Doctor Archive
Thread: VOTE! Doctor Top 10 (Voting Closed)
Same voting format as always, just give me the numbers.
Please don't comment on these at all, just comment on the relavent sections threads (to be put up for discussion tomorrow.)
The order these are listed in is based on the preference voting totals, so they are not categorized. These are just the Top 25 Issues based on the preference vote totals to keep the list a bit more succinct. In other words if I was asked for a Top 5 today, the first 5 are the ones they would get.
(Edit: I've removed Issue #7. Med Use on Enhances from Crates Bug, because it appears this is an unfixable bug.)
(Edit: Changed Subject back to show that Traigus will NOT be closing the vote yet. Blame TH for the mixup. 
)
1. Medical Surveying
2. Master Doc Benefits
3. Enhanced HAMs Sticking
4. Experimentation Issues
5. On Fire Cure&
6. Mounted Healing
8. Faction Points
9. High Level Wound Pack Consolidation
10. Resuscitation Consent Request
11. Enhance Stacking Exploit Bug
12. Drag and Clone Exploit
13. Resuscitation Timer Issues
14. Enhances Dropping on Logoff and Not Allowing New Buffs
15. Crate combining
16. Medical Bag/Inventory Search for Meds
17. Doctor Content
18. Money
19. Enhances Dropping on Resuscitation
20. Factory Completion Timer
21. Enhance Packs Variability%&*
22. Enhance Drop Notification
23. Droid Recharge Rate
24. Combat Queue Heals%
25. Enhance Action -v- other Enhance Pack Resource Disparity
Notes:
* - Denotes Issue has had some change or addition made to it since last posting.
% - Denotes some part of Issue will be fixed in either this publish or the next (generally. 4-8 weeks.)
& - Denotes an Issue acknowledged by the Developers that should be fixed at some undisclosed time in the future.
Message Edited by Zarlor on 12-03-2003 01:45 PM
[Edit: Changed title on thread to make it stand out a bit more, hopefully.]
Message Edited by Zarlor on 12-10-2003 08:20 AM
Message Edited by Zarlor on 01-07-2004 08:01 AM
Message Edited by Zarlor on 01-08-2004 09:45 PM
Message Edited by Zarlor on 03-10-2004 12:29 PM
1.Medical Surveying
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.
Since CHers seem to have been given the ability to heal pets without having to take Novice Medic to do so, and CMs have been given a basic scout skill in Terrain Negotiation, providing a partial form of /survey in the Doctor line would not too unreasonable according to many Docs. The other problem comes from the idea put forth previously by the Dev team 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, other than Medical 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.
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
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=21399
(*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.”
Zarlor passed along the following summation from Ben “Marvelin” Hanson’s response on the Correspondent forum on 10/28/2003:
“The SOE team is leaning towards adding a whole new set of items and such (medicines, components, and component enhancements) that can be yanked from the ground, sort of like scout, but with items specifically useful to medics. No final decision has been made, yet, but that's what they are considering at the moment.”
Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=17920 )
2.Master Doc Benefits
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.]
Zarlor passed along the following summation from Ben “Marvelin” Hanson’s response on the Correspondent forum on 10/28/2003:
“They really like many of the ideas for extra doctor abilities in the threads we listed. In particular things like AOE cures, dot resistances, multi wound packs, etc. All seem pretty interesting to work with. They do agree that the doctor could use another reason or two to get the master box. This particular issue may take quite some time to get to and code in, however.”
Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=17920 )
3.Enhanced HAMs Sticking
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.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=16354
4.Experimentation Issues
Experimentation does not seem to work correctly or consistently. Even with experimentation risks being listed as 0% there are still a great many critical failures, failures and some moderate and standard successes. Wholly inconsistent with the 0% failure rating guaranteed by the crafting station. Having highly experimented crafting tools and stations do seem to alleviate the problem a little, but not by very much. At least some think that having some possibility of failure is acceptable, but they do wish to have some indicator of what the possibility really is since obviously it is a greater than 0% chance and some would suggest it is really as high as a 5% chance. Amazing successes, on the other hand, appear to be far more rare than critical failures and do not produce as nearly drastic improvements as critical failures produce in reductions, there is simply no good trade-off here. Even experimenting by 1 point at a time seems to produce the same results (with less risk) as using as many points as possible, which is counterintuitive to what most folks expect, where they expect that taking the greater risk should provide some greater reward other than keeping the complexity low enough on an item that it doesn’t take quite as long to manufacture.
Part of the problem might come where recent experimentation with the crafting system would suggest that a crafting tool with a negative rating (up to –14.99) is far superior to a tool with a positive rating (+15). Apparently the values seem to be flipped for experimentation calculations, we think. We really would like more consistency and a more reliable, documented, experimentation methodology.
Further Malleability ratings do appear to affect the difficulty levels of crafting an item, but this is not otherwise annotated anywhere, not even in the Advanced Guide on Crafting on the main SWG website. Better documentation for experimentation needs to be made available.
5.On Fire Cure&
(To be Fixed)
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
(*Dev response:
Zarlor passed along the following summation from Ben “Marvelin” Hanson’s response on the Correspondent forum on 10/28/2003:
“They do not have a problem with adding some fire dot removal. Fire dots can get nasty on Tatooine where there are only two places on the map to put them out. Again this may take some time to get into the game, but at least it is being looked into now.”
Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=17920 )
6.Mounted Healing
The /healdamage command does not appear to work when mounted. While at least some consider that it may be understandable why healing cannot be done for others while the Doctor is mounted, we are wondering about having at least the ability to heal damage and/or states on ourselves while mounted. Please consider allowing these abilities as they may at least provide an otherwise support profession at least some ability to surviving an unwanted fight while trying to get away.
7.
(Edit: This issue, which was titled "Med Use on Enhances from Crates Bug" has been removed because it appears to be an unfixable problem. See the Dev Response thread on the issue for details.)
8.Faction Points
Docs are interested in seeing a share of Faction Points in the same way that we are getting Combat XP. It is considered inappropriate that a medic professional would be out in the field and, being unable to assist in taking out an opposing faction NPC or player (because they are healing those who are doing so), they will not gain FPs and so will progress much more slowly in faction gains, while providing at least as valuable a service as the person providing the offensive capabilities. Other considerations have included gaining FPs for healing Overt faction members, especially considering the dangers involved in gaining a TEF in this manner in a place that is known for finding unsuspecting TEFed characters (i.e. The Med Center, see TEF Issues).
9.High Level Wound Pack Consolidation
A request has been made for a set of low level wound packs (assuming no consolidation is done based on the Inventory consolidation issue) that would heal, say, Health and the Health secondaries all at the same time and another pack for Action and the Action secondaries. Perhaps limiting them to a comparable A, B and possibly as high as a C-pack, but no higher, at the highest of Doc crafting levels.
10.Resuscitation Consent Request
A request has also been made for a pop-up box to appear to the player of an unconsented corpse telling them that a Doctor is attempting to Resuscitate them, would they like to give consent for this action to occur? It was also suggested that a short delay, perhaps 30-60 seconds, would not be to out of line as an acceptable penalty for death before cloning is allowed. This also gives a Doctor a bit of time to get to a player and at least let them know that they are willing to Resuscitate them, if they prefer not to clone.
11.Enhance Stacking Exploit Bug
Apparently the bug that allows stacking of Doctor Enhancements is back. Please fix.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=18488
Message Edited by Zarlor on 12-03-2003 01:48 PM
12.Drag and Clone Exploit
It is possible to have a player Clone while being Dragged as a corpse allowing them to clone “in place” instead of being forced to the cloning center.
13.Resuscitation Timer Issues
Resuscitation seems to now be subject to a timer that does not allow a corpse to be resuscitated. The timer is inconsistent and otherwise undocumented. If there really is to be a timer we need to know what it is supposed to be or provide the dead player with some kind of indicator or countdown timer, but some folks are reporting that even given immediate access to a corpse they are unable to resuscitate the player.
For more info:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=15729
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=18255
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=21297
14.Enhances Dropping on Logoff and Not Allowing New Buffs
Enhance buffs are 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.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=15995
15.Crate combining
The ability to combine crates in inventory would be a very welcome addition.
16.Medical Bag/Inventory Search for Meds
It has been suggested that some kind of equip-able Medic Bag exist that would allow a Doc to put all of their medicines (and only medical items) in that allows sorting and that would also be searched, alongside of type level inventory, for the purposes of finding medicines with the use of some medic-related commands. Presumably this would be in addition to the wearable Travel Pack. Another possibility was mentioned of consolidating med-packs into single types. Like having a Healpack-C instead of one each for Action and Health, or a Curepack-A for curing ANY state, not just dizzy or blind, and so on. This last suggestion may also help the Developers in greatly reducing database bloat. Even changing the naming conventions of Medicines to a more standardized form so that all Med Packs and Stims, and so on, can at least be sorted better alphabetically. Shorter names wouldn’t hurt either (after all, why are there Small Stimpacks, when there are no Large Stimpacks? Why waste putting the word Small in there?) Stacking of meds in some way or putting things back into crates has also been suggested.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=9797
(*Dev Response:
Possibly addressed in part according to Holo’s response 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:
…
·Add smarter find medicine code.”
[Z’s note: This “update” likely refers to the October Publish, meaning we likely should not expect this until the November Publish at the earliest]
Ref:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=394421)
17.Doctor Content
There is concern that there is a lack of Doc specific content, such as missions to craft medicines or to heal an NPC someplace or to go someplace to heal folks until X number of wounds have been treated and so forth. Such missions could be construed as a method of alleviation of the issues concerning how Docs make money. (See the Money issue)
For reference:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14194
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14257
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14888
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14194
18.Money
This topic comes up very frequently on the Medic threads, but just as frequently, if not more so, on the Doctor forums. There is a lot of concern about how a focused medical character should be able to make money. By this I mean that we are talking about a character whose primary skills and interests are in the healing arts (which could include crafting of meds, for the Pharmaceutically inclined Docs) and not, necessarily, combat or resource management. The self-sufficiency of the profession does not really exist except in a few small methods, of which the primary one for making money IN the profession would seem to be the production and sales of Small Stimpack Bs with some income coming from the sale of the service of enhancing stats (not nearly as useful an income source until Master Doc is reached). There is a much smaller niche market for medical resources and components, but most Doctors seem to feel that resource gathering and sales, while obviously an integral part of the Doctor profession, is more of the realm of the artisan and such sales would be, in effect, making money as an Artisan, and not as a Doctor. Overall these markets are really on fully viable once Master, or at least Level 4 Doc Crafting, is reached.
The other methods of making money seem to be far less reliable, or are not well supported by the game. Tips for Doctors and Medics seems to be a small market except in a few locations or servers and medical professionals are often subjected to all manner of verbal abuse for suggesting payment should be made for the service. Primarily, for those interested in providing services such as Healing or Enhancing, there is no secure method of trade to ensure that the Doctor is paid for their service while also ensuring that the customer gets the service they are requesting.
Suggestions have included some form of secure trade window, like is done for normal trading, or having a Doctor’s healing actually use packs that the customer has on their person instead of the ones on the Doctor (and thereby the Doctor could sell the medicine to the player and then heal him with those), requiring or allowing some form of insurance, possibly whereby either the patients set a price they are willing to pay for healing that will be deducted from them if their healer accepts that rate or the Doctor sets a price they will heal for allowing the patient to accept, allowing A packs or stims only to be usable by anyone thereby opening the market for more pharmaceutical products that Doctors or Medics could then sell (for those who are more crafting oriented, although it should be noted that some recent controversy is beginning to surface over this idea, thread is listed below- Doc #11491 & Medic #6938.) Having Doc-specific missions, like the artisan or entertainer missions. Giving Doctors some sort of Vendor ability to encourage pharmaceutical sales. Paying Docs some rate simply for manning a place where they can /register. Some of the threads below show some of the solutions suggested in greater detail.
Again there is no true consensus on the issue other than that most of the Medic classes tend to rely on other methods of subsistence and take time doing those things that they may not be interested in or may not be fun for them (the usual, delivery/destroy missions, for example.) The issue is an important one amongst the player base and receives a lot of attention on the forums and in game from many of the medics and Doctors I have spoken with.
Of notable reference are the following threads:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1768
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1197
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1650
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=6196
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=10665
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=11491
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=medic&message.id=6938
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14194
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14257
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14012
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14888
(*Dev Response:
Ood Bnar wrote on 9/24/03 in a thread about Image Designer UI issues:
“We talked about adding a payment option, but this gets into the bigger 'payment for services rendered' issue which I will leave to the designers. They are working on the problem now.”
[Z’s note: This may or may not imply anything, but it seems that there maybe some consideration being given for some methods of handling payments for services universally, if possible, opening part of this issue to a possible need for a wider solution which may provide assistance on this issues as well as for other service-related sales.]
Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=image_designer&message.id=2796)
19.Enhances Dropping on Resuscitation
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).
20.Factory Completion Timer
Requests has also been made for some kind of Time-To-Completion timer being added to the factories radial menu, or even in an email sent at production start. Obviously game time is not always going to be accurate, but an estimate at the beginning of production would still prove useful, nonetheless.
21.Enhance Packs Variability%&*
(Partial To be Fixed, added poll results)
Since buffs seem to have such a wide range of healing levels we would like clarification on how this massive variability is generated (what’s the formula?) 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 Ds buffing for 3000 on rare occasion if they can get rid of the occasional 600 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, 1800 point enhancement, only to have it go off for 800 or impressing one customer with a 2300 buff only to get an extremely negative response when the other gets a buff for only 600. 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. Or just a general lowering of the buff range would also be acceptable. Some have also suggested allowing the overriding of lower level buffs as a possible alleviator for this situation.
(*Dev Response:
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.}
Zarlor passed along the following summation from Ben “Marvelin” Hanson’s response on the Correspondent forum on 10/28/2003:
“Currently they are thinking they will go ahead and leave the variation as is, but enable us to overwrite existing buffs. There is the problem of determining which buff is better (is 500 strength, 3000 duration better than 750 strength, 900 duration?). But, they expect to figure something out there. (Anyone have any suggestions?)”
Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=17920
[Z’s Note; A poll was concluded on 12/1/03 regarding the question regarding power or duration which was overwhelmingly in favor of higher power buffs overwriting even a longer duration, but lower power, buff.]
Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=21356)
22.Enhance Drop Notification
There is 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 been a report that there is some notification, but that it easily lost in the other “spam” normally sent or is simply not very noticeable. Possibly some other graphical notification of what buffs you currently have and possibly a blinking warning 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.
23.Droid Recharge Rate
Droids seem to need to be recharged every 20 minutes. For Doctors, who already have a great deal of items they must carry in inventory, carrying droid batteries and having to almost constantly recharge the droid is more of a hassle than its worth. We’d like to see batteries lasting longer, at least an hour, but something like 2 hours would be far more appropriate (keeping it in line with the length of an Entertainer Buff, for example.) This would improve droid viability in the field without making it unduly cumbersome for Doctor’s to use their droids. Another proposal for consideration would be to allow multiple charges to be stored in the droid, like putting quarters in a parking meter allowing it to last longer that way. Adding in the ability to see what the charge rate currently is on the droid would also be of great assistance.
24.Combat Queue Heals%
(Partial and To be Fixed)
There should be a graphic display of heals in combat queue. The fact that heals actually queue up in the combat queue already confuses a large number of Medics. Most Doctors have come to understand how heals do queue up, but it would be very nice to actually see at what position they are queued at. It has also been suggested that heals should always be considered a priority queue item that jumps immediately to the front of the queue to be the next action accomplished. Although it should be noted that the preferred method for healing actions would be to treat them like non-queued actions, such as posture changes, so that they take place without any delay.
(*Dev response:
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:
·Look into making healing go into the combat queue 100%.”
Ref:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=394421
Publish Notes on 10/8/03: “Made /dragIncapacitatedPlayer visible in action list”)
25.Enhance Action -v- other Enhance Pack Resource Disparity
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.
- 1
- 6
- 13
- 21
- 23
- 15
- 19
- 4
- 3
- 5
Thanks Zarlor - you do great work.
Ilealb Jek - Master Doctor, Flurry
Just the numbers:
3
2
8
14
5
23
19
6
24
9
03. Enhanced HAMs Sticking
02. Master Doc Benefits
08. Faction Points
14. Enhances Dropping on Logoff and Not Allowing New Buffs
05. On Fire Cure
23. Droid Recharge Rate
19. Enhances Dropping on Resuscitation
06. Mounted Healing
24. Combat Queue Heals
09. High Level Wound Pack Consolidation
Johaan,
an MD on Starsider who wants /vacinate for X-mas.
1.
5.
9.
6.
23.
Those would be my top five. Thanks for an excellent comprehensive list!
Concerning 1., I'd like to suggest that medical surveying show up first in the crafting IV box of the medic tree. Making it comparable to, say, Survey II, would solve the problem people like me have, without a single point to spare in my template to get surveying, while it would not be as good as actual surveying so hopefully wouldn't dent surveyors' incomes much.
Uh, whoops, I only listed my 1-5, so here is my 6-10. Sorry about that--wish we had an edit button.
4.
24.
2.
8.
19.