Doctor Archive
Thread: Buff Bots VS DOCTORS
homebreu
Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:29 am
#14
The ONLY way a buff bot will affect others in a negative way, is if there were too many of them running all the time and charging much less than you are. This is not the case at all, so therefore this is a non issue.
If you do not like a certain buff bot, hang out in front of their house and buff some of his customers for the same price or less than he is. They do nont care because they are not really there to make money as much as they are there to provide an alternate, more convieniant method for the populous to get the fix they so desperatly need to play the game. The Doc BUFF!
I guess I really do not understand what the big deal is. Can someone please give me some circumstances that would make being a buff bot a bad thing for anyone in the game?
homebreu
Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:43 am
#15
I do not like the tumblers either, but I think that is mostly because of where they do it. The funny thing is that without them in the med centers, there would be no one in there to actually heal the players.
I used to ninja buff the tumblers, but I found that that just cleaned out the med centers, so no one was there to heal the players. Lol.
Iwonder what is going to happen when people are not grinding out Doc just to get their Jedi anymore. I just hope there are enough Doc and Medic Rpers left to actaully hang out in the med centers when the grinders are all gone. I know I won't be in there healing the public.
BlackMageMerc
Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:44 am
#16
No, I really couldn't...then again I couldn't give you a situation where tumblers hurt anything either. *waits patiently for the recurring argument to ensue*
I wouldn't touch the tumbler issue with a 20 foot pole....
Dejik
Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:45 am
#17
I personally don't have enough time nor the patience to heal in medcenters. Although would be very nice if docs were paid a salary of sorts to stay and heal, I'm just too busy making buffs and selling them to actually go out of my way to wait to treat others. Love the idea, but quite flawed 
.
.
RashekZorr
Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:59 am
#18
Ok I might get ripped to shreds here but I dropped Master Weaponsmith/Master Merchant with my alt Sithral to turn him into a buff bot! Well shortly after I made Master Doctor my city was attacked and not having my main toon on I went to help with my new doctor abilities..Needless to say I fell in love with the profession and since have added Master Combat Medic as well! Sithral has never once been used as a "Buff Bot" as he has now become the character I use the most....Just thought I'd share that with you :0 Not sure why though hehe!
Rudoku
Sat Jun 19, 2004 8:13 am
#19
RashekZorr wrote:
Ok I might get ripped to shreds here but I dropped Master Weaponsmith/Master Merchant with my alt Sithral to turn him into a buff bot! Well shortly after I made Master Doctor my city was attacked and not having my main toon on I went to help with my new doctor abilities..Needless to say I fell in love with the profession and since have added Master Combat Medic as well! Sithral has never once been used as a "Buff Bot" as he has now become the character I use the most....Just thought I'd share that with you :0 Not sure why though hehe!
No one here cares, more power to you.
Gixxer750
Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:01 am
#20
What? I don't understand what you're saying? 7 years of what? It's not like you mastered Doctor from when it was actually hard, I mean come on, you joined a little over a month ago.
brizness wrote:
It's time docs. Stand up and say whats on your mind.
I for one am not happy about the buff bot idea and feel that it is a scam against us as doctors.
AFTEr all we had to go throught 7 years of bull**edit**!
Falcon187420
Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:24 am
#21
Sorry, didn't mean to go off on ya so harshly...I misunderstood what "buff bot" meant. My character isn't going to be an AFK buffer in the least bit, it's all for my own convenience and for a change of pace from Combat professions. I actually reallly enjoy my new character, it's a side of the game that I've never experienced and that's refreshing to me.
ScarMaker
Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:32 pm
#22
I think the buff bots r a good idea, saves me getting tells all the time. Only thing that bothers me is the fact that Coronet starport on Gorath used to be lag city due to spammers selling stuff. Now we have about 7 docs at a time inside the starport where the shuttle lands buffing and lagging it up for everyone. There should be a spot made for docs to buff so they dont all lag up the main cities. Bring back the spammers selling stuff!
Im a master doc myself so im not trolling the board but if u docs must make people line up like a load of zombies,PLZ do it away for the starports.
Roustabout
Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:48 pm
#23
7 years of med school. Now don't you feel silly?
Gixxer750 wrote:
What? I don't understand what you're saying? 7 years of what? It's not like you mastered Doctor from when it was actually hard, I mean come on, you joined a little over a month ago.
brizness wrote:
It's time docs. Stand up and say whats on your mind.
I for one am not happy about the buff bot idea and feel that it is a scam against us as doctors.
AFTEr all we had to go throught 7 years of bull**edit**!
Gixxer750
Sat Jun 19, 2004 3:52 pm
#25
Roustabout wrote:
7 years of med school. Now don't you feel silly?
Gixxer750 wrote:
What? I don't understand what you're saying? 7 years of what? It's not like you mastered Doctor from when it was actually hard, I mean come on, you joined a little over a month ago.
brizness wrote:
It's time docs. Stand up and say whats on your mind.
I for one am not happy about the buff bot idea and feel that it is a scam against us as doctors.
AFTEr all we had to go throught 7 years of bull**edit**!
/cry
I feel silly.
TFA_Maverick
Sat Jun 19, 2004 3:59 pm
#26
Alright, I make an appearance on these forums only very, very rarely... but as one of the guys who has been a medical professional since getting the game on launch date +2 and getting all the way up to MD the "legit" way (by *gasp* healing people!)... I'm gonna throw in my two bits and radical ideas. |: )
I'll admit up front, my perspective might be skewed a bit because I've always been involved in this game for the roleplay aspect, but I think the ideas are sound regardless. What has happened to the doctor profession is just a radical paradigm shift from being "healers" to instead being "enhancers." For the first several months of the game, doctors were respected and admired, and could actually roleplay being doctors, going and doing time in hospitals to heal people (and even make a decent enough living doing so). This came to a crashing halt as soon as ultra-buffs became common.
The situation as it is now, is that doctors no longer act like doctors; they're assembly-line manufacturers, sitting in the middle of city streets with people lining up in front of them for buffs, to be given in a quick and orderly fashion. The same ultra-buffs make wound healing almost completely obsolete, as they seem to drastically reduce the chances of taking and/or noticing any wounds, so any wound-healing by docs that goes on now is expected to be a free appetizer added on before the next round of buffs. In short, it has become possibly the ultimate gold-mine for opportunistic grinders in the game. Other than buffs, docs are seen as useful to a much lesser extent only for resurrection, and to an even lesser extent for poison and disease cures.
What the Devs and players need to decide which of those paradigms they ultimately want doctors to be: Healers, or Enhancers. If it is Enhancers, then I guess things can go on much as they have for the past half-year. If, on the other hand, it is Healers (which I think and sincerely hope it is), there are some things that can be done to reduce its enhancement addiction and bring it back. Some of these fundamental ideas...
Eliminate Buffs (Or nerf them drastically) - No matter who you are, you know in your heart of hearts it's what needs done. I wouldn't shed a tear if doctor buffs were totally removed from the game. The first argument from people is, of course, "How will I wear my armor?!" Well, my answer is you probably shouldn't be, at least not as much or of certain types... but that is an entirely different discussion for an entirely different forum. Suffice it to say, I've got theories as to what could be done to armor and weapons with the combat balance that all work out well and even with a massive buff nerf or elimination and make things much more balanced, but for the sake of argument here, and talking about strictly existing situations: does it really (truly) make sense for every single type of character in the game to be able to ever run around in full, super-resistant composite armor whenever they can spend three minutes and a few thousand credits to get a buff? If buffs are to be left in the game, then they should be limited to absolutely no more than 500-900 per attribute at the very, very highest.
If We Keep Them, Give Buffs Drawbacks - Even at nerfed effectiveness, there needs to be something to discourage people from refusing to do anything without buffs. Not neccesarily as harsh as some spice downers, but something. One simpler idea might be to limit the number of attributes that can be enhanced on a singled character at any given time (such as only health-related or action-related)... on the other hand, if we keep the current six attribute buffs at new nerfed levels, have potential side-effects with frequency and severity increasing directly proportionally to the strength of the buffs. These would be normal existing status conditions that could range from simply puking fits, to sudden agitated mental states (strong stunning or intimidation, or both), to severe dizziness, to even hemmoraging (a decent strength mind-bleed). This could also give an excuse to use A-C rated enhances in addition to D's... the most severe side-effects (such as hemmoraging) would be exclusive to D's, while you could expect much lighter side-effects (if any) for A's. The game would make a random check for your character every time a certain duration passes... such as a 10% chance every 20 minutes for A's, a 15% chance every 15 minutes for B's, a 20% chance every 10 minutes for C's, and a 20% chance every 5 minutes for D's.
Also, excessive steroid (buff) usage could be further penalized by having that every time you take a set of buffs over once in a 12-24 hour period of actual in-game time (counting re-buffs after deaths), you run an increasing risk of developing semi-permanent side effects. The chance would increase by, say, 10% for every buff session over the first until the character takes an appropriate length of time "buff-free." These semi-permanent side effects could resemble some spice downers by lowering the value of an attribute (or set of attributes) by 100-200 for 3-6 hours. These penalties would also immediately nullify any buffs given to the attributes in question that caused them. Or, alternatively, you could say that every single time a buff wears out, you suffer a downer to that attribute depending on what class of buffs was used... and re-buffing it starts from the downed value, but also further increases the value of the pre-existing downer when it wears out, until a certain "buff-free" time period elapses.
Reduce Stim Yield and Increase Stim Requirements - It's kind of crazy that a person with no more than novice medic can used a cranked up stim B to completely heal an un-buffed character. I say reduce stim yield across the board by about 10-20%, and increase the med usage requirements for all of them except A's to 5 or 10 higher than they currently are. This would be geared more towards giving plain medics a role again, in that you'd need one with you at almost all times to get any appreciable damage healed... and they'd have to have at least a moderate bit more than just novice medic to do any good.
Simultaneous Doctor and Combat Medic Ability Changes - I don't know how many of you are familiar with ever playing any sort of fantasy-ish RPG, but I have a vision of what doctors and combat medics could be in a loose sort of way. Imagine, if you will for a moment, that docs and cm's are "chemical mages." If you were to say that doctors, as healers, are supposed to be 'white chemical mages', and combat medics are to be 'black chemical mages,' then you suddenly have a bit stronger framework for what role exactly that each is supposed to play, and what abilities they should have.
Combat Medics: Would be primarily offensive and chemical warfare units. They would retain the most basic area stim usage, but all of the more advanced area healing would be transferred to doctor. In exchange, CM’s would gain a range of new chemical attack options to make them a mostly self-sufficient and viable combat profession (albeit one definitely limited by ‘ammo’). New gas and chemical area attack weapons would be given to them, which would be direct damage instead of DOT applications. Some advanced chemical weapons could also give other states in addition to damage (or alone), such as area stunning, dizzing, or even acid sprays that cause bleeding to a random pool. They would also have ‘spray guns’ that function as normal single-target ranged weapons that would deliver more concentrated damage, wounding, and/or status effects than the area variants. Additionally, one tree would gain CM’s excellent resistance to poisons and diseases, and some resistance to other states as well
Doctors: Would be primarily defensive and restorative characters. They would gain the entire progression of ranged healing stims currently exclusive to CMs. Additionally, high level or mastery of the profession would grant area state heals and anti-toxins to cure poisons, diseases, and other states (perhaps even an area coagulant for bleeding). Finally, docs would gain a new class of rated items in the form of vaccines, and a new ability to use them. Vaccines would be specific to a certain state (definitely poison and disease, but possibly others such as anti-stun, anti-dizzy, etc) and require application in a hospital. Afterwards, they’d grant about two hours of protection in the form of a +10-+50 defense bonus against that particular form of attack.
In the end, the sooner we eliminate the buff-craze and start getting some revamp akin to these kind of ideas implemented, the sooner we once again have a set of equally unique, valuable, and versatile medical professions that are all fun to be and roleplay. Think about it... Who knows, maybe these ideas will grow on you. Now I will take cover and prepare for the rocks that are going to be thrown at me. =)