Wow the side missions are broken

[Something Stupid]

While I appreciate that this game is new and that its early access, I have gone through about 4 side jobs and all of them either break or dont give you enough information to even start with. Its particularly disheartening when you spend a lot of time and use deductive reasoning to solve these puzzles that the side missions present but are rewarded with a broken or impossible endings.

I tried a theft job, a humiliation job, and an arrest job, all of which did not function.

The theft job broke when I found details about my target, as it did not register that i had found her. Then when I kept going regardless, eventually finding the document at her place of work, the game did not register that I picked it up. Then when I threw it in the ocean as instructed, the game did not register that either.

I know she was the one, because she was the only one that fit the description of the vague details I got in my job description - and there were only two people on her floor.

The humiliation job broke simply because the game did not give me enough details to find the person I was supposed to target. Eye colour, hair colour, a lack of glasses, and some other detail. I was left just running around the streets looking for him, and when I didn't, I gave up. I think it's rather silly that the people I'm meant to work for don't even have a name of the guy im supposed to humiliate. Just how deep can their grudge be that theyd pay 2000 for the guy to get food thrown in his face but dont even know his name or place of work?

As for the arrest job, I got details on which apartment building he lived in, his hairstyle and haircolour, glasses, and beard style.

Easy enough, I thought. I went into the apartment, headed to the security room and rummaged through the resident files. I found the only two people in the entire building that fit the description so I went into their apartments and tried to find anything that would lead me to find that they in particular were the one I was looking for. After looking through both of them AND their places of work, I realized that there was absolutely nothing that told me either of them was wanted by the cops. I had to simply guess between the two of them - which was an awful feeling.

So I guessed, and arrested one of them. To my surprise the steps for handing this mission in actually registered that i had arrested someone, and after 5 hours of playing the game I was finally ready to hand in my first successful side mission.

It failed.
I had gotten the wrong guy. I sighed and reloaded my save, and arrested the other guy, the only other option that fit the description I had been given - and handed the quest in. With some annoyance tainting my victory, I waited for it to process and... It failed again.

At this point I was just angry, I went through the entire apartment and knocked on every single door until someone answered. There was NO other people that fit the description. While doing this I broke into a couple apartments and found two diamonds which I sold for more money than I would have gotten from the entire mission, and then I stopped playing.


This game is in a very rough state. The side missions are in my experience completely broken and need either a complete overhaul in how many clues you get at the start or some serious reworking to make them actually fun/completable. In a detective game you should never have to just guess between two suspects without any way to motivate either guess, nor should you have to try and find a single guy in an entire city going off nothing but his haircolour and if he wears glasses or not, and neither should you have all your detective work thrown out the window because the game choses not to register when you find your target.


TL:DR
The game's side missions are broken beyond belief and unfun. If you play this game (Which I cant in good faith recommend right now given the state that its in) then I would suggest burglarizing random apartments for money and ignoring sidequests until a new murder case appears - those at least seem to be functioning.

But I'm curious, maybe the error is on me - Have any of you guys managed to successfully complete a side mission? And if so, how did you do it? Did you find it fun?

[DoremianCleff]

I have about 90% or more completion rate on sidejobs. Maybe investigatory nature of a game is just not for you? There are some side jobs that give you a poor set of leads, like
height, shoe size and eye color, but those are not common.

What comes after that is up to a player and i can tell you that this isn't a "checkbox" game, meaning you aren't just doing same things to find everyone (as often in murder cases). Anything that is given to you is an information and you need to think of a way how to leverage it. If a guy lives in a specific building - well, how many people live ther? How many fit the description? How to check all of them, without knocking on every door? Does cameras help? Maybe there is a registry of all the residents in a building.
This is what drives people to do these side jobs. People actually like being thorough and finding people based on their brand of cologne and such.

But if it's not for you, it's 100% understandable. If you still find the game fun, i would suggest to you trying getting a side job, seeing what details are available to you and think to yourself if you know how to use that information. If not - just close the case and take another job. Later, when you know more, you might start finding more ways of finding information and maybe you'll start to see what other people see in those hard to do sidejobs.

On side note: murder cases are actually easier than side jobs, because the way they are structured gives you a lot more information from the get go, before you even seen clues.
With side jobs you need to find more information yourself.

[DyD&Marina]

Originally posted by DoremianCleff:

I have about 90% or more completion rate on sidejobs. Maybe investigatory nature of a game is just not for you? There are some side jobs that give you a poor set of leads, like
height, shoe size and eye color, but those are not common.

What comes after that is up to a player and i can tell you that this isn't a "checkbox" game, meaning you aren't just doing same things to find everyone (as often in murder cases). Anything that is given to you is an information and you need to think of a way how to leverage it. If a guy lives in a specific building - well, how many people live ther? How many fit the description? How to check all of them, without knocking on every door? Does cameras help? Maybe there is a registry of all the residents in a building.
This is what drives people to do these side jobs. People actually like being thorough and finding people based on their brand of cologne and such.

But if it's not for you, it's 100% understandable. If you still find the game fun, i would suggest to you trying getting a side job, seeing what details are available to you and think to yourself if you know how to use that information. If not - just close the case and take another job. Later, when you know more, you might start finding more ways of finding information and maybe you'll start to see what other people see in those hard to do sidejobs.

On side note: murder cases are actually easier than side jobs, because the way they are structured gives you a lot more information from the get go, before you even seen clues.
With side jobs you need to find more information yourself.

Attempting to hide the problems of this game, will not help this game to developing in a working game.

Multiple people experiencing this bugs with missions.

Me too i found this bugs too and already refunded the game two times because simple not worth to buyed the game in this state, even for an early access.

And even more like buildings with security cam but no security room or missions point to inexistent roads.

Solution isn't take another jobs, because bugs like this need to be fixed.

And side jobs bugs are only the point of the iceberg.

Not even the storage of the apartment work, which lead to items disapper without reason

Attempt to hide this bugs will only create problems for this game when will be released, if not sooner.

[DoremianCleff]

Missions giving you vague description isn't a bug. It's a nature of randomly assigned missions. There are people who actually like finding people based on the color of their eyes and "fixing it" will strip them of that. On which i should note that compared to demo you get a lot more solvable side jobs than it used to be. I don't even do the "shoe size" missions and i still got more jobs done than i ditched.

As for borken envelopes - everyone knows about them, developer probably got mor ethan enough feedback to look into it. It's Early Access. I don't find it necessary to talk about same issues on a loop. That said - in some of those reporeted "bugs" it's just a wrong envelope, because they already exist in the world before you even got the case. So there is a non zero chance you will find 3 envelopes in same room. It's a nature of a procedural games. You might be just the unluckiest guy in the world and just not knowing that.

[Artuitus]

I have had 1 bugged mission-because i stole the document before identifying the mark. Otherwise I've had a few with poor leads and one that flat out was wrong -told me target works at xyz yet they don't-but I consider that a feature rather than a bug. We should get bad information at times to keep things going. On jobs that don't give me enough info I either put them to the side and see if I can stumble across clues while working jobs I can solve or just cancel the job if it is too little info to bother with.

[DyD&Marina]

Originally posted by DoremianCleff:

Missions giving you vague description isn't a bug. It's a nature of randomly assigned missions. There are people who actually like finding people based on the color of their eyes and "fixing it" will strip them of that. On which i should note that compared to demo you get a lot more solvable side jobs than it used to be.

As for borken envelopes - everyone knows about them, developer probably got mor ethan enough feedback to look into it. It's Early Access. I don't find it necessary to talk about same issues on a loop. That said - in some of those reporeted "bugs" it's just a wrong envelope, because they already exist in the world before you even got the case. So there is a non zero chance you will find 3 envelopes in same room. It's a nature of a procedural games. You might be just the unluckiest guy in the world and just not knowing that.

Mission give you description(hair and if i remember good eye color) and fingerprint and nothing else isn't a bug?

You should search the entire "town" to find this target(mission was to steal the secret document).

SImple not worth the time for the reward.

Or mission give you to place the delivery the document to an inexistent road isn't a bug?

And mission say to place the secret document near a dumpster and not work even if you try all the dumpster around the building isn't a bug?

I played less of 4 hours for stay in refund time in total and i have found around 10-15 side quests with this problems or similar.

Really there are various people finding this problems, hiding them not help this game.

This game have very good idea behind and if Developers really want to release it in 6 months, need alot of bug fixing and people helping developers to find them.

[DoremianCleff]

Originally posted by DyD&Marina:

Mission give you description and fingerprint and nothing else isn't a bug?

You should search the entire "town" to find this target(mission was to steal the secret document).

Or mission give you to place the document on an inexistent road isn't a bug?

I played less of 4 hours in total and i have found around 10-15 side quests with this problems or similar.

Idk what were you reading, but nowhere in my post there's anything about "Game has not bugs, you just bad, get out". Original post just talked about 2 cases and in one he had poor leads (understandable) and in the other he got a phantom envelope, which is either user error, or a legitimate bug that been reported couple of times already.

And yes. Side jobs just give you literal 3 traits for target. That's how they work. If you are lucky, they will have a photo or their address. Or if you unlucky it's just shoe sizes. But in general you are just give 3-5 traits. And it's a core gamplay of a game to find people based on a limited information. It's Investigatory game.

[DyD&Marina]

Originally posted by DoremianCleff:

Idk what were you reading, but nowhere in my post there's anything about "Game has not bugs, you just bad, get out". Original post just talked about 2 cases and in one he had poor leads (understandable) and in the other he got a phantom envelope, which is either user error, or a legitimate bug that been reported couple of times already.

And yes. Side jobs just give you literal 3 traits for target. That's how they work. If you are lucky, they will have a photo or their address. Or if you unlucky it's just shoe sizes. But in general you are just give 3-5 traits. And it's a core gamplay of a game to find people based on a limited information. It's Investigatory game.

" Maybe investigatory nature of a game is just not for you?"

This is what you have sayed in your first comment.

Seems a bad attempt to hide the problems

The fact in this way if is intentional,which i doubt seems simple the procedural algorithm leaved with too much freedom, create mission simple not worth the time considered the reward.

In a game if you a quest not give the right reward for the time invested is simple poor balancing.

So or is poor balancing and need to be fixed or Developers are still working on the procedural algorithm and they need more time.

Add to this for some type of quests this lack of details lack of logic.

Leaving the procedural algorithm run wild always create problems like this, not the first time i see in in a indie game use this type of things.

This game have alot of potential, leaving with poor balancing/poor balanced algorithm isn't the best choice for his future.

[Spicy Crab]

Originally posted by DyD&Marina:

In a game if you a quest not give the right reward for the time invested is simple poor balancing.

Dude, side jobs with bad info already pay more money than murder investigation. You have plenty of side jobs and you can turn down any of them. As long as most of them are "solvable". I don't think there's a problem.

[DoremianCleff]

I will not put it on you, cause it seems like what i say get lost in traslation, cause way you type seems like english isn't your first language.

I also said that Op should try playing more, so he might experience a wide variety of cases and maybe learn how some of it's mechanics work and see why other people enjoy them.

[CidDaBird]

I'll say this, when the game is loading it tells you some quests can lead to dead ends. Even one that you are just beginning. Could be bugs, could be intended design.

[Famous eco-rapper Biggi Bioswale]

The game is in EA and has a lot of bugs to iron out to be sure.

[CidDaBird]

For sure.

Originally posted by Lint Stalemate:

The game is in EA and has a lot of bugs to iron out to be sure.

[raNn]

Ok, I have that problem right now - find a person - Very Tall (210), Green eyes and 24 y/o. I have almost 8th social points level, and still don't know how to find that person.

[Patpat]

Been doing tens of them while waiting for another murder case, I had very few side jobs that were bugged. The ones that are bugged for sure are the "theft" ones IF you save and load during that job before it's complete.

[DyD&Marina]

Originally posted by Spicy Crab:

Dude, side jobs with bad info already pay more money than murder investigation. You have plenty of side jobs and you can turn down any of them. As long as most of them are "solvable". I don't think there's a problem.

If you need to search entire town, because you don't have any info give you a way to find a place to start, for around less of 1.5k not worth the time.

Poor balancing or problem with the procedural part which give the info.