Doctor Archive
Thread: Crafting and the economy
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Valkyryn
Sun Jul 27, 2003 5:19 am
#1
I posted this deep in a different thread, but wanted to hear everyone's opinion, so I'm giving it a thread of its own.
There is definitely a problem with the crafting trees in all medical professions. The basic problem as I see it is this: making medicine is expensive in both resources and time and the system is designed such that medics rarely receive compensation for using their medicines. Selling to other medics is not a solution, for two reasons: 1) if I had enough to sell, I would already have enough money; 2) if another medic doesn't have the resources to make his own medicines, he doesn't have enough money to buy mine. I'm not as concerned about the XP as the simple problem of staying financially solvent.
I made Novice Doctor a few days ago. I don't have a factory or any harvesters. I buy all the resources I need. I am perfectly okay with this arrangement, and think it makes a lot of sense. I like being dependant on other classes, as it adds to the realism of the economy. I don't mind the fact that I'm going to have to pay for my factory and harvesters - assumming I ever save enough to get them.
The problem for me is not that I can't get my own resources, but that scrounging up the money to buy them is quite difficult. The only reason I am not chronically broke is because I have ditched the med center completely. The med center is not a place for medical professionals to hang out their shingle for business, it's a free clinic. People walk in to the med center and expect to be healed on the spot for free. Most of the people I have seen who are permanant fixtures in med centers are novice medics who can't treat wounds worth a **edit**. All the doctors, who could clear the center of wounded in 5 minutes, have found working the med center a losing proposition and have gone elsewhere.
I make my money escourting hunting missions. That way I get a cut of the mission reward. My best experience was with a bounty hunter who paid me quite well (5K credits and 1K high quality bone) to escourt him and his pets for an hour. But instead of feeling like a skilled professional, I felt like a hired hand, because my patron was sitting on 1.7 million credits and I was struggling to break 20K. That just doesn't feel right. But it works that way because only fighter classes have a direct line on the source of credits in this economic model: running missions. Crafting classes - and medics especially - must get their credits from others unless they want to take a secondary role to the fighters.
I think the only way to actually make money as a straight medic is to organize. It makes a lot of sense: the reason physicians IRL are so rich is because people don't assume that doctors will heal you for free, and the reason they assume this is that none of them will. In Galaxies, this is not the case. I toyed with this idea, but judging from the fact that most of the medics I interacted with were strictly opposed to the idea as working against the enjoyment factor for all involved, I figured that there weren't going to be any non-medics that would put up with such. I have heard rumors of medical guilds on certain servers, but not on mine. As I haven't the time to create and maintain such an organization, I dropped the idea.
I'm starting to think that the best way of dealing with this problem is to enforce a kind of organizational structure upon the medical centers. Here is my suggestion: take payment out of the hands of patients. Have the devs set up a business area on the medical building such that to enter it costs money dependant upon the wounds one has. When a medic heals someone, they get money in proportion with the wounds they healed. This prevents medics from becoming a cheap way of getting out of cloning. I think with something like this in place, many of our problems would disappear. I like spending time in the medical center, chatting with patients, healing their wounds, etc. But I can't stay afloat if I do this. As much as I like healing people, the truth of the matter is that medicines are expensive. The same could be done on a lesser scale for the cantina, with proceeds being much lower as dancers and musicians don't expend anything but action points.
"But what if I want to heal my friend for free?" That is, of course, your perogative. You have two options: either give him the money back, or get yourself a droid and go outside. Because droids are expensive, only established docs with money to burn could afford to do this, which is already the case, but most novice medics are well on their way to master by the time they realize this. Another option would be to give the medic a choice as to whether to heal for free or not.
There is definitely a problem with the crafting trees in all medical professions. The basic problem as I see it is this: making medicine is expensive in both resources and time and the system is designed such that medics rarely receive compensation for using their medicines. Selling to other medics is not a solution, for two reasons: 1) if I had enough to sell, I would already have enough money; 2) if another medic doesn't have the resources to make his own medicines, he doesn't have enough money to buy mine. I'm not as concerned about the XP as the simple problem of staying financially solvent.
I made Novice Doctor a few days ago. I don't have a factory or any harvesters. I buy all the resources I need. I am perfectly okay with this arrangement, and think it makes a lot of sense. I like being dependant on other classes, as it adds to the realism of the economy. I don't mind the fact that I'm going to have to pay for my factory and harvesters - assumming I ever save enough to get them.
The problem for me is not that I can't get my own resources, but that scrounging up the money to buy them is quite difficult. The only reason I am not chronically broke is because I have ditched the med center completely. The med center is not a place for medical professionals to hang out their shingle for business, it's a free clinic. People walk in to the med center and expect to be healed on the spot for free. Most of the people I have seen who are permanant fixtures in med centers are novice medics who can't treat wounds worth a **edit**. All the doctors, who could clear the center of wounded in 5 minutes, have found working the med center a losing proposition and have gone elsewhere.
I make my money escourting hunting missions. That way I get a cut of the mission reward. My best experience was with a bounty hunter who paid me quite well (5K credits and 1K high quality bone) to escourt him and his pets for an hour. But instead of feeling like a skilled professional, I felt like a hired hand, because my patron was sitting on 1.7 million credits and I was struggling to break 20K. That just doesn't feel right. But it works that way because only fighter classes have a direct line on the source of credits in this economic model: running missions. Crafting classes - and medics especially - must get their credits from others unless they want to take a secondary role to the fighters.
I think the only way to actually make money as a straight medic is to organize. It makes a lot of sense: the reason physicians IRL are so rich is because people don't assume that doctors will heal you for free, and the reason they assume this is that none of them will. In Galaxies, this is not the case. I toyed with this idea, but judging from the fact that most of the medics I interacted with were strictly opposed to the idea as working against the enjoyment factor for all involved, I figured that there weren't going to be any non-medics that would put up with such. I have heard rumors of medical guilds on certain servers, but not on mine. As I haven't the time to create and maintain such an organization, I dropped the idea.
I'm starting to think that the best way of dealing with this problem is to enforce a kind of organizational structure upon the medical centers. Here is my suggestion: take payment out of the hands of patients. Have the devs set up a business area on the medical building such that to enter it costs money dependant upon the wounds one has. When a medic heals someone, they get money in proportion with the wounds they healed. This prevents medics from becoming a cheap way of getting out of cloning. I think with something like this in place, many of our problems would disappear. I like spending time in the medical center, chatting with patients, healing their wounds, etc. But I can't stay afloat if I do this. As much as I like healing people, the truth of the matter is that medicines are expensive. The same could be done on a lesser scale for the cantina, with proceeds being much lower as dancers and musicians don't expend anything but action points.
"But what if I want to heal my friend for free?" That is, of course, your perogative. You have two options: either give him the money back, or get yourself a droid and go outside. Because droids are expensive, only established docs with money to burn could afford to do this, which is already the case, but most novice medics are well on their way to master by the time they realize this. Another option would be to give the medic a choice as to whether to heal for free or not.
AllenAllen
Sun Jul 27, 2003 8:05 pm
#2
This is not really that bad of an idea at all. Sure there are other ways of making money for doctors (see the many other threads out there). But this having medcenters autocharge for us to me is equitable. However your droid idea for healing friends is available for who know how long because if believe they are broken for healing wound
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