Doctor Archive
Thread: Proposed Doctor Agro and why it worries me.
First the proposal.
Dev asked us what we think about improving Mob AI, and as side note, they also propose mob going after healers by making heal build agro.
It seems the argument among posters seem to come down to
"Let Mob ignore the pet and go for pet owner/other players"
And as for healer getting agro, some are for it and others are against it. If I were to take a bet, I'd say more are for it than against it.
This worries me alot.
First of all, since pet will no longer be able to hold agro, so mob will hit players LOT more often.
Now players don't have much HAM, and even with good buff, each hits they get makes a big dent, so healers will do what they do and heal em, and in turn get hit my the mob.
Now Doctors have no range, so they have to run to player that is getting hurt, which just happen to be the one closest to the mob. And when doctor get agro, he will immediately start getting pounded since he conviently walked to the mob.
So Doctor get killed.
So far no big deal really. Just part of what it means to be out with group, sharing the glory and danger and what not.
Except that most often Doctors are the rezzer.
So what do the rest of the group do? Wait until doctor re-join them from clone center? (which may take upto hr depend on how far they came to hunt) Or continue hunting without rezzer? How many times would you as doctor make the trip back to your group before you call it a night?
Would groupmates start yelling at doctors if they attempt to heal? saying Doctor is there to rez and buff and not heal? Taking CM for heal and DOc for rez? Take more than 1 doctors with every group? Do we have enough CM and Doctors to do that in every server? Do we even have enough to do that in ANY current server?
Is giving doctor greater range the answer? Don't think so, range healing is CM stuff.
Is giving doctor more defense? again CM would complain.
Exempt Doctor from Mob agro? sounds like plausible answer, but CM AND Medics would complain.
Now some say "They will give TANK agro special! to pull them away from the doc!"
Well that works with CM, but don't work with doctors. When CM heal, tanks might be able to regain agro before mob hit the CM, but since doctors are already right next to the mob when they gain agro, they will ALWAYS get hit. So after 1 or 2 hit tank pull the mob off doc. Then should DOctor ignore his health? so the next hit will surely kill him? But if Doc heal himself it will again gain agro.
Now you might say "not if tank taunt special always hold agro for long time!"
But then what is point of healer getting agro if tanks will ALWAYS get the agro?
Although I do like the AI to be more intellegent, I sure would like them to test this THROUGHLY before implementing this.
This just don't hurt doctors, this hurt EVERYBODY.
Nothing brings a smile to my face quite like that player who asked "why are you here?" screaming because the party is falling apart on your run back from the cloning center.
The bad side of this is the run from the cloning center will happen a lot more so our effectiveness will be reduced. However, this may cause the groups to bring a secod medic along for just that. Possible the doctor will be there just for buffs and revives, and the combat medic will be the healer. This to me seems to fit what these classes were intended for.
It will also be really nice to have the group keep an eye on me while I'm keeping them all alive for once. Tired of being left on my own when a aggro creature does jump me and my cries for help are ignored. Now they will have little choice but to keep me alive, I'd like to see a normal Rifleman shrug it off when that Krayt decides he looks like a better target than the Graul it was playing with. Where will he be after 2 combat rounds without us?
IlyaMasool wrote:
"Let Mob ignore the pet and go for pet owner/other players"
And as for healer getting agro, some are for it and others are against it. If I were to take a bet, I'd say more are for it than against it.
Who would be for this? When I group I'm well taken care of because they know I'm the one with the res kits. I can't imagine anybody saying that we want doc's to take the aggro.
It is pretty cool that when I do get aggro'd, I can just throw out a "help" and most of the group & pets switch targets...makes me feel all warm and fuzzy 
Vodo_Baas wrote:
...However, this may cause the groups to bring a secod medic along for just that. Possible the doctor will be there just for buffs and revives, and the combat medic will be the healer. This to me seems to fit what these classes were intended for....
That was one of the thing that concerned me too.
Do we really have all that many Doctors to accompany each group with 2 doctors? Considering we are doing this without pet as tank, I am sure almost EVERY group in advanced planet will need atleast one healer, and more than likely that healer better be able to rez.
Sure lot of doctors are also CM, but how many pure doctors would go along just to buff every 2 hrs and rez?
And I don't really see thats the vision Dev had of Doctors anyway. If that were the case CM would be limited to ranged stim-A and area Stim-A so they can heal you just enough for you to run to doctor for heal. And everyone would have drag command soyour team matecan drag you to doctor for heal.
This would really really STRONGLY encourage CM to take Doctor skill enough to rez, and that would just annoy the heck out of CM, not to mention make more of them demand that rez be moved to CM line.
Ilya,
This is an issue to watch, I agree. I wouldn't really compain with docs getting more defense from a CM standpoint (couse I'm MD/MCM so some could argue that i'd benefit anyway).
Range modifiers need to be a factored in suchthatdocs canfade back and drop a bit lower on the aggro list, and run in as you need to. At the same time docs should have to approach healing range of pets and be careful to stay out of melee range of the monster (doc wandering within melee range of a kryat to heal a pet mauler should haveher head ripped off in a target of opportunity...especially if the doc turns her back to retreat). In exchange, I think Docs have a case to really bump StimE (it's a pet heal weapon only). If you are gonna possibly take aggro on your run in to heal a high level pet, then stands to reason that the power of these packs should be higher so Docs have to do it less often. If not with E, then maybe a stronger pack is needed.
Ultimately, I think the balance here needs to come in the form of all melee PCs having a more effective taunt ability.
For docs exclusively, if we could find a way to make it Star Wars-ish, I think something akin to Sanctuary would be useful for docs. This should be **edit** expensive on the mind, as you don't want to see heal, sanct, heal, sanct. But I could forsee some very expensive (mind cost) doc pack that helps reduce aggro.
Lastly I have to disagree slightly that his hurts everyone. I think this in the long run benefits the game and everyone (thoughI can understand a bit of the inital CH reaction). Even short term, this significantly benefits PC melee who are second fiddles to hulking pets as meat shields. Their pending additions to active defense modifiers had better be good along with increased taunts if monsters are going to bypass non-faction pets more. Anythign that increases the variability of creature AI and reduces the ability to know how to kill something based upon its name (because it only has 1 AI path) is good.
Jacore, MD/MCM, Tempest
I never feel underappreciated. Since I can't mask scent that well I always seem to pull aggros anyway.
/yawn forgot what i was gonna say need some sleep.
If the profession gets flooded with users not all will want to craft so it opens a market for selling well made supplies. Also it will make mining resources for medical use a more viable way for a miner to make money so we may get some help tracking down those hard to find advanced component resources.
The bad side is all the people who have toughed it out to master Doctor (not as much so with CM) is because they enjoy the role, its fun for them and because of that they are good at it. All the new players will be doing it because their guild/group needs it and won't do as well. It may get us a bad rep for no reason. Also with more people that means less group oppurtunities.
My thoughts on the advanced AI attacking medics goes like this:
* It will give our profession more attention in groups
* It will cause us to die more, lets face it we aren't that stacked for combat
* The advanced AI needs to happen because pets are making players obsolete in groups, larger groups will be more necessary
* We can't selectively take changes based on wether or not they benefit us, we have to take the good with the bad. If mobs randomly attack players and not just pets we should be as valid a target as anyone else, its only fair. Though that commando setting the mob on fire, and the Rifleman doing large doses of damage ought to be more appealing
* Since not all damage is soaked by pets more people are going to want quality buffs before combat, they may become an even better money maker for us
In the end the enhanced AI will probably benefit us more than hurt us. At any rate it will bring players back into groups and THAT will be a very good thing for the game.
Here's my feeling on this:
1) If the mob is an npc, then yes the mob should be smart enough to realize that the healer is keeping the enemy alive longer than the enemy would be otherwise. This would lead the mob to attack the healer.
2) For monster mobs, I don't think it should be able to reason that the healer is a target. It is being hurt by other things and its instinct should be to attack them to get them to stop. And besides, to a critter, a healer stimming an attacker could like the healer is 'helping' the critter. I think for these mobs the ai should be made to aggro whatever is hurting, or scares,it the most.
Jacore I definately think making group more benificial is a GOOD thing.
I've always promoted that. I considered lack of purpose of group to be THE biggest problem of SWG.
But I think this is huge potential problem.
As you said,
"Range modifiers need to be a factored in such that docs can fade back and drop a bit lower on the aggro list, and run in as you need to. At the same time docs should have to approach healing range of pets and be careful to stay out of melee range of the monster (doc wandering within melee range of a kryat to heal a pet mauler should have her head ripped off in a target of opportunity...especially if the doc turns her back to retreat). In exchange, I think Docs have a case to really bump StimE (it's a pet heal weapon only). If you are gonna possibly take aggro on your run in to heal a high level pet, then stands to reason that the power of these packs should be higher so Docs have to do it less often. If not with E, then maybe a stronger pack is needed."
It is not known how much they will change the AI of Mob, but at worst, mob will completely ignore the pet, and more likely change would be Mob will ignore the pet depending on the pet. But what ever the degree of change, the end result is that healer's primary job in the group would no longer be healing the tank pet like it is now. It would be to heal the tank player.
Right now, as doctor I have to run right upto the player, that is within 6m. Even if the mob is opposit side of me from the player I am healing, I would still be within the range of mob.(is it me or does mob have HUGE melee range?) I think this pretty much guarantee that doctors (and medics) will take at least 1 hit everytime they run upto the tank to heal.
And since I am assuming that the amount of agro healer generate is directly related to amount of heal you do, it is my experience in other MMORPG that Healer always generate lot more agro since the damage group does is evenly distribued by all the combat profession while single healer heals everyone and get all the agro. Basically you have a main player tank who hold agro and take all the damage the mob deals, so the damage mob does is concentrated while the damage done to the mob is distributed. Healer heal that one person so the healing agro is also concentrated. I.E. Healer always gets the agro unless they reduce the ratio so low the whole point of heal generating agro is moot or make one profession super tank (i.e. Paladin in DAoC)
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"Ultimately, I think the balance here needs to come in the form of all melee PCs having a more effective taunt ability."
And that was the core of my concern. If they make taunt effective enough to always pull from healer, why put in agro for healer in the first place? I can see if they give this "super taunt" ability to selective profession like TKA and other melee profession, but then doesn't it seem so... DAoC-ish? Like for effective Group, add 1 healer(Doc/CM), 1 paladin(TKA), etc, etc. Sorta kick that "casual game" idea right out the window I think when you HAVE to have melee in your group, you HAVE to have healer, etc, etc. (although truth be known I think it is preferable to what we have of "solo-fest 2003")
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"For docs exclusively, if we could find a way to make it Star Wars-ish, I think something akin to Sanctuary would be useful for docs. This should be **edit** expensive on the mind, as you don't want to see heal, sanct, heal, sanct. But I could forsee some very expensive (mind cost) doc pack that helps reduce aggro."
Which bring up the most annoying issue of mind heal. If you give special that cost lot of mind, and we healers use mind to heal, it would literally take 1 hit from any mob to mind pool to incap/kill the doctor, and since it is almost assured that doctor will at least take 1 hit everytime he heal, this would not be a good idea if it cost mind. Btw, would mind heal issue be resolved before this one get played around with?
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"Lastly I have to disagree slightly that his hurts everyone. I think this in the long run benefits the game and everyone (though I can understand a bit of the inital CH reaction). Even short term, this significantly benefits PC melee who are second fiddles to hulking pets as meat shields. Their pending additions to active defense modifiers had better be good along with increased taunts if monsters are going to bypass non-faction pets more. Anythign that increases the variability of creature AI and reduces the ability to know how to kill something based upon its name (because it only has 1 AI path) is good."
Overall I agree that this would be a good thing for GROUP, but if above issue is not address, it would be so EASY to make this game frustrating by having only rezzer in group always getting killed and have to wait for him/her to return from clone center.
If they spend time and get good group together, travel far into dangerous territory to hunt, then on first 5 min of the hunt they get their rezzer killed, how frustrating would it be to sit and wait for him/her to walk back? and heaven forbid if doc get killed on the way back several times. Would whole group go back to escort the doc back? and what if he get killed again in 5 min?
I understand that this might be a good thing, to finally make group worth something rather than reward soloing and punishing grouping which we now have, but we've all seen so much trouble it took other MMORPG to finally reach that balance and all I am saying is that this issue should be address STRONGLY.
I really don't want any of this issue to be our future top 5 when we can bring this up now at planning phase.
1. I liked SWG because it wasn't a cookie cutter group activity. Alot of the things discussed here brings it right back to making it like all the other MMOGs.
2. If you must have an agro list, then you have to give more than just melee the ability to take and hold agro.
3. Pets [b]ARE NOT[/b] the best tankers in the game. I have a guy in my PA that is Master Brawler, Master TKA and it's amazing at how much agro he can control and how much damage he can soak up. When fighting Kimos, we have gone to telling the CHs to just put their pets up and let him take it. It's just amazing at how effective he really is at it.
4. I agree that the only mob that should be able to discern healing or CH should be a NPC.
5. I do not want healers of any kind to be relegated to just healing.
Ilya,
We're of the same mind then. I'm going to scruitize the healing ratio to aggro list closely because if it's anywhere near 1:1, CMs throwing an Area StimC is a death sentence.
A simple hate list of max damage (max heal) is foolish, and I think the healers will stand in unison about that. What's needed is variability and unpredictablilty, not a simple max damage formula. Variants of monsters holding the same name that have different AI paths, or random numbers that branch along a tree. Some go beserk at taking certain types of damage (not species specific but critter instance specific). And yes some hate healers. That's fine, but changing the formula from a point to a line won't make it that much more interesting. Variability and unpredictability is the key I think.
Such a solution works against 'super-taunt' as well. What's needed is not to see the species of the critter and know exactly how it's going to behave (same with kiting and the terrain negotiation race).
I have no idea if they'll put in limited mind heals before hand...my guess is they will as AI scripts take a lot of thought/time/testing to change (or at least SHOULD). The new mind buffs in today (x2 mind pool, 2 hour duration) will help.
I think we have a tremendous opportunity to steer/guide/craft the answer and both Docs and CMs should actively discuss a solution that's works for us.
Jacore, MD/MCM, Tempest
Healing aggro is a good thing. It will make the game more challenging. The ability to stand next to someone and heal them unlimited times while they tank is basically an exploit that the devs do nothing about.
And yes, I am a master doctor. I just want more of a challenge in PvE. It's way too simple at the moment.