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Jun-28-2008 08:39

There have been some recent events on this game that warrant some concern. It’s no secret that there has been a lack of interest. Much of this may be attributed to the release of Shades of Mystery. If that is what people want to play, far be it from me to tell them not to play it.

That being said. I am still a paying customer of Sleuth Noir. As a paying customer there are some things that I expect. Ben has done a decent job at keeping the server up and running. We had a slight issue earlier in the week with not being able to travel and Ben did a great job of addressing the issue and getting it corrected. He always has done a great job of taking care of things. He has not however kept the game fresh and interesting. We recently had the expansion of the USS Sleuthetania. There was a buzz before the initial launch of it and we couldn’t wait to see what was in store for us.

Well what did we get? The opportunity to pay $20,000 to get on board of a ship and do nothing more than play cases. Sure there are some new characters and new items along with 2 new “coming soon” links. That’s it! I can’t help but to feel disappointed in the way this has played out. Two weeks later, the links are still coming soon and the interest of the boat has already gone away. I know I have no plans or reason to get on the boat and be cut off from my agency completely. I don’t know this for a fact, but I think a lot of people are disappointed with the boat as well and some may even be irritated and feel cheated by the whole development.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh and we are missing some secret that still needs to be unlocked on the boat, but if people aren’t playing, the secret will not be unlocked. I know that Ben is just one person and can only do so much. He has a lot on his plate right now with running both SOM and Noir. I’m sorry, but SOM means absolutely nothing to me as I don’t play over there.

Jul-13-2008 00:17

hannah blue? that's funny...I thought you sounded a lot like this guy who used to call himself Nephi. But that's totally not you, like not at all. I think I remember he said something profound, just like "risk is the essence of gaming" before he left, but -and I'm sorry for being a stickler for details here, please just bear with me- I believe his exact words at the time were "Old spice is the essence of a man". Then he just whistled a sea-farin' tune, ate a codcake and disappeared into the bowels of a super-secret government test for a miracle pill that cures social anxiety, superiority complexes and swollen acne in one fell swoop.

More on the phenomena known as Nephitism on my bio. Serges' too. But all that is a bit of an aside. What I really wanted to say was something along the lines of, "Yeah...I know. There's been more focus on the new game of late. True." I can understand being frustrated at the lack of new developments (or, the inadequacy of the ones that HAVE appeared) on Noir. About a year ago, my own agency was sitting pretty close to the top when we all discovered we were getting a little tired of grinding out cases, one after another. The ensuing feeling of frustration sucked, plain and simple. The thing was , we all sort of realized that what we hated about it was the fact that the game we had all signed on for wasn't as fun as it used to be, because the thing about games is that they have rules, and once you figure these out, the challenge is gone. We didn't demand that the community change the rules to make things more exciting, and we didn't feel that admin owed us upgrades to the service we understood we were paying for when we bought our subscriptions. We understood that we were participating in a fledgling effort to make a business out of one in a million random internet games and we just shut up and felt happy on those rare occasions that we would log on an find the server blessedly UNclogged by armies of tweenagers with Nancy Drew names.

Jul-13-2008 00:32

The thing is, at ANY level you have to accept that continuing to play a game means making a choice accepting grinding in that game to remain competitive or just playing for fun. No-one can change that, and no amount of shipwrecked tanker ships and grandiose Celine Dion songs can change that. Please have a sense of history, and recall that this game survived for years with NO major changes (new cities, new contact rules, loads of new equipment, new caseloads and the twin advents of VH-ing and apartments).

I'm just sayin': expect only and exactly what you pay for and treat bonuses as a rare privilege rather than an expectation.


Hope you're all well :)

Jul-13-2008 01:55

Crunch darling I think I may have to disagree with you a bit, not based on fact, but based purely on my egotistical sense of understanding human nature.

Do you think that SMRT went down because you got bored with the game, or because you got burnt out? I remember that era with much sentiment. We (al-Q) were originally trying to beat Hitchhikers for the top spot in London. Tin made a bet with Serges that we would do it in 6 months. And we had a little countdown ticker on our boards to see much we had gained on HH and how much time we had left. And then you guys came out of nowhere and were perpetually treasure hunting and SMOKING us and we couldn't keep up with you. You guys were working non-stop and winning almost every hunt you were in. And in our efforts to keep up with you, it felt like a job away from our RL jobs. Actually for me it was more work than my RL job to have to come home every night and stress over treasure hunting.

Then all of a sudden, last summer, a year ago, everyone from SMRT kinda left. And everyone, at the same time, from al-Q kinda left. Around the same time as SleuthCon where SOM was announced. Obviously I can't speak for SMRT but I know what happened to us. We were all so tired and the idea of having a new game to start from scratch seemed really appealing where we weren't trying to play catch up. And our plans for Sleuth-World domination could go on hold for a few months because we were going to do it in the new game. And of course the newness of it was intriguing as well. So instead of just saying you know what... We're OK with not being the top agency in London, we said, we'll start up in the new game and be the top agency there. Let's just take a break for now.

Unfortunately, no one from al-Q ever came back. Being away from the game for over 6 months, I guess everyone found something new to do with their time. But I wonder, if that announcement of the new game had never taken place. Would al-Q and SMRT still be dead?

Jul-13-2008 09:37

Speaking as someone who has in fact left the game several times and then returned, let me tell you the reasons behind those decisions.

I left the game each time beacause things became stagnant, doing the same thing day in and day it became rather boring. What made me decide to resub? Changes to the game, new things to do. If this game was the saem way as it was 2 years ago, I never would have come back and resubbed. Granted, on this latest stint I did something I hadn't on the previous two, that is made friends with all you fine people. The community is what makes it for me.

Now crunch, what you had stated certainly has merit, Admin has in fact delivered everything that we have paid for. No where in the sub does it say anything about getting new developments and such. However, any business thrives on returning customers. If things get stale, people will not return, that is what I'm hoping to avoid here. New and interesting developments can prevent people from leaving and even bring old players back into the mix of things.

I have something, I think will be fun planned for the very near future. Keep your eyes posted on the boards for an official announcement of what I have planned. Some of you already know about it and I think it will be a great way to bring the community together and show how strong and passionate many of us feel about the game.

Jul-13-2008 13:59

Speaking for myself only, I would have to agree with nicnic. I got burned out from Sleuth and found other things to occupy my time.

Jul-13-2008 15:07

First off, gotta get this outta my system....

CRUNCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

Welcome back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now.

I think most of us can agree (hopefully) that we're here because of a combination of the challenge of Noir and the people we find here. At the same time, Crunch has a point. I can't count the number of times in the past when I bit my tongue to keep from screaming 'Enough Already!!' upon reading every other day somebody posting, "Hey, Ben, when ya gonna do something new?????"

Unfortunately, this is a slightly different (and unique) situation. Admin no longer seems to be willing to devote its time and resources to Noir like it has in the past. The question becomes, how do we keep Noir going from here. We're patiently waiting while Admin makes up their minds about the development team idea (one possible option). There probably are others, but whatever they are, they doubtless will have to heavily involve the community for Noir to survive.

Stagnancy is a state of mind. We can let it affect us if we want it to, or we can work to make things better.

So....

Who's next?? ;-D

Jul-13-2008 15:10

And HAPPY!!! Life just hasn't been as happy since you've been gone! ;-P

Welcome back!!!!!

Jul-13-2008 19:43

Breitkat:
You are marvellous in keeping the spirit up, but at the same time being truthful about the situation! If the community ever will need someone to keep us up and together, I will vote for you! :-)

When it comes to me, I wanted to assist with easier programming tasks, because programming is what I know. I thought that if I could do some of the easier things, Admin, the one who know everything, could take care of the harder issues, at least until I grew in skill and usefulness.
But, I NEVER had any plan of using such a position to steal code, or reveal secrets that were to be secrets, or do anything that would remove this from being the artwork of Ben Ringold.
In order to help getting myself up and running on python, I have started to develop a program that would produce a AVH-Tournament update, also in gratitude for someone giving me something to burn a little for. If I had been able to get even spyce up and running on my computer, I would have used spyce as well, because, since I have done asp, I understand how it's going to work. But since I am not there yet, I do it all in python.
Just like others have said before me, telling they would be happy to help out, I feel it's frustrating to see many possibilities and needs for refreshments, and know that people stand unpatiently waiting to be allowed to fill the gaps, and because the right doors don't seem to open, at least I see myself ending up in non-constructive paths.
It would have been like a game in itself to be participating in making refreshments to Noir, and even if the result was less than what Admin does, I would at least be occupied with something that allowed me to burn, making that a refreshment in Noir in itself.

Jul-13-2008 21:13

Welcome back Crunch!

...and just in the neph of time. The other night I found myself staring at this thread for a very long time trying to keep blood from shooting out of my eyes and asking myself, "How would Crunchpatty respond to this?" Eventually I just signed off and went to bed, where I dreamed a little dream of you (and turtle wax for some reason). Lo and behold: here you are.

However, I'm a bit conflicted about the bulk of your post.

I believe most of us do expect what we pay for, but hope for more. There's a lot of time invested here and when the fun wears off it makes sense to say, "I'm no longer as satisfied with this product as I once was, here is what it would take to get me to purchase this product again."

Most of the folks on this thread have already paid more than once, some many many times over the years. This may not entitle them to any special demands or conniption fits but does provide the business owner with a ready pool of knowledge and opinions on why first time customers become repeat customers. Paying attention to this sort of feedback makes economic sense. If maintaining the status quo was the most profitable option, there wouldn't be LOADS of "new and improved" items on every store shelf around the world.

Jul-13-2008 21:18

On a personal note, I'm not expecting any huge shakeups here. I still slog through my daily caseload even though I've got the tactics and strategies pretty much down to a science. In the cases themselves there's no real surprises and not much fun. I've expected that development since the earliest days of my career here. Since the random cases are the core dynamic of the game I don't expect any change there (and would fiercely oppose any suggestion on the point).

Still, I still very much enjoy the game because I've got a list of grander sleuth goals than "Tuesday, work 12 more cases. Wednesday, same. etc". Nearly everything on that list came about during one of the not major changes mentioned. Eventually I'll work through that list as well. Once the ocean liner is fully functional I hope to add a few more items. Hopefully the Sleuth World will develop just a hair faster than I can work through my list. If it doesn't then I'll make the choice about whether or not to continue subscribing. After all, I can still enjoy the community as an unsub.