Less Vicious Viruses-More Overall
For less apartment sitting

But! They infringe so much upon RP. The gnarly ones typically end in death if you don't get them treated. The other ones aren't particularly infectious.

I would love to see more viruses that are less deadly and less vicious, but still disable the characters somewhat. I'm unfamiliar with coding possibilities, but a stat drain to a certain floor would be great. Something that makes life obnoxious, but not completely restricting RP. There could be some that occur more often even in topside circles too.

It bums me out that there's not more topside and the RP there is typically reserved for Red. Maybe the cures could take time rather than be instant fixes?

It's possible other players wouldn't be interested in this - but I thought I'd give my suggestion :)

I'm not sure if it's an issue of desire to implement or simply lack of content but disease scripting is out there and very attainable for those interested both IC and OOC, I believe.

You have a robust medical system and characters to support that as well that involved themselves with that RP.

I agree that it does break down some RP, segregating people, but it also builds and creates RP too. Large plots have centred around infectious viruses for a long long time.

I personally see that it is in a reasonably good place, and handled by the admins really well.

Take the recent changes in Psuedomonas and sepsis (detailed in the patch notes)

They keep a close eye on this stuff.

I do feel though that this ooc feeling could actually lead into IC feelings and drum up RP rather than break it down.

"Why aren't you curing this!"

"Why are there so many shitty viruses we live in the future!"

"I can't see my friends cos of viruses DOWN WITH THE CORPS"

This is just my experience and perspective of course.

when someone releases ebola outbreak #6547 i just roll my eyes and log back out because what the fuck else am i going to do when everyone else is doing the exact same thing

this is similar to the issue of certain recurring villains. people will fuck off and not want to deal with it instead of just unnecessarily take the risk of waiting around for disaster to strike. unless they are given a good reason NOT to.

having less dire diseases may help, but also, if there are more infectuous but less deadly diseases, it's just going to spread around the entire game and end up being a tax for existing, as treatment for diseases is often expensive and difficult to track down. this will affect lowbies and immies much more than it will affect the players who can throw five, ten, fifteen thousand chyen at a treatment and not blink an eye.

So while there are people who say, "do crazy things" and are totally fine with watching the chaos. I think a lot of people try to weigh risk and reward when they do things.

In the last outbreak; ICly a faction rep said, "stay indoors".

Okay. So, unless I have an outbreak plan ready to roll. I'm likely planning something off the cuff. That is also something that I can probably do after the outbreak occurs without the risk of both dying from the disease and/or pissing off my faction by disobeying IC commands.

I have no issue with outbreaks, because there are some opportunities for certain characters to do things when the streets are empty. But I would think that in general, most people would do what they're ICly told, shelter in place, hang out and socialize or just not log in until it's over. I think that what I saw last time supports the idea that people kind of stop logging in, or just check in briefly when this kind of thing is happening too.

So, I have no objection to milder diseases, but let's make them more themely and targeted to some kind of RP as opposed to just random debuffs. A certain animal virus is a GREAT example of that. It drove a lot of RP, didn't force people to stay indoors and caused some major chaos.