Virology Healing Nerfs

[Hathkar]

I guess I'll bring this up here as well.

This PR https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/32432 has basically completely removed most of the non-antag symptoms in virology. In short, no more passive healing.

I don't like these changes, feel free to mock me wanting viro to be useful and how I recently joined, making my opinions invalid.

[onleavedontatme]

inb4 people telling me how being able to ignore environmental hazards and almost never need to interact with another player for healing again after 5 minutes into the round is actually excellent design and passive no brainer bonuses are actually very interesting for our game about surviving disaster

Seriously please consider very carefully the design implications of solo health regen and near environmental immunity in a game about working with other (potentially hostile) players to survive a variety of threats before you leave comments about the balance of 1v1 fights with tasers.

Is what I posted previously about the subject of nerfing viro

The "viro being useful" isn't more important than the rest of the game design

[ShadowDimentio]

I said it once I'll say it again, the hysterics over the viro healing symptoms were just that, hysterics. The healing was nice for sure, but it's small fucking fry compared to all the other shit other departments get for working them. Genetics, cargo, mining, botany, science...

The passive heal that viros got is small fry compared to all that shit, to say it was "breaking game balance" is a lie.

[Hathkar]

inb4 people telling me how being able to ignore environmental hazards and almost never need to interact with another player for healing again after 5 minutes into the round is actually excellent design and passive no brainer bonuses are actually very interesting for our game about surviving disaster

Seriously please consider very carefully the design implications of solo health regen and near environmental immunity in a game about working with other (potentially hostile) players to survive a variety of threats before you leave comments about the balance of 1v1 fights with tasers.

Is what I posted previously about the subject of nerfing viro

The "viro being useful" isn't more important than the rest of the game design

So why can't you just change it so viro doesn't heal nearly as much? Or require nutrition hunger in order to heal?
Gutting viro removes a layer of paranoia from the game. "Do I take this healing virus, knowing it could either heal me, or murder me?" to "Why should I bother taking this virus if it will not benefit me at all, or could kill me."

As for "surviving disaster", other deparments can still make a bunch of things to survive disasters. Botany can make very potent healing plants, genetics has hulks, xrays, cold resist, xenobio has all of their things, robotics has mechs.

If it's such a gamebreaker and flaw of design, why not do one of my suggestions and just cut down the healing rate, only have it work if you haven't taken damage in X seconds, or require you to eat food or something. Or make virology require some sort of minigame in order to get the better symptoms so the best things aren't unlocked at 5 minutes if the miners decide to bring up minerals early.

[Wyzack]

Having to hard kill anyone you fight or else they just pop back after x amount of time us bullshit, everyone being able to replicate the effect by stealing some blood is insane

[calzilla1]

Having to hard kill anyone you fight or else they just pop back after x amount of time us bullshit, everyone being able to replicate the effect by stealing some blood is insane

Cough cough lings cough

[ShadowDimentio]

Having to hard kill anyone you fight or else they just pop back after x amount of time us bullshit, everyone being able to replicate the effect by stealing some blood is insane

Not really? It's the difference of like maybe 5 more clicks to kill someone VS crit them.

[kevinz000]

I said it once I'll say it again, the hysterics over the viro healing symptoms were just that, hysterics. The healing was nice for sure, but it's small fucking fry compared to all the other shit other departments get for working them. Genetics, cargo, mining, botany, science...

The passive heal that viros got is small fry compared to all that shit, to say it was "breaking game balance" is a lie.

lol shadowdimentio knowing what he's talking about per usual.

[EagleWiz]

Viro healing was probably too good, but this goes way too far. Also I've got some serious concerns about the direction of recent changes. Huge Sci nerf followed with a huge Viro nerf (but only for non-antag viro)? If you want to make all the jobs useless for non-antags there are better ways to do it. Whats next, cargo being unable to order guns/implants unless emaged?

[onleavedontatme]

Viro was actually the thing making non antag jobs useless because the five med doctors/the cmo/the two chemists/anyone who picked medborg was out of a job within 5-10 minutes when the 12/12 healing virus rendered them obsolete

[EagleWiz]

Viro was actually the thing making non antag jobs useless because the five med doctors/the cmo/the two chemists/anyone who picked medborg was out of a job within 5-10 minutes when the 12/12 healing virus rendered them obsolete

Medical kits still exist. If we actually cared about medical doctor being a job with actual things to do we would be using baymed or something.

[onleavedontatme]

Medical kits will run out at some point

Sleepers and cryo are also bad lazy healing but at least it requires putting yourself at the mercy of another player and traveling to a certain location

[ShadowDimentio]

Viro was actually the thing making non antag jobs useless because the five med doctors/the cmo/the two chemists/anyone who picked medborg was out of a job within 5-10 minutes when the 12/12 healing virus rendered them obsolete

You're lucky to see 3 people playing the whole of the medical department even on highpop. There's still plenty of injuries that doctors have to attend to (delimbing, blood loss, surgery stuff, corpse recovery/cloning) that the virus can't fix.

But even without the virus healing everyone, it's not like med is a lively department even at the best of times. In some theoretical fully staffed fully functional medbay, chem will just make some patches and every injured person will just slap one on themselves and full heal harder than the virus ever could. Then not only the whole rest of the department is out of a job but the cloning half of genetics is too, since chem can ressurect people with the power of magic SCIENCE!

[Hathkar]

Viro was actually the thing making non antag jobs useless because the five med doctors/the cmo/the two chemists/anyone who picked medborg was out of a job within 5-10 minutes when the 12/12 healing virus rendered them obsolete

You keep citing the 12/12 healing. Why can't you just tone it down? What is so difficult about that? Like how many times do I have to ask this same question?

[onleavedontatme]

Because we've had healing viruses for something like five years now and the solution every time has been "healing is too high, just lower the values" followed by "its not worth doing viro, raise the values" over and over and over again. Why can't we try something new?

And even if we had it at low values I don't believe zero upkeep, free, unlimited solo healing at any speed is a good default power for crewmembers to have. If we wanted the crew to have regenerating health at (near) roundstart at any speed we'd just make them spawn with it.

[Armhulen]

it already exists with pod people, guess who's next.

[Incomptinence]

The pod people weaknesses to plant killer and somatoray are super deadly if you know to use them.

Also for station staff to become them they basically need to be at someone else's mercy in the tray.

Pod people make no part of any sane powergamer's strategy. It's nice to be one it's not worth dying over though.

[ShadowDimentio]

And even if we had it at low values I don't believe zero upkeep, free, unlimited solo healing at any speed is a good default power for crewmembers to have. If we wanted the crew to have regenerating health at (near) roundstart at any speed we'd just make them spawn with it.

"""Default"""

Viro, like every other job, isn't done anywhere close to every round. And for all your wailing, the difference between healing yourself with any one of the many methods available at roundstart and healing yourself with a viro virus is actually that someone actually had to do their job at some point. All the other methods, not so much.

Also, don't even try to pretend that healing was even slightly hard in anything but the most hellish conditions.

[Lazengann]

Healing was fun tho

[onleavedontatme]

Healing was fun tho

Overpowered things are fun to have in PVP games that is true. Not gonna lie and say I didn't think it was funny when I was able to get hit by three maxcaps (in the heavy damage range) and wander around missing an arm in the wrecked station with no suit dragging people to safety.

the difference between healing yourself with any one of the many methods available at roundstart and healing yourself with a viro virus is actually that someone actually had to do their job at some point

The difference is all the others either consume resources or require a second player and are both one time events rather than a forever passive buff. I know you know the difference, so I'm not sure what you get out of arguing like this.

[captain sawrge]

inb4 people telling me how being able to ignore environmental hazards and almost never need to interact with another player for healing again after 5 minutes into the round is actually excellent design and passive no brainer bonuses are actually very interesting for our game about surviving disaster

Seriously please consider very carefully the design implications of solo health regen and near environmental immunity in a game about working with other (potentially hostile) players to survive a variety of threats before you leave comments about the balance of 1v1 fights with tasers.

Is what I posted previously about the subject of nerfing viro

The "viro being useful" isn't more important than the rest of the game design

So why can't you just change it so viro doesn't heal nearly as much? Or require nutrition hunger in order to heal?
Gutting viro removes a layer of paranoia from the game. "Do I take this healing virus, knowing it could either heal me, or murder me?" to "Why should I bother taking this virus if it will not benefit me at all, or could kill me."

As for "surviving disaster", other deparments can still make a bunch of things to survive disasters. Botany can make very potent healing plants, genetics has hulks, xrays, cold resist, xenobio has all of their things, robotics has mechs.

If it's such a gamebreaker and flaw of design, why not do one of my suggestions and just cut down the healing rate, only have it work if you haven't taken damage in X seconds, or require you to eat food or something. Or make virology require some sort of minigame in order to get the better symptoms so the best things aren't unlocked at 5 minutes if the miners decide to bring up minerals early.

It doesnt offer paranoia because if you take the virus and get negative symptoms you just ahelp and the admins tell you the viro is a traitor and you organize a posse or else otherwise he gets banned and you get healed

[captain sawrge]

If anything the limitation/scarcity of healing resources creates an interesting conflict where in a state of emergency a battle for resources ensues amongst the crew which is also why the sleepers are also fucking retarded and should be torn out in favor of chemistry and roundstart healing items being the main and primary ways of healing

[captain sawrge]

Viro was actually the thing making non antag jobs useless because the five med doctors/the cmo/the two chemists/anyone who picked medborg was out of a job within 5-10 minutes when the 12/12 healing virus rendered them obsolete

You're lucky to see 3 people playing the whole of the medical department even on highpop. There's still plenty of injuries that doctors have to attend to (delimbing, blood loss, surgery stuff, corpse recovery/cloning) that the virus can't fix.

But even without the virus healing everyone, it's not like med is a lively department even at the best of times. In some theoretical fully staffed fully functional medbay, chem will just make some patches and every injured person will just slap one on themselves and full heal harder than the virus ever could. Then not only the whole rest of the department is out of a job but the cloning half of genetics is too, since chem can ressurect people with the power of magic SCIENCE!

Hmm maybe the reason no one plays a job is because that job serves no functional purpose as soon as the crew gets a passive buff that completely invalidates it

[Armhulen]

The pod people weaknesses to plant killer and somatoray are super deadly if you know to use them.

Also for station staff to become them they basically need to be at someone else's mercy in the tray.

Pod people make no part of any sane powergamer's strategy. It's nice to be one it's not worth dying over though.

Plant killer is pretty weak at 3 toxin, and somatorays are completely unused because of how weak they are. The only people who make them are botanists and I really doubt they're going to want to make the gun if they have the free healing race that dies to the gun.

[onleavedontatme]

Plant people are not something that can be infinitely and instantly reproduced with a needle, and giving up your human status is a significant drawback

[ShadowDimentio]

Hmm maybe the reason no one plays a job is because that job serves no functional purpose as soon as the crew gets a passive buff that completely invalidates it

There's still plenty of injuries that doctors have to attend to (delimbing, blood loss, surgery stuff, corpse recovery/cloning) that the virus can't fix.

Ah yes the buff that doesn't appear anywhere near every round and doesn't throw them out of a job, yes THAT'S why nobody plays doctor, not because it's the most boring job on the station, no, because the viro can release a virus that heals bumps and bruises without them.

Well now that nonantag viro got destroyed I can't wait to see a fully staffed medbay every round.

[Dr_bee]

If anything the limitation/scarcity of healing resources creates an interesting conflict where in a state of emergency a battle for resources ensues amongst the crew which is also why the sleepers are also fucking retarded and should be torn out in favor of chemistry and roundstart healing items being the main and primary ways of healing

I would be for this if chemicals were slightly easier to mass produce. You can go through a significant amount of healing chems in a round.

Make sleepers stop bleeding and oxy damage and give chemistry large vats to mix chemicals in and we have a functional chemical to healing economy.

I like the new viro changes otherwise.

[Qbopper]

If anything the limitation/scarcity of healing resources creates an interesting conflict where in a state of emergency a battle for resources ensues amongst the crew which is also why the sleepers are also fucking retarded and should be torn out in favor of chemistry and roundstart healing items being the main and primary ways of healing

you'd need to find a way to get people to not fuck off to make lube and drugs and doom the doctors to being useless again though

[ShadowDimentio]

If anything the limitation/scarcity of healing resources creates an interesting conflict where in a state of emergency a battle for resources ensues amongst the crew which is also why the sleepers are also fucking retarded and should be torn out in favor of chemistry and roundstart healing items being the main and primary ways of healing

you'd need to find a way to get people to not fuck off to make lube and drugs and doom the doctors to being useless again though

Literally good luck

[captain sawrge]

If anything the limitation/scarcity of healing resources creates an interesting conflict where in a state of emergency a battle for resources ensues amongst the crew which is also why the sleepers are also fucking retarded and should be torn out in favor of chemistry and roundstart healing items being the main and primary ways of healing

you'd need to find a way to get people to not fuck off to make lube and drugs and doom the doctors to being useless again though

c'est la vie

if everything always went right we wouldnt have a game

[Qbopper]

If anything the limitation/scarcity of healing resources creates an interesting conflict where in a state of emergency a battle for resources ensues amongst the crew which is also why the sleepers are also fucking retarded and should be torn out in favor of chemistry and roundstart healing items being the main and primary ways of healing

you'd need to find a way to get people to not fuck off to make lube and drugs and doom the doctors to being useless again though

c'est la vie

if everything always went right we wouldnt have a game

I mean yeah but I can't think of any roles that would be outright useless without another person's help

chef is the closest i can think of and even they have the public garden

[BeeSting12]

They even spawn with botany access on lowpop

[Saegrimr]

Tried viro, found the virus that heals brute when you heat up, and mixed it with Fevers at a high stage to make it heat you up even more.

Injected a monkey with it, stage 5, beat him to half health, maybe 1 brute every 6 minutes.
Went into maint, grabbed a space heater and cranked it up to 60c and stuck it on top of him. 1 brute every minute.
Should have tried lighting him on fire for shits and giggles but the shuttle got called because nuke ops. I waved at one from the viro space window.

[ShadowDimentio]

Tried viro, found the virus that heals brute when you heat up, and mixed it with Fevers at a high stage to make it heat you up even more.

Injected a monkey with it, stage 5, beat him to half health, maybe 1 brute every 6 minutes.
Went into maint, grabbed a space heater and cranked it up to 60c and stuck it on top of him. 1 brute every minute.
Should have tried lighting him on fire for shits and giggles but the shuttle got called because nuke ops. I waved at one from the viro space window.

Golly gee what a useful virus

[XDTM]

It's gotta be damage-level hot to heal fast

[Cobby]

Viro would be immensely more enjoyable if diseases were more prominent in the game and Viro focused more on treating than just adding other avenues to heal the already piss easy system

Would be cool if An area that isn’t clean can eventually start rolling for a random disease kinda like miasma in Df but not as punishing. Finally a use for that sterilization chem if it’s still in

[BeeSting12]

We should add infections and make the virologist the guy who makes vaccines/antibiotics to heal infections and viruses. Going off of what Cobby said, viruses should be more prevalent but less annoying overall. Viro is focused on healing those viruses and studying them. By studying viruses that come up, they earn randomly generated symptoms which can be used to build their own virus. Virus crates would obviously accelerate this due to the massive amount of exotic viruses they get.

Best case scenario, besides a few well known viruses, each virus would be it's own "strain" with a randomly generated set of symptoms and name when shown on the health analyzer. Getting these symptoms alone in a culture body for just those symptoms, studying monkey effects of the virus for random chance of more symptoms, and studying effects on a human gets the best effect. Could even tie this into techwebs, the more advanced symptoms viro discovers the more points science gets.

[Qbopper]

Viro would be immensely more enjoyable if diseases were more prominent in the game and Viro focused more on treating than just adding other avenues to heal the already piss easy system

yeah it's pretty lame how chemists are the ones curing people, it makes more sense for the viro to do it

[XDTM]

I like these ideas, i think my next rework will make viro into a catch-the-wild-virus-and-use-it-for-good kinda thing. Maybe lavaland creatures would give more exotic diseases, xenobio could pitch in, and so on

[Cobby]

I will improve viro if it doesn't negatively affect GBP

[Xango]

All you had to do was removing the P.A.N.D.E.M.I.C. or whatever it is called that just shows you the symptoms you acquired so you actually had to test it on the monkeya in the little rooms and observe the effects of the virus and note the symptoms.

[Selea]

I think,that there must be more symptoms with transformations. Possibly with horrible drawbacks.

[Incomptinence]

As long as viruses can still kill people viro is doing it's actual job.
You lynch viro for a reason you know.


Would have preferred coded downsides to regen effects that require more complex intervention like tumours or something but making healing viruses impotent is alright for now.