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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

Jojo
Jojo
Old Shoe

Jul-1-2008 16:23

First of all, great thread here!

First, being someone who will always stand by Ben (until he performs a monstrosity, at least), I think we need to give him some understanding. Hypoware is a small company. It's run by basically a few people, and they have two complete games and communities to attend to and please. We can't expect them to be putting out updates every week or even every month when they only have a few "staff members," if you can even call them that. Hypoware is not a huge game company with hundreds of staff members.

Sure, the easy fix seems to be to say, "Well, hire some more staff members." But therein lies the problem. The company is small and can't afford to just hire full-time staff. For a while, Sleuth went years without profiting.

Now to the topic of SOM. Yes, it took over. It's a much larger community because the game is more attractive to most players. It has graphic game play, and that's appealing to more. So, Noir feels like it has been forgotten. However, we have to remember, SOM isn't even close to being completed in its release. There is still LOTS to release over there. It's a wonder Ben even found the time to create the Sleuthetania for us.

That said, the Sleuthetania is a bit of a let-down, yes. But we did get something! And we still have yet to know what will be going on there. Remember when Cairo was released? - It was just an extra city. A place to play cases. But now we have catacombs and other things for which to travel there. Give Ben some time; he'll make the Sleuthetania great: he just needs the time to do so.

There are some great ideas here. And we should never stop pumping them out. The Sleuthetania was a completely player-driven project. And it became a reality!



Jojo
Jojo
Old Shoe

Jul-1-2008 16:25

However, we have to remember that Ben has ideas and projects that are yet to be finished at both Noir and SOM. Give him some time. I'm positive that he'll be finishing the Sleuthetania, pumping out more content at SOM, and he'll have many more updates for Noirs in the future.

Let's just make sure that we understand that Hypoware is small, it has two complete games to attend to, and we still have yet to see all of the fruits of the Sleuthetania and other updates. Give it some time. The flowers have to blossom.

ctown28
ctown28
Huntsman

Jul-1-2008 20:58

All good points Jojo, and believe me this is not to bash Ben, it never was. I do understand that hypoware is a small company. I understand that it is running two games. But, I am only paying to play one of them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going anywhere. But the fact that he also has Shades means nothing to me. Just like the people who only play Shades, Noir means nothing to them. Try and look at it from this perspective. If I had something going in in RL and I was not able to play for a month or so, would I get an extension on my subscription. That answer is probably a no.

I don't think anyone expects there to updates every week or even month as far as new stuff, but maybe a progress report.

I don't think the problem was so much of Sleuthetania being a letdown, then the way things were presented to us. Like miss snopes pointed out in an earlier post, Ben posted that there would be more on the 2nd voyage, nothing more has surfaced at all other than fixing the SM. I think that may have turned some people off.

Having been a big part of another online community, as I posted earlier, its not so much the game that keeps me as it is the community. But if the game does not move forward, the game and the communuity will die.

Now I agree with the small compnay maybe not being able to hire people to help out, thats where Breits idea of a development team comes into play. That decision is solely Bens if he wants to implement that.

ctown28
ctown28
Huntsman

Jul-1-2008 20:58

One thing to keep in mind is lets not try and reinvent the wheel here. Start slowly. How many of the editors and mods have went inactive. Of course IMO I really don't think they need to be replaced, but removal would be a good start, possibly replace them if he sees fit. Then maybe start working on a development team. The problem there is to find the individuals that could fit the mold of what hes looking for. Once in place, it would take a big load off of his shoulders.

Many of you would be surprised at what could be accomplished as a community if we all stick together.

Secret_Squirrel
Secret_Squirrel
Safety Officer

Jul-1-2008 21:59

Good thread. :) I'm on hols so I don't have much time to respond but am pleased to see some positive thoughts on the issues raised. :)

LoveHugs
LoveHugs
Well-Connected

Jul-2-2008 02:50

Jojo: we all know that Hypoware is a small company. I guess it's about Ben in person in size. It's a great company, if you see the great games he have been able to produce. Many companies with much more people have NOT managed to do what Ben have done. That's true. And if I have read the threads correctly, Ben not only have 2 great games to take care of, but he also have a little baby sleuth as well.
On the other hand, I do think that he might take advantage of getting the community involved. - and I don't think any of us have ever dreamed about getting paid for the job. Except for may be a couple of days or hours extension on (one of) the subscription, if much work is put in?
I know that if I had some support from Ben, I would be able to develop some small things, (for free of course, I already have an ordinary job), releasing Ben to concentrate on the bigger things. Also I do think that a development team could easen the work, as there are many things with getting an application working that's not programming. I know in the company where I work, we calculate that the core programming is less than 25% of the complete work of getting the job done. So it's easy to imagine the potential for what the community can do if allowed to be put in a position where we can cooperate with Ben.

LoveHugs
LoveHugs
Well-Connected

Jul-2-2008 02:54

Oh, I see that I have used some different doubles of me, when responding on this thread.
Huglover, Ija and LoveHugs share the same brain (when it's availiable), even if they also borrow someones others to control them some times. They are created to play with, and are happy when someone takes the time to play with them. :-)

Huglover
Huglover
Old Shoe

Jul-2-2008 04:21

Jojo, I am sorry to say, but I am sick and tired of waiting. When I complained last year, I was demanded to wait and see, things will change I was told....

Well, only main thing that have changed are the time that have passed. I have made my program a little better, so it's quicker to run a case. I have improved my ability to hack the resources that Ben lets out, but it's not that fun. It prooves to me the repetitious pattern of case solving. Always the same. And, makes me impressed that people can stand doing the case solving the manual way. I am bored even when I have a program that does most of the work automatically for me. Some times I think to myself, "what if my skills and abilities could be used constructive for the community, rather than just playing in my own sandbox, with a program that I can't share with many because it might be too destructive with the Sleuth server?"

Time, well, give it time....

I have had a look at the game info page, and at the number of active players. If the trend continues as it have done the last 3 days, we have between 50 and 80 days before the whole community is vanished.
I don't have the patience to wait another year for something to happen, that might improve the game. With the development team, at least some could be using their time being involved rather than waiting... - and if the team was wise, they would make sure that everyone would be able to involve, even if fewer people were the ones driving the project.

So, yea, I understand that I am commanded to give it time once more.

May be I'll just give it an eternity of time?

May be I'll just let all the 10-12 sleuths I am supporting at the moment lapse, and don't renew their subscriptions? I guess my opinion does not count anything anyway.

(oh, yes, I am able to do all the cases AI on a day if I use the time, but what's the point? What's the gain of it? Well, I might get 30-50 favors, so what?)

miss snopes
miss snopes
Demon of the Due Date

Jul-2-2008 10:24

Does anyone know if Ben still reads these threads anymore? I would hate for all of the positive feedback and great ideas here to go unseen.

Sleuth Admin
Sleuth Admin
Tale Spinner

Jul-2-2008 13:32

Hi all,

Thanks for the post Ctown, and thanks to everybody for weighing in. While it's always tough to provide enough new content for dedicated players, it's obviously been a long time since we've released significant new content, so I don't blame folks for getting frustrated.

First off, no you're not missing any secrets currently available on the Ship. Getting most of the narrative elements to work in the context of a ship, rather than in a normal city, has been more time consuming than I anticipated. The two under construction sections are getting closer to complete, but I still need a bit more time.

Considering that Sleuth Noir is never going to make much money, and we're putting more of our eggs in the Shades of Mystery basket, it probably is important for us to find more ways that players can contribute to the available game content in order to keep things fresh.

I have given some thought to making Sleuth Noir an open source project, so that other developers could work on the game code themselves. There are some complications to going that route, but it may be doable if there are a couple of programmers among the players who are interested in taking an active part (and learning spyce/python).

Short of that, we could definitely get more mileage out of the Scripted Mystery editor. I'll talk to SS and Anikka about whether it would be helpful to get more editors involved.

Also, maybe it would be a good idea to add some kind of Scripted Quest Editor that allows for Scripted Mysteries to be linked together with other smaller tasks (bring me a Rasputin's Egg or do a favor for the barber in Delhi) that would allow for another layer in player generated content. Before I add more editing/authoring features, I want to make sure there are people interested in using them.





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