Sleuth Home - Message Boards - Sleuth Talk


0 0
An Editorial
  <<First Page  |  <Previous Next>  |  Last Page>>  

ctown28
ctown28
Huntsman

Jun-28-2008 08:39

There have been some recent events on this game that warrant some concern. It’s no secret that there has been a lack of interest. Much of this may be attributed to the release of Shades of Mystery. If that is what people want to play, far be it from me to tell them not to play it.

That being said. I am still a paying customer of Sleuth Noir. As a paying customer there are some things that I expect. Ben has done a decent job at keeping the server up and running. We had a slight issue earlier in the week with not being able to travel and Ben did a great job of addressing the issue and getting it corrected. He always has done a great job of taking care of things. He has not however kept the game fresh and interesting. We recently had the expansion of the USS Sleuthetania. There was a buzz before the initial launch of it and we couldn’t wait to see what was in store for us.

Well what did we get? The opportunity to pay $20,000 to get on board of a ship and do nothing more than play cases. Sure there are some new characters and new items along with 2 new “coming soon” links. That’s it! I can’t help but to feel disappointed in the way this has played out. Two weeks later, the links are still coming soon and the interest of the boat has already gone away. I know I have no plans or reason to get on the boat and be cut off from my agency completely. I don’t know this for a fact, but I think a lot of people are disappointed with the boat as well and some may even be irritated and feel cheated by the whole development.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh and we are missing some secret that still needs to be unlocked on the boat, but if people aren’t playing, the secret will not be unlocked. I know that Ben is just one person and can only do so much. He has a lot on his plate right now with running both SOM and Noir. I’m sorry, but SOM means absolutely nothing to me as I don’t play over there.

Replies

Heimlich VonVictor
Heimlich VonVictor
Vigilante

Jun-30-2008 01:20

Perhaps adding more pieces of PE might make the game more interesting? SOM certainly has much more. It doesn't necessarily have to be more than 4 per case, because even a greater amount of possible pieces of evidence could further complicate cases. With another piece of evidence, let's say fingerprints for arguments sake, there's less chance that a detective's PE contact will be useful for that case.

Maybe creating Agency Wars to encourage a little friendly competition? Allow agencies to spend money on security and tools to go after other agencies. I.E. Agency A pays $100,000 and has Agency B's headquarters infested with termites. As a result Agency B is unable to access their case files, crime lab, or trophy room for 24 hours while the Agency is being fumigated. Or perhaps something that makes every detective in a particular agency lose 3 cases for the day. It would make treasure hunts more cut-throat and would make agency alliances actually mean something.

How about an award show? We could call it the Sleuthies and give out awards that agents could have on their profiles, much like the trophy room. We could have categories like Best Scripted Mystery, Most Creative Intro, Most Treasure Hunts Completed in the Shortest Time, Largest EXP Gain in the Shortest Time, etc.

Or how about massive treasure hunts? Let's say we have huge treasure hunts requiring 1 key from every WE and PE townie in the game. Furthermore, we could allow agencies to team up with each other to complete these. For example, Obelisk Inc. and Dawg Pound Investigations team up to solve a massive treasure hunt. Simultaneously, both are given the clues as if it were a normal treasure hunt for the city that the agency is based in. Dawg Pound would receive Shanghai tasks and Obelisk would receive New York tasks. Depending on the reward, we could range these from 2-6 cities! The agencies could split the cash reward and the item missing could be something like "A chest of gold coins"

Heimlich VonVictor
Heimlich VonVictor
Vigilante

Jun-30-2008 01:27

That way both agencies could have it in their treasure room. This would encourage agencies to talk more and form alliances.

How about a new skill that allows a player to determine that a particular townie is not the collaborator on a villain hunt? Good for one use per hunt.

I could go on, but considering I have work in 3 hours, I'd best be getting to bed :)

ija
ija
Sleuth About Town

Jun-30-2008 02:39

I could even want some "lazy TH's", where you only get one clue each day... - giving more agencies the chance of participating, even if they cannot mount the power of the big ones.
The reason why are that the townie you did the favor for, don't know where the next key are (or where the treasure was given away, because a mediator was used for the transaction), but the next day, you may ask all the townies the specific question "Treasure", and if you have come this far in the hunt, you will learn who in town the treasure was sold to, or who got the next key. An agency that start in the hunt on day 3, will be able to get information about all the 3 first favors (in sequence as in a normal hunt), but the 4. favor will still not be availiable until the next day.
There is also something good with a TH lasting for some days, and that are that it won't be so vulnerable to the different time zones we live in.

ija
ija
Sleuth About Town

Jun-30-2008 02:56

I think that a major inspiring thing in this game would be if we are able to build arenas where we, the subscribed players, are able to involve in some way, and apreciate each other for the involvements done.
Out of that reason I think the development team suggestion from Breitkat is a good one.
If we as community would learn to keep us from slaughtering the ideas or other kind of involvements of eachothers, but rather give positive or constructive feedback to each other, or apreciation of what can be apreciated, we might create a place where all the creativeness of us will bring out nice flowers, and people dear to bring out their heart and support of the game. I really believe that most of us who still are here, are so because we do like the game, but there might something that hold part of us back from completely loving the game. And, if we would help encourage eachother, we might bring those issues into the light, and with the help of Ben, we might even be able to solve some of those issues, removing some heavy stones people have been carrying around.


miss snopes
miss snopes
Demon of the Due Date

Jun-30-2008 11:14

This is one of the most exciting threads I've read in quite a while. I, like the rest of you, love this game and it doesn't take long, once you're here to love the community. There are days I have no time to play cases but MUST log in for a short while just to see what is going on, inside and outside of my agency.

I think what has made me worry the most lately is the number of older detectives who have become inactive. This includes editors, mods, etc. I can't imagine what all goes in to keeping sleuth world (noir & som) up and running but I do realize sometimes we won't get answers and/or replies to our questions as fast as we would like to get them but I do think certain updates, no matter how short they might be, would help tremendously if posted more frequently. i.e. I think the Sleuthetania has felt like such a letdown to so many of us because we haven't heard anything else on the coming soon areas. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the last post was during the first voyage saying other areas should be up and running by the second voyage yet i've lost count on the number now and we still don't know more. Even the slightest post such as "Still working on the new areas of the ship. Might take a few weeks but they are on the way" would go a long way towards keeping the excitement up and keeping us from feeling like there might not be anything else there. Maybe that's one of those jobs that an Editor or Moderator could help Ben with.

Breit, love, love, love the idea of a development team! Thanks ctown for starting this thread, it is much needed.

Sunniva
Sunniva
Nomad

Jun-30-2008 16:10

I rarely read the boards much anymore and what do I find, to my delight, a great discussion. I'm all for a development team but my concern is that players who have personal conflicts with one another, different time zones and personal agendas might come to many conflicts.

So how do we solve this? Perhaps we can nominate people who are willing to make a commitment and to leave personal feelings out. Great! But one of the biggest logistical headaches is that planning sessions for things like this are often done better in person or at least through big IM discussions or confrence calls. And honestly it's a really big time commitment for something a service that would need to be voluntary.

That said I think it is doable so maybe some of us should draft a proposal and then submit it to Ben and Sunny. And if they are into the idea, great! We, the Sleuth Community, would also need to appreciate the fact that not everyone would be on that team and it would probably only be a select few.

Sunniva
Sunniva
Nomad

Jun-30-2008 16:12

(2nd paragraph, last line: And honestly it's a really big time commitment for a service that would need to be voluntary.)

ctown28
ctown28
Huntsman

Jun-30-2008 17:16

Well this certainly has turned into a great thread with some great discussions. And to think I started it just to vent. I love the idea of a development team. Like Sunniva said there are some obstacles that may or may not come into play. The main one being clashing personalities. However, there are clashing personalities in all walks of life and that is something that can be worked out.

I’d like to share with you an experience I had with another online game that I played. Some of you have heard me talk about the Stone and some of you haven’t. I’ll just give a quick rundown. It was billed as an internet mystery game. There was a grid with 216 spaces on it. Each space represents a visual image that was a puzzle. The object was to find the specific answer that each puzzle was looking for. When you started the game, only 14 of these were available. You unlocked more as the game progressed. This is where this gets relevant. Many of us hit 56 puzzles available and had 56 solved. There were no new puzzles. The creator, Rod, (Our version of Admin) was out of puzzles, he had a split with his partner and things were tough for him. I won’t get into the mistakes he admittedly made but we went 2 years stuck at 56 puzzles available. The community however refused to die. Sure the message boards went a bit stagnant, but we still all talked and communicated, and some players even created their own puzzles which were hosted on a mirror site. Somebody gave Rod the idea to “tap” the community for help. Maybe the players that created for the mirror site would be willing to help him out. Shortly after getting that idea, I received an email from Rod asking if I would be willing to be a part of that team, which I was. The development team was in progress. We setup a Yahoo group and another mirror site where we created and tested the puzzles that we would use to fill the rest of the grid.

ctown28
ctown28
Huntsman

Jun-30-2008 17:16

I am happy to say that when the game came to its conclusion after 10 years earlier this year, I have 216 of 216 puzzles solved. Some of them created by me.

There were definitely some clashing personalities in that game much more than there are here, even on that development team. The message boards there also had some very heated discussions and there was not really any topic that went untouched. Everything from taste in music, to religion to politics. And you all know what can happen when religion and politics get thrown into the mix. I had the pleasure of meeting many of the players in RL at what we called gatherings, (Our version of SleuthCon). No surprise that when the conflicting personalities were present, everyone got along just fine.

When I came back to this game last year and saw that SleuthCon I was being organized, I just had to go. It wasn’t the same experience as a Stone Gathering, but it’s a different game. This community has the same potential and I would love to see that potential reached. I know you all don’t care about the game I played itself, but I just wanted to relate the experience there. I see many similarities in the two communities and even though that game has come to an end, many of us still keep in touch.


Lilly Day
Lilly Day
Well-Connected

Jun-30-2008 20:05

I think there is some really fabulous ideas being posted here.

I usually don't get to involved in the debates that go on in the message boards but this one caught my eyes due to the fact that some of my thought were written by others.

I know that there has been a somewhat "lack of interest" by others including agents who have been playing for much longer than me. As a director of a fairly active agency I have noticed that new recruits are few and far between. I personally love this game and would like to keep it interesting so I think any ideas that promote that should be welcome.

I think there should be more missions that can be added for agents to achieve. Just like in RL most people like to achieve and have goals that they can accomplish or at least work towards. I know I was thrilled when I finally got those new colored shoes. Took me awhile but I got them and now can proudly show them off.

I really like the ideas on expanding the Treasure Hunts. I would love to see "a brand new kind of Treasure Hunt" for our agency to compete in. Maybe there could be some kind of inter-agency treasure hunts/missions that we could compete in. Instead of competing with outside agencies it could be just between players within our agency to achieve.

Also what about a agency store...kind of like the detective shop. Maybe we could trade in trophys we aquire for items our agency could use to obtain special items that could be used during these Treasure Hunts. Only directors would be able to sell these items so that not just anyone could sell them.

These are just some suggestions...they are meant to help improve the game and promote teamwork. That is the reason I subscribe to this game and belong to an agency.

  <<First Page  |  <Previous Next>  |  Last Page>>  

[ You must login to reply ]