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Nov-17-2006 00:24

“Never explain yourself. Your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.”
--Elbert Hubbard

I’ve been putting off addressing the growing dissonance over what some players believe to be unfair abuse of the agency system. There have been several reasons for my hesitancy. First, I wanted to see if the community could come to some sort of consensus (or near consensus) without a dictatorial decision from me. Second, it’s a complicated issue and I wanted to decide on an official position before jumping into the fray. And lastly, navigating this kind of social minefield is always tricky and I’m a much better game designer than I am a conflict mediator.

It seems that patience with my hands-off approach has now run its course. I’ve gotten several direct appeals from players that I should intercede, clarify, pontificate or proselytize, and that the time for me to speak up is now.

Many sleuth players have voiced the opinion that it is unfair to combine cases from multiple accounts in order to raise a single detective’s standing in the High Scores List faster than would be possible without sharing cases. This basic argument has given rise to several related disagreements, along with a healthy dose of finger-calling and name-pointing. There are several threads in Sleuth Talk devoted to these debates, so I’ll assume that everybody reading this has a grasp of the arguments on both sides.

First off, I think it’s important to note that everybody on the high scores lists has put an enormous amount of time and energy into a difficult game and should be proud of what they’ve accomplished. We’re not talking about a bug that allows for solving mysteries in under a minute or an exploit that gives you thousands of free experience points. Every detective on those lists represents thousands of solved cases and many, many hours of game play.

Nov-18-2006 14:50

If you have more than one subscription, and you want to cancel one, we'll require you to cancel all of them.

I think he answered that question Roamie.

I sincerely hope that a small rule change such as this won't make anyone leave the game, when we all so clearly enjoy it....

Nov-18-2006 14:52

I'm not sure if I read it correctly about the password sharing thing not being up for debate as well, but I just wanted to raise some concerns:
1- if someone logs off with an item you desperately need because they forgot to put it back into the locker, are you just SOL cause you can't log in as them to retrieve your item? some people share pw's for that reason, among others that have been deemed shameful...
2- what if someone in your agency is not able to play for an extended period of time?

there are so many other things that (some more important!) could happen and can easily be resolved by pw sharing. i have never seen a debate about this before so hopefully you will consider all aspects of your possible decision before you put it into place. i, and many others, love this game and agree with all the other changes, except pw sharing...

i'm not too computer savvy so i don't know what sorts of problems arise from pw sharing, so excuse me if my concerns are that important.

Nov-18-2006 14:56

Not at all AJU...all those are, in my opinion, valid concerns.

Nov-18-2006 14:59

Um NO BIGGIE, that doesnt answer that question. What about gift subs? As usual if you can say " I agree " you are lost.

Nov-18-2006 15:05

settle down Roamie, just trying to answer your question :)

Nov-18-2006 15:06

At this time, I believe the password sharing will not be stopped. I believe Ben and Sunny are still considering this option since he said "I’m going to seriously look at enacting a technical rule that will prevent password sharing inside of an agency." The only two rule changes are, again I believe...

1. When a mystery is completed, half of the experience will go to the detective who finished the case, and half to the detective who started it. Obviously, if those are the same detective, they will get all of the experience as usual.

2. Ex-subscribers who are still in agencies will no longer be allowed to access case files.

Nov-18-2006 18:25

And now that we're into changing things and learning to adjust and swallow what's next....how 'bout suggestions that were made before like reducing the number of clicks for PE verification? or retrieval of agency items by a simple click?

I know for sure that several agencies held a poll on the issue of reducing the number of clicks for PE verification.

Nov-18-2006 18:51

I agree Badass, I would love those ideas....it would save a lot of time.

Nov-18-2006 19:46

Ben and Sunny, let me say that it saddens me that you have to get involved in this. (I too wish the community could have handled this without bothering you guys.) But thank you for attempting to come up with a solution to get the community back into playing the game instead of fighting on the boards.

Nov-20-2006 03:36

These two new rules changes are now in effect:

1. When a mystery is completed, half of the experience goes to the detective who finished the case, and half to the detective who started it. This only effects mysteries started from 11/20 on. Experience rewards for Mysteries that were originally begun before today go completely to the detective who completed it.

2. Ex-subscribers who are still in agencies are no longer be allowed to access case files.

We're still looking into a password sharing solution.