Goonhub
01-19-2021, 01:31 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-19-2021, 01:32 PM by virvatuli. Edited 1 time in total.)
preface: this only concerns RP because that's where I've parked my butt for the past couple of weeks, and it's my opinion, not other admin's
Pathology is suffering from the same thing that genetics suffers from, but worse. By gameplay design, it promotes isolation from other players. The patho-wizard goes into their ivory tower and studies their pestilent tomes of knowledge to grow more powerful, while interacting with nobody else. They emerge from their germ-ridden bunker to silently release a pathogen, good or bad, upon the population of the station.
For the entire test period, I have seen exactly one good roleplaying interaction between two people studying pathology, and that was them discussing the moral implications of a virus that forced people to stop harming one another. Every other instance has been: a few doctors pile into the lab, they minimally interact with each other while looking at their computers, grunting and farting being the only real noises outside of LOOC talk about how each different functions work.
This leads into my comparison with genetics, all I can think of is how everyone loves to poke fun at them for ignoring everything else going on around them. This is how pathology is, but even more true as there's no gameplay incentive for a pathologist to enlist aid from/interact with the crew prior to their "endgame". If it were to become a permanent staple, I think there really should be something that guides players into crew interactions rather than just locking themselves in a room for the whole shift.
Pathology is suffering from the same thing that genetics suffers from, but worse. By gameplay design, it promotes isolation from other players. The patho-wizard goes into their ivory tower and studies their pestilent tomes of knowledge to grow more powerful, while interacting with nobody else. They emerge from their germ-ridden bunker to silently release a pathogen, good or bad, upon the population of the station.
For the entire test period, I have seen exactly one good roleplaying interaction between two people studying pathology, and that was them discussing the moral implications of a virus that forced people to stop harming one another. Every other instance has been: a few doctors pile into the lab, they minimally interact with each other while looking at their computers, grunting and farting being the only real noises outside of LOOC talk about how each different functions work.
This leads into my comparison with genetics, all I can think of is how everyone loves to poke fun at them for ignoring everything else going on around them. This is how pathology is, but even more true as there's no gameplay incentive for a pathologist to enlist aid from/interact with the crew prior to their "endgame". If it were to become a permanent staple, I think there really should be something that guides players into crew interactions rather than just locking themselves in a room for the whole shift.