You might ask why I've been playing it at all. Calling it a fairly repetitive slog with little in the way of choice or even variety wouldn't be entirely wrong. Well I play it for three reasons: A friend of mine is the lead designer on the project and continually makes interesting changes to it, it has 3.6 million Daily Active Users, and honestly I like the feeling I get when I accomplish goals in a game and that happens pretty often in Mafia Wars.
So why am I quitting? Partially because I feel I've explored the different mechanics in the game sufficiently for now, but mostly because I ran into a mechanic that has ruined the little joy I get from the game.
One of the things I like about the game is that (in general) you can choose to participate in the PvP aspect of the game or not. Now, no matter what you do you can get attacked and lose some money, but it's generally fairly minor and if you're clever you can even make sure that you don't lose any money that you care about.
I chose from the beginning to not participate in PvP and to focus on the standard Energy slog and it's done me in very good stead so far. Zynga has so far been very good about making sure that my choice is fine, and has in fact allowed me to progress very quickly through many areas of the game. I've completed almost all of the cities so far. Recently, though, there's been more emphasis on the stats that help PvP. Las Vegas required you to do missions that spent your PvP "energy" but as long as you had any amount of it you could still progress.. just more slowly. It also had bosses that you had to defeat, and that took PvP energy, but with some amount of effort every single one of them could be defeated. Until now...
I finally hit one boss that I can't seem to defeat. The encounters are timed, you can ask people to help (and I have,) but it's just not possible with my stats to get past them. (Well, I imagine I could probably spend enough money to do it.) In any case, I'm stuck. My game cannot progress anymore and so I'm leaving the game.
The lesson here for game designers is: Always make sure that players can progress no matter what choices they've made. It's alright to make the game harder if they take certain paths, just not impossible. If you do, though, you should ALWAYS make sure that the player knows what the choices they make will mean for their gameplay.
So why am I quitting? Partially because I feel I've explored the different mechanics in the game sufficiently for now, but mostly because I ran into a mechanic that has ruined the little joy I get from the game.
One of the things I like about the game is that (in general) you can choose to participate in the PvP aspect of the game or not. Now, no matter what you do you can get attacked and lose some money, but it's generally fairly minor and if you're clever you can even make sure that you don't lose any money that you care about.
I chose from the beginning to not participate in PvP and to focus on the standard Energy slog and it's done me in very good stead so far. Zynga has so far been very good about making sure that my choice is fine, and has in fact allowed me to progress very quickly through many areas of the game. I've completed almost all of the cities so far. Recently, though, there's been more emphasis on the stats that help PvP. Las Vegas required you to do missions that spent your PvP "energy" but as long as you had any amount of it you could still progress.. just more slowly. It also had bosses that you had to defeat, and that took PvP energy, but with some amount of effort every single one of them could be defeated. Until now...
I finally hit one boss that I can't seem to defeat. The encounters are timed, you can ask people to help (and I have,) but it's just not possible with my stats to get past them. (Well, I imagine I could probably spend enough money to do it.) In any case, I'm stuck. My game cannot progress anymore and so I'm leaving the game.
The lesson here for game designers is: Always make sure that players can progress no matter what choices they've made. It's alright to make the game harder if they take certain paths, just not impossible. If you do, though, you should ALWAYS make sure that the player knows what the choices they make will mean for their gameplay.
Nearly the same thing has happened to me in WestWars. I chose the Energy Path to rapid level advancement...which worked fine getting to levels 300, 500 and recently 600. However, completing new missions requires non-Energy stats that I don't have, as I've put in more than 95% of upgrades into Energy. Basically, I can't complete half of the new missions added to the game in the past few months.
But the real reason why is that the costs of purchasing items that would allow has become so absurd that I have to level up 25-40 levels to get 1 new item. And I can't win PvP duels because, again, my stats are focused to be able to.
I can still level at will, but it's quite difficult or impossible to successfully participate in half of the new areas.
P.S. Paul, Could you enable Anonymous/URL option, so I could actually enter my name and url like I can do at 98.98% of blogs I comment at? Thanks!
Anonymous is now active.
Thanks for the comments!
I've noticed that a lot of this style of game keeps changing the gameplay in this way. Castle Age is in general a much better game than Mafia Wars and (at least at the point that I stopped playing) it really allowed people with different play styles to join in well.
I tried MW again for the same reasons, Paul, and I still couldn't enjoy it even the least bit. I just don't find the basic "click to complete" mechanic interesting or fun. The fact that the game is played by millions baffles me. I guess people love being told they're winners even when they did nothing to deserve it?
I feel a little bad talking about Mafia Wars because our friend works on it, and because I have a hard time finding anything good to say about it overall.
I have yet to find a single facebook game that has held my interest beyond the initial exlporation. Mafia wars really didn't do it for me. I'm not very interested in the subject matter, the game itself felt flat and by the numbers. I'm not a game snob and really like some casual games, it's just that the casual games on facebook, at least so far are dull.
Facebook games are starting to come up in quality, especially in terms of gameplay. There are a couple of relatively decent casual CCGs (Tyrant leaps to mind,) some of the RPGs are coming along nicely (Treasure Abyss and Fantasy University,) decent casual strategy (Desktop Defender and Backyard Monsters,) and if you're into it there's a slew of PvP games in the Evony/Travian bent. Frontierville is like Farmville but clearly an evolution.
I think it's just going to get better.
@Greg - I think there's something strong to be said for people feeling like they've earned something even if all they did was showed up and pressed the right buttons each day. Maybe it's the skinner box of pressing the buttons and getting a new piece of artwork which is associated to your character. For me it just fed the collector mentality of working each day toward catching them all.
Personally, I don't think Facebook games have been improving much. (Is Frontierville or Ravenwood Faire really a significant improvement? Not to me.)
Two I've liked recently: Fantasy University at least has a different art style and probably the best humor. But the Quest-only game play and slow-response just didn't work for me. Roman Taxi is the other; I wish it would grow in complexity.
I keep playing Galaxy Legion. I guess what I like about it is that it doesn't insult my intelligence and never asks me to spam my friends or post micro-acheivements to my wall. Still needs alliance Chat desperately. Doesn't take up too much time for what it is.
I'm a huge fan of Evony/Travian type games (but not those two in particular)...I've played just about every one except the one that started this category (Medieval Browser Games)...Tribal Wars. Grepolis and KingsAge are the two best. They have an incredible number of players, but mostly in Europe, so they don't get the press in the U.S.
I'm also with Anon above - there's not one Facebook game that I can strongly recommend. Too many games ask you to spam your friends or post constantly to your wall. Too many have Gifts that are just Make Work. Too many games use the exact same mechanics of other games. Too many have been dumbed-down to making them boring to a 3rd grader. And, most of all, too many are just Clicking Activities. Gah!