Well it's the Biggest Q&A Ever! And they want your feedback to help improve the game. In participation with the player advisory committee they are taking online responses to a "questionnaire" on their blog and you don't have to fill out a survey or anything, just respond to the questions you are interested in. And just in a standard message format, let them know what you think should be done, what they are completely screwing up on, or if they did something right and don't want them to change a feature.
Now is the time to do something about all the issues and express your feelings. Do it now or forever hold your peace! Because there won't be another time like this for a long while if ever!
Below is the full Q & A from their blog..
or go here: http://bit.ly/MafiaWarsQandA
PAC’s List of Player Questions & Complaints
1. Popups during fighting (except for ice/kill popups) are making me miss out on icing other players! Grrrr!
We totally agree that popups disrupt the fighting experience, so we’ve removed unnecessary popups to allow you to ice and kill uninterrupted. There may be a rare instance when a popup occurs, but, for the most part, you should notice that this issue has been greatly improved.
2. There are too many events, especially spammy gifting events. The pace is exhausting and all that gifting is obnoxious!
Since receiving this feedback, we are now, more than ever, building events around activities that you already enjoy doing: fighting, doing jobs, robbing, etc. There will always be some element of asking for and sending gifts, but we are moving away from the random requesting of gifts that do not contribute to game play. Our goal is to create events that enhance the gaming experience and we are always open to suggestions and ideas.
3. It’s not cool that the fight page sometimes jumps to the fight or rivals list and back again when I am fighting, which often causes me to miss out on icing other players.
This has been fixed with the release of the new fighting system. We are very excited about the new Mafia Wars fighting experience, but it still has a few bugs that we must fix before we can extend it to everyone. We are working to get it out to every player as soon as possible.
4. It is annoying to have to click 3 times to send a gift back to a member of my mafia. Can’t you make sending take only a single click?
We completely agree that 3 clicks is too many, but the current platform makes this a technical problem that is not easy to fix. We have begun to work on a solution, but it will be a while before it can be implemented. Improving this flow is a high priority and we want to release very soon. We look forward to being able to announce it once it is ready.
5. There are too many Send/Accept Gifts popups!
Gifting is an important part of Mafia Wars. We are working to improve not only the functionality of the system, but also the quality of the gifts. We welcome all suggestions and feedback.
6. I don’t see many players on my fight list or they are all dead/iced. What gives? Also, sometimes a player shows up as active on my fight list, but no "Attack Again" button appears after the first time I attack them. What’s going on here?
These issues are mentioned each time we ask for player feedback. We understand how frustrating it can be when you want to fight and there is no one to attack. We are constantly making changes to increase the number of live players of an appropriate skill level that appear in your fight list, but the number will always vary, especially during times of high fighting activity. When the “Attack Again” button fails to appear, it means that the player was alive when you first loaded the fight list, but was killed/iced before you wanted to attack them a second time. Fights can end very quickly, but we are constantly looking into ways to keep the list as up-to-date as possible.
7. When fighting a boss, my health sometimes decreases because I’m also being attacked by other players. Please make it so that other players can’t attack me while I’m fighting a boss, as it can prevent me from being able to ice the boss.
There are some challenges with this, but we are open to suggestions. The solution we’re currently considering is to essentially give you boss-fight-specific health. You would enter into a boss fight with a full bar of health and be able to fight the boss knowing that only they can reduce it. To reflect the fact that fighting someone in real life would leave you vulnerable to attack by others, you would still be able to be attacked by other players, but any hits you receive outside of the boss fight will only be reflected in your regular health. Because you can still be attacked and even iced while in a boss fight, you’ll still want to give some attention to building good attack and defense stats. The strategic balancing of stats is an important part of Mafia Wars.
8. Why can’t I save my boosts for when I really want to use them?
The new fighting system introduced the ability to enable and disable the use of boosts in each fight. While this does not let you pick and choose specifically which boosts you use and when, we did want to get the basic functionality out, and we will be making improvements in the future.
9. It takes way too many clicks to navigate over to the Chop Shop & Weapons Depot items I want to build!
This is one of the many items already on our To Do list. It will take quite a bit of development time, though, so we plan to include changes like this in a bigger project in which we reexamine chop shops, weapons depots, and all other properties as a whole. Currently, we do not have this scheduled for the near future, but as one of a number of properties changes coming later.
10. The red "War Declared" flag doesn’t always show up. Can Mafia Wars notify me in any other way when war is declared against me?
Notifications are tricky… how would you like to be notified?
11. Whenever I level up, my energy, health, & stamina points refill, which is cool, but I lose any points I had remaining, which is not cool. My existing points should just be carried over and added!
This is related to the strategy aspect we consider integral to Mafia Wars. The effective use of one’s energy and stamina proves how cunning a mobster they are. While it can be frustrating to watch the unused points go to waste, the choice to sacrifice those points is still up to you. You can wait it out to maximize the benefit of the points you have, or use a pack to speed up the leveling up process. Each time you make that decision is another important step in your quest to becoming the baddest mobster you can be.
12. I wish there were more customer support agents with whom I can chat live, as they always end up being the most helpful.
We are always making improvements within our customer support department, but live chat is not always available and not available to everyone. The Mafia Wars GetSatisfaction page is also a great way to get answers to common questions and player-wide issues.
13. I’m sick of the gifting page popping up whenever I enter the game. I know how to gift and if I have gifts waiting for me. I don’t need this annoying reminder!
How would you prefer to be notified that you have received gifts?
14. Some Mafia Wars events require that I add hundreds of friends so quickly that I risk getting pinked/banned by Facebook! This is ridiculous!
We removed the biggest issues with this and have been working with Facebook to improve player communications with each other. To our knowledge, this is becoming less and less of an issue.
15. Is it a bug that, unlike with energy, I can't get up to 125% stamina? It causes me to miss out on stamina points received via boosts in mystery bags and from stamina-producing Brazil properties?
It *is* a bug. We’ve been looking into this issue and have discovered challenges to implementing a fix within our code that will require more development resources than we can currently devote to the issue. It is definitely on our radar, but we do not yet know when a solution will become available.
16. It’s not fair that I miss out on leveling bonuses if I level up while I’m attacking someone!
We understand that this can be annoying when you are trying to get your next ice or kill, and we don’t want you to miss out on your bonus. What do you think would be the best way to receive leveling bonuses?
Got more suggestions?
We want to hear your feedback! Please share what you think via the Mafia Wars GetSatisfaction page. And, if someone has already raised your question or issue, please be sure to comment or "Me Too" the topic so that it raises to the top as a hot issue that deserves our attention. BTW, all 16 of the questions above can be viewed in this list on the Mafia Wars GetSatisfaction page. Thanks for helping us to craft a better Mafia Wars!
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