Doctor Archive

1) #2
2) #34
3) #18
4) #28
5) #1
6) #20
7) #22
8) #27
9) #13

1- 43

2- 47

3- 4

4- 5

5- 7

6- 8

7 - 9

8- 10

9- 17

10 - 18

1) 3

thats all i care about

Worrirr / starsider

one suggestion on the mind damage thing

only let master doctor/combat medic do it to cut down on exploitability

1) #50: Dev Response. For the love of God, just throw us a bone. Any bone. Even the old nasty smelly ones.

2) #3: Mind Damage. AUGH drives me NUTS. I don't care who gets the ability, just SOMEONE needs to heal mind damage in combat. I don't care who. I'm so tired of carrying newbie-out-of-chargen Damage Stimpacks with me just to raise from mind-incap.

3) #1: Enhance Packs. These are my bread and butter, and I need them to be flawless. Please, oh please, if nothing else, just fix the radial menu targeting? No matter what you pick, it enhances yourself. Ack.

4) #46: Experimentation. At least tell us how it works so we understand better what we should be doing?

5) #2: Factories. Everyone has this problem, but man, I would so love a crate of stims that doesn't require 24/7 babysitting.

1. #2


2. #4


3. #6


4. #8


5. #23

1). 9

2). 2

3). 3

4). 5

5). 13

6). 17

7). 1

3

4

2

11

18

21

I know this is kinda long, but there are some important things to note in here so you can fully understand this process and help us all to better the Doctor profession and make our voices heard through official channels.

Since our initial Top 5 was supposedly responded to (check my posts on the SOE forums, if you want the detail on how they were NOT responded to) I am taking that as satisfaction of the requirement needed for a response before sending in the next Top 5 list to the Devs. So here it is, the current Big List of Issues and your chance to make your voice heard. (Well maybe, since I'm starting to think the Top 5 actually falls into an email black hole or /dev/null somewhere.)

This will be done with preference voting. That means you should select from this Big List the Top 10 issues, in order, for you from all of the issues listed. The issue you list at #1 will be awarded 10 points, #2 will get 9 and so on down to your #10 issue which will receive 1 point. (There are other methods of handling preference voting that I won't bore you with, but I will actually check to see if any of the other methods is needed to ensure a proper preference rating on an issue.)

And Please use the reference number from the list. For example (and this is a bogus example):

1) #1
2) #99
3) #34
4) New Issue: Why aren't there more Wookiee Doctors in the game? Perhaps improving their Mind stats would encourage this.
5) #8
6) #22
7) #86
8) #3
9) #2347 (Wow! That list was long!)
10) #16

Do NOT vote for an issue twice in two separate places (like 1st and 5th) in an attempt to artificially increase that issues score. Doing so will simply invalidate the second time you selected it and it would mean you end up only submitting a Top 9, or less if you did it more than once. Please try to select 10 different issues, or just as many issues up to 10 different ones as you feel are important. I you do not agree with a listed issue, don't vote for it at all.

If you have a new issue that is not on the list, feel free to add it (I will add it to the big list for next time, if appropriate) in the priority level you want it to be in. If someone else selects your issue in this voting (by writing it out in their vote) then that will be fine and you may actually get a new issue up into the ratings. Normally I suggest getting your New issues into the Big List thread instead, so it is already here when voting comes along.

Please be aware that some issues are really a consolidated listing of closely related issues. It is quite possible that if you have a new issue, it may already be a part of another issue, so you may wish to read through them carefully. If I notice your "new" issue is already a part of some other issue, I will automatically make your new issue a vote for the existing issue that is applicable.

Be aware of the annotations on issues. If the Devs have stated they are already working on an issue, then you may wish to not vote for that item or set it at a lower priority since it supposedly is being worked on, however if you feel the issue still warrants a high priority anyway, feel free to vote for it where you feel it should be.

Voting will be closed at 2PM EST on Thursday 8/28/03, so please be sure to pass the word along for folks to get onto one of the forums to vote, or to send em an email or /tell in game if they are on the Eclipse server.

I will post the final Top 5 results in the form of the actual email that I will have sent to the Devs either Thursday Afternoon, or Friday Morning. The Big list will then be resorted based upon the voting and posted for commentary (without a vote).

I'll try to maintain a cycle (as long as I'm correspondent, that is) of posting a list for commentary while we wait for Dev Response followed by a Big List put up for vote with commentary annotations. That will be followed, as always, with public posting of any emails I send to the Devs, which will normally only be that Top 5 listing. If I receive any private responses (well, other than a "we go it, thanks") then I'll be happy to post that to the forums as well. For those of you on not on the SOE forums or who do not visit regularly the latest Big List, Top 5, Dev Responses and the Top 5 the Devs responded to, will all be stickied at the Top of the Doctor Profession forum. So it should be a little less painful than trying to wade through all of the other threads you will find there.

So please make your voice heard (responsibly, by only voting once on only one of the forums or letting me know that any new post by your is simply a change to your vote, please) and Vote on the issues!

1.Enhance Packs.

(Added pet timer issue, Added lower buff replacement, Enhancement Radial Selection and Enhance Pet Radial issues consolidated into this issue, other items partially fixed, see each section for parts fixed and those not fixed.)

There are several issues revolving around all of the enhance packs, and especially the B packs. 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, 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 also being lost on occasion when logging 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.

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.

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.

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.

Enhance pack radial menus also are bugged. As posted by Kamat (and tested on the Lowca Galaxy) “Selecting a target then going into inventory, selecting the item, and then selecting the enhance target always causes me to enhance myself. I cannot use this to enhance any target.” Also 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 be 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.

And finally, 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.

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

2.Factory Problems

(Added emailing schematic creator and/or factory starter to list of factory notification recipients, Partially fixed)

Factories sometimes still do not pull subcomponents from crates in Factory production. Factories are also only producing 100 items at any given time and stopping, even on a 1000 time schematic Some suggested methods for assisting with factory problems include things such as increasing the input hopper size so that more individual components could be placed there, since they have to be pulled from the crates by hand. 100 is simply too prohibitive a size for making items with multiple components without baby-sitting the factory. There are also times where if the factory does take some resources and/or items from a crate to begin making an item, but then when it fails to make the item it will eat the resources/components and 1 item off of the schematic without producing anything. We would like to see a factory double check that it’s requirements for all items are fulfilled before it actually processes those items and the schematic. It should also be noted that while it is possible to use the slider for a factory to create from 1-100 items, the slider does not granulate further, but will allow an additional 0 for a 1000 item run. 1000 items is actually very appropriate and convenient considering the extremely high demand for crated completed items, items which require multiple crates of components. The 100 item production limit at the moment has caused concern that 100 items really is the true limit and it has been asked that 1000 be kept as a more reasonable limit.

The reduction of the output hopper to 1000 is also proving to be a problem and factories will consistently refuse to run and at times require that the output hopper actually be completely empty in order to run. Crate volume reduction to 1 may help with the situation, but only if it actually sees that crate as only volume 1 in all situations.

Relatedly the ability to drop a crate into the input hopper and then double-click to drop an item directly out of the crate into that hopper would also be of some help in alleviating the problem. By the same respect there are times where the crate will not even dump an item into inventory. The whole crate just seems to be stuck and will not give up anything. (Possibly Fixed? Reports are less frequent of this happening, at least)

Factories also have the annoying problem, when sharing or providing admin rights for another player character to use the factory, that the factory sends all email about what is happening at the factory to the Factory owner, not whomever loaded the schematic and pressed the start button. Is there some way to grant this notification method? Continuing to notify the owner is fine, but adding in the individual doing the crafting is also very much needed.

Not to mention the exceptionally slow rate of production in a factory. This is especially true for medicines where the absolutely lowest complexity on an item is 10, meaning it would take 80 seconds (not quite a minute and a half) to produce 1 item in a factory, whereas by hand crafting the same items they can often be produced faster. If it weren’t for the dangers of carpal tunnel syndrome and the requirements of factory components I think most Doctors would simply hand-craft everything, at least you get some XP for it that way. After all 3XP every 80 seconds has absolutely no comparison to 33XP every 60 seconds even using just 1 crafting tool. So to heck with the XP, it’s irrelevant for factories, but speed of the factories is definitely an issue. They are simply too slow.

For more information you may wish to reference the following threads:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1201
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1224
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=2466

3.Mind damage.

(uncertain if parts of this issue are addressed or not due to ambiguity and possible mistyping of a /healmind command in the Dev response to our issues)
This appears to be a major concern amongst both Medics and Doctors (and Combat Medics, for that matter). It seems to be a fairly major issue discussed in multiple threads on multiple boards out there in the community and perhaps part of the problem is simple frustration in being the person everyone is counting on to keep them going when you can only watch helplessly as someone's mind is being damaged and there is nothing you can do.
Suggestions have ranged from leave it as is, since it is a balancing factor to keep combats from being too long to either letting Doctors or Advanced Medics (or Combat Medics, even) heal mind at a 1:1 rate or possibly better Although most admit that healing at a better ratio would be fairly exploitable since a medic could then stim their mind faster than they would lose it, even though once you hit Master, who really cares about exploiting Healing XP anyway. However it could also be argued that even if the medic simply were not allowed to stim their own mind, two medics could help each other to heal indefinitely, but it has also been pointed out that this is, in effect, what a Doc or Medic already provides for combat classes in allowing them to ignore their special costs by healing them so they can use their abilities endlessly. Giving mind stimming ability to Entertainers or Chefs or as a form of /rally command for Squad Leaders has also been suggested. Mind stimming only mind incapped players has also been suggested (a Doc could still never stim himself that way for any exploit purposes). Even the ability to create Enhance packs, of the usual Doctor skill ability, has been suggested as at least a better method of staving off the damage potential in a manner befitting what Docs are capable of compared to food and spice buffs, even if that buff is not given to Doctors to make. One of the more popular suggestions is to simply reduce the amount of damage given with mind hits, or to reduce their frequency, as well as the possibility of removing the ability to incap from Mind (you’d still be limited in not being able to heal more, etc.) and letting the “head shot” moves, such as those of the Rifleman, actually take large chunks of both Health and Action instead.

While there may not be a consensus on the issue there does seem to be a HUGE amount of interest and concern on the topic and I am sure the community would at least like to get some feedback and or considerations from the Dev team on what they see as the balancing factors between mind damage, healing mind damage and perceived problem with nerfing the Rifleman profession. (Personally I don’t see it since the other weapons skills are already “nerfed” because they can have the pools they damage healed right out from under them, but somehow riflemen just lucked out, plus they could benefit from a mind heal themselves since the majority of their specials use mind. Not much of a nerf to them, IMHO.)

I would suggest referencing the following threads to get the majority of the viewpoints involved, but should a tighter synopsis of these threads and their suggestions be needed, please don't hesitate to ask me for one. (I know, one of these is from the Medic forum, but there are a lot of Docs piping in on the issue, and one is from an outside forum that sees a good deal of traffic and interest from the Doctor community.)

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1299
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=medic&message.id=785
http://dynamic6.gamespy.com/~swgcraft/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1315
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=2177
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=3612

4.Doctor Surveying/Medical Forage

(Added Scout Harvesting as a minor related issue, listed as being addressed in some manner we don’t know of in Holo’s response.)

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 they 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 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.

Other suggestions include providing survey only capabilities to increase with Pharmacology much as it does for Artisan, 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), to test the qualities of a resource if nothing else, the simple ability to survey alone wouldn’t be very useful.

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

5.Combat Queue Heals

(added Healing at front of queue priority, Issue being looked into as a likely patch)

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.

6.TEF Issues

Notification of when a TEF might be incurred to allow the Doctor to NOT heal a character that would give them a TEF in a potential deadly situation and some representation for covert characters to know when they are under the effects of a TEF. Not to mention the additional problems of getting TEFs from inadvertently healing covert opposing faction members, which allow your own faction mates to be allowed to attack you.

Also, better documentation is needed to explain the TEF healing problems. Many neutral Doctors cannot understand why they cannot heal a factioned player, or why they cannot heal an otherwise apparently unaligned player who had just been in a duel or some such. Some notification other than it being "unwise to heal such a person" would help to provide clarification. (Personally I like to see it as to heal a Rebel is to bring down the wrath of the Empire, while to heal an Imp would also bring down their wrath, since they only trust their own Docs. However you wish to explain it, though, the message needs to be clearer on why it is “unwise”.) Other suggestions also include allowing the healing, but allowing the Doctor to incur a TEF, even a stacking TEF, that they are notified of. So that if a Neutral Doctor healed an Overt Imp player, they would gain a Rebel TEF, if they then turned around and healed a Rebel player they would ALSO gain an Imp TEF, thus being fair game for either side in the conflict, since being neutral could be maintaining non-aggression between both sides, or it could be viewed as equally aggressive to both sides. Some Doctors have expressed interested in being able to expand their role-playing options by healing whomever they wish, even if there are penalties involved as long as those penalties are well known.

7.First Aid Improvements

Allow First Aid to be a skill which improves. For example if a patient is hit hard enough to bleed it may currently take a Medic with FA2 6-10 times to cure that bleeding. Perhaps once someone is into the Doc levels of wound treatment their skill would reduce the number of times needed to stop the bleeding to, say, 2-4 times or even less. As it stand CM Poisons (another form of bleed, really) can be cured in one application, but bleeds simply cannot and are far too overpowered in comparison to that. Providing better First Aid would greatly assist in alleviating that problem. Other suggestions are that this improvement top out with Master Medic, or that the improvement, being trauma related, be given to Combat Medics. A suggestion for a craftable bleed state pack, a Band Aid if you will, could even be created for this purpose to ensure a resource drain for the skill improvement.

8.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 who's primary skills and interests are in the healing arts (which would include crafting of meds) and not, necessarily, combat. 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 be production and sales of Small Stimpack Bs. 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.

The other methods of making money seem to be far less reliable, or are not well supported by the game. 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, 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), lowering the Med Use requirements on some medicines, such as A packs, such that anyone could use them thereby opening the market for more pharmaceutical products that Doctors could then sell. Having Doc-specific mission, like the artisan or entertainer missions. 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

9.Heal consistency

Since wound/damage healing and, especially, 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 on 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. (See the Money Issue.)

10.Medicine Organization and Inventory Management

(partially fixed, added naming conventions to sorting suggestions, possibly addressed in part according to Holo’s response of “Add smarter find medicine code”)

(Partial Fix) 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 MedPacks 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 Large in there/)

We would also like to see better management of medicines that are in inventory, such as allowing searches from the /healdamage command to search for a stim in packs if it cannot find it in upper level inventory. (This MIGHT be part of the “smarter find medicine code” mentioned) Not to mention the inventory drain created by volume 5 crates seems a bit excessive when someone can carry a 10,000 stack of hides that is only volume 1. (Partially fixed. It appears that crates state they are 1 volume, but they appear to take up 5 volume on the inventory on the inventory size indicator/numeric value at the bottom op the inventory screen, however packs and inventory let you exceed that value to the point as if the crates were only a volume of 1 in some cases, but not always.)

And finally, many would like clarification on the methodology for heal pack selection from inventory when using, for example, the /healdamage command. Is it simply the last Stim in the inventory chosen? The strongest? The weakest? The one with most/least charges? Alphabetically? By Stim serial number? Could it be made to be more consistent and possibly follow one of the methods listed above, such as always using the pack with the least number of charges, or the highest base heal rate, or even intelligent selection choosing lower level packs for smaller heals and higher level packs for bigger heals. Perhaps we can at least try to sort our packs in the manner of pack selection, if nothing else, to try and order our meds so they will be taken in the order we would like to have them used. (This issue may already being addressed based upon our previous response.)

11.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.

12.Auto-Retaliate

(Added healing to front of queue)

The ability to turn off auto-retaliate when fighting has been requested. The reason being that for healer characters the actual fighting process slows down their heals, and can sometimes cause confusion about who/what is targeted occasionally causing heals to go in the wrong place. Some medics prefer to avoid having any weapons in hand in an attempt to not have attacks being fired off from them that might slow down their ability to heal. The possibility of ensuring that heals get priority in the combat queue by going immediately to the front of the queue may help to alleviate this at least some.

13.Resuscitation Stat Drain Bug/Stat Loss Bug/Stat Stick Bug

The 60 second stat drain after Resuscitation persists beyond 60 seconds. Food/buffs/spice seems to rectify. Likely this is related to stats getting stuck at lowered levels after taking wounds until those stats are kicked back to normal by doing something to affect the stat. Please fix.

14.Damage/Stim/State Timer and Bug
A timer on these like we have for wound packs to let us know when we are ready to heal Damage or a State again would be very helpful. As it stands now we simply have to continually hit the appropriate method of healing or attempt to keep an internal track of times between heals.

Relatedly the State packs (and when a Doctor stims themselves) seem to ignore Diagnostics level in that they notify the Doctor that he must wait, say 3 seconds before doing that again, but after three second it continues to give a command stating you must wait before you can do that to what would appear to be the full delay of someone who had no Diagnostics skill at all, or about 6 seconds, in effect doubling the delay rate. Please fix.

15.Pet Stimpacks

Some Docs are incensed about the idea of giving BE’s stimpacks for healing Pets. (Not at the BE’s for making these packs, but that anyone, primarily CH’s presumably, can use them.) Something that was previously the purview of the medic classes. Letting some other class utilize stimpacks, even if it’s just for pets, seems like a slap in the face by giving CHs the ability to use an item that is otherwise exclusive to Novice Medic, when an integral skill required for Medics, Surveying, won’t even be considered for Medics because it would somehow interfere with Artisans. Not to mention the ability of these new stims to heal mind damage on the fly when no other class in the game has this ability for use on player characters. Some clarification on the reasoning for this issue or some other form of compensation, such as reducing med use requirements on A packs, mind healing or the removal of pet stimpacks has been suggested.

16.Crafting XP

Docs are feeling a bit hampered by the crafting requirements of the class. While there are a few who simply do not like crafting at all, many seem to feel that crafting is acceptable, but only if it improves with use. An example pointed out on the forums was that a Stim E will often heal for 1500-2500, or about 600-700 xp a heal. That 1 stim E provides about 500 crafting xp. Since there are 41 charges on a stim E that means a difference of 41*700=28,700 healing xp, as compared to that 1 stim providing only 500 crafting xp. A ratio of 57:1 instead of the 3:1 that would be expected for proper scaling of raising the skills evenly. (Actually it has been noted that those numbers are probably a bit off, but the ratio is still approximately valid). Admittedly compared to the time it takes to use those charges enough stims could be made to equalize that ratio, but it is requested that the metrics be looked at again now that Factory XP is back to where it should have been and that self UXP in components has been fixed, keeping in mind that there are folks who are just grinding the meds for these lines to catch it up to their other med levels.

Some have also suggested that perhaps Doctor is simply too easy to Master. I am still uncertain whether this is intended or not and whether or not it is really balanced enough compared to possible speed of gain rates for other professions. It may be a situation where, as Holocron has told us before, the game simply does not start until you completely allocate all of your skill points and that philosophy being somewhat counterintuitive to how many other MMORPGs are played. Or if this is truly a valid concern that having Master Doctors within this time frame is unbalancing to the game. Perhaps guidance of the Dev thinking on the issue is needed, or the rate of gain should be adjusted. The crafting requirements will definitely need to be more balanced, however, in most players’ experience, some suggesting either making it easier, or making the rest of the line harder or somewhere in between.

Please reference the following for more information:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1383
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=2020

17.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. (Then again, buffs are pretty darned nice!) 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.

18.Faction Points

Docs are interested in seeing a share of Faction Points in the same way that we will be getting, presumably, Combat XP. It is considered inappropriate that a medic professional would be out in the field being unable to assist in taking out an opposing faction NPC or player and, as such, will progress much more slowly in faction gains, while providing at least as valuable a service as the person providing the offensive capabilities.

19.Healing Range/Distance

Heal range is annoyingly small. Just enough so that at the normal follow range healing simply cannot be done. Is it possible to increase the standard range just a smidge, to 7-8M, perhaps, or to decrease the standard follow range?

20.State Pack Persistence

Would it be possible to get some level of persistence in Cure State packs? The states appear to be regained upon the very next hit by a MOB. For example, why unblind someone when they are just going to get blinded again before they can even get their own attack off. Some persistence in the state cure packs would provide some level of immunity to being afflicted with the state again immediately. It should also be noted that many states do not seem to have some very obvious effects and with the timer-related errors involved in state pack usage, few Doctors, or their patients for that matter, bother with State healing, apparently. Clarification on the effects of various states, review of their effectiveness and review of their persistence on healing would be welcome.

21.Factory Identical Components

There has been a request to alleviate the requirement for factory identical components. It is possible this would not really be considered a problem if Medics had some decent ways to make money (see the Money issue) as then they might actually be able to afford a factory, or at least be a viable market for other Doctors running factories to sell to them. Right now it is considered a rather non-productive market to sell to, primarily, other Medics (although a few are making it an acceptable market in this respect.)

22.Target Self

The ability to target self when clicking on your own HAM bars, such as in a group, that would function in the same way as using Ctrl-1 would.

23.Med Center Grouping

Grouping for Medical classes in the Med Center has been brought up. The consideration would be that healers could group, in much the way Entertainers do, for minor healing gains and/or minor XP gains or even for simply lowering the variability of heals as many would simply prefer some greater consistency there. The suggestion for auto-splitting /tips was also brought up in conjunction with this idea, perhaps with a /tipsplit or /grouptip type of command for the patient to use.

24.Wound Stat Pack Selection & the /Heal Commands

(fixed for /tendwound, it could possibly affect /healwound as well, Added problem with Radial menu not displaying Heal options)

/heal command (wound, state, etc) does not work with the macro given, as a type must be specified. Doctors would like a way to get it to simply use the appropriate pack for the first type or perhaps worst type of wound/state it comes across on the selected target, much in the same way selecting the Heal Wound option from the patients Radial menu works if you do not select a sub-option for the specific wound. As it stands having the macros instantly implemented upon training (so they show up as /healdamage and /healstate) confuses the first time user because they cannot simply press the appropriate toolbar button and have the macro work in the same way the /healdamage command does.
It has also been noted that the Radial menu does not always provide the Heal options, even though the target is obviously wounded and/or the redial menu was just used to provide a heal.

25.Quickheal uselessness

Some people have mentioned they would like to see the Quickheal skill actually be useful. The mind costs and damage accrued are too prohibitive for actual use, and would never be used as a “last ditch” method in combat, simply because by the time a last ditch effort is needed the Doc will already have too low a mind level to use the skill. Suggestions tend to be along the lines of greatly reducing the mind and damage requirements of the skill, but greatly increasing the BF and mind wounds accrued through it’s use to balance that out.

26.Medicine Use Skill Granularity

Many would like to see more granularity in the base Medicine Use levels for different meds, to encourage balanced increases in the Medicine Use skill. Possibly even reducing some medicine use levels so that some Doctor created items can be used by Medics, while others could be made more difficult to encourage purchasing of the usage skill levels.

27.Schematic Trading

Allow trading of schematics. There could be a possible market for this outside of the Bazaar or on Vendors. Currently the only method of transferring schematics is through a vendor or a factory where both individuals have administrative rights. Both methods are really only a workaround for the much simpler method of being able to trade schematics directly in secure-trade. (Can we really NOT do this? I know that we can trade Pets and those use the Datapad for a storage method. Has anyone tried to drag and drop a schematic for trade?)

28.On Fire Cure

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

29.Incapacitated Player Location Problems

(added clarifications and solution suggestions)

Incapped players seem to always change location from where they, apparently, dropped down, even when you are on follow. As such the player who may not have moved since the last time you were close enough to heal them just a few seconds ago, is somehow no longer within healing range, even if they look like they are at your feet. Workarounds have included using the /DragIncapacitatedPlayer command to get them to you, but sometimes the location is so screwed up that even though the player appears to be at your character’s feet, they are still outside of the 20m drag range. A possible solution is using the same location algorithm for locating the “body” that heals were using on the live player (where the player WAS close enough) when they are incapped and allow the /follow command to actually work on incapped players and corpses to get us close enough to them to perform the required heal function.