Posted by: sarge945
« on: 09. May 2021, 01:53:35 »I've been thinking more about how the game is designed, and why QBRs feel so...awkward to so many people.
I guess when it comes down to the actual gameplay of both QBRs and Medbeds, they are *mostly* fine in their initial design. The issue is how spammable/abusable they are and how the save system effectively renders them meaningless.
Having an actual resource cost to dying is pretty based, same with having a resource cost associated with healing.
The main issues I see are:
1. There's sort of no point paying the nanite cost to use a QBR, since you can freely save anywhere you want and can just load the game on death. 15 nanites is far too cheap for a resurrection (a single med hypo can cost 20 something nanites after hacking a replicator), but increasing it to, say, 100 nanites (a far more fair and less spammable/abusable cost) then makes it worthless because saves are free. The game is contradicting it's own design. In their current design QBRs are basically just a punishment for forgetting to save recently, which is horrible.
2. Medbeds are so insanely cheap and plentiful, and can be spammed near infinitely. The player can run around to a medbed quicker than the enemies can respawn, which can make for a very repetitive (and in my opinion, extremely boring) style of play where the aim is to save hypos by constantly running back to the medbed. Again, free saving sort of invalidates all this anyway because why bother spending 10 nanites for a heal when you can just keep reloading until you get the kill perfectly.
In fact, many mechanics are broken by free saves. Failed a security computer hack? Just reload. Spending too many nanites on a modification and you run out? Just reload.
Unfortunately, short of changing how the save system works itself, or artificially enforcing certain rules on yourself when playing, many aspects of the game are impacted negatively. QBRs feeling cheap and overpowered plays directly into this.
I once had an idea to keep QBRs and Medbeds without making them abusable (and giving some backtracking mitigation), which was to have them break (and need to be repaired) every 3 uses (or every 1 use for a QBR), with the repair level requirement and difficulty going up by 1 every time they break, until eventually they can't be repaired anymore. While I feel like this would help to mitigate some of the "just go down the elevator and heal" shenanigans, it still doesn't fix the fundamental, underlying problem - the time machine in your pocket that lets you delete your mistakes for free.
Not that there's anything that can be done about this. As has been mentioned, saving is a core fundamental engine feature.
But if I had a recommendation for people wanting to get the absolute most out of the game, you should enforce these rules upon yourself:
1. Save the first time you reach every bulkhead. Unbind your quicksave key and do not save anymore unless you're needing to quit for whatever reason. If you save and quit, delete your save as soon as you resume.
2. Use the QBR Breaker mod as QBRs are far too cheap.
3. Either don't use medbeds at all, or use SS2-RSD so that they all require activation keys.
4. (Possibly) increase (double?) the respawn rate, which will make backtracking to safe healing sources less rewarding. This does nothing to stop the giant item hoarding commonly seen in medsci though, where every item in the game is stored there (why did they bother giving us an inventory?)
By playing this way, you will suddenly find that:
- Nanite costs for things like security terminals, hacking difficulty etc actually matter. You will no longer end the game with a huge overabundance of nanites
- Red nodes are still generally not worth taking, but if you're running low on nanites, they might be a risk worth taking. With free saving they are literally a worthless choice as they either succeed, or they fail and you reload.
- You might actually run out of med hypos (and, god forbid, have to actually buy some!), as your particularly bad fights will stick with you and will have to be healed off, rather than being simply deleted when you go "that was terrible" and reload.
I'd suggest everyone try it. It's a completely different (and in my opinion, far better) gameplay experience. I might try an ironman run one of these days too, although I can see how it could be frustrating going RIGHT BACK TO THE START because a psi reaver kills you in body of the many. I feel like my approach above is forgiving enough to not be frustrating, but still punishes you for your mistakes. With this playstyles, QBRs aren't that bad (although the nanite cost is still WAY too forgiving)
I guess when it comes down to the actual gameplay of both QBRs and Medbeds, they are *mostly* fine in their initial design. The issue is how spammable/abusable they are and how the save system effectively renders them meaningless.
Having an actual resource cost to dying is pretty based, same with having a resource cost associated with healing.
The main issues I see are:
1. There's sort of no point paying the nanite cost to use a QBR, since you can freely save anywhere you want and can just load the game on death. 15 nanites is far too cheap for a resurrection (a single med hypo can cost 20 something nanites after hacking a replicator), but increasing it to, say, 100 nanites (a far more fair and less spammable/abusable cost) then makes it worthless because saves are free. The game is contradicting it's own design. In their current design QBRs are basically just a punishment for forgetting to save recently, which is horrible.
2. Medbeds are so insanely cheap and plentiful, and can be spammed near infinitely. The player can run around to a medbed quicker than the enemies can respawn, which can make for a very repetitive (and in my opinion, extremely boring) style of play where the aim is to save hypos by constantly running back to the medbed. Again, free saving sort of invalidates all this anyway because why bother spending 10 nanites for a heal when you can just keep reloading until you get the kill perfectly.
In fact, many mechanics are broken by free saves. Failed a security computer hack? Just reload. Spending too many nanites on a modification and you run out? Just reload.
Unfortunately, short of changing how the save system works itself, or artificially enforcing certain rules on yourself when playing, many aspects of the game are impacted negatively. QBRs feeling cheap and overpowered plays directly into this.
I once had an idea to keep QBRs and Medbeds without making them abusable (and giving some backtracking mitigation), which was to have them break (and need to be repaired) every 3 uses (or every 1 use for a QBR), with the repair level requirement and difficulty going up by 1 every time they break, until eventually they can't be repaired anymore. While I feel like this would help to mitigate some of the "just go down the elevator and heal" shenanigans, it still doesn't fix the fundamental, underlying problem - the time machine in your pocket that lets you delete your mistakes for free.
Not that there's anything that can be done about this. As has been mentioned, saving is a core fundamental engine feature.
But if I had a recommendation for people wanting to get the absolute most out of the game, you should enforce these rules upon yourself:
1. Save the first time you reach every bulkhead. Unbind your quicksave key and do not save anymore unless you're needing to quit for whatever reason. If you save and quit, delete your save as soon as you resume.
2. Use the QBR Breaker mod as QBRs are far too cheap.
3. Either don't use medbeds at all, or use SS2-RSD so that they all require activation keys.
4. (Possibly) increase (double?) the respawn rate, which will make backtracking to safe healing sources less rewarding. This does nothing to stop the giant item hoarding commonly seen in medsci though, where every item in the game is stored there (why did they bother giving us an inventory?)
By playing this way, you will suddenly find that:
- Nanite costs for things like security terminals, hacking difficulty etc actually matter. You will no longer end the game with a huge overabundance of nanites
- Red nodes are still generally not worth taking, but if you're running low on nanites, they might be a risk worth taking. With free saving they are literally a worthless choice as they either succeed, or they fail and you reload.
- You might actually run out of med hypos (and, god forbid, have to actually buy some!), as your particularly bad fights will stick with you and will have to be healed off, rather than being simply deleted when you go "that was terrible" and reload.
I'd suggest everyone try it. It's a completely different (and in my opinion, far better) gameplay experience. I might try an ironman run one of these days too, although I can see how it could be frustrating going RIGHT BACK TO THE START because a psi reaver kills you in body of the many. I feel like my approach above is forgiving enough to not be frustrating, but still punishes you for your mistakes. With this playstyles, QBRs aren't that bad (although the nanite cost is still WAY too forgiving)
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