Combat Medic Archive
Thread: /medicalForage proposal
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MasterNerfSlayer
Mon Nov 22, 2004 6:28 pm
#1
The current state of the Medic profession does not allow for anew player to level in medic or make any money without support from other professions. To the players, this is a major oversight, and an unacceptable scenario that continues to this day. Novice medic is neither able to make money, craft the items he has schematics for, or in general have any fun whatsoever. Medic is the only profession where this interdepence occurs immediately at novice, and is major gating for new players who just want to be pure Medics.
Holocron once proposed that /medicalForage would be altered to allow a medic to pickup things like globules of bacta, small plants and bugs, akin to what a scout can pick up with /forage, except that these items would not be useful on their own, but be used in medical schematics.
What I propose is a change to /medicalForage and the stimpack schematics to firstly give a novice medic the ability to make the items granted at novice without any reliance on other professions (which is only fair), and promote more diversity and fun in the medic profession.
Things that need to be done are:
- /medicalForage should be enhanced to pickup new items added with the loot revamp, directed purely at medic. These items are crafting components that would add things like perhaps state cures, or mini buffs (eg. 1 - 50 pts for 300 seconds), or minor innoculations (eg. 5% resistance for 600 seconds). These items would of course have serial numbers to prevent mass manufacture.
- The unit count that /medicalForage picks up should be changed to a random number between 1 to 4, or possibly 6, to remove most of the frustration of trying to find the same resource over and over 1 unit at a time, but to prevent the command being abused as a replacement for Artisan survey. The type of unit collected would also still be random. I refer to the collected item as a unit because /medicalForage should be altered to allow the collection of minerals. This would remove the dependence of a novice medic on an Artisan, but not allow high end mass production further on in the Medics career.
- The next thing to do is to alter the stimpack schematics to allow for loot enhancements as additions to the item, rather than a replacement like Janta blood, so that one could possibly make a more powerful stim with added abilities. The chance that /medicalForage picks up a loot item should be fairly rare, as most of the loot items should come from creature / npc loot supplied by other players, but still allowing the novice to do something other than make pure stims. Perhaps some items like plants, bugs and bacta might be collectable with /medicalForage, and production enhancements like tubes of XXX that add some kind of ability might be loot, or even possibly craftable by Bio-Engineers.
These changes only address the ability of a novice medic to make stims and heal players without reliance on other professions. A method of making money exists for the other professions via mission terminals, and the Medic community feels that we should have terminals devoted to healing missions as not only a method of generating an income, but also as content. Healing players is currently the only content Medics have, and as such there is no "PvE" content for us. There are already a number of threads devoted to devising content for these terminals should the developers be willing to add them.
Please feel free to comment on this proposal of making the Medic profession more fun, especially for the new player.
MasterNerfSlayer
Mon Nov 22, 2004 6:29 pm
#2
The current state of the Medic profession does not allow for anew player to level in medic or make any money without support from other professions. To the players, this is a major oversight, and an unacceptable scenario that continues to this day. Novice medic is neither able to make money, craft the items he has schematics for, or in general have any fun whatsoever. Medic is the only profession where this interdepence occurs immediately at novice, and is major gating for new players who just want to be pure Medics.
Holocron once proposed that /medicalForage would be altered to allow a medic to pickup things like globules of bacta, small plants and bugs, akin to what a scout can pick up with /forage, except that these items would not be useful on their own, but be used in medical schematics.
What I propose is a change to /medicalForage and the stimpack schematics to firstly give a novice medic the ability to make the items granted at novice without any reliance on other professions (which is only fair), and promote more diversity and fun in the medic profession.
Things that need to be done are:
- /medicalForage should be enhanced to pickup new items added with the loot revamp, directed purely at medic. These items are crafting components that would add things like perhaps state cures, or mini buffs (eg. 1 - 50 pts for 300 seconds), or minor innoculations (eg. 5% resistance for 600 seconds). These items would of course have serial numbers to prevent mass manufacture.
- The unit count that /medicalForage picks up should be changed to a random number between 1 to 4, or possibly 6, to remove most of the frustration of trying to find the same resource over and over 1 unit at a time, but to prevent the command being abused as a replacement for Artisan survey. The type of unit collected would also still be random. I refer to the collected item as a unit because /medicalForage should be altered to allow the collection of minerals. This would remove the dependence of a novice medic on an Artisan, but not allow high end mass production further on in the Medics career.
- The next thing to do is to alter the stimpack schematics to allow for loot enhancements as additions to the item, rather than a replacement like Janta blood, so that one could possibly make a more powerful stim with added abilities. The chance that /medicalForage picks up a loot item should be fairly rare, as most of the loot items should come from creature / npc loot supplied by other players, but still allowing the novice to do something other than make pure stims. Perhaps some items like plants, bugs and bacta might be collectable with /medicalForage, and production enhancements like tubes of XXX that add some kind of ability might be loot, or even possibly craftable by Bio-Engineers.
These changes only address the ability of a novice medic to make stims and heal players without reliance on other professions. A method of making money exists for the other professions via mission terminals, and the Medic community feels that we should have terminals devoted to healing missions as not only a method of generating an income, but also as content. Healing players is currently the only content Medics have, and as such there is no "PvE" content for us. There are already a number of threads devoted to devising content for these terminals should the developers be willing to add them.
Please feel free to comment on this proposal of making the Medic profession more fun, especially for the new player.
Jagii
Mon Nov 22, 2004 7:04 pm
#3
The two ideas you present - medic missions and a revamped /medicalforage system - are good ideas to help out new medics. But is it realistic to expect either one (or even both) to be implemented in the game?
Even a simpler /medicalforage system would be nice, where you just pick up a small number of units of organic or inorganic resources per use. However, to make the ability such that it does not become obsolete and useful to all medic-associated professions (doctor, combat medic, and bio-engineer), I think the idea of medic-directed loot and forageable enhancements MUST also be considered.
= Andrew
Chilastra.Palacek
Even a simpler /medicalforage system would be nice, where you just pick up a small number of units of organic or inorganic resources per use. However, to make the ability such that it does not become obsolete and useful to all medic-associated professions (doctor, combat medic, and bio-engineer), I think the idea of medic-directed loot and forageable enhancements MUST also be considered.
= Andrew
Chilastra.Palacek
MasterNerfSlayer
Mon Nov 22, 2004 7:14 pm
#4
The current state of the Medic profession does not allow for anew player to level in medic or make any money without support from other professions. To the players, this is a major oversight, and an unacceptable scenario that continues to this day. Novice medic is neither able to make money, craft the items he has schematics for, or in general have any fun whatsoever. Medic is the only profession where this interdepence occurs immediately at novice, and is major gating for new players who just want to be pure Medics.
Holocron once proposed that /medicalForage would be altered to allow a medic to pickup things like globules of bacta, small plants and bugs, akin to what a scout can pick up with /forage, except that these items would not be useful on their own, but be used in medical schematics.
What I propose is a change to /medicalForage and the stimpack schematics to firstly give a novice medic the ability to make the items granted at novice without any reliance on other professions (which is only fair), and promote more diversity and fun in the medic profession.
Things that need to be done are:
- /medicalForage should be enhanced to pickup new items added with the loot revamp, directed purely at medic. These items are crafting components that would add things like perhaps state cures, or mini buffs (eg. 1 - 50 pts for 300 seconds), or minor innoculations (eg. 5% resistance for 600 seconds). These items would of course have serial numbers to prevent mass manufacture.
- The unit count that /medicalForage picks up should be changed to a random number between 1 to 4, or possibly 6, to remove most of the frustration of trying to find the same resource over and over 1 unit at a time, but to prevent the command being abused as a replacement for Artisan survey. The type of unit collected would also still be random. I refer to the collected item as a unit because /medicalForage should be altered to allow the collection of minerals. This would remove the dependence of a novice medic on an Artisan, but not allow high end mass production further on in the Medics career.
- The next thing to do is to alter the stimpack schematics to allow for loot enhancements as additions to the item, rather than a replacement like Janta blood, so that one could possibly make a more powerful stim with added abilities. The chance that /medicalForage picks up a loot item should be fairly rare, as most of the loot items should come from creature / npc loot supplied by other players, but still allowing the novice to do something other than make pure stims. Perhaps some items like plants, bugs and bacta might be collectable with /medicalForage, and production enhancements like tubes of XXX that add some kind of ability might be loot, or even possibly craftable by Bio-Engineers.
These changes only address the ability of a novice medic to make stims and heal players without reliance on other professions. A method of making money exists for the other professions via mission terminals, and the Medic community feels that we should have terminals devoted to healing missions as not only a method of generating an income, but also as content. Healing players is currently the only content Medics have, and as such there is no "PvE" content for us. There are already a number of threads devoted to devising content for these terminals should the developers be willing to add them.
Please feel free to comment on this proposal of making the Medic profession more fun, especially for the new player.
MasterNerfSlayer
Mon Nov 22, 2004 7:22 pm
#5
Jagii wrote:
The two ideas you present - medic missions and a revamped /medicalforage system - are good ideas to help out new medics. But is it realistic to expect either one (or even both) to be implemented in the game?
Even a simpler /medicalforage system would be nice, where you just pick up a small number of units of organic or inorganic resources per use. However, to make the ability such that it does not become obsolete and useful to all medic-associated professions (doctor, combat medic, and bio-engineer), I think the idea of medic-directed loot and forageable enhancements MUST also be considered.
= Andrew
Chilastra.Palacek
It would be simple to just make /medicalForage work simplistically. But what fun would that be? It was originally Holocron that proposed the loot idea for the skill, but it never saw any development time, and I don't think the current devs are really in favour of keeping the skill, but the medical community is, therefore I want to propose a fun system to try and help it remain in place.
Such a system as I have devised here would quickly become outdated as you got further into medic and started making enough money to hire an Artisan to get your resources for you, but still allowing you to forage for small loot additives for special stim batches that aren't going to be mass produced.
I think it is very realistic to expect it to be implemented, it is just a matter of convincing the dev team to work on it. It wont happen any time soon, but it may be possible during the profession revamp phase, and I want to convince the dev team before that point that medic not only needs these changes, but would be more fun with them.
If you look at what we currently have, then you can see that the artsian and entertainer mission terminals while fairly useless and in the case of Artisan, not needed to make money, the devs have been willing to improve professions in this way in the past. The command exists, the loots exists, and can easily be extended, and mission terminals with simple missions could be created very fast. I don't see it as an unreasonable request, after all, the one thing players in this game have been constantly screaming for is content. Anything that promotes reusable content I am all for promoting.
Jagii
Mon Nov 22, 2004 7:46 pm
#6
When I first experienced /medicalforage's basic function - gathering organics - I didn't think too much of it since it was a pretty inexciting ploy for gathering poor/medium quality resources. But now I see how much potential this ability has and how it can be useful for advanced professions like doctor, combat medic, and bioengineer.
If your proposal makes is implemented, I would hope the normal /forage gets a similar revamp.
= Andrew
Chilastra.Palacek
If your proposal makes is implemented, I would hope the normal /forage gets a similar revamp.
= Andrew
Chilastra.Palacek
NJ62
Mon Nov 22, 2004 9:34 pm
#7
I agree that the medical forage need not be great but rather should be a tool for novice players so that they are not required to take up a secondary profession to support their medical crafting.
I remember creating a medic in beta, and going through my wound packs trying to heal people in the hospital who were badly wounded, and then searching through my schematics and discovering that I had no materials, no way to get them, and no wound pack schematics in any case. I felt completely non-functional and gimped.
As a noob, you should be able to make your own supplies without having to immediately buy things (which you can't afford without taking up a secondary profession). Although the devs have said that nobody is just one profession, professions should be able to stand alone in the sense that you shouldn't have to make strategic decisions about which elements of your template must necessarily be leveled first.
I remember creating a medic in beta, and going through my wound packs trying to heal people in the hospital who were badly wounded, and then searching through my schematics and discovering that I had no materials, no way to get them, and no wound pack schematics in any case. I felt completely non-functional and gimped.
As a noob, you should be able to make your own supplies without having to immediately buy things (which you can't afford without taking up a secondary profession). Although the devs have said that nobody is just one profession, professions should be able to stand alone in the sense that you shouldn't have to make strategic decisions about which elements of your template must necessarily be leveled first.
Brainplay
Tue Nov 23, 2004 6:43 am
#8
I very much like this idea. I dont think I've ever used that skill except when I was wondering what it did. However, I don't think that most of the loot items should come from other players. Ramping the ability so that skill increases chances of success and still making the success semi-rare should be enough. Several mandatory and extra medicinal components come from players already and it makes no sense to grant them a greater chance at something they have no skill in. Tying the scout version into it would seem ok and would give that class more definition and use. Furthermore any enhancements would have to be worth the effort so a 1% increase in effectiveness isn't going to be worth the hour it took to forage the enhancement.
p.s.- the scout ability could be a catch-all type of skill and also be ramped. It could also tie into chef and as mentioned bio-engineer in some ways. That would help the scout profession out alot I think.
Marzuk147
Tue Nov 23, 2004 8:14 am
#10
I said a long time ago that I wished that medical forage worked like scout, was dependant on your med level, and allowed you to make medicine in the feild. Need more stims? Harvest a few components off of an animal and make some, like rangers make a camp.
Mass produced quality goods would still be awesome - there is no threat in a master doc bieng able to throw together a 25 charge 500 power stim E on the fly to heal a group with.
Mass produced quality goods would still be awesome - there is no threat in a master doc bieng able to throw together a 25 charge 500 power stim E on the fly to heal a group with.
taloncard
Tue Nov 23, 2004 8:27 am
#11
I like the idea,
Even add optional components to the schmatic like shipwrights and other professions have.
Another possibility is a weaker stim and general woundpack that solely requires foraged items.
They would either be weaker than the A packs or have 1 use but at least you would be able to create them on your own.
Even add optional components to the schmatic like shipwrights and other professions have.
Another possibility is a weaker stim and general woundpack that solely requires foraged items.
They would either be weaker than the A packs or have 1 use but at least you would be able to create them on your own.
UTech
Tue Nov 23, 2004 9:12 am
#12
If medical forage will pickup med-related loot-type enhancements (/applaud!) to be inserted into schems, then there would have to be some sort ofAFK-defeat function built in.. What I mean is that if you /medicalforage and pickup an enhancement component, then the chances of you picking up another one in the samesquare metre or so should decrease for a period of time. This would stop people from just running /sample-style AFKmacros to gather hundreds of these items. Or, as an alternative, and as in Artisan /sample, a popup would come up informing you you have discovered the enhance component and do you want to spend "x" more pool points to try and uncoverit. All sampling stops until this popup is answered.
Marrow1
Tue Nov 23, 2004 9:54 am
#13
Sorry, but I believe that this change will only result in one thing.
Lots of AFK people /medicalforage'ing they day way.
If you really want to address the issues listed then simply add in medical missions/quests like those for entertainers/art. For example, the quest has several parts: first is to go and get a med comp from Joe, then craft the med, then heal Jane, then collect reward. These missions can be set up to help train medics on crafting/healing.
I would just hate to see a bunch of mindless foraging going on. It would be very frustrating to new players who really need items and very abused by experienced players who macro everything.
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