Make pathology a little more accessible

[vampirate]

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has dabbled in game design (I was a builder/coder for a few muds in time's past) there are often things added that are what you'd call "groundwork". Think of it like this.

Say they were to make a job like "gadgeteer" who was only going to make gadgets, or even maybe just add a gadgeteer room near mechanics. You might six months before find that the room is there, you can make an few things, and build some complex assemblies, but really it's just incomplete and a bit complex. That doesn't mean coding is done on it, in early phases a lot if just watching and waiting to see what people like, dislike, and do. Not saying the post lacks merit, but it seems like people are treating pathology as a finished project when it's only recently, to my knowledge since we're talking since I've been back, been reimplimented. I'd wager there's a design direction being worked on for it and we're playing it in it's alpha stage.

[quiltyquilty]

The only issue with Pathology that I have is its heavy reliance on RNG in a lot of places, and usually whenever you fail a roll of the dice, every single bit of work you've done is completely erased. If there was no RNG, or if maybe you were only set back one step I wouldn't be as upset.

[Midaychi]

It does really seem like whoever designed new pathology, took a look at old pathology and how easy it was to fsuck over the station, and purposely designed a whole bunch of random inconsistent difficulty layers.

[Stryxic]

It's a shame. All of that code practically going to waste. Regardless, it still has huge potential.

I don't know enough about pathology to criticize it. Even for a person who loves the nerdy side of SS13 like packets and dwaine scripting, the process just looked monotonous. I'll speak about the things I can from the point of view I have. These are some of the problems I see contributing to people not using pathogens.

The Wiki: It's a tad nebulous. No, not in the sense that you can't understand it. It's just that it's basically an infodump if you exclude the last bit which is apparently trying to teach you how to gib everything. The guide should probably be upfront and dumbed down as much as possible. Maybe with a goal that isn't killing everything. The more people using pathology the better, so it needs to look inviting. It being used by idiots is better than it being used by nobody. Now let me be smote by Jesus.

Ah, I wrote that bit. Any suggestions you can give so I can make it more user friendly?

[Stryxic]

Also on topic, Pathology is awesome as it is. The only issue is A) The speed of which it takes to combine symptoms, and B) the RNG at round start with the kinds of pathogens.

Personally, if there were a way to buy a list of symptoms which you didn't work, you could tie it in with the Research budget. Hell, maybe you could buy a list of symptoms and what they do for a lot more. Then you still have to work to create the virus and all that lot, but you don't have to spend 80+ minutes working for 1 tier 5 symptom.

[Amuys]

I was able to figure out Pathology after getting some help on IRC and playing a few rounds.
It's not necessarily hard when you figure it out, just incredibly tedious and time consuming if you want something more effective than a disease that makes you sneeze and occasionally recite Shakespeare.

[Amuys]

The only crime is that the whole process of making it is horrifically boring and by the time you get a successful tier 3 or even tier 2 disease, half the station is vacuumed with all the explosions that happened.

[Noah Buttes]

Also on topic, Pathology is awesome as it is. The only issue is A) The speed of which it takes to combine symptoms, and B) the RNG at round start with the kinds of pathogens.

Personally, if there were a way to buy a list of symptoms which you didn't work, you could tie it in with the Research budget. Hell, maybe you could buy a list of symptoms and what they do for a lot more. Then you still have to work to create the virus and all that lot, but you don't have to spend 80+ minutes working for 1 tier 5 symptom.

I hope you mean a LOT more.

[Grek]

OK, I've been playing with Pathology a bit more, and honestly, I have to say that while I can understand it, I cannot bring myself to give enough of a fuck about viruses to want to play hunt for the symptom.

Currently, what you have to to is make like 5 different cultures of each starting pathogen (so you can try out each ordering of their symptoms until you get a green one) and fiddle with the machine for 30 minutes hoping to get them in the correct order. That's boring and I'm not willing to do it when, at best, the station will get like 10 minutes of benefit/suffering as a result before the shuttle is called.