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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.

Jul-3-2008 13:35

Thank's Lady Jas :-)
We absolutely needs to involve Ben. Sleuth Noir is still HIS product, and it would be bad if he was not with us on this.
Without the blessing from Ben, everything will be in vain.

Thank you for helping us to get him involved. :-)
I would rather want to work WITH Ben, not against him.
- and I guess that is true with all the others as well. :-)

Jul-6-2008 01:24

Colossal Rant In Progress:
As a Noir player who moved over to Shades, I am having a hard time adjusting and need to rant and figured there's no better place to do it. After Ben revealed the upcoming new game (about a year ago at Sleuth Com, I believe), Noir died off, almost instantaneously. I really wholeheartedly think this announcement was a big part of why so many vets left Noir. At least that's what happened to my agency (who at one time were amongst the most active players). We just all said... whatever... let's take a break and we will start up in the new game again. And it was exciting... Having something new…

Yes, in Noir... we were all getting a bit bored being able to solve AI cases in our sleep. Yes... we were wondering what to do with the 3000 skill points we had accumulated and there were no more skills to buy. Yes... we had all the possible gear from AVH's and then some...

But guess what... I could count the number of "vets" that are actually actively playing Shades on one hand. It's a different game and very few of our reverend sleuthers that vowed to play the new game are actually there. You don't have to be smart to play Shades. And I always felt like you had to be smart to play Noir. Noir is like a big logic problem and you have to use deductive reasoning to solve your cases. That's what drew me to it in the first place. I love logic problems! And that's why our boards were always filled with posts that would make you spew whatever you were drinking out your nose because you were consumed with uncontrollable laughter. We had/have smart and witty people here.
And I guess I find the following post from Ben disturbing:
"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."

Jul-6-2008 01:25

Does it say something about society in general that a product that is put out there as entertainment that actually requires that you use your brain can’t actually make significant amounts of money?
In Shades, at least so far, there is no brain-function required. You just click and click and ask questions until you run out of questions and hopefully you got enough evidence to accuse someone. Unlike Noir, there’s no formula. No deductive reasoning. No logic. The very few “tricks” I figured out in the first month of playing and most people over there still don’t get it. I PM them and explain and they still don’t get it.
Flash forward to what it is like in Shades. Very few people are actually there to play the game. I think the pretty graphics initially attracted people and then the realization that a free message board and chat room were much more appealing took over. People don’t talk about and debate the game passionately over there. There are actually very few posts that are about the game itself. And the ones that are about the game are responded to by the “popular” people that don’t really play the game themselves (according to what our standards of playing the game are) in an effort to sound smart (See below rant for definition of “popular”).
Take the worst summer we had in Noir with tweens posting random crap on the boards and magnify it about 10 times and that is a typical day in Shades. There is no respect for High Scorers. It doesn’t matter. What matters is if you have posted 98 consecutive uninteresting messages in the “Message Board Game Room”. That’s what makes you “popular”. Then all kinds of people post threads dedicated to the “popular” ones for obviously not quality, but quantity. And then everyone wants to be in cahoots with the mass-posters because… you know… they are the “cool” people.

Jul-6-2008 01:25

The rest of the posts are threads entitled “I Need Friends” for all those 11 year olds who figured out that logging into Sleuth does not get blocked by their parents internet-blocking for little kids who shouldn’t be logging on to adult sites tools. Which is both annoying and frightening for the demise of the younger generation, at the same time.
So after spending a couple of months over in Shades, I realized that Noir is a much more quality game. I will still play Shades, but I have been coming back to Noir as a refreshing outlet and a little brain-stimulation.
I guess I am just getting all deep and finding it a tad disturbing that admittedly Noir has no chance on the mass-market and Shades does. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I’m buying that. I don’t see the same level of dedication in Shades as there is/was here in Noir. And even as the ship is going down in Noir (or just the stern is peaking out of the icy depths of the ocean), there are still people that are insanely passionate about Noir. I don’t see that in Shades. Eventually, they could all literally move to a freewebs blog page and have the same level of enjoyment and self-appreciation. But only time will tell… And I will use this as another one of my personal “scientific studies” to keep trying to understand the mainstream human psyche.

Jul-6-2008 02:05

Excellent post nic, I couldn't have said it better myself.

However I do want to add a bit. I understand that Noir is not gonna generate the kind of money Ben hopes for. Thats all fine and well, but he still has an obligation to us. The fact that he posted on this thread is a very good thing. Of course we have to wait and see waht happens with it. The passion you speak of here is evident as all kinds of players are talking about a dev team and what needs to be done to make it work.

Lets take a look at hte differences now. Who remebers when there were 90+ people logged onto Noir? How many of them were the kids that were unsubbed looking for something to do? Now check out shades, see whos logged on, I'll bet 90% are unsubbed as well, they login there cuz it's prettier.

I'm not gonna bash sahde as I have not been subbed there but have played. It does seem to be easier though, where the game relies more on graphics rather than logic.

I missed the announcement at SleuthCon as I was still asleep, but does anyone else think maybe Admin got in a bit over his head? The fact that so many Noir players are willing to help out says alot about this community. I love the way the few of us that are left have rallied around a post that I mant just to vent.

Jul-6-2008 02:32

What gets frustrating is the fact that many of us have been here a while, and well, there are only a few left. I remember days when I couldn't log onto Noir as an unsub because there were many subscribers logged on. Now, even an unsub could log on at peak time, because there hasn't been 70+ people online. Most times I see the number of online people in the 20's. Then there's the factor that some of us are willing to do whatever it takes to pique the interest of others, but ideas and such ought to stay within the era of Noir. Some ideas that have been posted by others have been far-fetched and have been modern day things rather than Noir-y things. A lot of people have gotten busy. There are a few of us who are dedicated to at least log in close to a daily basis, and continue to do other things in RL. (if this seems like I'm rambling, I probably am... I'm awfully tired and decided I needed to post)

Jul-6-2008 02:52

I majored in Marketing in college (I don't practice it for a living because I didn't really want to sell my soul that way - sort of hippie). But you could sell and Eskimo and ice cube if you are good at it. I think Hypo's marketing strategy has changed and is pointing people to SOM. At one point, they had people breaking down the doors to get into Noir. And honestly... I haven't seen more than 60 people logged into SOM in a while. It's usually anywhere from 20-60. So the initial hype is over. Even the ecstatic newbies in my agency in SOM have gone MIA. Some of them haven't logged in in over a month. And it's because they weren't addicted to the game, just the social interaction. And it's very easy to get bored with that. There's always someone new to find on the internet. There's not always a game you can find to hold you interest.

Jul-6-2008 04:02

This game is unique in the fact that we may use our brains to solve things, and also that you can meet people who have passed their teens, or behaves like they have passed their teens.
It's soo wonderful to interact with people who understand that I might have problem playing a game like Shades because of my shivering, and don't degrade me because of that.
I really soo hope that we would be allowed to make this development team, and start making Noir a fresh and exciting game. In my opinion everything we need are here in the community. The community are soo full of resources in so many areas, and I think that many are even willing to contribute for this game that we love.

Jul-6-2008 04:23

I have been thinking of yet another kind of TH'ing ;-)
This one is designed for the smaller agencies, and goes like an ordinary TH, with this distinction.
There are only 6 sleuths from an agency that are allowed to participate, and no-one of them are allowed to do more than 8 favors a day in the hunt, meaning that if one of the sleuths in the TH taps into doing a 9.th favor, and it happens to be the "right" one, it won't count. And, if the correct favor is started one day, but finishes the next day, the starting day will make it not count.
If an agency with 6 or fewer members joins the hunt, everyone of the current members in the agency is considered members in the TH-team from that agency. If an agency with more than 6 members joins the hunt, the current members of the agency is scanned, and first those on AVH is excluded to see if that will reduce the size to 6 people, and then those unsubscribed will be taken away, and lastly, those who have the longest time since last time they were logged on.
In the "scoring" page of this hunt there must be possible to see which sleuths in an agency are member of the hunt, and I suggest even how many favors each of them have solved that day... ;-)
If an agency have fewer than 6 members, and gets new members joining the agency, those will be added to the TH-team, up to 6 members. This won't work for agencies with more than 6 members though. Even if 6 is on AVH and 2 is inactive and unsubscribed.

Jul-6-2008 12:43

I really like the idea of updating/expanding the SM feature. I started writing a mystery but soon go bored with it because the engine simply couldn't handle the mechanics I was looking for. The ability to remove a question via trigger and the use of and/or/not boolean triggers would add a huge amount of flexibility.

Even better, adding the open ended "ask about" box to SM would be great

On that topic, having more to ask about would also be nice, even if the answers didn't unlock anything significant. Just a sort of easter egg for those who want to spend the time. There's a huge amount of info in in the faction archives and townie descriptions that could be expanded upon.

And of course I'd like to see the pay-a-fee-to-dump-a-contact option that ben once signed off on.