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Apr-30-2004 11:17

I posted an update today. There are a bunch of little tweaks included and typos fixed. Some of the bigger changes:

* Fixed Double Father Bug in Random Mysteries
* Added two levels of difficulty
* Favors now go up to Incredibly Hard level for experienced players
* A bunch of new favor items were added
* Detectives are now automatically booted from agencies if they become retired
* High scores are now divided by detective age
* Fixed duplicate contact bug
* You are now allowed to use the detective shop while working on a case
* Session timeout from inactivity increased from 5 minutes to 15

Please post any comments or bugs specific to this update here.

May-5-2004 00:19

Actually I got a decay of 4 today. And the little job offers me 4, so it doesn't seem really possible to advance.
What would make sense to me is to gain different points according to the number of questions you answer. For example if you answer only 2/3 you gain 2 points, while if you answer 3/3 you gain 4 points.
And the decay should be less than 4.

May-5-2004 04:57

I, too, would be curious to try out other factions as well, even if I only got to advance/be on good standing in one at a time.

May-5-2004 08:39

The decay makes it easier to try out new factions, actually. In the old way, once you had built up good standing in one faction, you very likely had highly negative standing in the others. So, if you wanted to get to the point that you could do little jobs for one of them, you would need to:
a. stop doing little jobs for your current faction
and
b. quit any mysteries that went against the faction you were trying to build up

In other words, it would be a very long process. Now, if you want to return to zero, you can let decay take you down to the 10 point area. After that, you would still need to selectively quit mysteries, but you would have a lot less far to go.

May-5-2004 20:46

thats alot of mysterries to selecively quit, especially if you only get 3 a day... i dunno, i don't want to seem whiny

May-6-2004 00:25

Heh, I like it when you guys whine. Lets me know you care.

If a lot of people are interested in switching factions, I could look at adding some kind of voluntary action that will just completely reset your standing levels.

May-6-2004 09:18

That would be kinda unrealistic though. Unless you were talking about going into the witness protection program or something.

May-6-2004 09:59

I think that the decay makes a 'faction reset' option a little unnecessary.

Completely switching factions shouldn't be something you can do in a day; with the decay it seems like you could accomplish a switch in a week or so if you worked at it. That sounds reasonable enough...

May-6-2004 10:13

One tweak that might make it a little better though is to go ahead and continue the decay towards zero for scores between -10 and 0. Leave the 0 to +10 as the only set that doesn't drift. I don't know how often it comes up since I haven't tracked it, but the opportunities to move ahead when you are negative seem to be pretty rare. (Maybe only 2 or 3 times a week?) As it is now, once you drift up to -10, it might take a month or more to get to +1.

May-6-2004 10:23

Good idea. Although maybe split the difference and make -5 the cut-off. Or something.