The idea is that people usually use "Ignore" for houses that they think are impossible. So if someone gets through, it might be worth another look.
]]>Like, if the owner re-tests it, or some other player robs it.
Just to be clear, if the ignored house owner successfully robs someone, his house doesn't get off the ignore list?
]]>But if you make a mistake and ignore a house? Yeah.... I guess we need a button for that.
]]>that seems fair enough
is there a way to un-ignore a house?
This.
I would suggest an overall 'restore all houses' button rather than a case-by-case un-ignore.
]]>is there a way to un-ignore a house?
]]>Regarding money going right into the vault: that's why the salary exists. It gives people something to steal, and turns a "not worth it" house into a "worth it" house over time. It's really not meant as funds for the owner (though the owner can use the funds, obviously, if they're not stolen first).
]]>Okay, upped it to $140 + $280. We'll see what that does.
wages trickle into the vault, free to be stolen, correct? would it be a lot of effort to have partner's wages go into the vault, but your own remain 'in-hand' (as if you have just stolen them while someone is in your house)?
i wonder if the increase in wages will mean people not slaughtering partners willy-nilly and instead 'milking' empty/broken-but-solvable houses.. hmm!
]]>I personally think they are currently quite a big problem.
I was thinking so too, until I looked at the admin data.
Out of the six houses that are at the top of the list right now (the six that have value estimates over $6000), only ONE is in a "stuck" state ( Christopher Norman Doe). The other five are just really hard houses.
Harold Mark Jones sure looks impossible, but it isn't!
Now.... as for the idea that people are going away-from-keyboard for five minutes to get their house to time out without fixing it up, I see no evidence of that. Doe has just been away from the game for six days.
Remember, people can't even re-fill their backpack without fixing up their house if it's been robbed.
Right now, there are 9 houses that have not been successfully robbed yet. Four of them have so little money that they aren't worth robbing yet. These houses are earning salary, but only at a rate of $14 + $28 per hour (if wife is alive). I think I need to turn this up a bit. Will do that now.
]]>Voting a house off the lobby list on the grounds of it being unbeatable wouldn't benefit the economy. It's effectively the same as adding it to your ignore list.
Take your point about not wanting to force people to check in if their house is still a viable puzzle. Repossession is perhaps rather harsh.
Perhaps there is scope for an automated take on your idea:
After a successful robbery the server re-runs your self-test on the new layout. If it fails then it marks your house with a skull (sort of a TRESPASSERS BEWARE! sign), or removes it from the lobby entirely until you successfully complete another self-test.
I imagine this would rely on pet positions resetting after robbery.
]]>It might help to reintroduce the 'minimum wage' and pay a higher wage to those houses which haven't been beaten yet.
I'm not convinced that purpose built one-time-beatable houses are a huge problem. If you do this you are basically opting not to play the game, and if you're not playing the game then you're not playing a role in its economy either.
An idea:
If your house has been broken for X weeks without you checking in and fixing it up it could be repossessed. This could remove you from the house list and leave you with a percentage of your cash, your security tapes and an otherwise empty house.
I personally think they are currently quite a big problem. They hold loads of money and there's no way of stopping them being at the top of the list.
Players with an unbeatable house can still check in on their house, watch tapes, and I think even AFK for 5 minutes to get kicked out of it and go rob other peoples houses. So they are still playing the game and they have a lot of unobtainable money.
I dislike the idea of having to check my house every so often and, even if it still functions perfectly fine and is a good puzzle, having it repossessed if I don't.
Perhaps players could vote if they think a house is completely unbeatable (not just uninteresting to them) and if a house gets enough votes in comparison to total people who've tried it, it is hidden off the list until the house owner logs in and gets to the vault again (Which they should have to do normally anyway if their house has been changed by robbers).
If a house hasn't actually been changed by robbers yet then it shouldn't be markable as impossible. So only houses that have been robbed but the owner hasn't fixed the damages yet can be marked, which should be the only ones that are actually impossible.
]]>I'm not convinced that purpose built one-time-beatable houses are a huge problem. If you do this you are basically opting not to play the game, and if you're not playing the game then you're not playing a role in its economy either.
An idea:
If your house has been broken for X weeks without you checking in and fixing it up it could be repossessed. This could remove you from the house list and leave you with a percentage of your cash, your security tapes and an otherwise empty house.
]]>Yeah, duh, pets falling into pits, etc., are a cornerstone of many one-time-robbable designs, and resetting living pets wouldn't change much.
Actually, looking at the top houses in the current world, it seems like many of them are being visited by their owners regularly. There's only one that is actually "stuck".
The others are just really, really hard. Two that I've examined exploit the nuances of voltage-triggered switch behavior in some pretty extreme ways (even I didn't know they could be used this way...). So, yeah, blueprints don't ruin anything on that front.
So, maybe the problem is just lack of money coming into the system to feed the smaller-scale good houses. Upping the hourly salaries could help this (recall that from v6 onward, salary is only paid if your house hasn't been successfully robbed yet).
More thinking needed here.
]]>The only way I could see it working is if pets didn't die AND their positions reset. But then you are left with almost a complete house reset anyway.
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