Doctor Archive
Thread: Zarlor: Some thoughts on the new HAM cost system
Hi everyone, and Zarlor in particular.
First, I want to say that I think that this new system is actually a step in the right direction in terms of trying to fix the oddities in the SWG damage system. Before I get to that,I'd like to say a quick bit about why I dont feel that it's a "nerf" to healers in general. After i get done with that, I want to mention a bit about how I feel that this new system could be extended to encompass healers, allowing full fledged mind heals for all.
I think this new change is an excellent idea. I only tested it briefly on TC with a brawler using intimidate so i could see first hand how it works, so i dont know if everything is balanced and stuff like that. However, it achieves the goal that the HAM costs were meant to achieve in the first place without being totally annoying: keep combat specials from becoming something that were mindlessly "spammed" to achieve the maximum damage output. When used strategically, specials will not have a large effect on your character. Hopefully, the regen rates and depletion rates are still modified by your secondary stats, allowing them to retain the same importance.
I feel that half of the uproar caused in the healer community caused by these thoughts is also an artifact of the currently unbalanced system, and that makes another good point in how this is a boon and not a nerf. Currently, medics spend a lot of time concentrating on healing players' damage caused by specials rather than healing actual battle damage. Why is this? The combination of the relative effectiveness of creature handlers and the relative uselessness of melee types as tanks has caused 99% of all PvE tanking to be done by pets. With the recent increrases to melee type characters in defence, and the reductions in creature handler power, I'd hope (REALLY REALLY hope, actually...im sick of grauls and rancors) that more player tanks emerge. Hell, i'd love it of a pikeman could be a better tank than a grauler...they're not so huge, and it gives melee characters a role in the game. How is that relavant? You dont get xp for healing pets, so the only time you ever bother to heal them is when asked or when you have to to keep yourself alive. What happens when all those thousands of points of damage are dealt to another player instead of a pet? Sure, the specials that people are doing may not be causing healable damage, but how much sense does it really make that a hunting party needs a medic to keep its shooters alive...while the creatures are beating on another 30 foot tall hairy creature?
There is plenty to heal to give you XP. Heck, it's currently way to easy to get medical experience. Maybe removing HAM damage from weapons would help make this problem less visable. As a former carbineer, I can tell you one thing...it gets old when your weapon is almost more efficient at killing you than it is at killing your enemy.
Finally, the salvation of both PvP and PvE combat systems could be wrapped up in this, despite all the cries of "nerf." Currently, the system is unbalanced because late in the design of the game a realization was made: If medics are allowed to heal the very same pool they spend to allow them to heal, they can heal infinately in battle, limited only by their resources. Perhaps in the beginning, they felt that this resource limitation was enough. Whatever their reasoning was, we are now stuck with a system in which there are threedamagable health pools, and each of the three is just as easy to damage as the others. What happens when you can only actively heal two of them? Damaging that third pool suddenly becomes THE way to win in PvP conflicts, and damage to that third pool becomes the limiting factor in all battles.
If this new HAM cost system were to be extended to healing (I verified to myself that it wasnt by creating anovice medic, training novice brawler, taking some damage by fighting a mob, and healing myself with the damage stim provided to newbie healers...if I am wrong and for real heals this new system is in place, please correct me), this would allow for all healers to be able to heal mind damage using standard stimpacks without causing the same infinite loop effect seen before when healing caused standard damage. This system would have the same end effect...a healer that chain heals will eventually come to a point where his mind pool is too low to heal any more, and there is nothing that can be done about aside from waiting. A healer could heal mind damage done to himself, although at limited efficiency since his/her maximum mind pool would decrease due to the healing. This would allow medics, doctors, and combat medics alike to keep their newly found melee tanks alive longer in PvE, and would remove some of the inbalance seen in targeted mind attacks from bounty hunters, riflemen, and combat medics. The mind pool would remain to be a weaker **edit** in the armor, which still leaves medics witha **edit** in their armor...a medic cannot infinitely heal his own mind, and would still be unable to heal wounds or buff mind related stats.
Zarlor, if you read this and agree with what I'm saying, please do whatever you can to relay this idea to the developers. Let them know that they may have accidentally fixed their wacky three pool damage system, and probably dont even realize it!
Well, as i mentioned this has actually been talked about on teh correspondent forum for a few days now when they gave us a heads up on it. (With orders not to say anything until it hit TC.) So a lot of this has already come up.
As for it being indavertent, I'm not too sure that it is. I'm pretty sure they are already aware of some of the areas where this could really affect a fix for having an otherwise unhealable pool and helping to take care of the one issue that has been on our Top 5 lists since I started doing Top 5 lists at the end of June,I think it was. For all i know it was a driving factor in it, although I think the real reason was to try to work more of a combat balance into special usage.
At any rate, are there any threads started up on this on the TC forum yet? I have not had a chance to cehck over there, but I think putting you insights there would be the best place to work from. I suspect the Devs will be doing that silently watching routine on any thread that does focus on this change on that forum, at any rate.
Outside of that my methods tend to fall more toward voting threads to make sure I offer a good cross-section of where the Docs stand on issues. Those are the views in particular that I try to bring over to the Devs more often than anything else.
When i first heard about this system i was for it but now having concidered a few things i have several questions/concerns that i would like ironed out before this system is even concidered for live.
1. I'm assuming here that heals count as specials and reduce this bar therefore allowing for the inclusion of mind stims, my problem with this is if this bar has a set regeneration time then my willpower maxed at 900 and my maxed focus is now wasted as everyone can heal as often and for as long as me.
2. If secondary/tertiary stats no longer effect the specials then you'll end up only being able to sell health and action buffs.
3. If using specials removes from the max of a stat does this mean after a long period of healing i become a one hit kill if hit in mind ?
So i'd say yes as long as sec/ter stats are still relevant andboth doctors and CM's get a mind heal. It would be nice if this bar could be healed like wounds but is not an absolute must.
ogreb42 wrote:
...keep combat specials from becoming something that were mindlessly "spammed" to achieve the maximum damage output. When used strategically, specials will not have a large effect on your character....
I think this IS the biggest problem I have with the new system as you pointed out.
But I don't understand why you would think that this is NOT supposed to be.
What is the biggest different between pistol and rifle? Rifle does MANY times the damage as pistol if we are to just use it normally.
Pistol and pistoleer are able to keep up with other high damage weapon because they have the rate of fire. conbine that with special they can keep up with other weapon. If pistoleer or any other fast firing weapon are forced to use their specials same rate as all other profession, I don't think they can compete at current damage rate.
If as you put it specials are not meant to use back to back, then I think speed on weapon would lose their import as well as weapon enhancer with speedbuff or weapon sliced for speed.
I guess they can substentially increase the damage of faster weapons unless the reason they are doing this is because they feel way too many are playing pistoleer.(I think they mentioned that before)
That also go for many other combat profession as well. Ever since they limited the number of knowckdown that can happen, the only thing that keep player from dying when solois the fact that they can kill it before they die because how much HAM mob has. I suppose this is good news for us healers since longer fight last, more people get hurt and more often they will die.
If fighting every even con mob become an event, then each mission would last great deal longer. I think this would hit the soloist the hardest.
MedBoy wrote:
When i first heard about this system i was for it but now having concidered a few things i have several questions/concerns that i would like ironed out before this system is even concidered for live.
1. I'm assuming here that heals count as specials and reduce this bar therefore allowing for the inclusion of mind stims, my problem with this is if this bar has a set regeneration time then my willpower maxed at 900 and my maxed focus is now wasted as everyone can heal as often and for as long as me.
The assumptions are exactly why I highly recoomend folks get onto TC and try these things our. Currently only Combat Specials use this new method over there. Healing actions are not a prt of it... yet. Currently the regen rate is based on the factor of the cost of the special to regen in 25 seconds. So the more costly the special the faster the regen. They ahve mentioned a LOT to the correspondents that they expect to ahve to do a LOT of tweaking to the system. It's not even remotely close to being set in stone the way it is. THe ability to have secondary stats affect this specials pool is certainly going to have to be one of the considerations on the matter (and the Corre's have already broght it up anyways. 
)
2. If secondary/tertiary stats no longer effect the specials then you'll end up only being able to sell health and action buffs.
In the dcurrent incarnation your stat that affects special cost stil affects special cost. So that par tof hte equation for buffs is still very, very useful. The regen part of the equation is simply unanswered at this point int time. We have been told that what is on TC is a quick and dirty test for a more intricate system. As such I'm pretty sure all of these things will be taken into consdieration, and have already been mentioned, actually.
3. If using specials removes from the max of a stat does this mean after a long period of healing i become a one hit kill if hit in mind ?
Assuming we are talking about some time in the future if they decide they like th system, and assuming they decide to add healing actions as one of these types of "specials", then yes. THat's exactly what it means. Just like it is now. The difference is that stimming will do nothing to allow unlimited specials usage and that the regen rate is MUCH faster than your normal damage regen rate is. For Medics this would mean you could actually heal more than you could now, but initial reports also suggest that combats are lasting longer. So it should balance out overall.
Don't say yes or no yet based on what you hear here. Say yes or no based on trying things out on TC and seeing for youself how it works. The questions you've posed here just scratch the surface of all the game systems such a fundamental change affects. To really get a good idea of how this thing operates I think we'lll all need to do waht we can to help our profession out by really digging into this. So I definitely reccomend folks get onto Test Center and put this thing through all the paces you can. Sure you'll be starting out (for now) as a Novice Medic, but that will also give you some idea of XP gain rates. There's a LOT to take into consideration with this, so give it a try and then let us know what you think.
So i'd say yes as long as sec/ter stats are still relevant andboth doctors and CM's get a mind heal. It would be nice if this bar could be healed like wounds but is not an absolute must.
Thanks zarlor.
As the annoying old saying goes when you assume you make an ass out of u and me 
In it current state then this doesn't really offer any advantages to the medical community.
I'm not sure that I understand your point about combat balance Ilya. Rifles hit harder, but shoot slower. Pistols dont hit as hard, but shoot faster. In the end, the amount of damage (should!) be roughly equal. The difference between the weapons is the situations in which they are most useful. The weapons being balanced is a separate issue, really...I'm making the assumption that they are now, or will be in the future, balanced in terms of damage. Crazy assumption, I know, but it needs to happen. Spamming specials to maximize your damage output should have some sort of penalty to offset the increased damage output. Currently, that penalty is totally negated by anyone with novice medic, which is why novice medic is so prevalant now. I dont understand why you would think that not always using specials back to back would minimize the importance of weapon speed...the amount of damage you can deal over time is heavily depandant on weapon speed, and the specials that do get used will still fire slower than the default attack, making speed even more important. There's nothing wrong with using specials back to back...and, if secndary stats are to retain their importance (the only way i would support this change would be if the same depletion and regenration link to stam/quick/con/str/will/focus is maintained), you will probably be able to use all the specials you want, back to back, while buffed, just like before.
Yeah, it could end up reducing the power of soloers. But, get a buff, and you'll be able to solo just as you could before. Also, nobody should be out there soloing the hardest creatures in the game. I'm not saying that you cant solo...I'm just saying that since people can group together, there should be things in the game that cannot be killed solo.
Really, if done right, the final result of this change would be indistinguishable from the old system. If weapons all use the same amount of HAM, but the HAM used regenerates faster than it used to be, people will be able to use back-to-back specials more than they can currently, barring being healed. The if done right part is very important. As Zarlor has now mentioned twice, nobody really knows if the assumptions I am making about how the system works are correct. This system needs to be teasted and tweaked before introduction to the live servers, and if the decision were to be made to include healing in the change, that would need to be tested specifically.
This is just how I see things working, though. I am in no way infallable, and I admit that I am making several assumptions (several of which include assuming that the developers will be able to properly implement and balance this system along with the combat systems). But, changing the healing system to work like this could help relieve the mind pool weakness without making healers invulnerable. Mind wounds would remain unchanged, so it wouldnt affect the entertainers. Damaging a healer's mind would still limit his healing ability, and repeated healing would still leave the healer with a vulnerable mind.
I just hope this new system won't make stims useless/worthless.
combat101 wrote:
I just hope this new system won't make stims useless/worthless.
Well if it's any consolation I don't see that happening. It may prolong combats some, which means more opportunities for taking damage, even though specials won;t be causing damage. So there will likely still be the same damage to heal, you just won't be doing it constantly like we do now. If anything we will likely see mroe wounds coming out of a change like this, too.
We'll just have to see hwo the tweaking and balancing works out with it.
Right now there is no "specials pool" It's your actaul HAM bar that gets affected. Kind of like taking wounds, but the wounds aoutheal at a much faster rate than even buffed up damage regenerates. Making kind of a bouncy-bar effect, if you will. So buffing these means more HAMs to spam specials with. Buffs are still VERY useful.
The problem being addressed primarily has to to with combat specials and in-equalities between the combat classes,I believe. As such only Combat Specials at this time fall under this change. So there's still plenty to see with how it works and what tweaking it will need.
I hope that this leads to:
- More tanks needing healing, and those tanks are PC's
- PC's getting wounds, and those wounds need healing more often
I've been playing a fencer recently. The rate at which I get wounds is astounding. Pets have been denying doctors the job of fixing those wounds, because players don't get those wounds. With these changes, I hope that we start seeing wounded in the hospitals again.
Dr. Vema Gara
"I'm not sure that I understand your point about combat balance Ilya. Rifles hit harder, but shoot slower"
There's been a bug in the speed reduction calculations since release that renders this argument false at high levels of skill. All weapons operate at the minimums for all styles. Unfortunately, instead of fixing the bug in the speed calcs, the devs have been talking of just reducing the speed cap on pistols, while keeping it the same for other weapons (1 sec for most).
One reason I don't enjoy pvp combat is that fights normally only last under10 seconds, due to the enormous damage output players are capable of, largely due to the broken speed calculations. This is a strong contradiction to SOE claims that this was not a 'twitch' type game.
What would stop novice medic dabblers would be to put stim Bs at pharm II and stim Cs at pharm IV. I know alot of us make money of stim Bs, but this system will put an end to stim B sales for the most part. At leaststimA's will have a reason. It seems like rifleman will be the way to go then. And now from what I read they have a special that allows them to pull one creature from the crowd w/o alerting all the other creatures as well.