Doctor Archive
Thread: Doctor Surveying
Interlocking professions is fine. But when one preofession is COMPLETELY dependand and some on those dependant preofessions do not sell their services..what do you do.
Lets face it surveying is not fun especially when you only need to do it when it makes you more mone by catering to the mass market.
Medical professions cannot master a second elite and get enough survey to get their resource. I dont see changing the schematics as changing much, because even if theyr are less specific, weaponsmiths dont need much floar food and it would not make sense to make medicines from metals.
Artisans are not selling their skills so to survive our sacrifice is we cannot be like other professions and master another (unless it is artisan)
That is a balance issue.
I sure do sell a lot of StimBs to non-Doctors though, and for what I consider rapacious prices on the Bazaar. I don't have a vendor, all of my selling is through the bazaar and it keeps me in fancy armor and nice (non-Krayt) weapons. My net worth peaks at around 250-300k before I break down and buy a heavy harvester to replacea medium, etc., but I don't feel especially poor. I DID feel poor before I got a factory and a passel of harvesters, and before I could play the Buffing for Dollars game.
Our opinions differ, and I respect your position.
Well, Stim B sales isn't exactly going outside of the profession, though. That's still selling to Medics. That would be like Weaponsmiths only being able to sell guns to someone who took Novice Artisan. And a net-worth of 300k on most servers is actually not too far outside of poverty level considering some of the inflation levels that exist out there. Seeing Armor and Weapsonsmiths sitting on tens of millions of credits makes 300k look like a walk in the park.
Irregardless, however, of the few methods we do have for attaining money (most all of them really only possible at or near Master Doc, Medics and CMs do not really have thoe money-making opportunities, though) there is still the simple and basci issue of the ability to simply gain any XP at all in the same way that any other profession can. Limited self-sufficiency is available to all other professions, except ours (well, and maybe IDs, but they don't have any crafting requirements, either.)
We have a /medicalforage command? Kidding...
I guess now that there are vehicles, we could run EMS missions, arrive at the scene of the accident, apply first aid, heal wounds, etc. Lower level missions could be housecalls for sick NPCs where a medic could /tendwound or use lower-level Packs, it would at least let us use the buildings that fill cities for some purpose other than hazard navigation and pretty 3-D wallpaper. We could also get longer missions to go to a neutral NPC hunting camp, I guess, and fix damage there.
MANY people have novice medic skills specifically for the use of StimBs and WoundBs, just like we should get Novice Scout/Artisan skills to harvest meat and run harvesters. From that standpoint, Architechts mainly sell to other Artisans, for everything except houses. Houses are one example of an item sold "beyond class", whereas we have to sell things to at least Novice Medics -- that point I concede. Weaponsmiths couldn't sell any high-dollar items to people who don't at least have Novice Marksman, though, BEs can sell to anyone but only dumbed-down animals most non-CH people can use. I would imagine they sell most of their product to either CHs or Tailors/Chefs. Armorsmiths can sell to anyone, but their Composite Armor (big-dollaritem)is almost useless without buffs, you can shift stats to wear a set, but your HAM pools will be so low you couldn't special or heal yourself more than twice.
I realize my net worth is minimal compared to other specialties, but in general it doesn't bother me. I could accumulate much more if I stopped trading up to better harvesters and stayed out of PvE fights to allow me to ditch armor, but I LIKE shooting things, it's one of the reasons I play the game.
When I initially joined my PA... they had very little to no Doc resources in their Resource Warehouse. As I mastered Doc, our guild became a player city, our dues ended, our resource person took a "leave" from the game and the harvesting stopped, just as I tried to get Doc resources in the Resource Warehouse. So... I got Novice Artisan and started getting my own resources. Yes there are enough points to have the /survey, /sample, /harvest and some weapon skills.... my sig used to look like this... before I opened my first holo and decided to drop everything else so I could master CM and keep Doc -
Master Doc, Novice Artisan, Novice Scout 3/0/3/0, Novice Marksmen 0/0/4/0, Novice Carbine 3/3/0/0
But alas... it now looks like my current sig.
So you can have it all... to some degree... is it fair that we are a crafting class if more limited than other crafting classes, that get /survey and /sample as part of their skill tree, yet we have to spend points that they don't have to spend. Other crafters can spend points for things outside their profession... while we have to spend points to be able to do our profession successfully. At least on my server, I can buy resources... there are several who have Doc specific resources available. I wanted to try surveying and harvesting my own... so I spent the points and I like doing it myself - (shame on me... I'm self sufficient;X) But I don't think it's fair that it cost me points that I could have used elsewhere to be able to do what the Artisan crafters do.
I don't think changing the schematics will help... we would still need to get the resources whatever they were changed to. I do like the previous post about a Doctor Resource Only survey tool... made by Artisans... that we could purchase. You could give it a HAM like a speeder bike and we would have to recharge it... or make it w/ a specific number of uses and then we would have to buy a new one... to keep the artisans rolling in millions;X
That's my two cents... seems pretty windy for only two cents... and don't think I really said anything new... just wanted to jump in
If nothing else I think that changing the avian meat to something more generic would be a huge help for us. In my opinion the real issue for me isn't so much that we have to pick up an extra novice skill to survey OR to harvest. My issue is that you have to pick up TWO novice skills one to survey and another to harvest. We need both of the resources generated by these two novice skills in significant quantities and those animals that carry avian meat typically don't carry much. I can master doc and still have enough skill points to master one of several other professions and have just enough points left over for novice artisian, but not for both artisian and scout. If I go down the scout tree then I can harvest but I can't actually kill anything to harvest because I lack the combat skills. Sure you can hire out rangers to gather meat for you but they are typically very difficult to find as most prefer to harvest resources from the larger animals, not to mention expensive. It is all but impossible to purchase all resources for the Doc crafting due to the specific nature of most resources we use, not to mention the only other profession that relies heavily on organics is a Chef only major problem with working out a resource arrangement with them is that they don't typically use the same resources and those few that are similar they are going to be going after the ones with different high end stats than we would. For most Chef recipies flavor is the most important thing, while for docs flavor is totally irrelevant.
If we had one extra profession to pick up in order to at least minimally sustain us(you could never truely harvest enough meats by yourself with just novice scout) I would be ok, but NO I have to pick up two totally different professions at a total cost of 30 skillpoints just to be able to survive my profession. Personally I have been fortunate enough to have found a PA that is typically willing to help out a bit and on rare ocassion someone will have one or two of the resources I need that I can purchase from them. I now harvest all my own materials but still of course have to purchase meats whenever I can. I am master doc/rifleman and I swap between scout/artisian as my need arises. Only costs me 100 each time but more than anything is simply an inconvenience.
There were several solutions that I think would help with at least a short term solution to this problem. The first being a Limited use survey tool, and the second being to make resources more generic so that we would have SOME overlapping resources with other professions. I have no problem with the rare resources that is part of the challenge of the game(dolovite/Class4 LP) and I think that every crafting class experiences this situation. But to have this kind of a challenge on nearly every component we make is pretty outrageous. ABEC's aren't too bad but use both very specific resources and typically spawn in very poor qualities, ACRDMS use not only the rare Class4 LP but they also require large amounts of herbivore meat, ASDS require Dolovite. Now we get to the actual meds that require very specific resources on the high end meds. Enhance packs all require Avian meat with the exception of action. Then we have Stims require specific resources for the high end ones, Res packs, etc. etc. etc. Of the most difficult resources we have Class4LP/Dolovite/Avian/Herb, then we get to specific resources Lokian wild wheat/Dantooine berries/Talusion water/ tattooine fiberplast The list goes on and on and on.
on an unrelated rant I am somewhat frustrated that there are tons of skill tapes out there for every professions but seem to be almost non-existant for docs. There are to my knowledge no skill tapes for wound treatment. I have only ever seen any mention of ONE healdamage speed tape. By that statement i don't just mean one type but I mean ONE tape period. At least we know a tape exists for docs.
just my little rant. oh well. Why expect anything to get done we should all know better by now. Our class for all intents and purposes works and so we are basically ignored I bet if we all just stopped healing they would take a sudden interest in us. I guess my last point would simply be it isn't all the Dev's fault unfortunately they are probably the least to blame. Yes, they will be the ones to fix us if it ever happens, but the real culprits of this situation and many, many more like it are to be found in the marketing department and upper management. They are the ones that are likely making the decisions as to what needs to be fixed/added/worked on based on what will bring in the most profits. Why fix it when they could add this great new space expansion pack that probably won't work right and get tons of new customers to sign up. They have already got your money now they are looking for someone else's.
Zarlor wrote:
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.
I would say our needs are more complex and our advancement requires more thought and ingenuity than running destroy missions to get money and progressively better weapons/armor. We are a special profession with superpowered combat abilities including enhances, rezzes and state heals.In PvP or PvE we depend on the combat classes around us,but we also are an uber force multiplier.Our "complete reliance" on professions outside our own, as it was put, is counterbalanced by our unique set of skills that every combat/hunting class depends on.
So while Artisan-related crafting professions have business and survey in their trees already, which makes them more self-sufficient as crafters and having a vendor, inside their profession they can't participate in combat. Doctors can, purely as doctors, make a huge difference in combat, without Marksman even. There is your counterbalance for the additional dependencies we have.
We are very well balanced!
I'm with you, Arc.
I'd like the opinion of folks on the other thread I posted about letting PCs place survey mission requests on survey terminals. For the people bound and determined not to spend 15 points on Artisan, it would be a good way around that option, that and people just too lazy or too busy to survey.
Rankfahrt,
You also hit the nail on the head on that we play characters not professions. It's more useful to think about the self-sufficiency of your character template, not just your primary profession. Your character also comes with 10 lots, some of which u can use to drop harvestors. Even without survey, it's not too hard to run around (now with speeders, even) and just drop your harvestors where someone else's is and pull up whatever's there and sell/use it.
Well, I simply must disagree. Certinaly Docs can be something of a "force multiplier", but we also spend a lot of skill points to be that. As do CMs, to an even greater extent. I feel strongly, very strongly, that our balance lies there. Complete removal of the ability of any of the medical professions to simply gain XP in their most basicforms is ludicrous, and the Devs at one point agreed and provided us with a barely useful, at the time, skill called /medicalforage, only to run around a week later and change a few schematics making that barely useful skill into an utterly useless skill.
Medic is not an easy profession to learn, in the least. I would suggest that, in fact, it is the most difficult one to learn. For me, presonally, that was a draw and one of the things I greatly enjoyed about the profession. That and the diversity of skills required. But completely cutting off the profession from the basic necessities of even learning the profession to begin with? I don;t see that there is much point into "balancing" the profession in that manner. (Note that I will continuously use the word profession, here, not "class", because I am very well aware of the connotations involved in discussing character templates.)
The players have separated it.
Medics have the ability to Xp with no material cost (at the cost of mind wounds and BF, which can be healed by an entertainer (with no (or little in the case of musician) material cost as well.
Medical types ahve traded away their value for free heals.
Money can buy anything in SWG, even materials. The tools are all there.. The players have failed to value themselves appropriately. See the threads where peopel are getting downright nasty about people "overcharging for buffs." They aren't.
Why?
Because the buffs are paying for all the free group heales/cures, and all the support machinery that the doc needs to make both buffs and regular meds.
If players (both medical and not) would get a reasonable baseline value for all healing activities, then yes buffs could be cheaper, because they wouldn't be paying for everything.
The idea of NPC healers in beta was appealing to peope lthat still wanted medical XP for one reason only.. It would basline a price for everything.. Better heals, or faster healing could then be charged for... in comparison to the NPC.
Everyoen booed that down, and now we are stuck with no money again.
The solution is not /survey /sample.
The solution is charge for your services and buy what you need.
The reason people go out of their way to /sample and /harvest fro weaponsmiths is that weaponsmiths have money.
Why don't doctors have money?
Because of the doctors themselves.
There is not a single medical or doctor skill (besides /medforage
) that does not have a lot of value to combat professions. Someday, uit is my dream people on both sides will realize it ;p\
-T
LOL exactly, exactly what needs to be said you just did. Imagine a world where everyone had 1/1/500 HAMs; Doctors would rule the galaxy. People we ned to more for our services, but this can only be achieved by the whole cooperation of all healers. Sure fighter classes can heal their own wounds but we supply the materials; sure they can heal damage; butdont we supply the materials; H el lYeah they can fight!!but can they buff? NO!!But we can. and who the heal(lol that was a typo it supposed to be h e ll but I think its funny)wants to sit in a hospital all day make 6k for a set of buffs; No one!!; Why do we bitch about having surveying skills so we have more resources to make more Medicines, Because we have no money!!
Granted there are the select few who have lots of money, but maybe thats because they have a fighting profession and get lots of $$$. I'm a MCM/MD and i have 150k and i consider myself "well-off" but thats because of lots of pateince and hard work. D A M N i remember a time when i couldnt even afford a frickin shuttle ticket, let alone a trip to Lok to harvest some wild wheat.
Please people you must also understand that a profession does what it does for a reason. SO THAT PEOPLE WILL RELY ON OTHER PEOPLE. Hence the name MMORPG, not *i need to be able to do everything by myself role-playing game*. You want to kill Jedi and waste some skill points you become a MBH. You want to be able to blow the shazbot (lol funny word) of stuff you go Commando, you wanna own in PvE you go TKM, you wanna pwn at griefing you become MCM, you wanna make **edit** you become an artisan.
Alright here it comes "But Bahamut were doctors we make all our own stuff we should get survey"......weeeeeelllllll what if we had a NEW profession such as....oh say....umm. i dont know.....Pharmacolgist?? Yeah that would make sense because my RL doctor doesnt make my medicines, the guy at Jewel does.
Basically what im saying is two things
1. Doctors need to charge more for buffs or whatever they do to make money(stims wounds etc.)
2. People when we bitch that our Class doesnt get everything we think it should other classes bitch about it too and we get no-where except more patching(which sucks a$$), if you want an abiltiy become that profession plain and simple.
(BTW im horrible at writing so this whole thing probably doesnt make a bit of sense, except to the uber noob)
So I got my copy of the game(sprang for the 'Collectors Edition) one day and popped in the disc, patched, and loaded up the game. I went into the character creation screen and began tweaking my characters appearance, loathing the fact that the one hairstyle I wanted was reserved for IDs only(got it eventually 
). I messed with the height, weight, skin-tone, eyes, nose, mouth, lips, etc, etc. Finally, after getting my character the way I wanted, it was time to select a profession.
I was going to be a doctor.
I wanted to help out my fellow players and, most importantly, my PA(at the time I was the only one in-game going Doc). Having been in Beta I had quite a bit of knowledge. I knew that I should go through the tutorial simply for the extra credits that could be looted from the pirate. I knew that I could arrange my stats automatically while aboard the space station in the tutorial. I knew that, in order to become a Doctor, I would first have to become a Medic.
And so I chose as my starting profession..... Artisan.
Why you ask?(and many did ask me that, actually). Simple. I knew that the Medical Professions involved a LOT of crafting, and that crafting required resources, and that resources could be obtained by a Novice Artisan. Not to mention the fact that, as a novice artisan, you start out with a GCT and some survey tools which would prove very, very useful.
After arriving at the starport I immediately learned Novice Medic(since I would eventually become a Doctor) as well as Novice Marksman(since I needed to protect myself) and lastly Novice Scout(since I knew there would be creature resources I'd need later on).
And thus began my journey to Mastering Doctor and Combat Medic, and mastering Medic and Artisan along the way. I harvested my own resources, both Artisan and Scout aquired, and was always on the lookout for resources for sale on the bazaar. I parked myself in the hospital in Ty during my gaming hours, healing folks for a nominal fee or in trade for resources. In my off-hours I'd set up a macro to sample resources I'd use the following day to craft meds. And still, I kept an eye on the bazaar for whatever resources I could find to make good, not even great just 'good', meds.
I advanced at a steady pace because, at the start, people were basically still learning. They were learning what it meant for a MOB to con red to them, they were learning that death without cloning caused massive wounds, and they were learning that dying on a corpse run(I actually miss those) without cloning meant even more wounds. And I healed them all, some I charged, some I simply hoped for a tip from, and some I downright ignored. All the while I barely managed to generate a bank account in the 5 digit range.
And all the while I gathered my own resources as I kept an eye on the bazaar while asking around for anyone who might be interested in obtaining my resources for me.
I finally mastered Doctor, with some help from my PA in the form of creds for training and some general resources, and not once did I ever manage to find good resources in a decent quantity nor finding anyone willing to obtain resources on my behalf(at least, not at a rate I could afford).
I obtained several harvesters and began scouting out my own resource spots on Lok and Tat, and teamed with a friend who obtained the Dantooine Berries and Talusian water vapor. Together we managed to get just enough to make our own meds for our own use and sell a few on the side. Any extra resources I'd have I ended up putting for sale on the bazaar in Ty, and still no one else was selling the necessary resources.
To this day it's hard to find decent quantities of quality resources for sale.
Every artisan or surveyor I spoke to as I advanced was more interested in getting massive quantities of ore for the architects, or steel for the weaponsmiths, or just about anything else but Medical Resources. The only way I managed was because of my partner in medicine and my PA. Because of them I was finally, finally, able to not only break the 6 digit bank account ceiling that had eluded me for so long, but I was also able to get into the 7 digit range.
It was a group effort, interdependency at work.
But, you see, not everyone has that support framework at their disposal. Not everyone has the time to cultivate or create that situation. Not everyone wants to be in a PA.
Not everyone is a 'powergamer' as I've come to learn that I am.
For the casual gamer, or the more 'lone' gamer, or simply the individualistic gamer the medical professions are a hard, tough, and long road. Medic is NOT an intuitive profession, countless are the times when I'd have to sit down and explain in detail to a new player exactly how to advance, how to make meds, how to be a medic/doctor/cm. And numerous are the times when I'd see those same players later on carrying a big gun and asking for a heal, only to find out that they had given up the profession out of frustration.
No other profession requires the ammount of dependency on others as we do. In order to advance, we must interact with other players. We rely on their damage and wounds for our xp. We rely on their ability to obtain credits for our payment. We're even told to rely upon them for our resource needs.
Yes, we are a working and rather well-off set of professions whose issues are few and non game-breaking...but, honestly, we can be so much better.
We ARE a support profession...but that doesn't equate to us being virtual slaves to every other profession in-game...