stuff123

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.