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Serious problems with Mafia Wars by Zynga

Ntombi

Ntombi

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 1, 2008
3,822
1,636
Bostonian exiled in SoCal
1. It freezes during a fight way more too often.

2. Their server loses track of my mafia often. It's gone from 1 to 465 (the real number) to 200, back to 1, and then to a seemingly random number. VERY ANNOYING.

3. I seem to get into a rut of losing eight to ten fights in a row to opponents with less than half my numbers. Every once in a while, or even a third of the time is one thing, but I shouldn't lose all the time to someone with 10 mafia members when I have over 400. :mad:

4. The sound does not follow the SDK, which is unacceptable. Having a booming startup sound erupt from a muted iPhone is maddening, and it means that I don't play the game as often as I would like.

5. The font is hard to read, especially the numbers.

Okay, the last one is an aesthetic choice, but still, I hope they fix it.

I was trying to be understanding at first, but this has been happening since it got to the App Store, and I'm not going to be happy if an update isn't imminent.


Anyone else having these issues?

Oh, and you can't give them direct feedback unless you register on their site. Not cool.
 
those are the reasons i deleted if off my iphone.

Any game i download thats similar gets binned now too. Not worth bothering with any app that requires you to recruit people.
 
Ntombi said:
1. It freezes during a fight way more too often.
Click to expand...

Never had this happen to me, but I am lucky.

2. Their server loses track of my mafia often. It's gone from 1 to 465 (the real number) to 200, back to 1, and then to a seemingly random number. VERY ANNOYING.
Click to expand...

Again never seeen this but I only have like 80 people in my mafia or something.


3. I seem to get into a rut of losing eight to ten fights in a row to opponents with less than half my numbers. Every once in a while, or even a third of the time is one thing, but I shouldn't lose all the time to someone with 10 mafia members when I have over 400. :mad:
Click to expand...

I have been trying to figure this out and what I have learned is personal stats > all. If someone went and got some points and boosted up their attack and defense they will beat you, it does not matter how many mafia members you have or how many weapons and cars you have. Focus on those points over everything else when it comes to winning fights.
I was wondering why a guy with 2 people would beat me and then the game would say he is better armed, but that is why. His attack was higher than mine.

4. The sound does not follow the SDK, which is unacceptable. Having a booming startup sound erupt from a muted iPhone is maddening, and it means that I don't play the game as often as I would like.
Click to expand...

I agree they need to fix it.

5. The font is hard to read, especially the numbers.
Click to expand...

The one I have a problem with is the money of my victi uh other mobs. It so small and with the colors and background and font is hard to read.
 
paulcdb said:
those are the reasons i deleted if off my iphone.

Any game i download thats similar gets binned now too. Not worth bothering with any app that requires you to recruit people.
Click to expand...

You don't really have to recruit people you know?
 
marksman said:
I have been trying to figure this out and what I have learned is personal stats > all. If someone went and got some points and boosted up their attack and defense they will beat you, it does not matter how many mafia members you have or how many weapons and cars you have. Focus on those points over everything else when it comes to winning fights.
I was wondering why a guy with 2 people would beat me and then the game would say he is better armed, but that is why. His attack was higher than mine.
Click to expand...
That's not what I'm talking about. It'll say something like "you outnumbered your opponent 462 to 40. You were better armed and had better defenses.

Unlucky break! Your gun jammed in the beginning of the fight. Better luck next time!"

I'm not talking about arms and secret defenses. I'm talking about the "unlucky break" happening way too often, something like 30% in general, and sometimes it happens ten or more times in a row. The former is their choice, I guess, though I disagree with it, but the latter has to be a glitch.

marksman said:
The one I have a problem with is the money of my victi uh other mobs. It so small and with the colors and background and font is hard to read.
Click to expand...
That's mainly my complaint too. I find the font in general to be hard to read, but the numbers in particular are almost illegible, especially with a lot of ambient light.
 
Well, the update is out, and it's even worse!

Thank goodness I updated on my iPhone and didn't sync, because the "update" was so bad that it kept freezing my phone. I couldn't even get past the news screen (set to show at each startup); it would freeze and force me to do a hard reset. After 5 tries, I deleted it from my phone and then synced so that I could get the old version back. For all that's worth.

I went to the forum, and it sounds like a disaster. Even people who aren't having the major problems I am are having other serious issues that make it impossible to play, so if you're even still playing the game, just stick with 1.0 until 1.2 comes out. Hopefully soon. :mad:
 
I concur with many of the points listed above that this game needs some heavy rework or I will no longer be playing it.

1. I understand that unlucky breaks can occur but come on... to lose 8 out of 10 battles when you have a better attack, better defense more than 120 more folks, are better armored and better defenses. The code needs to be reworked or just make everything random.

2. ADD A BANK!!! It is utterly ridiculous to do quest after quest accumulating gold to buy properties to provide you the necessary income to accommodate the high level of expense necessary for required weapons / vehicles to do the higher level jobs that provide a better income source... only to lose 120k a shot to someone with an 50 overall attack, 50 overall defense and 4 mafia members!
 
This new version is unplayable for me!!! It keeps crashing and kicking me out of the program. Or it resets my phone. I wish I thought about resyncing from itunes, but it's too late for that now...

I can't play this game anymore. =(
 
Ntombi said:
That's not what I'm talking about. It'll say something like "you outnumbered your opponent 462 to 40. You were better armed and had better defenses.

Unlucky break! Your gun jammed in the beginning of the fight. Better luck next time!"

I'm not talking about arms and secret defenses. I'm talking about the "unlucky break" happening way too often, something like 30% in general, and sometimes it happens ten or more times in a row. The former is their choice, I guess, though I disagree with it, but the latter has to be a glitch.
Click to expand...


I think one other potential major factor in this is how much the difference is between you and your opponent and also relative levels.

I find some people I can beat them 55 out of 60 times with only 5 unlucky breaks. While some other guy might get a lucky break 6 out of 20 times. I think that the bigger spread between you and your opponent in overall numbers, the less chance they have for a lucky break. I also think there is a floor for lucky breaks.

However, if you have just a slight edge in total numbers, it is possible that they get 4 lucky breaks out of 10 because they are almost as strong as you. Even if you had 3x as many people they could still be nearly as strong as you because the hidden stats are a huge part of the total number.

Let us say you have 300 mafia, and your open attack and defense are both 3000, and the other guy has 150 mafia and his attack and defense are both 1800. Looks like a big win for you.

Yet let us say in hidden stats he has 2x as many as you and when multiplied to get a total number his bonus stats give him 2000 points, and your bonus stats only give you 1000 points.

At that point adding the numbers up the battle is 4000 points for you to 38000 points for your opponent. Say you are both the same level, and the game determines that a 200 point difference at that level gives the underdog a 40% chance to win.

This could easily show up as him winning more than half the time over the short term.

Take the same initial stats, but then say you have the same hidden stats as him, so you have 5000 points and he has 3800 points. Also say he is 10 levels below you. Lets say the game gives a 10% level penalty to him for this (totally made up by me). That puts his total at ~3420.

Now the game says at that level a 1580 point difference gives the underdog a 8% chance of winning. Sure you could get a few bad breaks in a row once in a while, but even over a relatively small sample you are likely to prevail most of the time.

I think it is a mistake to think just because it says you are stronger that you should win every time. That would not be a very good game design. You may only be 1 single point better than your opponent. You should not win every time.

That is the problem when people take small samples of encounters and claim things are broken. The unfortunate truth is you would have to fight 100s or 1000s of fights between two opponents whom you know all the stats on to start to determine that anything is broken. Worst case is you likely just don't like the percentages.

It is very unlikely that if you were able to play one of these battles out that frustrate you 1000 times that the underdog would win most of the time. And that would be the only way it would be broken. Everything else would just be an argument on degrees.
 
I don't expect to win every time, and I never said anything like that. But there is a problem. This morning, for instance, I lost ten times in a row to a player with one-tenth of my mafia, and half of my public attack and defense. Plus, they had to have a smaller secret defense. You can tell that because everyone gets the same five godfather points per level to spend, and you can deduce from what's public. If they had spent all their points on defense and none on attack, we'd be similar in my attack vs. their defense. So tell me what legit formula would lead to that result?

I fully understand the point of the fights being unpredictable, but in general, the bigger, better eqipped group should beat the smaller weaker group more often than not. In iPhone Mafia Wars, that's not the case. That's all I'm saying. It works perfectly well in the Facebook version.
 
I don't even own a Mac, but I'm so pissed about this

I never had problems with Mafia Wars being slow until I was in the beta testing for Cuba.As soon as I was it starting going so slow that it would take me an hour to fight 30 times when that used to take me 5 minutes. I used to be able to go back to NY and it was normal, then both places were retarded slow, now I can't fight at all in either spot? I tried on multiple computers, on different networks, so that isn't the issue. I am still being attacked, so obviously others can still fight. Is this my reward for helping test the beta version?
 
I was experiencing slowness a few version ago but have never had the problems of losing mafia members, points, etc.

Their support was pretty good too. I switched to a 3GS and they quickly got me moved over while I think they were figuring out how to switch profiles themselves. There's now instructions on the app on how to do it.

My only two issues...like others have said...

The font is to big in some places to read the whole number. Not a big deal at all but once your secret attack and defense levels go past 10000, you can't read the whole numbers other than in stats.

And, I also seem to lose fights to the same people with lower mafia members and less defenses all the time. I open the app and see they've won a fight twice in a row. I can attack them back like 4 times in a row and win everytime but I just don't get how they never lose when they attack me?

Strange.
 
problems with fighting on Mafia wars

Hi,

For the oast 4 days i've been unable to fight on mafia wars, i keep getting a slow revolver and 'error on page'. all other aspects of the game are working ok, any suggestions??

Ive removed the application, cleared my temp folders / cache, restarted but no joy!

Please help!
 
argh

I have not been able to use mafia wars for weeks now.
It does open sometimes but I am never able to do anything.
Moreover, it keeps reloading and reloading when opened.

Please help ASAP


thanks,
mafia snicker
 
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