Providing a hints for surgery on the next step

[TheSpoonyCroy]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):Basically the title...

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): Lets be real, having to to look at a wiki, is a horrid way to learn a game, it just really disconnects you from the experience. USCM are hiring full fledged doctors, they aren't going to hire a couple interns to handle their dying marines, so they would need to know each step since these guys have been training for a min of 8 or so years now (college + medschool + internship + residency)

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): This can really be as simple or complex as the developers/higher ups want this to be since in the simplest forms its just a flavor text change but if you want this to be even more complex you can basically add in checks that change up how the flavor text is for example, you patch up someone lungs and the new flavor text to something like "You finished mending -insert patient's name here- lungs, but you feel there is still something in their lodged between what was his/her's ribcage, might want to remove that" or in a more extreme example "you open -insert patient's name here- ribcage, you notice their heart is engorged*, lungs are shrived up*, liver scarring*, bleeding profusely internally*, and something partially hidden deeper in their chest might want to give it look*. Seriously how is this person not dead yet?" If you noticed I marked each thing that is wrong with the person with a * just to show how screwed this person is. I can easily see this benefiting all players from the lowly aspiring surgeons to even very competent doctors since even the good doctors can forget something. I would class myself as somewhat competent and I honestly forget a few things in the person like shrapnel or bleeders when I pull out a chestburster (since I skip the initial bleeder phase). Also if this gets added could there possibly some flavor text due to too much damage causing a rebreak since at the current moment a new doctors get highly damaged patients and when they are all done and sorted, they fix the chest/whatever is broken and once fixed it just resnaps, there is quite bit of vagueness to this and some of these players get the wrong idea of what is causing it, I hear some complain its "bone setter rng" or "a glitch" or whatever and this vagueness can screw someone (the doctor and the patient)

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): like said this can be as simple or complex as you want this to be, but the barebones version of this is just changing up the flavor text after preforming a step


Edit: I do want to say I do agree I hate hand holding but this is just the first step in actually giving medical complexity, so we can finally stop relying on a wiki to provide all the answers

[Jroinc1]

-1. READ THE WIKI. USE THE SCANNERS if in medbay, or be a GOOD surgeon, if you go planetside.

It's really not that hard.

[TheSpoonyCroy]

-snip-

Again this isn't meant to get rid of scanners or the wiki but to have the information in the game.... I knew people were going get defensive over this but this is mostly to help new players out since doctor is something tough to learn but is very shallow. Hell I would love more complexity in medical but fact is people still struggle with the current system. Also "Read the wiki" This whole suggestion is so you don't have to go to the wiki since you shouldn't be forced to take your focus off the game just to head to the wiki to look it up, this info should be in the game.

This suggestion does no harm at all, really at worst it means just a little portion of blue text after a step is done, if you don't need it, don't use it, hell I don't even read the current flavor text since I only look for the blue of the action to start the next step. If you are going to say this is going to drop the skill floor, yeah it would but having a lower skill floor for such a crucial role is a good idea since fact is noone likes long surgeries (not the surgeon, not the patient, not the other 10 guys in the medical lobby waiting on your ass). I want to let you on a little secret _{the skill ceiling for medical is pretty fucking low and all so shallow}, the "higher" forms of medical is just cutting surgery times by mereseconds and making the best chems combinations (and there aren't alot of useful chemicals, just enough count on probably 2 hands, which are all very simple to make)

[Arkatos]

I think adding some in-game book describing every surgery + some tips about them (which would basically serve as wiki in-game, to be honest) could be quite useful for new and forgetful doctors. I personally dont have problem with using wiki for surgeries, but hey, just my 2 cents.

[Biolock]

Hell no ,-1, the SS13 world use to be full of mysteries and horrible mistakes. This new age SS13 is spoon feeding the game to players as it is, along with admin who are willing to literally answer any technical questions players have (very much against that as I think it destroys the complexity of the world when we turn it into a step by step process right away; instead of having players figure it out). We perhaps could put guides into the game that can be found in books somewhere in the medbay, but hell no the game should not just tell players what to do. Learn the surgeries the way everyone else in SS13 has, and once you really UNDERSTAND them, you'll be able to solve much larger surgeries that take actual knowledge of the spessman's bodily workings to fix.

[TheSpoonyCroy]

"players figure it out

If that is the mentality why is there a wiki in the first place. Yeah I miss the days of old where you had to figure shit out and you were given 100 pg manuals but this is the bloody wiki/datamining era of gaming. Where secrets don't exist and fact is medical is already a step by step process. I love medical but calling this "spoon feeding" is like calling everyone who uses the wiki a bloody metagamer (even though doctors would have 8+ of training in the field....) Also my request isn't saying "Use the hemostat dummy", its about giving vague hints, they still fuck up horribly but acting like surgery has some mystical and hidden secret when there isn't, is so offbase and when you don't use the wiki you will be yelled at via LOOC "To use the damn wiki". This mentality is really what turns away new players. There is complete difference to spoon feeding and actually providing useful information. I call having the alien embryo sign via medical hud, spoon feeding since the marines wouldn't have such an icon for an unknown species/parasites in general. Surgery currently has the lowest ceiling of the medical department because it all step based and simple true false statements. Once you are decent at surgery, that is about it, you can shave a few seconds off of your time but you are locked behind the rng time of each operation, chemistry on the other hand, you can waste hours upon hours just trying to formulate the best chemical concoctions, spending hours trying to make them as efficiently as possible all done not in game but via spreadsheet (which I have done...). So there are other places you can spend your time, which can actually provide a benefit to the department

[Snypehunter007]

Going to say go of with the wiki Croy. -1

[Polkjm]

+1, I play doctor from time to time and it's a hassle to open the wiki when you forget one of the steps (Although I rarely forget anymore), and I don't see why it would be spoonfeeding since it's legit just information that is available elsewhere.

Plus, it's much more immersive than tabbing out.
Other plus: It would take seconds to implement. Just add a few words to existing messages like "you clamp the bleeders, so you're able to retract the skin safely."

A problem I could see is that there isn't always only one thing to do, like sometimes in the ribcage you need to fix lungs and sometimes you need to fix the bones. This could be dealt with by making the message: "You retract the ribcage out of the way. The ribs and organs are now exposed."

[tempchar]

I don't have an opinion on this but when I saw this quote:

We perhaps could put guides into the game that can be found in books somewhere in the medbay

I couldn't stop laughing at the thought of the last thing a marine seeing before going under anesthetics is his surgeon nervously opening up a book titled "How 2 do brain surgery 4 dummies"

[Jroinc1]

Snip"

I guess it's time to write that guide...

[Mitii]

"You finished mending -insert patient's name here- lungs, but you feel there is still something in their lodged between what was his/her's ribcage, might want to remove that"

Now I'm in 100% agreement with this idea and absolutely love it. For a medium RP server, nothing is more immersion breaking than having to pull up the wiki on your Firefox/Safari/Chrome browser and take you away from the game play. Not to mention it's distracting in that anything can happen in-game during those moments you're searching for something on the wiki, and next thing you know you hear gunshots while you're looking at the wiki and look at that- you're dead.

Not to mention that if you're character is performing surgery, then your character probably has a really good idea about what they're doing, so dropping hints as you go along the surgical process makes sense.

I also noticed that someone said something about making books of guides people have made on the forums and placing them in-game. That's a nice idea as well, as long as the books are approved by the staff.

I don't see why there is disagreement towards this suggestion, it's simple and isn't asking for much.

[Snypehunter007]

Now I'm in 100% agreement with this idea and absolutely love it. For a medium RP server, nothing is more immersion breaking than having to pull up the wiki on your Firefox/Safari/Chrome browser and take you away from the game play. Not to mention it's distracting in that anything can happen in-game during those moments you're searching for something on the wiki, and next thing you know you hear gunshots while you're looking at the wiki and look at that- you're dead.

Not to mention that if you're character is performing surgery, then your character probably has a really good idea about what they're doing, so dropping hints as you go along the surgical process makes sense.

I also noticed that someone said something about making books of guides people have made on the forums and placing them in-game. That's a nice idea as well, as long as the books are approved by the staff.

I don't see why there is disagreement towards this suggestion, it's simple and isn't asking for much.

Not to sound like an asshole but what your saying is: Its more RP oriented to have a book that doctors, who went to medical school and already learned these things, would use to then look at because they have just forgotten everything they went to school for?

That instead of looking at a guide OOC in the wiki for when they forget something, or are new, they break the RP by going "Yeah, I need to look at a book to do this surgery on you. Goodnight." as you start to panic after hearing them say that?

[Polkjm]

The whole having books in the medbay is complete bullshit.. But the little IC hints the doctor gets are fine.

[Mitii]

Not to sound like an asshole

Nah, you're good.

what your saying is: Its more RP oriented to have a book that doctors, who went to medical school and already learned these things, would use to then look at because they have just forgotten everything they went to school for?

That instead of looking at a guide OOC in the wiki for when they forget something, or are new, they break the RP by going "Yeah, I need to look at a book to do this surgery on you. Goodnight." as you start to panic after hearing them say that?

To address your post, all I said was that I don't mind the implementation of books featuring guides people have made in-game. Do you have to use them? No, but just having them in-game would be pretty cool in my opinion.

Not to be disrespectful, but you seemed to have missed the point of my post, which was me just simply agreeing with the original suggestion of providing hints and why it's a good idea.

[Lucius Jones]

-1 Just use the damn wiki, or if you REALLY don't want too use a book.

[Snypehunter007]

Nah, you're good.



To address your post, all I said was that I don't mind the implementation of books featuring guides people have made in-game. Do you have to use them? No, but just having them in-game would be pretty cool in my opinion.

Not to be disrespectful, but you seemed to have missed the point of my post, which was me just simply agreeing with the original suggestion of providing hints and why it's a good idea.

I was speaking of the part where you said "For a Medium RP server nothing is more immersion breaking than opening up a wiki in your Web browser"

[Mitii]

I was speaking of the part where you said "For a Medium RP server nothing is more immersion breaking than opening up a wiki in your Web browser"

just simply agreeing with the original suggestion of providing hints and why it's a good idea.

Lets be real, having to to look at a wiki, is a horrid way to learn a game, it just really disconnects you from the experience.

Not to mention that if you're character is performing surgery, then your character probably has a really good idea about what they're doing, so dropping hints as you go along the surgical process makes sense.

USCM are hiring full fledged doctors, they aren't going to hire a couple interns to handle their dying marines, so they would need to know each step since these guys have been training for a min of 8 or so years now (college + medschool + internship + residency)

I'm not sure what exactly it is you're trying to get at since I already addressed what you said. If I'm missing something then please feel free to point me in the right direction. I went ahead and added quotes where I agreed with TheSpoonyCroy's ideas to hopefully clarify.

[Snypehunter007]

Now I'm in 100% agreement with this idea and absolutely love it. For a medium RP server, nothing is more immersion breaking than having to pull up the wiki on your Firefox/Safari/Chrome browser and take you away from the game play.

Not to mention that if you're character is performing surgery, then your character probably has a really good idea about what they're doing, so dropping hints as you go along the surgical process easier.

I am saying that, as a patient who is being treated by a qualified medical professional, you wouldn't find it more immersion breaking to see a doctor who, once again, has already trained for this pick up a book about surgery to perform on you?

[RoswellRay]

Ss13 colonial hugbox! -1
If everything is spelled out for noobs I lose my job.

[Mitii]

I am saying that, as a patient who is being treated by a qualified medical professional, you wouldn't find it more immersion breaking to see a doctor who, once again, has already trained for this pick up a book about surgery to perform on you?

Not to be disrespectful, but you seemed to have missed the point of my post, which was me just simply agreeing with the original suggestion of providing hints and why it's a good idea.

At this point I'm just going to start quoting my responses since we're basically looping back to something that was already addressed previously.

Let me reiterate this for you. The point of this thread was to make a suggestion yes? That suggestion was basically the name of the thread's title "Providing a hints for surgery on the next step"

Now regarding the books, they were not what this thread was created to suggest. That was simply what someone else said that I decided to agree with. They are not the topic of this thread.

I also noticed that someone said something about making books of guides people have made on the forums and placing them in-game. That's a nice idea as well, as long as the books are approved by the staff.

To address your post, all I said was that I don't mind the implementation of books featuring guides people have made in-game. Do you have to use them? No, but just having them in-game would be pretty cool in my opinion.

So if we could kindly move away from the books and actually focus on TheSpoonyCroy's suggestion that would be appreciated.

[Snypehunter007]

Asking this to be locked.

[forwardslashN]

A doctor who had training in surgery and has done it before shouldn't need a wiki to know which step to use next. The problem is that character knowledge is not player knowledge, and that applies to everything in the game. We have some ideas on how to improve that disparity in the future, and maybe this suggestion will see the light of day then. But for now, denied.