Doctor Archive

As promised here is the Top 5 (and my allowed Pet Peeve) that I sent off to the Devs today. I will post the reorganized, based on your voting, full list of issues for commentary and such on Monday. Just a few new little things added here and there and 3 new issues (one of them being the Pet Peeve Issue for this time around.) That way folks can comment or add new issues or correct the old ones as needed. There will be no more voiting until we get the next set of Dev responses (and let's all hope we get actual responses this time).

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1. Factory Problems

Factories sometimes still do not pull subcomponents from crates in Factory production. Factories are also only producing 100 items at any given time, although sometimes they will do more, and stopping, even on a 1000 item schematic Some suggested methods for assisting with factory problems include things such as increasing the input hopper size so that more individual components could be placed there, since they have to be pulled from the crates by hand. 100 is simply too prohibitive a size for making items with multiple components without baby-sitting the factory. There are also times where if the factory does take some resources and/or items from a crate to begin making an item, but then when it fails to make the item it will eat the resources/components and 1 item off of the schematic without producing anything. We would like to see a factory double check that it’s requirements for all items are fulfilled before it actually processes those items and the schematic. It should also be noted that while it is possible to use the slider for a factory to create from 1-100 items, the slider does not granulate further, but will allow an additional 0 for a 1000 item run. 1000 items is actually very appropriate and convenient considering the extremely high demand for crated completed items, items which require multiple crates of components themselves. The 100 item production limit at the moment has caused concern that 100 items really is the true limit and it has been asked that 1000 be kept as a more reasonable limit.

The reduction of the output hopper to 1000 is also proving to be a problem and factories will consistently refuse to run and at times require that the output hopper actually be completely empty in order to run. Crate volume reduction to 1 may help with the situation, but only if it actually sees that crate as only volume 1 in all situations.

Relatedly the ability to drop a crate into the input hopper and then double-click to drop an item directly out of the crate into that hopper would also be of some help in alleviating the problem. By the same respect there are times where the crate will not even dump an item into inventory. The whole crate just seems to be stuck and will not give up anything. (Reports are less frequent of this happening, at least, but it still does occur.)

Factories also have the annoying problem, when sharing or providing admin rights for another player character to use the factory, that the factory sends all email about what is happening at the factory to the Factory owner, not whomever loaded the schematic and pressed the start button. Is there some way to grant this notification method? Continuing to notify the owner is fine, but adding in the individual doing the crafting is also very much needed.

Not to mention the exceptionally slow rate of production in a factory. This is especially true for medicines where the absolutely lowest complexity on an item is 10, meaning it would take 80 seconds (not quite a minute and a half) to produce 1 item in a factory, whereas by hand crafting the same items they can often be produced faster. If it weren’t for the dangers of carpal tunnel syndrome and the requirements of factory components I think most Doctors would simply hand-craft everything, at least you get some XP for it that way. After all 3XP every 80 seconds has absolutely no comparison to 33XP every 60 seconds even using just 1 crafting tool. So to heck with the XP, it’s irrelevant for factories, but speed of the factories is definitely an issue. They are simply too slow.

For more information you may wish to reference the following threads:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1201

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1224

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=2466

2. Doctor Surveying/Medical Forage

(Issue is being addressed in some manner we don’t know of in Holo’s response.)

Docs seem to feel the need to survey for their own resources and dislike the need to use skill points in Artisan in order to do so. Let's face it, anyone getting into the Doc level had to craft to get there, so the SWG version of a focused Doc is, in fact, a crafting profession and they want the abilities to self subsist in that capacity in the same way as Artisans do.

One could argue that this is related to the problems with the /medicalforage command being of no real value to the profession. Since CHers seem to have been given the ability to heal pets without having to take Novice Medic to do so this request doesn’t seem too unreasonable to many Docs. The other problem comes from the idea put forth previously by the Dev team (or Holocron at least) that Doctors could always just buy their resource needs. However, Docs have many very specific resource needs (Dantooine Berries, Class 4 Liquid Petro Fuel, Avian Meat, Lokian Wild Wheat, etc.) that very few, if any, other professions truly need. Considering the prevalence of the Money issue for Docs, the market for surveyors to cater to the medic market is simply too small to be successful in comparison to what a surveyor could make catering to one of the artisan professions. In this way it could also be argued that rarely would Doctors be able to actually compete with Artisans on the resource market simply because their normal resource needs are not the needs of other professions. Worthwhile resources for any good medicines are just rarely found on the bazaar, unless that resource also overlaps with an artisan need, and then they price on such an item will be driven by the artisan ability to make far more profit on the item than the average medic pulls in.

It should be noted that some are also having this issue in regards to scout skills and the need for some meat requirements. Again the situation tends to revolve around the idea that scouts will make far more profit from catering to the Hide/Bone needs of Artisans than they will from catering to Medics. In general these needs by Medics are not nearly as high as the artisan requirements and there seem to be far fewer folks who have as much of an issue when it comes to harvesting meat.

Other suggestions include providing survey only capabilities to increase with Pharmacology much as it does for Artisan, but disallowing the sampling capability and perhaps with a smaller range. Others have noted that without some ability to sample (perhaps limiting Docs to only ever being able to sample 1 resource per sample tick), to test the qualities of a resource if nothing else, the simple ability to survey alone wouldn’t be very useful.

For reference the following thread may be of interest:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1540

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=5233

3. Mind damage.

(uncertain if parts of this issue are addressed or not due to ambiguity and possible mistyping of a /healmind command in the Dev response to our issues)

This appears to be a major concern amongst both Medics and Doctors (and Combat Medics, for that matter). It seems to be a fairly major issue discussed in multiple threads on multiple boards out there in the community and perhaps part of the problem is simple frustration in being the person everyone is counting on to keep them going when you can only watch helplessly as someone's mind is being damaged and there is nothing you can do.

Suggestions have ranged from leave it as is, since it is a balancing factor to keep combats from being too long to either letting Doctors or Advanced Medics (or Combat Medics, even) heal mind at a 1:1 rate or possibly better Although most admit that healing at a better ratio would be fairly exploitable since a medic could then stim their mind faster than they would lose it, even though once you hit Master, who really cares about exploiting Healing XP anyway. However it could also be argued that even if the medic simply were not allowed to stim their own mind, two medics could help each other to heal indefinitely, but it has also been pointed out that this is, in effect, what a Doc or Medic already provides for combat classes in allowing them to ignore their special costs by healing them so they can use their abilities endlessly. Giving mind stimming ability to Entertainers or Chefs or as a form of /rally command for Squad Leaders has also been suggested. Mind stimming only mind incapped players has also been suggested (a Doc could still never stim himself that way for any exploit purposes). Even the ability to create Enhance packs, of the usual Doctor skill ability, has been suggested as at least a better method of staving off the damage potential in a manner befitting what Docs are capable of compared to food and spice buffs, even if that buff is not given to Doctors to make. One of the more popular suggestions is to simply reduce the amount of damage given with mind hits, or to reduce their frequency, as well as the possibility of removing the ability to incap from Mind (you’d still be limited in not being able to heal more, etc.) and letting the “head shot” moves, such as those of the Rifleman, actually take large chunks of both Health and Action instead.

While there may not be a consensus on the issue there does seem to be a HUGE amount of interest and concern on the topic and I am sure the community would at least like to get some feedback and or considerations from the Dev team on what they see as the balancing factors between mind damage, healing mind damage and perceived problems with nerfing the Rifleman profession.

I would suggest referencing the following threads to get the majority of the viewpoints involved, but should a tighter synopsis of these threads and their suggestions be needed, please don't hesitate to ask me for one. (I know, one of these is from the Medic forum, but there are a lot of Docs piping in on the issue, and one is from an outside forum that sees a good deal of traffic and interest from the Doctor community.)

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1299

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=medic&message.id=785

http://dynamic6.gamespy.com/~swgcraft/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1315

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=2177

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=3612

4. Enhance Packs.

(Added armor and buff issues)

There are several issues revolving around all of the enhance packs, and especially the B packs. Stuck HAMs on buffed players are proving especially annoying to many Doctor characters. Either the HAMs stick after being buffed so that the player cannot see when they are getting damage (Mostly Fixed, still seeing reports of this, but less often), they stick so that the Doctor cannot see that their groupmates are getting damaged (a very dangerous situation)(Mostly Fixed, still seeing reports of this, although it appears it can be worked around by disbanding from the group, running out to 100m away, running back and rejoining the group.), they stick for both the Doc and the player(Fixed?), or they simply do not scale properly so that the buffed bar simply goes out past the edge of the window and any damage sustained to that attribute is not seen until it gets below the point where it can be seen inside the window.

Enhance buffs are also being lost on occasion when logging yet the enhance timer remains active, as if the player still were buffed. This one is proving to be of some difficulty, especially for higher level Doctors who have longer Buff times. The timers on Pets are also screwed up in that if a pet is enhanced using the same buff that is used on the Pet’s owner at approximately the same time, after the buff wears off normally from the owner, for example, the Pet’s buff will also wear off. However the Pet’s timer will still be active, so even though the owner could be re-buffed, the Pet cannot as the game states the pet already has an enhancement to that attribute.

There is also no notification of a buffs expiration, as folks cannot see that stream of lost numbers while in First Person mode and may not notice that they have lost their enhancement. There has a been a report that there is some notification, but that it easily gets lost in other notifications or is simply not very noticeable. Possibly some other graphical notification of what buffs you currently have and possibly a blinking notification that those buffs are about to expire would be helpful. Allowing the buffing medic or groupmates to see who has what buffs would also be very advantageous. One suggestion was made for a type of Pie Chart as an icon on the HAM, like where other states are shown, that slowly cuts away slices of the color until it is getting low, perhaps blinking for the last minute or so of the Buffs duration. Even simply converting the Duration rating from seconds to an hours:minutes:seconds format would be helpful.

Buffs also do not seem to assist in the wearing of armor, as would be expected. Early experimentation seems to suggest that Armor requirements take a look at your standard stats, not your buffed stats.

There is also the possibility of griefing involved with buffs. Should a Doctor use lower level buffs on someone they could be, effectively, locked out from getting a better buff. Some other method of replacing lower level buffs should be allowed.

Experimentation on Ease of Use on Enhance Packs makes them HARDER to use, not easier. Very frustrating for the lower level Medicine Use individuals who gains access to higher level Doctor Crafting in that they cannot use these packs in the same way they had gotten used to being able to use Stim Cs at a lower Pharmacology level.

Enhance pack radial menus also are bugged. As posted by Kamat (and tested on the Lowca Galaxy) “Selecting a target then going into inventory, selecting the item, and then selecting the enhance target always causes me to enhance myself. I cannot use this to enhance any target.” Also the Pet Radial menu does not show Enhance options (it can be done manually, but it's not on the radial for a pet). Please add it to that menu for consistency sake.

Enhance Action B+ packs use simple Organic and Inorganic resources, while the rest of the B+ Enhance series uses Avian Meat and Reactive Gas. It is often considered a problem in that the Action packs should be brought into line with the rest of the Enhance packs, or the stringent requirements on the other packs be lessened. Occasional questions also arise about the 2 or 3 BEC requirement that seems to fluctuate between some of the higher end Enhance schematics. Some consistency would make things less confusing.

And finally, Enhance A packs can be made at a lower skill ability than Advanced Wound Treatment and are given a low enough med use requirement that most Doctors will have no problem trying to make and use one as soon as they acquire the ability to do so. Unfortunately trying to use the packs without Advanced Wound Treatment means that they do not work, but they also do not give notification of why they do not work. This proves to be very confusing to many new Doctors. Same for Cure Poison Statepack. (And possibly Disease as well). Please provide some form of error notification when trying to use these packs.

More information on the last item can be found in the following thread:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1168

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=5278

5. Heal consistency

Since wound/damage healing and, especially, buffs seem to have such a wide range of healing levels we would like clarification on how this massive variability is generated and were wondering if it would be possible to reduce the variability ranges we are currently seeing. I think most folks seem to suggest that they can live without their Enhance Bs buffing for 500 on rare occasion if they can get rid of the occasional 150 buff and maintain a more consistent level of buff. Buffs are considered part of the bread-and-butter of Doctors and some level of consistency in them that we could determine from our base enhance number on the pack and our skill level would make these buff far more marketable. There’s nothing worse than selling a buff for a flat rate and telling the customer the buff averages out to a, say, 300 point enhancement, only to have it go off for 150 or passing on a Master Doc buff for 1800 and impressing one customer with a 2300 buff only to get an extremely negative response when the other gets a buff for on 500. The negative responses are the ones that are truly remembered by other possible repeat customers and this is definitely a difficult issue when making our skills sellable.

Pet Peeve Issue:

Correspondence Response

Many Doctors feel slighted by the lack of direct response to our initial set of correspondent issues. We are most interested in providing what input we may into improving the Doctor profession, and the game in general, by whatever means we can and since the correspondence program is the most official method provided, it is felt that a more timely, and thorough response to the issues the correspondent forwards is needed. Such responses should be public and posted directly to the forums and address the issues as presented. Without proper input on Developer considerations on the issues we cannot provide better feedback in the continuing development processes.

For relavent threads on this issues please see:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=6713

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=418706

Man you should be getting paid.

THe surveying an enormous skill sink. And the factory bugs are absolute hell.

We love you Zarlor.

Tale.

Excellent job man, we seem to have the best correspondent of any class.

/cheer

Very nice job presenting this, just read through it and am very pleased that we have you representing the Doctor profession.

Ramoldar

Thanks for the hard work of Zarlor and the other medics that have thought long and hard about how do make healers a viable and enjoyable class. I'm sure our efforts will be rewarded.

Ssnood N'Ray, Valcyn, Medical Store West of MosEisley

If you look at some of the other profession forums you will see the correspondent constantly getting flamed. I think we Docs are lucky to have someone like Zarlor. You are without a doubt the best correspondent on the boards. Now if the Devs would just listen, we would be set.

Excellent job Zarlor

We appreciate all your hard UNPAID UNSUPPORTED work

/salute

Staiglier

Great Job!!

I've got to agree with the above posters. It looks like we've got the best Correspondentof all the classes. Too bad no matter how eloquent your post, or well-argued your comments, it seems the devs will still ignore or brush off most doctor complaints.

The factories have been broken for what, two weeks now? This should be one of their top issues as it is costing us doctors a great amount of time and money (both of which we already have in short supply). Not only does this effect doctors, but it effects the other food and chemical factory-using classes as well.

Sy- Lence of Ahazi