Goonhub
10-31-2019, 06:38 PM
I know I've gone on the record as saying secret chems are my least favorite part of the game, but I do get what they're trying to do. If every mechanic is spelled out, if every aspect of the game is on the wiki somewhere, you don't feel like there's anything left to explore. There is a real power behind there being parts of the game that are not understood, behind mechanics that aren't fully explained, behind a fog that can only be lifted by experience, and it's a major part of SS13's appeal to new players. Even now I still play scientist a lot because frankly there is so much to test and explore with flamethrowers and poisons.
But secret chems are the most annoying kind of riddle. I worked on feather fluid for a full week. In retrospect I can see that I was always so close but even with good guessing I was so far. I never would have gotten it without three separate hints I got from other people. It just seems inane that secret chems expect you to get by on a wiki hint and random chemistry guesswork, as if that's a fun way to explore, while in practice people end up sharing hints to try to make it more bearable.
However, I feel kind of eh about making secret chems spoiler tagged. There is in fact a real danger to making the recipes publicly accessible. Would anyone really try to take on a challenge like strychnine spoilerless if every chem antag could sling it everywhere because they had just looked it up on the wiki? And I admit, my Doctor Birb gimmick would be much less interesting to me if every round there were other people turning themselves into birds. I complained about how elitist secret chems felt when I started out and now, at least with feather fluid, I am one of those elites. It feels rather weird.
I think the secret chem experience could be improved a lot more with, say, secret labs you could explore and find chunks of recipes until you could assemble the whole thing. Maybe even some forgotten pieces of paper on the station somewhere for some of the easy ones or secret ingredients. And a note on the wiki about how you might find these lost pieces in the debris field or meatstation or sold by a trader or whatever. Then you have the secret chems engaging with other parts of the game in ways that aren't simply assembling the materials. I know minor hints may exist for some of the chems but most of them have nothing and currently there is nothing that tells you that hints lie in the trench or wherever.
The unchanged public release secret chems should just be put on the wiki for sure.
But secret chems are the most annoying kind of riddle. I worked on feather fluid for a full week. In retrospect I can see that I was always so close but even with good guessing I was so far. I never would have gotten it without three separate hints I got from other people. It just seems inane that secret chems expect you to get by on a wiki hint and random chemistry guesswork, as if that's a fun way to explore, while in practice people end up sharing hints to try to make it more bearable.
However, I feel kind of eh about making secret chems spoiler tagged. There is in fact a real danger to making the recipes publicly accessible. Would anyone really try to take on a challenge like strychnine spoilerless if every chem antag could sling it everywhere because they had just looked it up on the wiki? And I admit, my Doctor Birb gimmick would be much less interesting to me if every round there were other people turning themselves into birds. I complained about how elitist secret chems felt when I started out and now, at least with feather fluid, I am one of those elites. It feels rather weird.
I think the secret chem experience could be improved a lot more with, say, secret labs you could explore and find chunks of recipes until you could assemble the whole thing. Maybe even some forgotten pieces of paper on the station somewhere for some of the easy ones or secret ingredients. And a note on the wiki about how you might find these lost pieces in the debris field or meatstation or sold by a trader or whatever. Then you have the secret chems engaging with other parts of the game in ways that aren't simply assembling the materials. I know minor hints may exist for some of the chems but most of them have nothing and currently there is nothing that tells you that hints lie in the trench or wherever.
The unchanged public release secret chems should just be put on the wiki for sure.