clarification on that AB. I assume the reason these went away was also to do with not being able to populate the fight lists properly. Would a return with no fighting be on the cards? Like before Cuba went there was something about the government not allowing large gatherings so only bring 50 to a fight. Could have something along the lines of the government is heavily guarding mafia hot spots since the defeat of the neo-imperium.
Populating the fight lists isn't the problem. We want to keep a limited number of cities open at any time so that the players are not overwhelmed. If we ever reopen Cuba or Moscow - we will advertize it. You will know!
Originally Posted by 110inNC
Good Morning, First I want to say I'm very glad to see this, it gives hopes that you may actually listen and learn somethings about your game (not meant in a negative way, but I know how it is to develop something then you realize, oh that just doesn't work for average user). I'm a fighter style player, on a relatively slow internet connection, and I have a fairly decent knowledge of Javascript, PHP, and HTML markup. Thanks for taking the time to read this
1: Why are so many images used in the fight module?
As someone with a slow internet very often these images very slowly load in, if at all, and make it very hard to use the module. Fighting in general has always been a simple thing, Click to Kill, I do not think anyone would complain if it took a ascetics downgrade for the sake of speed.
Most of the images are necessary to load and to display the loot you obtain from fighting. Aesthetics are an important part of Mafia Wars and makes the game look great!
Originally Posted by 110inNC
Good Morning,
4: Damage?
Not a question in itself per say, but I personally have almost 15,000 health in a game, and without a script to kill me, or a numerous amount of people, I do not have to worry about being iced. Yes, this has been a strategy in the game for fighters and clan (excuse me, families) for a long time, but it has come to a point now where its become a problem. I would love to see a skill based damage algorithm or something similar (like moscow had). A lot of reason scripts have become abundant is its not possible manually to do what needs to be done, you fix that issue, and scripts are no longer needed.
Thanks for taking the time to read~BV
We have been discussing a lot of new kinds of fight mechanics, almost all of them will be scaling damage with skills.
-jeffef
Originally Posted by Impending Doom
Ok so another counter to this. If this is "easily the biggest issue" as you put it then why the need to put the gradient heal timer back in with in the last few days? I didn't have it last week but I noticed it as of yesterday. Rather annoying and while it's there I can't heal. If people can't heal it's surly working against the situation further is it not?
biggest issue, but also, hardest to fix
the gradient health timer exists to keep players(like you) from remaining un-iceable. the timer should reset to the normal 40 or 60 seconds once you get iced.
Originally Posted by dawnskies
now another question, how can my paid double health with chicago boost totaling about 95k health be dropped in less than a minute? when fighting with normal health takes about 20 seconds if being hammered at the moment?
We weren't bluffing when we said that we've made fighting faster
Originally Posted by Lil Ms Mandy
Assuming you get the health problem under control, and you find a way to get the fight list populated, awhile ago there was a family ice event that families were really excited about. It was ruined for everyone by a few families that exploited the event by attacking alt accounts with scripts for easy ices to get the top prize. It would be nice to have this event again, but with the restriction that all ices that count are only from the fight list. Are more family fighting event something you can look into in the future?
We shall consider this. However, we are looking at fight list improvements before bringing similar events back.
Originally Posted by dawnskies
ha yet when i blast someone it takes forever to get the ice if they dont manage to hit their 40 sec mark to heal or pay! my hands are going numb these days!
Like I said, we are working on formulating high impact attacks. We do care for your hands!
As you can see, there were a lot of good questions and responses from the Q and A. You can take from this what you will, but I only ask that you also take from it an Olive Branch showing that Zynga and the Dev’s ARE trying.
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