Being in crit should partially or completely make you unable to hear other people talk

[DrSmugleaf]

Description

• Beat yourself into a coma
• You can still read all speech near you perfectly

The rules already don't allow remembering what happens in crit so this is a way to reinforce it (and also feature parity with ss13) However this should ideally either be in a component or configurable in some way for other mobs (or downstreams) that don't want this mechanic

[UbaserB]

Yesss i really wanted this

[Hmeister-fake]

I also really want this. It would also be great if you also couldn't see people touching or doing stuff like stripping you, and if you also couldn't see do-after bars. The amount of times as a syndie I try to take someone's ID while they are in crit, and then hear them get up and scream that I stole their ID is dumb.

[Emisse]

i remember seeing in med refactor that it implements consciousness, would this conflict with that horribly

[crazybrain23]

i remember seeing in med refactor that it implements consciousness, would this conflict with that horribly

I'd imagine it would work quite well together, just make it so how much you can understand scales with consciousness.

[LordCarve]

One rather obvious point here is that this affects OOC gameplay.

As the player observing OOC what's happening and being done to your helpless IC body is a unique experience. This includes seeing (with your OOC eyes, obviously) people scrambling to save you, and hearing others trying to slander you so you don't get rescued. You involuntarily start cheering for whoever starts dragging your body and cry when a bomb goes off in med and everybody evacuates leaving you behind.

Obviously none of these are IC experiences, but they are part of what you experience as the player.

There's definitely room for improvement here: @Hmeister-fake suggested not seeing do-after bars, and not getting any of the feedback of being stripped and I think these could be done at no harm to the OOC experience (I'm 100% for it). As for stuff like impeding hearing - I suggest treading carefully as messing this up could easily make the OOC crit experience not as fun as it is.

For example completely disabling hearing when in critical state is almost definitely going to hurt the OOC experience of being in crit. However, there's middle ground to be had. One idea that comes to mind is making hearing lose the "spatial sense" - you still see speech messages, but you don't know who or where they are coming from - instead of showing above the speaker they show up some distance + random distortion away in the general direction of the speaker from you. Most of your screen is covered up by the "dying" overlay anyway - so this has the extra benefit of making good use of all the otherwise "wasted" screen real estate. This also does justice to simulate the blurry state of mind and general difficulty with comprehension, but most importantly: it doesn't take away from the OOC experience of being in a critical state in any way.

I'm thinking of how barely-consciousness is usually depicted in the movies. It's a blurry mess and dulled, echoing voices are coming from somewhere, and you can't pinpoint from where.

That being said, I can see hearing in crit making sense IC as well. You are in a critical state (for whatever reason) and someone starts dragging you. As they do they say "Hang in there buddy - I've got you!" or "Don't you dare die on me!". We probably don't want to take away from this, as it's a pretty damn awesome scene to behold - either as a bystander or either of the participants.

There's also the aspect of such pep talk used IRL by medical personnel to actually improve outcomes of rescue procedures. Talking to coma patients etc. But we probably don't want to go too deep down this rabbit hole.

Just my few cents.

[Tayrtahn]

I definitely like the idea of removing/obscuring the positional aspect of speech while in crit state. I think that would actually enhance the OOC experience of being dragged to med and treated.

[IProduceWidgets]

It needs to be clear what is and isn't remembered IC though. making chat unintelligible or making it so you can't hear at all accomplishes this. I worry that if we add extra effort to make thing said while in crit appear fuzzy, it will be even more unclear what your remember IC than it is now.

[Emisse]

wut, if you obscure it then you dont need rules against it

[DrMelon]

Characters probably should still be able to hear at least nearby voices, but maybe obscure the names, e.g; Someone says, "Hang in there, buddy!" Someone says, "GIB THAT LOSER"

[Nopey]

I want to write a PR to at least obscure the names, as DrMelon suggests above. The chat message's 'author' is used on the client if an admin erases a message, see MsgDeleteChatMessagesBy. Is ensuring Erase works more important than the information leakage that sending author (and name) causes?