Collectable Cards: Bugged & Not A Good Deal

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When Collectable Stat Cards were dumped on us last Friday, most could sense that Zynga was up to no good and this was just a gimmick to get uninformed players and collectors to part with their Reward Points (1).

 

As usual, the in game directions were a little vague. The statement "Improve your stats with cards and gain access to powerful mastery items when you collect all the cards in a set" is somewhat misleading if you don't understand the best ways to acquire skill points.

I was going to let this one go but many players had ask questions and had problems with this feature. There is only one way to get collection cards, you need to buy them with Reward Points. You do have two options and can buy one card for 15 Reward Points or 3 for 42. Each card comes with 3-7 skill points and get you closer to the mastery item. You can buy card from the Home Page banner, the Collectable Cards Page under the Collections & Vaults Tab or in the Marketplace under the new Collectable Cards Tab. I hope Zynga knows that "Collectable" is not a real word.

You will save a l Reward Point if you buy them in groups of 3 as opposed to one at a time. You have no control over which cards you will get so there is a luck factor involved. I spent 1,008 Reward Points to get them all and Mike spent 942. They get you towards the end when you only need 1 or 2 cards. I spent the most trying to get those last few cards and ended up with many multiples.

1 Card for 15 Reward Points

3 Cards for 42 Reward Points

The three types of cards you can purchase are Common, Uncommon and Rare. There are a total of 5 Series and 5 of these cards in each series. When you get all 5 cards in a series, you get a Superior Card item which is the Mastery Card for the series you completed. Get all five Mastery Cards and you get the Ultimate Card. There are a total of 31 Cards in Set 1 of the Crime Series.

The Superior Cards don't give you any additional skill points but offer you a chance to get a loot item. They don't just give you the item, you are told where to farm for it.

Once you get all 5 Series Mastery Cards, you will get the final card of the set.

The reward that comes with the final card is just given to you so you won't need to hunt it down. The Golden Eye has stats of 200/200 and will make the collectors drool. This is surely what Zynga is counting on.

In addition to spending Reward Points, you will also waste energy to get the loot rewards. Even if you completed everything, the jobs you need to do have very low experience/energy ratios so your leveling will be affected. Zynga must have assumed that if players were foolish enough to buy cards with no real value then they would also buy energy refills to get the rewards. Below are the 6 loot item rewards and where you will find them.

Series	Loot Item	Location	Best Ratio
I	Wrist Blade 110/78	Las Vegas District 2	1.85
II	Falconry Glove 76/109	Brazil District 1	1.52
III	Sea Dog 111/73	Italy Region 2	1.78
IV	Porcupine Piranha 112/71	Chicago  District 1	1.42
V	Electronics Expert 75/111	Las Vegas District 1	1.83
Reward	Golden Eye 200/200	N/A	N/A

The jobs in Chicago and Brazil that will drop the reward items have icons on the job payouts. The ones in Las Vegas and Italy do not. Many players are reporting that the rewards simply do not drop. I found this to be true for some of them. I spend thousands and thousands of energy and some of the items still haven't dropped.

I had to laugh when the item that is suppose to drop in Chicago dropped in Las Vegas. The system is definitively bugged. I submitted a ticket to Customer Support but haven't heard back in over 2 days now. From what players are reporting, Customer Support has been AWOL over the holidays.

I found it interesting that once the Porcupine Piranha dropped in Las Vegas, the icon was removed from my Chicago Job Page. This makes me think that we can only get 1 loot reward per mastery card. At the time of this post, no player has reported getting more than 1 reward.

I didn't have any trouble getting the item in Italy and it dropped after about spending 2,000 energy. I've given up on the other items as I'm tired of spending energy on low ratio jobs and not getting anything for it.

Players who aren't collectors and know the best strategy to get skill points are probably laughing at this feature. I had to buy a total of 72 cards in order to get 5 complete sets. This cost 1,008 Reward Points total and I gained 286 skill points from the process. In the Marketplace, skill points cost +4 for 14 Reward Points. I would have gained 288 skill points if I just purchased them straight up.

Most players know that the cheapest way to get skill points is to speed up the crafting timers of your New York Properties. Each timer speed up costs 12 Reward Points and you can gain anywhere from +1 to +20 skill points. I'm working on my attack skills and can get +6 attack points for 12 Reward Points. If I had used the 1,008 Reward Points I spent on the Collectable Card, I would have gained +504 attack points. This is a much better deal. 

Health is the new defense and players who want to build their health will find for the same cost of the Collectable Cards, they could add an additional health 1,680 points to their character by crafting Warthogs for the same cost of buying cards.

Simple math dictates that Collectable Cards are not a good deal, especially when you consider the random factor and you could end up spending a lot more Reward Points than you had planned. Strategic players should not waste their Reward Points on these cards. The additional bonus of loot will not last. Some of the rewards are already obsolete.

1,008 Reward Points Total	Collectable Cards	Marketplace	Weapons Depot	Armory
Skill Point Gain	+286	+288	+504	+1,680

Other than the skill points you get for purchasing Collectable Cards, the cards have no value. You can't trade them. Zynga didn't even put in any effort and all cards use images that already exist in the game. For what they are charging you would think they could have created original images. 

There is a lot Zynga could do to make this feature useful and enjoyable to all players. Things that people collect such as Baseball Cards are tradeable. If these cards could be added to our wishlist it may bring life back into the trading community. There should be another way to obtain cards other than purchasing them. The Daily Chance feature is underutilized because the rewards suck. If these cards were added as a reward it would add a use for two features. If Collectable Cards remain the way they are, players will soon figure out it's not a deal or worth it and Zynga will have another Trader Goh on their hands.

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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