9 years ago
Doctor (career) Frustrations
- Once I got to around Technician level (and levels after), there was an orderly that spawned when I went to work. This orderly tries to chat me up all the time, disrupting my work, and doesn't actually do anything beyond making beds after a patient is cured.
- I got to GP and went into work as normal. After many frustrating moments of trying to track down illnesses on a couple different patients, I get distracted by a notification that a patient has left because it took too long to get to him (never seen that before GP rank). Then I get a house call that I don't answer because it's never been explained or been part of my work objectives and I don't even know whether it does me any good for job performance, but apparently ignoring it as GP hurts work performance where it didn't before - again, no warning for this at all. Patients continue to come in at a ridiculous pace and leave because I'm not getting to them, and I can see my performance bar going down because of it.
- I have never seen an orderly admit a patient to a bed ONCE (no wonder patients are leaving..). And it is very common for the game to choose an occupied bed when admitting a patient, even if several others are free.
- It is also impossible to keep up with the stream of patients as one doctor, at all the levels I've seen so far.
I've now tried all of the GTW careers, excluding a few final levels of Doctor, and from where I'm standing, Detective and Scientist are fun and well-designed, but Doctor feels rushed and unpolished.
Nothing about the Hospital feels like a bustling, functional hospital and the general activities/objectives (particularly when it comes to diagnosis) expects too much of the player, compared to the other active careers. It is incredibly easy to get stuck with an unclear diagnosis and have to look up a symptoms list on the internet to try to figure out what it might be. Compare that to Detective, where some RL observational skill is required for arresting suspects, but most of the time, it's appallingly obvious visuals that you're looking for. The Doctor career doesn't give you a list of symptoms to look for, a reference sheet to compare, or any sort of quick and tangible way to observe and discern between illnesses - you are reduced to hoping you can catch a glimpse of animations at the right time. Or using the russian roulette wheel of diagnosis.
What's crazy is I seem to have had an easier time reaching Guaranteed Diagnosis at *early* levels than at later ones, which is the opposite of making sense. Maybe it was just a weird streak of luck, but it doesn't exactly add to my satisfaction with this career.
- I got to GP and went into work as normal. After many frustrating moments of trying to track down illnesses on a couple different patients, I get distracted by a notification that a patient has left because it took too long to get to him (never seen that before GP rank). Then I get a house call that I don't answer because it's never been explained or been part of my work objectives and I don't even know whether it does me any good for job performance, but apparently ignoring it as GP hurts work performance where it didn't before - again, no warning for this at all. Patients continue to come in at a ridiculous pace and leave because I'm not getting to them, and I can see my performance bar going down because of it.
- I have never seen an orderly admit a patient to a bed ONCE (no wonder patients are leaving..). And it is very common for the game to choose an occupied bed when admitting a patient, even if several others are free.
- It is also impossible to keep up with the stream of patients as one doctor, at all the levels I've seen so far.
I've now tried all of the GTW careers, excluding a few final levels of Doctor, and from where I'm standing, Detective and Scientist are fun and well-designed, but Doctor feels rushed and unpolished.
Nothing about the Hospital feels like a bustling, functional hospital and the general activities/objectives (particularly when it comes to diagnosis) expects too much of the player, compared to the other active careers. It is incredibly easy to get stuck with an unclear diagnosis and have to look up a symptoms list on the internet to try to figure out what it might be. Compare that to Detective, where some RL observational skill is required for arresting suspects, but most of the time, it's appallingly obvious visuals that you're looking for. The Doctor career doesn't give you a list of symptoms to look for, a reference sheet to compare, or any sort of quick and tangible way to observe and discern between illnesses - you are reduced to hoping you can catch a glimpse of animations at the right time. Or using the russian roulette wheel of diagnosis.
What's crazy is I seem to have had an easier time reaching Guaranteed Diagnosis at *early* levels than at later ones, which is the opposite of making sense. Maybe it was just a weird streak of luck, but it doesn't exactly add to my satisfaction with this career.