Doctor Archive
Thread: Dev Response to Recent Enahancement Med Use Issues (12/02/2003)
Zarlor, don't get me wrong. I appreciate all the hard word you are doing and your informing us every step of the way as you find out information.
But this "nerf" for lack of better word, affected our whole profession in a negative manner. They see this now, and they've admitted it wasn't planned nor was it forseen or expected to THEM even yet unlike in other situations where a patch stealth nerfed other issues they weren't aware would happen, they refuse to revert the coding.
I'm not saying this is a conspiracy to screw over doctors. But they KNOW something happened that they didn't know would happen, and of course couldn't warn us would happen because they simply say they had no idea. So why, in other situations similar when a patch affected other professions that SOE didn't realize would happen with a patch, they reverted the code until it could be fixed properly.
They "could" very easily revert the patch (we know they have the coding that went into the new patch, as well as keep the old coding in case something inadvertent or bad happens with the new code), post that they are reversing the code in the patch notes and allow us to use pre patch medicines. THEN they could also mention that med use "is meant to be 91+ on D's" and they are looking at the effect this decision will have on doctors and will be changed in the future. A warning if you will.
First they say that med use was ALWAYS supposed to be 91+ on D's, and now they say that they will be looking at this number and perhaps change it in future (possibly to 80-90 where logically it should be).
Does it not make sense (to my mind it makes perfect sense) since they really can't decide what med use D's SHOULD have, that they revert the code until they DECIDE and THEN change the coding at that time to the level they really want D's to be forever after.
Why maintain a brick wall stance of "well we changed it and there is nothing more we can do" and have a lot of people suck up millions of credits worth of loss, only to decide in a FUTURE fix that the med use SHOULD be lower after all. At which time they change our crates AGAIN, doubly screwing us. Is it not better to just revert the code now, make their design decisions for long term game viability, THEN code and patch the issue correctly once those decisions have been made.
Let me give you an example of how this will screw us over twice.
Pre patch crates of D's were 77-78 use. Doctors that sell meds made tons of crates using hard to find and expensive resources. The doctors that bought them, that only had 80 med use, are out millions of credits because they can no longer use them. The doctors that have pre patch stock, for the most part can't sell them, other than to perhaps 5% of their previous customer base, so the doctor eats millions of credits worth of resources.
Now, it's been 2-3 weeks since the patch? Because we got no word for so long, a lot of doctors bit the bullet and are now making enhance D's with med use experimented down, causing at least ONE experimennt pt to be wasted on ease of use. This means that the D's they make now are LESS POWER.
IF they subsequently say "oh we have decided that med use on D's (even IF it's just health and action that they decide this for) should be in the 80's" and they put ina patch to fix that, a LOT of doctors will be stuck with OLD weaker enhances, people that bought them will be stuck with old, weaker enhances also since the new enhances will not have had to have ONE of the experimentation points used to bring ease of use down.
I'm sorry but this just REEKS of bad planning and lack of consideration for our whole profession and I for one (and I know many other docs in game feel the same way) am disgusted with their whole approach to this situation.
It's one thing to admit they made an inadvertant mistake. "gee we're sorry, we didn't know that would happen". It another thing altogether to refuse to revert the mistake while they fix the issue PROPERLY, and THEN re-patch it once they actually KNOW what they want as an end result.
Benecia wrote:
Its a stealth nerf. They took already made crates and made them unusable without ever mentioning they were going to do this and its more important to developers now to keep use at 93 for d's than to be fair to those who spent all they had on these packs. I spent $1.5 mil on 8crates, am broke now with no way to earn money by buffing people. I tried trading these on bria and nobody is interested.
Benecia,
I just don't think you understand what has happened. It is not a "stealth nerf." If it is a nerf, it should be called an "accidental nerf" or "unintended nerf." This was not done intentionally as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is, not much can be done now.
At least, they are looking at the med use for us.
Thanks!
Zarlor wrote:They CULD revert the patch. But look at it this way. What would happen if they did? They'd still have to put it back like it is now at some point to fix the bug in the code. Experimenting Ease of Use would still be impossible for us and they get a LOT more complaints about it. In the meantime before chaning things back you'd have to use up ALL of those crates of Med Use 70s buffs, but other folks would be blissfully unaware and start making more of them. It would be a neverending cycle of folks being ticked offwhenever they fix the bug. They'd just be delaying the inevitable. And considering the minority of players taht actually visit these forums to get the full details, they would jsut end up confusing the vast majority of players in the game who just see the changes but otherwise don't relly know why they are happening.
Well I've stayed out of this issue since I don't see anything can be done about it. The change is in and it will likely stay in so there is no point in chewing hte old fat.
But I want the Dev to know that we are not all stupid.
The issue of Med use experimentation was that it would go up and not down on BUFF PACKS. Okay they fixed that.
But old med use on Buff Packs were like 30, 40, 50, 70. And now they are 50, 60, 70, 90. So great we can put all our experiment point into med use and watch the med use go down, but still higher than it was before the fix without single putting single point into it, with added bonus of 1/2 the amount of buffs.
So the end result is we have buff pack that will NEVER have the med use of old ones even with "fixed" med use experimentation.
IlyaMasool wrote:
But old med use on Buff Packs were like 30, 40, 50, 70. And now they are 50, 60, 70, 90. So great we can put all our experiment point into med use and watch the med use go down, but still higher than it was before the fix without single putting single point into it, with added bonus of 1/2 the amount of buffs.
So the end result is we have buff pack that will NEVER have the med use of old ones even with "fixed" med use experimentation.
Yes, but these new med use levels seem much more appropriate than before. Master Surgeons loos out on the high power D buffs, but in turn, it gives more incentive to go MD.
According to the Devs that is not strictly true. The problem was those levels were reversed. So we reall can get to those levels bu we'd need to use close to 1000 rated resources (including in Maleability, mind you) and experiment all points with amazing successes in Ease of Use. That is what they implied, at any rate. Do you have some 1k (or at least 990) resources to try it with?
IlyaMasool wrote:
But old med use on Buff Packs were like 30, 40, 50, 70. And now they are 50, 60, 70, 90. So great we can put all our experiment point into med use and watch the med use go down, but still higher than it was before the fix without single putting single point into it, with added bonus of 1/2 the amount of buffs.
So the end result is we have buff pack that will NEVER have the med use of old ones even with "fixed" med use experimentation.
Zarlor wrote:
According to the Devs that is not strictly true. The problem was those levels were reversed. So we reall can get to those levels bu we'd need to use close to 1000 rated resources (including in Maleability, mind you) and experiment all points with amazing successes in Ease of Use. That is what they implied, at any rate. Do you have some 1k (or at least 990) resources to try it with?
On most yes. One thing good about being long time doctor is over last several months we get to gather justabout every avian met that fell off Lok and I just never had heart to throw away anything if they are OQ above 700.
On avian meat and Gas I have close to 1000 and on Adv solid and Adv bio I have very close to cap. Only short coming is Adv chem seeing as we haven't had too many good turn on Liq-4.
So Although not 1000, I think I am getting close to 950's and even using them I don't get the base number of old buffs.
I've made several since the patch and although there is no change in Buff amount, Med use base is consistantly around 20 higher than old ones no matter how good of resource I use. (Since both ease of use & effectiveness both us OQ & PE I always max these two)
In fact instead of putting points into effectiness as would be only common sense to do but maxing out the ease of use still gave me higher med use than old ones.
I guess I can accept the fact that these change make sense, but considering the fact that end result is producing buff packs that are ALWAYS inferior to pre-patch, I cannot be happy about it. Especially we are already accepting that Stimp-B have low med use not because it make sense but because it is "good" for the game.
It "fixed" the ease of use issue but made "making money as Doctor" issue more complicated since Enhance pack were one of better selling item.
We used to be able to sell Stimp-B, Enhanced packs & Wound-B.
Now we are down to Wound-B.
If I am given choice between broken ease use experiment we can't use & fixed ease use experiment that give us result that is ALWAYS worse, then I am not sure I will decide to have it fixed.
But we can't ask them to deliberately break something they went thru trouble of fixing it so there you go.
P.S. This still isn't enough to kick me out of med profession! you can't get rid of me that easily!!!
The implications I was getting was that the Med Use ratings we were seeing would be the same as if we had use REALLY bad resources, like the oppsite of what we were using (so call it 50s in all the relavent stats, and I include Maleability along with OQ and.... what's the other one for Ease of Use?). And then, on top of using such poor resources, crit failing. So we were taking a bad number and making it worse, hence lowering it. Although in this case lowering that number was a good thing for us. It means we didn't NEED to experiment Ease of Use and could just go mad experimenting the good stuff, like Effectiveness.
See where I'm getting at? Everything was totally flip-flopped. The numbers we used to get on Med Use were, by the current system, so incredibly awesome that it maight take a doc with +125 Med Experimentation,almost 1000 resources in every stat, and amazing successesto even get to the Med Use level we were getting before. The whole formula was just completely borked.
"If I am given choice between broken ease use experiment we can't use & fixed ease use experiment that give us result that is ALWAYS worse, then I am not sure I will decide to have it fixed."
I completely agree with this statement.
"fixing" a broken factor in our crafting (ease of use) with the end result that we make meds WORSE than before the fix, seems an awful price to pay for the dev's finally fixing a bug we've had for months.
We wanted ease of use fixed, so that we could experiment down our buffs, just like we can experiment down other meds. Now that we CAN experiment down ease of use, we still can't match pre patch med usage on buffs while maintaining the effectiveness.
This would be like them "fixing" a broken ease of use bug with Stim Pack C's that ended up that Stim C's now required 42+ med use to use but hey you can always experiement down the med use to 30 IF you want to because that's now working. (speaking hypothetically if Stim's ease of use had been broken also)
Like i will recomend anyone get this for the xmas season as a gift for someone.
LOL
Also, it is said that there neads to be 'carrot' to become a master doc. So that only master should use D's for example. Well let's take Pistoleer for example. The last Cert you get for a pistol is at novice pistoleer....and it isn't even the best gun. One of the best guns is Republic Blaster and ANYONE in the game can use it. I've heard of other examples, but I know of this one since I mastered Pistoleer for lil while....but of course i had to give up master doc to do it (had artisian had that time for survey).
Next is the issue that if you are master doc it is hard to get anythign else in the game. You have to fill up 2 ENTIRE trees just to get master doc. While others like CH only take tree and a half. I myself am tring Master CH / Master Doc with 4 lousy SP left. And if you want to survey to get materials and not pay through the a** to get them, that will cost you 15 SP for just novice Artisian with very limited survey ability. So the poor docs just get poorer becuase not only aren't they making much money, they have to pay for the resources to make the meds that make them the lil bit of money they have.
And I too am stuck with MANY crates of enhance D's i made myself so i wouldn't ahve to craft over and over. And all i did was give up master so i could 1 more SP to use in some combat field so i can live logn enuff to walk outside a city. I know have master again for now so I can use those crates and I'm not out ALL that money, resources, and time. And yes i do code actually and i do know it can be hard to find problems at times, but my boss won't take the answer that 'sorry I fixed it but it caused another problem'. They would tell me good job now fix the new problem! And also you know what, that is their job and they get payed well to do it!
Just my 2 cents and vent for the nt
So in other words they nerfed it while fixing it - so net effect is that everything basically remains as it was or worse - as now I cannot EVER create a med use 70 enhance D - and since they are saying I was never intended to - how can I argue ? This is infuriating - antoher example of DONT BOTHER US or we will screw you !