One of my friends and mafia members is Jose Perez. I'm sure many of you have heard of him as he is the source of many great notes written about Mafia Wars related topics. If you ever see links to add things to your wishlist, chances are they came from Jose. Jose is cool and leaves his notes open for everybody to read. To check out all of his awesome notes, click
HERE.
One note that I found very interesting is titled
How do I find the MW Profile of someone I lost against in a Tournament?. In this note, Jose taught me how to look up the profile of a player who beat me in a tournament. This is a touchy subject in Mafia Wars and we always hear about strong players losing no matter what they do or what the odds are suppose to be. I've tried everything and have never been able to reproduce a pattern on the rare occasion that I win. I was stuck on 9/10 tournaments for the In It to Win It achievement for a very long time.
I wanted to verify what Jose outlined in his notes and I was amazed at my results. I followed his instructions and was quite pleased with how easy it was to get the Mafia Wars profile of the player who kicked my ass. His name is Doppelganger and if Jose never wrote his note this is all I would have ever known about him.
All Zynga likes to tell me whenever I lose a tournament is that I need to equip my mafia with better items. It really bugs me that they haven't fixed the grammar on this screen. "You can get increase your chances of winning by:" makes no sense and this obvious typo as been there ever since tournaments were introduced to the game.
This screen also contains a link which will direct your to the Limited Edition Loot page in the Marketplace.
Now on to the fun stuff which may explain why the link mentioned above is there. Once you are beat, right click on the image of the person who took you out of the tournament (in this case Doppelganger) and select "Copy image URL".
Now find somewhere to paste the information to. I just started a Facebook message but anywhere you can paste will work. Now take the numbers you need and add them to the general Mafia Wars link to create the link for your party of interest. Review Jose's note for more details on this step.
From the information above, I was able to find Doppelganger. Like Jose says, there is no need to get the Facebook profile. It's not like it is the persons fault they beat you in a tournament.
I decided to attack Doppelganger so I could analyse his equipment and strength and get a better idea of why I lost to him in the tournament. You can see by the results below that I destroyed him! His defense is 28,595 and my attack is 122,461! This is no typo on my end. Look at the screen shot.
I know the tournament fight equation is different than the PvP formula but here is too much of a difference to account for any way Doppelganger could win. The tournament I lost in was in the Bantamweight Class so only 25 of our mafia members were used. Maybe Doppelganger has better top 25 equipment than I do.
Upon review, this is not the case at all. Doppelganger has Bangkok loot is still in his top 25!. My equipment is far superior. If these results weren't reproducible by multiple players and I didn't lose so many tournaments, I would suspect that maybe his attack and defense skill points were through the roof. I suggest you try this on your own profile and see if you get the same results.
(click to enlarge)
Obviously there is something very wrong with these tournaments. I know a small luck factor exists but how can so many players lose time and time again. I've been so close to getting the achievement that one time I spent the 8 Reward Points so I could try again without waiting. To my dismay, the exact same player beat me again. Ever since that happened, I refuse to "Cut the Wait".
I finally got the In It to Win It achievement and can't believe how long it took. I do feel lucky because I know many players who can't even win one of these tournaments. The only 2 variables that we have control of when participating in a tournament fight is the weight class and the betting. I had more luck in the lower weigh classes but found once I won a tournament in a certain weight class, I was unable to do so again. I also found that betting heavily against myself worked for awhile but eventually I switched to betting for myself to win. I never won a tournament if I didn't make a bet at all.
also if you lose in the first or second round and have been fighting by rounds not by fight all rounds button, than you can simply navigate out of the tournament page and if you return after more than 1 hour (don't return in the meanwhile, if you do, you have to wait the hour again from the moment on you leave the tournament page) it will reset the current tournament meaning you will have another chance without spending extra stamina again, while the 4 hour clock still ticks in the backround, nice way to get 3 chances during one 4 hour tournament period, especially useful if you lose during 1st or 2nd round of world championships...
ReplyDeleteyah i raced to first 9 wins before i realised wht tournaments were.. am stuck at 9/10 ever since.. just cannot win anymore.. u r so rite.. zynga is so screwed up, they fuck with ur minds n want u 2 cut the wait.. i have done it on numerous occasions without any real progress.. im tired of this stupid game for lo$ers where they only wanna pull out ca$h from the wallets in return for nothing at the end.. this is an interesting article tht u hv written, no mistake of the low level players whos gonna get hit rotten cos of the fury of losing the tournament but somebodys gotta pay for zynga's sins.. dats my fb id
ReplyDeletehttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000800557025
This has been goin on for Months.. I reported it A long time ago with Prof.. All the agents want to due is Blow it Off
ReplyDeleteHere's my Prof from September.. This has been an Issues for a very Long time http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=429139099645
ReplyDeletehi jennifer,
ReplyDeletei noticed when using the MW Analyzer at www.mwhelper.com/?A=BML that tournament loot and fight loot is different; it shows different sorting for each.
so quite possibly it maybe inaccurate to compare fight loot with someone you have fought a tournament with?
No Disrespect Intended, and all your Articles are useful.. never seen the ones from back In aug, just wanted you to see what I have gathered up thats all.. I love your work and RSS your Blog to my FB feed..when I was doing my investigation on it I even joined mafias with the people I lost to and Talked to them about there Stats... But Thank You for pointing out my Proof would be better if I had what was used when I attacked them..But Zynga sure gifted me well to keep Silent on the prof I had... Once again no Disrespect meant
ReplyDelete@Anonymous, Sorry. My bad, I thought you were complaining that this was old news and appreciate that you wanted to show your results. As Loonlam pointed out, tournament loot is calculated differently but come on, my guy had track loaders in his top 500! There is something wrong and I think you are right to say that Zynga didn't want to do anything about it. I was hoping by posting this now that more people would test the waters and then maybe the would re-evaluate the equation used for tournaments and make it more fair. I'm all for a challenge but if I can't beat players who are obviously way weaker than me, it's frustrating.
ReplyDeletethank you...thank you...thank you...thank you...THANK YOU!!! lootlady!!!
ReplyDeleteit is not a new topic, that's true. but is still current and of much interest for everyone who is still stuck on the achievement. so who bothers if it's new or not...
i appreciate it SO much, that you continue to write about the screwed-up tournaments.
and this time you even have strong evidence, for what all zynga employees already know...
the tournament is totally random and has nothing to do with your skillpoints or weapons.
i hope now, that the news is gone public it will jump up on the "todo list" for the zynga programmers...
GREAT Job Jennifer, and many thanks for your kind words ! Makes all the time spent on those notes worthwhile !
ReplyDeleteA few precisions/thoughts:
I have systematically hit back EVERY SINGLE person I lost against except a handful where I lost their link or where no profile pic was available. From HUNDREDS of tournaments - Mostly Heavyweight where all equipment counts, only 7 losses were "possibly" legitimate losses. Since I got the achievements I have stopped doing them altogether... RIGGED I tell ya ! RIGGED !!! But then isn't it the case for everything in Vegas ?
lmao !
Also: USE OF ANIMALS in the tournaments:
When clicking the ? to find out how the tournaments are calculated (I think it appears only after we lose one), we can see a blurb in which they mention Weapons, Armor and Vehicles, but NO MENTION OF ANIMALS.
I have seen various communications with Zynga Support reg this and it seems that their support staff do NOT agree as if the animals are really in use or not in the calculations: 1 stated they are used while 3 stated they are NOT used. Sorry, no proof to back it up, I only can give yo my word I saw those, so feel free to believe it or not.
One thing is certain though: There IS a random factor of - lets call it - a "Critical Strike" such as when fighting or robbing, which will permit a much weaker opponent to get the better of you. I am unsure if this is also associated with Top Mafia Bonuses but wouldn't be surprised if Top Mafia would be a factor as well.
Another unknown factor is the "Selection" of the people on the Tournament list. How are they selected ? My guts are telling me that it is totally random, but I think that a great addition to the tournaments would be to have a "waiting list": The Tournaments opponents could be populated as people actually enter them, just like in the Poker Shootouts, this would ensure that you would be fighting opponents that decided on their own to enter this specific class.
But I digress... this reply is getting long, I don't want to take over your article, Jennifer !
;)
I personally think that IF a random factor is in fact at play, that the person responsible for coding the Tournament Fights simply have let it happen at too high of a frequency to make those tournament enjoyable. In my books they failed at achieving a good "balance" in this specific feature, maybe in time they will correct this, but in the meantime I'm completely turned off...
Happy Fighting !
I've done my own research into the matter because frankly, the payout for winning Heavyweight is worthwhile to me. 13x ratio for winning is a huuuge boost for me to level up quickly. but back to subject, 10 out 10, in Heavyweight that I lose in Final 3rd round, I can *always* beat, easily in a normal fight. Yes and some have very low combined item A/D and I suspect also corresponding lower combined skill points too. the RNG(random number generator) in the tournament fight formula, tweaks the results way out of balance for that it is borderline unfair.
ReplyDeletei was also stuck at 9/10 on the achievement page - but after being frustrated i wrote zynga an email this week.
ReplyDeletei had won some tourneys before the achievement was started - so i sent them a screen cap and they gave me the award. :)
For the last several weeks I have been stuck with only 4 tourny wins in the lower classes. I am a 720 with my att and def both at 124,000 so it makes no sense to me how I can not win fights past the national second round. However i did something on accident where I fought the rounds individually and waited 5-10 seconds between rounds and I have won the heavyweight and cruiserweight divisions both in the last 36 hours so maybe there is something there that might help someone else out.
ReplyDelete