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Dec-15-2007 12:59

So, as you may have noticed the "Beating a Dead Horse" discussion has been archived. (A post started by Roamie about the perceived steepness of Shady prices). Be assured that everyone's opinion was read and appreciated here in the Sleuth Admin household. We would like to put an offer on the table: cap at 1 mil.

Please let us know what you think and based on your posts, we'll make a decision by Christmas morning.*

*Disclaimer:
This message is not intended to promote and/or belittle Christmas. You do not have to celebrate Christmas or any other winter holiday in order to post here.

Dec-22-2007 02:09

this is obviously a very emotive issue that i've stumbled upon!! Out of curiosity i've read all the posts (it took a bit of time...) and now i've decided to throw in my two pennies worth. I noticed that almost everyone who's contributed so far is quite experienced (>100,000 xp). is it possible to earn 1mill by then?

As a newbie, i haven't even considered the possibility of earning 1 mill dollars. I did pay off shady once when i was young (even younger than now i mean), it cost me $4500!! you can imagine how little i had then... but now i'm s*** scared of getting another FA and have in fact quit cases rather than risk it.

in terms of re-doing how shady calculates how much to charge, i think that would certainly make the game easier for newbies and make it easier to progress in the earlier stages. But would that encourage more guessing? it probably would for me if i knew the penalty was really low.

in terms of a 1 mill cap, i can't really comment on that. at this point in time it wouldn't make a difference to me at all, probably for a long long time. tho i imagine that by the time i get there i would be travelling and helping newbies in the agency etc so i wouldn't have that much money still.

in terms of freezing the penalty at what level you were when you got it, well, real life doesn't really work like that, why should sleuth? again it might encourage guessing if you knew that after getting an FA you could just do lots of safe/easy cases to earn the money without worrying about the price going up, whilst you were trying to earn this money.

in terms of paying shady with something other than money, perhaps a range of choices? Money, skill points/skills, xp, contacts, maybe a ban on travelling, not be allowed to be in an agency, not allowed to do harder level cases, lose faction standing points.

ok, so that's not a yes or no from me, but i really feel that i can't decide at this point in my sleuth life. but i hope that this has given a newbie point of view.

Dec-22-2007 09:37

Just wanted to say I really like the idea of adding a Shady Reduction as something to go along with the Shoes in Cairo! - But I think that should only be added if a cap isn't, since then you could get things far too cheap.

Dec-22-2007 09:45

Like Jojo, I would be in favour of a Shady Reduction. (probably through Cairo given the setup, but steeper prices)

I would sooner have a reduction than a cap.

But failing a Shady Reduction, a cap is fine.

Dec-22-2007 09:55

I am FOR a cap on Shady.
Even if I am not experienced enough to be able to owe 1 million $. When I read most of the comments on this thread, I would suggest that many of you were Norwegians, who at least inside of Norway is known to score high in the envy contest. "It was hard for me, then sure it's going to be hard for you too..."
But, since there seem to be so many who want to pay shady the full amount of money, I suggest that you get the option of paying at the capped price IF you meet theese requirements:
* Your subscription does last more than 6 months
* You agree to not being able to do cases harder than Really Really Hard for one week. (That would restrict you from doing AVH's and participate in Treasure Hunts, and you might as well have to observe someone passes you on a high score list...)

When reading the posts, I see that there seems to be many having too much money to spend, so I suggest that a charity institution is introduced to Sleuthville. The institution may be called Salvation Army. When you pay to the charity institution your agency get 3% of the amount in fame, and 30% of the money is transferred to a randomly selected subscribed sleuth who got less than $3 000. Imagine how a sleuth that have been hard beaten by the war (1. world war?) would rejoice if they recieve an envelope from Salvation Army containing $15 000 because someone else in Sleuthville have been gracious and paid $50 000 for charity.

Dec-22-2007 16:23

Although I like Secret Squirrel's idea, it doesn't help people in lower levels who are hit hard if it's linked to Cairo.

I have to agree with Treschaude. A cap at the top may be great for the people at the top, but what about those in the middle and at the bottom?

Topkebab said: "in terms of re-doing how shady calculates how much to charge, i think that would certainly make the game easier for newbies and make it easier to progress in the earlier stages. But would that encourage more guessing? it probably would for me if i knew the penalty was really low."

To which I say, If not going completely broke to pay Shady off encourages you to guess, then you'll be paying him more often. Even if you're paying less each time, you'll still end up shelling out just as much money because you'll be paying more often (in fact, if you're going to be reckless, you'll either end up paying out MORE, or be retired).

I do not think that retiring your detective as a way to lower your Shady costs makes any sense at all. While I'd love to re-do my contacts (!!!!), the loss of skill points would HURT. I'm not yet at the point where I've got extra skill points, I'm not yet at the point where I've got a full apartment and tons of money left over.

I am, however, at the point where I usually need agency help to pay off an FA. And as careful as I am, I know too well how things happen when you're tired or distracted - or both.

If I wasn't in a agency with a partner who's always there to help me, I would be that dreaded thing right now - retired - and I can assure you I wouldn't be playing Sleuth anymore, as much as I love it.

And that's the point of view of one who is neither a lowbie nor a highbie, not a newbie but not an oldbie.


PS -- And please, people, if you have a negative comment to make about someone's ethnicity or culture, or to make about someone based on their ethnicity or culture, kindly keep it to yourself. No one wants to hear it.

Dec-23-2007 23:11

I suppose it's time to put in my 2 cents...

I will admit, I was wanting an unretirement, but since then, I have not retired, and I have paid off shady a few times. I have kept track of what has happened. I just want to say, I don't like the unretirement now since there is a high number using it to not pay Shady.

The original idea of this post, I do NOT agree with having a cap on Shady. You would think that one would know not to make a guess, educated or otherwise, since Shady prices do increase with experience points. Quite frankly, there are several long posts for me to catch up on since I haven't been on boards for days. I will just say I want Shady left alone, and unretirement removed. I'm even willing to give up all the detectives I've unretired and transfer my sub to a new one if that's what it takes to remove it. That's saying a lot considering how far I've gotten with lil since I've resurrected her. If that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. It won't make complaining any less. And quite frankly, people will still complain about having to fork over a million sleuth dollars to Shady. I don't particularly like to hold 200k on me... so I'll complain now if I really wanted to, because if I get an FA with lil now... the price of shady is over 200k for sure. Not my idea of fun, walking around with 200k cash on you. I do realize that the agency safe is there, but some agencies don't help on Shady, due to rules their rules saying "Whatever you do, DO NOT GUESS!" If you're not 100% sure, then quit the case. It costs a lot less than an FA.

In summary, I'm against the idea of changing Shady's current standings.

Dec-24-2007 13:56

I hesitated and almost didn't add to this thread because quite frankly, I'm embbarassed to admit I have a problem with Shady on a regular basis. It's not because I guess or am not careful enough, but my mind thinks of too many things at once and I have trouble focusing. I am always shocked and horrified when I get a FA! I would be willing to bet that I wouldn't still be in the game if I hadn't been able to resurrect my detective. I also think that there are others out there like me, who didn't post. It would also be interesting to quantify all the people that quit for the same reason.

I love Sleuth but, it's hard to play when you seem to be saving up for Shady most of the time. And even worse, when you have 2 FA and you pray it dosen't happen again, and take all the contacts you just worked so hard to get. (One possibilty might be to give some big rewards to those who go ? # many cases without any FA, like how some companies reward perfect attendance.)

Sleuth is a fabulous game! You did a really great job in designing it!!!! I love it's complexity and all it's intricate and varied challanges. I can also appreciate some of the other comments for leaving Shady alone. However I have to say for me, and others like me, the severity of Shady is taking some of fun out of the game.

Dec-24-2007 15:32

I am NOT in favor of a shady cap. Personally I think shady is fine just the way he is. When I first came to this game, I fell in love with it for the way it was. I personally like the idea of shandy always hanging over my head. It gives me the incentive to ALWAYS be careful when I play out my cases. If I'm too tired or easily distracted, I wait to play my cases. I always quit cases no matter how certain I think I am. If I don't have enough evidence based on the formulas then I don't accuse. Plain and simple. There are some that like to be resident guessers, but I am not one of them. If you always have a problem with shady or are careless then you get what is coming to you. You should pay the high prices for being careless and guessing or for being too distracted to concentrate.

I've owed quite a bit to shady in the past, and I can't say that I regret that one bit. It's helped me out a lot and put things into perspective as to how I play the game and the actions I take during my cases. Shady actually keeps me in check and is like a boundry for me. If I cross that boundry, I know I will pay the price, and quite frankly if I do cross it, I should have to pay the price....afterall it would be me that was careless and distracted in the first place, so it would be no one's fault but my own.

Dec-24-2007 15:48

Merry Christmas Everyone. It will be interesting to see Ben and Sunny's decision tomorrow.

There were alot of great discussions on both sides of the topic. I must admit, some of the posts made me laugh out loud, while at least one other had me rolling my eyes and saying you have GOT to be kidding. ;-)

Dec-25-2007 17:40

Yay Christmas!

Alright, by our count, the aye's have it by almost a two to one margin, hemming, hawing and excessive long-windedness not withstanding.

Now, we could keep things simple and just follow the majority decision as originally promised, and cap the price at $1M. But, of course, we don't like to keep anything simple.

The original formula by which Shady calculated his price was put in place before anybody had reached 100k experience. The fairness of the price at levels higher than that was purely speculative on our part. At some point, we had to admit that the escalation of those prices got out of wack for high level players.

Similarly, the fix we put in addressed the situation for players in the 1M+ range, but we did not at the time have a good idea about how much money the average detective would have at their disposal at 5M, 10M or up.

So, I've run a semi-scientific analysis of the total assets accumulated by players with more than 5M experience to try a price that would maintain a similar amount of "pain" for a high level player, that someone in a lower experience range has to put up with for their own shady prices.

Using the results, we've decided we're going to adjust Shady's formula for high experience detectives, without adding a "hard" cap.

So, effective immediately, the price for a Shady pay-off now slows by 20% once a player passes 5M experience. That may or may not sound like a lot, but, that 20% accumulation difference amounts to a $150k lower price for a detective with 10M experience, and a $450k reduction for a detective with 20M experience.

I'm guessing that most people on both sides of the argument won't be completely happy with this, but hopefully all (or at least most) can accept it.

As for me, I've got to go sleep off the turkey dinner Sunny's dad cooked for us.