Medic Archive

State of the Medic Profession - January

Since Runesabre had been hitting some of the other forums and checking on their State of the Profession posts, and since I’ve started in as the Medic Correspondent, thanks to Traigus kindly switching places with me, I thought I should put together a new State of the Profession report. The “old” one is still quite current, but I wanted to ensure we had the latest issues listing summary all in one spot and ordered based on the latest pollings.

Overall the Medic profession is in fairly decent shape. The basic profession is workable and performs an admirable function in the game. There are, however, some definitive issues which have always plagued this profession and there is certainly room for improvement.

The medic profession is difficult to learn and requires a wide set of skills, yet the basic tools for learning the profession are only partially existent. Those that are “in the know” simply never start a character as a Medic, even if their intent is primarily to work with a character aimed at the healing professions. They almost always start as Artisans to gain their resource needs because medics do not have the skills within their profession to advance their crafting line. Overall this means a great deal of hand-holding tends to occur where truly new players get involved in the profession and leaves more than a little to be desired with the learning process of the profession.

Most medics look forward past medic into the elite professions of Doctor and Combat Medic and the advanced profession of Bio-Engineer. In fact my personal belief is that the majority of Medic templates are either aimed at mastering the profession to get the skills past it, or generally stop at the novice level for the personal use of Stim Bs. Dabbling templates are probably far less common from those two extremes with any “spare” points used in the profession being exactly that, just some leftovers that usually a primary combat template simply doesn’t need and so uses them in Medic as being a good a place as any to spend them.

We tend to have a fairly balanced list of issues that include our fair share of bugs, balance issues, Gameplay issues as well as a decent array of wish list items for where we would like to see the medic profession progressing in the future. Our exploits listing is fairly small and the combat revamp will likely take care, in large part, of the few we do have, although the concern over the wounding of pets as a speedy form of XP gain is a noteworthy one according to community polling (raking 16th overall).

Below is the complete list of issues in the latest polling order within each category. For the complete description of each issue please see the "Complete List of Medic Issues" thread located at: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=medic&message.id=9392.

Bugs

1. Experimentation Issues


2. Room/Dungeon Wound Healing Problems


3. Factory Hopper/Inventory Window Refresh


4. Factory XP (or lack thereof)


5. Battle Fatigue Notification


6. Incapacitated Player Location Problems


7. Skill Enhancement Concerns &


8. Rooms/Dungeons and /DragIncap


9. Healing Negative Wounds Bug


10. “Medical” Locations That Don’t Allow Healing


11. Usage XP Inconsistencies


12. Droid Med Module Rating Overrides Location Ratings


13. Wrong XP on Some Schematics


14. Radial Menu and Heal Options Bug


15. Multiple CRDM problem


16. Food Factory Deed

Exploits

1. Flaming/Diseasing Pets for XP


2. Tumble/Healing Exploit &

Gameplay Issues

1. Combat Queue Heals (or removal of) &


2. Target Friendlies


3. Medic Content


4. Droid Recharge Rate


5. Mounted Healing


6. /medicalForage Uselessness &


7. Droid Low Power Notifications


8. Auto-Retaliate


9. Heal Targeting Persistence


10. Factory/Harvester Status Notifications


11. Droid Crafter Rating


12. TEF Notification and Getting Kicked Out of Med Centers


13. Healing Range/Distance


14. Power Selection for Factories/Harvesters


15. Factory Identical Components


16. General Inventory Search for Meds


17. /diagnose Refresh


18. Heal Pack Selection Methodology Clarification


19. Med Center Grouping


20. Calling Medical Droids Anywhere =


21. Crafting Schematics Clarification and Documentation


22. Target Self


23. Title (No Title) is Not Sticking


24. Medic Vision/Usefulness


25. TEF Documentation and Faction Healing (including Neutrals)


26. Droid/Pet Change Concerns


27. B-level Schematic and Crafting Station Requirement Inconsistencies


28. /tend Command “Magic” Problem

Balance Issues

1. Medical Resource Requirements


2. Faction Points


3. Medicine Use Skill Granularity


4. On Fire Cure =


5. Money


6. Crafting XP Speed Imbalance


7. Crafting XP from Complex Schematics -v- Components


8. Mind Damage Healing for Medics


9. Ease of Mastery


10. Pet Healing XP (or lack thereof)


11. Pet Stimpacks

Wishlist

1. Component Crate Size Increase


2. Crate combining


3. Universal Stim As


4. Factory Speed


5. Heal Over Time Meds


6. Med Center Crafting Station


7. Groupmate Numbering


8. Factory Crate Size Selection


9. Factory Completion Timer


10. Medic-looking Clothing


11. Factory Email Notifications


12. Medical Bag/Inventory Search for Meds


13. Schematic Sorting


14. Window Persistence


15. Factory Input Hopper Access During Operation


16. Schematic Listing in Holocron


17. Correspondence Response &


18. /diagnose Damage Level Display


19. Groupmate Highlighting

Notes:

& - Denotes an Issue acknowledged by the Developers that should be fixed at some undisclosed time in the future.

= - Denotes Issue is listed by Devs as being fixed in either this publish or the next (generally, 4-8 weeks.)

[Edit: Updated On Fire Cure and Calling Med Droids Anywhere issues to reflect their status to be fixed (for Publsih 7, currently slated for late February.)]

Message Edited by Zarlor on 01-22-2004 03:35 PM

my biggest issue is with the healing/combat queue issue. it makes no sense, i can clear the combat queue and still not be guaranteed a heal. or if healing myself. the target dies and after all the 2 hours of heal lag it then chooses that moment in time to allow my heal and says, target must be a player or whatever, then i click heal again and have to wait another 2 hours, this is annoying. or i can be attacking NOTHING, and try to heal a group member, the lag usually means they get incapped before my heal, and often get slain also, then i heal their dead body. lets fix this lag, quickly, is REALLY annoying, lol

Based on the current voting the Combat Queue issue as it relates to our heals is sitting right around the #5 position. Traigus had it as the #1 issue on the last go around for the Top 5, where teh Dev response was "We love this, but its very difficult (coding-wise). We don’t know if this can happen, but we will investigate. " Although I think it should be noted that I don't think his initial issue stated the possibility of simply removing healing actions from being affected by the queue at all, so I don;t know for certain if that possibility was considered or if it would also be "very difficult" to get in.

I did notice, SasKarna, thatyou haven't voted on the curent voting thread, so I would certainly reccomend that you hit that issues list and give me the numbers of which of those issues you think are the 10 most important, in order of importance to you. In that way we can be sure to get your voice heard and your vote counted. Ever vote definitely can, and often does, make a difference on many of the issues, especially once you get past the first 2 or so issues.

So please do help all of us out and offer your vote.

The possibility for complete removal was mentioned in the origional October Top 5 list (in a bulleted list of possible solutions). That list went "poof" in TH's replies, and he only replied to "putting it in." I'm not sure who narrowed it down to that 1 solution off the list, TH or the devs.


-T

How aboutdiagnose window customization? When I use the diagnose window the first thing I do is scale it so I can see all of the details. I know the placement is per patient, but the size of the window should be persistent across all instances of the diagnose window.

Thanks.

my biggest issue is with the healing/combat queue issue. it makes no sense, i can clear the combat queue and still not be guaranteed a heal. or if healing myself. the target dies and after all the 2 hours of heal lag it then chooses that moment in time to allow my heal and says, target must be a player or whatever, then i click heal again and have to wait another 2 hours, this is annoying. or i can be attacking NOTHING, and try to heal a group member, the lag usually means they get incapped before my heal, and often get slain also, then i heal their dead body. lets fix this lag, quickly, is REALLY annoying, lol

I'd consider that part of the Window Persistence issue (#14 on the Wishlist section). You can read the details for any of the issues on the Complete List of Medic Issues (Discussion) thread.

That's all in the Money issue.