Doctor Archive
Thread: Fan Fest Medical Forum
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MyT_Chicken
Sun Jun 05, 2005 2:42 am
#1
This is a condensed (as much as I could) version of the one hour forum we had with 3 of the Medical Dev's. Please forgive me for spelling / grammer errors.....I've been working on this for 3 hours nearly, and I'm tired.
What you read in this threadis NOT exact quotes from the Devs. There was a lot of information that was passed, and I took only what was easy to understand without making this longer then it already is. It is extreamly long (8 Pages in Word) but there is a lot of good stuff in here.
Please feel free to ask any question about this post, but please remember....I'm not a Red Name....and even though the answer were from Devs, these are NOT exact quote. It was very hard to me to understand what was said sometimes with the back ground noise, so I did my best.
Another thing to remember, is just because it was said....doesn't mean its going to happen!!
P = Player Question / Comment
D = Dev Answer / Comment
Me = My questions. 
I tried to seperate the converstaions by color for slightly easier reading.
BTW Next Expansion......CAPITAL SHIPS!!! WOOT!!!!
P: Do you have any plans to balance healers with Jedi?
D: Yes, Doctor healing, CM Healing is defiantly to low and Jedi healing is far too high....
P: So you are going to nerf Jedi?
D: Well we don't really know what we are going to do. Jedi healing is currently healing for way to much for way to long. It may not just be and issue of reducing the healing amount or the rate they can heal; it might only need to be something like putting a mind cost into their healing so that they can only use a heal a few times in a battle. But right now a Jedi can basically be un-killable as long as they have force for upwards of 20-30 minutes in PVE. PVP is slightly different but Jedi healing right now is just....
P: Well I know that right now I am, at least to me being a master rifleman / Master Doc, feel that I'm more useful prone on the ground, using sniper shot....rather then healing the tanks in my group, because we have a Jedi healer that can just out perform me.
D: Right and we are aware of this.
P: So Combat Medic's Bacta Spray is one of the best taunts in the game...
D: Yes, yes we are aware that healing agro (hate) is very high, but healing agro is something we defiantly want to keep in. Healing should not be something where you heal your group and you (the healer) instantly go down.
P: Well couldn't there be some randomness in healing?
D: Well, Randomness is good to a degree, but you don't want to be afraid to hit the heal button when you really need it...So with Agro I want people to say "well if I heal for this much on this many people, I'm going to get the agro".
P: Well right now it feels like we either get a free ride or we are tanking...
D: No...Right now I think there is a really good middle ground. Right now, sometimes your group will get to crazy and pull to much stuff, and we know that the agro is really bad right now, but despite that, that’s when you as a Doc / CM needs to say "Hey chill out because I'm not going to die for you"
Me: Since we are on topic with the Jedi, why is it that when a Jedi heals for 1500+ they get zero hate?
D: I'll check it, I mean everyone that participates in combat needs to be included in the hate table, and healing agro should be healing agro. We know Jedi are far better then everyone else and we will look into that.
P: Is there any way Drag could be put into Combat Medic?
D: Right...
P: Medic has drag!!
D: We will look at that, and it may be something we change so that both professions can share that ability.
P: I have noticed that I can't heal incap players with any heals
D: Yes, that is a bug.
Me: You can use Bacta Spray however
*Laughter*
D: Haha, well there you go, however that issue will be fixed soon.
P: Is there any way we could get Drag incap and Wound healing moved into the shared line of Doc / CM?
D: Well if we do that, we get into the position of people wanting everything to be shared in some form, and we don't want that. For me I don't see how picking up a few extra blocks to get something like Drag Incap will mess up a template. I mean it all ties into the whole skill point crunch. We don't want to water down the profession by duplicating abilities, but if it's something like Drag incap that may be something we could move down the tree, or just simply move it. But that's something we will have to look into.
P: I have to say I think the totally opposite of that. I think it's exactly where it should be. I mean if I want ranged healing I have to pick up that skill and I just think it's pretty balanced as it is.
P: I would just like to say that I'm really happy with how the two professions work now. The only thing I'm frustrated about is that my failure rate for revive is very high, is there a reason for that?
D: Yes...it's broken, and we are aware of that. It has to do with the server thinking your still moving, even if the client say's your not. This will be looked at, fixed, and we plan to actually reduce the sensitivity of abilities that have warm-ups like Revive. However you still will have a chance to fail, it's just not going to be strict as it "feels" right now.
All warm ups have this same issue, and we are looking into it.
P: Why was Terrain Neg. removed from CM?
D: Well TN is always a big issue with everyone, simply because everyone wants it. So...basically we removed it because we wanted to give something back the Scout profession. And if players feel that they need TN, we suggest you spend the points to get the blocks in Scout.
P: How are healers suppose to complete village quests now that we can't craft?
D: The village issues are all known, and should be fixed when we do the planetary balance passes.
P: Enhancers...***Sorry I can't really hear the question but its something about enhancers***
P: Are enhancers even working?
D: Yes, Enhancers are working but it’s a delicate balance, because we don't want to make them so potent that you would never use anything without the enhancers.
P: **Something about enhancers being useless** (I'm sorry, the people didn't speak loud enough so I could actually hear them on my recorder)
D: Well, if enhancers aren't being crafted or used, we defiantly need to take a look at them. We want it to be worthwhile for you to carry them around, but it shouldn't be so incredibly potent so that you are like "Well I can't play because I don't have XXX enhancers". The issue with the enhancers right now is we don't have the ability to "cool down" items. So when you move enhancers into your bar and use them you won’t get any cool down on the item. But you will see it on the ability that the enhancer is linked to.
P: Right we know that, but what I mean is that when you use bacta shot it doesn't use an enhancer
D: Correct, it will only use the ability. You much physically select the enhancer and use it for it to be used. This was changed because it was such a huge resource mess to check your inventory, etc. What I mean by this is before the change, the system would use a random XXX pack....but players were getting frustrated that it would use "uber" items on things that could have been done with a less potent item.
So now you have to physically say (**Not literally**) I want to use this enhancer for this job. We understand that it's still a juggling act, but we hope to fix that very soon.
P: When your max health goes down, from like a CM Debuff or channel force or anything like that, there is no way of telling that "Oh hey! I only got 150 health now". Could this be looked into and possible fixed?
D: Yes this is something we are defiantly going to have to fix to make it easier for players to see what is going on with the health bars.
P: What does the number on Enhancers actually mean?
D: It's an indicator on the effectiveness of the enhancers.
P: So is that the amount the enhancer is actually going to enhance?
D: No, that number means nothing to you except Higher = Better. That’s a number we use to help balance the enhancers. To us the Number is a % on the back end of the code. So we could actually go in and say we need to adjust this to make it better. But because the number on the enhancer isn't actually changing, it's easier for us to balance things without messing up already crafted items. Higher = Better.
D: So to better help you understand, the enhancers are not all the same, if you have a buff enhancer for example, it would raise the duration by X%. But on the flip side a bacta shot enhancer would offer a % increase to the strength. So it just depends on the abilities.
P: Regardless what you are, you always get 10% for buffs. Enhancers only increase the duration...
D: Correct, Buffs we have to be very restrictive on how much a stat can be buffed. In the past we clearly had buffs that just totally unbalanced the game. And for buffs specifically, we had to make sure that the amount was highly restricted, and let the enhancers work only with the duration.
P: Could you do something with Master Doc to make buffs more worthwhile....like increase the health buff for 20% at Master and last at least an hour to an hour and a half?
D: No....no...no...no...no we don't want Doctors to go back to just buffing...
P: But why would that change at master matter?
D: Because anything you have a duration that is that long.....players feel that it's more worthwhile to run in, get a buff, play for an hour and a half and just go back and get another one. We don't want that. We want the players to say "hey doc, come hunt with us". We "WANT" the Docs in a group, playing with people, and buffing the players there rather then at the starport or whatever.
We need to find that middle ground where the buff last long enough to play and so that you aren't feeling frustrated at having to rebuff every 5-10 minutes, but its short enough that people want to bring the doctors with them.
P: Well I'm not saying players shouldn't take the Docs with them, but it Master should be worth more then 5% duration...higher power....something
D: Ok, well we will check that out, but I am not going to make Doctor Buffs an hour and a half.
D: Right, so what we are looking for is some type of better reward at Master Doc, and we will look into that.
P: Well what about Food, I mean I can make Blob Candy at Master Artisan.
P: Right but Blob candy isn't free (consumable wise), it takes up some type of inventory space, and fills your stomach. With us it's just "Boom" it doesn't take any packs or anything.
D: We will see what we can do about making Master Doctor more worthwhile.
P: What is this Doctor Bag??
D: It was originally intended for all the medical stuff Doctors had to carry. It wasn't intended to go to live like it did, but it's something that slipped under the radar.
P: How about using it to hold enhancers?
D: We are not going to make it hold enhancers....but we may make it into something useful like a Backpack, or something like that.
I honestly don't know what we are going to do with it, but right now it does nothing.
Me: Could you please give Doctors a reason to actually heal wounds....XP....or maybe something like cover charge, or something..........It's just that it's completely worthless for any Doctor to go out and heal wounds, and it's really not fair to the other players in the game.
D: Ok, well the XP was pulled to prevent things like AFK "monkey work", and XP is not going to go back in for this reason alone. As far as some type of secure credits trade, like cover charge, but part of it is we expect Doctors to actually be out in the field healing a group, where you can loot stuff, share the credits and XP from that.
Me: Right but then you run into the problem where people are getting killed and there is no one to heal them. And there is no point for a Doctor to even heal someone out side of a group. Me personally I play with a very limited number of people, and I don't go out of my way to find people to heal. Sure I will help people out, but there is not benefit for me doing so.
D: Right, and I agree with what you’re saying, and I know you aren't the only one that feels this way. And it is a problem that currently we don't really have a solution to. I...We don't expect doctor's to go back to doing that, because we want them out in a group. But you’re absolutely right, that is a problem we need to solve for everyone else that play's the game. The fact people have to run around looking for a doctor is just not right. I'm just not sure as to what we are going to do to fix this problem, but we are going to do something so they aren't crippled because the want to play in space and happen to die a few times.
One thing that would ease some pain is if wound heals were more powerful....then Doctors don't waste so much time healing players with massive wounds. Doctor healing and wound healing is something we are defiantly going to look into making better.
P: One thing to remember is some Doctors like the role as Wound Healer...that's their play style...to sit in a cantina or med center and heal wounds
D: Yes and we don't want to take that away from doctor's and ideally what I would like to see is some type of secure trade system that will allow you to heal something for a set fee...something like cover charge, but something like that is very tricky, and I know we have it for Entertainers and ID's but it's very tasking.
P: How about increasing Med center’s "auto healing" ability?
D: Yes currently it's set at "miserable"
**Laughing**
D: That is not something that we expect players to do..."Oh yeah just go to the hospital and sit for 6 hours straight to heal those 300-500 wounds". And we don't want that. I mean we defiantly need to figure something out and I just don't know what it would be....maybe offline healing, or npcs or I really have no idea how we are going to solve this issue....but we really do need to address this issue so that the Doctors can continue to go out and continue to have fun, but also make it so that the players unable to find doctors are not crippled because of that.
P: ***Something about the res arm, I can't really hear what he asked***
P: Well it has a 30m timer and it's frustrating that those people don't have any "skill" to actually revive.
D: Yes, but there is also an item that can res before this cybernetic (talking about the Ring of Res)......
P: Yeah but that has a 24h timer NOT a 30m timer.
D: Ahh ok, so we need to look at the timer and perhaps increase it, or make it require some type of pre-req or something like that.
The thing about the arm is that you can't wear armor, and the arm actually offers very little protection.
P: Yes but if it "acts like armor" the ability will still remain even after it is at 0 condition. I don't know this to be true because I don't use it, but. It's also frustrating to give out a Master Level ability without any type of Pre-Req or anything like that.
D: Ok we will take a look at the timer and see what we can come up with, or add a pre-req or something, we defiantly hear your concerns about it.
P: ***Something about a Jedi out healing a Doc or CM***
D: Yes we know, you all don't even compare to Jedi and that will be addressed.
P: Is Poison and Disease for creature turned on?
D: No it is not, it's not working properly, so we have it turned off currently. But it's on my list of things to fix.
**Crowd groans and moans**
Well I need to get it working for the CH pets and stuff like that.
P: Sometimes when I'm tanking and I want to heal myself, I actually end up healing another player....
D: Oh yes, and this is a little confusing....Anything that is a helpful action we put in something called Target Assistance. What this does is if you have your enemy targeted and when you go a head and use a heal, what it does is makes you heal whatever that mob is actually attacking. So if you’re the tank, and it’s attacking you, you will heal yourself. But if someone else has the Agro, you are going to need to un-target the mob to heal yourself, or make a macro of some kind to target and heal yourself.
It's really there to benefit the Doctors a lot because you can have the mob targeted, and heal a person that needs it without actually loosing the mob. This reduces the amount of switching back and forth you have to do. Furthermore, if you have a group member targeted, you can also attack the mob that they have targeted
P: Well what about something that goes area attack, and I actually want to heal myself, and not the tank
D: In that case you can either unselect it, or target yourself. Because in this case, even those a mob is using an area attack, it still has one person it hates the most that it is trying to attack, so that is who you would actually be healing.
P: Ok I just wanted to make use that it was right.
D: Yes it is, and it’s really nice once you get use to it.
P: ***Something about Healing Agro***
D: Yes, that came up earlier, and it’s too high....we will reduce that.
P: ***Something about the "Do you want to go Combatant" pop up not working anymore***
D: We are defiantly going to get that working again
Message Edited by MyT_Chicken on 06-05-2005 02:45 AM
TenshiHanaKinu
Sun Jun 05, 2005 4:31 am
#4
Heh, someone tried to get Wound Healing to CM.
Good read overall though, thanks a ton.
TheTemplar
Sun Jun 05, 2005 8:56 am
#6
Nice stuff especially Jedi healing vs doc healing and that they realise that threat levels from healing might be abit high.
Btw where can I read about this capital ships expansion?
Dapu
Sun Jun 05, 2005 9:35 am
#7
MyT_Chicken wrote:
...
Me: Could you please give Doctors a reason to actually heal wounds....XP....or maybe something like cover charge, or something..........It's just that it's completely worthless for any Doctor to go out and heal wounds, and it's really not fair to the other players in the game.
D: Ok, well the XP was pulled to prevent things like AFK "monkey work", and XP is not going to go back in for this reason alone. As far as some type of secure credits trade, like cover charge, but part of it is we expect Doctors to actually be out in the field healing a group, where you can loot stuff, share the credits and XP from that.
Me: Right but then you run into the problem where people are getting killed and there is no one to heal them. And there is no point for a Doctor to even heal someone out side of a group. Me personally I play with a very limited number of people, and I don't go out of my way to find people to heal. Sure I will help people out, but there is not benefit for me doing so.
D: Right, and I agree with what you’re saying, and I know you aren't the only one that feels this way. And it is a problem that currently we don't really have a solution to. I...We don't expect doctor's to go back to doing that, because we want them out in a group. But you’re absolutely right, that is a problem we need to solve for everyone else that play's the game. The fact people have to run around looking for a doctor is just not right. I'm just not sure as to what we are going to do to fix this problem, but we are going to do something so they aren't crippled because the want to play in space and happen to die a few times.
One thing that would ease some pain is if wound heals were more powerful....then Doctors don't waste so much time healing players with massive wounds. Doctor healing and wound healing is something we are defiantly going to look into making better.
P: One thing to remember is some Doctors like the role as Wound Healer...that's their play style...to sit in a cantina or med center and heal wounds
D: Yes and we don't want to take that away from doctor's and ideally what I would like to see is some type of secure trade system that will allow you to heal something for a set fee...something like cover charge, but something like that is very tricky, and I know we have it for Entertainers and ID's but it's very tasking.
P: How about increasing Med center’s "auto healing" ability?
D: Yes currently it's set at "miserable"
**Laughing**
D: That is not something that we expect players to do..."Oh yeah just go to the hospital and sit for 6 hours straight to heal those 300-500 wounds". And we don't want that. I mean we defiantly need to figure something out and I just don't know what it would be....maybe offline healing, or npcs or I really have no idea how we are going to solve this issue....but we really do need to address this issue so that the Doctors can continue to go out and continue to have fun, but also make it so that the players unable to find doctors are not crippled because of that.
...
Message Edited by MyT_Chicken on 06-05-2005 02:45 AM
Really sad to see the devs being so against getting xp outside of combat. Hopefully they'll realize how much it affects the game and change their minds.
Thank you so much firstfor posting this, and second for asking those questions many of us have been dying to hear an answer to, though. Great to finally hear what the devs are thinking about our issues.
MyT_Chicken
Sun Jun 05, 2005 9:48 am
#8
TheTemplar wrote:
Nice stuff especially Jedi healing vs doc healing and that they realise that threat levels from healing might be abit high.
Btw where can I read about this capital ships expansion?
Well, we only saw a small 2.5 minute movie about it....and if you ask me the film was biased.
You can doc with the SD....walk on the SD....where.....Vadar is now commanding. After doing some stuff on it, you eventually seem to get a mission to attack a corvette (Eps 4 anyone. 
)...and eventually pilot that this somewhere. They really didn't offer much information about it. But it it looks very interesting to finally get some more (I would assume) Master Level missions.
After5CST
Sun Jun 05, 2005 1:53 pm
#9
Very informative, very helpful, very encouraging. Thank you for attending and being so attentive and meticulous.
I wish they were more receptive to wound center healing, but other than that it was mostly good news. Hoepfully they'll get some of the fixes in sooner rather than later.
RizzyUK
Mon Jun 06, 2005 12:15 am
#11
Really nice work
Just a shame about the enhancer details . I thought I'd read somewhere in the original CU notes that there would be a long lasting buff with a low level increase in ham ( 10% ) and the abillity to buff for a shorter duration but at a higher increase to ham ( 20% ) . If this was right then they would really encourage the doc's to be invited along in the groups. A 20% increase for a shorter period would , I think be more of a benifit to the group .
Obviously there is never going to be a return to the uber 3+hour buff of 3k+ ham but if the crafted enhancers were to give increasses getting close to the 20% as stated then that would make it viable to craft them . I mean even if they cap them so if you craft over a value then you will never get more than the 20% . I crafted some during the respec time and managed 1250 so say set the limit value to 1500 = 20% max and there u have it .
If they were really good with the coding I'm sure they could make it that if you crafted over the 1500 then the extra amout could go onto the duration .
They must be able to test the possibilities / limitsof crafted items by just making them with resourses that have 1000 in all stats and see what value enhancer they produce then this would givethem an idea for the limit value for the 20% ( not saying here that you wouldhave to be in possion of uber resourses to get an enhancer to buff to 20 % but it would give them a realistic value for the enhancer)
What do ppl think of making the craftedenhancers having a higher increase to ham but ashorter duration ?
IGN Zoci
Farstar mdoc/mpike
BadgerSmaker
Mon Jun 06, 2005 3:01 am
#12
Thanks for the info. I particularly like Jedi healing nerfs and giving hate for jedi heals. I'm glad there are no plans for xp for wound healing as I'd hate to see it used to gain FXP while AFK.
As for the Cyber Arm, I have one as I dabble in 4/4/0/3 CM and 1/0/04 Doc and dont have Res, the half hour timer is quite restrictive already but I must admit to feeling somewhat overpowered, being able to rez without either elite medic skill mastered.
Maybe a Novice Doctor cert for the arm is needed.
MyT_Chicken
Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:10 am
#13
BadgerSmaker wrote:
Thanks for the info. I particularly like Jedi healing nerfs and giving hate for jedi heals. I'm glad there are no plans for xp for wound healing as I'd hate to see it used to gain FXP while AFK.
As for the Cyber Arm, I have one as I dabble in 4/4/0/3 CM and 1/0/04 Doc and dont have Res, the half hour timer is quite restrictive already but I must admit to feeling somewhat overpowered, being able to rez without either elite medic skill mastered.
Maybe a Novice Doctor cert for the arm is needed.
Yes, that would be something I would actually like to see....either Novice CM or Doc to be the Pre-req for the arms. I would be totally happy with a change like that. Your right 30m is a pretty restrictive, but it would definantly fix the problem of giving revive away for "free".
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