Recently Zynga boasted that they resolved some “known issues” in the game
(1). One resolved issue was a bug related to Secret Districts.
What Zynga missed in this case is the bug in question is not specific to Secret Districts or to the Ruby Level. I encountered this known issue and posted about it here. Later, learned that this bug happened only when you completely mastered a job by asking your mafia to help. The workaround was simple, all you had to do was click on the job you asked for help with and you would instantly get your mastery popup and loot reward. The game was not registering completion unless you were the one to complete the job.
----------------------------------Resolved Issues-------------------------------
Secret Districts - Not Receiving Ruby Mastery Popup or Rewards
Issue: Some players reported that they were not receiving the Ruby Mastery popup or rewards upon completing Secret Districts.
Status: Resolved on 1/22/2012 so that the issues would not be present in the next Secret District, The Slammer, which started at 5pm (Pacific Time) on 1/23/2012. If you experience any issues with Secret District: The Slammer, please let us know by reporting them in the Report A Bug forum.
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I don’t think Zynga actually fixed this bug. It looks like they made it impossible to master a job by generating help requests. Before the “fix” you could request help and 10 players were able to add mastery to your job. The mastery each player added was one half the mastery percentage per click of the job in which help was requested. In the example below, I asked for help with a job that gives 6% mastery per click. After 10 players helped, the job was 30% mastered. These same rules have applied to Secret Districts.
While attempting to verify that the mastery bug was indeed fixed, I ran into other bugs which would prevent the original bug from ever happening. I was on the Silver Level of The Slammer and asked my mafia for help. In the example below, my mastery only increased by 3%. This job offers 7% mastery so if 10 players were able to help then it should have increased by 35%. I only needed 9% to master the job and the whole idea was to see if the bug was fixed.
The next day I tried again but was on the Gold Level. My mastery didn’t increase at all and everyone who clicked on my request were told they were too late.
After 24 hours had elapsed, I tried again. I don’t know if they changed the formula but I got an increase of 45% mastery when I should have gotten 35%. The difference from the example above was I asked for help on a job that was no where near 100% mastery.
I then went to a different account and tried once again from a job that was close to mastery. After asking for help, I ensured that enough players had actually helped me by using other accounts.
I got the same results as I did on the first attempt. My mastery was only increased by 3% even though 10 players helped me with the job.
It appears that Zynga “fixed” this issue by ensuring that we can’t master a job when asking out mafia members for help. I don’t know what the thresholds are but if you want to maximize the amount help you can receive, it’s best to ask on jobs that aren’t close to 100% mastery. This type of “fix” is very similar to how Zynga handled the Daily Take Stamina bug. Rather than actually fix the problem of the extra 20% stamina disappearing, the nerfed it so players wouldn’t get extra stamina (1). In the case of this mastery bug which isn’t specific to Secret Districts, they did the same thing!
I don't remember it ever being different. I have always had to do the last bit myself
ReplyDeleteIt was different. If you asked for help and the job was completed, you couldn't move on to the next level and you wouldn't get the reward. That was the bug. Their fix was to make it impossible to complete a job with help hence nerfing the amount of mastery you can get and costing the players more energy.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about secret districts specifically as I usually ask for help with whichever mission costs the most energy and usually after only clicking it once myself - but when I was asking for help with the older districts such as NY, Vegas etc, asking for help would only ever get me to 99%, I always had to do the last bit myself, I've been playing for a year, its nothing new to me...
ReplyDeleteI have not been able to 100% master a job by "asking for help" in well over a year, so that part is true to my account and unchanged... if you had been able to master a job that way Jen, then you had a nice bug in your favor all this time, hehe... it certainly is annoying though that you have to make sure to only ask for help on jobs that are not close to being completed... kinda rude on zynga's part to do that to us, but then again they are not known for making the game fun, so...
ReplyDeleteI had the problem of non-completion throughout Brazil. Some of the jobs were incredibly expensive so I asked for help rather than pay for the items needed. But the helpers were never able to complete the job. I always ended up having to contact support to get it completed. I wonder what they would say now...
ReplyDelete