Weird Case Logic/Behavior

[hanako]

This topic is for the discussion of specific cases, things that are not bugs (as far as you know) but didn't make sense to you.

Can't figure out how on earth to resolve a particular case? Talk about what you've done and what you thought should have happened.

Sure that a specific action should be available / should have worked? Talk about that too.

I make no promises about changing things, but I'm willing to add options when they make sense.

[skydragonwings]

Not sure if this is a bug or weird logic, but in The Secret Society, the society turned out to be holding a protest on a certain day. On the day of the protest, I suspended the leader of the group. The first two girls who were there when I started the case were not punished. I didn't hear anything about the protest happening or not happening, and the case just closed a week later when the girl I suspended returned to school. I would have thought that either the protest should have happened without the leader and I should have failed, or it shouldn't have happened and I should have succeeded that day. Was there some clue I missed that it was being rescheduled or something, or did you have another explanation in mind?

This was in custom minion mode, if that makes a difference.

[hanako]

A lot of cases work this way if the chief instigator is suspended - the case can't close properly until the instigator returns (since sometimes you've been tricked into suspending an innocent person, and the case will FAIL when the suspended person returns to school).

While the protest leader is suspended, you don't know if she's going to lead a protest anyway when she gets back to school. The council can't know if it's been cancelled or just postponed until she's back.

[Xuenay]

- One of those "estranged best friends" cases had a situation where, after a bit of investigation, it turned out that best friend A had a new friend and best friend B was jealous. I forget the exact details, but I recall having confused when the new friend C said that she didn't mean to steal A from B, all three could still be friends, but when I tried talking to B again she complained that A was spending all her time with C.

It felt like either C was lying and she actually was intentionally stealing A from B and I could expose this somehow, or alternatively B was just being oversensitive and there was some way to force her to confront the fact that she could still very well be friends with A, if she just so chose. But I never figured out how I was supposed to do either.

- Also, on my first playthrough I was a little confused in a case where someone's dress (or whatever) had gone missing, and I found the dress in another girl's room. At the time I was confused when this wasn't enough to solve the case ("I have proof that the other girl stole it, right?").

Since this was one of my first cases, I didn't realize that the "detention" option actually also involved squeezing a confession out of her and that you needed one to close the case. Instead I thought that the detention/suspend/expel options were there because I was supposed to choose a suitable punishment for her. So I figured that theft would probably require a harsher punishment than just a detention, while expelling her entirely would be a little too harsh, so I went for "suspend". And was confused as to why the case *still* remained open - "I found the guilty party *and* decided on her punishment, what else is there that I could do?".

Later on I figured out that you were supposed to extract a confession by giving her detention, but this wasn't intuitive on the first time.

[hanako]

Suspending a thief will have an effect, but since she's out of play for a week the case can't progress until she gets back. (Which is why the card is prominently labeled with when the character is expected to return, to try and give an indication of when something will happen.)

On the best friends:

It felt like either C was lying and she actually was intentionally stealing A from B and I could expose this somehow, or alternatively B was just being oversensitive and there was some way to force her to confront the fact that she could still very well be friends with A, if she just so chose. But I never figured out how I was supposed to do either.

If you feel that the new friend is lying, harassing her will move the case along, and I think most people currently solve it this way. It's not the only answer though.

Figuring out what's going on with the 'oversensitive' girl is possibly a little too tricky. Currently the only way to open up the option to punish her is to get evidence from her roommate. Possibly she should also leak some clues on a successful persuade check... I'll think about that.

[Zaeteo]

On the cellphone case, sometimes after I've harassed everyone who still had it into deleting the message, I'm still left with the students who claimed they already deleted it. And no amount of questioning/harassing/even stalking either resolves the case or gives me any new leads.

[hanako]

There's at least one version where if you harass people without having actually seen the message first, you lose the clues you need to solve the case (which is hinted in the harassment text, "Now there's no evidence!")

Would you prefer it if the girls who deleted the message were removed from the case as well, even though that still won't actually resolve it? (Because yeah, it is odd that they stick around.)

[Zaeteo]

I did expect having only the innocent girls left would lead to an eventual "The rash of texts seems to have died down/been contained" outcome.

Or could there be a failsafe where if we've harassed all our evidence away, the remaining innocent girls offer some dialogue that leads us back to the victim/perpetrator? The most recent case I've had like this was the nude photo version; there might be dialogue like, "I deleted it, but Alice is going to be a really good model someday." If the other versions (bras/sexual histories) can be borked too, the innocent girls might say something like, "I deleted it, but I don't think I can ever look at Jenny in the same way again."

Or I could just be more careful about scaring away all my witnesses.

Edit: Or, of course, if the case could just be failed immediately instead of leaving some lingering doubt....