Doctor Archive
Thread: Skill Points and Doctors...A way for us to regain 15 SP.
LonelyKnight wrote:When i actually stop to think about it. i agree that medics/doctors should not have surey or sample unless they want to pay for them with skill points.
the medical companies of today dont grow their own plants or gather their own minerals they have to buy them or spend money to have that ability.
so we medics/ doctors should those skillunless we are willing to pay for them.
but theres the tough part, i can spend skill points and not have all the skills i want or i can spend cash and not have all the materials i want....
personaly i think artisans sell their materials at way to high prices.... more calculations on the cost of getting the matirals needs to be done. why charge 4-5 per unit when it might cost the artisan only .5 credits per unit to gather. im not too sure on this so i might be wrong.... but when i can get 15k of minerals for about 12k cash and have a artsan complain about not making a profit at 2/1 price (24k) for the same thing i wonder if they even know how much money they are spending vs takeing in..
but im going off subject there,,,
i would love to give up artisan but the sad fact is i cant afford it.
You forget one thing. In 'real life', doctors are paid to heal wounds. Can you imagine if I requested a pre-payment from group members for potential services rendered? Can you imagine me keeping track of who I healed when so that I could demand proper payment after battle? I've *NEVER EVER* sat in a medical center (where most docs dont get paid for services anyway!). That's extremely boring. I prefer battle, grouping, missions, and other combat related stuff myself
In 'real life' since doctors are paid to heal wounds, they can afford the cost of meds. Often times they just 'perscribe' meds, and the end user directly pays for it
Since there is a cost associated with meds, the med-makers can pay the costs associated with production including ingredients, r&d, etc..etc.. Stop trying to compare 'real life' to a game. We have a bunch of obscure needs and we have to waste 15+ points on obtaining these needs or be held at the convienence of the *very few* farming specific players - most of whom are 'casual gamers' and as such may not have quality, quantity, or type that you need
Originally I was a BE/CH/Swordsman.. and we'll I got a little tired of that... but I did notice that I loved healing!!
So I decided to go doctor and kind of revamp my character (was great was like starting over but not losing my character/items/money ect...)
So now I am Doctor/Swordsman (almost rifleman but ill give that up so I can get to wound IV)
And I totally dropped artisan before I ever had anything more than Organic Chem IV, everything else I gained after I dropped artisan skills...
Basically the plan is to be Master Swordsman, Rifle Spec in Marksman, and 0-4-4-4 in Doctor. that leaves i think 1 or 2 points... I love not being artisan... but then again I have no problem making money... being almost master swordsman missions can be a breeze if done right.
Just say no to Artisan!!
Earning cash can be a separate issue. But people often bring it in as the reason they can't buy the resource they need, assuming they would be available to buy. Thus finding us a way to gain a secure income is one part of my counter argument to this. I have been thinking about how little med center healing I do and the proposed idea that people healing there get some sort of terminal to enforce payment. I was thinking that even if they put in such a thing it wouldn't matter, I wouldn't use it. But if the potential to raise cash is there, and we don't use, it who's fault is that? And this is what Holo was getting at, though I felt he stated poorly.
Yes getting any skill does not make you rich, it must have a certain potential to do so and you have to use it in a specific manner to get rich, well off, or what ever. If you get a skill that has the potential and you don't use it for that purpose fine. None one is going to care. But if they give you that potential they have to be responsible for the action of giving it to you, which is what Halo was getting at. Giving survey/sample gives a potential to make a lot of cash, not rich, but a sizeable amount of cash. I know you want to limit how much and what we can survey/sample. And yes that may work, but then we all know how much we need to craft. So how limited is it going to be? For each sample do you want us only getting 1 resource, maybe 2? Is theSample time increased for us? If the limit is so low that we spend more time sampling then playing what's the point? If its too limited we will start calling it a busted skill.
I currently do not have harvesters. I do have survey 4. I did have harvesters for a little while and was able to gather so many resources they lasted me a month. I don't know the hard numbers,but know that about a week of harvester work I can gather enough resources to get me through a couple of weeks (I'm adjusting for current level)at least, playing6 hrs a day. I can't see how someone can't get a reasonable amount of cash and all the resources they need using survey/sample and harvesters. Since I'm running out now I was planning to get a few more,as an experiment I will gather harder numbers and details of what I did. Who knows, maybe this time I may find it not so productive...
It is true that resource hunters may not be out there, but the economic structure of SWG makes it hard to know that for sure. A stronger economic structure would let others know what is in Demand rather than what is in supply, and thusgive everyone ameans to judge how to best raise an income based on resource gathering. It is true that at first the artisans will out bid us but they will be mostly bidding against themselves and driving up their costs so it won't last. This will be counter balanced by how much they can charge for their final goods. It will equal out and a market for us will evolve where in we can get orders filled. It wouldn't happen over night but with such a small coummunity it would be pretty quick. Since the community is small there will be a more fluctuations as well.
I was a bit overly strong in my wording when I said nobody is looking at the balancing issue.
btw I don't really think us having these skills would take anything away from anyone. It grants us more skills, and it increases self-reliance.
I do agree that we are not as self-reliant as other classes and we are in the same boat as Entertainers. But being an exception means we have to look harder at why we are that way. I know you have I just want to look at it again from another point of view and deepen that view cause I think there is something there.
I also agree we are not blanced. How much is what I'm debating and how to fix it as well. There are classes far worse off than us in terms of missing skills and balance. I personally feel the game is still in beta form.
You were correct in that I'm not asking 2 questions but a bunch. I'm trying to distill it down to core issues, keep it simple. What you would spend your points on is not an issue, what is, is that you can spend them. The fact that you will have 15 more points to spend means you will be better at something. This means we may be outside what parameters of balance the Devs want and thus why they are reluctant to give it to us.
What I was after originally, and I'm not sure where I got lost, was that I wanted to see other options, other than just survey/sample, listed as a fix for the problem in the top five. I'm a wordy kind of guy. I know Zarlor, you gave the url, but I felt it need more debating. I though that, though you and many others may not think it would work, Traigus has a good grasp of game balance and a good idea. I felt it was dismissed out of hand, in this thread at least, to quickly. I think it is more related than you do and am trying to prove it.
On a side note I did just read a post from Holo: We'd rather fix medical forage than remove it, for example.
I think I'm going to play forwhile now.
As you can tell I'm rather wordy myself and all up for a good debate. I won't say I dismissed Traigus' idea out of hand, it certianly has potential and merit. I'm justnot convincedit's really the answer needed.
As for the balance issue of it all... those 15 points I really don't think were considered part of the issue for the Devs. (they're not talking so we can only guess here and this is just my conjecture.) They seem to have expected that we would just use them wherever we wanted simply because they figured we would buy all our resources, but they also put us in a bind if we want to make any of the better meds in that it's not really that easy to do wihtout having those skills.
Money could be a possible solution, but I think our somewhat lower volume requirements and the fact that Weaponsmiths, for example and particularly, can raise their prices to fairly exhorbitant levels and actually keep it there, be competetive and still pay outrageous prices for resources. And this on an item that does decay over time and selling to folks who brag about how much they paid for their weapons (while usually not tipping us to boot). It may drop some, but we're definitely not seeing it yet, IMHO.
As to this set of questions:
"So how limited is it going to be? For each sample do you want us only getting 1 resource, maybe 2? Is theSample time increased for us? If the limit is so low that we spend more time sampling then playing what's the point? If its too limited we will start calling it a busted skill."
Being able to hand sample only 1 resource at a time is, I think, a great limitation because it does limit severely the usefulness of hand sampling. That's right I think it SHOULD be a busted skill in this respect.If someone prefers being able to hand sample, and gain all the advantages thereof, then they have incentive to get the Artisan Survey skill.
So let's consider that instead of giving /sample and /survey to medics we are really talking about /medsample and /medsurvey. Limiting the types of resources we can sample for may not be completely feasible, since we can still use a decent variety, but there are a few that rarely, if ever, get used in Meds because they aren't always the most suitable, such as any inorganic resource witout a UT rating, such as the gasses. (Except that there are meds that actually require gasses *sigh*), or organics with no PE rating.
In this way we have limited /medsurvey and /medsample to not be nearly as useful as the Artisan skill. But it does give us the one thing we really need, the ability to check the stats on a resource, even if it's virtually useless for handsampling purposes. So now we really cannot compete with an Artisan at all on the handsampling level. But we can still get them to make us harvesters that we can now use witha form of survey skill to find good locations for and where we can sample a little something to see if the recsource is even worth dropping a harvester for. The inter-dependcy still exits for the harvesters and for the survey tools, but the skill that we really need to accomplish the task of crafting complex meds would be available to us. Reliance and self-sufficiency together with a limiting factor to make us, if not non-competetive with Artisans, at least far less competetive and capable than they are for pure resource gathering purposes. Hence why I feel the idea has some merit on maintaining a level of balance that would better satisfy the intent of how the proffessions should be balanced with self-sufficieny AND inter-dependencies.
So far I, obviously, think this is a sound argument. Other options are certainly available and may work as well or better. They'd probably take longer to impliment, but I'm also willing to wait. (We Docs are a pretty patient bunch,I would think, on the whole.)
Part of what Holo alluded to in his original post when we first went live was Med specific resources for the lwoer level meds. Well that's all fine and dandy for gettting a beginning medic on their feet (and they could use the help, as it's not an easy profession to get into and especially not to do well.) I don't think I would have too much of a complaint if they took that one whole step further and made all med shematics use some kind of med-specific resources, BUT the problem there is we would have removed the OPTION of using artisan skills or dedicated resource gatherers as a means of supply. We could only supply ourselves, then, and it would reduce the inter-dependency that in such a situation I think would be useful. So really not the best solution, IMHO, but at least one direction the Devs seemed to be considering to at least a much lesser degree.
At any rate, I'm still pretty enamored of a lesser version of /survey and /sample. That doesn't mean I'm not open to being convinced otherwise. Now if only I could see the Dev arguments to this discussion we could focus the thread in a manner that might be more productive for thier purposes. I just don't think we'll have any luck there, if thier history of direct involvement in the medical professions' forumshas anything to say about it.
Since what exactly type of class doctors are is the major issue i would like to do this, a side by side comparison of Artisan, Weaponsmith(random elite artisan prof based on crafting), Medic, Doctor, and Bio-Engineer.
Firstly the crafting xp to get finished with the crafting line in artisan is the exact same as in the medic skill line...well i take that back medic crafting requiresso much more crafting than the artisan Engineer line. Since the bone armor yieldsxp in the hundreds(what makes things soo sad is that a master doctordoesn't get much more xp for their highest Stim of buff) and medics have to makecomponents and stimsthat give xp in the teens. But still disregarding that fact they should be considered crafting classes. Now let me get further on. to get weaponsmith requires like 16k crafting xp, and BE requires just a lil less at 10k crafting xp. Still so far they are exactly identical classes (medic and artisan..in comparing the elite profs i have mentioned). Weaponsmith has 4 trees of crafting. BE has 3 trees of crafting and 1 tree of DNA sampling. So in reality BE has 4 trees of crafting, as it is a hybrid prof and the sampling is Scout's crafting..so really they are no different. So how can you possibly say that medic is not a crafting class? when i have just shown in a direct comparison of 2 different Elite Profs.
Now let me get to doctors. Looking at the artisan class. There is absolutly no other profession that offshoots from being a master artisan. Skill point wise not much at all has to be invested into the novice Elite Profs that spawn from the Engineer tree. Of course you can do survey tree as well..but that is your porogative to do as it is fully optional.
Novice doctor on the other hand is incredibly more skill point investing. To reach just novice doctor means Mastering medic and getting the novice doctor prof, which requires84 skill points...compared to a novice weaponsmiths' meager 35 skill points. Now with getting weaponsmith, the novice weaponsmith gets a whole assortment of new items to craft that yield higher xp than those in the Engineer line. But a novice Doctor on the other hand is required to craft3 TIMES the amount needed in medic...making more or less the EXACT SAME items as were made in medic class.
Since i have shown how medic and doctor classes in some ways, more of a crafting class then artisan is, there is no reason we should be required to have artisan to be able to survey. However if it is felt that medics do not require survey/sample..i actually am complelty fine in that. Being just a medic means you have not invested much into the prof and most likely still have points to get artisan. However for Doctors...we absolutly MUST HAVE this. We have invested almost 3x as much skill points in our profession to just reach novice lvl and have incredibly strict resource requirements for advance parts...which are the only real things that yield a decent amount of XP. Thinking about it though...it would be wise that this would be given at medic level, since BE need this just as much as doctors and they themselves are heavily invested skill point wise..and they are absolutly no different than an Elite Artisan prof.
No matter how you look at it, medic/doctor and BE is as much a crafting profession as any Artisan profession. And should be treated thusly as one. Along with being a healing class as well. So in essence medic is the only hybrid basic skill set...lol so does that make doctors and BEs an Elite Hybrid Elite profession? lol
This is pretty simple.. they dont.
They make so much money and go through so many resources that they either need more, or dont want to get their own, but that is their option.
I know an archetect that charges 200-225k for heavy harvesters, that HAS 10 heavy down on different things, that makes so many harvesters and sells them all at that price (which is 8cr + per unit) that he cant keep up with the demand.
Weaponsmiths are from what I hear a bit different, as they cant make money until master or close to (I dont know this for a fact, just repeating what I have heard) but once they get their, they have a markup that makes that artisan look poor in comparison.
Yes - these proffessions are rich compared to doctors, and as such have an entire market of resource gatherers tending to their every need, as its a great way to make money.
Ive put some holy **edit** kind of resources on the bazaar for doctors (900+ OQ PE type dantoine berries ect) and while they sell, they dont sell that quickly, and I sold them at 4-6cr a unit. If that were a weaponsmith, I could have sold all the resources like that I had, at 10-15cr a unit, given the specific nature of the resource.
I know archetects that buy ALL ore for 3cr a unit, quantity is no barrier, the more you collect the more they buy.
Why would people market a product to medical people, when we are not near rich enough to afford that? See, when a weaponsmith pays for that rare resource at 15cr per, they turn it around and make a profit off of it. For me as a doctor to afford that, gee I get to go do destroy or artisan missions for it. This locks me into a skill where I have to earn money. I cant take entertainer, combat medic becomes rough, ect.
I dont think holo is going to come up with an acceptable fix for the money issue, because we all know they are now trying to find money sinks for the game. Thus giving medical people a way to earn money through the game is not going to happen imho.
Whats going to happen is we will get some lame ass attempt at forcing other people to pay for our service (which we can already do by simply charging for healing) which will just be a "there we did something about it" measure. Something like a secure trade healing window.
Just like the guy that I ran into that wasnt willing to pay 1000cr to heal 1500 wounds (in 3-4 heals I might add) who is going to accept a fee just because of secure trade? They will probably just sit there for 2 hours afk until some medic heals them.
Thats the common way for people to interact with medics - go into the med center, throw up the afk tag and just let yourself time out. Guilt free healing for which you cant be charged. Of course all the people getting their ability to self heal up are dieing for the chance to use their 40point heals anyway.
PS. You want to throw me a bone? Rate med use based on how much a pack heals. No more of this 400 base heal from a Stim B requiring only novice medic crap.
Its tiresome to be refused on groups because they can just heal themselves and get more money than if they invited me along.
Integral part of combat.. ha!
Important part of the game... ha!
I find that I have no problem finding someone to get animal resources for me. Thats a totally different ballgame, and provided I can come up with the money, I can have people get that for me.
The difference is that the people I ask are already hunting anyway, and need to make xp, so whatever they kill is pretty much arbitrary - they may as well be killing something that gives them a meat that they can sell, so it isnt too hard to work out.
At comparison, while meat ect will sell just as well as anything else and we can state a need for it to be filled, mining is different because it is an opportunity cost problem. When someone mines something for me, they do it at the cost of having a harvester NOT on something they are going to be able to sell for a better price in a better quantity.
Mining resources for medics and doctors = 1 less harvester on the stuff that sells the best.
Scout / ranger getting resources = well I was doing that anyway, may as well just collect your amount of meat.
Also a big difference, is that for the meat we need, you dont have to go to lok, talus, dantoine, tatoine ect to get it. It can be had off of the things that are given for starter missions even. Even a novice marksman / scout can gather up a formidable amount of this on their home planet in a couple of days, provided they know we are looking for it.
So no, I dont particularly feel the need to be able to scout as part of the medical branch. While I can feel that it is annoying at times, and would be more convienant, I definately have other avenues I can turn to to take care of my needs, provided I can pay for it.