Is something missing?

[General High Ping]

I just feel that there's something missing with the gameplay.

-Training seems kind of useless, aside from the objective to use it, i havn't trained a single doctor. Patient death seems really rare unless you really screw up somehow.
-Room upgrades (except the holo-doc) seem pretty useless. You can only have one per room and they provide such minor buffs that they're really not worth the effort. No actual treatment machine upgrades either.
-Research doesn't seem to have much effect on anything, but its hard to tell because of the running theme of not giving you stats to compare, just a description that hints at what things do.
-Staff Rooms seem to be a pointless room, required for staff to be happy but they don't use it. All i've seen them use are vending machines, toilets and bins to fulfil needs.
-Edit: I've now seen them in use, very rarely.
-Lots of basic QoL features like room flip, scroll wheel rotate, saving room templates etc etc that always get requested on Day 1 with these kind of games, not present.
-Constant need for decorations on every plain of existence, would be nice if some decorations had effects or some kind of purpose other than ridding me of those cursed floating opinion bubbles.
-Holo-docs are "less efficient" but they seem to diagnose at the same speed and don't take breaks, except for 1 sec ones where the room goes off and on again.
-Diagnosis is one and done, no discovery process or use of diagnostic equipment to find the issue. Feels almost too streamlined.

Really trying not to directly compare it with TPH but their base design gives me the feeling that my minor actions are having an effect, whereas in GC everything is solved with just plopping down another copy of the room and another doctor, over and over again.

[iancw]

I've also found training room to be pretty pointless. The sole purpose of the staff lounge seems to be to exist so they don't complain about its absence, but I've never seen anyone actually in it.

[Sigvuld]

I also noticed that about the staff lounge, although I don't know if I'm just missing something, or if they genuinely don't go in there and relax for a time when they need it.

[iancw]

The other thing I'm finding is that it is impossible to lose money, to the extent that the financial system could be completely deleted with minimal impact? I think its to do with the balance of salaries and treatment. One treatment seems to cover one doctor's entire salary?

[critterannie]

I have seen a doctor use the staff room. They don't stay in there long, which is a good thing. Also, you can save room templates. Click on a completed room, then the save icon (disk). I do agree that room flip would be good to implement.

[Central]

my doctors use the staff room from time to time, they are not there for long though.

holo doctors dont have any ractial bonuses or training so patients are generally a bit less happy about being treated by them.
i am confused about the effects of research though

[Clumsy Vulcan]

These are some fair points for sure. We wanted to keep the barrier to entry low, which is part of why some of the systems are a bit of a light touch right now. I am intending to tighten a few things up (and also get some bugs fixed) which should help.

#1: The ability to "lose money" isn't working perfectly. The player does get fined when things go wrong (dead patients, etc), but we've recently discovered that these fines are not actually always applying. So that needs fixing. We also still need to do a little bit of tuning to the overall economy, as it's a smidge too generous at the moment.

#2: The baseline difficulty of keeping patients alive is a little bit too soft right now. Essentially, I'd like to see more dead patients than we're seeing right now

#3: The impact of higher-level staff (and therefore the value of the training room) isn't as powerful as it could be. #2 will help with this a bit, but this is in general one of the harder problems to solve without making the game any easier than it is. We are exploring a few ideas, but they aren't short-term solutions.

#4: Currently, staff make frequent use of nutrition and toilet need fulfilment objects during their breaks, but aren't using the staff lounge that much. I want to make some changes here so most breaks that staff take will involve the staff lounge (without impacting the overall number of breaks too much).

#5: The impact of research is another one that's difficult to tackle without making the game easier. I'm currently okay with where this is at. Something to keep in mind is that a big part of the research system is the narrative component (found in the Pathodex), not just the improvement made to your treatments. This is actually one reason why we kept the per-patient diagnosis process fairly streamlined, as we wanted to use the research system to tell a story with each condition.

[JOBE]

I agree—there just doesn’t seem to be much “management” in this management game. The gameplay loop is mostly just plopping down some rooms and watching things happen. I wish leveling up doctors was a more involved and rewarding process. Right now you can just hire specialized doctors, assign them to rooms, and forget about them.

Instead, I think only trainees should be available to start, and leveling them should require a combination of working, training, and research experience. Higher level doctors should have more demands and higher upkeep. This time and resource investment would require you to choose which specializations are most important to focus on, and unspecialized doctors should be far more likely to make mistakes.

Also, maybe they can gain random traits over time. Right now I would never hire a psychopath, but if my favorite doctor suddenly developed bloodlust I might learn to live with it.

[critterannie]

I have also noticed that doctors DO use the training rooms. I have had the most success with having small (barely spacious 3x4) staff and training rooms scattered around. If there are no patients queued for their room, and their needs are decent, they will go train.

[Draago]

I wouldn't sleep on the room upgrades (only the majority of them). Holodoc diagnostics are powerful because its really fast no matter what and you can spam lots of rooms. But for treatment rooms I found the one that speeds up time makes a big difference. From my experience theres different animations depending on the speed and with the upgrade it always does the shortest one.

Also training is useful considering its very hard to run out of money in this game. So just hire more docs than you need and keep swapping them around till everyone is max level.

[Draago]

Originally posted by Clumsy Vulcan:

These are some fair points for sure. We wanted to keep the barrier to entry low, which is part of why some of the systems are a bit of a light touch right now. I am intending to tighten a few things up (and also get some bugs fixed) which should help.

Just my opinion, i'd reeeaaally love to see difficulty options like in the original theme hospital (like nurse, doctor, consultant) where on nurse its so easy you're free to do what you want, and consultant you always have to worry about money and reputation like killing too many patients or making them leave loses you the game.

[Sigvuld]

Originally posted by Clumsy Vulcan:

These are some fair points for sure. We wanted to keep the barrier to entry low, which is part of why some of the systems are a bit of a light touch right now. I am intending to tighten a few things up (and also get some bugs fixed) which should help.

#1: The ability to "lose money" isn't working perfectly. The player does get fined when things go wrong (dead patients, etc), but we've recently discovered that these fines are not actually always applying. So that needs fixing. We also still need to do a little bit of tuning to the overall economy, as it's a smidge too generous at the moment.

#2: The baseline difficulty of keeping patients alive is a little bit too soft right now. Essentially, I'd like to see more dead patients than we're seeing right now

#3: The impact of higher-level staff (and therefore the value of the training room) isn't as powerful as it could be. #2 will help with this a bit, but this is in general one of the harder problems to solve without making the game any easier than it is. We are exploring a few ideas, but they aren't short-term solutions.

#4: Currently, staff make frequent use of nutrition and toilet need fulfilment objects during their breaks, but aren't using the staff lounge that much. I want to make some changes here so most breaks that staff take will involve the staff lounge (without impacting the overall number of breaks too much).

#5: The impact of research is another one that's difficult to tackle without making the game easier. I'm currently okay with where this is at. Something to keep in mind is that a big part of the research system is the narrative component (found in the Pathodex), not just the improvement made to your treatments. This is actually one reason why we kept the per-patient diagnosis process fairly streamlined, as we wanted to use the research system to tell a story with each condition.

If this feedback helps at all, I'd just like to point out that in my nearly 10 hours of play, I actually haven't seen any staff enter the staff room so much as once. It definitely seems to be a recurring theme with people's complaints!

Aside from that, I wholeheartedly agree on patients being extremely easy to keep alive, and I also would LOVE to see more effects from a doctor being higher level.

Thank you for paying attention to our feedback!

[General High Ping]

Originally posted by Clumsy Vulcan:

These are some fair points for sure. We wanted to keep the barrier to entry low, which is part of why some of the systems are a bit of a light touch right now. I am intending to tighten a few things up (and also get some bugs fixed) which should help.

#1: The ability to "lose money" isn't working perfectly. The player does get fined when things go wrong (dead patients, etc), but we've recently discovered that these fines are not actually always applying. So that needs fixing. We also still need to do a little bit of tuning to the overall economy, as it's a smidge too generous at the moment.

#2: The baseline difficulty of keeping patients alive is a little bit too soft right now. Essentially, I'd like to see more dead patients than we're seeing right now

#3: The impact of higher-level staff (and therefore the value of the training room) isn't as powerful as it could be. #2 will help with this a bit, but this is in general one of the harder problems to solve without making the game any easier than it is. We are exploring a few ideas, but they aren't short-term solutions.

#4: Currently, staff make frequent use of nutrition and toilet need fulfilment objects during their breaks, but aren't using the staff lounge that much. I want to make some changes here so most breaks that staff take will involve the staff lounge (without impacting the overall number of breaks too much).

#5: The impact of research is another one that's difficult to tackle without making the game easier. I'm currently okay with where this is at. Something to keep in mind is that a big part of the research system is the narrative component (found in the Pathodex), not just the improvement made to your treatments. This is actually one reason why we kept the per-patient diagnosis process fairly streamlined, as we wanted to use the research system to tell a story with each condition.

TBh i think the research lab upgrades system and the room upgrades needs a complete rework.

-All the lab upgrades seem to do is give me cheaper crafting, useful but not useful enough that i've completely ignored it (aside from that one mission you have to).
If i've missed any other feature of item upgrades then its because its effect is so minimal its hard to tell or you don't get any feedback on whats changing.
-Room upgrades seen very underpowered.
*holodoc-pretty good but now i can't alter any other room stats.
*Aclarity Engine-very minimal speed increase
...thats kind of the only two that really mattered during my gameplay, even if you could put one of each upgrade, per room, i feel the effects would still be rather underwhelming.

The only things i've found that have genuine impact on your hospital when used are the teleporters and slapping down another room copy.

-Upping the staff room usage might affect some of the current levels with more restricted layouts. I think there were two levels where due to room spam to cover a constant increase in a certain illness, i used every feasible bit of space for treatment rooms, only having space for one staff room, accessible by teleporter.

[Don Vincenzoo 57]

i like it like that .
and i was able to have some patient diying ... sometime too long queue . sometimes treatment erro etc ...