Aug 28, 2015

Fight Carnage Strike Results

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Yesterday there was an organized strike against the Fight Carnage feature [1]. Over 2,500 players signed up but it wasn't reflected in the metrics. There were 142 more monthly players the day before the strike and 117 less daily players [1]. Either most of those who signed up played anyway or there were more non-striking players who didn't played on the day of the strike but not the day before. Regardless of the reasons, the event page was probably good for those who wanted to vent about Fight Carnage. Maybe Zynga will look at the page and do something with the negative feedback. At one time fighters were a big part of the game but things may be different now. We have no idea what type of players are spending the most money but the features and events suggest that Zynga is catering to the serial leveling script users. As previously stated, history has shown us that boycotts often result in the opposite of what is desired. I suspect we will see even more Fight Carnage than what was intended. It is for a 'Limited Time' so it eventually has to end. As the numbers below demonstrate, Zynga doesn't have many players to work with.


Monthly Users
Daily Users

42 comments:

  1. Stupid is as stupid does!

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  2. How quickly people forget. strikes aren't going to help anything - nor make matters worse. Things remain status quo.

    Haven't we all learned by now, that Zynga doesn't listen to their gamers? If they don't listen - who here honestly believes that a "strike" would have ANY impact? Zynga doesn't care shit about anything anymore... if people quit... complain... go on strike... Zynga won't even rise an eye brow - but will continue to throw out events as always. But like you said... hopefully it was a good outlet for frustrations.

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  3. 'It is for a 'Limited Time' so it eventually has to end.'

    Sure? Reread this:

    'On July 22, 2011, the Rob Squad Boost was introduced to the game and Zynga called this The Big Heist.
    We were told by Customer Support that they would be around for approximately one week.
    That was over a hundred days ago and the Rob Squads are still here. Zynga has never officially stated that they are a permanent feature. In fact, the Rob Boost Page and the Rob Squad activation area on the Robbing Page says "Limited Time" as does the Free Gift Page.'

    Source:
    http://www.mafiawarslootlady.com/2011/10/rob-squad-boosts-and-docks.html

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    1. That statement was my attempt at a joke :) There are many Limited Time things in the game that never go away. There is a Limited Time loot item in the City Store that has been there for years.

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    2. The Rob Squad is a very useful feature though, it makes robbing much faster and easier

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  4. People who keep saying zynga doesn't listen are not even paying attention. Carnage is a direct result of them listening. Everyone complains about load times and errors, zynga researched the issue and tracked it to the fight portion of the game and are attempting to find a solution. With the recent devspeak it is easier to see behind the curtain as to many of the recent changes, such as the higher job cost percentages etc. They are trying to reduce server calls to reduce the load errors/times. If you look at it objectively they really are working hard to keep a game past its prime. They most likely won't bring more servers on line as it may make the game unprofitable. Even the recent ramp up in arena events could be seen as trying to get people out of the fight lists. One the frustration of the gamer is taken out, at least to me, it is clear they have listened and are doing their best to juggle keeping the game online and fix the issues.

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    1. The end result has been damaging the ability of fighter accounts to fight as they are accustomed to. The new fight ratio is lower than the previous one, rendering many self-leveling account from being just that -- self leveling. Judging from the number of players in this position that I personally know of (including myself now), as well as the same people cancelling VIP, Zynga's effort to improve the server performance will simply lead to the accelerated demise of the game. If they restore the original fight ratios, they might save this Carnage event, and prevent the exodus of many players. But as of now, I don't see it happening.

      Now, where is that listening part?

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    2. the real reason carnage was introduced is to reduce server calls so they can get rid of more of them & therefore save costs. Any impact on performance is incidental & not their primary purpose.
      Getting thousands more people to quit playing will also help their "performance" issues.
      Call me a cynic, but the only thing they care about is milking the few remaining paying players for as much as they can get. We all know the game is dying. Zynga is dying. Will they both meet their inevitable demise at the same time, or will they pull the plug on MW first?

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  5. what's the definition of Monthly Player? someone who plays at least once a month?

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    1. Any account that played one time in the last 30 days. The numbers the day after really don't mean a whole lot for the monthly metric. The daily one is a better reflection.

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  6. a lot of them still logged in and played, either intentionally as they didn't understand the point was not to log on period, not to just not fight, so many logged on and did builds and parts begs and then you have all the others that forgot that they are set to auto log on when opening fb, i would say maybe 1k people actually did it right and didn't touch MWS at all, but hey, there are not that many daily players anyways so prolly more than that do not log in daily anymore anyhow

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  7. The numbers that will matter in the long run is how many people have or will be canceling VIP because of Carnage. Since you can cancel your VIP subscription it can take up to 30 days for the number of actual subscribers to be reflected in their numbers. Those are the stats that would be interesting to see.

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    1. I cancelled mine because of the loading issues and I know others who did the same. I guess it will depend if they see returning subscribers as well. I would sign back up right now but I don't trust that the loading issues are gone. I imagine if they remove Fight Carnage they will come right back. There has to be a way they can keep it but adjust it so the fighters will be happy too. If not than they will probably try to figure out which group is more important to them financially. I guess we are lucky they are trying because they could always say to hell with it and shut down the game. If enough people cancel that may be a viable option for them.

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    2. While the numbers from yesterday might be accurate I have serious doubts about the metrics monk website. Considering it's down for days at a time for no apparent reason I question how valid any information is coming from that site. That being said the Loot Lady is spot on that strikes have never been an effective way to get problems solved. Zynga is a business and I'm sure they have a specific revenue goal for all of it's games. Once it dips below a certain benchmark they shut the game down. Plain and simple. Zynga could care less about daily or monthly players. They care about VIP's and people buying reward points. Outside of fighters it's hard to believe there are other MW groups dropping that kind of money to enhance their accounts. Regardless of that I still believe it's a serious error for Zynga or anyone else to think that fighting accounts don't matter in terms of keeping MW a viable game long term.

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    3. The numbers come from Facebook so even if their site is down the data is still what Facebook reports. We've always felt the numbers aren't accurate as we don't know the criteria and suspect they are drastically inflated, comparing day to day is the only thing the numbers are actually useful for. Zynga reports these metrics to their investors so they do care to some extent. The number of players playing their games is something that is monitored. They also get ad revenue so the number of players logging into their games affects that. We will never know who is spending the money. We can make educated guesses but for all we know maybe they are just satisfied with the ad money and the rest is just gravy.

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    4. Possibly many would sooner see the game shut down than to continue with this carnage. That is the impression I'm getting from all the quitting notices I'm seeing. Page load fails and slow gameplay are highly annoying, yes, but what they have done to fighting very dramatically alters gameplay, and it is nothing anyone who fights in wars would have expected them to do, so it will be a very hard adjustment and most likely not worthwhile to adapt to it for some. Also, many are continuing to experience the problems they set out to correct, so not only is fighting unbearable for these people, they still have the page load fails and poor game performance.

      I am finding a slight reduction in page load fails, but they're still there, and the game performance hasn't improved enough for me to want to keep carnage fighting. Fighting manually causes nothing but anxiety, waiting for that stupid bar to fill so I can attack again and hoping my opponent doesn't have the chance to heal after a few clicks and several thousand stamina points gone into the attack. Fighting with script (I use Demon Gold) improves the experience, but only slightly. It is still dead slow, and if you're actually in a retaliation fight, you're always worrying you'll run out of stamina before the ice. Carnage is an unacceptable feature they have introduced to the game, so my overall feeling is, if they keep it, within a few months, the game will most surely close down, and the page loads in hindsight, will look very insignificant, compared to having no game.

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    5. All good points. I'd rather not play the game that it has now become than continue.
      It seems a lot of people have moved to the arena making it hard for small accounts to get a good finish and good ratio in the 100 arenas or the 500 arenas.
      I did a run of stamina that was mostly one stab hits as I set it to ignore targets with a high percentage of health. I won almost all the fights and I got the abysmally embarrassing ratio of 1.13 (someone else please try this)
      Doesn't it seem that every move Zynga makes to fix one of their goof ups causes even a worse one?
      Not the game I loved and won't care if they shut it down due to lack of revenue. As long as the money isn't coming from me anymore I won't mind.

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  8. People shouldn't be so concerned about the number of players playing, but focus more on the number of players paying. If people can be believed, VIP memberships are being cancelled like crazy as a direct result of the carnage event. Some who have cancelled their VIPs might continue to play, some might quit the game completely, but it will impact Zynga financially. I'm not sure when they'll start feeling the financial impact, because some may already be paid up for this period, but there it is.

    Additionally, if the e-mails Zynga is sending to people about carnage are legit, where they are saying that it is only temporary and that they are giving people a strong assurance that regular fighting will be returned as soon as developers get their technical stuff sorted, and they do not honor that commitment, then they have lied, and when corporations lie it is fraud, and fraud can cause some trouble for them. Just sayin'

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  9. Great so the Serial Icing big accounts got there way. Now I have Loading issues again. My posts are not going through. Along with all the old issues

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  10. Ok, this should give you some idea of the effect carnage is having. Since Family Feud has been introduced, my family has never placed in the top 30. We haven't placed anywhere near the top 30. I have always taken for granted this event is not for us, so I don't even bother to look to see where we are in in relation to even making the ranks, because it's too depressing to see we're 30 or more thousand ices away from hitting #30. I just now signed in to the game and the Feud tab on the home page was displaying. We're ranked in 10th place at the moment, but here's the kicker: we're a very small family, and I'm the only one playing today, rather than the 20 of us who usually play! And we're competing with the same families as last time; the ones who always bury us! And I need less than 3K ices to rank up to #9, which is easy peasy for me to do, all by myself.

    I might give the impression of being excited that our family has made the ranks, but I'm actually not. I can't even take personal pride in knowing I did it singlehandedly because it means so many fewer players are playing right now, including members of my own family. It won't be too long before these players discover a more rewarding life outside the game and then they will be gone forever.

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    1. Update: this is the third day from when I started noticing my tiny family was making the ranks in the Family Feud, with only one member (me) playing. This is something we had never done before now, as noted above. We have always been consistently 30K or more ices away from even placing #30 on the board, and that was with all 20 members providing maximum effort to try and make ranks. We have also been competing against the very same families who usually leave us in the dust. This time around, though, due to Carnage, my family has been consistently in the top 10 on the board and yesterday we were #2... and it has been only me playing.

      The metricsmonk might be recording no great reduction of people playing, but what are these people actually doing when they sign in to the game? I would lay bets that many players are only signing into the game to see if the event is over, and then signing back out again once they see the event's still going on, and they might be doing the bare minimum posting/building while they're in there before signing out again. That's not really playing, and I doubt any buying of refills and skill points is going on. If all these people were playing as normal, then my little army of 1 would not be getting anywhere with the Family Feud. I'd be willing to bet that every Family Feud grouping is like that right now, except probably the top 2 or 3 groupings in the game. We all know these top tier families are mostly self-leveling players who are unaffected by what's going on because when events like the Feud are on, many play solely in the arena.

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    2. I sign in, look to see if the Carnage event is over , build and leave
      Im not buying RPs at this time. Maybe Zynga can force the Carnage on us but they can't force us to spend money ;)

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    3. Yep, that's what I thought, and I don't think you're alone in just going into the game to build and boogie. The tier of Family Feud our family is in has had a very poor turnout this time around, and this is a complete change from the previous times this event has been held. Our family is small but about 2/3s are mid-to-strong sized players who are regular spenders. I'm not sure where we fall in the category of spending but Zynga's not getting any of our money right now. Because of the way I built my account, Carnage has had minimal effect on me, but that doesn't mean I'm in support of it. I hate it on too many levels to count, but I hate it most because of the effect it is having on those players who I consider close friends. The game wouldn't be the same if they decide to permanently leave, and the longer this event drags on, the bigger the risk there is of that happening.

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  11. I'm having a scary thought. Zynga has already messed with energy and stamina, so if they're allowed to get away with it, what's next? Attack and defense?

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  12. I do appreciate the adjustments that they made to Carnage, but the poster above me is correct in that the loading issues have returned

    Kathie E

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  13. please get rid of it carnage, it takes me 20 mins to die when before it would only be 5 mins, it slows the game down A LOT!!!! END IT NOW

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    1. Hahaha, yes burning down health at the end of the day is almost a day long task, and there's always the risk you'll run out of stamina before you get there. I'm mid-range monster when it comes to health. I have just over 70K. Since this event started, I have not been iced. I get knocked down about 5K and then heal. The lowest my health has got when someone is hitting, is to about 30% but that was because I was fighting someone else as I was getting hit. I don't feel great about being practically un-iceable. While I hate getting iced and will do everything to prevent it under the old fighting, I would sooner go back to it, as it was way more of a challenge and way more fun trying to stay on my feet.

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  14. The easiest solution is to buy more servers!

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    1. they can't afford to. They are losing too much money.

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  15. Thank you for the metrics. I would be interested in seeing a graph of the MW players since the start of the game. Weren't we over 20 million players at one point? Now to be down under 90k? That sure says something.

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  16. I am an all round player and have been for 6+ years now, I have put up with all the problems in the game because I love this game, I pay regular for reward points to buy stamina for fighting I could get on average 19 ices per clip now with this idiotic carnage I am lucky to get 2 ices so my six years of wasting HARD earned cash has now been in vain. All transactions to zynga have now stopped I will never pay another penny & I hope zynga go bust. moan moan moan moan moan

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  17. I finally woke up yesterday and cancelled my DIAMOND VIP membership. Told all of the Zynga idiots if they had any common sense, they should start looking for other employment. Zynga is a fading company and once the economic collapse hits, they are HISTORY! Just like the comment above, I could EASILY get 20 ices per each pool of stamina before FIGHT CARNAGE, now I get ZERO ICES with all of my stamina GONE! So almost finished with URBAN ASSAULT, I JUST QUIT. NO WAY TO GET ANY ICES WITHOUT PAYING ZYNGA FOR REWARD POINTS!!! GREEDY BASTARDS! I have played since September 2008. The end for me. I kicked everyone out of my small family and told them if they had any common sense, to bail out now. So long to everyone....it was fun, but once it became PAINFUL, it was time to say goodbye to the mafia and GOOD RIDDANCE to Zynga.

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  18. Back in the old timey days of MW, stamina cost twice the amount of skill points as the other options. Zynga was constantly trying to get more people to fight/rob, Most people were avoiding fighting due to the stamina price, and they seemed more concerned about obtaining a high level number, They dumped most of their skill points into energy. Then, all of a sudden Zynga changed the rules of the game and now stamina only cost 1 skill point. Prior to this I had spent about $20 on a few things and wasn't against spending money -- BUT, after they changed the rules of the game midstream and gave everyone else an unfair advantage over me, I vowed to never spend another dime on the game. When they made the switch they should have doubled everyone's current stamina points at the time, so those who had added a bunch of stamina weren't penalized.

    While I'm certain they initially made stamina cost more because they were concerned about server traffic, they still changed the rules of the game. Since that time, there have been numerous changes that Zynga has made to the game that penalized players who were building their characters based upon the premise that the game is about obtaining power over opponents, and getting a high level number is irrelevant. Similar to how people build automobiles that look nice and actually go fast, versus cars that are made to look and sound fast, but are slow, which are paper tigers.

    I'm sure the whole purpose of the arena was to reduce server traffic, so they could use less resources and make the game more profitable. I think the arena ruined the game as it once again changed the rules of the game, as it reduced the power of fighting opponents. I'm at the point where I wish Zynga would just shut the game down. I'm playing more out of spite now based upon Zynga's past poor behavior. I'm using their resources for free!

    I've always thought the people at Zynga who set the prices for things were idiots as most of the things would barely help someone's character, and many would be obsolete in a month. Of course there a apparently even dumber people out there who buy the things



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    1. I agree with you in that Zynga should have compensated those who had allocated skill points to stamina when they switched from 2 to 1sp. I remember that time very well. I couldn't understand why stamina was set at 2sp, when everything else was set at 1. I was too cheap to buy stamina back then, and then, when Vegas opened, I had no choice. I think that is when they changed stamina down to 1sp from 2, because they got so many complaints about it. At least back then, Zynga was responsive to customer complaints. Usually if they did something stupid that affected players adversely, they'd have it fixed within hours. I also remember they used to issue in-game pop-up apologies every time they messed up, and they would usually credit all accounts affected by their boobery with 10 or 20 rps. The apology was good enough for me. The rps were gravy.

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  19. The loading issues are better, but not totally fixed, haven't tried carnage, been busy finishing district to gold, what a pain in the ash. You build up your account, so the game gets much easier to play, and zinga pulls this crapper. So now its getting boring.

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    1. I have been plagued by every nasty bug the game has today, so they are coming back, and they're coming back to stay is my bet, probably because now they've screwed everyone over, they can take more server space away from the game.

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  20. When Carnage started I was getting upwards of over 800 ices in one session. My time playing dropped from 6 hours to 3 hours. I have 32k stamina. What I don't understand is that some players are saying their stamina is gone in 20 minutes. What am I missing here? Also when Carnage started I had no issues with spinning bullets, pages not loading, etc. all was working fine. Now with the change in Carnage I have been on here playing for 2 and a half hours and have 67 ices!! What's up with that? At this rate I will be up all night.

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    1. I feel your pain...I have just under 100k in stamina and I was happy with the whole carnage thing until they tweaked it

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  21. If people are serious about wanting them to stop carnage and go back to regular fighting, they're going to have to start taking serious action, now that it seems almost certain zynga is not going to be dropping carnage. If they were going to drop it, they would have done it by now, rather than be still messing around with it, making it an even more unstable gaming experience.

    It is going on 2 weeks and they are refusing to even give people a date it will end, even though they have written to people saying it will end. Why are they so reluctant to give anyone a date? At this point, I say they're lying and they have no intention of getting rid of it, and they're just waiting for shit to calm down and go away, as they always seem to do in this game. They count on it.

    People are going to have to start demanding to speak with upper management at zynga, although my guess is that is where the problems started, but at least start there so you can say you have tried to speak to upper management. Then after trying to speak to upper management fails, and it likely will because, hey, it's zynga afterall, you can take your complaints outside of zynga to places like Consumer Affairs, Better Business Bureau, or the Federal Trade Commission. These agencies will either help you or refer you on to the right people to deal with this type of complaint.

    If you have received in writing something from zynga, confirming that the event will end, write them back, referring to the original e-mail, asking them for a firm date that carnage will end. If they still refuse to give you a date, or they start backpedaling and saying they're not sure it will end now, then you know that their original e-mail to you was them lying to you, and you can make that the basis of your complaint (lying is fraud) if you do decide to take it to an outside agency or even upper management at zynga.

    A lot of us have spent thousands on this game so the least zynga can do is not lie to us when we contact them to complain about a game feature we do not like.

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  22. So.....explain to me again how Carnage has improved game loading issues! Carnage is still here and the game is loading as slow as ever. The spinning bullets are back along with all of the other persistent issues we have been plagued with!!!!!!!!!!

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  23. Well the strikers had a vote about Carnage and they wanted to present the results to Zynga to show how everyone was against it .. you were good enough to advertise it for them. The only trouble was it was not an anonymous vote, I stuck by my guns and voted NO, I did NOT want it to change back to the 'old way', I quite like Carnage .. There were about 50 of us brave (foolish) enough to vote no. Now I find I am under constant attack by SOME of those who want it abolished. My level 768, one of the brave fighters level who is attacking me : 43910 .. even has a profile picture suggesting that if you don't support the fight against carnage " Now I fight you ". What a group of childish babies some of the fighters are.

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  24. Last Carnage post was Oct., 2015. I was asked to join the boycott by a long time friend. I liked carnage so didn't respond. My "friend" unfriended me after over 5 yr. and BLOCKED me for not going along with her. She removed the block so I blocked her. She was 1 of the ones starting the boycott. That was bullying ppl to join. Is Carnage still available b/c I had it until a friend team-viewed with me who was also against carnage and now it's gone. I liked not having to keep crew in fighting & got good results fighting with the added points to A & D. Just need to know if I can chg. back to carnage or if it is gone. I have a 5K mafia but feel that there are many who are tired of MW & have quit. I use Mafia Inspector & remove non-players. Big question is: Can I get Carnage back or not?? I can't seem to keep crew enough now to fill all the spots needed & that was not a problem before. Now I'm getting robbed b/c I don't think the crew is lasting 8 hr. like it used to. The guy who helped me was in on the boycott against Carnage. I just want it back like it was before he messed with it if that is possible. Need to find out if it is possible to get it back before saying anything to him & ticking him off at me. TY !!

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