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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-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.

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.

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

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. :)

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"
....

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!

Jul-22-2008 21:00

SS.
Heehee. They have a hump, hold water and spit tobacco.

Hmmm. except for the extra legs it sounds like the proto-type for the manager of a professional league baseball team.

I won't name names :p

Jul-24-2008 15:55

If there is anyone who would like to try my TownieSweeper, it's now availiable at: http://www.freewebs.com/huglover/index.htm
The program is delivered to you "as-is", meaning that if you get it to work, then, nice, if not, then too bad. But, I won't take any responsibility for the program not working. Or, any damage it will do on your computer.
Also, don't test out the program if you don't really want to.
It's only useable to assist you in asking the townies in the city where your sleuth are some specific questions. - and meant to help you find out if a specific question will reveal some secrets that are not found yet.
- or to assist you if you need to ask sevral townies in a city the same question. (Yes, it's working in Shangri La too...)

Jul-24-2008 21:08

The program does work, a setting or two may need to be tweaked, I'll have some full install instructions and another copy of the file up on DPI's website in the next day or two. Was gonna do it tonight but ran into some PC problems of my own that I had to get resolved. Stupid ISP! :-S

Jul-30-2008 15:38

I just had a short trip into Shades, and what I discovered when I logged out made me disappointed.
Whenever I log out of Noir, to change to another detective, I have to pass by the page which presents both the Sleuth games, so that I will be sure to be reminded what is hot and what is not...
BUT, when I logged out of Shades, I came directly to the Shades login page, and did NOT have to go by the page which presents both the Sleuth games....
Either this is a mistake, and I am sure Ben can quickly correct the problem to proove this was just a mistake, or it's done by purpose, which in my eyes feels ... well, the words I would use to describe it are not really positive...
I have a feeling that we in the Noir community from time to time feel neglected, and such small details don't actually help the impression.
I hope very much this is just a small mistake...