Combat Medic Archive

The post discussing balancing in SWG is too long, and I would like to focus on our class and its variant skill combinations. This post is disturbing in a few ways, to say the least, and since Mr. Koster wants some insight onto how we should fit on the grand scale of things, we should lend that to him before the designers completely break us due to a misconception or misunderstanding on how we actually work.

Before we begin this discussion, here are some ground rules I would like people to follow in order to keep things civil and moderated:

1. Ignore the trolls - Please do not feel inclined to answer people that want to incite flame wars and post irrelevant messages. You are not obligated to respond to them, as this is a discussion for the progression of our class and their variants, not how X killed Y or A is stronger than B.

2. If at all possible, keep your posts structured to answer the questions on the original post. Any sort of random presentation would be detrimental to the discussion.

3. Be objective and use rational thinking based on what you know, not what you assume - Nothing is more annoying than someone throwing off dozens of other people with any sorts of misinformation. It's ok to talk about something that you think might be the truth, but if the community corrects it, please do not continue to promote false information, if you feel inclined to post data that is contrary to popular beleive post hard data...logs, screenshots, numbers.

4. Keep criticism constructive - Stay away from personal attacks and pointless posts. If you can't lend something towards the discussion, please don't add anything.

5. Keep in mind that this is a discussion concerning the balancing and development of our class in all aspects of the game, not just what you are interested in.

6. If it isn't already in your signature, post your skills. Non-Combat Medics are welcome to add their insights to the discussion; this measure is to keep whiners and trolls at bay.

With these guidelines in mind, we should be able to have a productive discussion/debate. If a moderator can make this sticky so it doesn't get lost in all the nerf posts, it would be much appreciated =)

The Original Post is found on the SWG Main Discussion Forums.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=366138

So after all the threads I've participated in today, a better picture has started to emerge for me as to why so many folks are upset with our changes, and why we seem out of synch with you guys on several issues.

So here's what I'd like to do: I am going to list off some premises, and hopefully we can come to agreement on them. Some of these premises are going to seem blatantly false to you, and that is why I want to discuss them here.

1. A red con is supposed to be extremely difficult to kill; you should die 95% of the time when you tackle it. In practice, a white con is supposed to be an even match, meaning a 50/50 fight. The actual difficulty of reds actually is supposed to increase the higher you advance, but the basic premise remains.

2. Devs have to adjust player capabilities to the level of the game data, not the other way around. I ask for your buy-in on this because it's really important. We set up the game data based on certain assumptions. There's a lot of game data and it's all interrelated. If we avoid nerfing by always raising the stats of everything that is worse off than something overpowered, then we make all the creature stats, HAM costs, creature damage values, item stats, resource costs, maintenance costs, and so on down the chain become invalid. Sometimes, we can adjust this relatively easily--creature stats and damage comes to mind, because they are derived mathematically. Other times, we can't--adjusting all the experimental values on each item is an example of that case--we have to update each schematic individually.

3. A lot of players (certain professions, but also "multiclassers" who have figured out good templates) are killing reds with ease and think this is how it is supposed to be. I offer this up just as a factoid. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that an assumption has arisen in entire professions at once. These guys get upset when we keep circling around to nerf them--I can't blame them.

4. A lot of players are not powergamers, and have no idea how this is being done. This means that they see us "ignoring them" in their demands for increased power, when in fact we see them as being correct in their power. They also see the things that they are striving for, like the T21, getting nerfed in front of them right before they reach it, or before they've figured out how to use it to devastating effect, or when they're using it just to play at a "normal" level so they don't realize how it could be used as the equivalent of a small nuke.

5. Players have defined baseline advancement assuming the killing of things they shouldn't be able to kill. This has all sorts of perception ramifications. For example, the assertion that there's no high-level PvE content--if you're fighting that far above your level, that's effectively true. Or the perception that grouping doesn't provide benefits (mathematical illustration: you're supposed to be killing lvl 10 whites solo for 1000xp, or dying to level 30 reads worth 6000xp, or killing them in groups of 3 and each getting 2000xp for tackling the mob which cons white to the group. But instead, you're used to soloing the lvl 30 for 6000xp. When you group up, you perceive diminished returns). Or the perception that a given profession is underpowered--when in fact it might be "right" and the problem is that something else is overpowered.

There's probably more basic premises I could list, but these seem like a good baseline to discuss. We need to have a baseline, or else we'll always be caught in "nerfland" without discussing the actual issues. One of the things we noticed from the correspondent material, for example, was that every single combat profession said they were underpowered or gimped, except for pistoleer. Our approach on that, frankly, would be "pistoleers are probably too powerful," not to elevate everyone else. But I bet you guys saw it the exact opposite way.

How accurate do you feel these basic premises are? I can tell you that the devs have been assuming #1, and #2, in their entirety, and intend to keep doing so, because without them we're lost at sea. We need to have solid baselines that don't move. All our decisions have been based on those premises. We also know that the first half of #3 is accurate ("a lot of players are killing reds with ease").

A valuable experiment to do in this thread wouldbe for you guys to each post here telling me which professions "feel right," which are underpowered, and which are overpowered, based on your assumptions of how the game should be played. That would actually be really useful to us.

Now, I'm going to dinner, but I hope to see lots of posts later tonight.

PS, the dev tracker should be showing my posts again.

-Raph Koster, Creative Director

BUMP please make this sticky, good work Merrin.

I really dont see us as overpowered at all in PvE which is what is Holo's most precious baby. we are functioning exactly as i think the devs intended. in PvE we are by NO means overpowered. as a matter of fact, it is my belief that the time and resources required to make our packs makes us an underpowered class compared to others that can run a destroy mission and buy a cheap weapon instead of spending hours sitting with factories, harvesters, and crafting stations to get ourselves to work...

in PvP now that the TEF bug is fixed, the only exploit i see needing fixes, is the LOS into a building from outside or vice versa. non-los OVER a building should still be allowed cause these things arent like the empire state building and I can definitely throw something overr them... as far as mind poisons go, the simple way to keep us balanced is with an equally effective doctor counter. in my experience, it is so hard to make these damned packs that they should NOT be removed or nerfed down any further. if you choose not to fight with a doctor, you choose to be my fodder when you get poisoned, simple as that. people need to realize that doctors counter and balance CMs and that they are as necessary to group success as we are. forgetting that and calling for a nerf to our poisons is asinine whining and trolling

My thoughts on this are mixed. I feel allthese issues are linked. A big part of the problem is... as far as I'm aware nobody really knows how the consider system works and why something cons the way it does. Alot of it has to do with how high your skill is in the weapon you're currently holding - apparently, that's all it's based on in fact. If I'm holding a CDEF carbine, a mob cons the same as if I'm holding my extremely high quality DH17 short, or my EE3 or E11.If I surrendered all my medic skills, creatures would still con the same as they do - even though right nowI can Stim B or Stim C myself for 40% to 100% healing every 5 seconds (depending on luck and stimquality).This is a big problem in gauging the difficulty of a con and the power of a player because people can use multiple weapons, traps, heals, specials, and buffs - but the con system doesn't integrate that in any way.

That said:a hardred will squash just about anyone in a head-on slugfest. People generally beat reds by fighting smart, not by being crushingly uber.

The classic example would be a BH, using underhand shot with a carbine then switching to a scatter pistol for bodyshot 2 or eye shot for higher DPS than carbines deal. Another example is my own soloing tactic - I use a carbine, pick a mob that can't massively outrun me, and use actionshot and suppression fire to posture-down and 'root' it while I stay at distance and deal damage. I rarely ever get hit, even against high-HAMred cons. But that's because I'm fighting smart, not because I'm overpowered. I could do this more effectively stillwith adhesive mesh or phen dart traps, if I had them.

To steal a line from Spaceballs, "players will always triumph because mobs are dumb." If the devs are going to nerf everything that players use tactically to gain advantages in PvE, then everything will be nerfed to uselessness. Being able to use tactics to fight smart in ways that really make a differenceis a good thing. The solutions, in my mind, would be the make mobs smarter and/or change the consider system to take into accountsupport/secondary skills (trapping, medic, other weapons you can use) in some way.

If the devs keep nerfing smart fighting tactics, however, look for a majorincrease in demand for medical characters of all sorts and a huge demand for buffs. In a dumb fighting environment, like EQ or AO where most of the good tactics were soundly nerfed, the only things that matter are enoughhitpoints to survive two hits for the tank, and thenhealing per second and damage per second for the rest of the team.

But EQ and AO style fighting isn't very interesting - it's just outsmarting the dumb mobs in a different (more straightforward) way and basically turns every encounter into an exercise in mathematics instead of an exercise in tactics. "If I have 15 people dealing an average of 70 damage per second each it will take usX minutes to chew through the 34,000 hitpoints on mob Y."

I'm not a combat medic; my related skills are 4-3-4-4 Medic, 0-4-4-4 Marksman, and 0-0-0-1 Carbineer.

i don't get what Holo wants from us, shall we post if those points are valid baselines or not, or if this is the way things are right now?

as for valid baselines, he saids them, and if he does, they are valid. period.

other than that, i have a few coments on all of them:

1.) thething is, that no matter what con it is, every mob has strenghts and weaknesses. a smart player looks for those weaknesses and abuses them to the point that he is able to defeat the mob while dodging his strengths. like: you don't fight an ATST with ranged attacks, you get him pinned down with melee pets and posture down attacks. I am sure, there are supposed to be defenses that prevent us from applying states to higher cons, but these are not "level" based and for the most parts they are not working at all, just like they are not working for us players. For CM that means: it should be harder to apply a poison to a red con Tusken King than to a blue con Tusken King. The problem is, CM skills do not count for the con at all so there is no way to apply that rule right away.

2.) if this means (mind) poison schematics need a total balance pass than do so.

3.) this derives from the thesis i made in point 1: player are using the weakness in certain things to beat them. Certain setups make certain enemies look very weak. The thing should not be to nerf the viability of those player setups but to fix the AI, where nessecary and to fix the bugs that partialy allow those setups to be successful. Of course you can not eliminate every weakness a mob has because this would make them unbeatable. But if you don't want me to dizzy and lunge a red con, than put in level based resists (or make them work) to prevent that

4.) no idea how to handle this, i am a powergamer.

5.) basicly, in the weeks post release we were forced to advance on red cons because f.i. lvl 10 faction missions spawned lvl 30 enemies and BH missions still only spawn red cons.

so does feel CM overpowered?

we start as Medic and for most of our progression we are forced to rely on our Medic skills which only changes when we hit Master CM.

there are multiple problems causing this, that are all stated across this board but essentialy this is reduced to bugs and to 1 design issue that all crafting classes have in comon (except Doc's):

we start over with our skills at Novice Combat Medic and our Medic Skills are not at Master level (i.e. it requires Master Doc crafting to reach that)

if we could make A - C packs with full assembly/experimentation at the level we get them, they could turn out usefull than, but the way it is, they are not. Of course you could buy A-B packs from a Master CM and they would be more powerfull and maybe even usefull but that is not practicable because we need the crafting exp and are already lacking there. The Assembly- and Experimentation-Skill-System is neat but it wrecks the CM class and every crafting class that relies on it (all minus Tailor/Architect?) in terms of usefullness of not-mastered Skills.

As long as a Master CM makes better A packs than a Novice, this will remain an issue. If you buff up the A packs so they get better at Novice, they will get godly at Master, making B/C packs underpowered in comparision. Unchain this assembly/experimentation from the Skill-level and you can balance them and make the novice level comparibly usefull. A Carbineer does not start over either.

Marwin T'an - Master CM - Gorath

Mycroft T'Han - Master CM - Beta/Bria

oh, and also... i posted a much more thorough argument of this in holos post, but guess what guys. if the devs had released a complete game this wouldnt be an issue and we wouldnt be here arguing about balance issues.

<P><STRONG>1. A red con is supposed to be extremely difficult to kill; you should die 95% of the time when you tackle it.</STRONG> In practice, a white con is supposed to be an even match, meaning a 50/50 fight. The actual difficulty of reds actually is supposed to increase the higher you advance, but the basic premise remains.</P>
<P>The fact that this is the first premise that he makes in his post is worrisome. Currently the mob "conning" system works based on your weapon certifications. This system is flawed - it does not take into account the following variables</P>
<UL>
<LI>Your capability to sustain damage, aka tank. </LI>
<UL>
<LI>What armor you are wearing</LI>
<LI>What stat enhancements you have in effect</LI>
<LI>Armor enhancements</LI>
<LI>Skill Enhancing Attachments</LI>
<LI>Toughness modifiers found in brawler professions</LI>
<LI>Defense modifiers found in most professions</LI>
<LI>The ability of players and mobs to <STRONG>heal</STRONG>, which is why there are so many dabblers in Medic.</LI></UL>
<LI>It also does not take into account your "true" damage output.</LI>
<UL>
<LI>Weapons vary with resources. One weapon might be poor while it's counterpart on another server could be quite exceptional.</LI>
<LI>Weapon enhancemnts</LI>
<LI>Stat enhancements increase your style efficiency, in other words reduce your HAM cost for special attacks,</LI>
<LI>Poison is not taken into account, and also contributes to damage.</LI>
<LI>Effects of special attacks are not calculated. Knockdown, posture changes and states all significantly weigh encounters for or against players.</LI></UL>
<LI>Like players, mobs are subject to these same variables. I know some low CL things that will kick the tar out of other things high above them, or against certain opponents.</LI></UL>
<P>What this means for me personally:</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<P>I am a Master Doctor, Master Combat Medic, Specialist Carbineer. All my skills complement each other and I have learned to use them for maximum effect. Since I am only a Specialist Carbineer and the weapon I use has a certification that is quite low (DH17 Short Carbine), a good majorty of the game cons red to me. If I was soley a Specialist Carbineer, the system for conning should work. However, when used in conjunction with my other professions, I can deal with a lot of mobs solo that con "red" to me. According to Premise #1, this makes me overpowered and in need of balancing...but is not actually the case because:</P>
<UL dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<LI>Enhancements increase my survivability significantly and allow me to perform multiple actions at high rates of efficiency in terms of HAM costs.</LI>
<LI>Poisons and Bleeds augment my damage, giving my character a DPS ratio far higher than the game assumes for a "Specialist Carbineer with DH17 Short Carbine"</LI>
<LI>Skill Enhancement Attachments augment my passive abilities, such as defense, accuracy, speed and effectiveness.</LI></UL></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<P dir=ltr>So a Fambaa cons "red" to me, sure. On paper it should quite easily smash me to a pulp if I decided to attack it. In practice, these <EM>uncalculated</EM> factors turn the "extremely difficult" encounter into something trivial. Do I randomly flail at my target to kill it? No. I use all my skills to maximum effect to minimize risk to my character and obtain maximum DPS against my target. This is not <EM>overpowered and in need of balancing</EM>, this is <STRONG>smart gameplay</STRONG>. Players who are true Masters of their skills - in the gameplay, not profession sense - should not be punished for knowing how to play their class.</P>
<P dir=ltr> </P></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P dir=ltr><STRONG>2. Devs have to adjust player capabilities to the level of the game data, not the other way around.</STRONG> I ask for your buy-in on this because it's really important. We set up the game data based on certain assumptions. There's a lot of game data and it's all interrelated. If we avoid nerfing by always raising the stats of everything that is worse off than something overpowered, then we make all the creature stats, HAM costs, creature damage values, item stats, resource costs, maintenance costs, and so on down the chain become invalid. Sometimes, we can adjust this relatively easily--creature stats and damage comes to mind, because they are derived mathematically. Other times, we can't--adjusting all the experimental values on each item is an example of that case--we have to update each schematic individually.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Combat Medics have not been <EM>directly</EM> affected by this yet as a class, but it is possible that somewhere down the road someone will decide that AE stims are too powerful in PvE and reduce the effectiveness, or increase the resources needed to make one. They could decide the range on stims is not enough and increase it. Personally, for the sake of all medic classes, I would like to see some changes in order to maintain our "identity" as a healing class. As you well know, a great amount of players are "dabbling" in Novice Medic, some are going further to gain skills or acess to certain medical products.</P>
<UL dir=ltr>
<LI>
<DIV>The problem here for Combat Medics is in the form of Skill Enhancement Attachments. These are quite valuable, and rightly so. Why are they valuable, and why are they a problem?</DIV></LI>
<UL>
<LI>
<DIV>SEAs can increase certain skills by up to 25 points.</DIV></LI>
<LI>
<DIV>/healdamage is a skill at Novice Medic</DIV></LI>
<LI>
<DIV>By extension, a dabbler in Novice Medic could go out and get +100 combat medicine use, effectiveness and range and basically heal for the same amounts as a Master Combat Medic.</DIV></LI>
<LI>
<DIV>Another example would be a Master Medic getting Novice Combat Medic for /applypoison, then getting SEAs to effectively hold the same offensive power as a Master Combat Medic.</DIV></LI>
<LI>
<DIV>As the game progresses, SEAs will become more common and you will see things like Master BHs that heal as well as any Master Combat Medic.</DIV></LI>
<LI>
<DIV>Master Doctors Could feasibly get Master Pistoleer and be a Master Combat Medic as well through use of SEAs.</DIV></LI>
<LI>
<DIV>You can see the problem arising here. Why spend precious skillpoints on things you can get with a decent investment in SEAs? You can get that survey you always wanted, or pick up extra combat or trade skills instead.</DIV></LI></UL>
<LI>
<DIV>There is a simple solution for this: Create a certification-type system so that dabblers cannot reach this point. You don't want Novice Combat Medics tossing Poison Cs? Make Poison Cs a Master Combat Medic "certification".</DIV></LI>
<UL>
<LI>
<DIV>Best way to do this is to just add new skills, like /applypoisonC or /healareaC.</DIV></LI>
<LI>
<DIV>Of course initial implementation of these skill would most likely cause a slew of bugs, but I am fine with that as long as they work...eventually.</DIV></LI></UL>
<LI>
<DIV>Personally if it comes down to SEAs and dabblers not being addressed, I am going to make a 60000 use schematic of everything, then drop Master Doc to Revive/Curestate levels, and Master Combat Medic to Apply Disease levels. I will then get Master Carbineer and the TKA meditation line.</DIV></LI></UL>
<P> </P>
<P><STRONG>3. A lot of players (certain professions, but also "multiclassers" who have figured out good templates) are killing reds with ease and think this is how it is supposed to be.</STRONG> I offer this up just as a factoid. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that an assumption has arisen in entire professions at once. These guys get upset when we keep circling around to nerf them--I can't blame them.</P>
<P>Here is a nice little fallback plan, basically allowing them to say "<EM>You aren't supposed to be able to do this, this wasn't intended in the first place".</EM> It reeks of Mythic Entertainment actually. The designers can disregard the fact that smart and experienced players with the right skillsets and equipment have, <EM>in addition to their weapon, </EM>come up with established methods that can drastically increase their combat effectiveness. They can say "Y<EM>ou are using this gun, which makes this mob con red to you. The skills, tactics and equipment you are using are therefore deemed overpowered and not intended to be used in such a manner. Here is some 'balancing'. Thank you for playing SWG and have a great day."</EM></P>
<P>I have no clue what the "vision" of SWG ultimately is, but based on designer statements and trends are going, it is an ugly one. How does this affect Combat Medics? With 169 skill points to acheive mastery, and 232 skillpoints for those that want to master Doctor as well, it leaves us with little room to specialize in a combat skill. I will always be stuck with my little non-elite marksman weapons and the majority of the game will con red to me, even if they end up being trivial encounters. Nerf waiting to happen if the designers don't realize all the factors that go into practical mob encounters? You bet.</P>
<P> </P>
<P><STRONG>4. A lot of players are not powergamers, and have no idea how this is being done.</STRONG> This means that they see us "ignoring them" in their demands for increased power, when in fact we see them as being correct in their power. They also see the things that they are striving for, like the T21, getting nerfed in front of them right before they reach it, or before they've figured out how to use it to devastating effect, or when they're using it just to play at a "normal" level so they don't realize how it could be used as the equivalent of a small nuke.</P>
<P>This is a common problem in all MMOs to date - Powergamer vs Casual Gamer. For me, being a powergamer doesn't necessarily mean they spend 6+ hours a day playing. Under the same reasoning, a casual gamer could spend 8 hours sitting in the cantina chatting and 1 hour out killing things. They could be extraordinarily talented players who know their characters and how to use them to maximum effect, or really stupid players that have a glutton for punishment. So far, I believe the devs have done *ok* for the most part, with a few glaring exceptions. With the game only being two months old and minimal major changes being done thus far, I can't really make a solid comment on how they are doing overall and how it will affect the long term.</P>
<P> </P>
<P><STRONG>5. Players have defined baseline advancement assuming the killing of things they shouldn't be able to kill.</STRONG> This has all sorts of perception ramifications. For example, the assertion that there's no high-level PvE content--if you're fighting that far above your level, that's effectively true. Or the perception that grouping doesn't provide benefits (mathematical illustration: you're supposed to be killing lvl 10 whites solo for 1000xp, or dying to level 30 reads worth 6000xp, or killing them in groups of 3 and each getting 2000xp for tackling the mob which cons white to the group. But instead, you're used to soloing the lvl 30 for 6000xp. When you group up, you perceive diminished returns). Or the perception that a given profession is underpowered--when in fact it might be "right" and the problem is that something else is overpowered.</P>
<P>This is sort of saying the same thing as #3 except clarifying it further. Sort of a statement saying <EM>"You can't say we didn't warn you"</EM>. It gives the designers the "power" to do anything they see as "correct" according to their vision of what the game should be like. They already have the power in terms of turning the game upside down and inside out, all they need is an excuse that players can't do anything about directly (aside from cancelling their accounts).</P>
<P> </P>
<P><STRONG>Summary of my Post:</STRONG></P>
<P>Designers are certainly not all knowing, and quite prone to errors in judgement and outright mistakes. If we are really unlucky we can end up with designers that think they know all and are always right no matter how apparent their flaws are to everyone else. Regardless of the whining about "playing a beta", MMOs that are consistently updated will always have this problem to one degree or another. They do not have the collective pool of talent and "testers" of the live servers combined, and they never will. Something that will slip by the group of people in Internal Testing becomes something that the dozens of players on TC may be able to filter out. TC will never be able to filter out everything because they simply don't have the sheer playerbase of the live servers. Though they may gradually refine their processes, there will always be oversights and bugs that will appear on live servers. </P>
<P>By the designer's own judgement, if they see <STRONG>#1</STRONG>, they will put <STRONG>#2 </STRONG>into effect. Players can complain, but they have credibility because of <STRONG>#3, 4</STRONG> and <STRONG>5</STRONG>. As players, the only thing we can do is attempt to influence their perception of <STRONG>#1</STRONG> so they will implement <STRONG>#2</STRONG> as effectively as possible.</P>

Hooray for buggy boards...someone care to clean that up for me? I keep getting some wierd error.

remove the html tags

get VB boards or anything other than this crap

I wrote that post using the built-in graphical editor too =(

1. A red con is supposed to be extremely difficult to kill; you should die 95% of the time when you tackle it. In practice, a white con is supposed to be an even match, meaning a 50/50 fight. The actual difficulty of reds actually is supposed to increase the higher you advance, but the basic premise remains.

The fact that this is the first premise that he makes in his post is worrisome. Currently the mob "conning" system works based on your weapon certifications. This system is flawed - it does not take into account the following variables

• Your capability to sustain damage, aka tank.




• What armor you are wearing


• What stat enhancements you have in effect


• Armor enhancements


• Skill Enhancing Attachments


• Toughness modifiers found in brawler professions


• Defense modifiers found in most professions


• The ability of players and mobs to heal, which is why there are so many dabblers in Medic.


• It also does not take into account your "true" damage output.




• Weapons vary with resources. One weapon might be poor while it's counterpart on another server could be quite exceptional.


• Weapon enhancemnts


• Stat enhancements increase your style efficiency, in other words reduce your HAM cost for special attacks,


• Poison is not taken into account, and also contributes to damage.


• Effects of special attacks are not calculated. Knockdown, posture changes and states all significantly weigh encounters for or against players.


• Like players, mobs are subject to these same variables. I know some low CL things that will kick the tar out of other things high above them, or against certain opponents.

What this means for me personally:

I am a Master Doctor, Master Combat Medic, Specialist Carbineer. All my skills complement each other and I have learned to use them for maximum effect. Since I am only a Specialist Carbineer and the weapon I use has a certification that is quite low (DH17 Short Carbine), a good majorty of the game cons red to me. If I was soley a Specialist Carbineer, the system for conning should work. However, when used in conjunction with my other professions, I can deal with a lot of mobs solo that con "red" to me. According to Premise #1, this makes me overpowered and in need of balancing...but is not actually the case because:

Enhancements increase my survivability significantly and allow me to perform multiple actions at high rates of efficiency in terms of HAM costs.

Poisons and Bleeds augment my damage, giving my character a DPS ratio far higher than the game assumes for a "Specialist Carbineer with DH17 Short Carbine"

Skill Enhancement Attachments augment my passive abilities, such as defense, accuracy, speed and effectiveness.

So a Fambaa cons "red" to me, sure. On paper it should quite easily smash me to a pulp if I decided to attack it. In practice, these uncalculated factors turn the "extremely difficult" encounter into something trivial. Do I randomly flail at my target to kill it? No. I use all my skills to maximum effect to minimize risk to my character and obtain maximum DPS against my target. This is not overpowered and in need of balancing, this is smart gameplay. Players who are true Masters of their skills - in the gameplay, not profession sense - should not be punished for knowing how to play their class.

2. Devs have to adjust player capabilities to the level of the game data, not the other way around. I ask for your buy-in on this because it's really important. We set up the game data based on certain assumptions. There's a lot of game data and it's all interrelated. If we avoid nerfing by always raising the stats of everything that is worse off than something overpowered, then we make all the creature stats, HAM costs, creature damage values, item stats, resource costs, maintenance costs, and so on down the chain become invalid. Sometimes, we can adjust this relatively easily--creature stats and damage comes to mind, because they are derived mathematically. Other times, we can't--adjusting all the experimental values on each item is an example of that case--we have to update each schematic individually.

Combat Medics have not been directly affected by this yet as a class, but it is possible that somewhere down the road someone will decide that AE stims are too powerful in PvE and reduce the effectiveness, or increase the resources needed to make one. They could decide the range on stims is not enough and increase it. Personally, for the sake of all medic classes, I would like to see some changes in order to maintain our "identity" as a healing class. As you well know, a great amount of players are "dabbling" in Novice Medic, some are going further to gain skills or acess to certain medical products.

The problem here for Combat Medics is in the form of Skill Enhancement Attachments. These are quite valuable, and rightly so. Why are they valuable, and why are they a problem?

• 
  
  SEAs can increase certain skills by up to 25 points.


• 
  
  /healdamage is a skill at Novice Medic


• 
  
  By extension, a dabbler in Novice Medic could go out and get +100 combat medicine use, effectiveness and range and basically heal for the same amounts as a Master Combat Medic.


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  Another example would be a Master Medic getting Novice Combat Medic for /applypoison, then getting SEAs to effectively hold the same offensive power as a Master Combat Medic.


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  As the game progresses, SEAs will become more common and you will see things like Master BHs that heal as well as any Master Combat Medic.


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  Master Doctors Could feasibly get Master Pistoleer and be a Master Combat Medic as well through use of SEAs.


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  You can see the problem arising here. Why spend precious skillpoints on things you can get with a decent investment in SEAs? You can get that survey you always wanted, or pick up extra combat or trade skills instead.

There is a simple solution for this: Create a certification-type system so that dabblers cannot reach this point. You don't want Novice Combat Medics tossing Poison Cs? Make Poison Cs a Master Combat Medic "certification".

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  Best way to do this is to just add new skills, like /applypoisonC or /healareaC.


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  Of course initial implementation of these skill would most likely cause a slew of bugs, but I am fine with that as long as they work...eventually.

Personally if it comes down to SEAs and dabblers not being addressed, I am going to make a 60000 use schematic of everything, then drop Master Doc to Revive/Curestate levels, and Master Combat Medic to Apply Disease levels. I will then get Master Carbineer and the TKA meditation line.

3. A lot of players (certain professions, but also "multiclassers" who have figured out good templates) are killing reds with ease and think this is how it is supposed to be. I offer this up just as a factoid. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that an assumption has arisen in entire professions at once. These guys get upset when we keep circling around to nerf them--I can't blame them.

Here is a nice little fallback plan, basically allowing them to say "You aren't supposed to be able to do this, this wasn't intended in the first place". It reeks of Mythic Entertainment actually. The designers can disregard the fact that smart and experienced players with the right skillsets and equipment have, in addition to their weapon, come up with established methods that can drastically increase their combat effectiveness. They can say "You are using this gun, which makes this mob con red to you. The skills, tactics and equipment you are using are therefore deemed overpowered and not intended to be used in such a manner. Here is some 'balancing'. Thank you for playing SWG and have a great day."

I have no clue what the "vision" of SWG ultimately is, but based on designer statements and trends are going, it is an ugly one. How does this affect Combat Medics? With 169 skill points to acheive mastery, and 232 skillpoints for those that want to master Doctor as well, it leaves us with little room to specialize in a combat skill. I will always be stuck with my little non-elite marksman weapons and the majority of the game will con red to me, even if they end up being trivial encounters. Nerf waiting to happen if the designers don't realize all the factors that go into practical mob encounters? You bet.

4. A lot of players are not powergamers, and have no idea how this is being done. This means that they see us "ignoring them" in their demands for increased power, when in fact we see them as being correct in their power. They also see the things that they are striving for, like the T21, getting nerfed in front of them right before they reach it, or before they've figured out how to use it to devastating effect, or when they're using it just to play at a "normal" level so they don't realize how it could be used as the equivalent of a small nuke.

This is a common problem in all MMOs to date - Powergamer vs Casual Gamer. For me, being a powergamer doesn't necessarily mean they spend 6+ hours a day playing. Under the same reasoning, a casual gamer could spend 8 hours sitting in the cantina chatting and 1 hour out killing things. They could be extraordinarily talented players who know their characters and how to use them to maximum effect, or really stupid players that have a glutton for punishment. So far, I believe the devs have done *ok* for the most part, with a few glaring exceptions. With the game only being two months old and minimal major changes being done thus far, I can't really make a solid comment on how they are doing overall and how it will affect the long term.

5. Players have defined baseline advancement assuming the killing of things they shouldn't be able to kill. This has all sorts of perception ramifications. For example, the assertion that there's no high-level PvE content--if you're fighting that far above your level, that's effectively true. Or the perception that grouping doesn't provide benefits (mathematical illustration: you're supposed to be killing lvl 10 whites solo for 1000xp, or dying to level 30 reads worth 6000xp, or killing them in groups of 3 and each getting 2000xp for tackling the mob which cons white to the group. But instead, you're used to soloing the lvl 30 for 6000xp. When you group up, you perceive diminished returns). Or the perception that a given profession is underpowered--when in fact it might be "right" and the problem is that something else is overpowered.

This is sort of saying the same thing as #3 except clarifying it further. Sort of a statement saying "You can't say we didn't warn you". It gives the designers the "power" to do anything they see as "correct" according to their vision of what the game should be like. They already have the power in terms of turning the game upside down and inside out, all they need is an excuse that players can't do anything about directly (aside from cancelling their accounts).

Summary of my Post:

Designers are certainly not all knowing, and quite prone to errors in judgement and outright mistakes. If we are really unlucky we can end up with designers that think they know all and are always right no matter how apparent their flaws are to everyone else. Regardless of the whining about "playing a beta", MMOs that are consistently updated will always have this problem to one degree or another. They do not have the collective pool of talent and "testers" of the live servers combined, and they never will. Something that will slip by the group of people in Internal Testing becomes something that the dozens of players on TC may be able to filter out. TC will never be able to filter out everything because they simply don't have the sheer playerbase of the live servers. Though they may gradually refine their processes, there will always be oversights and bugs that will appear on live servers.

By the designer's own judgement, if they see #1, they will put #2 into effect. Players can complain, but they have credibility because of #3, 4 and 5. As players, the only thing we can do is attempt to influence their perception of #1 so they will implement #2 as effectively as possible.