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An Editorial
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ctown28
Demon of the Due Date
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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.
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Replies |
Sophie4
Gopher to the Sleuth Gods
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Jul-18-2008 15:50
I didn't like the idea of a development team from the start but I"m sure for a totally different reason than Helen and Rose.
I hate committees. I've never seen a committee that could accomplish anything. Even city councils can't do anything...they pass things on to committees and nothing happens for years.
I believe we'd be further ahead with a "Dear Santa/Ben" list. If he had a list of plausible things to do I believe he would work on it. For instance, my suggestion about the SM's, he answered that and told us what was possible. Then the talk went back to committee's and he's quiet again.
This is just my humble opinion and observation.
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red_lips
Well-Connected
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Jul-18-2008 23:50
wow... i finished reading the thread (it's massive by the way). i feel very proud of myself so part of my post is just me congratulating myself. (GO RED)
now that's over I do have one tiny thought.
when people decide to leave sleuth... for whatever reason, they usually retire their detective. I'm not 100% sure why you would do that (cause I know I could never really leave red) but it means that the never come back. They never return because they would either have to start over (which would be hard) or they come back, but loose a stack of experience and their place on high score lists, contacts etc.
so my idea is this, in a way to gain old detectives back, would there be a way to leave, but have the option of coming back. For example if people left for shades, but then wanted to come back, could they do that without starting over???
I await rotten tomatoes being thrown at me for bad ideas!
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yoyofoshow
Old Shoe
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Jul-19-2008 03:06
I will be willing to help with any idea that comes forward, I don't care what it is but I'll try to make it work , I've been here for over two years now and the state of the community kills me.
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Brasco De Gama
Old Shoe
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Jul-19-2008 06:21
I reread the response from Ben and I'm glad I did. I misquoted him, as he said he was putting “more” of the eggs in the SoM basket, not “all”, which is a relief to me.
@ Sophie, you have made a very valid point. Trains were never late under Mussolini… but sometimes to keep things balanced you have to get more than one input, at the expense of speed. We already have a place to write a wish list, this message board. That’s how the Sleuthetania came about in the first place. I’m not sure a list is really going to help Ben find more time for running both games. It’s just going to get very long.
I picked up on Ben’s comment “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.” He also mentioned making the game open source, so there is definitely more to discuss than just SM’s.
Incidentally I had got half way through writing a SM and found that what I wanted to do was very complicated and I lost confidence in my ability to complete it, but I'll give it another go.
@ red_lips, I don't think it's true that most people retire their detective. Have a look through the agencies and see the number of inactive players there are. That's the way you come back without having to start over again. You just become inactive.
Hey, maybe we are all just over-reacting and in a few months time numbers will be back. We don't know either way. I'm glad I found this thread because now I know there are quite a few of us sharing the same concerns it makes me more positive that a solution will be found. :)
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Huglover
Old Shoe
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Jul-20-2008 10:30
Brasco: having a look at your super-user idea (which I apreciate), and also understanding that you did not like the development team idea...
- it makes me wonder: what's the big difference between those two ideas?
In my eyes it's just the same, but it might be that the organizing is a bit different?
Also a development team need to have some close contact with admin, in order to make things work, and there needs to be some kind of small leadership that takes care of the contact between the community and the admin.
In my eyes I thought we have the following situation:
- there are some of us in the community which love the game, but on the same time are not completely satisfied, because we have a feeling of being neglected. I am among those people.
- the Admin (Ben) seem to, of different reasons, to have far to much to do in order to be able to satisfy us.
- there might be a solution if we as community would be able to move some of the load that now rest on Admin, to be put on the shoulders of the community, or may be even better, some people from the community that are selected for this in some way. This will only be possible with a cooperation with Admin, and only to the extent that he authorize.
- there are sevral people in the community that have lifted their voice to say they would be willing to help Admin carry his burden, because we love the game so much, that we don't want to see Admin be overloaded to the point where he cannot carry anything.
- I don't think anyone who have said they would like to help ever thought that they would do so to change the game so that it was no longer the creation of Ben, or do anything that would undermine his leadership or ownership. I think that all of us would love to see Ben being involved as much as possible, but at the same time, there seem to be a sense of feeling that Ben's own wish to involve and use energy on Noir is declining.
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Huglover
Old Shoe
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Jul-20-2008 10:33
I think that second best to Ben doing everything himself, are a group of people doing part of the job for Ben, at Ben's instructions or to unload Ben of burdens that it's not crucial that He carry.
Third best would be people authorized by Ben, to also make the instructions after which things are going to be done.
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Secret_Squirrel
Safety Officer
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Jul-20-2008 17:52
lol sophie. As they say, 'a camel is a horse designed by a committee' :) what... that's all I've got :p
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Brasco De Gama
Old Shoe
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Jul-21-2008 01:32
Huglover: the review team is the pretty much the same as development team, and originally I wrote development team, but I changed it just to emphasise that development was Ben's remit. :)
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Huglover
Old Shoe
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Jul-21-2008 02:11
Being not really sure about what work is already delegated, and what's not, I have some ideas about what a development team/team of superUsers, whatever you call it, only that we hope it would be organized in a way that ensures results...
* Follow up on technical issues, like the picture drop-out we had yesterday, and find information and update the community, and have the possibility to tell Ben on a "hot-line", if there is something we need him to do. This team may be could also have a look at other issues as well, like:
- how do you implement uploading of pictures?
- are there alternatives for subscription payments other than paypal that's easy and safe?
* Create a new FAQ with answers to those kind of questions that we "know" the answer of, and be the first-line contact and responders for questions to Ben, leaving to him give the answer the yet unsorted questions, and using the information of theese questions/answers to expand the FAQ.
* Easen the process of creating/doing avatars, so that the job left for Ben, when Secret Squirrel and his helpers have done most of the job, might be nothing, or only a quick review.
* Creating a "competition team", that will both be able to run various competitions, and have the possibility to "give" different kind of rewards to the winners.
* Perhaps creating a marketing team, that might have a small fund of either money or gift subscriptions to try to get more people to play sleuth? - this fund could be created by some kind of "fee" that are payed to be in certain competitions. (like 1 dayload of cases?, a certain amount of sleuth $?)
* Perhaps making an "item-creator" which enables more people to come with ideas for items to include in Sleuth? Could be so that what kind of "slanting" you are allowed to give the item you create are dependent on the experience your character got? - such items must pass a review of some kind, to ensure that it's still "sleuthy"
....
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red_lips
Well-Connected
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Jul-21-2008 05:11
Okay, sorry about my above point, I know it was dodgy.
I agree with a lot of people that we do need to work with advertising to get newbies and I would like to talk about the wonders of gift subscriptions.
now i know they're really icky to hand out but I was the proud reciever of a gift subscription (I cam 2nd in the poetry comp) and without it, I wouldn't be here today. It gave me a taste of everything... I joined an agency, traveled, played more cases, experienced new things and THEN re-subscribed.
I know people don't like handing them out but I think that we should even just give people a taste of what it's like to be subscribed (maybe you play for a month, then get a weeks free subscription) because I know if that happened to me, I would've subscribed much earlier!
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