Big news today. Over the past year we’ve heard a lot of concern about how raids and purchasing have affected the game, especially in the last year since Mafia Wars shut down. There’s been concern that people have been levelling too quickly by investing all their Skill Points into Energy and Stamina, and that new players who buy Favor Points have taken advantage of imbalances in the game to gain too much of an advantage when fighting. People have reported being beaten up by players hundreds or even thousands of levels below them, which is especially frustrating when they may have only started playing recently.
Recently we’ve done a deep dive into the game’s statistics to learn more about fight interactions throughout LCN. We’ve found that there are indeed some cases where people have become extremely strong fighters by investing in new and powerful Limited items, even when their Attack and Defence stats are relatively weak.
This chart shows interactions between a sample of different players (not everyone in the game, just a representative group). Green means the player on the left axis defeated the player on the bottom axis, red means they lost, and white means it was a tie (it could have gone either way.)
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As you can see, players tend to beat people at lower levels and lose to players at higher levels, and things are fairly even when you’re similar in level. However, there are a few green lines that go deep into the red. These players are so strong that they defeat people much higher level than them, despite how much those higher levels have built up their Attack and Defence.
Especially early on in the life of the game, PvP calculations have been adjusted a number of times. We haven’t done this in quite a while, but recent events have demonstrated just how powerful Limiteds can be, even when you aren’t investing your Skill Points in Attack and Defense. For this reason, we think it’s time to make another adjustment — namely, improving the amount that Attack and Defence affect your fighting strength.
![[IMG]](proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.kanoapps.com.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fmob_wars%2Fmailout%2FFight%2520Outcomes%2520%25282%2529.jpg&hash=ad09c3ea77cc80f7754f2fd8a5403697)
This chart above shows how our proposed change would affect this sample of players. There are still some green lines poking into the red, but they are much closer to the centerline. Those same strong players still have pretty good chances against people quite a bit higher than them, but they aren’t easily defeating everyone all the way to the other end.
We think this adjustment will help address the concerns expressed by players, while still keeping things fun and competitive within your Fight Range. We may have to tweak the formula more over time as we monitor fight interactions, but for right now we believe this is the fastest, cleanest and neatest way to approach this problem. We understand this is a pretty big change and we’re really looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
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