Bug: Absurdly limited target information, rejected anyway

[Elizabeth Sterling]

To ID a target for a vandalism job I was given the age, the building they live in and their build and nothing else. I went through the building records and found two people who fit that profile, both of whom had their apartments trashed, neither of whom were accepted as the target on submission. Honestly having almost no info on a target really kills immersion, especially for a job where the commission is revenge. You want revenge on someone and you can't even tell me their gender, job, hair colour or height?

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Elizabeth Sterling:

To ID a target for a vandalism job I was given the age, the building they live in and their build and nothing else. I went through the building records and found two people who fit that profile, both of whom had their apartments trashed, neither of whom were accepted as the target on submission. Honestly having almost no info on a target really kills immersion, especially for a job where the commission is revenge. You want revenge on someone and you can't even tell me their gender, job, hair colour or height?

When the game generates a side job in which you are expected to arrest / vandalize somebody based off characteristics that multiple people WILL share in full, that's a logically inconsistent case. Just close the case and take another; Until the dev makes it so your evidence cannot point toward more than one person at a time, we just have to deal with the occasional broken mission generation.

[Zalugar]

This isn't a bug. It's not even the worst information combination you can get.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Zalugar:

This isn't a bug. It's not even the worst information combination you can get.

I mean, it's not a bug in the traditional sense, but I'm absolutely certain that this case would give you several different people that fit the description in full, and that's unimmersive and illogical.

[Zalugar]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

I mean, it's not a bug in the traditional sense, but I'm absolutely certain that this case would give you several different people that fit the description in full, and that's unimmersive and illogical.

Unimmersive is purely subjective, and dependent on the person's ability to be immersed.

What if the client doesn't actually know that much about the guy, they just barely know him and are just that petty? Or they're dumb enough to think it's enough.
Or they (the client) withhold information because they think giving out more will give away who they (the client) are due to personally knowing the target or being close to them.
There's plenty ways to get immersed.

I find it plenty immersive personally. Gives me a challenge. Harder than the murders, frankly.
The ones that really break ability to solve it are ones that give you no specific combination. Handwriting and Bloodtype being two of the worst methods of identification, combined with any other generic trait, such as height, hair, build, or god forbid their stupid hobby are nearly impossible to verify without the game doing it for you (and it will do it for you if you find them).

[Elizabeth Sterling]

Okay, I'm going to gloss over your justifications of why it's immersive and just focus on the fact that the only two targets who fit the profile were rejected. That is, categorically, a bug.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Zalugar:

Originally posted by Isabelle:

I mean, it's not a bug in the traditional sense, but I'm absolutely certain that this case would give you several different people that fit the description in full, and that's unimmersive and illogical.

Unimmersive is purely subjective, and dependent on the person's ability to be immersed.

What if the client doesn't actually know that much about the guy, they just barely know him and are just that petty? Or they're dumb enough to think it's enough.
Or they (the client) withhold information because they think giving out more will give away who they (the client) are due to personally knowing the target or being close to them.
There's plenty ways to get immersed.

I find it plenty immersive personally. Gives me a challenge. Harder than the murders, frankly.
The ones that really break ability to solve it are ones that give you no specific combination. Handwriting and Bloodtype being two of the worst methods of identification, combined with any other generic trait, such as height, hair, build, or god forbid their stupid hobby are nearly impossible to verify without the game doing it for you (and it will do it for you if you find them).

This is a misunderstanding of logical deduction. You literally cannot in any capacity logically deduce the target of one of these missions given information that applies to several people.

You're confusing the challenge of having very little information with the case gen mess-up of having information that doesn't point to anyone at all.

OP even said "the two people that matched the description"- how on earth is it immersive to have a client request you arrest or vandalize somebody based off descriptions that objectively do not lead to anything or anyone in particular?

for what it's worth, I can solve any case in this game with literally zero information- All it takes is clicking on people until the "target" field is filled in automatically for me.

[Zalugar]

Originally posted by Elizabeth Sterling:

Okay, I'm going to gloss over your justifications of why it's not immersive and just focus on the fact that the only two targets who fit the profile were rejected. That is, categorically, a bug.

Alright, instead of giving up and stopping all critical thinking, let's think about this logically.

So you go through the building resident records and neither of the two people who fit the description match the case solution. But you know they live there, the game is confirming it.
Question: How many records are there, and how many people live in the building? Let's just do a quick example of 14 floor, 3 rooms on each floor setup. That's 42 people. Let's say half of them have partners living with them. My god, that's 63 people. Were there 63 files in that file cabinet?

So what's the bug here. That the only two people who it could possibly be aren't what the game wants?
Or is it that the file cabinet doesn't contain every resident? The former is a bug. The latter could be a bug, but if it is, it's a consistent bug. Especially considering not every apartment even has a resident roster.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Zalugar:

Originally posted by Elizabeth Sterling:

Okay, I'm going to gloss over your justifications of why it's not immersive and just focus on the fact that the only two targets who fit the profile were rejected. That is, categorically, a bug.

Alright, instead of giving up and stopping all critical thinking, let's think about this logically.

So you go through the building resident records and neither match the profile. But you know they live there, the game is confirming it.
Question: How many records are there, and how many people live in the building? Let's just do a quick example of 14 floor, 3 rooms on each floor setup. That's 42 people. Let's say half of them have partners living with them. My god, that's 63 people. Were there 63 files in that file cabinet?

So what's the bug here. That the only two people who it could possibly be aren't what the game wants?
Or is it that the file cabinet doesn't contain every resident? The former is a bug. The latter could be a bug, but if it is, it's a consistent bug. Especially considering not every apartment even has a resident roster.

No, the bug is simply that the game has given you evidence types that cannot be used to single out a suspect out of a list.

For the sake of argument I'll take this to its logical extreme, to demonstrate what I mean:

Your information is merely your target's eye color.

Logically, sure, you certainly COULD make a list of every person in the city with green eyes and systematically go one-by-one until the game tells you that you got it right.

There are (lets say) 50 folks with green eyes. Because the only information you have in this circumstance is eye color, there's no possible way for you as the player to deduce who out of those 50 might be the target. It becomes entirely a game of clicking on heads.

[Elizabeth Sterling]

Originally posted by Zalugar:

Originally posted by Elizabeth Sterling:

Okay, I'm going to gloss over your justifications of why it's not immersive and just focus on the fact that the only two targets who fit the profile were rejected. That is, categorically, a bug.

Alright, instead of giving up and stopping all critical thinking, let's think about this logically.

So you go through the building resident records and neither of the two people who fit the description match the case solution. But you know they live there, the game is confirming it.
Question: How many records are there, and how many people live in the building? Let's just do a quick example of 14 floor, 3 rooms on each floor setup. That's 42 people. Let's say half of them have partners living with them. My god, that's 63 people. Were there 63 files in that file cabinet?

So what's the bug here. That the only two people who it could possibly be aren't what the game wants?
Or is it that the file cabinet doesn't contain every resident? The former is a bug. The latter could be a bug, but if it is, it's a consistent bug. Especially considering not every apartment even has a resident roster.

...yeah, you're an exasperating grognard and I'm blocking you, but to be clear before that:
They. Were. Unambiguously. The. Only. Valid. Targets.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Elizabeth Sterling:

Originally posted by Zalugar:

Alright, instead of giving up and stopping all critical thinking, let's think about this logically.

So you go through the building resident records and neither of the two people who fit the description match the case solution. But you know they live there, the game is confirming it.
Question: How many records are there, and how many people live in the building? Let's just do a quick example of 14 floor, 3 rooms on each floor setup. That's 42 people. Let's say half of them have partners living with them. My god, that's 63 people. Were there 63 files in that file cabinet?

So what's the bug here. That the only two people who it could possibly be aren't what the game wants?
Or is it that the file cabinet doesn't contain every resident? The former is a bug. The latter could be a bug, but if it is, it's a consistent bug. Especially considering not every apartment even has a resident roster.

...yeah, you're an exasperating grognard and I'm blocking you, but to be clear before that:
They. Were. Unambiguously. The. Only. Valid. Targets.

I mean, it's not IMPOSSIBLE that there's one or two others that fit that description, but without an in-game way of verifying who out of those is even the target without the game doing it for you, it's not worth trying to begin with.

[Maya-Neko]

Sounds like some fun overtime at the buildings surveillance room to me^^

Had something similar with hair instead of build and after watching through the surveillance i had like 8 candidates. After that it mostly was about asking around, if other people know them and i was able to verify some addresses. Definitely feels more like i'm an actual detective there than just checking the houses of 10 people, which the game told me to go to with a letter of their name.

Though there should definitely be some safety mechanism to generate cases, where too many leads are generated, which can only be verified by searching the targets apartment. But this safety mechanism shouldn't be too strong, since some problems might only be caused by RNG (like having too many people with specific traits living near each other randomly)

[Zalugar]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

[No, the bug is simply that the game has given you evidence types that cannot be used to single out a suspect out of a list.

For the sake of argument I'll take this to its logical extreme, to demonstrate what I mean:

Your information is merely your target's eye color.

Logically, sure, you certainly COULD make a list of every person in the city with green eyes and systematically go one-by-one until the game tells you that you got it right.

There are (lets say) 50 folks with green eyes. Because the only information you have in this circumstance is eye color, there's no possible way for you as the player to deduce who out of those 50 might be the target. It becomes entirely a game of clicking on heads.

Alright. Show me evidence that it's a bug. Show me where the developer has said 'every case is solvable with 100% accuracy from the information given'.

Yes, you'll get information that cannot plausibly lead to a correct arrest. That's the game. Shadows of Doubt. But you know what? It's okay to be wrong. The cases have fines for submitting incorrect information, and that's why it's there. Save scum if you want. Do I think it's absurd? Absolutely. Would I bother doing it? Probably not. But it's doable.

Claiming something you disagree with or don't understand as a bug is not commendable. It's the boy who cried wolf.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Zalugar:

Originally posted by Isabelle:

[No, the bug is simply that the game has given you evidence types that cannot be used to single out a suspect out of a list.

For the sake of argument I'll take this to its logical extreme, to demonstrate what I mean:

Your information is merely your target's eye color.

Logically, sure, you certainly COULD make a list of every person in the city with green eyes and systematically go one-by-one until the game tells you that you got it right.

There are (lets say) 50 folks with green eyes. Because the only information you have in this circumstance is eye color, there's no possible way for you as the player to deduce who out of those 50 might be the target. It becomes entirely a game of clicking on heads.

Alright. Show me evidence that it's a bug. Show me where the developer has said 'every case is solvable with 100% accuracy with the information given'.

Yes, you'll get information that cannot plausibly lead to a correct arrest. That's the game. Shadows of Doubt. But you know what? It's okay to be wrong. The cases have fines for submitting incorrect information, and that's why it's there. Save scum if you want. Do I think it's absurd? Absolutely. Would I bother doing it? Probably not. But it's doable.

Claiming something you disagree with or don't understand as a bug is not commendable. It's the boy who cried wolf.

what? this is a completely ridiculous comment go away

i know for a fact that you are either willfully ignorant of my point or you genuinely do not understand how not having a way to logically deduce your target is pretty much a bug

and for the record... yeah. the cases should be 100% solvable. that's the entire point. You investigate. As it currently stands, investigation work is irrelevant when you have one single bit of information to go off of

[Zalugar]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

what? this is a completely ridiculous comment go away

i know for a fact that you are either willfully ignorant of my point or you genuinely do not understand how not having a way to logically deduce your target is pretty much a bug

and for the record... yeah. the cases should be 100% solvable. that's the entire point. You investigate. As it currently stands, investigation work is irrelevant when you have one single bit of information to go off of

I have amply addressed your points and have provided counterarguments. But you are incapable of understanding any position but your own. You disregard any argument that, in your mind, is not feasible.

What it comes down to is you disagree with the design and insist that it's a bug, even if it's intentional. That's all it is.

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

i know for a fact that you are either willfully ignorant of my point or you genuinely do not understand how not having a way to logically deduce your target is pretty much a bug

Depends on how the future game will look like though. Maybe some things are "just there" as for now, but they might add more features in the future to make them being actually usable to some degree (like having doctors could make use of the blood type or having more places could make it more easy to use the hobby)