May 22, 2011

Declare War Issues

Share:

It sucks when you go to your Mafia Wars game and learn that someone declared war on you when you were off line.
It sucks even more when you check and see that you lost.
This seems to be happening a lot more than it did in the past. The reason is there is no longer a cool down timer on when another player can declare war on you. Depending on which Customer Support agent you get, the rules are that while you are in an active war, another player can't declare war on you. I do get these messages quite frequently but usually for the players Zynga picks for me or the person that Zynga wants me to get revenge on from my Player Updates.
What Zynga Customer Support agents say and what happens in the game are not always the same thing. Many players are getting tired of constantly having wars declared on them even when they are in active wars. Paul AV posted the following images and had four wars declared in a 4 hour time frame.
You can see here that two players declared war against Paul at the exact same time. He states that he also had an active war open during this time. It's hard to determine if this is happening because of a bug which allows players to declare war on other players while they are in a war or if wars are ending so quickly that it appears to be happening.
The reason wars end so fast and make it almost impossible to find one to help on in your news feeds is because of automated scripting for that function. Zynga implemented a few new war features that most will never have the chance to use.
If I post for help, my wars are over before I refresh the page.
I've talked about this in a few other posts and even told you how to work around the problem here. I won't blast players for using these scripts as it's their choice to do so. Zynga and anybody else who looks at profile statistics knows who they are.
Personally I don't mind having a few players in my mafia who use these scripts. I joined a private War Help group and I don't generate War Help Requests unless I'm about to lose a war.
If I can get to my help request quickly enough, I always end up winning thanks to my super fast mafia members.
Using any script (to include Switch and the Chucker) is against Zynga's TOS. They are all "use at your own risk". If Zynga wants to start banning accounts for script use, there is no difference between the two images shown below. They need to clarify their TOS or knock out all accounts that use scripts.
Zynga should change the way war help requests are generated. Rather than dump a request in the news feeds whenever a war is declared...
...it would be better to send requests through the Zynga Message Center and Facebook Request Page in the same manner that Mission Crew Help requests are sent. Arvind Jain made this suggestion and posted the image below on the fan page to demonstrated (1).
If this happened, we could still make War Help links when we needed to end a war quickly with the Link-a-Nator and the bots wouldn't be able to take over.

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.
All material is protected by copyright law

14 comments:

  1. In Paul's war you can clearly see that he wasn't in an active war. check the time each war was declared. Since most wars are over in about a minute, he wasn't in an active war when the next was declared.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Make wars like mission crew help? What a terrible idea!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. LMAO - Jen you bring up an idea to stop script users finishing wars quickly then say about using another script to get wars done quickly can you please clarify if you are for or against scripts and wars ending quickly as you are promoting both sides of both arguments here

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm not against any of the scripts. Zynga has issues with automated scripts. A lot of players have issues with scripts that do war helps because they can't find ones to help in as they don't use the other scripts that find but don't automate so they are the ones who have issues. The automated war scripts aren't a problem for me because I work around them. I do post about issues that affect other players and try to get those points of view out there. They are not always my own. Without a clear definition from Zynga which scripts are ok and which ones aren't we can't expect them to solve the problem by banning accounts so the suggested idea was something they could do.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Stop posting war help to newsfeed? NOT!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Confused on this subject also.It is ok to use scripts you like but not for ones others like?
    we all hate the spam so you are suggesting more of it. wow!! lets just make everything spam.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Zynga has said multiple time scripts are against TOS. Some people just don't like the answer.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Zynga has said multiple times, that scripts are against TOS. Some people just don't like that answer.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I used script to do war help for a week and 2 people unfriended me because i cheated. these 2 people generate links everyday and at least 1 of them has 2 accounts. isn't it considered cheating?
    I hate arguing so i'll keep it brief. if no script is allowed, i won't play mw and i'm sure many people are with me.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I don't use war scripts and i can still get into a lot of wars and quite a few times the first to arrive. I know a few people who use them and they do it to help their friends to finish wars quickly and not bcos of the loot. A few days ago i was helping out in two wars and for both wars, a player commented on the post about people using scripts and about how impossible it is to get more than 10000 (or some such number)war assists after 2 yrs of playing. That was such a big lie and the player did not even help in the war even though there were a lot of places still empty and in the end one of the war was lost after about half an hour. If i have a link to that player i would definitely attack that person, not mainly bcos of the insinuation but for letting a friend down like that by commenting but not helping. Getting mission crew help is one of the worst things at the moment and is really not a good thing for war help. I spent about twice the number of reqs to get 8 spots filled yesterday and had to wait and wait just to get that part of the mission complete. Used to generate links but found they are mainly a waste of time bcos only 1 or 2 players will click on them and players who do use them have to do it over and over again, hours for some. Players hate the constant begging and using links will create that situation.
    My main and constant worry about war help is that i attack my own player in helping another player in my mafia bcos many players have diff facebook names and pics from MW pic and name and some constantly change. I just wish that zynga come up with a system that you can't join a war against your own player like you can't attack your own player in the fight page.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Where can i find war scripts, i think is a cool thing.. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  12. I don't like War scripts, so I unfriended most of the team mates who are using them. I do like scripts but not the ones that offer you a "clear" advantage over your team mates.
    What you may do is easy:
    As I am doing since time 0 (the moment that the new wars appeared), press the button "Ask for help", right click the title and copy it, make a new post with the war loot item and put in the comments the link of the war; I am feeling really happy when I see not strong enough team mates participating in my wars.
    I made a few new lower levels friends and finally managed to participate in a few wars.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I don't understand why anyone would care if they've had war declared on them or lost while offline. "Wars lost" isn't even a tracked statistic. Who cares?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Adding more things to the ZMC is not the answer... if I were to actually accept all of the crew requests that I get in a day, I would be over my 200 limit (and not get any mystery bags or any goodies for myself). Adding more to the ZMC (even if it wasn't toward the 200 limit, would add to the 15 minutes i already spend ignoring things in my zmc :(

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated and will not be published until they are reviewed. Please don't use bad language or insult others. For faster feedback on questions, visit our fan page.