The voting period has ended for the last poll and the results are below. I allowed players to select multiple answers so the percentages of each response add up to more than 100. What's interesting about the results is that 1,791 responses were negative towards events yet only 75 claim to ignore them. Zynga is driven by metrics more so than player feedback. If players suffering from event fatigue chose not to participate, Zynga would have tangible results. For now, player complaints don't seem to be working.
"We have heard your cries about the gifting event! We are making changes and ask that you be patient!
There is nothing we can do about this next gifting event as that one is bagged and ready to go, but we will be trying out new events which will provide the same type of rewards with a more rewarding player experience."
It should be obvious that these events aren't retaining the player base. There continues to be negative growth (a fancy way to say players are quitting) even with the launch of a new destination. The number of daily active player is close to dropping below 2 million. There was a big player spike but that was due to a cross game promotion that CityVille, Zynga's most popular game had with Mafia Wars. Obviously the CityVille folks didn't like Mafia Wars. This shows that they felt the same way we did when we played Cafe World, FrontierVille, FarmVille and Treasure Island. Cross Game promotions only provide temporary boosts to the application statistics.
(original image from All Facebook)
| Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. |
Part of the reason why people don't ignore the events is the need to collect whatever is new. I'm a collector and hate missing out on having an item. I've used Reward Points for things that don't help my stats just so I could have one.
ReplyDeleteCan you please add an "all of the above" option to the poll you created?
ReplyDeletei support you Aaron..all of above + more gift quota per day.
ReplyDeleteIt is getting harder every day for me to keep doing this , i use to love this game , but this is no longer the game i once loved. There is two things that have kept me logging on, # 1 is the friends that i have made , and i don't want to let them down , i want to be here for them and help when i can. # 2 is i keep hoping that Zynga well finally wake up and make some drastic changes. Personally if i owned Zynga and seen numbers like are reflected in these graphs i would be firing some damn people fast.
ReplyDeleteI posted in the forum that I thought there was some bug or mistake with these events rolling out back to back---and now back again. I have always wondered what would push me to quit. Now I know. When I leave work I'm actually dreading getting home to play MWs (due to all the gifting (work) to be done). FHEL doesnt help my stats so the only way to get better loot is to BUY it or do the events. 3 times. Each. I logged on daily this past week but stayed for about 5 min each time. I guess I'm slowly letting go. I will let my platinum level go. Like a BandAid. It'll hurt for a bit, but life goes on.
ReplyDeleteSorry guys, I want to see what people want the most. If I put all of the above everybody would check it. It was hard for me to decide as well.
ReplyDeleteIts information overload, we can only do so many jobs in MW, and having now to email our friends for energy, collectable items and missions, well I have stopped. I just play now once every 24 hrs,not the hours per day of last year. I dont gift (my choice), nor receive much anymore, and I agree with Joe, above. I would always try to collect what ever the latest or greatest, now I dont, if I get 1 of each item over the event, fine. I have realised that it is no longer the atk/def anymore, and that skill points, more important.
ReplyDeleteZynga is a business, and for both sides have to understand this is a leisure game for players, and we do it at our own pace, not theirs
the summer is approaching, the outdoors calling.
I can see that the drop in players is affecting the game. I also remember a year back when Zynga stopped supporting a game (name slips me), MW is heading this way. City/front/farm ville with its more gentle game approach is the newest and biggest, and that's where resources are now.
Its like a town where Walmart enters, we all survive for a while, then all go into a gradual decline, I believe MW is heading that way.
thats my 2 cent's worth..
Your analasis on the poll says that the majority of the responses were negative, yet there was only one positive response to select, which in my opinion, was a tad sarcastic.
ReplyDeleteIf additionally, there had been a choice that said "I reluctantly participate in the events in order to score high quality loot items", Or "I ignore events that have no decent loot as a prize" I think your results may have been a little different and less biased to the extreme and possibly more helpful to Zynga to motivate changing the playing experience.
cant believe that 154 love them.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with most of the posters so far.
ReplyDeleteThe need to post things in order to have your mafia help you continues to increase, but they are even further limiting the amount of people I can ask. For my account, I don't even get the pop-up that I can post on my wall for whoever might want to help me. I get the choice of a list of predetermined people or I have to sort through my entire mafia to select people I know will choose to click on what I send them.
It's TOO MUCH. Event after event rolls out, and since fighting loot doesn't help, I can only do so many jobs in Brazil at the ridiculous ratios, I have to do these spamfests in order to get loot that actually helps. The game was slanted towards Zynga putting $$$ in their pockets, which is why someone with 108k mafia skills can dump $$$ into their account and beat someone much higher in level and mafia #s.
I am also playing less than at any point since I started, much like others who have hit a point where they have walked away.
all of the above
ReplyDeleteThe poll really was set up to only have a negative result. There needs to be an I like it and an I don't like it for each question to give the pollsters a choice. The anger, venting choices are 3 to 1, Make it even and wait till you have a few thousand results. 1500 is a just drop in the ocean.
ReplyDeleteI'll keep saying it... this game has to cater to new players and get them sucked in like the rest of us, the missions effectively do that.
From the comments above it looks like the time has come for what I have been delaying for some time. To go through all my friends of Mafia profiles and look at the last time they were active in the game. Time to get rid of those non gamers then I won't be wasting my sent gifts, the selection process will be a lot cleaner. I've enjoyed the game for over a year now and frustration has come and gone from time to time with the annoying little things that get to you, but I keep on playing.
ReplyDeleteWay too much time required to keep up with everything. I am concentrating on clearing Bangkok and Italy and getting to level 1000 and then I'm done for Mafia Wars.
ReplyDeleteBrian P
It's easy to point at the gifting events as something that's driven people away - I don't doubt that they are a part of it, but they're only one piece of the puzzle. Look at your post on what it takes to upgrade all of the properties in a city now. It's absurd.
ReplyDeleteI'm no apologist for Zynga, but it has to be very difficult to strike a balance between creating a challenge for long-time players AND creating a rewarding and enticing experience for new players that keeps them coming back.
There was a time when I played several games across the Zynga portfolio. But Zynga has raised the stakes in each game to the point that you can't play multiple games with any decent level of satisfaction because of the effort to jump through the requisite hoops to accomplish anything worthwhile. I think that the diminishing numbers has less to do with the pastoral nature of the FV/CV/FV games and more to do with the polarizing nature of the accomplishments/missions for each game. You don't have time to play everything well, so you pick your favorite and move on.
With regards to your latest poll, I selected Robbing as the part of the game needing the most updating. Other sections drop junk loot, but Robbing is dropping junk for jobs in cities that are now closed! Blueprints? Dossiers on Dmitri? Bundles of Dynamite? Really?
I have been playing for 2 years and 2 months. The latest "6 mini pack energy begging scheme" was the worst idea yet. If I send requests to my mafia for energy, I cannot send requests for anything else on the "free" list that day, or even return gifts I get. What GENIUS dreamed this up ? It appears to me that Zynga is trying to eliminate lots of players thru disgust for some reason, and they are doing a very good job. They apparently are NOT listening to any of the ideas the PAC had to give. At least we are not getting year old Easter eggs and St. Patrick's Day gifts now. I have started playing Glory of Rome and like it much better. Zynga Sucks !!!
ReplyDelete