Problems with Revival:
► Show Spoiler
1. It Trivializes Death.
This is one of the most common arguments against revives, that being it makes death pretty insignificant. Depending on the situation, actually dying is just an inconvenience at worst. Drink yourself to death in the bar? No worries! Medical will fix you up in no time. Myself and many others are of the opinion that this feels kind of weird. Death should matter, and being able to cha-cha slide across the mortal coil as many times as you want can get a bit stupid. If you get in a fight with someone and actually kill them it should be meaningful, not just a field trip to medical. At it's worse death can feel like it lowers the tension of a high stakes situation. Trying to keep a friend stable while waiting for medical assistance can be pretty exciting and difficult, depending on the injuries. However if that person dies, you no longer need to do anything. Medical can take as much time as they need, since they already need to be revived, and at that point why rush?
2. The Paramedic is Kinda Useless.
The purpose of the paramed is to respond to health emergencies outside of med quickly, but as is, that's entirely unnecessary. If a body is found, you can pretty much just drag them back to medical at your leisure. Sure organ decay is a thing, but either the body is fresh enough where you can take your time, or the organs are already so decayed it really doesn't matter how long you take anymore. The same goes for anyone who is found in critical condition and on the verge of death. If an engineer gets blasted by an emitter and goes in to hard crit, there's no need for paramedics. The engineers can just epi and drag their friend to med. If they die on the way it's no big deal, since they can just be defibbed back up. As is, everyone on the station has the tools to deal with the dead or dying, therefor nobody needs a paramedic with a stretcher bed and 30u of formaldehyde. This is why parameds often just help out in medical, and why there are lots of rounds where you just won't have any parameds, because it is just worse doctor at the moment.
3. Assassinations are Weird and Boring.
As controversial as round removal is, there are situations where it is called for. Unfortunately, if you ever need to take someone out, this basically necessitates either kidnapping, stealing the body, or hard round removal. Attempts have been made to fix this, with features such as prog traitors calling card, or heretic sacrifices doing whatever the fuck heretic sacrifices do now. These attempts (again my opinion) feel pretty awkward and mechanical. Where before assassinations could be attempted however you wanted, it now has to be in a way that leaves a calling card. However the same issue still existed for the old version. Any assassination attempt also required following up with the body, but instead of planting a calling card you had to hide/destroy it. All of these attempts fail to address the primary reason murder objectives necessitate strategies like this, which is because of the ease of revives. Any kill that doesn't involve stealing the body is liable to be nullified by medical reviving the target. Overall it discourages unoptimal gameplay by making anything that isn't sleepy pen into shuttlegib way riskier, as all of your hard work can be undone by anyone with a defib.
4. Midround Roles and Ghost Spawners are Discouraged.
It isn't uncommon for off station ghost spawners in a round to go completely unused, even if there are plenty of ghosts online. Same goes for on station ghost roles like positronic brains, minebots, pAI's etc, or even some antag stuff like cult shades or certain midrounds. It would be disingenuous to say that the actual roles don't have anything to do with this. I for one wouldn't be caught dead accepting a slime ghost spawn, mainly because it's boring as fuck. However, I think a lot of players opt out of ghost spawns due to the possibility of being revived. Unless the spawn is something really rare or fun, like a blob revenant or space ninja, most players would prefer being a normal crew member. Therefore if there is any chance of revival, however slim, some players will wait for 30+ minutes as their corpse decays in maintenance somewhere. Instead of re-entering the round or even just closing the game and doing something else, players will just float around as a ghost, occasionally jumping back into their body to check if its been found yet.
5. Organ Decay Sucks.
I don't think it's really a hot take to say that organ decay is unfun. Nothing feels worse than having a pile of corpses with nonfunctioning organs that you somehow need to get walking again. Printing a full set of mechanical organs is very expensive, and unless you've been on the organ farming grindset, you wont have enough squishy organs to meet demands. It's also time consuming as fuck to revive someone with a chest cavity full of sludge. Not to mention brain traumas which require even more surgery to get rid off. Organ decay also is a big reason why operating tables almost never get used, since decay is such a pain to deal with. With the way organ decay works now, it feels intentionally designed to discourage revives after long periods of time, and push doctors towards treating the more recently deceased or injured. However, by having these corpses be revivable at all, people are going to try, and it results in no fun for everyone involved.
This is one of the most common arguments against revives, that being it makes death pretty insignificant. Depending on the situation, actually dying is just an inconvenience at worst. Drink yourself to death in the bar? No worries! Medical will fix you up in no time. Myself and many others are of the opinion that this feels kind of weird. Death should matter, and being able to cha-cha slide across the mortal coil as many times as you want can get a bit stupid. If you get in a fight with someone and actually kill them it should be meaningful, not just a field trip to medical. At it's worse death can feel like it lowers the tension of a high stakes situation. Trying to keep a friend stable while waiting for medical assistance can be pretty exciting and difficult, depending on the injuries. However if that person dies, you no longer need to do anything. Medical can take as much time as they need, since they already need to be revived, and at that point why rush?
2. The Paramedic is Kinda Useless.
The purpose of the paramed is to respond to health emergencies outside of med quickly, but as is, that's entirely unnecessary. If a body is found, you can pretty much just drag them back to medical at your leisure. Sure organ decay is a thing, but either the body is fresh enough where you can take your time, or the organs are already so decayed it really doesn't matter how long you take anymore. The same goes for anyone who is found in critical condition and on the verge of death. If an engineer gets blasted by an emitter and goes in to hard crit, there's no need for paramedics. The engineers can just epi and drag their friend to med. If they die on the way it's no big deal, since they can just be defibbed back up. As is, everyone on the station has the tools to deal with the dead or dying, therefor nobody needs a paramedic with a stretcher bed and 30u of formaldehyde. This is why parameds often just help out in medical, and why there are lots of rounds where you just won't have any parameds, because it is just worse doctor at the moment.
3. Assassinations are Weird and Boring.
As controversial as round removal is, there are situations where it is called for. Unfortunately, if you ever need to take someone out, this basically necessitates either kidnapping, stealing the body, or hard round removal. Attempts have been made to fix this, with features such as prog traitors calling card, or heretic sacrifices doing whatever the fuck heretic sacrifices do now. These attempts (again my opinion) feel pretty awkward and mechanical. Where before assassinations could be attempted however you wanted, it now has to be in a way that leaves a calling card. However the same issue still existed for the old version. Any assassination attempt also required following up with the body, but instead of planting a calling card you had to hide/destroy it. All of these attempts fail to address the primary reason murder objectives necessitate strategies like this, which is because of the ease of revives. Any kill that doesn't involve stealing the body is liable to be nullified by medical reviving the target. Overall it discourages unoptimal gameplay by making anything that isn't sleepy pen into shuttlegib way riskier, as all of your hard work can be undone by anyone with a defib.
4. Midround Roles and Ghost Spawners are Discouraged.
It isn't uncommon for off station ghost spawners in a round to go completely unused, even if there are plenty of ghosts online. Same goes for on station ghost roles like positronic brains, minebots, pAI's etc, or even some antag stuff like cult shades or certain midrounds. It would be disingenuous to say that the actual roles don't have anything to do with this. I for one wouldn't be caught dead accepting a slime ghost spawn, mainly because it's boring as fuck. However, I think a lot of players opt out of ghost spawns due to the possibility of being revived. Unless the spawn is something really rare or fun, like a blob revenant or space ninja, most players would prefer being a normal crew member. Therefore if there is any chance of revival, however slim, some players will wait for 30+ minutes as their corpse decays in maintenance somewhere. Instead of re-entering the round or even just closing the game and doing something else, players will just float around as a ghost, occasionally jumping back into their body to check if its been found yet.
5. Organ Decay Sucks.
I don't think it's really a hot take to say that organ decay is unfun. Nothing feels worse than having a pile of corpses with nonfunctioning organs that you somehow need to get walking again. Printing a full set of mechanical organs is very expensive, and unless you've been on the organ farming grindset, you wont have enough squishy organs to meet demands. It's also time consuming as fuck to revive someone with a chest cavity full of sludge. Not to mention brain traumas which require even more surgery to get rid off. Organ decay also is a big reason why operating tables almost never get used, since decay is such a pain to deal with. With the way organ decay works now, it feels intentionally designed to discourage revives after long periods of time, and push doctors towards treating the more recently deceased or injured. However, by having these corpses be revivable at all, people are going to try, and it results in no fun for everyone involved.
► Show Spoiler
So with all the listed problems with the standard defib revive listed above, what's the solution? I personally believe that a five minute timer on death would fix many of the issues with the current system. Ideally the system would work as follows:
- On death, a timer starts. While not directly visible, this timer can be observed by examining the corpse, giving different messages depending on how much time has elapsed, letting responders know how quickly to act.
- This timer would be connected to the brain. If you were to take a brain out of a dead body the timer still counts down until the brain is either revived in a body or put in an MMI.
- The timer would reset on revival, and there would be no penalties for repeated revives. This is mainly to not punish medical players for accidently letting a corpse die on them mid treatment, but also to allow greater flexibility with mechanics surrounding brain removal and death.
- If the timer reaches zero, total brain death occurs and the patient is lost. After this point both traditional revives and MMIs will not work.
- Revival may still be possible through methods like pod cloning. For balance purposes other methods may be added, but these would have to either be difficult to achieve and limited in quantity, therefor it is only used on important crew members like heads of staff, or those with valuable information.
- Stasis beds would not pause the timer, and if the timer reaches zero brain death will still occur, even in a stasis bed.
- To be honest I'm not entirely sure about this point. I think it has interesting gameplay implications if it stays unpaused, but I'd be open to hear arguments otherwise.
- Formaldehyde may be used to extend, but not permanently delay the timer. While the brain is in a body with formaldehyde in its system, the timer will tick down at half speed, giving a maximum of 10 minutes dead.
► Show Spoiler
1. Death has Impact.
With the timer system, someone dying is no longer a "deal with it whenever" situation, but instead a "oh shit we have to do something fast" situation. To save someone who has died requires immediate action. The moment they deathrattle the clock is ticking, and you have five minutes to get their ass to medical and get them breathing. This would lead to all sorts of interesting gameplay situations. For example if there is no time to get to medical the revival surgery may be attempted using ghetto tools and a stun baton. There's no reason to use that with the current revival system, but with a time limit those split second decisions may be life or death.
2. Paramedics are Actually Useful!
You've got a corpse that needs to get to medical fast? Does all hope of revival seem lost? Do not despair humble crewmember! A knight in shining navy blue is on their way with a syringe full of formaldehyde and a stretcher bed for maximum speed! With the timer system, every second sent transporting the body is important. If it takes 90 seconds to get to medical, that leaves only 210 seconds to revive the patient. This is the area in which the paramedic would shine. By immediately applying formaldehyde on the scene they can extend the timer, and then get the corpse to medial significantly faster using the stretcher. This could give medical up to 9 whole minutes of revival time. Paramedic would go from a niche job completely overshadowed by the medical doctor, to an essential member of the department with significant and noticeable impact
3. Keeping Patients Alive becomes a Priority.
It's uncommon to see a doctor healing brute/burn damage on a dead patient in a stasis bed. I don't know if it bothers anyone else, but it always feels weird to be fixing cuts and bruises on a patient in cardiac arrest. This change will add a new layer of gameplay to treating patients, as you actively need to keep them alive while treating them. If a burned to death husk roles into medical, the number one priority is to treat as much burn damage as quickly as possible, and normal tend wounds surgery might not be fast enough. Suddenly surgeries that deal damage, such as brain surgery, are a risk, since the patient dying mid operation would complicate things. This is all reliant on the stasis bed not pausing the revive timer, which is why I think the pros outweigh the cons in that area. Surgeries have always had a chance to fail, but before it was just a waste of time. Now a surgery failing can be a huge deal. For example, coronary bypass surgery has a 90% chance to fail when attempted, and you can't defib with a nonfunctioning heart. With this system you can permanently lose a patient after botching an open heart surgery. That's some medical drama shit, and would be rad to see more on the station.
4. Funny Murder Methods are Viable.
Before, any assassination that didn't hide or destroy the body was vulnerable to being undone. Now with the new system anything that keeps the target down for five minutes is just as effective. Poison, bombs, hostile mobs, or whatever you can think of can work, as long as it keeps the target down for at least five minutes. This opens up way more options for interesting stories to be created. This obviously won't magically end the time honored tradition of desword and space, but it would encourage players to take more risks with their antag role, without having to worry about being outed by a revived target.
5. Ghostroles and Midrounds get Play .
With five minute timers, players will no longer feel obligated to stick around as a ghost, since the tiny chance they would have been revived is now gone. Players will either disconnect and go do something else for 30 minutes (the good ending), observe the round and hang out in dead chat, or actually take ghost roles. You might actually start to see roles like minebots or cult shades get picked, and ghost spawns that aren't ash lizard will see more consistent play. Babysitting a corpse hoping beyond hope your body is picked from the pile of 15 other players rotting in medical to be revived isn't fun, and by making revives impossible after a period of time, players will feel free to try other things while they wait for the next round.
6. No More Corpse Piles!
The bane of any medical doctor. A pile of corpses, all with severe organ decay, and waiting to be revived. Doctors often have to chose between treating the corpse pile, which is always a losing battle, or just treating newer patients. Usually newer patients take priority over old ones, and they just end up forgotten. So ultimately we would be better off making corpses unrevivable after some time. Finally doctors can just put max organ decay bodies in the morgue without feeling guilty, and actually treat patients who can be saved.
7. Alternative Revival Options.
With the defib requiring patients to be fixed up a bit before reviving, sometimes there may not be enough time to save them. This would mean that more doctors might opt to put unsaveble brains in MMIs and hand them off to robotics for borgification. Obviously being revived is preferable, but the time constraint will push players towards potentially suboptimal options, resulting in more varied gameplay, and typically more fun. Pod cloning would also become more popular, since now it actually has a use beyond corpses with no brains. Other limited or difficult to acquire revival methods could be added to provide more options for reviving important crewmembers. For example a one time brain revival shot, similar to the lazurus, that can be used to bring a dead brain back to life. Medical could even start with one or two of these in the CMO's office that are to be used at the CMO's discretion, with more being unlocked through tech or purchased through cargo. Overall by making traditional revives more difficult, this opens the door to weird and wacky alternatives in the future that may actually see play.
With the timer system, someone dying is no longer a "deal with it whenever" situation, but instead a "oh shit we have to do something fast" situation. To save someone who has died requires immediate action. The moment they deathrattle the clock is ticking, and you have five minutes to get their ass to medical and get them breathing. This would lead to all sorts of interesting gameplay situations. For example if there is no time to get to medical the revival surgery may be attempted using ghetto tools and a stun baton. There's no reason to use that with the current revival system, but with a time limit those split second decisions may be life or death.
2. Paramedics are Actually Useful!
You've got a corpse that needs to get to medical fast? Does all hope of revival seem lost? Do not despair humble crewmember! A knight in shining navy blue is on their way with a syringe full of formaldehyde and a stretcher bed for maximum speed! With the timer system, every second sent transporting the body is important. If it takes 90 seconds to get to medical, that leaves only 210 seconds to revive the patient. This is the area in which the paramedic would shine. By immediately applying formaldehyde on the scene they can extend the timer, and then get the corpse to medial significantly faster using the stretcher. This could give medical up to 9 whole minutes of revival time. Paramedic would go from a niche job completely overshadowed by the medical doctor, to an essential member of the department with significant and noticeable impact
3. Keeping Patients Alive becomes a Priority.
It's uncommon to see a doctor healing brute/burn damage on a dead patient in a stasis bed. I don't know if it bothers anyone else, but it always feels weird to be fixing cuts and bruises on a patient in cardiac arrest. This change will add a new layer of gameplay to treating patients, as you actively need to keep them alive while treating them. If a burned to death husk roles into medical, the number one priority is to treat as much burn damage as quickly as possible, and normal tend wounds surgery might not be fast enough. Suddenly surgeries that deal damage, such as brain surgery, are a risk, since the patient dying mid operation would complicate things. This is all reliant on the stasis bed not pausing the revive timer, which is why I think the pros outweigh the cons in that area. Surgeries have always had a chance to fail, but before it was just a waste of time. Now a surgery failing can be a huge deal. For example, coronary bypass surgery has a 90% chance to fail when attempted, and you can't defib with a nonfunctioning heart. With this system you can permanently lose a patient after botching an open heart surgery. That's some medical drama shit, and would be rad to see more on the station.
4. Funny Murder Methods are Viable.
Before, any assassination that didn't hide or destroy the body was vulnerable to being undone. Now with the new system anything that keeps the target down for five minutes is just as effective. Poison, bombs, hostile mobs, or whatever you can think of can work, as long as it keeps the target down for at least five minutes. This opens up way more options for interesting stories to be created. This obviously won't magically end the time honored tradition of desword and space, but it would encourage players to take more risks with their antag role, without having to worry about being outed by a revived target.
5. Ghostroles and Midrounds get Play .
With five minute timers, players will no longer feel obligated to stick around as a ghost, since the tiny chance they would have been revived is now gone. Players will either disconnect and go do something else for 30 minutes (the good ending), observe the round and hang out in dead chat, or actually take ghost roles. You might actually start to see roles like minebots or cult shades get picked, and ghost spawns that aren't ash lizard will see more consistent play. Babysitting a corpse hoping beyond hope your body is picked from the pile of 15 other players rotting in medical to be revived isn't fun, and by making revives impossible after a period of time, players will feel free to try other things while they wait for the next round.
6. No More Corpse Piles!
The bane of any medical doctor. A pile of corpses, all with severe organ decay, and waiting to be revived. Doctors often have to chose between treating the corpse pile, which is always a losing battle, or just treating newer patients. Usually newer patients take priority over old ones, and they just end up forgotten. So ultimately we would be better off making corpses unrevivable after some time. Finally doctors can just put max organ decay bodies in the morgue without feeling guilty, and actually treat patients who can be saved.
7. Alternative Revival Options.
With the defib requiring patients to be fixed up a bit before reviving, sometimes there may not be enough time to save them. This would mean that more doctors might opt to put unsaveble brains in MMIs and hand them off to robotics for borgification. Obviously being revived is preferable, but the time constraint will push players towards potentially suboptimal options, resulting in more varied gameplay, and typically more fun. Pod cloning would also become more popular, since now it actually has a use beyond corpses with no brains. Other limited or difficult to acquire revival methods could be added to provide more options for reviving important crewmembers. For example a one time brain revival shot, similar to the lazurus, that can be used to bring a dead brain back to life. Medical could even start with one or two of these in the CMO's office that are to be used at the CMO's discretion, with more being unlocked through tech or purchased through cargo. Overall by making traditional revives more difficult, this opens the door to weird and wacky alternatives in the future that may actually see play.
► Show Spoiler
Obviously this system would have its issue. Some of the most obvious are as follows.
1. Round Removal is Easier.
The big one. Probably the first thing some people thought when seeing the title. This would make round removal easier, and therefore mass grief and murderbone even more destructive. This obviously isn't great, however, i believe that it would not affect these rounds too much. When something really fucking bad happens and medical has twenty-something corpses lying around, do those typically get revived? In my experience no. Instead, usually the shuttle is called and everyone moves on to the next round. Regardless, with the new change just hiding a body will be the equivalent of round removal, which brings all sorts of consequences.
2. Admin Shit.
This is the most concerning point in my opinion. With a revival timer, death becomes far more risky, and round removal far more common. With that naturally comes ahelps and potential rule violations. If two players get in a fight, one dies, and the other isn't brought to med in time, is that round removal? People are going to be both accidently and purposefully round removing players by just denying treatment. Rulings around this will likely be messy for a while, but I think with time and precedent things would eventually level out.
3. Player Backlash.
People would be pissed if something like this got merged, no way around it. It would be another cloning situation as people declare it the death of /tg/. However, I honestly believe this, or something similar, would be an ultimately positive change. As mad as people were, now most agree that removing cloning was the right call. I think a decision like this would eventually reach a similar consensus also when has player backlash stopped coders before?
There would 100% be more problems with a system like this. But in my opinion these are the most immediate.
1. Round Removal is Easier.
The big one. Probably the first thing some people thought when seeing the title. This would make round removal easier, and therefore mass grief and murderbone even more destructive. This obviously isn't great, however, i believe that it would not affect these rounds too much. When something really fucking bad happens and medical has twenty-something corpses lying around, do those typically get revived? In my experience no. Instead, usually the shuttle is called and everyone moves on to the next round. Regardless, with the new change just hiding a body will be the equivalent of round removal, which brings all sorts of consequences.
2. Admin Shit.
This is the most concerning point in my opinion. With a revival timer, death becomes far more risky, and round removal far more common. With that naturally comes ahelps and potential rule violations. If two players get in a fight, one dies, and the other isn't brought to med in time, is that round removal? People are going to be both accidently and purposefully round removing players by just denying treatment. Rulings around this will likely be messy for a while, but I think with time and precedent things would eventually level out.
3. Player Backlash.
People would be pissed if something like this got merged, no way around it. It would be another cloning situation as people declare it the death of /tg/. However, I honestly believe this, or something similar, would be an ultimately positive change. As mad as people were, now most agree that removing cloning was the right call. I think a decision like this would eventually reach a similar consensus also when has player backlash stopped coders before?
There would 100% be more problems with a system like this. But in my opinion these are the most immediate.
► Show Spoiler
holy shit you're still reading this???
Do I think any of this is going to happen?
No
Do I think it should happen?
Yes, 100%
Medical and revives as a whole feel like they're in a weird place right now. To the patient death is often just an inconvenience, or at worst effective round removal with the smallest hope of revival. For medical doctors its just a time sink. No risk, no crunch, just waiting on progress bars and chem ticks. Overall I think these changes would both make death more impactful, and medical more engaging, while also generating more exciting and memorable stories.
TLDR:
Defib revives should only be possible within five minutes of death because:
Do I think any of this is going to happen?
No
Do I think it should happen?
Yes, 100%
Medical and revives as a whole feel like they're in a weird place right now. To the patient death is often just an inconvenience, or at worst effective round removal with the smallest hope of revival. For medical doctors its just a time sink. No risk, no crunch, just waiting on progress bars and chem ticks. Overall I think these changes would both make death more impactful, and medical more engaging, while also generating more exciting and memorable stories.
TLDR:
Defib revives should only be possible within five minutes of death because:
- It makes death more impactful
- Makes the paramed useful
- Makes medical gameplay more engaging
- People don't have to hang out as a ghost, midrounds and ghost spawners get more play
- Makes alternatives like pod cloning and borging more viable
- No more corpse piles
