Unsolvable case?

[Windy Winston]

I have to steal an envelope from somebody with the first name initial of K, at Novak house. I went through the resident records and found the one person with that initial. Broke into their place, which is a very small studio apartment, tore the place apart, but no envelope. What is weird, is that there is a note with a code on it, but no safe or cruncher in the room.

[Windy Winston]

Actually there is no way all the residents were in that file cabinet... On cases like that do you just have to beat down doors looking for the guy?

[Isabelle]

More than one person will match that exact description in full, it's a failure of case generation. Close it and move on

[Mama Llama]

The resident records in the filing cabinets are incomplete. It might be because they can't all fit in one drawer or because it only lists one person per household but the only complete record of all residents in a given building is the Resident Databse in the security room and you need a name to search that.

Like I said to the last person with this problem, you're gonna have to manually eliminate each person in the building by entering their apartment and gobbling up all their personal files to check their name. Birth certificates are great for this and everyone has a file cabinet or box somewhere in their house with one.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Mama Llama:

The resident records in the filing cabinets are incomplete. It might be because they can't all fit in one drawer or because it only lists one person per household but the only complete record of all residents in a given building is the Resident Databse in the security room and you need a name to search that.

Like I said to the last person with this problem, you're gonna have to manually eliminate each person in the building by entering their apartment and gobbling up all their personal files to check their name. Birth certificates are great for this and everyone has a file cabinet or box somewhere in their house with one.

this is not worth it at all

it takes forever AND fills your notebook with pointless info that your character will never forget- making future cases significantly easier. You'll get murder cases where you scan the murder weapon and the fingerprint will have an entire profile attached to it.

[Mama Llama]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

More than one person will match that exact description in full, it's a failure of case generation. Close it and move on

I get that you may have had difficulty in the past with tough cases but telling other people authoritatively that there is an issue with case generation without even offering any advice or asking for clarification or trying to be helpful in any way is not helping anyone. Stop it.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Mama Llama:

Originally posted by Isabelle:

More than one person will match that exact description in full, it's a failure of case generation. Close it and move on

I get that you may have had difficulty in the past with tough cases but telling other people authoritatively that there is an issue with case generation without even offering any advice or asking for clarification or trying to be helpful in any way is not helping anyone. Stop it.

This is not difficulty at all.

If your given description matches multiple people with no way of differentiating them, you DO NOT have a target. Period. That is a failure.

[Isabelle]

For example beacuse this evidently confuses a lot of people:

Let's say the only info you have is as follows:

Brown hair
Glasses
Lives in: Apartment Building A

How many total people share that exact description to a T? a lot of them, it turns out.

Given that this is the ONLY information given to the player, you cannot logically deduce which of those people it is, unless the game tells you directly, after you interact with them and the sticky note gets filled in automatically.

It's nonsensical.

If the addition of, like, ONE extra evidence type would clearly point to a perp, then it's fine.

[Isabelle]

And for what it's worth, I don't find this game difficult in the slightest. It's a logical deduction simulator. I happen to be pretty good at that.

[Mama Llama]

Sorry you've had problems with cases. Replying to new players or players with questions with "Its a bug close your case" is not constructive. Stop doing it.

My favorite side job type is the photograph target one and I've been playing in an Extra Large city with 650 citizens for most of my nearly 90 hours play time and I have not failed to find my target yet. If the case generator can even fail in the way you describe it must be exceedingly uncommon which makes it even more egregious that you're copy/pasting this nonsense into so many threads. You're not helping anyone. Stop it.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Mama Llama:

Sorry you've had problems with cases. Replying to new players or players with questions with "Its a bug close your case" is not constructive. Stop doing it.

My favorite side job type is the photograph target one and I've been playing in an Extra Large city with 650 citizens for most of my nearly 90 hours play time and I have not failed to find my target yet. If the case generator can even fail in the way you describe it must be exceedingly uncommon which makes it even more egregious that you're copy/pasting this nonsense into so many threads. You're not helping anyone. Stop it.

You didn't even read my comment. You' just re-stated a bunch of nonsense.

The cases I call failures ARE indeed failures... if your data doesn't point toward one civ even after intense investigation it is a FAILURE of case generation, not a difficult case.

It happens to me quite literally 50% of cases.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

For example beacuse this evidently confuses a lot of people:

Let's say the only info you have is as follows:

Brown hair
Glasses
Lives in: Apartment Building A

How many total people share that exact description to a T? a lot of them, it turns out.

Given that this is the ONLY information given to the player, you cannot logically deduce which of those people it is, unless the game tells you directly, after you interact with them and the sticky note gets filled in automatically.

It's nonsensical.

If the addition of, like, ONE extra evidence type would clearly point to a perp, then it's fine.

if you read this youd understand what im talking about but you are clearly much more interested in trying to forum moderate me for some reason, it's really sad

[Mama Llama]

50% of all cases? That is veritably nonsense. Please stop spreading misinformation.

[Cooperal]

The envelope can also be found hidden at their workplace and maybe some other places. I once checked the targets workplace as a last ditch effort and nearly gave up hope when I didn't find it at their work desk, but very soon after I found it in the security room with the targets prints all over it, unlike everything else in that room.

[Esca]

(If only Valve ever hired more forum moderators. )

Mass break-ins to read people's files is the simplest route, but I *think* the resident database on the security room PC has everyone listed, unlike the paper files. You could try searching for other people with "K" names in that. (It needs 2 letters to search, so type K followed by each vowel.)

But yeah, like Cooperal said, it might also be at that person's workplace. That's very common in my experience.

[Mehrunes Dagon did nothing wrong]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

Originally posted by Isabelle:

For example beacuse this evidently confuses a lot of people:

Let's say the only info you have is as follows:

Brown hair
Glasses
Lives in: Apartment Building A

How many total people share that exact description to a T? a lot of them, it turns out.

Given that this is the ONLY information given to the player, you cannot logically deduce which of those people it is, unless the game tells you directly, after you interact with them and the sticky note gets filled in automatically.

It's nonsensical.

If the addition of, like, ONE extra evidence type would clearly point to a perp, then it's fine.

if you read this youd understand what im talking about but you are clearly much more interested in trying to forum moderate me for some reason, it's really sad

The reason I think they are saying you're spreading misinformation is because even though it doesn't make sense to try to find someone like that, it's completely possible. It might take you actual hours but nothing on the storepage says the cases are quick. There's a notion of "legwork" in these types of jobs which means you might literally have to do grueling work just to hit a dead end. Some people actually find this fun and realistic. The game always picks a target, as it knows who the person is. Yes the only way you'd know that is if you actually found the right person on the off chance and it gets added to your info, but the point is that person DID exist. The game just didn't give you enough info, but that's on you whether or not you want to take that job, nothing about it is inherently impossible. If there was some kind of bug relating to that it would most likely have been around for a long time and known about, but only a few people complain about these cases that you "can't" solve, those same people just say to close the case, but I've never once had a person I couldn't find with enough effort, even when I was only given details like hair color and build. Though I do understand where you're coming from about it not being worth it, that doesn't make it impossible inherently.

I also have thought before about what you said about eventually having enough fingerprints logged where you can instantly identify someone based on a scanned print. I think you'd have to go through a lot of business to be able to do that in a city of 650+. Even if you had 100 peoples fingerprints saved you'd still not find a match that often, that's not to say it won't happen but statistically it's going to be rare. On smaller cities and stuff though I can see this being a huge issue.