Doctor Archive
Thread: Doctor Surveying
Zalor hit the nail on the head.. as a profession we are 100% dependant on others.
We need resources in mass quantities, but we have no way of gathering them.
We need to heal others to get XP.
We need others to make money.
Yes you can easily say, that's what 250 skill points are for, and I accept that. However as the class itself stands we're 100% dependant on others.
Smugglers are a "combat" class by default, so they can run missions to make money to buy resources to make spice. We have no missions so we have no way of making money.
All elite crafting professions start with artisan, and can survey themselves. Not to mention they have missions for themselves as well.
With the exception of Squad Leader, every other class out there can make XP on their own. (read: solo)
Why as a profession are we not capable of doing anything ourselves? This is what I have a fundamental problem with. WhileI understand we're a "support" class we should be able to do something on our own. If we want to sell stims, we have to take artisan to have a vendor, we want to mass produce, we need resources we take artisan. We want to make money, we have to take a combat class.
I'm not saying give us everything, but if they could at least give us a way to make money, that would be a start and would make things easier on us, and I'd have less problems buying resources.
And for the person who said most docs won't buy above 3cr/unit I won't. And see above for why. We have no way of making money as a class. And why does something that costs you the same to harvest, suddenly jump to 20cr/unit. I have a fundamental problem with this. It's called gauging.
Yes I know there's lots of ways to over come these problems, as you can use your 250 points to address these issues, but that's not the point of this. The point is, as a class we can't do these things.
Well sorry for the rant.. got to go.
I don't know that I would call this a server population issue. I play on the most populated of servers, and while that server is less populated these days, it seems, than it was for the first 3-4 months of Live, we still had exactly the same problems then.
Now we have Hologrinders going nuts in all of these other professions, but it hasn't helped us in any way with haveing more surveyors or Scouts or Rangers out there, not even in just getting some grinders leftover resources for cheap. Instead they've just driven the price of resources through the roof so that those who are more focused on being in a support profession (in other words, without a means of income outside of the Medical or Entertainer professions) can no longer afford those resources. While I wouldn't call the current inflation rate on medical resouces price gouging, it's really just the laws of supply and demand, it does screw over the legitimate medical professionals in a huge way.
But overall, I don't think server population is really the problem in this situation.
Exactly te kind of thing I've been talking about. Changing the resources we need to be more generic in nature, or more commonly available. Even for Adv. Components, why not make it Dantooin Seed, or just Berries.Back things outone step on resource ladder, so that current resources gathered are not useless, but you've opeened up what other resources can be used. It still makes things a pain, but at least it's easer to get, say, a good quality generic Chemical than it is to get that in a Fiberplast.
That still seems like getting the short end of the stick to me, but I guess it would be better than painfully tight requirements we have to go through now.
I like your idea, however a few changes.
Make the specialized survey tool schematic onlyavailabletothose with aLvl 4 Survey skill. Allow them to key them to one specific resource/type of resource. I.E. - Dantooine Berries,Talusian Water, etc... Whatever the Artisan decides upon creation. (Maybe it auto-keys it to the last resource he sampled.)
Don't give them charges, or if they do have charges allow us to re-charge them or get them re-charged by another high-level Artisan.
This would supply the Doctors with what they want. And it still keep the cross-profession dependence the Dev's are looking for.
I don't care if an Artisan charges me 50k for something like that, I'd pay it. Hell, as a Doc you'd probably need 5 of them... + recharging... Artisans would get rich selling them to us. :-p
Doctors shouldn't be able to neither medicalsurvey without artisan nor medicalharvest without scout.No profession is completely self-sufficient and to some extent has to rely on others. Asking for medical survey is a case of trying to get a skill that benefits doctors but is, on the whole, detrimental to the game as a whole. The whole point of the game is you have to pay for your abilities in skill points.
Buck up! Pay the price for novice artisan and/or novice scout, or cooperate with someone to get what you need done. You have two paths, which more or less follow the cliches: (1) Jack of all trades, Master of none or (2) Do one thing, do it well.
Arcdischarge wrote:
Doctors shouldn't be able to neither medicalsurvey without artisan nor medicalharvest without scout.No profession is completely self-sufficient and to some extent has to rely on others. Asking for medical survey is a case of trying to get a skill that benefits doctors but is, on the whole, detrimental to the game as a whole. The whole point of the game is you have to pay for your abilities in skill points.
Buck up! Pay the price for novice artisan and/or novice scout, or cooperate with someone to get what you need done. You have two paths, which more or less follow the cliches: (1) Jack of all trades, Master of none or (2) Do one thing, do it well.
With all due respect, you seem to be missing the point that Zarlor, Texxie, and the others have made. While I would agree with you that no profession is completely self-sufficient, our point is that we are completely reliant on the rest of the player base. For everything.Wanna sell stims on a regular basis? Have to find someone to set up a vendor for you. Need a resource? Have to find an artisan/scout willing to find it for you and hope they don't gouge you. Need some dough? Either buff, which requires stupid amounts of specific resources to make and is the source of many problems that docs get from other players,or hope to heck some near-corpse walks in and is in a giving mood after you heal his wounds. For the amount of skill points that we(speaking of masters and those who plan on mastery) spend on doctor, we get nothing to help our ownprogression through the crafting line or maintain our needs when we get master doctor, nor do we get anything to promote a steady stream of income.
The fact that we haveskill points left over after master doctor isvery irrelevant. It'sthe same stuff Iread in the pistoleer forum whensome say that pistoleer is good when you combineit with X profession. While that may be true, it doesn'tmake the fact that the professionneeds work stand out any less. The same idea applies to this issue and doctors.
I am in a prominent PA on my server, and although I do get help when I need it, it takes a long time because the non-docs of the PA are either elite artisan professions who use their lots/harvesters to deal with their own copious resource needs or they are combat oriented for the most part and would rather go krayt hunting, etc. than surveying Lok for wild wheat orproviding escort on dangerous planets. And those who are scouts are either CHs or BHs (combat oriented both) who have better things to do than hunt carrion spats. And I don't blame them. They pay to play just like I do and they pay to have fun, not to cater to me. Surveying and repetitive harvesting are NOT fun.
Finally, like Zarlor has more than hinted at, I think it would be wise for us as a whole to hope for a workable, functional (and functioning 
),solution as opposed to hoping for a specific solution.
Arcdischarge: You seee to miss the point, here. We are not asking to be self-sufficient in any more of a way than any other profession. As Sif mentioned we are COMPLETELY reliant outside of our profession to do anything at all. By our very nature assupport professions the medical professions simply cannot be self-reliant, because we rely on other simply to heal, if nothing else. However, being completely reliant on others puts us completely off balance compared to every other profession in the game which requires nowhere near the same level of other-professions dependencies.
We simply want to be more balanced to the level of dependence that all other professions have. They all have some degree of self-reliance. We have absolutely none.
Well, I am Master Doctor, Novice Artisan, Scout 0010, Brawler 4000, Marksman 0400 and Smuggler 0040.
I'm basically not dependant on anybody for anything, though a Master Doc/Surveyor partner and I need all the lots between us for harvesting. I have a house and one factory, and I have 8 medium-to-heavy harvesters running. I find my own waypoints for resources and in general I do about as well as my Surveyor partner at finding hot spots. At one point I was Scout 4044, Artisan 3224, and I wish I had known what I needed to collect back then, but now I do just fine, even with a 64m tool. Maybe I am just strong in the Force at finding resources, or it could be that I look for other people's harvesters and survey there, I dunno.
Point is, we CAN make meds, and a fair number of them and with decent if not spectacular quality, without Scout skills at all, and with just Novice Artisan. I have mastered Doctor and still sling a pistol fairly well, as well as running multiple high-yield harvesters. I'm not a power-gamer, have yet to start grinding a holo-profession, and take it from me -- it can be done with nothing more than Novice Artisan/Novice Scout. Most resources we need can be found within a few km of a city, and with vehicles and some guessing you will eventually find a field. Took me about 20 minutes of somewhat random driving to find a 61% concentration of Lokian Wild Wheat last night, 2000m from the starport on Lok. Is there a 90% concentration out there somewhere? Probably, but I don't feel entitled to that unless I want to scour a planet, and my time is more valuable than that.
I completely disagree with giving Docs survey skills, without getting Artisan as well. Same for harvesting skills -- there IS a skill tree with those skills, and you have plenty of skill points left over to get it.
Schematics with sensible requirements. (For instance .. what is it about avian meat as a protein that's so necessary for enhancements) or surveying abilities. Probably schematic changes. "Lokian Wild Wheat" is ok .. there will always be a lok wheat. "Dolovite Iron" isnt. I'd also move to change enhancement herbivore/avian meat to "high quality meat (OQ800+)" which would make more sense to me. The justification being that the crafter classes get surveying in their own tree.
Right now I'm trying to be a master doc, get the resources I need to make a set of tools (stims, wound, poison, disease, state, enhance) and have points left to work on a combat class.
I tend to think that you can be a crafter and something.. so a master architect / tka, or there is the ubiquitous master [combattemplate] & tka & novice medic.
I agree you just cant do that as a doc. We're treated like a walking medical centre, buff, heal, repair on demand. Never have I had "Player X has tipped you 1000" credits. followed by "Player X: any chance you could heal me?". Let's face it, thats the reverse of what we do.. heal and hope for some reward.
If I remove my surveying abilities my costs spiral amazingly. Resources stop being available, my ability to make more than 1 or 2 stims at a time, especially quality stims and factory components, just ceases to exist.
It's a support profession as you stated yourself, we chose it, like others chose dancing and entertaining. We can at least look down in pity at the Image Designers, nobody NEEDS that, unless IDs can buff astat, but that is of rather limited utility. Be that as it may, the game would grind to a complete halt without doctors, with everyone sacked out on the floor of hospitals waiting to auto-heal after bad clonings and getting slaughtered in the field without stims.
Our crafting requirement is minimal compared to Weaponsmith (though not to Smuggler, it's grindable in a minimal amount of time) and some other professions, and we can get that XP on our own.
SWG is designed with interlocking professions so that there HAS to be a community. For a game to be successful, on one level you have to provide content, but on another level you have to meet a need for interpersonal communication, the "chat room" function of a game. One of the basic drivers of our society is to interact with others, and MMOGs are successful when they fill that role. Making any character completely independant of others defeats the purpose of a massive MULTIPLAYER online game by turning it essentially into a single-player game populated by really talkative NPCs. There is a single-player game out now, KOTOR, from what I hear the content is much better in that game than SWG, but there are no people to swap recipies, waypoints and war stories with. This gameis designed for interaction, and when you break that you break the game.
There are ways around this besides giving doctors survey skills. One idea would be to allow Novice Doctors or even Master Medics to GIVE survey missions instead of get them, walk up to a survey terminal on a planet, post a bounty and specifications, and when a surveyor finds your resource, you are notified by email and pick up a waypoint ticket at any survey terminal on that planet,which will allow you to set ONE harvester for that resource (not exactly at that resource point, since someone may have planted a harvester at your site in the meantime). It maintains the integrity of the classes, and for docs who don't want to huddle over a survey scope, gives them the ability to use harvesters. Everybody wins -- rather than "buying" survey skills with Skill Pointsyou rent them a harvester at a time with credits, the surveyors get a job, and nobody cries about doctors encroaching on their skill set.
The point also is, your character is a character, not a profession. Thus the profusion of skill points above and beyond what's needed for any Master Profession, to allow you to tailor your skills to your needs. I wanted to Master Doctor, and I knew I wouldneed meat to do that, and after climbing halfwayup the pistoleer tree I realized I wouldn't be able to do all thethings I wanted AND master Pistoleer, so I dumped that for the Smuggler pistol line. Besides being a doctor IRL, I play SWG, I know a lot about computers, and I play golf -- and so on.
I pretty much agree with you. But the issue is one of balance. All professions interlock in some manner, but for the Medical Professions there is absolutely no level of self-sufficency. None at all. For a set of professions with a very high skill point cost as it stands. To me that means we have a problem.
Now some kind of surveying ability may very well not be the answer. There are MANY solutions offered in the issues I listed and all of the associated threads. The focus most folks have on the survey idea is because it would be fairly easy to implement, there is already pleanty of precident for novice skills being pulled into other professions (Pets Stims, TN for CMs, Chef and Smuggler buffs that are, effectively, short term heals) and such a massive amount of our resource requirements come from the survey line.
Comparing Docs to Weaponsmiths is limited, though, since you also need to consider all of the other Survey professions, including Chef, Armorsmith, DEs, Architects and Merchants. Or you could compare us to the hybrid crafters of Scout, Ranger, Musician and Smuggler. Frankly we have far greater needs in resources than any of the hybrid crafters and in that sense we are far, far closer to the "true crafters" We certainly need to craft more than a Merchant does.
In all cases, however, there is some compensation for the ability to attain the resources needed. In the case of Artisan-based craftersthat is /survey and /sample, in the case of Scouts and Rangers it is /harvest, in the case of Musicians and Smugglers it is very generic and very small resource needs where the qualtiy of hte resources used are utterly irrelavent (anything of the type needed will do.) Not to mention in the caseof Smugglers they have a saleable product in Spice. In our case only we can use the products we make. And only Rangers have anywhere near the skill point requirements of a Doc or a CM in any of thsoe professions listed.
So you have a combination of effects coming into play where a lesser ability to make money and inability to otherwise acquire ANY of the resource needs for our crafting on our own, in addition to a high skill pointprerequisite,leaves those taking the medical professions as part of their templateat an extreme disadvantage compared to other profession templates. And that is the overall issue that needs to be addressed.
The solutions are varied, but I personally don't see something like a gimped version of /survey being made available somewhere in the medical profession lines as being anywhere out of whack with the base abilities of other professions and how templates are made using those professions.