Doctor Archive

Here is the report I sent on to our Dev for our Top 5 Issues for October.

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Here is how the latest voting turned out for Docs for October.

Text Highlighted in Blue indicates a change or addition from the last time you mayhave seen these issues. (Please note that althoguh I have done such highlighting on Issues #4 and #5, netiher of them have actually been placed here as a Top 5 Issue before.)

1.Doctor Surveying/Medical Forage*

(Added CM TN note)

This issue is the still the #1 issue for Docs with 70% of them (well over a 2/3rds majority) listing it in their Top 10 issues. 46% list it as one of their Top 2. By all apperances the previous response was nto satisfactory to those playing the Doctor profession.

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 the 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 also be noted that CMs have been given a basic scout skill in Terrain Negotiation, so providing a partial form of /survey in the Doctor line would not seem out of the question.

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, but with the recent reduction for single scouts/rangers in groups this is starting to become more of a concern and should be noted as present at any rate.

Suggestions include providing survey only capabilities to increase with Organic Chemistry (the most common line for ALL of the Medical-based professions) or Pharmacology, much in the way it does for Artisan Surveying, 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, capping out resource samples so none are ever pulled up if there is more than our minimum, 8, or our maximum, I believe that’s 36, of a resources in inventory, or even just letting the survey tool show the resource values that only a Doc would use from those resources), to test the qualities of a resource if nothing else, the simple ability to survey alone wouldn’t be very useful. Suggestions have also included making the ability part of some kind of decayable survey tool made by artisans that let a Doc survey, ensuring a continued resource stream to artisans to compensate for those few Docs that try to make money as miners instead of as Docs. Or the use of a DE created resource seeker droid that might be able to locate a high concentration of a given resource within some given range and possibly provide either a single sample or at least some of the required stats for that resource, possibly even providing additional capabilities for those with the Artisan Survey skill.

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
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14251

(*Dev Response:
Holo wrote in a thread on /medicalforage on 6/29/03:
“This here is a proposal to tackle JUST one aspect of that. It felt a bit like we got overwhelmed with the sheer number of ideas proposed for medics, so I want to present just two things (one of them based on suggestions from you guys during beta) so we can discuss them, before we move on to tackling other things.

OK, the first suggestion is this:

·Make medical foraging find small herbs/bacta globules/bugs/whatever (think: aloe and penicillin mold) that can be used to make medicines. Not resources, in other words. Because they are not resources, we do not need to worry about undercutting the surveyors and scouts.
·Make the A level stims and wound packs use ONLY these.
·Make higher level medicines use smaller amounts of these, so that profession interdependency increases as you go up.

This would make new medics trying to make medicines a lot better off, I think.

The second suggestion is based on beta tester ideas:

·Make tending use a small device. This device lasts a long time but does eventually break, and is made by artisans.
·Have it have charges.
·Each item that you can medical forage up gives it a charge.
·Take out the current wounding/battle fatigue effect of the /tend commands.

Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=medic&message.id=192&highlight=#M192

Holo wrote presumably as a response to our initial Top 5 issues on 8/22/03:
“Healing tasks that aren’t making it in this update, but are on the list as high priorities:
…
·Investigate making /medicalforage more useful.”

Ref:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=394421

Holo wrote on 8/29/03: “We agree with many of the issues you raise, but most of them are not easy to fix. We'd rather fix medical forage than remove it, for example. The group bonus isn't that easy to do. And so on.” Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=443645#M443645

Ben “Marvelin” Hanson wrote on 9/30/03 on the Correspondent Forum:
“I don't want to make it like sampling since I feel that undermines the artisan skill tree. If as a medic you want something that works just like sampling, you should grab novice artisan. So the trick is, that it needs to be different from sampling but not more efficient than sampling for the artisan (I don't want /medicalForage to become a staple skill for non-medics). If you have some suggestions pass them along.

You can tell the players that this is on the radar for a complete revamp. I'd love to hear their ideas given the restrictions that I outlined above.”)

2.Mind Damage%*

This was also the #2 Issue in the last list. While Mind Healing has been provided to Combat Medics on Test Center, this is likely just to reiterate that it is still a large issue (65% list it on their Top 10, while 36% list it as one of their Top 2.) Consider this a reminder that we agree with seeing mind damage healing go live.

(*Added*) Doctors would like to have the /mindheal command made available to them. Suggestions have included having it be a Doctor-only command, perhaps even only available at Master Doc. However there seems to be a bit more consensus (a polling would need o be done to ascertain the exact degrees of this) towards giving /mindheal to Master Medic to provide a little something extra for those reaching MM level, as well as then providing the capabilities to both Doctors and Combat Medics. In this way the command is at least closer to being as available as healing of the other Bars is to maintain the proper level of balance for the medical professions. Some have also suggested that the command might also be well served to also go to Entertainers and/or Squad Leaders. Others suggest that that command should only go to Entertainers or Squad Leaders. Some of the threads below will offer more insights into the various viewpoints.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=16728
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=17017
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=16865

3.Master Doc Benefits

This issue was listed as the #4 issue in the last listing. 60% list this issue as one of their Top 10, 34% list it in their Top 2.

The benefits of being a Master Doctor seem like a bit of a letdown to some. Suggestions have included moving Resuscitation packs to that level for creation and/or use and/or raising the Med Use requirements on that pack, others feel doing so would be a nerf to non-Masters and suggest only working with additional content in this manner. Other suggestions include Inoculation packs for some form of immunity or resistance to various states. Point-Blank (Doctor centered) AoE state cures have been mentioned as well, as has the ability to harvest creatures at a low level of ability. Mind Stims, especially since Master Docs could care less about any way of exploiting something like this for XP (generally speaking.), consolidated wound packs (also look at the Inventory Issue) or a method to convert Med or Med Crafting XP at Master levels to Experimentation points (since there otherwise no need for that extra XP) or some other purchasable schematics/items.

For a sampling of the discussion see:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=7596
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=8075
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=10330
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14389
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14638

(*Dev Response:
Ben “Marvelin” Hanson wrote on 9/30/03 on the Correspondent Forum:
“I'm open to ability ideas for master doctor.”
[Z’s note: I have passed on the ideas already listed in the above issue, not to mention those in the threads noted above.])

4.Enhance Packs%

(Partial Fix, In Test)

This Issue moved up from the #6 position (part of this, the enhance variability, was actually in the #3 issue). 48% list it as one of their Top 10 issues, 13% listing it in their Top 2.

Since 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 only 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.

A suggested alleviator would be to not only allow experimentation on base heal, but experimentation on heal variability as well. Thus a Doc who spends most of the experimentation points on Base Heal would still see a great variability, while those who spend on heal variability would get less mega-heals, but also less low-ball heals, providing a more consistent heal range. (See the Money Issue.) (*Ben “Marvelin” Hanson wrote on 9/30/03 on the Correspondent Forum: “Part of the reason for randomization is to put more emphasis on the higher-powered meds. Character advancement not granting additional hitpoints has made making meaningful healing power increases a little tricky. In most games, a healer's low level heal ability of 50 points is very effective for a low-level character with 100 hitpoints, but pretty worthless for a high-level character with 5000 hitpoints. That big hitpoint increase gives plenty of room to ratchet up healing powering as the healer advances. In SWG, however, virtually all characters have hitpoints in the 800-1000 range. Therefore, there's not a lot of maneuvering room when even the lowest level medics have to provide some reasonably effective healing. The average value of a StimC will more or less do the trick in most situations. StimD's and StimE's average value tends to be overkill. The low end of the range after randomization, however, is about 50% of the average value. Therefore, Stim E's no longer become overkill if you want to be guaranteed a high probability of getting a complete or near-complete heal.

That being said, I will agree that this reason doesn't hold true for enhancement packs. Enhancement packs are randomized simply because they use the same code pipeline that healing does. I'm more than happy to remove the variance for enhancement packs. Since the randomization as a net 0 effect on the base value, this will not affect the average power of enhancement medpacks. It will, however, eliminate the chance to get extra high results. Of course, on the positive side, you won't get extra low results either. I'm fine with doing this as long as everybody realizes that this will significantly drop the high end of the buff range.” [*Z’s note: Voting on the issue suggests that a clear majority of folks actually want a reduction of variability, but not a removal of it. At this time Mr. Hanson was only able to offer either complete removal of the variability factor, which would mean that Docs would always buff for the average of what they are buffing for now, or to keep things as they are. The poll of Doctors on the forum show only 52% in favor of removing variability altogether. That information was passed on to Mr. Hanson but while he has not offered any comment as of yet it is my personally opinion that 52% is not a clear enough variation to make the change worthwhile. However, this does not preclude that at some point in the future, if time and priorities allow, he could instigate a reduced variability option.})

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 being lost whenever a character dies, even after being Resuscitated. Previously only when cloning would buffs, understandably, be lost. With buffs no longer remaining even after Resuscitation that skill is becoming even less valuable. We are hoping this is just a bug and not a new situation stealthed onto us (it was NEVER mentioned in any patch or publish notes). Enhance buffs are also being lost on occasion when logging or in rare situations when crossing (or so it seems) server boundaries 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. (Storing then recalling the pet is a likely workaround for this, but also a possible exploit since it allows unlimited buffing of a pet for XP.)

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, or providing the recipient with a Confirmation box , requiring them to give /consent, or requiring that they be grouped in order for enhancement to occur.

Buffs also do seem to have some problems when used to assist in the wearing of armor. Sometimes other buffs methods seem to assist. It is likely related to Mind encumbrance in some manner, but the error message, which always states “'You are not healthy enough” seems to imply it is a Health related problem, when in fact it could be mind or action related, or even related to a substat of those. A more descriptive error message may help in alleviating some of these problems. One of the links below is to a thread further investigating this issue. (#9640)

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. Perhaps allowing a higher level buff to simply override and replace a lower level one, but not allowing a lower or same-level buff to be replaced (due to possible exploits in such a situation). Other possibilities include only allowing buffs on groupmates or those who have given /consent.

Enhance (and other Advanced Meds as well) that use multiple CRDMs do not seem to be reading the Power correctly. Preliminary suggestions seem to imply that the power rating from the CRDMs are not being read at all. Further, thorough, testing needs to be done, however. (Anyone wanting to help out on this front, please jump right in.)

(*In Test*) 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. (*Ben “Marvelin” Hanson response to correspondent on 9/22/03: “Fixed experimentation on enhancement medicines so that skillModRequired is reduced, not increased.” As noted at the top the earliest we can probably expect to see such a fix would be in the November Publish.)

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 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 or at least some clarification on the reasoning for these inconsistencies.

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.

Starting with the October Publish the Enhances now also seem to have the ability to lower a stat when it wears off, much like a Spice Downer will do. However there is no indicator beyond checking your stats. The enhancing of the stats, such as by eating food, does not seem to rectify the problem, like it would for the standard Stat Stick bug. Logging off appears to be the only other workaround, but the issue mentioned above about losing a buff, but not the timer, on Logoff makes this workaround a great inconvenience. [*Z’s note: This bug has been acknowledged by the Devs and is being worked on. No time estimates available at the moment.]

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 http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=9640 http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14508 http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14087 http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=15995 http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=16354

5.On Fire Cure

This issue moved up from #10 in the last listing. 49% listed it in their Top 10, only 6% listing it in their Top 2, though. (It had a mean ranking in the lists of 6 out of 10.)

The ability to cure the “On Fire!” state created by several attack forms has also been requested.

More information can be found in the following: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=13565

Zarlor, you are doing a wonderful job. I can't even imagine how much time and effort you devoted, and I just want to say that we all appreciate it.

I just hope the developers read the report thoroughly and not just skim through it, and missing a lot of the important points in the process. It may be helpful to further break down each issue into subcategories or bullet points rather than having a general topic (i.e. Enhance packs) and a lot of text afterwards.

Alessandra: Thanks. Actually I already have a response I'm just waiting for the go ahead to post it.

As for the format change, I'jave actually been considering (and I have another thread here on it) that since we are getting some fairly quick responses maybe I should just completely break out the issues. In effect changing the listing from 48 seperate meta-issues to, say, 100 seperate individual issues. (I don't know the exact number, as I haven't tried to do the breakout yet.) Considering the speed of this second response I'm even more encouraged to do it that way.

Zarlor could you add special item drop rates to the list next month. They only drop 1 at a time at least when I see them they do and since most adv doctor meds use more than one subcomponent at a time this underminds them being useful to anyone but medics.

Wow very impressed. I seldom visit the Doctor forum, but as a Master Doctor its good to see I'm so well represented. Also let me say you hit the nail on the head with those issues, every issue you listed is on my list of concerns except for the /mindheal one which I wasn't aware of till now and is at the top of my list. Keep up the good work!

Ilapek

Master Doctor/Master Pistoleer

Radiant

Iw-Ip: I thought I had that one, actually. As in the fact that loot drops usually are singular and each one has a different serial number (for things like Janta Blood, I'm assuming you mean?) I should have that one already in there, but I'll have to double-check to make sure, that those items should all have the same serial regardless of coming from different MOBs.

Or did you mean that the rate of drop appears to be too low for those kinds of itmes and that the MOBs should be dropping more than 1 of them at a time?

Yes Zarlor I'm talking about different serial on top of the rate of drop. What I also ment was even if all the serials where the same the drop rate would have to average 3-8 for those items to scale again other special drops which are often components and only need one of to complete a schematic. I guess my suggestion would be to make our special components have charges to them so that maybe you find Janta blood with 5 charges so you use 3 in a stim-e and have 2 more charges left for another med. It would solve both drop amount and usefulness issues.

I looked through the big list and I didn't see it off the bat.

You might be right, I may have missed it, but it should go in there. It's been brought up before. I'll look it over and make sure to get it in if it isn't.

I have a master doc/ novice rifleman as my alt, I am continually amazed by the amount of time and effort you put in as the doc correspondent. Thank you forall the hard work.

Do you ever have any time to just enjoy the game? If I was doing this much for the profession, I know I wouldn't. Salute.

Let's just say that I have a lot of time at the office. As long as my servers are running smoothly, I'm doing my job right and just happen to have a lot of time on my hands in that situation. Nature of the Sys Admin profession. (It's good to be a geek. )

Quite impressive job Zarlor.

Could you answer a quick one for me? Is creating a bigger gap between the necessary med use for a's and b's on the list?

Thnx,

Cim Taurus

Yeah. If you look at the thread we voted on it's listed as Med Use Granularity. I'll have a new list up for dicussion so you can see all of the issues again (in a new format) this coming week. I would expect to have it up by no later than Wednesday.