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Apr-15-2004 12:07

The time is approaching for an end to the Beta testing phase of Sleuth, and some kind of relaunch of the game. I plan on continuosly tweaking and adding to the game, but we've fixed most of the big bugs, and I think the game is pretty well balanced now.

I don't have a hard date for a launch, but I'm leaning towards early May. There are a few ways we can handle this, but I want to get input from some of you. I have two big questions:

1) Should we reset the character database and make everybody start from scratch, or not? There have been a lot of bugs and expoits that were open earlier in the game that no longer are. Also, I've recently made an adjustment to slow the rate at which high level characters acrue skill points. In the interest of fariness, it seems like we should reset the database, but please voice your opinions here.

2) How are we going to pay for better hosting? As you may have noticed, I've been periodically turning off new user registration, in an effort ot hold down traffic. I'm taking steps to move the game to a more professional hosting environment (it's already partially on a new server). This is going to be fairly expensive, so the game will need to bring in some money to pay for that. Any additional money would allow me to spend more time adding game content. I welcome any ideas for how to bring in revenue. Although the prefered method would obviously be to sell advertising space on Sleuth, I don't think that's realistic considering our traffic dynamics. That is, online advertising seems to work better for sites with a lot of unique daily visitors, each of whom only spends a few minutes on per session. Our traffic tends to be a smaller number of unique users who return often and play a lot each month.

Apr-16-2004 16:08

On top of that, the obsessive players are just going to complain if there isn't an option for more games. They're like that. You can do something for people's health, but they usually don't care anyways.

Apr-16-2004 16:30

In a way, it might even be fun to start again from scratch, but I would really hate to lose my identity and our wonderful agency! I would love it if there was a way to only reset all scores and skills, but at least to keep the character (and preferably the agency, but I see how that might be a problem).

Paying is tricky. I do not support the idea of more mysteries for money, because I believe high score lists should come from skill, not from how much money (or simply time) are able to invest in playing. A better idea might be to give paying customers access to better equipment etc, and give them control of the agencies.

Or maybe just give a free trial period and after that automatically charge everyone a small sum per month to play. Small enough not to be an obstacle. In know this might still discourage a lot of players. It seems there isn't a perfect solution for the problem.

Apr-16-2004 18:21

Yet another solution.. I've brainstormed through all this an thought about solutions used on other games, so here's another one
Make non-paying customers more susceptible to retirement/paying customers less suceptible to it, or have different consequences. it depends on if you want to keep the actual concept, but personnally I don't think it adds that much to the game. So here's a possibility(out of many I guess): retirement would reset the stats, money and equipment of the character, except maybe exp to keep the high scores of the characters, plus their name because most players, including me, are attached to their character names, and only paying customers would have access to the shady character(along with other extra features), so they would have a bif advantage over other players, while keeping the game on equal terms regarding case solving.

Apr-16-2004 19:15

Okay, Okay. I couldn't con Mr. Winter-summers to post it. So I will. Bleh. ;p
*complain, complain, whine*

Okay. Done :)
My idea was having certain activities only available to paying customers, and banners and (rare) popups to non-paying. Like say, the treasure hunts or say, some other activity in the future is only available to paying clientele. Then the limit on mysteries isn't being raised, and it's fairly fair, .. Or some of the best items only available to paying members.

Apr-16-2004 19:38

It seems like denying non-paying players access to the shady character is even less fair than giving them less daily plays. Of course, it could prove to be pretty convincing enticement to pay... Hmm.

OK, how about rates. Assuming that there will be some kind of in-game advantage to becoming a paying subscriber (seems like an appropriate term), how much would be reasonable? I'm thinking $5 a month. Maybe with options to subscribe for more than one month at a discount rate.

Apr-16-2004 22:36

I'm actually okay with the idea of granting paying customers more plays per day. I don't mind paying players chalking up the charts at all. After all, if they have paid for a game, they have should have the privilege of playing more than 4 per day. It makes sense. But the problem with this is that many people may not choose to pay after all.

Denying access to Shady is a good idea, in terms of getting people to pay. But then, some non-paying players might also then choose to be more careful about their accusations (simply not accusing till they have the most concrete proof) to get over this limitation.

Apr-16-2004 23:04

I certainly want people to be able to enjoy playing, even if they don't pay. That's why I think the idea of more plays per day is better than not allowing non-paying players to use the shady character. If you don't want to pay, you can still log in every day, and enjoy the game, you're just probably not going to get to the top of the leaderboards.

So, what about the idea of clearing the character database? We haven't had too many objections to that. So please let me know if anybody has strong feelings about it, one way or another. If we do clear it, I don't think we can retain current agencies.

As of now, I'm planning the launch for May 1st, which is a Saturday. It may get pushed back depending on how a few things go between now and then.

Apr-17-2004 03:19

I think denying non-paying players access to the Shady Character would be the most effective way of getting people to pay. It would certainly be enough to make me pay.

Because I do not want more mysteries than 4 a day, that on the other hand would not entice me to pay, even if as a result I could never top the High Score lists. I realise that's just me personally - yet I do think the Shady Character way could earn you more paying members. I've given this whole thing more thought, though, and in the end the concept of paying customers getting more mysteries does seem perfectly fair even if I don't like it.

You couldn't categorize the high score lists as paying, non-paying and general or something, could you? I guess it might be complicated.

Definitely no more than the suggested $5, is my opinon on the cost. A discount for long term subscription sounds good.

Apr-17-2004 06:48

Here's a suggestion -- since most newbies do mess up in the beginning and need the shady character, how about only allowing free subscribers to use him 3 times total. OR for the free characters, make his cost go up exponentially ($100, $10,000, $1,000,000) each time so that it's much harder to use him. For the paying characters, let them have a free pass to use with the shady character along with the rates being more of a linear function ($100, $200, $300) depending upon experience, so it's WAY more affordable.

Apr-17-2004 08:25

I'll play devil's advocate about resetting the characters -- I personally didn't use the exploits in the program, only testing them once sometimes and then reporting them, and I'm guessing this is the case with most people. And along with these helpful bugs came the unhelpful ones, like people dying. Current detectives' skills and standings are the result of a lot of hard work, not bugs in the program. One possible exception is the high rate of experience-grabbing which you recently lowered, but then you could just cut back on old people's experience and skills to balance that out.


If you reset now, then yes the new people will get a chance to compete for high scores -- on the other hand, the people who join three weeks after that, won't have much of a chance. You're always going to have the problem that new people won't have a great chance, unless you can figure out some way around that. For instance:

- sponsoring tournaments every now and then where people are temporarily given the same experience and all have a week to go as far as they can

- honoring all folks who get up to a certain point ("The Master Detectives" high score list for all people with, say, over 100,000 experience -- along with the number of days/cases it took them to get there)


Okay, those are some arguments against resetting! But I personally don't mind, again it just means I'll probably cut back on playing because I won't have much incentive to build up my character again in the non-beta world.