Goonhub
05-20-2017, 07:02 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-20-2017, 07:07 AM by Tincan Man. Edited 2 times in total.)
Mostly just going to be repeating what everyone else has said, but from my time it seems there are a few jobs that really could use some work.
Cyborgs
They feel strangely and unnecessarily clunky and unsuited for many jobs, resulting in them being unused. How many cyborgs do you actually see being a Hydroponics Borg, for example? Or a Janitor Cyborg? Usually everyone just picks Medical, Chemistry or Engineering as those are the three modules that are most relevant to the station's problems and also because Chemistry can kill people very easily. Brobots are only ever really used for when people are bored out of their brains and have nothing else to really do, and run around spamming sounds before throwing themselves in the crusher and hoping nobody noticed or asking for a module change. All of the other borgs I almost never see, and there's some very strange decisions with their design that I can't tell if it was done fore 'balance' or because Cyborgs haven't been touched since Spy was in rotation.
For example, the Medical Cyborg. It has a seemingly infinite amount of styptic powder patches and silver sulfadiazine. If you find someone that's injured, or being attacked/was attacked you can just endlessly slap them with the patches until they're okay. Apply some stuff to make sure they won't die of oxygen damage and you're done. But then you have the Chemistry Cyborg, who has to make all of those chems for himself and has the absolute worst interface out of all of the borgs - as you're forced to navigate a drop down menu and scroll around for the chem you want, then the amount you want, one at a time. If the chem you're making has 10 units too many, you can't just flush it out using the device like everyone else can - you have to go over to your mini-chem dispenser thing and remove five units at a time. It's terrible.
Balancing borgs is very strange because of their inability to pick up items and robot-ness. However cloning is another alternative to borging and it's much easier to do, as well as not making the player feel like they can't do anything any more because of how many downsides cyborgs have. It feels more like a punishment than an actual job by now as humans can do so much more than the cyborgs can.
Chef & Barman
Let it be known that I think the Chef is in a very good spot for traitoring. His job doesn't put himself in too much of an important position and his traitor items actively compliment his job. The syndicate sauce lets you poison your food to turn them into deathtraps (which I'll explain why this isn't very helpful later), and the Butcher Knife is down right one of the best traitor items in the entire game - allowing you to instantly stun and bleed out your victims in mere seconds and then turn them into meat you can later use for your foods. Both of these open up opportunities for the Chef to kill people and do traitor stuff while still being a Chef, unlike other traitor items that are either just underpowered/overpriced or generally don't make sense with the job they have to work with.
The issue is that the Chef is overall a gimmick role. If you're not a traitor the only real thing for you to do is make food, and nobody gives a shit about food because half the time the food is always poisoned - or does absolutely nothing of interest. This problem plagues the Barman as well, as he has a million different drinks he can make that are all just the same. The Barman has a chemistry dispenser too, which results in him using that instead of his alcohol dispenser. This means the Barman is just a glorified Chemist making liquid poison instead of custom made alcoholic liquid poison. As a result of all of this, I rarely see the Chef's food get eaten or the Barman's drinks actually get drank when he isn't forcefeeding it to people, or when they aren't hot dogs.
On top of that there are very strange inconsistencies. After seeing how the brainburger gives people prions you'd imagine that all of the other kinds of foods involving brains would also give people prions, right? If you're literally eating mashed brains with a spoon, you'd be dead from kuru in seconds flat. At least you'd think so, because in reality the ONLY brain related food that gives you kuru is the brainburger - so if you were out to poison people with brain food then you're out of luck. So people don't even bother, they'll just shove the brainburger into the reagent extractor and kill people with forcible injections of prions instead of trying to get people to eat their totally-not-poison.
I frequently see Barmen doing nothing but abusing their shotgun and their still before running off and getting killed.
AI
The AI is terrible. His cameras are awful. There's nothing for him to do. He doesn't even get free movement. He isn't even allowed to kill himself. He sucks.
AIs will either be people hoping desperately that a traitor subverts them so they can have fun, complete asshats, or people who whine until they get a cyborg shell and then just run around being a cyborg.
On other servers the AI has plenty of other things to do as he had control over everything he could see - including telecommunications. He was easily able to set people to Arrest, he was able to fuck with robots if he saw them (even setting them on harmful modes if the time called for it, resulting in emagged-ish effects) and he was capable of clearly seeing everyone and could stalk them without having to pop over from camera to camera wondering where they just vanished off to. This made subverting him a dangerous situation for the crew - as he, again, had control over literally everything - usually leading to plasma flooding the station and a sigh of relief from the admins as all of the players collapsed in fire therein letting them adminparty and get drunk instead of having to do their jobs. On Goon you just charge the AI with a reset module or killswitch it the moment it looks rogue, and it is laughably easy to fix or take down unless it has 8 cyborgs.
I'm not really sure of a solution for the AI, besides free camera movement. He feels very restricted and unfun to play as.
Staff Assistant
You might be a big surprised about how I'm complaining about the Staff Assistant's "job" but really it's mostly about what the Staff Assistant does and how little variety he has to carry it out. Staff Assistants typically do three things: rob everything in sight, attack Security, stupid gimmicks. I'd personally expect Staff Assistants to be maintenance hobos, people who run around looting everything they can get their grubby mitts on and making improvised weaponry and tools to get the job done.
Instead they just try and slip you with lube or uppercut you with boxing gloves. The Assistant could really use some more improvised weaponry or devices other than just a Zip Gun. This could even work in favor of the Quartermaster, as you could be making random shit for vendors like improvised weapons and sell them off to the not-syndicate.
Miner
I think Miner would be better off if there were actual places in Space to take the pods so he and others could go on big mining expeditions on weird asteroids or planets that aren't just the Debris Field. Instead, telescience ruined that idea and the Miner has nothing to do except excavate the same area over and over. Sure, he might have things to do other than his main job - but the issue is that his main job isn't fun.
Out of all the jobs, AI and Miner seem like they could use the help the most.
Cyborgs
They feel strangely and unnecessarily clunky and unsuited for many jobs, resulting in them being unused. How many cyborgs do you actually see being a Hydroponics Borg, for example? Or a Janitor Cyborg? Usually everyone just picks Medical, Chemistry or Engineering as those are the three modules that are most relevant to the station's problems and also because Chemistry can kill people very easily. Brobots are only ever really used for when people are bored out of their brains and have nothing else to really do, and run around spamming sounds before throwing themselves in the crusher and hoping nobody noticed or asking for a module change. All of the other borgs I almost never see, and there's some very strange decisions with their design that I can't tell if it was done fore 'balance' or because Cyborgs haven't been touched since Spy was in rotation.
For example, the Medical Cyborg. It has a seemingly infinite amount of styptic powder patches and silver sulfadiazine. If you find someone that's injured, or being attacked/was attacked you can just endlessly slap them with the patches until they're okay. Apply some stuff to make sure they won't die of oxygen damage and you're done. But then you have the Chemistry Cyborg, who has to make all of those chems for himself and has the absolute worst interface out of all of the borgs - as you're forced to navigate a drop down menu and scroll around for the chem you want, then the amount you want, one at a time. If the chem you're making has 10 units too many, you can't just flush it out using the device like everyone else can - you have to go over to your mini-chem dispenser thing and remove five units at a time. It's terrible.
Balancing borgs is very strange because of their inability to pick up items and robot-ness. However cloning is another alternative to borging and it's much easier to do, as well as not making the player feel like they can't do anything any more because of how many downsides cyborgs have. It feels more like a punishment than an actual job by now as humans can do so much more than the cyborgs can.
Chef & Barman
Let it be known that I think the Chef is in a very good spot for traitoring. His job doesn't put himself in too much of an important position and his traitor items actively compliment his job. The syndicate sauce lets you poison your food to turn them into deathtraps (which I'll explain why this isn't very helpful later), and the Butcher Knife is down right one of the best traitor items in the entire game - allowing you to instantly stun and bleed out your victims in mere seconds and then turn them into meat you can later use for your foods. Both of these open up opportunities for the Chef to kill people and do traitor stuff while still being a Chef, unlike other traitor items that are either just underpowered/overpriced or generally don't make sense with the job they have to work with.
The issue is that the Chef is overall a gimmick role. If you're not a traitor the only real thing for you to do is make food, and nobody gives a shit about food because half the time the food is always poisoned - or does absolutely nothing of interest. This problem plagues the Barman as well, as he has a million different drinks he can make that are all just the same. The Barman has a chemistry dispenser too, which results in him using that instead of his alcohol dispenser. This means the Barman is just a glorified Chemist making liquid poison instead of custom made alcoholic liquid poison. As a result of all of this, I rarely see the Chef's food get eaten or the Barman's drinks actually get drank when he isn't forcefeeding it to people, or when they aren't hot dogs.
On top of that there are very strange inconsistencies. After seeing how the brainburger gives people prions you'd imagine that all of the other kinds of foods involving brains would also give people prions, right? If you're literally eating mashed brains with a spoon, you'd be dead from kuru in seconds flat. At least you'd think so, because in reality the ONLY brain related food that gives you kuru is the brainburger - so if you were out to poison people with brain food then you're out of luck. So people don't even bother, they'll just shove the brainburger into the reagent extractor and kill people with forcible injections of prions instead of trying to get people to eat their totally-not-poison.
I frequently see Barmen doing nothing but abusing their shotgun and their still before running off and getting killed.
AI
The AI is terrible. His cameras are awful. There's nothing for him to do. He doesn't even get free movement. He isn't even allowed to kill himself. He sucks.
AIs will either be people hoping desperately that a traitor subverts them so they can have fun, complete asshats, or people who whine until they get a cyborg shell and then just run around being a cyborg.
On other servers the AI has plenty of other things to do as he had control over everything he could see - including telecommunications. He was easily able to set people to Arrest, he was able to fuck with robots if he saw them (even setting them on harmful modes if the time called for it, resulting in emagged-ish effects) and he was capable of clearly seeing everyone and could stalk them without having to pop over from camera to camera wondering where they just vanished off to. This made subverting him a dangerous situation for the crew - as he, again, had control over literally everything - usually leading to plasma flooding the station and a sigh of relief from the admins as all of the players collapsed in fire therein letting them adminparty and get drunk instead of having to do their jobs. On Goon you just charge the AI with a reset module or killswitch it the moment it looks rogue, and it is laughably easy to fix or take down unless it has 8 cyborgs.
I'm not really sure of a solution for the AI, besides free camera movement. He feels very restricted and unfun to play as.
Staff Assistant
You might be a big surprised about how I'm complaining about the Staff Assistant's "job" but really it's mostly about what the Staff Assistant does and how little variety he has to carry it out. Staff Assistants typically do three things: rob everything in sight, attack Security, stupid gimmicks. I'd personally expect Staff Assistants to be maintenance hobos, people who run around looting everything they can get their grubby mitts on and making improvised weaponry and tools to get the job done.
Instead they just try and slip you with lube or uppercut you with boxing gloves. The Assistant could really use some more improvised weaponry or devices other than just a Zip Gun. This could even work in favor of the Quartermaster, as you could be making random shit for vendors like improvised weapons and sell them off to the not-syndicate.
Miner
I think Miner would be better off if there were actual places in Space to take the pods so he and others could go on big mining expeditions on weird asteroids or planets that aren't just the Debris Field. Instead, telescience ruined that idea and the Miner has nothing to do except excavate the same area over and over. Sure, he might have things to do other than his main job - but the issue is that his main job isn't fun.
Out of all the jobs, AI and Miner seem like they could use the help the most.