The Hoarder's Hunt Mystery - Feedback

  • RealStyli
    Vanguard
    Insider

    We're a few days after discovering the final code and a couple of days from the end, but I think I'm at a place where I can give some feedback on the current Mystery.

    First off, congrats to the winners. I think we have an idea who won, and I really do have my fingers crossed for the lovely couple of pirates who shared the code. But we'll see soon enough. GG in any case.

    I thought the Hoarder's Hunt has been a massive improvement on the previous Mystery and, overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It felt more focused on puzzle solving and a lot less focused on social media engagement, though it did still lean a little much on requiring folks to have accounts to certain services in order to progress.

    In particular, Spotify and Amazon were the more egregious of these requirements. Amazon, especially, while you could get preview of the comic, the clue for that section required having access to the full comic - which needed an account. Spotify, was similar, I believe. Things like this I hope get ironed out in future mysteries, with less reliance on third party accounts.

    While the IRL prizes on offer certainly added to the intensity and competition, I did feel they also detracted from what was an opportunity to really bring the community together - especially in the latter stages. As a community, we got lucky that someone decided to share the final code or it could have been a disappointing end. Next time, I would hope for the stakes to be different (maybe a fail state and ramifications if we don't solve it?) and really rely on the community to work together.

    On that subject, the Discord just felt like a mess of voices and wasn't helped by misinformation from trolls. I don't know if there is a way to limit that but perhaps a role system could be implemented and stages broken up into channels.

    While Rare Thief and Merfolk's Lullaby did a great job of keeping guides up to date, it was a bit disappointing to see clues disappear (Twitter accounts changed, OneDrive files removed) as the Mystery progressed. It meant anyone starting late would not be able to work on the Mystery without looking up guides (good luck MatPat trying to do a Game Theory on this one!).

    However, having the Mystery broken up into stages really helped with the flow, I felt, as everyone knew the structure - puzzle, then voyage, then puzzle, etc.... Though I do feel we lost something by not having some more elements of in-game interactions during the puzzle phases. That said, the voyages were fantastic, in my opinion. I know it would be a lot of work to make them modular and varied, but I would love to see them implemented as proper voyages in the game - maybe another part of the Legend of the Veil?

    I liked the rewards on offer, they felt fitting. Though stage 2 suffered from not having anything beyond 10K for completing it. It was a minor issue, in my opinion, but something I had heard folks express.

    Finally, we don't know (yet) the full outcome of the Mystery story, I would hope we get some resolution on Thursday regarding who H is, or something that shows our actions had an impact. As it is, though we have some vague lore implications, we don't really have a sense that the Mystery has concluded - the story just seemed to fizzle out.

    (P.S. please do a recap of the Mystery, I know a lot of us would love to know the thinking behind a lot of the clues)

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  • Grog Minto
    Master
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    In particular, Spotify and Amazon were the more egregious of these requirements. Amazon, especially, while you could get preview of the comic, the clue for that section required having access to the full comic - which needed an account. Spotify, was similar, I believe. Things like this I hope get ironed out in future mysteries, with less reliance on third party accounts.

    The spotify bit really had me enraged xD I was on my PC, so I went on the PC version when the clue lead me there... But the Spotify clues were only available through the Phone app (luckily I discovered it quicly during a bathroom break).

    The same thing happened week 2 when I was looking around in w3w (which uses google map) for hours... To discover afterwards that I should have taken the coordinates to actual Google map in order to have a chance to find the clue.

    Ngl, I stopped caring after that one.

  • HeyltsMeTC
    Legend
    Insider

    Lots of sentiments agreed with here!
    Pros: The mystery was MUCH more organised, snappy, and engaging, because we basically knew when and where to be, and while not necessarily what to expect, we could be sure there would be no "Retweet 3000 times to unlock the clue!" It felt more approachable (But more on that later).
    The in game segments were so fun, and while there were one or two "clues" that i think could have been better worded/setup, being able to test my knowledge of the game, while also deciphering the clues themselves, was incredible. I particularly loved the Ferry clues in the last in game stage, so creative.
    The IRL rewards themselves are beautiful, i actually thought the skull looked wayyy better than i expected! The in-game rewards are awesome, but I do feel there cooould have been more, or more to them. The Gold hoarder skull is a LITTLE small!

    Now, there are a few considerable Cons:
    Major gripe is the out of game segments were unnecessarily complex. They were genuinely complicated beyond average abilities, and multiple steps had to be absolutely bruteforced. Some didn't make sense until you could look back. I was personally hoping for this to be something you could sit down and do solo! But unfortunately, without the mass involvement of the community, we would never have gotten anywhere.
    On the TOPIC, and going back, as nice as the real world rewards were, they also impacted the "community" essence. People holding codes and clues back to have a leg up, people misdirecting and faking clues and codes in order to better their chances. The third code was found and held for over 12 hours, all the while the crew were bragging about it on twitter. It soured the "community work" aspect.
    Finally. The ending, or lack thereof, was sorely disappointing. Despite all its problems, Mystery 1 had an awesome finale cutscene with some genuine emotion, this one had nothing, or, has nothing yet. But no in game finale definitely soured it for me, especially after how LONG the fourth quest was.

    Overall an absolute improvement from Mystery 1, BUT! If you consider Mystery 1 at one end of the spectrum, i would argue this mystery was at the other end. I would hope Mystery 3 can just be a fun, solo-solvable story with a satisfying ending and some neat in-game rewards!

  • Magus104
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    @grog-minto Yea that is awful. I hate doing anything on mobile. It's like for youtube I pretty much only go to my subscriptions tab on PC. Community posts are hidden yet on mobile community posts are in the subscription feed. I get most people these days are way more into mobile. I am at the PC all day why would I want to do anything on a smaller screen and slower because I have to use a touch screen vs typing.

    Then there's the money that went into this when they clearly need to hire someone with specific skill sets to help deal with some very serious in game issues which have gone ignored for far too long. Seems like they don't have anyone with the knowledge on how to deal with the issues, which isn't an insult in anyway but they seem to be in denial of that fact and aren't willing to outsource a fix for these issues that are ruining the gameplay experience.

  • Lucky11
    Commander
    Insider

    @realstyli
    I think you said this better than what I have in my own feedback post I published a day or so ago. Rare just needs to iron out a few more wrinkles for the "Real Life" puzzles (like what you mentioned with the Spotify and Amazon clues), and I think the third mystery will be awesome! I would also agree that the in-game voyages should be their own quest type. (I could absolutely get on board with 'H's Voyages' being a part of the Legend of the Veil)

    I have a gut feeling we'll get some sort of resolution on Thursday revolving around the story and 'H's' identity. Maybe it will tie into the Adventure? I like the fact that, on top of the current threats in the Sea of Thieves (Flameheart, the Dark Brethren, the Sovereigns/Grand Maritime Union, and LeChuck), Rare has developed an antihero relentlessly going after the Gold Hoarders by attempting some kind of coup d'etat. I think it makes for a really interesting story arc for the future of the game and the Gold Hoarders as a company.

  • D3ADST1CK
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    I agree with most of this. Some of the puzzles relied on large scale bruteforcing that wouldn't be able to be done by a single person in a reasonable time frame, and using the third party accounts didn't need to exist. Overall it was better than the DeMarco murder.

    I think the lack of plot development or ending was the worst part. We didn't learn anything about H, his motivation or his actual plan over the course of the mystery. I hope they have something planned to fill this in, but an in game finale would have been much better.

  • RealStyli
    Vanguard
    Insider

    @magus104 said in The Hoarder's Hunt Mystery - Feedback:

    Then there's the money that went into this when they clearly need to hire someone with specific skill sets to help deal with some very serious in game issues which have gone ignored for far too long. Seems like they don't have anyone with the knowledge on how to deal with the issues, which isn't an insult in anyway but they seem to be in denial of that fact and aren't willing to outsource a fix for these issues that are ruining the gameplay experience.

    Like any media company, I would imagine they have separate budgets for development and marketing (and other sections), which are probably dictated by Microsoft. It's probably a case of "use it or lose it", rather than being able to transfer it to a different department.

  • LordQulex
    Captain

    Here are my thoughts, tldr;

    • This was a proper mystery done well. The puzzles were the right length to keep the community engaged, and were hard enough to require collaborating without locking them behind social media pressure plates (5000 likes, etc.). The treasure hunt theme was spot on for this game using period accurate ciphers and techniques and the delivery was spectacular (I'm sure we all have out criticisms of Feathered Fortune but the trained parrots were amazing.). Well done!
    • I agree with @HeyltsMeTC—you didn't seem to read the room regarding the puzzle solving skills of your average participant. Your average pirate had little to no capability or experience to contribute meaningfully, as the Discord exemplifies. The brute forcing of the W3W solution was ridiculous. It was basically a proof-of-work exercise like in crypto currency designed to simply take time. I agree with OP, and am looking forward to the Making of the Hoarder's Hunt documentary where the puzzle master shows us how we should have solved some of the logical leaps we didn't understand.
    • DeMarco got a cutscene with daddy dearest and the culprit, and we got... handing in a key and a trinket. Where's my cutscene!? Who is H!? The ending of this was just so disappointing compared to the epic scale of what came before it. No closure.
    • Valuable real world prize was out of reach to community due to cost of winning, and discouraged cooperation and collaboration at times. We are all bitter about what happened during Phase 3. It was disrespectful and displayed poor sportsmanship toward the community that did 80% of the work for the scallywag pirate.
  • Peteloaf777
    Champion
    Insider
    Founder

    @lordqulex

    What happened during phase 3?

    My feedback would be that I’m surprised and disappointed they kept doing things outside of the game. The feedback overwhelmingly from Mystery 1 was that nobody wants to do stuff outside of the game - we want to play the game. The additions of the quests were welcome, and hopefully Mystery 3 will completely move away from anything outside of the game.

    The voyages were fantastic though, great thought provoking riddles, really well implemented.

  • LordQulex
    Captain

    @peteloaf777

    One guy on twitter road the coat tails of the community to solve 80% of the riddle, then boasted on twitter for 12 hours when he completed it and we didn't. That was after days of Rare trickle-feeding us more portraits because we had absolutely zero idea what we needed to do with them. It really put a bad taste in the mouths for many in the community when Rare stated that this was designed to require and promote community cooperation. It was simply bad sportsmanship.

    The voyages were... voyages. Sail here, look there, sail there, look here, dig here, repeat. They were well written and sometimes interesting but by voyage four calling lanterns "stars" over and over again was getting old, and when you're are looking at an island full of lanterns and torches and need to just guess which one the note is talking about is more frustrating than it is exciting. Leaps and bounds better than "retweet this 5000 times for the next clue" for sure, especially when many pirates are old millennials like myself that simply don't participate in twitter or tiktok. I understand that adding assets to the game that are one time, throw away work is not worth the effort, but there are swathes of assets they could have used to make the in-game parts less vanilla.

    This mystery was certainly a large leap in the right direction, but could still use much improvement. The cadence was great, release a stage every week instead of time-gating or social-media-gating it. I don't want to say the real life prize was a mistake, but when much of your community can't win it because they must be 18 to enter, it kills engagement; when much of your community can't afford the taxes and lawyer fees to win the prize (in the US anyway), it kills engagement; when the puzzles are so hard that much of the community's only contribution is bumping clues we've discovered days ago and going into the Discord asking "code?", it kills engagement.

    If I were designing the next mystery, my take-aways are:

    • One week cadence per stage of a multi-stage mystery worked well and was very well received.
    • Stay away from otherwise time-gating or social-media-gating progress.
    • Keep the prizes digital and accessible to the entire community to promote participation and good sportsmanship.
    • Cutscenes are fun and don't end in a (expiative deleted) cliffhanger on who the main character actually is.
    • Make the in-game easter eggs more common to drive up curiosity and interest. (I've only heard of a handful of pirates who actually found a bullion coin in game. I spent hours in meetings just sailing from island to island looking for one.)
  • ZiG ZaG LTU
    Commander
    Insider

    @lordqulex Yeah I do have to agree on the bullion part, I have not played a crazy amount of time during that month, but enough to have a say in this. 0 Bullion coins, which is fine. But for it being so Rare (probably just as many people killed Shrouded ghost as they found the coin) the 10k price is a bit of a joke. I believe yourself as well, have suggested for it to be 100k at least.

    So now Imagine if it's so rare. And that coin is worth 1Million, 5million, 10 million as an example. Who would get hurt from it? The shop keeper in PL hideout as he might run out of DA sails and Hulls? ''The economy'' :D? Alliance server players can make that in a Day.

    I personally did not care much about it as it's only 10k and most of the loot im after is about same price or more.

  • LordQulex
    Captain

    @zig-zag-ltu

    My biggest concern (before finishing Part 3) was that you needed to find a coin to get the trinket. No one really knew how to unlock it at the time. I spent hours every day just sailing island to island trying to find one; I have a bit of an obsession at seeing the chat radial for items in the game. They often put some funny things in there. Thankfully the trinket was unlocked for completing Voyage 3, so no fomo there. Still wish I knew what the radial said...

  • ZiG ZaG LTU
    Commander
    Insider

    @lordqulex The thing being so Rare, I don't see why it should be removed from the game after mystery ends to begin with. It would only incentivize exploring, instead of tunnel vision while sailing.

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