Sleuth Home - Message Boards - Sleuth Talk

Jan-17-2005 21:43

The old discussions about how many detectives a player should have in a single agency and whether or not detectives can switch in and out of agencies have resurfaced. As of now, here are the rules:

1) The system will not allow a particular detective to join a particular agency more than once inside a 48 hour period. This does not stop a detective from quitting their first agency (agency A) and joining a second one (agency B) immediately, but if they want to return to agency A, they cannot do so within 48 hours of the last time they joined agency A.

2) A single player should not control more than 2 single detectives within any given agency. This has always been the semi-official policy, but I will start to enforce it more regularly.

Just because these limits are now enforced, that does not mean I consider any agencies that previously switched detectives between agencies to have been cheating. Sometimes, it is just necessary to review the strategies being employed and decide whether new rules need to be enacted in order to level the playing field.

Feel free to comment or complain about these rules here, report any related bugs, or share your feelings.

Also, please remember that the treasure hunts are meant to be friendly competitions, and have fun.

Jan-18-2005 01:13

I can live with the switching rule just fine. The last time I brought a detective right back to the agency, it was because when I booted my second character, Dr. Falco Maltese, to make room for a returning agent, I forgot and booted him wearing a full set of smarts gear. So I had to boot someone else, haul him back, strip him of his gear, boot him again, and get the other guy back. So it would have been inconvenient to wait two days between each rejoining, but we probably could work around it. Note, however, that this switching was the result of my dorkiness in forgetting to have him take his gear off, not some dastardly strategy.

But I do have a question about what it means to control more than 2 agents in an agency. Right now, I only personally have one character in my agency, this one. But I have the passwords of others in the agency, so I can effectively "control" several others. Is this now not allowed? Or do you mean we can't, as individual players, have more than two agents that we ourselves have /subscribed/ in any agency, but we can sign in as others? There is a pretty big difference.

Jan-18-2005 06:55

I know in our agency, we trust each other and share passwords in case one of us is away for a lengthy period of time and needs someone else to pay rent, etc. Honestly, we have never considered that to be "controlling" more than our original agent. It's something we only use in certain circumstances, but I can see how it could get out of hand. Plus, we've seen agents stealing from others by using their passwords given in trust.
I don't see how this can be anything but a discretionary issue. You personally have to choose who you give your password too, or if you don't give it out at all. Plus we have that great feature to change our password at the drop of a hat, to keep these problems from occuring. I feel more comfortable knowing that when I have to be away from Sleuthville for an extended period of time, my co-players can sign on as me and pay my rent, make sure I didn't forget to return any clothes, etc.
But I don't believe that counts as someone else having "control" over my character.

Jan-18-2005 10:50

Password sharing is OK. What I'm trying to avoid is having an agency that is entirely controlled by two or three people.

Jan-18-2005 11:02

Like my last post, I think if you limit the amount of hunts a agency can do in a 24 hr time frame, then you don't have to watch to see if anyone is doing anything unfairly. 3 Hunts a day keeps the gossip away lol. It doesn't matter what ever Ben says goes.

Jan-19-2005 05:10

But limiting the number of hunts would block the agencies that are competing to be (er...forgive me) DBest.

I remember Chronestrian saying that he had a goal for ERT to be the first to win 100 hunts. If we all progressed in lockstep - 3 a day, how would we compete against each other?

I would still like to vote for smaller hunts (the missing carkeys or lost dog idea) limited to small agencies since 4 agents can't hope to compete against the big guys and not everybody wants to be in a warehouse.

Jan-19-2005 16:48

What I mean is limit the amount of hunts any 1 agency can solve in any 1 day to 3. Not the amount of hunts a day. If that is what I think your saying.

Jan-20-2005 06:25

I was very interested to read this thread. I have two different unsubscribed detectives and I had no idea there were rules governing how many detectives under your control could be in the same agency. And there was I thinking I might subscribe both characters and set up my own agency with them some day ...

Also from a non-subscriber's point-of-view, I don't think there's enough info on how the game might improve if you (a) subscribe and (b) join an agency. I'd like to see a brief description of how agencies work and how belonging to one could improve my "gaming experience"! Also, if there are to be rules, maybe these should be available to read on the site before you subscribe, just so you know exactly what you're getting.

I think you might be missing a valuable marketing point for subscribing to Sleuth here.

Jan-31-2005 16:01

I would agree with Chloe on that one. A bit of warning once you are eligible for Featured Mysteries that they are different to random ones, I had to change strategy halfway through, ran out of helpful people and had to quit. Also warning that you can't store them in your agency file before you start.

(I would like to apologise now if it's all obviously there and I'm just being dappy)

Jan-31-2005 16:16

There is a lot of information in the Subscription FAQ (bottom of the page), for those considering subscribing for the first time.

Feb-1-2005 06:58

Chloe, in regards to you having two subscribed agents in your agency, that is something many agencies have and we have basically all agreed is fine. I personally have two of my own subscribed agents in my agency.