I get the point behind them and on paper, it sounds great, but in execution it’s horrible. Having to manually send them to rest is just tedious. Also having the incubation procedure have to assign scientists twice is a pain because it makes them tired faster. Having to send them to rest also sends the park into a halt because the game is so dependent on them to do everything
Scientists are Horrible
- Thread starter Jonathan05151998
- Start date
I think it was executed pretty well. It's about managing your staff's brain power. There's a way to measure work stress, consequences for over working your staff, and a tradeoff for avoiding those consequences. As for Synthesis/Incubation, I generally use different scientists for the two parts because the first needs high genetic skill, and the second part is high veterinarian skill. Generally, Logistic Specialists do expeditions and most of the heavy lifting in research, Geneticists extract fossils and synthesize eggs, veterinarians incubate dinosaurs and perform surgery at the PMF, and generalists can fill in anytime an "Rest" leaves one specialty lacking.
I would like to toy around with the system more before changing it. While it might come off as tedious to have to assign scientists twice for synthesis and incubation, it is actually a nice quality of life as well. You might not want the same scientist to do both tasks, it might be more efficient to swap them out. A compromise could be that you could assign a scientist up front to perform a task for both steps, would need a small UI tweak for this option.
Removing them from having to be rested manually would be bad for the game. Now you have essentially eliminated sabotage as a mechanic if they can be set to auto-rest before they can ever trigger it. It's designed to punish you for overworking and or neglecting your scientists and its one of the best game design decisions Frontier has made, the power is in the player's hands. I reiterate that its more often the player rather than the game that is causing these headaches.
They rebalanced the expeditions to require less trips for 100% genome whereas it would have been tedious as hell if they carried it over directly from JWE. Sabotage makes sense and is preventable now, good foreplanning and scientist consideration factors into the gameplay. It influences your decisions and gives you the opportunity for each subsequent playthrough to feel different, its replayability.
I bet as soon as the MVU gets tweaked these sorts of complaints will be reduced, and players will start to make decisions about getting scientist training earlier, identifying useful traits, and prioritizing potential skills over the defaults when hiring them. Time, money, and your goals in a gameplay session are all going to come with tradeoffs the player chooses.
Removing them from having to be rested manually would be bad for the game. Now you have essentially eliminated sabotage as a mechanic if they can be set to auto-rest before they can ever trigger it. It's designed to punish you for overworking and or neglecting your scientists and its one of the best game design decisions Frontier has made, the power is in the player's hands. I reiterate that its more often the player rather than the game that is causing these headaches.
They rebalanced the expeditions to require less trips for 100% genome whereas it would have been tedious as hell if they carried it over directly from JWE. Sabotage makes sense and is preventable now, good foreplanning and scientist consideration factors into the gameplay. It influences your decisions and gives you the opportunity for each subsequent playthrough to feel different, its replayability.
I bet as soon as the MVU gets tweaked these sorts of complaints will be reduced, and players will start to make decisions about getting scientist training earlier, identifying useful traits, and prioritizing potential skills over the defaults when hiring them. Time, money, and your goals in a gameplay session are all going to come with tradeoffs the player chooses.
I think some of the traits should be reworked, like motivated gives it's scientist 2 extra stress slots, and a scaling benefit for the rest. Like if there are 2 staff centers or less the other scientists get 2 more stress slots, and over 2 centers they get 1 (more staff less effect).
Same with the altruistic trait, cut the scientist who has it's bonus to 30%, but allow them to convince the other scientists to work for less.
They could balance it by limiting the number of times the bonus could stack (say 2 for motivated and 1 time for altruistic.)
Same with the altruistic trait, cut the scientist who has it's bonus to 30%, but allow them to convince the other scientists to work for less.
They could balance it by limiting the number of times the bonus could stack (say 2 for motivated and 1 time for altruistic.)
Do you >ever< have a sabotage in your parks? I played for 60 hours and never had one except when I purposely didn't rest my scientists to see what would happen
In isolation sabotage is an easy mechanic to prevent, the whole idea behind sabotage has to do with oversights. Its the very essence of Jurassic Park as small oversights, varying priorities, and neglect can easily create a disaster, chaos if you will. It works in tandem with other game mechanics, right now we really don't have enough to make this live up to its potential, that can easily change as the game matures.
Moreover, I would say its rarity is a good thing. You don't want sabotage to happen all the time, its an event that would occasionally occur and that rarity is no reason to simply remove it.
On challenge maps u get the dinosaur inside a building event, its sort of a sabotage if u decide to check it out.
On the last challenge map the game gave me an our and gave me an automatic 5 stars. Anyone else get this? A company wants to finance u or something and it will increase ticket sales 1.5x for 15 minutes? I said yes thinking it'd push me to 5 stars and it did. Thank you frontier lol.
On the last challenge map the game gave me an our and gave me an automatic 5 stars. Anyone else get this? A company wants to finance u or something and it will increase ticket sales 1.5x for 15 minutes? I said yes thinking it'd push me to 5 stars and it did. Thank you frontier lol.
Agreed, but that's your reasoning for the system, not how the system actually plays out. Do you want an idea how your description of the system would actually work the way you think it should?
Scientist have a stamina bar that is consumed while they are doing tasks (or maybe a stress bar which fills up), and it is filled >while<, not when you tell them to. That way, your park keeps running and if you are distracted by doing something else and neglect your park (or as you said, an oversight in your management or even a consequence from a natural disaster that ocurred and you had to focus elsewhere), the mechanics would work as you reasoned it to be: you focused them on doing whatever you needed them to do and didn't have enough time to rest them, causing accidents in the park (I really dislike SABOTAGE specifically, but we could have other ocurrences such as malfunctioning structures, accidentally killing dinosaurs instead of healing them, etc).
The way the system in game currently works is: you assign 5 tasks and click rest. Wait x minutes (I know you can speed up but you still have to wait). There is NO reason why you shouldn't click Rest when you see red. There's no advantage in risking overtiring your scientists. You never do it, nothing ever happens. Therefore, the mechanic shouldn't be ingame as it currently is.
Of course, for this suggestion to work other tweaks would add to the design so it works as intended, like I suggested in my feedback thread (and have seen some people also mentioning), assigning a scientist as the default for one specific task (so you don't need to micromanage them once every 30 sec) and not having the game pause >while< you are choosing what to do with the scientists (so you feel the need to manage them, is happening WHILE you decide what that "almost tired" scientist should do next), etc.
Would a gradually expiring task bar be better, sure, always room for improvement. We know the desire is there otherwise why would Frontier let you rest them at all? The execution could surely use some work, for the time being its fine I'd much rather they get the MVU situation in order. Maybe a better word is serviceable.
I think the little random events in Challenge Mode are similar to those occurrences you mentioned though, still find it odd those aren't ubiquitous. The only sabotage that I still hate is any scenario in which all the gates are opened whether its a mission objective or not, its just a cheap way to create instant tension and you can just delete the gates funny enough to circumvent it.
Patience is the biggest thing I would say that is tested. People are too attached to the time controls already, you can easily achieve a sabotage if people are in a hurry to get research or whatever done and they are willing to take a risk to do that. Doesn't work for everyone, but I do see your point. Personally I think your suggestion of a stress meter or whatever we are referring to it as now, is the better approach than what we have. I think this particular use case and its potential is why it should remain, the system is not deleterious to any other aspect of the game and it does service a purpose even if its not in its ideal form, its a solid foundation.
Again, agreed, the game pausing frequently is not great. From this standpoint is a mixed bag, one the one hand, you want to have player control and flexibility between say Synthesis and Incubation stages, but by forcing the player to pay attention to the Scientists too much you are doing so at the expense of a sabotage risk.
Had to search what ubiquitous means lmao! I agree. I didn't touch challenge yet because I was trying powering through the Chaos Theory mode, but found the game was trying too hard to not make me have fun and I decided to wait for patches. Sadly, we didn't get JWE1 Campaign mode (where you jumped from park to park to improve them).
The way it currently is implemented was DoA for me, but there are a lot of improvements that could be added to it and make the game perfect. It's so close but so far at the same time. That's why I'm actually taking the time to come to this forum and try to discuss over ideas with other players, in hopes that the devs actually see them and implement some tweaks in the game. The biggest and easiest fix for the scientist system is to not make the game pause while you're doing the process of clicking Rest. It makes it so obnoxious because you are actually losing time if you take a while to stop and think to make the decision of Resting or not (Again, you never should have to make this decision. The way it is, you actually "play better" by resting as constantly as your income allows you to).
- The Stress bar would add to the feeling of "risk and reward", adding flavour to the system as well.
- Another one would be assigning "chief scientists" so every time you do X, you use scientist Y, reducing the need to open the windows that many times.
- Even better, make them rest while not performing tasks (so you don't even need to see the Scientist window, you just control how often you assign an expedition/synthesis/incubation/etc;
- Adding to that: you then would be able to see the scientist's Stress bar in the Expedition window, for instance)
Also, they could have taken inspirations from other management games (but changing the "feeling" of the game much more than they would be willing to/people would receive).
- "Science Center" building which gives you more "resources" for that Stress Bar. The more science centers, the more tasks you can do before resting (with the above changes, literally: YOU would rest from telling the game to do stuff, not wait while time passes and you look at a window)
- (This is not exactly what I would want, but here as another possible design decision they could have made) Actually have the scientists as "units" ingame, and they have to move around the park when assigned to do tasks. Then you could queue up actions and use the scientists in conjunction with the other units, like having them go to a hatchery somewhere else to hatch one dinosaur there, or go to a clinic to perform sugery in a dinosaur, etc. (see my points about vehicles and buildings to contextualize this better)
I think there are SO many other options they could've gone with other than "Mobile game hearts" and that made me a little frustrated and I decided not to play the game anymore (for now).
Thank you for the discussion! This was fun!
Had to search what ubiquitous means lmao! I agree. I didn't touch challenge yet because I was trying powering through the Chaos Theory mode, but found the game was trying too hard to not make me have fun and I decided to wait for patches. Sadly, we didn't get JWE1 Campaign mode (where you jumped from park to park to improve them).
The way it currently is implemented was DoA for me, but there are a lot of improvements that could be added to it and make the game perfect. It's so close but so far at the same time. That's why I'm actually taking the time to come to this forum and try to discuss over ideas with other players, in hopes that the devs actually see them and implement some tweaks in the game. The biggest and easiest fix for the scientist system is to not make the game pause while you're doing the process of clicking Rest. It makes it so obnoxious because you are actually losing time if you take a while to stop and think to make the decision of Resting or not (Again, you never should have to make this decision. The way it is, you actually "play better" by resting as constantly as your income allows you to).
- The Stress bar would add to the feeling of "risk and reward", adding flavour to the system as well.
- Another one would be assigning "chief scientists" so every time you do X, you use scientist Y, reducing the need to open the windows that many times.
- Even better, make them rest while not performing tasks (so you don't even need to see the Scientist window, you just control how often you assign an expedition/synthesis/incubation/etc;
- Adding to that: you then would be able to see the scientist's Stress bar in the Expedition window, for instance)
Also, they could have taken inspirations from other management games (but changing the "feeling" of the game much more than they would be willing to/people would receive).
- "Science Center" building which gives you more "resources" for that Stress Bar. The more science centers, the more tasks you can do before resting (with the above changes, literally: YOU would rest from telling the game to do stuff, not wait while time passes and you look at a window)
- (This is not exactly what I would want, but here as another possible design decision they could have made) Actually have the scientists as "units" ingame, and they have to move around the park when assigned to do tasks. Then you could queue up actions and use the scientists in conjunction with the other units, like having them go to a hatchery somewhere else to hatch one dinosaur there, or go to a clinic to perform sugery in a dinosaur, etc. (see my points about vehicles and buildings to contextualize this better)
I think there are SO many other options they could've gone with other than "Mobile game hearts" and that made me a little frustrated and I decided not to play the game anymore (for now).
Thank you for the discussion! This was fun!
Challenge Mode is fun if you just want to jump into a management of a park without any narrative disruptions. I mean they are just splash screens with an option, its more for flavor than some real challenge. The fact your digs can occasionally fail or you have to choose to take a hit to publicity or monetary hit for a feeder getting attacked is at least something. The random nature of these little events at least gives the illusion of something happening.
Not going to lie, I am pretty cautious with my park management so I don't get sabotaged either, I'd like to think I just overthink my parks compared to most players. Same thing here, I see the potential of the game and what it wants and could be, so I come here to try and nudge it in that direction.
Those are some great ideas, would address a lot of the complaints with the scientists the community has and deepen the management. It plays well thematically since Dr. Wu is a chief geneticist, being able to assign your own chief scientists works quite well. I shot down the idea of auto-rest, before but by reducing the need to actually see the scientist window in the first place, I think we have found a good compromise where sabotage can be a potentially risk without a nuisance. Love the thought put into this!
Hmm, seems like your Science Center could be tied into the Staff Center, as a passive effect it would increase the stress meter in addition to enabling more staffers to be employed. I do have a small problem with some of these 1-only buildings, but I haven't thought of a good solution for the Science Center or Innovation Center, for instance. Its actually bothered me since the first JWE, these buildings should have some other purpose than glorified set piece. I already found a good solution for the San Diego Amphitheatre.
I think having actual ground units similar to an RTS in some regard might actually be a fun addition to the game. I fear that would be a mighty undertaking even though I made similar suggestions for an ACU team before. I have a real vendetta against those stupid helicopters being a click and done sort of mechanic.
I enjoyed this conversation quite a bit. Hope to see you around the forums more in the future!