Architect Archive
Thread: Top Issues
Rancorrider4 wrote:
"Not many people thought it was "pie-in-the-sky fluff" back when it was first presented to Thunderheart. Why the dissent now? IMHO, impatience has set it and people want to just settle. I refuse to settle. While I agree we should get some minor fixes now, such as for creature harvesting and trapping, I firmly believe that we need to shoot for the moon.We seem to have two vastly different views on this, and that is ok. To use an acting analogy, most directors will always tell you to make your performance as big and grandiose as you possibly can, as it is easier to tone you down than to build up what is not there. The devs need something to work with. I think the more we give them the better.They can justwhittle away till they get it where they agree it should be."
I emphatically agree with this. Firstly, I like the Outdoorsman proposal a great deal. We seem to have had some migration in the Ranger ranks as we have some new faces disagreeing with something the community previously established.
This has been in front of the developers for some time. Let's see where we stand on it before quitting and starting anew with a whole nwe list of items and concerns.
I think the more we give them the more they will ignore it all. I'm sorry that I'm one of the new faces here but, for what its worth, i'm not quitting master ranger. I really like this profession and would like to see it advance. I think the entire outdoorsman post is a true work of art. But with many of the other works of art that have been created for other professions (smuggler, fencer, creature handler, driod engineer - to name a few) what starts as a Renior ends up as a counterfiet Rauschenberg after the dev team puts it inline with the rest of the game.
If the Dev team actually plans to revamp master ranger to the extent of the Outdoorsman and they have confirmed this, then I applaud them. But I think that the Outdoorsman was conceived in a time where the entire community truly believed that the dev team was working with our ideas to groom this game into something amazing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Outdoorsman must have come about, in concept, prior to vehicles, if not mounts. I understand it was posted in January, but by the look of it, it must have taken a couple months to put together, if everyone in the ranger community was onboard with it.
I think the Dev's have bigger issues at stake, first and foremost is to get the game to grow, stop players from leaving and get more players to join. To do this you must look at the game as a whole and point out the flaws. Fixing ranger to the extent of the Outdoorsman is not going to attract new players, it will attract current players to a newly refurbished profession and keep them playing for a few more months. But the bang for the buck in creating a profession to the extent of the Outdoorsman is just not a realistic goal for the period now until a month or two after space expansion.
Therefore, you must take the current profession and consider the simpler things that should be done within the next 5 months and take what we can get. If you take the top 4 issues, counting the Outdoorsman as 5, and list them out the majority of us want 4 things.
1. Better harvesting, ability to harvest more than just one resource.
2. /track, or a better system for /areaTrack so that wecan find creatures better than we do now.
3. Better traps, or upgrades to the existing traps to make their effects last longer.
4. better creature to-hit bonus and PvCreature defence.
I think the best thing we have going in regards to these top 4 issues are that they will not "unbalance" us in PvP since we are essentially the hunters in the game. Our tactics need to put us on top of being hunters putting us into a position where we get just as many /tells asking to join a hunting group as a master doc gets asking for buffs at a starport. It should be at the point where people outright pay us to go along. (I do get paid, but I mean for us to be a real hot commodity)
I won't state again, from so many that have, how simple these top 4 issues can be addressed. Well, maybe not #2 but I fully understand the complexity of that problem, but the other 3 just require mathmatical boosts. Juggle some numbers around and see what works. No need to do elaborate testing on test center, this would be a 2 week start to finish operation, it would shut us all up for a while during which time we should collectively re-review the Outdoorsman and consider two main things while doing so.
1. Compare what other documents of its nature have done in the past, if anything, to improve any other profession. In terms of one example, take the whole Fencer issue. I started fencer back in september and went through the biggest power boost in the game in December only to have it taken away in January. It basically gave it everything fencer could want, but its obvious that the Dev's knew it was a short term fix that eventually put the profession back in-line with the rest. Was the effort a waste of time? no, not at all. Had it not been done fencer would have been dead in the water after the january patch. After looking at these other profession revamp documents, then the corrospondant would discuss with the dev team what exactly they are looking for in a document, the extent of which they are willing to make changes and where the focus should lie. (I'm 99.9% positive this is being done by the new corospondant already) This way we, as a community, come up with a document that is maybe 2 pages long, max, that they will actually read start to finish without stopping one to laugh their ass off saying "OMG did you see what they thought we could do? Ha Ha Ha, i know, instead of harvesting 211 hide off a rancor, we'll make it100 and then bump it up to 150 next month."
2. Really consider what the Dev's will do to this profession. We are nothing but a glorified scout. It seems that we are missing one more tree to achieve novice ranger. IMHO, we should have to go up either one hand or two hand in the brawler tree (if not master brawler)to get ranger, along with master scout. This will prevent too much dabbling into what could become a very incredible profession. But to add something like that will really wreak havoc on those players with the master title if not given proper notice that they will need to get that column before the patch next week.
I'm all for high expectations, but when it comes down to it, I really appreciate what the dev team has done with the game. I've experienced very few bugs and the ones I have, I can live with. I have not seen the dev's take much of anything we all put together seriously and i'm sorry i'm being so pessimistic in this case, I really am generally optimistic. I can't help but think that the dev team looks at the outdoorsman and think, "Wow, that would be a really incredible thing. But if we do that for ranger, then where does that put the balance in the development and future of the game? how much time investment will it take to do all of that or evenpart of that? if only part of it is done, what part do you pick that will still keep ranger inline with the game?" There's just too many issues at stake.
So, being long winded as I have a tendancy to be, I think we need to focus on 4 basic needs that MUST be adressed before space expansion. Better harvests, /track, better traps, and a real defence/offence system that we get. And again, except for /track, its only a matter of bumping up some numbers and we all know how easy it is for the dev team to move those around.
Want specifics? (these are accumulative, I don't mean that the + would come at master, but would be distributed among the trees with the largest bonus to cap it at master)
Creature to-hit bonus, make it +100 at master, this means we always strike. Add creature melee defence, give us +50 at master, this would give us a non-stackable dodge against creatures that comes close to a fencer's dodge.
Creature harvest, make that come out to +150 at master. This means a novice scout harvests a rancor and gets 100 hide (example only, i don't know the exact number) +150 would mean that a master ranger would harvest 600. Too much, then make it 400, either way, a master ranger needs to be able to harvest considerably more than we do now. At least double at master than what we do now.
As for trapping, +100 at master surely does not feel like +100. It feels like a broken +75 at best. Not to mention that the traps we throw in ranger are not much better than those in scout. Sonic blast, without experiment (i never experimented on traps, can u?) should create stacks of 10. /throwtrap should be fixed "/throwTrap sonic" or "/tt adhesiveMesh" or something like that so that we have a better way to hot key traps and use them. The effects of traps has got to be put inline with the special attacks from other professions. Dizzy, blind and stun MUST last just as long, if not longer, than those applied by fencers, TKM, etc. Effects should stack.
Ok, i'll shut up now, but I hope i've made my point that in all honesty, at this point in time, based on past experience with the development of this game, it would be best if we all kissed the outdoorsman goodbye and started over with much more realistic goals that the dev team will actually listen to. But I think that in the next couple weeks, harvesting, trapping and defence/offence MUST be addresses as a hot fix, its been way too long.
I have never been in favor of it and I have never made any secret of that. I think it asks for the moon and stars, and that it gives too much authority to the (purported) position of the devs that Rangers should be some kind of ultimate creature hunter. Supporting that position is a one-way ticket to irrelevancy.
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
Bingo.
Fred_Skinner wrote:I think this is a good exorcise still. It's called "Brainstorming". They (the devs) will find jewels here to work off of, perhaps come up with stuff we didn't even think of that they would not have otherwise and blow us all away (in a good way).
Hey Calculus,
May i suggest starting a sticky post for brainstorming on each individual part of ranger? what I mean is to have seperate posts regarding harvesting, trapping, cammo, campsites, etc. The problem is that this profession tends to handle a lot of different things and to group them all into a top 5 issues might create a lot of stuff to sift through to discuss the subject you are really interested in. It may also be a huge benefit to paraphrase the Outdoorsman in a short post and request comments for a fresh look at it.
just my 2 credits...
First of all, nice bullets.
My Peeves in order of importance:
1. Harvesting: Early on in the game I was under the impression that we would be able to harvest multiple types from one creature, only makes sense.
2. Camps: I like that I can heal in it but it needs more functionality.
3. Tracking: My preferred method of searching for rare spawns is to fly around on my bike until I run into one. This shouldn't work better than tracking but it does.
4. Outdoorsman Proposal: Lots of work went into this, lets not let it get pushed aside.
5. Camo: Masked Scent, a scout skill works as well without requiring resources. Only good for use on other players, not self.
6. Traps: Some are good for emergency use but the action pool drain from thowing one isn't worth it otherwise.
wickedHangover wrote:
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
Bingo.
Fred_Skinner wrote:I think this is a good exorcise still. It's called "Brainstorming". They (the devs) will find jewels here to work off of, perhaps come up with stuff we didn't even think of that they would not have otherwise and blow us all away (in a good way
Hey Calculus,
May i suggest starting a sticky post for brainstorming on each individual part of ranger? what I mean is to have seperate posts regarding harvesting, trapping, cammo, campsites, etc. The problem is that this profession tends to handle a lot of different things and to group them all into a top 5 issues might create a lot of stuff to sift through to discuss the subject you are really interested in. It may also be a huge benefit to paraphrase the Outdoorsman in a short post and request comments for a fresh look at it.
just my 2 credits...
WOW, duh...makes a lot of sense...
Make 5 separate stickies! (TOP 5) get it? Sweet idea...
I think this is a good exorcise still. It's called "Brainstorming". They (the devs) will find jewels here to work off of, perhaps come up with stuff we didn't even think of that they would not have otherwise and blow us all away (in a good way
wickedHangover wrote:
Rancorrider4 wrote:
...stuff...
..."omg were do you find the time to write all that"... stuff...
).I agree that we need to get an answer on the outdoorsman proposal. I have parts of at least 3 threads on the Correspondent Forum devoted to it. I have other means of talking to the devs that I am going to explore if the threads don't work. I agree with many of you who think we got antsy without a response from the Devs. I was certainly hasty in my decision to post my "Outdoorsman Tweak" thread. I only did so because others, including people who had accepted the proposal , had said maybe it could use a tweak. I am now waffling and saying we really need to wait until we an answer on what Rangers can expect. That said, is there any reason we shouldn't ask for some minor hot fixes in the mean time? I think much of what has been said here can go in via hot fixes and not in fringe upon the Outdoorsman. Tell me what you gusy think.
Rancorrider4 wrote:
I emphatically agree with this. Firstly, I like the Outdoorsman proposal a great deal. We seem to have had some migration in the Ranger ranks as we have some new faces disagreeing with something the community previously established.
This has been in front of the developers for some time. Let's see where we stand on it before quitting and starting anew with a whole nwe list of items and concerns.
Bingo.
Fred_Skinner wrote:
I think this is a good exorcise still. It's called "Brainstorming". They (the devs) will find jewels here to work off of, perhaps come up with stuff we didn't even think of that they would not have otherwise and blow us all away (in a good way
wickedHangover wrote:
Rancorrider4 wrote:
...stuff...
..."omg were do you find the time to write all that"... stuff...
CRAP
ALMOST FORGOT
- There should be a "Harvestor-Trap". Something akin to a deedable harvestor that simulates what trappers in the fur trade did. We would have a skill that can "see" the migration patterns and try to put a trap in for getting that critter. Allows us to collect a resource on a "boring" planet that is good while collecting others on Adventure! planet manually.
Fred_Skinner wrote:
CRAP
ALMOST FORGOT
- There should be a "Harvestor-Trap". Something akin to a deedable harvestor that simulates what trappers in the fur trade did. We would have a skill that can "see" the migration patterns and try to put a trap in for getting that critter. Allows us to collect a resource on a "boring" planet that is good while collecting others on Adventure! planet manually.
That sounds like a trap to get at master. I suspect your idea would require it to use one plot, which I think anyone can agree that it would make sense. I'm not sure who would craft it, but if we did and it had a BER rate of like 5-7 i'd be very happy. and if we had some artisan to experiemnt on it and could get it up to a BER10, that would be very nice.
I think the /track command, as I suggested and was blasted for, could use a survey type screen that could show migration patterns like you suggest, as you advance the area you can "survey" increases. The alternative is to "/track rancors" and get a message "there appears to be a large concentration of rancors 400 SW" or "There are very few rancors in the area, most appear to be to the north" or "Sorry bud, nothing here".
-edit:
Having thought about this more, I think having a harvesting method would make bone, meat and hide worth much less. I'd prefer to keep the current method of harvesting. What would be nice, and its ben sugested more than once, is a command to target corpses. Like a ctrl+tab so you can cycle through a bactch of kills and harvest instead of pointing the mouse on each one. It's not so much that i'm too lazy to click on each kill, there are many times where my kills land directly on top of one another and if I could cycle through I wouldn't miss any resources...
Message Edited by wickedHangover on 03-24-2004 09:51 AM