Doctor Archive
Thread: The problem with the Mind pool, as it is implemented currently.
Ok, if I was to change the battle system to how I think it should work, the points bellow are probably the biggest things that I'd do (please read everything before commenting). I tried to take several things into account: medics feeling frustrated that everyone around them is dieing from mind damage, making sure that battles and the time out in the field is has a limit, seeing that entertainers still have a reason to exist, and that it makes sense.
First, instead of the mind pool being the limiting factor, I'd have it be BF. Make special moves cause BF damage (this would be in addition to HAMs costs... with maybe some adjustment for balance on some specials). So, the more special moves/abilities you use, the faster your BF increases. Mind stats would now be just like all the other stats. Medics should be able to heal damage, wounds, and also able to buff, and entertainers wouldn't do anything with the mind stats (they deal with BF). In short, the mind bar is physical damage to the head, while BF is how long a char can be out in the field.
Second, I'd change BF so that as it increases, you start to not perform as well. I'd say that for every 10 BF damage you have, you lose 1% of your ability (the actually number that would be used would need to be tested... but I'll use 10 for my example). So when you have 100 BF, your stat regeneration slows down by 10%, your HAMs cost on specials increases, if you're fighting you're missing 10% more often, if you're healing you're healing for 10% less (or maybe your down time is 10% longer), etc. This would limit how long a battle could go on before the players become useless (i.e. missing 80% of the shots they fire). This also means that entertainers are very important, as you won't be able to be your best until you go and see one.
Third, I'd make camping give back 25% of the BF you gained in the last 15 minutes (once again... I'm just guessing at the numbers... they're just there for illustration). After all, a rest from battle always helps. To give entertainers more of a role on the field, I'd say that if you have a high level entertainer that you’d be able to restore more BF on the field (i.e. with a master dancer, maybe you would recover 90% of the BF you gained in the last 15 minutes). You'd still need to find a cantina to fully recover, but bringing a master dancer along would help you stay out hunting longer.
Fourth, Entertainer types need more of a role in battle (I know not every entertainer wants to be in the field... but lets give them the option). I mentioned one thing above, but I'd like to add a couple more ideas. The first is a battle dance, this dance would buff the BF resist of someone, reducing the BF they take in battle (most likely this would be done before a fight). Next, have a war drum or something like it that would reduce the BF damage taken during a battle. Also add in a trumpet call. The trumpet call would lower the BF of everyone in the party for a limited time (the idea here is that they are encouraged and try harder). This move should have some sort of timer on how often it can be used for the party (that way you don't get two people who alternate using it). In essence, I'd have the dancer's abilities to be aimed at before and after the fight while musicians would be more useful during a fight.
Fifth, Give force sensitive characters a way to damage BF (Jedi mind trick type stuff). I think that this would give those characters something special to stand out... right now there isn't much difference between hunting a force sensitive character verses fighting a very high level critter (i.e. they both just hit hard and have big HAMs). It would also strike more fear into hunters knowing that they can very quickly become useless in a fight against a force sensitive character (plus it should help prevent 2 people being able to take down a dark Jedi master).
Anyways... the chance of seeing this type of change go into the game is pretty close to nil... but I can dream can't I 
Eh... been reading all of these ideas, each with their own problems... and tried to think of something more original. Don't know if I've thought this through all the way, but how about if we had a mind healing move that was sort of like a reverse Quick Heal. It would only heal damage in mind pool of the target (it's not a heal-all stim), but would cause majordamage/wounds to health and action, and battle fatigue.
Or an alternation I just thought of. A Mind Stim that basically works like a regular Stim in reverse. Only heals mind pool, and then drains health and action proportianately.In other words,it would technically be draining double what a regular stim drains, since it drains from two pools rather than one. I'm already starting to see flaws with both of these, but maybe someone else can use them as starting points to expand on.
The one thing I'd have to say about almost all of the ideas is that I think almost all of them could work without making entertainers useless, which is what most people's (especially the Devs, I have to think) greatest concern is. Entertainers would still be needed to heal BF and mind wounds. Very few people are disputing that. All the majority of us want is to be able to heal mind damage, and not necessarily a lot. Mainly just enough to revive those incapped by head wounds.
Hey, that just gave me another idea. What if we had a type of stim that healed mind damage, but only worked on characters that had been incapped (from mind damage)? Hmmmm....
Actually I kind of agree with that. It's just the argument I keep hearing brought up about that being so very exploitable.
Of course it seems to me if you only get the abilities at the higher levels you wouldn't be using the "exploit" for XP purposes anyway. And if that's an exploit then why isn't my buffing a Carbineer's, Action, Quickness and Stamina an exploit? I mean I can buff those stats and never have to bother healing that Carbiner for stat loss from using specials on a high-end carbine because their costs will be so low and they'll regen what they do use so fast.
And since I can just heal them if they get hit anway, they can still just special with impunity, which is obviously somehting a Doc or Medic can't do. Go figure.
Here's an odd idea. SOE is going to work on droids for the DEs, right? What if ... medical modules also had the effect of letting you heal mind damage with your regular stims? Each level of med module could then be certified to only work with certain stims. Say Med 1 only works with /tenddamage, Med 2 Stim As, Med 3 for Stim Bs, Med 4 for Stim Cs, Med 5 for Stim Ds, and Med 6 for Stim Es. This would help both Docs and CMs. Add to this the droid cert system, and it would restrict it to players' appropriate skill levels. Also, droids are targetable which would make them vulnerable in PvP. They require batteries to maintain, perhaps their batteries drain faster the more mind damage you heal. Etc. DEs would then be tasked with keeping the medical and combat droids functioning via repair kits and repair droids. Basically, it would add another layer or two of support lines for mass PvE and PvP battles.
Like I said, it was an odd idea. Just thought it might help medics, docs, CMs, and DEs.
Taallyn wrote:
Umm, Pistoleers do not have a dedicated mind damaging attack. That's only BHs that can do it with pistols. Pistoleers can only target the health pool specifically with BodyShot ./ Healthshot. All the other special attacksdo random pool damage. Pistoleers' MeleeDefense 1 skill is a melee range knockdown. DisarmingShot2 at Master Pistoleer is acting like a ranged AoE knockdown, but that's not what it's description says it's supposed to be. So, look to see it get corrected at some point.
Uh fan shot?!
hits all 3 pools at one time...
Yeah, it could be that you got hit with shots that landed on each pool. For instance if the Fan Shot check came up with three shots hitting you, each pool might have then gotten hit by a different shot. Normal attacks are distributed randomly as well. Only the Mind/Body/Action/etc specific typeshots go for individual pools. I know it's really strange when I kill something via the Mind or Action pools when I'm solo. It's just the way the damage system works. Even someone just starting the game hits all the pools randomly. That's why it takes so long for them to kill something, they can't target one particular HAM pool so end up whittling away at all three pools.
Hehe. The reason Stopping Shot does so much more damage is because it's not targetted at a specific pool. So, you could do a huge amount of damage to the one pool that's completely full and still get killed by something that had a sliver of live remaining in another pool.
All of the combat professions are very similar in this regard. Each will usually have one HAM pool it can specifically target, yet be able to do large amounts of damage with random distribution via other specials.
lol most people dont have any HAM that goes above 1200 and stopping shot hits for a ton...
where is that pvp damge reduction!!!!