Jun 30 2009
Mafia Wars - Cuba 2
After playing the changed game for a while, a few things have become very obvious. Since money is scarce in Cuba, you will fly back to NY to heal in the Hospital a lot. So it would appear that fighting in Cuba is the first way to get Cuban pesos so you can start to to take over Businesses which will create a cash flow in Cuba.
The MySpace version gives Reward Points each day while the Facebook version has brought in a system of Lotto tickets that will reward various prizes. The top prize is a 1,000 Reward Points for matching 5 numbers out of a possible 70. That prize is equivalent to about $250 worth of Reward Points. You can buy Lotto tickets for Reward Points. You can find the Beta version under Godfather in Facebook only right now.
Loot & Inventory
A very significant change is an improvement in items that can be gained as Loot in Fights and through doing Jobs in Cuba. In a few cases you can buy better inventory in Cuba but most of the items are Loot. They are usable in both Cuba and NY.
Weapons
Previously the best attack weapon was the AR-15 Assault Rifle with a value of 32. Looted weapons now has TNT (42), Aguila HV .50 Sniper Rifle (40), ASC45 “Conquistador” (36) and Para 322 (34).
Armor
Previously the best attack armor was the Federal Agent with a value of 15. Looted armor now has the Guerilla Squad (34), Street Gang Member (20) and Camouflage Body Armor (18). You can also purchase in Cuba the Rebel Sniper (24), Wise Guy (20) and Hired Thug (16).
Vehicles
Previously the best attack vehicle was the Humvee with a value of 26. Looted vehicles now has Hu-9 Helicopter (36), Si-14 Cargo Plane (31), Armored State Car (30), Mini-Sub (30) and Montaine 320 (27).
All of these ratings are for offense only. Currently the game doesn’t give a listing of your best makeup of defensive weapons, armor and vehicles. If you want to drive yourself crazy, you can attempt to keep track of what your defensive numbers are but there is currently no way of confirming that this is what is actually taking place in the game. I would think that this is an area that could be improved upon in the future.
One of the downsides of making the game more complex and more interesting is that game speed is dropping again and you get faced with the mostly 501 groupings in fights to assist Zynga in their Beta tests. The Facebook version currently has over 3,500,000 players each day and that can only mean that the servers will need to upgraded. It also means that the Zynga folks are probably back visiting the Ferrari dealership on a more regular basis since the latest changes seem to have drawn a lot of players into the game.
