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Feb-15-2006 07:27

I think that there needs to be some changes made to how agencies work.

Agencies should serve two purposes.

One to foster community and coperation. Helping new players learn the ins and outs of the game. To make friends and have fun together.

The other is to give us teams to work together in compition. That is defined mostly by the hunts.

To help keep these two aspects in balance I think there should be one large change made to agencies.

During a treasure hunt one of two options.

a - No new detective can join the agency while there is an active hunt. This is the easist to set up from an Admin point of view. It prevents rotations to help out with hunting and will even the playing field for everyone.

b - New detectives can not participate in open hunts. This would be much more fair to everyone because it allows more active movement and recruiting. It would be problematic to implement programing wise I am sure.


I think these changes give us the community spirit of the agencies while at the same time keeping a level playing field for hunting.

Feb-16-2006 06:02

No that would not.

Currently a detective uses up their cases for the day (10) by solving 5 and having 5 solved in the files. That detective is kicked out of the agency. Now a new detective is brought in to add to the favors and those 10 cases are added. Then a third is added the same way. That can generate 9 favors in just those three detectives.

A restriction on rotation does not prevent this building up of cases in the files. It becomes only a time limitation. If the agency has enough real people (no duplicate detectives) each puts in a small amount of time and favors are easier to come by. More favors equals easier hunts. More real people equals less work load.

Feb-16-2006 06:48

*handcuffs herself to her office since this is that time she always feared, the urge to delete the whole dang board far too strong*

Feb-16-2006 13:43

*wants to help if it's gonna happen*

Feb-17-2006 07:41

So what about option B, new detectives can not participate in open hunts, combined with a limit on the number cases you can store in the case files? If your HQ supports 12 players with 5 slots for cases each (as an example), wouldn't it make sense that no more than 60 cases could be stored at any given time?

Feb-17-2006 08:28

If you were replying to me, Ran, then I think you misunderstood me.

I think my idea limits an agency to (max no. of dets.) * (max no. of cases per det.) = 120 cases per day.

If an agency is at full complement then it could solve 120 cases, it then, can not hire another detective without first booting a member detective. This is where the restriction comes into place, seeing that they wouldn't be able to fill the vacancy until the next turn when the booted detective would get a new set of cases anyway.

This won't stop an agency storing cases, but since there are 6 hunts across 4 cities at any one time I don't see this as being much of a problem.

It also won't stop agencies booting detectives in a mutli-city hunt once they have to move to the next city in order to save cases from the travel time.

But seeing as these are small advantages I sure you couldn't begrudge a more organised set of agencies of making use those tactics. Just like you couldn't begrude an agency that had opted to learn safe cracking.

Feb-17-2006 12:51

One possible spin on your idea Sam.

When a detective leaves an agency all the cases in the files under their name leave with them. Poof. It would stop hoarding but not rotation.

Blue I actually do not know that there is a limit to the number of cases that can be held in the files at any one time. I do not believe there is a ceiling, the database only tracks the detectives name and counts to 5 (or what ever number).

As was pointed out several times also that this hoard of cases helps on hunts in the agencies home city only.

Mar-2-2006 16:03

I like the ideas mentioned here.

If a new recruit could not join an open hunt there'd be no agent rotation for hunt purposes. Which would take away any possibility of agencies that do have "satellite" agencies having an advantage in mulit-city hunts.

It would stop the on-going "agent-rotation" debate forever.

Also, if you have a 'capped' number of case files, which I believe was the intention is the first place?, (otherwise, why make a maximum number of case files a detective could store?) then it would stop an agency inviting in detectives, getting them to store the max number of case files, giving them an advantage in home hunts as they'd have acess to more case files than everyone else.

I am not implying any of this goes on, but would mean it could NEVER happen and would take any advantage an agency could use to make the game a less fair playing field.

I don't even think these are changes as such, rather just technically implentment what was oringinally intended.

Please, correct me if I am wrong, this is just my understanding of the situation.
I believe the oringinal intentions were to make it fair by having acapped number of cases that could be saved, eg an agent couldn't save all there cases to do at once and that an agency could only have a maximum number of agents.

I believe this was to make hunts fair and keep a more level playing field.

By technically implementing these ideas, you suceed in keeping those original intentions.

Mar-14-2006 18:44

Let me speak out on this as the voice of the "little guy".

I'm a director of an agency that has been active for just over a week. We have 10 members, and aside from our resident "advisor". the other 9 detectives are all less than a month old. (we recruited that way intentionally to buid our agency "from the ground up").

Now, we have been active in hunts for only a few days, but the impression that I have gotten is that ORGANIZED, COMMITTED agencies solve hunts. We solved our first only 3-4 days in, and would hopefully have solved more if we weren't limited by resources to (realistically) single-city hunts in our home turf.

The argument here is for a change in the game mechanics that make certain agencies' "tactics" in hunt-solving more difficult. I feel that this would serve no purpose but to make things more difficult for agencies in general. Like I said before, it's not the "little tricks" that result in treasures. It's dedication, organization, and management within the agency.

I don't get bothered one bit if a "bigger" agency solves hunts we've been active in. One can assume that mechanics of the game are exploited in those situations by the larger agency to solve the hunt, but honestly, so be it. They found a STRATEGY that works. We have our own way of doing hunts, and it seems to work too.

You put 10 (or 12) detectives in a room and tell them to find a treasure, they'll find it... if they all WANT it bad enough.