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Sep-4-2004 16:22

Ok this might sound like a wierd idea but hear me out.

Say your agency has 3 or 4 Shoemaker contacts. Now say somebody elses agency has like 3 or 4 Banker contacts. Say your agency only has 1 Banker contact, and you'd like to aquire another Banker contact. Well wouldn't it be a cool Idea if you could put in a feature where Agencies could make a trade with each other to help both agencies out with their needs?

I mean each agency only has a certain number of slots to hire people and once your full your full. A lot of the rookies you hire don't have contacts yet or if they do a lot have the second contact first. So how about being able to trade Detectives with each other. Just a thought.I personally think it would be a neat feature to add to the game how about some feed back.

Sep-5-2004 01:05

I've been thinking that one way to make the game more complicated would be to have the townspeople feud with each other the way the factions do. Maybe this wouldn't happen until a sleuth is quite established and ready for new challenges - but I can imagine that my Shoemaker contact could stop working for a while if he heard I did a favor for the butcher, against whom he was holding a grudge, or something like that.

It might then be possible to switch contacts the way that we now can laboriously switch affiliations.

I can get behind the idea of switching, or dropping and earning, but I don't think it should be too easy. Otherwise where is the challenge?

And without enough challenge, the game ceases to be as enjoyable - at least, that is my perspective.

Sep-5-2004 11:37

Thats why i figure only the directors should be able to switch a team members contact and only in a limited role for a postion you need. so if you say already have 2 of something you can't switch a third over to that contact you can only have 2 at a contact. so what i'm saying is say you have 3 banker contacts in your agency and you have 2 shoemaker contacts. you couldn't switch one of the banker contacts to a shoemaker just because you felt like it because you already have two. so you'd have to switch the banker over to barber where you only have one. anyway just some food for thought.

Sep-5-2004 12:00

Don't forget that there are hunts involved and agencies are in competition for those. So for example if I went and helped another agency and in the process win a hunt I wouldn't feel right about it, and what about the points we earn in favour of our agency by solving case? Do not like the idea of switching detectives very much also taking into consideration recent events ...

Sep-5-2004 12:03

But I'm all in favour of being able to change a contact as long as skills and ability in the game are involved. I think that might solve the problem some agency are experiencing.

Sep-5-2004 15:00

Yeah basically the point of this whole thread was to find a way to switch a contact it started out with the trade but then moved on to finding a way for the directors to switch someones contact who is already in their orginization.

Sep-5-2004 17:57

And maybe it's not the directors who do it, but it's the individual agents who have to accomplish this through play somehow...and possibly in challenging way...

Sep-8-2004 14:19

Maybe once you have a contact, if you fail to solve a favor they gave you there is a 1 in 4 or something chance you will loose your contact because they are disapointed in you/have lost faith in you.

There would be the risk you would have an unsolvable favor and lose you contact when you didn't want to, or you could quit favors if you were trying to lose your contact. Both would add a chalenge element to the game. It also shouldn't be too hard to program, Ben tell me if I am wrong, as I don't know the back end of this particular game.

I definitly would like to see a way to change contacts.

Sep-14-2004 10:57

The Agencies also involve loyalty issues, at least for me. I don't think I could trade off to another agency. Contacts are the same way. I think what is strange is if you get a contact for whom you have done 1 or less favors. I did 2 favors for Octavia, but ended up with the shoe maker. Mind you, the shoe maker is a better contact for my character, given her skills and lack there-of.

I kinda thought that the agencies watched the contact balance in their recruiting tactics?? Although, you cannot control later contacts gained, but I've seen on the boards where they ask for agents with specific contacts.

Sep-14-2004 12:26

i dont like the idea of directors being able to change contacts - the reason being that they could just change them to suit a particular hunt. This would be too easy.

The whole point of having a contact is having earned it. So I agree that if it is to be made possible, through gameplay is the best way to do it.

I really like Elven's suggestion of possibly losing the contact if you get a favour for them wrong, whether you do it on purpose or not. This means that a deliberate failure may lose the contact - but not definitely. That then gets the detective asking if it is worth the effort :)

Sep-14-2004 12:28

by suiting a particular hunt i mean they could change someones attributes so they didnt have to wait for a shoemaker/banker/barber/tailor to log on to analyse the evidence - meaning they could get to favours faster..