Medic Archive
Thread: Medic Correspondant Report Week 1 (July 6, 2003)
Following, is the Medic Profession Report for the first week of the Correspondent Program (ending July 25, 2003).
While there are many issues and bugs that the Medic Community, here are the ones that gathered the most interest this week (in order of importance).
*********************
1.)Concerns about the role of Mind Damage in combat (and the effect it has on keeping groups alive).
*********************
Many people in SWG are worried about Mind Damage, none more so than the medics, Combat medics, and Doctors.
As character get more and more powerful, their stats do not get higher (yes we realize this is by design), but mob/ NPC damage does get higher.
Where Doctors can buff all Green and Red stats to large values, they cannot buff blue stats. The professions that can buff blue stats ( most notably Smugglers and Chefs), cannot buff them to the same levels as Doctors can the Red and Green. Overall, mind is always the lowest stat on any group member
1.)Low combatant initial mind values (SWG generates combatant characters with low mind).
2.)Lower value of Mind buffs.
3.)High mind special move costs on rifles (lowers mind fast on already low stat).
4.)No significant blockage of mind damage even by helmets (indeed the large stat drains on helmets lowering Mind regen may slow regen enough to be worse than no helmet at all.
This by itself is not a horrible thing, but there are other game mechanics that make this problem worse.
1.)Mind is completely unhealable in the field (by anyone). The only medicine that can heal mind is the "Damage Stimpack" which is a rare NPC drop, or starting medic item only. Even if someone has this stimpack, the base heal is 50 points (very low).
2.)Mind is part of the 'random damage' cycle of "normal" attacks (It is just as likely to happen for a normal attack as Action or Health (all have 1 in 3 chance of happening). While not a big deal at lower levels, at high levels this can create a random attack (not special) that can Inca a player in 1 swing (when combined with low mind and low mind buffs).
3.)Special attacks to mind are unhealable. 1 brawler and 1 ranged class special specifically on mind. Any mobs/NPC's that have these abilities are far more dangerous to PC's.
4.) PVP: Professions in #3 have an unfair advantage in PVP, because while other combatant damage going to Action and Health can be healed, Mind damage cannot.
Proposed solutions:
There have been many proposed solutions to this problem.
Please also see these threads for specific details. (Top Suggestions follow URLs.)
The goal here, as the majority see it, is not to make Medics/Docs/Combat Medics uber or overpowered, just make groups last a reasonable amount of time in a high level combat situation. That being said, several suggestions would probably overpower the professions.
Medic:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=medic&message.id=785&page=1
Doctor:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1299&page=1
Combat Medic:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=combat_medic&message.id=980&page=1
1.)Lower the chance of mind damage from 'standard attacks' to something less likely than 1 in 3.
2.)Lower the amount of mind damage done by normal attacks (1/3 or1/2 what action/mind do, since they can be healed)
3.) Numbers 1 and 2 combined.
4.)Make Mind Damage not cause incap.
5.)Change all weapons/mobs to do Action/Health only.
6.)Give Doctor Mind Damagehealing
7.)Give CM Mind Damage healing
8.)Give Medic Mind Damage healing(thus also giving it to Doc/CM).
9.)Give some other profession Mind Damage healing (Chefs, Entertainers,Squad leaders etc.)
10.)Give someone "emergency" mind heals1:1 ratio of mind for mind.
Again, while is seems to be a 'give us mind damage healing' topic, in reality it is frustration to very common mind incap in groups at med/high levels, with little or nothing anyone can do about it.
This topic is very important to us, and probably to everyone else too, but as the ones that are expected to keep others standing in a fight, it is something we think about more.
*********************
2.)Money For Medics
*********************
Although Holo has addressed this many times, this topic has come up again. Medics in general (including Docs and CM's) feel that they have no fair way to get compensated for their skills/ material use without appearing to be greedy.
There is a great aversion to charging up front (as someone nearby is always healing for XP) because other players cry 'greed' (even other medics).
As the servers mature and less medics are looking to heal free for XP, there will be a problem of "how do we get the money?"
Medics (in general)would one or all of the following:
1.)Some kind of 'secure trade' for healing.
2.)"Insurance plans": Kind of like bank accts. Players pay in to their insurance acct. When healers heal them, money changes hands to the healer's bank. (rates either fixed, or set by medic).
3.)"On duty" pay for working in med centers (funds either come from a door fee (like houses) or voluntary pay. Pay could be over time (to encourage medics to wait around for patients), or by wound healed.
4.) Some other Dev inspired payment plan.
Note: this is not medics trying to get money out of "thin air" or from the game, but secure ways to get money from other players.
**********************
3.) Request that Healing be put 100% into, or 100% out of the Combat Queue
**********************
Currently, healing is suspended confusingly between the combat Queue and the rest of the game.
1.)Heals are delayed when medic is in combat mode, but it is not clear to us when (if ever) the heals will actually arrive.
2.)Heals are even more delayed when medics use special attacks in combat, but it is not clear when (if ever) those heals will arrive.
3.)Medics can heal instantly (timer permitting) outside of combat.
4.)Medics cannot always /peace out of combat to heal.
5.)Medics (especially a problem with Combat medics) feel they can't fight and heal effectively with this lack of information, so many don't fight at all, so they can be sure to heal when needed.
While the new patch notes seems to indicate we can now get a more fiar share Combat XP and Faction points while healing in groups. We still can't fight and heal effectively.
We request that if you don't want to separate heals entirely from combat (allowing heals as fast as timer permits, while medic is attacking and special attacking normally... which we understand may be unbalancing), could we get healing to be 100% integrated into the Combat Queue. If it is already, could we get healing inserted graphically into the queue so we can see when our heals will land. (making them a special attack basically... this would also make them override the default attack, just like special attacks...they don't seem to now).
In conjunction with this, we would like a "you are ready to heal more damage" message (like the one we get for wounds).
***********************
4.)Lack of ingame information on medical Schematics before levels when we can craft them.
***********************
While we have a full listing of all schematics we can make, and all the names of schematics are listed in the skill screen. All medics (perhaps all crafting classes) would like to be able to plan ahead while gathering materials.
We don't know what materials (especially specific and mandatory materials for higher level meds) we will need to get in the future ... until the exact point when we can make them. This leads to a mad scrabble for equipment and materials.
1.)Rare materials of good quality could have been gotten, but got ignored because medic didn't know he/she needed them.(Material may also be 100% missing, not just low quality.)
2.)Houses/droids/Crafting Stations/ Factories are expensive. Knowing which future meds needs which items would help in planning, saving money and finding te appropriate salespeople beforehand.
This information is available outside the game (on third party websites). It should be available ingame. If not in our kits/datapads, in some kind of "library terminal" where the base stats of all items in the game could be listed for everyone. This is not just a medic issue.
**************************
5.)Medicines and Inventory management
**************************
SWG's inventory system has a lot of issues that affects us.
1.)Inventory often resorts itself (this seems to be fixed in upcoming patch)
2.)Inventory cannot be ordered by "drag and drop." We have no actual control of our inventory items. "Sorting" does not place things in the groups we want, or in the order we want.
3.)medicines in inventory are apparently chosen randomly why medics use a /heal hot-key. Not first in list, last in list, most powerful... although it does seem to pick higher letter grade meds over lower letter grade, the selection seems random between the same letter grade Selection (combined with #2, medics can only use the exact pack they want by manually using the radial from inventory on that specific med).
4.)Medicine hot-keys do not draw medicines out of bags/containers (not drawing out of factory crates is fine)... causing a lot of congestion in base inventory layer
5.) bags/containers do not retain position/size in UI, making use resize and reposition bag windows every time.
-----------------------
You said I could throw in one of my pet issues... I'll just put in what made 6 on my list, as it is important to all of us.
******************
Healing Variance
******************
While we think we understand how healing (both damage and wounds) works, we are baffled by the range that medicines seem to be able to heal in.
The maximum positive value we can get added by random skill roll to out heals seem VASTLY smaller than the negative.
When heals go bad, they go REALLY bad, when they go good, they never go REALLY good. We suppose this may be an effect of a critical failure of some type, but the ultra low heals happen commonly enough, that it seems unlikely this is the case unless critical failures are far more common than we'd like them to be.
People have reported 200 damage stimpacks with +100 damage healing (according to the skill screen +100%) are getting about 400 heals most of the time.
Occasionally they are getting 150, but never do they seem to get more than 450 or so... So, a really good heal nets us 50 points over, while a bad roll gets us -250.
Is this intended... are our really good skill rolls the ones that get us the 350-450 heals, and we just are so skilled we never see the "normal" range of healing... We just get crit good most of the time, and crit bad sometimes?
-------------------
Thank you for reading our concerns. We look forward to your responces. Overall, we enjoy the medic profession (although there is some grumbling about crafting) and hope to see it, and te number of players who chose it grow.
-Traigus
Medic Correspondent
July 25, 2003
Wookies can not wear helmets -- thus they do not have any extra protection against mind shots.
I believe mind damage should also be healable bymedics.And, maybe no mind cost for usingyour weapon?
Anyhow, mind damage situtation needs to be addressed.
(Of course, entertainers would still heal mind damage, mind wounds, and battle fatigue.)
Good work Traigus.
/bow
Leonard McCoy, Medical Intern, Mos Espa, Tattoine
Looking forward to seeing the responses.
Many medicines call for ingredients that do not have the resource properties that determine the effectiveness of the experimentation. For instance, Water only has Overall Quality and Decay Resistance, yet a Liquid Suspension component's abilities are also going to be judged by the Potential Energy and Unit Toughness of the ingredients, so we get a big goose-egg in those categories from the Water ingredient when making this item. And in that same example, the organic component can only have Potential Energy OR Unit Toughness, therefore we are getting absolutely nothing factored in as at least 14% of our experimentation formula.
Scorus
Scourus,
There has been a crafting material pass on the medic shematics (see both big list of patch notes, and Q's post here with just our part). We can't complain about it again until we see what parts are still broken (if any) when it hits test center.
BTW everyone. I sent this in 2 mins before I posted it here.
Start up your new threads for next week's report, continue posting on issues that are still important to you, and sharpen your knives for the response to this list (I have no idea when we'll get one).
-T
I'm not sure about this, but Mind healing seems more in the realm of what a Chef would do not what a doctor can do.
While it is frustrating, giving doctors any kind of realm over Mind healing wouldn't be wise.
Stimpak message for out of range and for when you have a mob targetted says that you don't have any stimpaks left in inventory. This is for the /command to heal without having to put stimpaks on the toolbar.
It's probably been /bugged a million times and isn't a real game breaker, but it would be nice to know when you really do run out of stims for real...
Selecting yourself can be done by pressing ctrl 1 but I'd like to be able to select myself with the mouse cursor and actually have my name appear as selected in the upper right (default location) selected target area. As it is, afterI click onmy chrI may or may not be selected, and if am not and try to heal I get the error message, no target,and lose precious seconds.
I'll second the motion about healing queues vs combat. I too find myself just standing there healing instead of trying to help kill. I understand that you can't really put healing into the combat queue because the system wouldn't remember who you had targetted for the heal. Healing is probably a different type of action anyway,not related to combat at all. My guess is working with the combat queue is not possible.
If we can't do heals independant of the combat queue then I rather go into peace mode the instant that I tried to heal someone. It's more important to me to get the heal off than to worry about one or two blaster shots. I can always re-target a hostile or get attacked and start automatically fighting again once the health/actionsituation is under control. I'm guessing this request would actually be asking for the elimination of the special healing queue altogether. Perhaps this idea could be added as an option, "healing during combat puts you in peace mode". Bypass the healing versus combat queue problem altogether.
I'm undecided on the blue bar issue. medics can't touch blue bars, giving them the capability in combat seems kind of destructive to the overall design of the game.
I personally don't know ifanother skill hasa way to heal minds during battle. Not having any skill set at all that can heal mind seems wrong though, especially since there are so many different ways to damage mind directly. If another skilltree can already heal bluethen why give it to medics now? That would eliminate the need for other skills.
If no skilltree can heal mind then perhapsblue needs some thorough attention. I can pretty much guarantee that a brawler/medic team is gonna have a hard timefighting tougher mobs without somekind ofblue love. Maybe give brawlers a way to revive blue themselves? A war cry or something, they can't attack for a few seconds but it gives them back some sanity (blue). My brawler incapped to a soldier moth on naboo with nearly full health and action. Wasn't a thing the medic could do. Luckly he wasn't sent to the clonery, sat down for awhile to gethis wits about him and took out the soldier.
I agree with your concerns and posible ways of addressing them. I think your list hits issues that are effecting the most medics. The issue I have should be effecting more medics but doesn't because the issue itself makes factories hard enough to use that most don't bother.
My personal top issue didn't make the list, but it's because I'm not a typical medic/doctor. I am one of the manufacturing medics. I make crates of stims. The bug with factories not reliably pulling components from crates in the ingrediant hopper makes me spend hours a day instead of just minutes to put out a few crates of stims in one day. It's certainly posible to do it, but the small inventories we have, the small input hopper sizes combined with 50 item crates means I spend a lot of time on tedious inventory management and losing components. I also spend a LOT of time waiting with the input and output hoppers open waiting for a full manufacturing cycle to pass to see what crate might be holding up the process and then restacking everything with that crate depopulated.
This will probly get fixed along with a general factory fix for everyone, I just wanted to chime in because it hits me everyday and turns what should be a click saving convenience I give myself by paying extra maintenance into a tool that works, but barely and with tedium and frustration.
My crate of 50 Stim Ds with 688 effectiness (no advanced components) are worth it, but PLEASE help factories live up to their potential. Us medical professionalsneed all the help we can get.
Thanks!
Factory issues are pretty much #1 or #2 for doctors though (and many other crafting classes that rely on them for many of their items). So with that in mind, using up one of our spots for factories seemed kind of wasteful (it would have just sqeeked in as number 5 for us).
Again, there will be a new list of 5 next friday.
Feel free to push your favorite bugs and topics...
People will definitely have a lot to say when we get a response too.
-T
My least favourite bug is indeed related to the Combat queue, but not in the way you have mentioned it Traigus (BTW great report)
I like to solo a fair bit, and thats where this bug pops up and bites me more often than not. Ill be fighting away, and will realise i need a heal, so ill click off target to clear my aim, and hit F1 for a self heal. In the time that it takes for the heal to fire off, one of my adversaries (i tend to fight lairs full of whites rather than struggle against solitary low reds) will drop dead. Instantly my bracket target will switch to the dead MOB, and when the heal finally lands it tells me I have an invalid target, even though I hit F1 before the MOB dropped.
This also happens to me in groups. Ill be healing my team mates, when suddenly the cursor will target a dead critter, and the heal will be invalid.
We need heals to stick to the person they were intended for, delay or no delay.