Jul 20, 2011

The Anatomy of a Nerf: Shotgun Blasts

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It's comical to study the evolution of the Shotgun Blast. When Boss Fight Ammo was introduced into the game, the Shotgun Blast was the saving grace to compensate for poor drop rates of the other consumables. The first boss we got to use our Ammo on was Roughhouse Rafael. We could accept up to 40 Shotgun Blasts as free gifts and collect two at a time from our news feeds. Nobody complained and many liked the new style of Boss Fight. Things remained the same for the Kassina Kunoichi Boss Fight as well.
When The Raven first came to terrorize Mafia Wars, Zynga removed the option to get Shotgun Blasts from the Free Gift Page and reduced the number of Shotgun Blasts from the news feeds to one.
When Captain Jack came on the scene, the damage that Shotgun Blasts would do per attack was reduced from over 300 to over 100 but you could still collect them from your news feeds.
Instead of further nerfing Shotgun Blasts, Zynga decided to eliminate them all together for the return of The Raven. They were replaced with Sniper Shots that don't drop as advertised and the only way to get enough to defeat The Raven is to purchase them from the Marketplace.
This has really made players angry. Zynga always maintains that Mafia Wars is a social game and we have gotten used to all the Mafia Wars spam. Some of this spam is even acceptable to players. We loved Shotgun Blast news feed posts and enjoyed interacting with each other to get them.
One thing that seems to be a constant in Mafia Wars is if players like something, it's taken away. This reminds me of the Seal and the Bucket.
Here is how the story ends.

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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

8 comments:

  1. ATLEAST DEY NOT BE STEELIN' MAH KUNZOOMABLES.
    ELSE DEY BE IN BEEG TRUBBLE !!

    WAIT.. THEY BE STEELIN' MAH ARR-PEE... GRRRR!!!

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  2. takes the piss, i knew raven was due, (3 day cooldown) had my energy and bonuses ready, im in the second hour or his timer and only after 500 ices i finally got 2 snipers whilst reading this very post, even finished diaomond level again, even if i had an extra 10 snipers it might be possible to beat him without spending, points, will let you know if i actually managed it

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  3. I might be in the minority, but I actually liked that they removed the shotgun blast cos' they were unbalancing the boss fights, what I don't like is the fact that the sniper shots which were a great idea don't drop and are an obvious scam

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  4. lol @ "we . . . enjoyed interacting with each other to get them." Like you, I used stream helper to get them. There's really nothing "social" or interactive about spam. Its real function is to serve as an advertisement for the game.

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  5. I agree Jen, the drops are absolutely ludicrous. I burned through 10K stamina and got 2. That's not a good ratio.

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  6. do you still believe this crap?

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  7. Sadly mafia has lost the social element it used to have. Everyone is too busy with all these missions to interact like they used to ! Even family's are split into those 100 lucky to have a red tag, the rest that didnt get in fast enough.... More and more players are leaving or scaling back the amount of time they play as it is no longer "fun" but more of a chore !

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  8. me again from the second posts here, i didnt kill him even though i did actaully get 8 snipers to drop, it was no point as halfway through the 8 hours, none of the other stuff needed to fight would drop, so its even more fixed than thought

    ReplyDelete

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