#Apartment utility, Closed cases, corkboard suggestions & physicality

26 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

ember linden
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I'd really love for owning an apartment to be a more substantial asset to an investigation. Right now it just kind of feels like a money sink (that i do enjoy, but i end up never spending much time there). To me one of the quintessential film noir tropes is the smoky office, where our hard-boiled detective spends their days drinking, and thinking about that special someone, or that one case they could never quite crack.
With that in mind I feel the apartments can be quite lacking. Here are a few ideas on how i think they could be improved.

  • Implementing a feature to assign owned property as your "P.I. Office", and have some gameplay happen there. Maybe people could meet in person to give you jobs, or divulge information. If the detective isn't in, they might leave a phone number behind, slip a note under the door, put it in some sort of 'inquiries box', or maybe they'll decide it's not worth it to try and contact you again (there is a killer on the loose after all). If something like an answering machine is implemented, they might just call you up.
  • Allow the player to store closed cases, whether in a filing cabinet, or those cardboard storage boxes. Maybe you can reopen a case, in case there's some relevant information in there.
  • Additionally, letting the player "display" a case on the corkboard would be awesome! It could be tied in with the above mentioned system to let players display a case, open or closed, that they think is worth putting up. Maybe it's the case that keeps them up at night; with a perp that slipped through their fingers. Maybe it's one they're particularly proud of.
  • Give a player's personal cruncher additional use, like an expensive item you can buy at a black market trader to install on a surveillance system and remotely view it from home, access phone logs, hack into databases, or buy database access for a company for a limited time.
  • let the player smoke and overfill the ashtray

Basically make properties more useful/important.

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A note on the corkboard: I'm picturing different textures on it in relation to how many items you have pinned. from sparse to overflowing, and maybe a few levels in-between. Nothing crazy like dynamically displaying a case as it is on the detective board.
Maybe interacting with it could open the caseboard, and you could access a menu where you can switch it out. The boxes/files would work in a similar way.
Also it would be important to be able to delete a closed case completely so the list doesn't get filled with side-jobs that aren't worth it, etc.

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Also i love the game!

candid hill
# ember linden I'd really love for owning an apartment to be a more substantial asset to an inv...

I thought I'd post this here instead of in the thread where we're chatting. Because it has releted more with apartments.
We all put up miserable rows of vending machines because we're too lazy to go to the store. And it's weird and it's not in atmospheric. We need home deliveries. With a phone or personal cruncher. Even if delivery works instantly right into our inventory, it's still cooler than putting vending machines in our apartment.

ember linden
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Lmao yeah that or it could arrive in like a dumbwaiter

ember linden
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Like an order slip at a convenience store and ask for a delivery, then a box outside your door could show up

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And letting us make coffee with the small machines

candid hill
ember linden
candid hill
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Especially if that box could be tossed in the trash and didn't have to be thrown off a balcony or dock.

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Or disappeared after you took things out of it.

ember linden
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Or thrown at someone for the funny factor

candid hill
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<D

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Well, boxes can do that already)

ember linden
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Yeah lol, for now I'm gonna check out the new experimental build. Cya around detective 👋🕵️

candid hill
warm meteor
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I would love to see this kind of stuff. Instead of corkboards all over, people come to you like in the old noir flicks. Or you overhear someone talking about a problem and you essentially give them your card. And I love the idea of cosmetic boards you can have around your house, and keeping the old cases in the file boxes is great too. Gives them a real use. I also would love to have things where you feel like a real living person. Grocery shopping to get food you can cook in your apartment that gives more perks than just fixing being hungry or something. Have to take out your trash to the dumpsters behind your building, which would give more options for interactions like someone trying to stick you up in the alley or coming back to your door open/a note under it and other random events like that.

manic jewel
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would make sense to me to give more functionality to your personal cruncher, like people emailing jobs or clues, or you being able to email people to meet at locations(to then put a bloodhound tracker on them, or simply arrest them if they agree)

Making the cruncher a better tool would also give a reason to visit your apartment more frequently

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i agree with literally every above idea

zealous ledge
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i also think more expansions could be made with the little status effects and survival mechanics, obviously you already have like hungry and thirsty/full and slaked, but a basic stress mechanic would add a lot.

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basic ideas for how it would work is like
-stress accrues being on the streets, trespassing, when a killer gets a new kill bc you couldnt solve the case, etc
-when stressed, you can get like a headache which would look sorta like being cold and your mental corkboard reorganizes itself randomly whenever you open it so sorting through everything over and over becomes more of a burden as you gain more evidence
-relieving it could be eating, sleeping, imbibing, or watching TV, listening to a record, hitting a couple of balls on the billiards table etc.
-i also think it should take time to fully relieve stress; that enables more time for killers to make more kills because i have yet to have more than 2 in a single case.

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also just being home could be like an ongoing slight benefit to your stress

zealous ledge
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also cant believe i forgot to mention but like a better object placement system so make decorating easier, its sucks when stuff i wanna put on the counter is right on the edge and not against the wall.

spring fjord
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The idea of having notes slip occasionally under the player's apartment door as a starting point for cases seems shockingly obvious given how that exact idea happens in the Dead Of Night tutorial.
I'm astounded that hasn't been implemented as an actual feature yet tbh

Maybe that's how they plan to introduce missing persons cases?