I ended the last post with an inclination to try Mafia Wars. (Obsolete numbers signify delay in writing.) I sit ten days after that fateful compromise, feeling somewhat as though I have played it much longer. For a time, it was a harrowing obsession. My choices have propelled me to the opposite extreme from my bored lamentation before. In short, I have joined a cult whose preening updates eclipse almost all the legitimate relations I kept tabs on before. Without dropping the game entirely, I can’t go back. Woe and enjoyment keep watch over the gateway; see how lightly I ignored both.

For the uninitiated, Mafia Wars is (yet another) economRPG. Perhaps strategy game is more appropriate than rpg. A prospective player makes some lasting, permanent decisions – with little guidance, mind – and generally attributes stats to one of two paths: fighting or working. I chose working. As with Tiny Adventures, I made a point of researching the game prior to making the all-important initial decisions.

While there are traditional forums and a couple short articles by fans, I found a shocking divergence from Tiny Adventures. There is a faq that the forums and certain sites reproduce that comes from a promotion page. It turns out that people can spend money for game perks or advancement. This inclined other people to create a strategy guide for playing Mafia Wars, an e-book strategy guide. (They show a picture of a printed book, but its digital nature makes the next all the more damning.)  The website for the top search hit suggests that a niche is actually willing to pay the twenty dollars demanded. The particular style of the promotion is one I have seen before, suggesting a similar web design company or at least imitation.

Any purchase, in retrospect, represents waste because I have seen indications that we are not playing quite the same game. Old reviews … sin. I was going to point out that some old reviews show obsolete costs for many items, suggesting my cousin leveled up more cheaply than I. But, the forum posts in question have been updated to my costs. Still, I know that some new players have complained about using a different system than I. My predecessors and I buy properties to provide interest accrual. Newer players (which I appear to have avoided by less than a week) use a system that dominates on the next stage involving collecting from rackets instead. As I play with restaurants and hotels for the moment, I can’t make any comparison about balance or retention.

Nevertheless, I can’t imagine paying for advice on a facebook game. I admit that I came close (to paying for ‘perks,’ not advice) because the economics looked so harsh until I paid by sacrificing my user interface entirely to this hobby. I am actively resisting that level of commitment (and the game helps too, perversely). Besides Tiny Adventures’ bare imitation, I have used similar economRPGs. Five years ago, I tried and dropped a text based stand-alone called Fantasia Five. My friends in high school were far more successful and described anecdotes (killing noobs via crushing them under huge gifts of gold) and changes to the experience (the introduction of a degeneration system to prevent players from battling a particular low-threat, yet infinite opponent). The game’s learning curve put me off and I forgot about it.

Some months ago though, I found a descendent via an ad banner. Though a cool little graphic enticed me, Improbable Island is another text-based RPG. Its authors produced a clever setting, but its stamina system keeps me away for three hours at a time. Websnark introduced me to the reason in his lamentation for Tiny Adventures long ago: server load. Obviously, meting out participants’ demand in subjective or objective units offers more opportunity to replace or cool down the machines responding to my fervent click storm. Improbable Island enforces an objective window, four hours long. Mafia Wars is crueler by letting me choose subjectively. As  the character ages, the player likely increases the energy or stamina to accomplish more. No, explaining this ahead of a better introduction is backwards. Let’s start over.

Mafia Wars, and its kin Vampire Wars, offer two choices for the prospective player: hiser name and regeneration advantage. Both offer the opportunity to change that name later, but Mafiosi pay far more dearly for the privilege. I strongly suggest creating an enduringly satisfying name either in either case to save the effort. The regeneration choice has a tremendous influence over your progression and, while offered lightly, ought to be given real thought. Again, Zynga (the company that runs both games over several platforms) favors the Vampire crowd by letting players change their regeneration profile.

You may select a faster regeneration for your energy (Maniac or Modern), money (Mogul or Noble), or health (Fearless or Primordial). They offer, as so many publishers do, that your preferred playing style ought to guide your hand. No one can really make that choice prior to learning the incentive structure of the game. Consider real D&D, the Player’s Handbook suggests you think about whether you like to deal damage to one foe, many foes, protect your mates with your health, or by ‘healing’ them. Strictly speaking, a responsible DM ought to offer a variety of fights to rotate the importance of each class’s advantage. In the static program though, like Diablo 2, my choice has no real basis until I play each class for ten or so levels (lest the weakness of early levels dissuade me). Of course, computer games encourage this unwieldy complexity as “dozens of hours of replayability.” So, you need to know which regeneration matters in which way.

Again, I note that my advice only holds for systems like my own. I have no idea if the racket version offers a different flowthrough. Energy represents the number of times a ‘character’ can perform jobs that give experience and money. The money is worthwhile for buying weapons/abilities to unlock levels that require them and to buy the properties/minions that offer interest. A (blood) bank exists to store money at a 10% deposit fee so when other players fight your character, they can’t steal from your pocket change. I am fairly sure that is only possible, in Mafia Wars, when you are logged off. I vaguely recall being notified during Vampire wars that I had defended successfully, so you may not be safe while logged on. Health functions intuitively. If your character is reduced below twenty hitpoints, shhe is safe from being attacked or put on a hitlist. If that final attack kills the character, some experience is lost and the (Mafia) victor can offer perks to ten friends. Zynga’s introductory note says health regeneration enables more fights, which is true.

On its face, this looks like the health regeneration is the least valuable. The real limitation on fights is stamina/rage, which regenerates in five minute increments universally. One stamina point allows for one fight. Fight doesn’t really represent the interaction justly. There are a couple early jobs in both games that function as a stereotypical fight: I attack and defend from an opponent until one avatar’s health meter expires. Attacking a player more resembles a mugging. I do some damage, the victim may damage me, and if I succeeded I may gain experience and money from the event. Whether it turns up any money depends upon whether that player has any money in hand.

The system I described in Mafia only gives that opportunity if the player forsakes the bank or if shhe has some defense winnings. The server also gives a small chance of helping one of my ‘family’ during one of their fights (or jobs) and rewards me commensurately. The interest from properties needs to be manually withdrawn, so it remains safe. Vampires, in contrast, receive blood directly to their hand hourly (or every 54 minutes for nobles, like me). Visiting hourly would obviate any loss, but I have more money than I can reasonably spend at the moment, so I let them have what they can carry. A particular assailant’s stamina and health represent the upper limit on potential gains, but some courtesy exists. Zynga established a maximum theft at a given level. For the last ten or so levels, the most I can take is 70,000. In that case, I hit the person again before moving on. And yet, we embody criminals and monsters. No game mechanic stops me from sucking that person dry. Of course, shhe could put me on the hitlist for a fee, but the damage is done. For the moment, that represents courtesy enough, though I won’t trust anyone else to return the favor.

That number, 70,000 deserves a second look before moving on. I hadn’t created a fighting character when I began and only shifted my focus after thirty or so levels. Still, with judicious selection, I can succeed with the majority. The problem in comparing fights with jobs comes from the rewards and predictability. A fight may give five or so experience for each success. If the victims chosen all have more in hand than stolen, each may give that maximum. But, it depends on success and favorable conditions. Jobs, in contrast mark out explicitly that twenty energy returns thirty experience and three hundred-thousand dollars (at my level).

In a single fight returning the maximum, the two skill points to buy that point of stamina appear worth the cost. 70,000 / 2 = 35,000. 300,000 / 20 = 15,000. But, I steal the maximum intermittently. Let’s be overgenerous by stipulating super-success each third turn: 70,000 / 6 = 11,666. The trade pales further if a player focuses on the single job each tier that returns the best energy to money ratio. In the particular tier I am grinding out, that comes to 3,420,001 / 35 = 97,714 per skill point spent. The experience difference hammers the last ten nails in the metaphorical coffin. Yet, overfocus entails a weaker character, certainly. A great many of my family fight all the time, but not as much as they perform jobs. This merely highlights the problems in Zynga’s under-explanation of the game’s structurally favored tasks.

Which culminates in the strong contradiction of what I imply above about the fearless character, specifically. The following does not apply to primordial Vampires. With the preceding, regenerating health looks to be the least valuable type of character. The real limit on mugging comes from stamina points chosen, which don’t levy that sweet racket reliably. It seems better to go through jobs faster or unlock jobs faster via buying the necessities earlier. It seems demonstrably foolish to choose a fighting profile, until the tenth level. At that point, Mafia Wars unlocks the player’s “Top Mafia” board.

Now, a player can promote seven members of their family to positions (mastermind, buttonman, safecracker) that randomly return particular bonuses of experience, defense, money, and so on. In addition, that player’s character now has a tiny chance of receiving an extraordinary bonus. The bagman might get twice the money when performing a job. However, only your mogul friends can be a bagman. And only fearless characters can be promoted as their friend’s wheelmen. A wheelman has the miniscule chance of performing a job for no energy at all. Over the course of several months of play, that could represent a great boost over even the maniac’s faster regeneration. The sixth tier’s jobs require, on average, thirty energy; the seventh requires forty. Likely, the progression holds in addition to offering slower rates of mastery. (That means times these jobs must be repeated before awarding a skill point bonus.) So, even if I regenerate 3:5 minutes faster than the fearless character, one out of one hundred jobs (or less, or more) costs nothing, which represents two or so hours to me.

That could be a fantastic boost or average out. The math involved is complicated and depends on rates of play and, especially, when that character is promoted. I want the highest level wheelman because that, randomly, decreases the energy that I spend on jobs by one or seven points. Generally, this will depend upon the makeup of your friend’s families. But, if a person is of a sort to sink money into this game, that isn’t worth trusting. Shhe may make a facebook profile for hiser infant sister, or a fictional person with a shell email address. That way, each puppet promotes the other to the more important job and one can serve as a consumable miner and the other as a primary account. But that spirals into its own uninteresting grand strategy with goals I neither understand nor value.

For the rest of us, the preceding ought to give the proper basis to decide which of the three regeneration types might suit your perceived need. I like performing the most jobs in a sitting and seeing the colored bars increase. Maniac does suit that. A wheelman may get an extra job (weekly? Every other day? I have no idea, and if promoted by several friends, maybe one daily) occasionally but has fewer until that point because of slower energy regeneration. Perhaps unpredictable rewards and contesting players rather than the System appeals more. The fearless Mafiosi makes sense, but so does the mogul. To increase the chance of success, we buy the strongest guns, armor, and vehicles to equal the number we have in our family (which is poorly explained on the website). A faster income could speed that stockpiling.

As any adult-oriented must be, Mafia Wars incorporates much more complexity. Whatever its real value, that strategy book will certainly run into dozens of pages. I may describe my strategies at a later time. For the moment, this post represents all that you need to be aware of before creating your character, for Mafia Wars. Vampire wars balances the need for fighting more evenly with jobs. I suggest choosing a modern or primordial vampire because their meters come into play more often. I have seventy million blood points in the bank but only use five in a given day and currently earn one million each hour. In sum, its overkill even with the inflation tweak I saw during my first week of play. Either of those two would be fine.

Should you feel restless with your choice in Mafia Wars, try it on Myspace, tagged, or yahoo. Should you try out Improbable Island (which I may describe some other day), I would appreciate it if you told them that I sent you.