New Community Mission

1. I'd say it was just right for a mission of Medium Level difficulty.
   From the looks of things, it both incentivised people to co-operate, but at the same time, was also solvable on your own, which, in my opinion, is perhaps one of the better - if superficial - gauges for the difficulty of a mission, with both options being viable placing a given mission as "Medium" - so aye, effective difficulty was close to intended difficulty, in my opinion.
   
   
2. Very.
   Felt great getting past points where one might be stuck, and I didn't feel (too) stupid for being stuck, as it was always either a matter of simply not finding the right answer despite being in the right place (i.e. no fault in logic), or as a result of simply not shifting conceptual frames (i.e. not having followed ones brain-farts).
   It also was another great practice, for me at least, in being more prudent about attempting to break out of the conceptual frames I instinctively apply.
   The addition of the "bonus mystery" was great, because my main "concern" with missions thus far, has been that solving them can at times lack a bit in the climax area - "finding" that bonus mystery was a good substitute for a narrative climax.
   
   
3. I'm not sure. Overall, all mysteries were good, in my opinion. For the sake of feedback, however:
   
   Off the bat, I think #3 was the one I disliked the most, because everything was figuratively staring me in the face, but with no (readily) discernible feature to pin-point it. It wasn't so much a matter of "missing that vital piece", but more of a "I can't see the vital piece, so here are some guesses" - ultimately I did find the answer, but it felt somewhat more frustrating because finding the answer wasn't really a question of making a leap of faith or logical connection, and more a question of trying to squint hard enough and type what you thought you saw.
   
   As for the one I liked the most, I'd have to say the bonus mystery. It required both a leap of faith, breaking out of ones initial conceptual frame (for me), and making a logical connection. In other words, it more or less contained all aspects of mystery solving, whereas I felt the actual mysteries (1-4) only contained one or two such aspects.
   
   But, as mentioned, I liked all of them, and the above is if I absolutely had to give some examples.

 

1- Was the mission too difficult / too easy or ok for a 'Medium level' mission?

On a scale from 1-7, one being the easiest and 7 being the hardest, I would rate this one a solid 4, breaking down each part individually:

• Part 1: 4.5
• Part 2: 3
• Part 3: 5.5
• Part 4: 3.5

I would call this a medium mission, though perhaps without part 3 it would be on the easier side.

2- Did you had fun doing the puzzle?

Yes! I did. I must say that I really stumbled upon the answer to part 1 by accident, a lucky click got me the answer. I definitely liked the 'bonus question' a lot, since it brought the whole mission together.

3- What type of puzzle did you like / dislike?

I think my favorite one was part 4. I imagine some people here might not identify the object in one of the pictures immediately, but it wasn't incredibly necessary. I enjoyed the mismatch between 3 character and 4 character answers. Connecting item to location to answer felt rewarding to me especially in this one.

My least favorite was part 3. Most of the time I spent working on this mission was spent on part 3, where we quickly identified the general location (loved the phonetic alphabet, by the way) but got heavily stuck on the specific address itself. Our only useful piece of information in that photo was "Les C____" as far as my poor eyesight could read, and the name on the truck which looks like "Carmichael." I searched far and wide for hotels and casinos that it might be but came up short. After the fact, I realized that searching for the name of this location on google maps brings up a completely different area, so I passed by the correct answer a couple of times without knowing... Mildly frustrating that the two avenues in this case were to find a small piece of information that was blurry to my eyes, as Santiak did, or know the location in real life, like Vismal.

That got a lot rantier than I wanted. Sorry, it's late here haha

 

I have been pretty obvious myself about my dislike for Code 3. With help from Santiak and Daed (and some sleep, good call, Daed) I was finally able to track the answer down. The rest of the codes were pretty easy with some google-fu and I galloped along on those. That may be what added to my ire over code 3. When you hit a wall going 60 kmph, it can get frustrating. I particularly liked Code 1: I was familiar with the content being raised both Roman Catholic and having an art history degree, that one was a snap.
All this being said, if you had to do it over again, I wouldn't change it, even code 3. The reason being that some of this stuff will be familiar, and some will be massively unfamiliar. Despite my frustration, that's the learning curve and an essential part of what makes this game different.
But next time I will sleep before I try and figure out blurry photos.