Mafia Wars Insider Epsiode 12

Episode 12 of Mafia Wars Insider is now available!

For our 12th episode, "Month" once again joined "Don Perogi" to report on the exciting features and events released recently or coming soon to Mafia Wars, and to answer the questions you submitted via the Mafia Wars forum. You can watch the episode embedded below or at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mafia-wars-insider. Scroll beyond the embedded video to view the typed answers to the questions covered in this episode.

We appreciate and would like to thank all of the viewers who have stuck with us over the past 12 episodes, but episode 12 will be the last. We have decided to transform the Mafia Wars Insider Q&A program. We now encourage you to send your questions to us at insider@mafiawars.com. Then, starting next week, we'll begin posting answers to those questions on the Mafia Wars forum. We're very excited about this format, which should help us get answers for you more quickly than we were able to via the videos.

Video streaming by Ustream

If you are unable to view the video embedded above, click here to watch it on Ustream.com.

Ukgouki, who's security software interferes with their Mafia Wars game experience, asked: Why dont you guys send off the javacode you're using to the security companies to whitelist so they won't be blocked as maliciuos code?
Answer: We would have to confirm many cases of this issue to justify doing something like this. If you believe the security software you are using is impacting your Mafia Wars gameplay, please submit a description of the problem (including the name(s) of the security software you're using and steps that would allow us to reproduce the error you're seeing) via the Report A Bug subforum under the top-level Bugs & Support forum. Your details could help us determine a solution!

Yurgeta asked: Over a year ago we saw a post about the header being updated, but we still have the old header. How come this looks like it was abandoned? It was a massive improvement theme/layout wise. If the above header does finally get released would we see improvements to old cities to match the styles of Brazil and Chicago?
Answer: Players often have a hard time whenever game navigation is changed and the proposed new header was not well received by everyone who tested it. If we do release a UI change, it would likely affect all cities.

Yurgeta asked: Can you please rollout the feature to active accounts first instead of inactive accounts? Surely the active community should have priority over the inactive. My inactive acount has Chicago already yet my active account does’nt. Yes, I know I will get it sometime today, but that’s not the point. The point is inactive accounts are getting things before active ones.
Answer: Everyone should have Chicago at this point. If you don't, please submit a bug report via the Report A Bug subforum under the top-level Bugs & Support forum. Be sure to include your Facebook profile link, which we need in order to investigate your account's lack of Chicago.

Angelle asked: Why can't inactive accounts be deleted from the game? I know that some people take a break and then return. However, if someone has not played the game in 2 years or so, most likely, they will not be returning. It could free up a little server space and such. If inactive accounts can't be deleted, could (or rather will) active accounts be given priority over inactive accounts in regards to new updates, new cities and the like?
Answer: Inactive accounts don’t really take up space on our servers, so there's no reason for us to delete them once they reach a certain duration of inactivity. As for how updates and new features are distributed in limited-release cases, only active accounts are eligible to recieve them.

Angelle asked: What is the criteria for picking a new city/country for the game? Could we make suggestions, or perhaps even have a contest, for the next one? We have a slogan contest. Why not have a city contest?
Answer: We actually have this forum thread set up to collect your next city suggestions. Our newest city, Chicago, was chosen in response to the results of an in-game poll we conducted. We might do that again in the future, but there are too many sensitive details we must consider to allow a travel location to be selected via a contest.

Inti God Of Sun asked: Why can’t a gradient healing timer be implemented to balance the game due to those that have high health and use auto healers?
Answer: We have that kind of feature in the works, but it may be a few weeks.

Mich So asked: I am a family player and have noticed that I don't get any points for building from these new upgradeable properties. Any chance you could let us get points from crafting from these? Also, I noticed that you basically need to have the armory, weapons depot, chop shop and private zoo fully upgraded to make a difference for your family. I don't always want to have to take the highest level as sometimes I am looking to build the highest thing that will give me say the most attack points or defense points. Any chance this value could be lowered just a little?
Answer: The property part of Family Progression was tuned to the old NY properties. The addition of the new crafting properties would throw a wrench into the tuning. Property progression may be retuned to include the new properties when additional levels are added to Family Progression. As for needing to craft the highest level item from properties to maximize the amount of property progression you receive, the amount of property progression actually doesn't depend on what you craft, but rather on the level of the property from which you are crafting. Therefore, crafting any level item from a level 10 property still earns you the maximum number of points toward the property part of family progression.

Markall42 is among a number of Mafia Wars players worried about the future of Mafia Wars 1 given that Mafia Wars 2 was recently released.
Response: We’re really excited about the release of Mafia Wars 2 and the way it expands the Mafia Wars universe. We are just as excited about all of the new content and updates planned for Mafia Wars 1 and about our renewed focus on the top concerns we continue to hear from players:

1) Bugs & performance issues that impact your game play (especially when fighting)
2) Event cadence - We realize there has been too much to do and the timers have been too tight
3) The gifting experience - It’s frustrating, not easy, and takes too much time. We want to improve the gifting experience.

Mind you, we can’t fix everything overnight, but we will be focusing on these items and any additional player concerns as they arise while we continue to develop additional content. We are VERY excited about the future of Mafia Wars 1 and hope you are too! As always, we’d love to hear from you on the Mafia Wars forum.

Smashedengineer asked: Whats with the lag/throttling? White Screens? 400 Error? Grant Batch 43 cookie? Any plans to fix, well, anything?
Answer: Within the last month, we’ve implemented fixes for many of these issues, so they should be things of the past. If you are still experiencing any of these issues, please post to our Report A Bug subforum under the top-level Bugs & Support forum.

Fumbles McStupid asked: I would like to know with the new re-designed support layout .. if we will ever see the Live Chat feature again? I'm not pleased with a standard form reply that states the devs are aware of this or that and working to fix it as soon as possible! It was hard enough in recent weeks to even reach the live chat people when it was active on "my server" .. but I've got peeps all around me in a frenzy about the complete absence of any live customer service support.. especially those that pay heavily each week to play the game.
Answer: We recently made changes to our Customer Support website to refresh the look and feel and prepare for future enhancements. The changes made were purely cosmetic and did not change how we provide support to our customers.

Haider Al asked: Why should we waste time by keep upgrade the new crafting building to become 10 buildings and we have ONLY to build from 5!
Answer: The new properties give you the opportunity to grow your character's stats beyond what the old ones can help you achieve. To build the most useful loot that includes skill points, you will want to build from fully upgraded recent properties.

Haider Al asked: You mentioned in episode 7 I think..that the Union Hall will be updated to fix the bug of collect NY money..but still the same.
Answer: This is a known bug, but fixing it is of a low priority because it doesn’t inhibit game play.

L1NK-KUN asked: How about implementing new ways to make money? A lot of players had a difficult time collecting all that cash to complete Brazil (and the new districts). Fighting other players and pushing your luck isn't the way to collect millions.
Answer: We currently think there are enough ways to get the money needed to complete districts. That being said, we are going to try changing the item requirements on an upcoming secret district to see if it makes for a better player experience.

HLK Angel asked: I think over all most long term hard core mafia wars players just want something simple dealt with.. and that's what is already broken just fix it before rolling anything new out and fulfill what was promised before....

1. Fix the posting of wars before making missions needing a high number of them.
Answer: We're attacking this issue in two ways: 1) war post/feed issues are being resolved as we can determine their causes and 2) new Mission Events will be screened prior to release for any objectives that may be especially difficult due to requiring the use of systems currently experiencing bugs. If you are still experiencing war post/feed issues, please post to our Report A Bug subforum under the top-level Bugs & Support forum.

2. Daily Take, Gold Chest, Stashes, Loyalty program... all loot needs upgrading and brought in line with current values. This was promised in previous episodes and never materialised.
Answer: Daily Take and Lucky Stash loot was recently updated, but, in an effort to make the game a bit less complicated, we're actually looking at removing the Gold Chests and Loyalty Program. See the answer to the next question to learn more about our idea for how we may retire the Loyalty Program.

JaggyJag asked: Would you please update the loyalty shop? At the moment, the loyalty shop is more or less useless. What is the benefit of collecting loyalty points when the loots on there are outdated. If you are not going to be bothered updating it, would you at least start giving out Victory points for Reward points purchases.
Answer: Neither of the loyalty point or fight club systems should be updated as they currently exist, as both systems are cash flooded. We would consider updating the loot as long as it was accompanied by an update to the system. One option we're considering instead of a system update is making new loot available via those features for a limited time just prior to their removal. We will post an announcement on the blog when we decide what we're going to do with these systems.

Sushivbaby asked: Ever since you made the changes to family battles my families family feature has been increasingly buggy. First our family showed up as having no members at all, no one on respective leaderboards and no way to send each other boosts in the boss battles. Then members of our family who joined family battles were not added into the fight or appeared way later than they had joined up, leaving our family at a disadvantage in the battles. Then we annihilate a family and the scoreboard shows up as a loss and the battle is lost. Today we fought a second family, beat them easily, never got credit for the win, then later the battle reappears briefly and shows us as having lost when the other side didn’t even fire more than a couple of shots. Are you aware of these issues and is a fix imminent?
Answer: We are aware of most of these issues and have already resolved a number of them. If you are experiencing any of these issues and they don't appear on our Known Issues or Resolved Issues lists (or if the status on the issue listed in either of those lists asks you to submit a bug report to help us develop a fix), please post to our Report A Bug subforum under the top-level Bugs & Support forum.

Thanks,
The Mafia Wars Team