Artisan Archive
Thread: Artisan Survey about Surveying
Doctor takes 140 skill points to master, add to that 29 points for Survey 4 (24 for survey 3), and you have 81 skillpoints left which isn't even enough to master a combat class (6-11 short).
On the other hand artisans are used to getting 10-20cpu from weaponsmiths & armorsmiths for insanely good coper and rares they need to make the elite weapons & armor. So naturally we try to get the top price, especially considering the effort it takes (i.e. going to Talus for water, Tatooine for fiberplast etc). I have asked for and recieved 25-40cpu for 950+ quality advanced medicine component resources.
The Medic professions have disposable products whose components require planet specific resources. No other profession's elite components require planet-specific components, and most other professions' elite products are permanent rather than disposable products.
Either every professions' elites should require planet specific components, or the Medic line's schematics should drop the planet-specific requirements (perhaps substituted by more category specific resources). IMO that is the solution.
Improving /medicalforiage is also neccessary, but not critical.
... and Correspondants are allowed to have opinions, but their first duity is to report the opinion of the community.
Agreed. Although in this case, this issue pretty much sums up the top concern for at least my previous community. I'm still working on the poll in the Medic forum to determineexactly where the medic communities top issues lie. And, shameless plug here,for those who would like to participate and have at least dabbled into the Medic profession, feel free to help out with the vote there by letting your voice be heard and voting. Polling closes Monday, January 5th.
[snip of great summary of Medical profession economic problems in their crafted products based on difficult resources]
... and Correspondants are allowed to have opinions, but their first duity is to report the opinion of the community.
And that's pretty much been my experience as well. And the experience of many other on the Medical Profession forums. It's a pervasive and unbalancing issue for the medical professions. One that sets us up to fail because we either need to be more like Artisans, or "true crafters", with more sruvey-like abilityor we need to be a whole lot more like the "hybrid crafters". As it stands were are very, very much more like Artisans without the basic ability to fulfill that role properly.
Scoooter wrote:
[snip]
Now in a previous post I challenged the artisans on the Valcyn server to prove me wrong by sending me an e-mail stating that they would do the dirty job of surveying for cash. I have received ZERO responses to that.
Scoooter wrote:
The game was designed so that characters could in fact master three classes. When you are a master doctor you cannot because of survey requirements.
That is an EXCELLENT point. IIRC the quote was "master two and dabble in a third". Making a master doctor/pistoleer template you have 18 skill points to go, but 15 of those give you novice artisan... leaving you 3 points to "dabble in a third"...
What if you were given /survey and /sample at master doctor crafting?
In fact what has been most discussed in the doctors forum is limited survey/sample capability in the crafting section of the doctors tree and what has not been asked for is that doctors should have survey 4 ability.
Doctors would be happy with a decent range on tools and just enough sample to know exactly if the resource is worth surveying.
As Zarlor and I have pointed out..who are your customers for the bulk of the sales. Not doctors thats for sure. And also as he and I have pointed out the medic/doctor profession has been stepped on more that any other with pet stims and new food enhancements.
Well, having read all this I honestly don't have a MAJOR problem with a limited /medicalforage ability.
We're talking about sampling for about 1-5 units at a throw. Part of me thinks that the docs having that ability simply isn't going to kill my bottom line on resource sales. Even IF I knew what they were looking for, and harvested it myself.
OTOH: I can see where some Artisans might feel this sort of thing to cut into their profit line.
And it would definetly have an impact on the whole interdependence thing the DEVs want this game to have.
The original idea being, you buy meats and other creature organics from Scouts, and buy your mineral/chemicals/whatever from Artisans.
I think the better solution would be to alter the schematics so Meds have less specific requirements on thier ingredients lists.
Having said that, if you're a Med type on Starsider pop an email to Biwaba with a list and I'll start looking for some of the stuff you folks need while I'm out getting pwned by whatever Red con I happen to walk by without noticing because I'm too busy staring at my survey screen. 
Heck, I might even have some of it already, I tend to collect things without noticing. 
Well, the Medic professions are all about interdependence anyway. Right now it is required on more fromts than for any other profession, though. Obviously we need other players irregardless of profession for doing what most of us primarily do to begin with, which is healing. As a support class that means we are already dependent on others, just as they are dependent on us.
The next crossover comes from resource needs. We need resources, however, from both artisan samplings AND from the Scout lines. Unlike Artisans who obviously only need to rely on Scouts for some resources or Scouts who only need to rely on Artisans for some of their resources, or Entertainers and Smugglers who, I believe, only need to rely on Artisan for their resources (although their requirements are miniscule anyway compared to the medical profession needs so even if they NEED resources from both of those trees it isn't quite the same.) Pluse we gerneally need the Entertainers because we are a mind-using profession. (CM's especially need Entertainer services for the inevitable and massiveMind Wounds they receive from using /healmind.)
So either the interdependencies need to lessened for the Medical Professions in the interest of balanced play, or they need to be increased for the other professions. I suspect the second part of that would meet with even more resistance than the first with the general playerbase, though. As gamers we really only want so much interdependence, I think. More than that just get's to be burdensome and bothersome and un-fun (Especially if you are on at some hour when the someone with the skills you are dependent on is not around.)
Zarlor, what you're asking is to essentially close an entire resource demographic. If doctors (who are enormous consumers of resources) can get their own resources, then resource traders lose one of their biggest customers. In fact, I'd say their biggest. Other Artisans are able to harvest, they just lack the time and energy (no pun intended, but laugh it you like). Doctors, on the other hand, are a crafting profession that can't mine their own resources, so I'd say they're the BIGGEST market.
It's all about interdependency. If you can do everything your profession needs by yourself, you don't really NEED other players, and that sucks. Just like Entertainers can't heal bodily wounds without spending the skillpoints (which WOULD hack you guys off) you can't survey without spending the resources. It's all about balance and interdependancy baby.
JTGAlpha wrote:
Zarlor, what you're asking is to essentially close an entire resource demographic. If doctors (who are enormous consumers of resources) can get their own resources, then resource traders lose one of their biggest customers. In fact, I'd say their biggest. Other Artisans are able to harvest, they just lack the time and energy (no pun intended, but laugh it you like). Doctors, on the other hand, are a crafting profession that can't mine their own resources, so I'd say they're the BIGGEST market.
I would definitely have to argue that point. Docs aren;t even e blip on teh resource market. The biggest resource consumers are other artisans, primarily Armormiths, Weaponsmiths and Architects. I know. Those are the markets I can make money in trying to sell resources. The medical market is far too small. In fact I would suggest that the biggest seller to the Medic market comes from other medics who have taken surveying because they needed to. We are a non-existent market for artisans our you'd see a LOT more of our resource needs on teh market and they just aren't there.
It's all about interdependency. If you can do everything your profession needs by yourself, you don't really NEED other players, and that sucks. Just like Entertainers can't heal bodily wounds without spending the skillpoints (which WOULD hack you guys off) you can't survey without spending the resources. It's all about balance and interdependancy baby.
WHat I am saying is that I, nor do I think most Docs, have any problesm with interdependency. It's the level of interdependency forced upon the medical professions taht is the problem. You see for Artisns you can get most of your resource needs with your own skills, and you have some dep[endency on Scout resouces. For Scouts it is the same where they are dependent on you for some of their resources, but not a lot in either case. Medics, OTOH, need resources from BOTH Artisan and Scout. With no method at all for obtaining their crafting needs from their own skills. None. The only other professions in a similar boat are Smuggler and Entertainer, neither of whom need the quantities, specific resources nor the qualities of resources that we need.
There is a balance to interdependencies and for the Medical professions it is out of whack. That balance has never really existed. So the answer, IMHO< is to either balance the medical professions with some method to obtain resources or hamper the other professions by forcing dependencies on the, such as creating a seperate profession that does nothing but resource gathering and all crafters, true or hybrid, would ahve to get their recourse needs from them. Then you would have a more balanced approach to the matter.
I'm not saying there aren't any folks who service the medical market, what I'm saying is that almost all of them are already Docs or CMs using that as their method for making money. The vast majority of the resource requests you see on the forums are almost always for grinding, especially when you see those Lok Wheat requests. Anything to ground out ABECs for XP. That alone has driven the resource market far beyond the means of most Docs & CMs.
Outside of which from the other side you should see how extrememly difficult it is to get a surveyor or find a resource provider for Medical supplies. Most every resource vendor I know caters to the Smiths and Architects. That's their biggest market with the best profit margins, bar none. You don't even need to advertise in those markets because of the sheer prevalence of suppliers. More than a few of the Docs I;ve know who used to try to cater to the Medical market have mostly dropped out. THey put up some of their leftovers that they are not using for personal use, but otherwise they all cater to resources for Armor, Weapons and Buildings. That's where the money is at.
Just look at the Doc forum some time. Folks are often asking for Waypoints or where to get resources, but nobody is selling. ANd nobody is selling anything decent for 10cpu or less, and for a set of professions that have no mission terminals and only 1 product that makes an money (Stim Bs) and only 1 service that makes any money (buffing), and where for the last two you pretty much need to be a Master Doc to do successfully... let's say it all adds up.
Artisans are not getting rich off of Medics because Medics don't have the money for them to get rich off of.
Zarlor wrote:
PrincessThea wrote:
Would it be ok with the medical community if artisans were given the skill to heal themselves, without any medical skills. Ya i didnt think so.
Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that. There are some on the medical community who are very protective of the idea of healing being used anyplace else, however, there are quite a few of us who think that Stim As should be changed around so that they are useable by anyone. (Call it a Booster Shot instead of a Stim A, if you will.) It wouldn't be like giving the /healdamage skill away, but it would create a market for Medics that does not othwerwise exist. And it, frankly, wouldn't be anywhere near the capabilities of of a Medic using it, let along a Medic using a better stim. It would do in a pinch, though.
It should be noted, though, that Medics have already given up their healing abilities to a MUCH higher degree to every profession in the game. It's called the Pet Stim and anyone can use it. And it does something no Medic or Doctor and only a High Level Combat Medic can do (at least not without the rare Damage Stim loot drop)... it heals Mind Damage. And all of that is done on the primary tank for most combat groups.
Chef and Spice buffs perform a form of emergency healing as well.
So healing skills even now are not exclusive to the Medical professions.
All of that being said, though, the push on the Issue from the Doctor (or CM or Medic)side is probably a lot more complex than just getting some gimped from of survey ability. The problem is that Artisans currently do not really cater to Doctors. Some do, but it's really not enough to service the whole medicalcommunity. Prices on those resources that do get pulled up have gone through the roof with the Hologrinders, especially, and the Medical Professions, who otherwise have very limited forms of income, (heck, we don't even have mission terminals like artisans do, and let's not talk about tips) are having a very hard time of affording any of those resources. So most currently suffer though taking Artisan for the survey abilities even though it really messes with the templates pretty heavily.
The schematics are as complex, or moreso in some cases, than those of the artisan-based, or "true", crafters. So despite being a "hybrid" crafter the hoops we go through are just like those of the Artisan professions (and yeah, I've played several of them, including Mastering Artisan and Architect as well as dabbling in Chef, Merchant and Weaponsmith, just so you know I don't speak from a lack of experience.)
So the issue for the Medical professions is one of being shoved into the position of havingmany ofthe samerequirements of a true crafter, yet being lumped into the ring with the hybrid crafters who all can get their own resources for the majority (though not all, of course)of their crafting needs (Scout and Ranger /harvest) and/or have no need to worry about the stats of their resources because there is nothing to experiement on, their schematics use very general (non-named) resources and they use far less resources
than we do in thier crafting anyway.
So it's more of a question of strapping the profession with the burdens of the crafter but not given us the tools to actually perform our function. We havethe only novice professions where we cannot advance at all without turning outside of the profession. We need healing XP from other folks (nobody has any qualms with that, though, and the same is true for Entertainers on their healing line) and we need resources from Artisan and Scout skills in order tocraft anything that we need in order to do that healing to begin with (well, to heal at any decent level, at any rate, since there are those oddball /tend commands, the damage one not even giving us XP anyway.)
Now does that mean we should get /survey and /sample? No, not necessarily. Although that is seen as the easiest possible solution. However it is a pervasive problem for the profession that greatly hampers the enjoyment of the average player in that profession. (For the record, over a 2/3rds majority of Doctor players on the forumshave voted for this one issue as being on their personal list of Top 10 Issues, easily more than half of all Doctors had it in their Top 2. It really is an issue that is hurting us that badly!)
There are other possibilities to consider, though. As mentioned things like decaying survey tools, 1 shot survey droids, limited ranges, extrememly limited sample abilities or ability to only see certain stats (primarily OQ/PE/UT/DR and possibly Mal.) that are of importance to the Medical professions, a great reduction in specificity and/or quantities required of resources on our schematics. Many things could be looked at here, but it is definitely a huge problem for the medical professions and I just don't see it going away, I'm sorry to say. It's a question of balance, fairness and playability. Heck we were given that ability to some extent back in Beta with /medicalforage, but changes that made the crafting system more complex for Medics completely invalidated the usefulness of that skill.
So the problem is there, it's just a question of making sure we delineate exactly what the problem is for the Dev team and then finding some kind of viable solution to that very huge issue. If /survey is the answer then I don't have a problem with that since I really don't see Surveyors getting hit too hard by any minor loss of Doctor business that might cause anyway. But it is a core issue that does need to find some kind of resolution. What the final solution will be, though, I just don't know. All I can say is that as the Medic Correspondent I will continue to see the issue through to work with the Devs to show them how this is a huge problem for us and to see if a solution can be found.
(BTW, if my title still shows Doctor Correspondent, I'd just like folks to know that Traigus is now the Doc Corre, I'm actually the Medic Corre now. And all of the above is my personal opinion and has diddley squat to do with my being a Corre.
Stimps A are just useless if you fight something better than a gnort, why ppl will want the ability to use them? Healing 50-60 dmg every 5-10 sec it's just a waste. Every fighter that takes novice medic takes it not for the stimps-A but for the B ones and for being able to heal wounds.
With food, spices and doc buffs only novice combat professions wil need the ability of use a stimp-a but if you are in a novice state you can spend the skill points for novice medic and heal yourself.
IMO stimps-A to everyone is just useless