There have always been loading issues of various types in Mafia Wars. One of the most annoying is the half page and it’s frequency of late has been driving players crazy. To avoid half page load issues, we keep telling players to load their Mafia Wars game from http://spockon.me/unframed/ but many are in the habit of loading it from Facebook . Back in May Facebook told Zynga and other developers what to do about this issue . It looks like Zynga finally realizes this is a serious problem and they are “working on it” Click. They should have been working on it months ago but we will take what we can get!
It only took 3 days out of a 7 day times event, but the Iceboard feature is now available to all. According to the Official Mafia Wars Blog, the slow roll was necessary to “maintain the system stability” Click. They forgot to point out that the slow roll defeated any purpose the feature would have. They are making up for this gross oversight by promising us the feature will reset on Tuesday September 4th. I guess we can consider this weeks Iceboard an experiment and the real deal will happen next week. They would like for us to take the following survey. Go to http://zynga.tm/jCE and give your feedback. I left my reply short and simple as I’ve already written several blog posts pointing out the many flaws. I’m sure you will have more to say in that little box!
Team Spockholm keeps pushing out new toys for us to play with. Their latest is called the Beg-o-Meter and it’s designed to help you manage the Limited Time Property upgrade process. Players who don’t ignore these care about two things…how many parts they need to get and how much time they have to do it. We were given 16 days to get 471 parts to upgrade the VFX Lab. It’s often a pain to check the number of parts you have, look at the timer then calculate how much time it will take at your current pace. None of us want to get into alarm clock setting mode! This is especially difficult for players who don’t even know how many parts they need as Zynga doesn’t supply that information (it’s always up to the community to figure it out). If you want Team Spockholm to help you easily manage your upgrading, follow the instructions below.
1. Type any part of Beg-o-Meter into the seach of the Spockholm Mafia Toolbar and click on it. If Beg-o-Meter does not appear, click on the wrench icon located to the far right of the toolbar to open up the Configuration Page, click on the “Force reload Spocklets” and reload your game.
2. The Beg-o-Meter will now appear on the page. If you don’t see it, scroll down a little. There is all kinds of information to review. The Beg-o-Meter displays how many parts you already collected, how many you need to get to Level 15, a progress meter, a time meter, a break down of the maximum parts you can still get with or without scanning the feeds for bragging posts on a 8 hour and 12 hour schedule. It also tells you the maximum number of parts you could have if you begged and collected every 8 hours and calculates the percentage of parts from the maximum you have. The last line of the Beg-o-Meter is Team Spockholms prognosis of your success. At my current rate I will make it.
If you ignore Limited Time Properties, you will get the hard truth and probably won’t care.
For so long now, I’ve been disgusted with the Lucky Stash Slot Machine. It’s just a scam to get your reward points and Zynga needs to be exposed and players need to demand change . You may have noticed that the Jackpot is within range of hitting so many players are probably giving it a go. All put one person is making a mistake. Zynga is taking advantage of the fact that you hope to be the one.
Most would think that this is the best time to spin the Lucky Stash. If you look at the list of the past 20 winners, only 3 have had Jackpots higher than the current one is at.
It seems that a few months ago, the odds of getting a winning spin have dramatically decreased and many stopped using the feature as it didn’t go unnoticed. From the image above, you can look at the time intervals between winners and see it’s taking much longer for the Jackpot to grow within range. There are several reasons for this. The first being that there aren’t nearly as many players as there were a year ago, those who used to use the feature got tired of getting ripped off and quit and the bonus spin loot rewards aren’t helpful to VIP players (the ones who spend money!). To demonstrate what will probably happen to you if you take your chances, I’m posting 20 spins. You can see the reward point balance decrease by 3 points each spin and the bonus spin meter increase by 1. My starting balance is 418 reward points and the bonus meter is reset to zero. There are three things you can count on in life...taxes, death and getting a girl on your next Lucky Stash spin!
Out of the 20 spins, only 2 were winners and they were the lowest possible payouts on the table. The 20 spins above ended up costing 54 reward points. It’s still possible to gain 5, 10 or 20 reward points on the bonus spin but it seems 90% of the time you get loot.
Getting loot wouldn’t be such a bad thing but none of the loot rewards are helpful to me and many other players. Basically I spend 54 reward points for this beauty and it doesn’t even come close to helping my score. In the end I feel ripped off and angry at Zynga.
Zynga is looking into legalized gambling but the company has such a bad reputation I don’t think many would trust them [1]. When it comes to the Lucky Stash Slot Machine, Mafia Wars players should look the other way. There are no laws governing this thing and with Zynga so desperate to make money, I feel they are taking advantage of the players who think they could be next. Instead of giving a ton of reward points to one lucky bastard, why can’t they break it up and give all those who spin better pay outs? It would be a fun feature and they may turn more of a profit. Players who do win on their spins often post screen shots and it generates buzz and inspires others to play. Those who win, keep playing and eventually lose. Las Vegas wasn’t built by winners but at least they have a reasonable shot.
The moment extreme OCD players who hate useless loot in their inventory have been waiting for has finally arrived. The VLA-a-Nator by Spockholm Mafia Tools is a inventory dumper. It’s only function is to remove items from your inventory, even if they aren't giftable. For a history of where the name VLA-a-Nator came from go here. Having a way to dump loot items from your inventory was actually a player suggested feature that resulted in Trader Goh’s Pawn Shop. Zynga missed the boat but inadvertently added a way to dump loot when they introduced the Family Properties to the game. It’s pretty sad when a feature not meant for bulk dumping needs to be used for the functionality of a useless feature designed to give players what they asked for in the first place. if you want to dump items from your inventory for free, follow the instructions below.
1. Launch the VLA-a-Nator via the Spockholm Toolbar. If it doesn't show up in your search, go to the Configuration Page and click on the "Force reload Spocklets" links.
2. Wait for it to load your inventory.The “VLA-a-Nator” button will remain gray until the loading process is over. While loading, it will say “Loading inventory…” under the log.
If your inventory doesn’t load, it’s a Zynga issue. Try again. If it still doesn’t load, try to load your inventory manually. If you aren’t successful then you won’t be able to use the VLA-a-Nator until your loading issues are resolved.
3. Once your inventory loads, the “VLA-a-Nator mode” button will appear unshadowed. Click on it.
4. Now the button will appear yellow, be in the “On” position and you can begin.
5. In order for the VLA-a-Nator to work, you need to select two items from your inventory. Obviously, you should choose 2 items that no longer help your score and are not giftable. If the items you wish to dump are giftable, it’s much easier and faster to use the Gift-a-Nator to remove them from your inventory. Use the search bar to find your first item, click on it and then click on the “Add Item” button. In the example below, I chose the Gypsy Girl which is outdated fight loot.
The image and count of the item you select will appear in the far left corner.
6. Now select a second item to remove. I chose the Walrus which is a VIP loot item that I have way too many of.
Once both items are selected, they will appear in the corner and you can proceed.
7. Look below the images and you will see a remove box with the lowest number of items from the two you selected as the default.
If you are a collector or don’t have enough time to remove all the items, select how many you want to remove. For the sake of this post, I chose 100.
8. Once you are satisfied with your selection and number of items you want removed, click on the red “Remove now!” button. You will then get a confirmation screen to ensure you really do want to remove the items. Click “OK”.
9. Now just wait for the script to do it’s thing. When you consider what needs to be done manually to remove items from the Family Properties, you shouldn’t be surprised that it takes a while. The VLA-a-Nator will rotate the two items you selected and remove one at a time. When it’s finished, the log will say “Done VLA-a-Nating”.
10. If you care about your Family Property health score, turn off the VLA-a-Nator mode and add better items to your property or do it manually. This scripts also includes the functionality of the Defendor!.
