For the love of God, rebuild the chem system from the ground up.

Aug 17, 2022
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What does this suggestion change/add/remove:
This suggestion would prompt the developers that work on SCP-RP to unite to, as quickly as possible, rebuild the chemical system from the ground up. This is being requested in the aftermath of the revelations made from @Harry 's resignation document about the chem system.

Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?:
To this extent? Not to my knowledge.

Possible Positives of the suggestion (At least 2):
1) Makes the chemical system actually function as intended without numerous exploits that can be used to effectively abuse chems to extend raids to ridiculous durations, make people nigh on immortal or otherwise ruin intended gameplay loops on the server.

2) Brings factions on the server way more in line with each other when it comes to power balancing. This system is by far and away the source point of so much imbalance and it NEEDS to be addressed.


Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
1) This is almost certainly going to require a LOT of dev time, based on the level of exploitation/fundamental code issue that must be present for the chem system to be working as it currently does.

2) A severe normalization of the chem system is going to be very annoying for those who frequently use chemicals in combat.


Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
Never in my life did I think I was going to make a suggestion with as much urgency and hope to see it implemented as the content parity suggestions. Holy SHIT was I wrong. Harry's chemical document on how the system currently works is completely and utterly diabolical for the state of server health and shows that this system is fundamentally flawed and needs a rewrite.

To break it down for those of you who may not have read the document yet; (Link here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p-6IXxeL8k-TFkWk7rGVKhTbq3A2pLQhg_3t2aBPZ-4/edit?usp=sharing)

Ever wondered why CI on chems seemed like absolutely unstoppable forces even in the face of many regiments trying to mass produce potent and other useful chems? Well, there WAS a reason for that all along! It turns out CI discovered a way to use the way the chem system cached effect timers on the server memory to absolutely DESTROY the balance of chemicals.


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Want a chemical that allows you to maintain see-through which is the number one basic indicator that you're unable to shoot, gives you infinitely topping up 50% speed and actually allows you to shoot WHILE in see-through state due to the fact they stacked the see-through outside of the NHU abilities, meaning nobody could ever find out if you were in a damagable state or not? YOU GOT IT RIGHT HERE!

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Want a chemical that is literally using REVERSAL OF CHEM EFFECTS (that's right, this chem heals you for 1200hp in 2 mins by drinking CHLORINE OF ALL CHEMICALS) to make you effectively unkillable thanks to the heal override system, while only costing approx 700 dollars for one dose of it due to how accessible these basic chems are? YOU GOT IT RIGHT HERE!!!


Oh, speaking of the memory cache and reversal of chems thing:
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YUP! It turns out that every single basic negative HP chemical has been the key for these CI chems all along, because for some god forsaken reason, due to memory cache based on the order you drink chems, you can stack the timer of an extremely long -hp effect onto the insane heals of a short burst +hp effect to gain nigh-on INFINITE healing! FUN!

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Also, turns out the reason CI always seem to never run out of speed chems is because they literally DONT! If you keep drinking basic speed chems after using NHU, you can literally keep refreshing the timer over and over again, which explains why they've been able to use these systems to such good effect, because they never needed to make that much of the best chems in the first place! (Also, sick job including bugs in this document Harry, as well as the recipe to multiple now banned god chems! I'm sure minges and covert CI players totally aren't going to secretly try and use these going forward!


I could go on ranting and raving about the absolutely abysmal state of this system that has been unveiled by Harry's document, but I genuinely can't be bothered. The fact this information is currently public domain is a genuine DANGER to server health, because now every down to Johnny CI Main can start producing this shit and it's going to work until the timer reversal and memory caching issues are fixed. Every single hunch people have had for months if not YEARS about CI's chems and abilities in combat have been validated by this nonsense, and the worst part is, 99% of the players who've been exploiting this are never going to see punishment for it despite how secretly unfair the gameplay loops have been this whole time.

For the love of god, fix this. Nothing has ever gobsmacked and discouraged me more from playing than knowing how right people have been about this stuff for so long and it took Harry essentially dropping a truth nuke on leaving to actually bring it to the public light. How many players have we lost cause of the imbalance this sort of thing causes to gameplay loop interruptions, all while being told that these things HAVE been looked into and are fine?

 
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I'm going to disagree a bit - while, granted, the server is SCP RP and not SCP PVP, combat still plays a major part in the server's life. Using chems for combat purposes is one of the few things that give more strategy to combat rather than running and gunning. It is a bit annoying to play against chems, but I am of the opinion that there should be more intelligence put into PVP.
hurr durr let me drink a chemical and my legs run 50% faster. strategy tenfold.
 
icl guys like this document was given to US CI and they never really cared to use this... most of these chemicals cost literally like 20-40k for 2 minutes of having 30% damage reduction and healing for 10 hp, which... will not take that much of difference unless you're maybe on juggernaut, even so no one is using 40k for 2 mins of being a bit more tanky... CI on UK rarely used it outside of special raids..

The NHU one is just.. pure confusion, if you have like 10 IQ and shoot a guy after 10s of them being on NHU you will just kill them.
why would i use NHU speed to try to extend if i can just.. buy AMX or drink potent since i won't even need the extra 20% speed.

like twins, i agree that chemicals are crazy but like... in the document it literally says what is bug abusing and what isn't, CI HAD to test for all of these, and staff have looked at this and said it was fine, the only difference now is that there might be an increase of chemicals being used on US/UK since there is wow! a new "god" Drug that makes you tanker! man if i see a guy using vitro on anything but juggernaut you might aswell just drop me 40k or something


actually, just remove all chemicals so i don't have to use money on potent so I can match people on surface :)

edit: i forgot to say i do agree that vcraft should be reworked in some way to not allow for most of their interactions but.. i don't think this document is even the main reason, there has like cheaper god drugs that made you actually immortal and unable to die for like 2k a pot...
 
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icl guys like this document was given to US CI and they never really cared to use this... most of these chemicals cost literally like 20-40k for 2 minutes of having 30% damage reduction and healing for 10 hp, which... will not take that much of difference unless you're maybe on juggernaut, even so no one is using 40k for 2 mins of being a bit more tanky... CI on UK rarely used it outside of special raids..

The NHU one is just.. pure confusion, if you have like 10 IQ and shoot a guy after 10s of them being on NHU you will just kill them.
why would i use NHU speed to try to extend if i can just.. buy AMX or drink potent since i won't even need the extra 20% speed.

like twins, i agree that chemicals are crazy but like... in the document it literally says what is bug abusing and what isn't, CI HAD to test for all of these, and staff have looked at this and said it was fine, the only difference now is that there might be an increase of chemicals being used on US/UK since there is wow! a new "god" Drug that makes you tanker! man if i see a guy using vitro on anything but juggernaut you might aswell just drop me 40k or something


actually, just remove all chemicals so i don't have to use money on potent so I can match people on surface :)
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I'll just chime in on this and say that is quite a mis-characterisation.

Devs have about 100 things to do, and they work on them when they want to work on them - It's not lack of care, it's lack of time.
Thats fair but at the same time motivation isnt just about time. If devs dont have any real reward or benefit for putting hours into a full rework, its natural that they wont prioritize it or care enough to do it and they have got every right to focus on things that actually pay off for them. After all, if they can get paid for putting the same ammount of effort elsewhere, why do it for free?
 
+Support to the revamping that is proposed. As it stands, these bugs will *rapidly* be getting abused by everyone, further stalling RP from taking place.
 
i hate potent duloxetines existance, i hate all speed chems for many reasons...

I remember when I was in content team back when the chemical system was first being presented and we were tasked with just general testing and going through the various effects, giving ideas, etc.
It was an enjoyable experience, but I think one of the complaints from me and @Kw1ll (i think?) was that we were afraid that players won't consider chems as a reward for RP. My percieved goal for the chemical update was to have more interactions with SCPs, and to have surface SCPs have a more widespread influence over the servers RP environment.

But this clearly wasn't what happened. I don't know when or how it got sidetracked, if it was in the development process, or the QC, or after the update was given out, but the update effectively killed the Research Department at the time. The server economy was changed permanently, and certain chemicals and effects were way more powerful than we originally intended (see OG anima, or the Dynamic Damage Resistance VCraft effect).

VCraft as a whole for SCP-RP needs to be adjusted. The Hunger/Energy system isn't fleshed out enough to justify it's existance, the surface scavenging for chems and food items is boring and unengaging, and the VCraft effects that comes with chemicals were made in a bad way (as proven by the document that Harry provided). I can't give solutions, but I can tell when this isn't the direction the server wants.
Some NL told me that they attempted to use "RP Chemicals" such as Codeine as a test to see if it's effective, but it wasn't. People don't want to use chemicals in a roleplay fashion. Why?
A couple of reasons I can think of would be this:
  • The process of creating chemicals requires in-game money. This balance transfers between characters, so I always was under the impression this was an OOC money system for at least the first 6 months of my time in this community. I believe this could contribute to the issue. Additionally, why would you spend money for a chemical that wont give you any sort of combative benefit, and only changes the color of someones screen.
  • The Chemist jobs are locked behind a donation paywall, this discourages players from making RP Chemicals like Codine if they don't already have the access.
  • The RP Chemicals like Codeine (especially Codeine) are not nearly fleshed out enough. You'd be hard pressed to find a player to even know what it is, and what it's intended effects are. More factors need to be added, such as effect delays, an overdose system, and clear instructions as to how to act when injected with said chemicals.
I don't know man, It's been hard to think lately.
Yeah, when we accepted the suggestion it was more in the line of "gives researchers more stuff to do with SCPs, and more stuff for researchers to RP with". Honestly, the absolute biggest reason for this was Surface SCPs, as they had literally like 1 a day if that. Adding a chemical that was created via a Surface SCP created more of that interaction.

I regret not being more active in the development of it, as it kind of went crazy. The idea got way overblown and my idea of it has always been as an RP only thing, not a perma buff that you simply lose out on if you have a irl J*B (sorry for the offensive language)
 
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MRP had chem later (it was added 6-7 monthes before it shutting down i think?), and they were NEVER combat, just only used for funny (fent chem) and RP. I think why they did that in MRP is because MRP was focused on PVP-RP so they would never allow combat chems but on SCPRP, they allowed because they never will allow "TDM" on their "RP only" server.
It was added how long ago
 

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+1

Now, I may not play the server anymore, but to pull the old man back in my day ahh card and have used some of the stupidly OP combinations back when I was playing and reading through this document, it is time to change. Fighting an enemy that just drank some funny juice and makes it 10x harder to kill on a RP server is not a fun experience.