Psyker feedback

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PengisBungholius
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:41 pm
Byond Username: PengisBungholius

Psyker feedback

Post by PengisBungholius » #665615

Psykers freaking suuuuck.

Right now, at least.
Burden sect chaplain is cool, becoming a psyker is cool, all the fluff stuff is nice.
The gameplay, though, (both pre and post psyker) is awful.
To run through a usual round (with the end goal of becoming a psyker): go to genetics, ask them to find and keep negative (red name instead of orange or green(?)) mutations (or do genetics yourself, bleugh); go to medical, ask them to cut out your tongue, eyes, legs, and an arm (the tongue and eyes are all that really need to be removed, since you loose your eyes and losing your tongue doesn't remove favor gained by taking incomprehensible and mute as negative mutations); go to a cigarette vendor and spend a bunch of money on getting an easy-to-play around addiction; go to the bar and try and get an alcohol addiction, if you can.
If you got nine favor by the end of that, your head explodes, you're a psyker, you can do a ritual to get a revolver that reloads by prayer, and also you're now worse than blind! Congrats!

"Worse than blind? What? Psykers get a whole overlay that shows way more than blindness! How can that be worse than being blind?" <- a strawman statement that only a deranged person would say. Psyker echolocation SUCKS. It's the reason why people hate playing as psyker. You outrun it, if you didn't sacrifice your legs. You don't know what the hell is going on, since you're also blind and the chat messages that you'd normally see (Gary McGreytide punches John Nanotrasen!) are now replaced with vague messages (You hear a sickening sound of flesh hitting flesh!). You can't tell by looking at stuff, since the echolocation does not pulse fast enough for you to see ANYTHING of use. One of the main ways you can tell who's who is color (red = sec, yellow = engi, etc.), but the slow pulses of info you get are all the same bright purple (good luck identifying moths without trying to hover over them with your mouse). And, lastly, you don't get to always see the immediate tiles surrounding you OR yourself! Are you on fire? Probably! Are your arteries slashed? Probably! Are you even wearing clothes? Or pointing to things in your hand? No clue! Is that guy on the ground dying or untying shoes? Who knows!

Now, you might think "well, psykers get some cool spell-like abilities, so being essentially blind is a good tradeoff." That's wrong, since it assumes that you can use any of those abilities (except the wall, the wall is fun, but it's just a wiz spell): the mind affecting thing is weird (and won't work since you're worse than blind and thus can't click on anyone that's running) and really niche (the only guns people run around with without stowing are combat shotguns, since they are huge, but even still they're likely full of rubber shots or improv, things that blindly fired can still hit you); and the self buff is (literally) just double tap root beer (I haven't been able to get to test the homing effect, I assume it homes in when you click directly on them--something I hope I've established is almost impossible if they're moving (the time when you want homing) or useless since they're standing still--but that'd be weird since it'd be like a melee attack with a gun).
Technically, you do get telekinesis, telepathy, and mind reading as well. But, those aren't any different when you're a psyker or a normal geneticist which is really disappointing. Telekinesis isn't too useful, since you're blind and get a gun, and telepathy is really clunky (it opens a menu with everyone around you--including simple mobs with no one to communicate with--and you can only talk to one person at a time, on cooldown).

Psykers can also be pirates. In space. A spaceship that doesn't have backpacks. You have to make them from cut up bedsheets. You also have to figure out where you are or where you're going. It's awful. It really shows how painful the echolocation is, since you can't navigate more than a few steps without stopping to make sure you don't drift off into space. Also, since there can only be one chaplain sect in a given round, most people's first experience as a psyker is in deep space. Fun.

Possible solutions:
-Rework the burden sect's favor gain system. Let it account for some quirks (taking the mute quirk and mute mutation only gives one point, which is annoying since it means you have to do genetics to get that point for something you're already experiencing), and let different burdens count for more or less than others (and please make an actual list of negative mutations, stuff like coughing is horrible to play with but it isn't worth any points).
-Improve already existing psychic stuff when you're a psyker. Burden chaplains get them already, it's disappointing to see "out of range" on mindreading when your mind is literally bursting at the seams.
-Please please please, if nothing else, improve the visuals. I like the purple, but it does NOT help the actual blindness you have and the worse than blindness that you get. There is no reason that a psyker (or anyone with telekinesis) should be whacking things with a white cane or having to feel their faith-powered revolver to see how many bullets they have left. It's horrible, and exacerbates the issues with the echolocation stuff.
-Give pirates like, a pinpointer like nukies have. Point it towards the vault or something, and towards their ship like the nukie pinpointer. Watching them cluelessly struggle to do anything is kinda funny, but it should definitely be fixed in SOME way.
-Also, give the mind-affecting spell any sort of feedback, I have no idea when it actually goes through and only know what it does because a psyker pirate used it on me when they were arrested.

Uhhh there's probably more but I lost my train of thought.

TL;DR: psyker vision should be better than being blind, and it isn't. Pls fix, thx :)
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