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Level 120/125/130 Jobs

The level 120 job is Shake Down a City Council Member that pays $23 - 31M costing 77 Energy points and returning 133 Experience points.  You will need 5 Town Cars and 1 Illegal Transaction Record to the complete the job. You also have a chance to loot an Armored Limousine.

The level 125 job is Make Arrangements for a Visiting Don that pays $57 - 67M costing 36 Energy points and returning 64 Experience points.  You will need 40 Town Cars, 20 Body Armor, 20 Chain Guns and 4 Bodyguards to the complete the job.

The level 130job is Take Control of a Casino that pays $182 - 257M costing 63 Energy points and returning 118 Experience points.  You will need the same 40 Town Cars, 20 Body Armor, 20 Chain Guns and 4 Bodyguards to the complete the job.

Keep in mind that your payout and points may be different depending on your Top Mafia modifiers. If you haven’t set up your better players as Top Mafia yet, you should do this since the adjustments are significant. It takes longer to level up now and reducing costs or increasing experience points only makes the game play a little quicker.

Robbing

OK, it’s time for me to get on my soap box about property protection once more. I think the people at Zynga might be reading these tips and the feedback you are providing in some of the comments are also useful. We might actually have them thinking about what the players would like to see in the game.

The property protection disappears with the first 5 attacks no matter how many units you have. The quantity does have an impact on the % drop after that. This should probably be revised so that it takes more attacks to actually remove the property protection when you have a large number of properties. The protection itself is not worth the money. Spend it on more properties and only rebuild to one shield maybe so you have a flag telling you it is slightly over 100%. There should be better safety in numbers.

Property protection should be very expensive and provide better value for the dollar if it is to remain in the game. The mathematics here are in question and don’t make a lot of game sense. The other aspect of property protection is it’s just plain boring because it is repetitive and doesn’t have any surprises, and the same can be said for playing the Hitlist, in my opinion. Fights are more interesting because there are different outcomes to individual attacks. Sometimes you get loot. Sometimes you suffer a critical hit. Sometimes you get money. Sometimes you only get a few experience points. There is a good lesson here.

The people at Zynga have been working on improving fighting and they are succeeding. It is more interesting now but the number of players with 501 is not. This needs to be addressed especially for those that have 501. Are you actually having any fun? I can’t see these players buying Godfather points so where is the advantage for Zynga?

Sometimes making a change to the game really doesn’t accomplish anything positive. Property protection is right up there with the pet in Pirates. Its just a nuisance that could be dropped, in my opinion. I would think it is losing in popularity.

Other Improvements

Reconfiguring the inventory pages is a very welcome modification. It makes it a lot easier to buy inventory items, view your loot and see what you have and need to complete the vault collections. It would have been nice if the loot page was broken down into 3 sections just like the weapons/armor/vehicle page so you don’t have to scroll so much to see what you have. Selling loot at higher levels would not really mean much now. Special Forces has introduced that option along with a lot of features that are present in Mafia Wars.

The other Zynga games are starting to become a little more like Mafia Wars. I would still think that Mafia Wars is still the most popular game and possibly Street Racing has the best overall setup but it could use more variety in Parts and Properties. The key, for me, is still to provide more variety in the outcomes so the game does not become too predictable and, therefore, not become boring.

After playing the game for quite a while and assisting in some of the graphics, I found that I had come to a cap at 100 players and couldn’t find a way to increase this or find any new quests. So I just started all over to have some fun even though you have some idea of where things are going to show up. The game is a lot easier if you have a lot of friends you can ask to join in your guild but you still have to do all the quests and battle monsters.

What I did remember is that while you wait to get enough players to move to another area, you can still do some things and build for later. Some of the quests and particularly the drops get used in more than one place in the game, so you can repeat these and carry some for later use.

The most important drop item after food (health and energy) might be ores and particularly – iron, mithril and steel. These show up more than once in the game and you will use a lot over time. Some of the other items are the webs, poison apples, logs, gold coin, earring, goblin arrows and bear claws. You can carry more of these as well. The idea is that you should carry these and not sell them because they will be needed later. Others are not as important so you might sell them but they have such a low value that it is probably not going to help too much. There are others that show up later in the game, such as dragon teeth and seeds but they are not as important as the others.

This information isn’t going to give too much away about the various quests but it will give you something useful to do with your stamina points if you are stuck somewhere because your guild isn’t big enough. You can visit the sage and buy points to add a mercenary if you like. You can always add food, gold or battle a Wyrm for drops which you can sell later if you already have too many.

With the effort required to rebuild the graphic database, it is understood that new quests are not a high proirity right now but they would be welcomed by players that have really large guilds. Like all games, there is a point at which the game is “used up” but this one could be revived quite easily by just adding quests and other new areas.

It still is a challenge the second time through and yours is to build the strongest guild you can and decide which items you can sell to help improve your overall performance. So it is important to pay attention to your attack and defense numbers and have them grow. Looking at how your guild is equipped (guild page) will help you to understand what you can sell and what are better performers. The closer the item is to your 1st position, the more valuabel it is and selling these items are not usually wise but there are exceptions. Items that are all attack or all defense should be replaced at some point.

Keep in mind, that if you sell an item, you may need it to do a quest as you cover ground that you mastered some time before. Some items are best kept in quantities of 1, 2 or 3 and that will depend on the quest requirement.

It’s still a fun game but it could use some new life.

Like a lot of players, I’m trying to understand what is going on in property protection, robbing and fighting and I have come to the conclusion that the people at Zynga are trying to figure out how to make it work better. These parts of the game are back in what is called beta testing since they need to be refined before they sign off on how they should work.

Note the first screen that I get in fighting. I’ve got one choice here and that is take on the player with 140 mafia size (I edited the screenshots and added the type in red). So I said, no thank you and tried robbing instead.

So I get this screen and the player Yolo (who would name their player Yolo?) has only two groups of properties. Do you see where they are tyring to direct me?

So here is Yolo’s grouping of properties and I can only attack the one. I tried it for a bit and then tried to get to another robbing screen. I got a listing that was higher than mine and all same at 116 mafia size. So I said no thanks, spent some money on properties, went to the hospital and came back to try robbing again.

And now I was presented with a similar choice and the player I got to attack, because  the only choice, was “Dave the gun”. Who would name their player Dave the gun–I’m thinking someone in the design team at Zynga. All the other players had one less mafia member than my mafia size and Dave was the only player lower. I guess they need to control the experiment but doing it live is frustrating a lot of players.

So it would appear that they are working on this part of the game and we should see some changes made and hopefully for the better. Unfortunately, their customer service approach to solving problems is one of those pick from a list of problems thing and they don’t want human contact. They want to put you in a queue and take a number and they will get back to you. No thank you.

Just concentrate on improving the play of the game is all that people are asking. Make the game enjoyable and people will play. Make it frustrating and painful and they will choose another option. It is really that simple.

Property Protection

This is causing a little bit of concern amongst players. The belief is that you should get some kind of immunity for paying money for the protection of your properties. It really should have been called property armor or damage resistance—something more along those lines. The idea that you are safe from attack by paying money isn’t really workable or realsistic but you shouldn’t be attacked by someone significantly stronger than you like a level 69 attacking the property of a level 17. So it needs work.

The MySpace version is trying a single payment for all of the properties to be upgraded which is a good idea. There is safety in numbers so you should load up on any property that you have as a low number. These are easier targets since the percentage drop is quicker. You get higher payouts as the property becomes more valuable so robbing the bigger properties is more worthwhile but you need to check on the total number of each to see where you can do the most damage or just go high if you only want a lot of cash.

Eventually you should see a lot more retaliation via hits but I think most everybody is just confused right now and that would include Zynga. The beta test is still in place as evidenced by the numbers in robbing. How can 18 out of 20 all have the same number of team members. They are obviously using the other ones as the measuring stick for the test.

Collections

Acquiring 7 cigars will get you 2 additional energy points.

Acquiring 7 rings will get you  5 additional defense points.

Acquiring 7 paintings will get you 6 additional energy points.

Personally, I think these rewards are far too low for the effort required to get them so they are not that significant unlike the bonuses now available for top mafia players assuming certain roles like a bagman or wheelman.

Level 110 & Level 115–New Jobs

At 110 you get to do “Make a Deal with the Mexican Cartel” costing me 40 Energy and returning 60 Experience, paying $8,000,000 - $12,500,000. You need 3 Prop Planes, 4 Night Goggles and 10 Automatic Rifles. At least you have a use for the automatic rifles now. You also have a chance to loot a Private Jet which has an attack of 12 but a  very strong defense of 38 (I have one so far)

At 115 you get to do “Blackmail the District Attorney” costing me 38 Energy and returning 73 Experience, paying $12,880,000 - $19,230,000. All the numbers are now adjusted because of the Top Mafia factors that these players contribute. Learn how to assign you best players to the roles provided. The green number will tell you which one should be your bagman or bodyguard, for an example.  You will also need a Blackmail Photo and a .22 Pistol to complete this job. You have a chance to loot a Police Cruiser and I don’t have one yet so I can’t say what it is worth.

Robbing

Looks like a lot of players must have been unhappy with property maintenance and rackateerimg because they are gone or have been dramatically altered in both the Facebook and MySpace versions of the game.

The current replacement for rackateering is now robbing which is a different listing of targets than fights which is a good improvement. You still only get loot in fights but now you may get loot and a bonus (like 2X experience or cash) in the same attack.

The intent in robbing is to target a particular set of properties and get it down to 30% which puts it out of action. I am assuming that this is as long as the player doesn’t pay for protection for that set of properties. You cannot attack Louie’s Deli, Mafia Mike’s, Rent House or Undeveloped Space. The player continues to get money from these properties. If you could attack everything, the bigger players would put all the smaller players out of the game totally.

You also will find it difficult to destroy enough of the property protection to get property health down to 30% in one series of passes unless you have a lot of health and stamina. It seems that the more properties you have of any one type, that more attacks would be necessary to get the number down to the 30% mark. That would be seem to make good sense. If you only have 2 restaurants versus 200, your customers’ dining pleasure is in jeopardy and so is the revenue you earn from these properties.

Based on some recent comments elsewhere,  robbing isn’t turning out to be too fair for the weaker player so expect some changes. The best way to protect yourself seems to be about having a lot of one particular property so you are not as vulnerable. Robbing is in “beta” which means it’s on trial and it appears it needs tweaking.

Buying Properties 

With this change, I now buy properties by starting at the top of the list and buying as many of the highest value that I can afford and working my way down the list. I spend what is left on undeveloped space or sometimes start with boosting undeveloped space if there are not enough units in reserve. You now are not as reliant on the bank. In fact, it isn’t that important anymore at higher levels so banking your money for protection doesn’t appear to be as useful as it was before. Instead sink your money into properties.

If you are beginning the game and just starting to buy properties, you may want to stay away from the restaurant and above until you can get enough cash to protect it. Otherwise, you may lose your properties. It looks like the designers have considered this because I’m pretty sure you can’t rob or be robbed until you reach level 15. You can rob with 1 member/level as long as you have similar numers. At level 100 with 80 players, you rob with 80 but could rob with 100 if you had enough players. So inviting additional players is still wise.

I’m having great difficulty inviting players in MySpace because the app just doesn’t operate properly. It works much better in Facebook, which is why the next category may not be available in MySpace for a bit.

Top Mafia (Facebook version)

There are now six categories that give different improvements such as wheelman reduces your energy requirement for each job. You will have to work with your mafia a bit to figure out which player is better suited for each category because not every category is available for each player. It appears that the higher the ranking of each member, the higher the reward. These are very useful adjustments to the game and you do need to assign one player to each top mafia category.

Since I am at level 112 or so in Facebook, I can’t comment on how this might impact you at lower levels. It would make sense that this is a very valuable area in the game and has much better values for effort than mastering jobs.

So the folks at Zynga are trying to improve the play of the game. The Facebook version has become a lot slower but that could be temporary as they load the new changes. Change had to come, just like the competition would make that happen.

Have you tried Mobties yet? It is a different way to play gang and mob games and will spawn another series of games I would think.

Running a number of villages and supporting them with resources will require a fair bit of farming so a way to make this less tedious is very helpful. In order to make this simpler, I copied a script from the game and modified it to work with my series of local farms and some a little further out. This particular script will bring back 40,000 resources at a time if those resources exist at the destination. Otherwise, they collect what is there and return to the starting location.

The reason I choose to send a scout along is to see what the makeup of the village is and what resources may have been left behind. Sometimes you will find a very large farm that may be better handled by a number of continuous run. My personal best was in the range of 875,000 resources at one location. That would require a little less than 11,000 Light Calvary to bring it all back. Keep in mind that the village continues to create resources while your troops move towards the location. If the number drops when you arrive, well someone else is also farming this location.

The Script

javascript:coords=’xxx|yyy xxx|yyy ‘;var%20doc=document;if(window.frames.length>0)doc=window.main.document;url=document.URL;if(url.indexOf(’screen=place’)==-1)alert(’This%20script%20needs%20to%20be%20run%20from%20the%20rally%20point’);coords=coords.split(”%20″);index=Math.round(Math.random()*(coords.length-1));coords=coords[index];coords=coords.split(”|”);doc.forms[0].x.value=coords[0];doc.forms[0].y.value=coords[1];insertUnit(doc.forms[0].light,500);insertUnit(doc.forms[0].spy,1);end();

First you must purchase the Premium package to run this script in your quickbar menu. Always remember that scripts cannot replace game functions totally or be one action-do everything programs. In this case, you need to be at the rally point for a village to run the script and you must click on Atack and then OK to complete the move. The game coordinators will ban you from the game if you don’t follow their approach for using scripts.

There are a few variables here that need to be input by you before you paste the script in the correct location. You need a list of the coordinates of the farms (usually barbarians) that you want to include in this script. Enter one in the place of the dark blue coordinates and enter a second in the lighter blue. Make sure you leave a space between each set of coordinates. You may enter as many a you want. I don’t  know if there is an upper limit but this isn’t that important since my script has about 100 farms included.

This script will send 500 Light Calvary and 1 Scout to each location. If you want to change that value edit the red numbers in the script to a value you would prefer. Earlier in the game, you can get away with 25, 50 and 100 as other options. As the barbarian villages develop walls, you will start losing an LC or two on each run.

To use the script, you must go to Settings on your main menu bar and the Edit Quick Bar. Add a New Link. You will have three boxes to enter information here.

1. Entry Name - Call it what you like. This will appear on your quick bar.
2. Image - URL: - This is optional. The game used .png image files - 18 x 18 px
   (I made some of my own (32 x 32) and they can be found in Gamestuff - Masterpage . You can right click on an image and copy the image location and then paste it into this box. Keep the file small so it doesn’t interfere with the look of your main menu)
3. Target - URL: - Copy your script with your farm locations and paste it into this location.

If you don’t know how to use the Ctrl Key and additional keys to copy and paste in windows, here is a simple lesson. Highlight the entire text that you want to copy. Depress both the Ctrl key and the C key at the same time. This will copy the highlighted text (or image) to the Windows clipboard.

To paste this information, move your pointer to the location you want and depress both the Ctrl key and the V key and it is now pasted. If there is something in the box that you want to replace, highlight everything to be replaced first and then depress the Ctrl key and V key together. The new text will replace what was there.

Test your script to see that it is working properly. You should see that the villages are randomly selected and your farming runs are a lot simpler now.

With some minor adjustments you can modify this script to run fakes (ram instead of spy and remove the following - insertUnit(doc.forms[0].light,500);

So you work your way from one village to another in the rally point and run the script one at a time as long as you have troops to match.

Job Tiers Mastered

You have mastered all of the level 3 “Soldier” jobs earning the title of “Master Soldier”.

A Golden Skull has been added to your inventory, giving you a 30 second reduction on your health

In this case, I think they mean that replenishment of a health point takes 30 seconds less than it did before.

You have mastered all of the level 3 “Enforcer” jobs earning the title of “Master Enforcer”.

A Money Plate has been added to your inventory, giving you a 5% discount on property purchases.

This is self explanatory. Now if they would only find an alternative to the property maintenance requirements. In the MySpace version they are playing around with the ability to destroy other players property but very slowly. This is more of an annoyance than a good game feature, in my opinion. The creators are certainly having a challenge trying to breed new life into the game.

The most recent change is Robbing has replaced Rackateering. It allows you to gain more money than in Fights but I have not experienced any chance to win loot in this category so it is a little interest to the player who has higher levels. More money is not really a problem for these players.

Robbing seems to get $94,000 very frequently and not loot. Fights don’t pay cash as frequently, have a critical hit occasionally which results in loss of cash if it is not been banked, chance at loot and appear to be a more appealing option. Both seem to have similar points cost and experience points payouts.

Vaulted Collections

Acquiring 7 cigars will get you 2 additional energy points.

Acquiring 7 rings will get you  5 additional defense points.

The bonus would appear to be rather light considering the effort required to get 7 items in one category. Perhaps the other items will result in better bonus levels.

Energy Pak

It makes a lot of sense to not use your energy pak until you have used up your current supply of energy points. If your energy limit is at say 100, then you will get 125 points if you take it down to 0. Conversely, if you are at 75, you will only get an additional 50, topping up to the 125 number. Patience will be rewarded here.

This is a new and quite interesting game with some new twists for the menu based Facebook game platform. The use of the page is a little too overdone with some very interesting graphics. Seems a lot of the game characters are female and they suffer from arthritis. The game designer(s) know what sells so that is smart. The game ringleader, Celesta and a bonus player, Savannah suffer from this malady. Celesta is in fact well-healed.

You will need to save a lot of gold to buy all the different stuff in the game. The variety is a welcome change from short lists that some games provide. The player has a lot of options available which makes for a more interesting game.

Here are some key highlights.

Heroes

They become Generals and you decide which one is active for quests. You should attempt to match the general for the specific quest to open up bonus quests when you have enough energy and the correct troops. Each general supports 5 players so you must have more than one hero. The smart design here is that you are allowed to purchase only one of each and you must meet the 5 level requirement (or partial) to utilize each general.

Duel

Under Battle, you have an option to duel with leader of another army. In order to be successful at this, you need to have the strongest hero available to you and one of each of the best items from the Smith or won in quests. Most players choose to buy Dragons, Phoenix or better troops and forget about this feature so they leave themselves vulnerable to this attack. You can be successful with duels with armies much larger than yours because it is only a one-on-one battle between leaders.

General Game Decisions

Like many of the other menu based games, you have to develop a cash flow to pay for upgrades, so you need to balance between upgrading troops and weaponry while growing your land ownership to generate revenue. Battling and quests are important and you must watch your levels and visit Celesta to heal on a regular basis.

Like most games, a strategy of quality over quantity, is usually more successful. Players with large numbers are only as strong as the protective gear that supports them, so you need to find players with gold and with poor protection. Obviously, your strategy is to protect your players and arm them with the best weaponry as much as possible. You can’t stay small because the 5-player/general feature increases your strength.

Adding players

This game works much the same as all the others in that you can invite directly through the game. Adding them too quickly will make it more difficult to equip them properly so possibly 5-10 at a time is a good approach since not everyone will respond.

Go to your list of regulars that play other games. This game will grow quickly because it seems to be very popular and offers a very strong alternative to the other options out there.

If you are enjoying the game, don’t forget to visit the Oracle and make a contribution to the game developers’ fund to buy favor points. That is how good games grow. You can also take part in the third party offerings for favor points. I choose not to because it generates a lot of spam emails through these offers.

Castle Age is a refreshing addition to the world of Facebook menu based games and looks like it is going to do very well. Welcome aboard.

A Message to All Game Designers

We all play enough games on the Facebook platform to have some better ideas to share with all the game designers that are making new and interesting quests for all of us. He are some of my observations.

The Attack button(s) are in the wrong place. Instead of putting all the game stats and the results page scrolling at the top they should be like a page pulled out from a roll of toilet paper—from the very bottom please. There should always be a “Repeat the Last action” button at the very top of the screen. Scrolling up and down in a web browser is painfully slow and we all can’t read mice print so don’t make it so small that we can’t read it.

Keep the buttons spread out so you don’t accidentally hit the wrong button. There are two many engineers and computer designers building games and not enough actual players involved in the design. The game must be efficient but it must be pleasing to the eyes and very playable. Boring looking games get put on the shelf first.

Keep everything to one small page that uses the full width of usable screen minus the ad space. If necessary make two and three columns, instead of one long column. Make the most often used buttons appear at the top of each column and the least used appear at the bottom of these columns.

Don’t add things to the game that are just very frustrating to the player in the name of making it more challenging. Repeating a pattern of two or three directions 8 or 9 times is a waste of time and just annoys the player. Just make it cost more to do these steps but make them 3 or 4 only. Low probability payouts are better handled by increasing the game cost and increasing the probability. A 1 in 20 opportunity to get something to drop is not worth the effort. Double the cost and make it 1 in 10.

Chances of getting an item to drop less than 5% will ultimately frustrate the player and they may never come back to the game. And there goes your chance to make any money from that player. Remember the customer service phrase. A happy customer will tell 2 friends. An unhappy customer will tell 7!!

Change your tables for selling anything in a game to something better than 50% of the original value. Make everything in the game for sale. What is the point of giving out free items that have no play value. You just annoyed the player again.

If the game is designed properly you should not have to get a message that says you cannot battle with someone in your own tribe/guild/horde/team. Programme it so the player can’t do this. And programme fail safes so the player doesn’t waste more resources than necessary. If it takes 500 units of some resource to max out a category, you should not be able to spend 600. You should get a warning message.

If you have multiple games, share the good design ideas with all the games. I don’t understand this concept in any business. Why would you not want to make all your products better and with little cost because the research and development is already proof by the number of players that are playing the better designed game.

Forget about the idea of bulletin boards and find your answer to the problem in a list of irrelevant other problems. All you do is show the player that there are a lot of unhappy players. This is just bad advertising.

Real customer support people need to respond to customer complaints in any and every business. If you choose to roadblock you customers, you will soon have no customers if they can find a better alternative. Are you willing to take that chance?

Make your game experience fun, challenging and wanting them to come back for more. It is in your best interest.

Job Tier Mastered - Associate

You have mastered all of the level 3 “Associate” jobs earning the title of “Master Associate”. 

A Bugatti has been added to your inventory, giving you -7% damage received in fights.

This time it was a little red old-fashioned Bugatti that makes you stronger in future fights, obviously. It seems like it is important to go back to lower levels and do the 3 levels of mastering each job tier. The approach I have used is to pick the highest cost job in each grouping and deal with it first and use the points left in the last move on a lower value so that you use them all up.

Move you mouse pointer over the yellow loot bag icon to see what loot you have a chance to get by doing that particular job. You will also see red icons around images of items. This tells you that you do not currently own enough of that item to undertake that particular job.

Level 105

A new job appears called “Buy Off A Federal Agent”. It pays $4,200,000 - $5,400,00 costing 35 Energy and returning +57 Experience. You also have a chance to loot a Federal Agent. You must have 2 Towncars, 5 Grenades and a Blackmail Photo. At this level, it isn’t that important about payoff ratios and experience points/energy point because you should be earning very large sums of money now from your properties.

For example, a Casino costs me $644,000,000 plus the Prime Downtown Lot at the time of writing this post. Cash flow is around $108,000,000/hour.

Next new job is at level 110.

Collections

It is looking like there are 5 separate collections, at least, that you must collect 7 different items—cigars, paintings, poker chips, sculptures, and rings. My current holdings range from 3-6 and you must group 7 of one type together to move it to the vault. When I get a seventh, I will let you know what happens. It appears that these items are earned in jobs. I honestly can’t remember if you earn them in fights as well but I think you can earn them there as well.