Doctor Archive

I am a reasonably successful doctor on Chilastra, and as the Cries of Alderaan event has become more defined, I am finding that I have some serious concerns about the nature of the doctor profession in SWG and also as coupled with casual gamers.

First of all, I realize that the pure profession of doctor is not intended to be combative, which is why I have marksman skills. However, there are plenty of doctors who don't want to support too extensive of combat skills, and that's where my concerns are founded.

In order to participate in CoA, you have to collect disks from NPC's. Now, I'm not adverse to hunting low-powered thugs, but it certainly seems that these disks are not to be found too frequently on those types...instead, you need to take down more powerful ones to have a chance of finding something other than a combat staff, CDEF weapon, or stone knife. The casual player cannot dedicate his time to this grind, and so therefore must turn to the bazaar to buy the disks or friends to beg them off of.

Doctors, as I'm sure we all know, are not the most financially rewarded class in SWG. Unlike combat classes, we cannot grind out 2 dangerous destroy missions in 30 minutes and walk away with 25,000 credits or more. Delivery missions pay pathetic rewards, so those are of no use, and tips from services are sporadic at best and usually low. Demand payment, you say? Try doing that when there are 3 other medics in a Medical Center healing for free. Frankly, Doctors are poorly financially rewarded by players (though thanks go out to everyone who does tip) and there are no suitable missions to help the credit problem, so buying CoA disks on the bazaar is not really a viable option.

So without the combat skills or the hardcore time to find them through combat, and without the credits to bid on them in the bazaar, it seems to this doctor that short of begging we are left out of the CoA feature.

My request is that the Correspondant go back to the Development Team and present this issue. Is this the fate for all future story-lines? If we can't fight 24-7 hunting for items, and we don't get the credits to buy them from the greedy players wanting to gouge us for them, we are simply excluded from this? There is no way to explore and find items peacefully? There is no way to heal a wounded npc and be rewarded with them? There is no way to get them as a reward for doing a delivery mission?

I'm worried that unless you are a rich, combat-intensive player dedicating a lot of time to these quests, you are not going to be able to participate, and that goes far against the committment the Development Team made to casual players a long time ago. Something should be done to address this, in my opinion.

I'm further worried that the 'secret' Force Sensitive puzzle is working off of the same policy, and that would be a tragedy if a struggling doctor working altruistically with the community to heal the wounded and help those in need would be mathematically eliminated from the determination of gaining the force sensitive slot, because they are not able to do a quest requiring him to kill some powerful creature to gain hidden force sensitive 'faction points'. Again, a tragedy to those not dedicated to combat and big guns to be excluded if this is the case.

Thank you for your time.

Despite promises to the contrary, this game is oriented totally toward MOB combat style progression. Devs just have a horrendous time coming up with any other formula that works for these MMOG games.And its largely because thats what the vast majority of MMOG'rs seem to want. So you can either create your CH+any one weapon skill ubertemplate and solo all of the current and proposed future content in the game, or you can be a non-combat thing-a-ma-bob sitting around Corellia all day and chat with people, waiting to eagerly cater to the occasional CHuberleetsologod to saunter into town looking for a new gun. The devs are even caving on pet healing, the magic sack is back, it justs works slower.

Migosh, I think you really are hitting the heart of the issue.

Do the devs want doctors to be the role-players content to not get the in-game rewards for following the storylines? Because that's what they will be. And honestly, I don't want that for my character. I would like to accomplish things in the game, and I had hoped I could do it from the perspective of a healer who can fight with novice skills, but not as good as the uber class combinations.

If I'm doomed to having to watch the storylines pass me by because I'm a doctor and unable to go get the money to buy storyline disks from people and unable to go win them in a fight, then I don't want to be a doctor, frankly.

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There is no way to heal a wounded npc and be rewarded with them? There is no way to get them as a reward for doing a delivery mission?

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You hit exactly what should happen. Profession specific missions should always have the option of gaining look, just as destroy missions geared towards combat do. This should mean that Entertainer missions should have a percentage chance that the customer will give them loot, as should Artisan missions. As a logical extension, those missions should have the same percentage to get a CoA item as the destroys do, which I assume is a subfraction of the percentage of loot drops. Of course, this would only be relevant to us if they actually created Medic mission terminals.

Actually the disks are dirt common.. it is the code that is hard... I now have 4 disks 2 reb, 2 imp.. from only killing ex-swoopers (aggro city spawns that used to be swpoopers are aggro NPC's of te same level without swooper tags) that jump me in town (Kor Vella), and the rare one that aggroes me out in the wuilderness when I get too close to spawnpoints of actual swoopers. that's 4 out of maybe 25 kills. I ahve not been looking for them.

SW is a fundimentally combat oriented universe... the plots will always probably have combat involved... but a non-combatant can always group.. and Doctor is the most group friendly profession in the game, even if you never equip a blaster, or buy a blaster skill in addition to your doctor/medic trees... (there have been several outcries that medics in the field never have a chance to shoot anyway).

I can't see how the monthly plots could possibly not include combat... it alienates too large a segemnet of the population. Delivering items between towns 15 times.. is not the epic struggle between the empire and the rebellion suited fro a main monthly event... and delivery missions outside town always run the risk of combat... I can't say I agree personally with this.


I really don't like the idea of "intown" medic missions... heal guy near starport.. or heal guy in other town... the Npc's would just go to the med center...etc. etc. in the SW fictional world.... and healable npc's just hanging out i nthe med center is pure free XP... and we Xp too fast as it is.... any other type of medic mission would require running into the wilderness.. .and probably combat...in or around the target npc's location.


-T
(welcome to rant week)

I don't know what you are asking ME to consider here. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm just a data collector/collator here. As such most of the issues you raise are already on the Big List of Issues (new one coming once we get our response from the Devs). The way you can make YOUR concerns known is to make sure that when the new list does come out, you put the issues that pertain to your concerns in your Top 5 list. I only get to send a Top 5 list to the Devs every... well.. whenever they get back to us on the last list, I guess. Other than an email address to send that Top 5 list to, I have no other contact with the Devs (and what little I have gotten I have posted directly to here for all of you to see.)

Correspondent is really a very poor term for what we do. We are just players like you who volunteered to collect the issues that we are seeing crop up on the forums and in the community as they pertain to our specific professions and then providing a list of the Top 5 Issues for that time-frame to give to the Devs in some kind of email black-hole. The don't actually correspond with me at all and all I do is try to objectively compile a list of what the majority of players concerned with the Doctor profession seem to see as their biggest issues with the game. Right now I'm trying to do that by creating a Big List of Issues, as consolidated as well as I can, and offer that list up for voting so YOU can tell me what items belong where in the priority. Any questions about why something isn't in the Top 5? Just take a look at the last vote and you can see where perhaps a majority of other players just didn't agree that some particular issue was or was not as important as some other. Believe me, it's not my personal Top 5. You can even see my own vote in the last thread when I ran a vote and you can see that not all the stuff i wanted to see as a Top 5 item made it.
So to address the specifics:

* Is this the fate for all future story-lines? There is no way to explore and find items peacefully?

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to add this as an issue on the Big List. But I can add it so it can be voted on as a concern, I'm just not sure how to really phrase it. The Devs have asked that we provide a declaration of the issue, a summation of the issue, proposed solutions (if any) and links for more details about the issue. So I need some help on formatting this particular issue in that way.

* If we can't fight 24-7 hunting for items, and we don't get the credits to buy them from the greedy players wanting to gouge us for them, we are simply excluded from this?

I would suggest that this is actually already a listed Issue, Money (#9, I believe, although it was in the Top 5 for the first set that got sent to the Devs for comment.)

* There is no way to heal a wounded npc and be rewarded with them? There is no way to get them as a reward for doing a delivery mission?

I would suggest that these two question are actually a part of another listed Issue, Doctor Content (#12, I think, and those numbers are based on the preference voting from last time, so this issue was all-time in 12th position taking a backseat to the other 11 issues listed before it by player ballot.)

So. Help me to reiterate, or even better, get your issue consolidated into one of the other issues (perhaps the Doctor Content issue) and I'll be happy to make sure it is on the list for when we get to do our next vote. I'm guessing we'll get to send a Top 5 about once a month at this rate, BTW.

Well, since you put it that way, perhaps my concerns are addressed. I'd only add to it that it should be made crystal clear to the developers that it is percieved as a poor design practice to tie every special quest that they cook up to combat. If they do that, then they are essentially telling us you have to fight to participate. That's the problem. Storyline quests are incumbent upon combat when you only reward ONE person with the special item and then the badge. If a team of five people work together for a week on it and get only two complete sets, three of those people don't get the reward that they worked just as hard for. Buying them is not an alternative as auctions on them go for 30K or more thanks to some people having more money that they should... *cough* combat exploits *cough*...it creates inflated prices and well, that's a whole different argument.

The proposed solution is to address this. Make the reward span a group if they earned it together. Make the badge span a group if they return it together. Not just for any strangers who group up at the time the message is handed over, but have a system that knows who was present when the disks were found and if they are also present when the set is handed it, they get the badge too.

Future storylines should include the possibility for people to earn rewards outside of combat. If doctor's getting some kind of profession-specific missions, that could help immensely. (note---holo, we argued about this in beta...and you said medics didn't need missions...)

To address you, Traigus, perhaps the disks are 'dirt common' for you, but not for me. You never hunted for them and have 4...I have hunted for them for 3 days and I have 0. And I think you misunderstood (or maybe I misspoke)...I'm not advocating having storyarcs without combat, I just want them to include along WITH combat a system for those who cannot fight well a chance to still find the items through peaceful means (and not paying the gougers on the bazaar).

Doctor missions are very viable in my mind. Specific delivery missions that grant medical xp...crafting missions that grant medical crafting xp...heal npc missions unable to get to med centers (hey, kinda hard to limp back to Mos Eisley with two broken legs, right?) for medical xp....all that stuff would not only give the medics a system for monitary and xp reward, it would give them something to have special rewards for storyarc items. And the xp and cash would be low enough that it still is desirable to heal others, but it's something when there are no patients or those patients don't tip.

After all, if you can get 200 credits for running a medic mission, doesn't that sort of force the patients to be a little more free with their credits?