Ranger Archive

Just some ideas I've been kicking around, with the thought of improving Rangers a bit more and bringing them into their own. I can agree with most in the feeling that we're just 'Scouts on steroids' - as we really have nothing unique and useful over the normal scout class, except for better camps. I'm fine with the 'improvement' idea over the scout lines, but at this point in time I feel that improvement is not pronounced enough to justify our profession. Most of these suggestions focus on widening the gap between our professions skills, and their counterparts in the Scout line.

1) Harvesting

Rangers should be able to harvest multiple resources from a single animal. With the amount you can harvest scaled by your skill in the bioscience line - ending at the Master Ranger level where you can harvest all resources. So someone slightly skilled in the ranger tree could harvest 2 resources, while a master could harvest all of them. This just makes sense, as a natural progression from the Scout line.

Rangers should also be able to harvest the 'excess' from an already harvested corpse (harvested by a group mate). What I mean by this is, currently whenever a corpse is harvested - the amount of resources the harvester gets is dependant upon their skill level. So something a scout harvests and gets 40 hides on, I'm likely to get 60+ on being at Bioscience 4. If a scout in my group beats me to the harvest, I should be able to harvest the corpse myself and get the 20+ hides (or at least a portion of them) which remain.

Lastly, as I don't think it currently works this way (but I could be mistaken) - harvested resources overall quality should be effected by how skilled the person who harvested it was. It only makes sense that someone very skilled in harvesting would have the highest quality hides, meat, etc.

2) Camping

I see this is being changed a bit in the update (through the scouting line), but even with the increased XP gains I think there is room for change.

Quite frankly, it shouldn't matter who created the camp - every scout/ranger within the camp (or group) should get Survival XP from them. The system currently forces scouts and rangers to 'swap out' camps - and as such it tends to hurt the higher skilled Rangers the most, as the scouts 'need the XP more'. If the scout also got XP from sitting around in a Ranger camp, the group wouldn't have to worry about camping turns and swapping out camps every X minutes so everyone gets XP - and the group would get the benefit of always getting the best camp available. Also, remove the XP cap on camps so that they don't have to constantly be rebuilt over and over to get more XP.. or at the least extend the cap enough that a camp caps out on XP after 6 minutes of having more than 5 people in it.

The higher level camps (Field Base and above) should be 'semi-permenant' - as in, they stay up no matter what the creator is currently doing, or how long they've been gone. They should stay up until disbanded, as long as the player is online and still on the same planet. They take quite a bit more resources than the lower level camps, and it sucks to lose them when some aggro monster spawns (or wanders up and ignores the 'repulsion' effect our camps supposedly have). I fail to see how setting up a good camp near where we're hunting would harm any aspect of the game.

Keeping the above in mind, possibly add a new camp at Master Ranger level, a High Tech Field Base with added cloning abilities. Would be a great perk for attaining MR, and be a highly sought after camp. The cloning station could only be used via the 'closest cloning facility' option, and would never store your clone data (so you always spawned at one with wounds). This would be a good step in making them seem more like actual base camps, with all the crafting stations, as well as the ability to respawn there if things go wrong.

The ability to rotate our camps, or have their orientation based on which direction were were facing at the time it was placed, would be nice. Sometimes I'd like to have a clear view in a certain direction, but unfortunately my tents and crafting stations always block my view to a particular direction. This isn't really a problem until Field Base kits, as the large canopy even blocks your view in 3rd person. This is mostly cosmetic, but something I'd like to see eventually.

3) Trapping

I'm not very experienced with these, as I find using them more of a nuisance than avoiding them altogether (and from what I understand, the Ranger traps are currently broken for the most part - or don't provide any benefit over Scout traps - the Snare one is the only I ever bother to use).. and I never enjoyed the idea of the grenade like traps we currently have (if we throw them like grenades, shouldn't they also logically work on human NPCs as well?). So I'll leave those alone, but make one addition I think the 'true' trappers would enjoy;

The ability to 'trap', ie - capture, baby creatures. Perhaps a new buildable in our trapping line, sort of a lure which we have to place on the ground near a baby creature we've successfully mask-scented. If successful, the baby creature is attracted to it and is trapped in a cage or container of some sort - if it fails its treated just like an attack on the creature and handled accordingly. We can place the container in our inventory - and the baby creature can be sold just as any normal item. These could be sellable to Bio-Engineers and Creature Handlers - who could then DNA sample them or train them. There could be a whole market in selling baby animals of all types, and I don't think it'll draw anything away from Bio-Engineers, as they'll have better pets overall - we'd just be able to sell the ones they cannot create.. or provide them with an easier/safer means to sample from (recently they made it so they can't sample from babies, this would have to be made an exception). I'd love the be contracted by someone to go out and capture them X amount of a certain animal!

4) Terrain Negotiation

What good is faster crawling speed? I mean, really? Other than a rifleman, to which its not much of a benefit anyhow - there is no point in it. I think our extra TR skills should give us a direct speed increase running over any terrain. Not a huge boost, but something noticable and actually useful. I never crawl anywhere, and the times I go prone to fire at something the only movement I make is to stand back up - increased crawling speed is worthless.

Also, the 'bonus' we get for burst run isn't that great. Instead of lessening the amount of Health and Action it drains to burst run, it should shorten the amount of time that you have to 'rest' in-between bursts, or lengthen the amount of time you burst run. I guess you might notice the amount it costs if you wait around long enough to get damaged to near death before burst running (if you're that low on health at that point, you're probably dead anyhow - or at least you will be when you burst run into another pack of aggro mobs), but for the most part it goes un-noticed.

5) Conceal

Can we please have this back? Pretty please? Fix the problems it was having with AI, and put it back in - the ability to 'mask-scent' NPCs would be a valuable addition to our class.

Those are some great ideas! Hopefully somebody who can do somthing takes notice!

I couldn't agree more that the Ranger profession needs a little more depth to be interesting. I find myself playing for the title, not the skills, and it's becoming quite boring.

I really like all these ideas except one. I agree that swapping out camps is annoying and whenever more than one camp producer is in a group, the current system tends to have people racing to set up the camp first, but having all the Rangers and Scouts in a camp gain XP from it isn't a viable solution. Within minutes we'd have groups of 10-20 scouts trodding off to a nice quiet corner to camp and they would master camping in a couple of hours. Ifyou had the camping XP divide itself amongst the scouts and rangers, then you'd have people fighting over whether or not they want other scouts/rangers in their camp, or we'd have camp XP thieves sneaking into the camps of AFK scouts. I love the idea of semi-permanent camps and the master camp with the cloning station. I agree this should be implemented and only available at Master Ranger. It would make Master Rangers quite sought after in groups.

Here's a suggestion of my own. Given the extensive creature knowledge a Ranger is supposed to have, we should be able to track specific creatures. For example, my favourite hunt is the Ikopi Stag (it's about the toughest thing I can kill on my own, and it gives great XP). These are, unfortunately, quite rare and hard to find. A sufficiently skilled Ranger should be able to recognize evidence that an Ikopi Stag has been in the area (after all, if you've seen them, you know they're bound to leave quite a trail) and follow its tracks to its current location. Perhaps this skill should be learned on a creature to creature basis. For example, target the Ikopi Stag and activate the "Study Habits" skill. Once it has been studied for a sufficient amount of time, the Ranger should then be able to track any Ikopi Stag within a certain radius of the Ranger's current position, and the Ikopi Stag would be included in the list of creatures the Ranger knows how to track. Or, alternatively, have Rangers able to track more difficult creatures at higher skill levels. The track skill interface could work exactly like the /find command. Typing /track would bring up a menu with the list of creatures a ranger could track. Have skilled trackers able to track more than one creature simultaneously via a checkbox menu (like group options). When the Ranger is tracking our friend the Ikopi Stag, a coloured waypoint arrow could appear as soon as the Ranger came within a certain radius of the tracked creature.

Currently, pursuing Master Ranger will only get you 3 new camps, 2 new traps, and the rescue skill. I see no reason why tracking skills couldn't be included in the Field Bioscience tree, since it currently yields no new skills at all. I realize that implementing something like this could prove to be quite complex and would probably not be considered for any updates in the very near future, but I'm hoping to have inspired the Dev's enough to consider it for some update in the future, when all their current projects are finished.

Thanks for reading, I know it was long.

I would like to see rangers have tracking skills like the druid in everquest for example.

SO that we can track creatures...

Instead of aimlessy running around looking for a certain one.....we rangers right...we can read the woods

I cancelled my account to SWG. This is probably because I played a Ranger. I had so much time invested in him, when I found out I was pretty much useless in a group that had Critter Handlers or pets of any kinds (obviate ANY need to use traps because pets hold aggro like superglue) I was devastated. Add to that the fact that 2 whole skill lines makes me no better against NPC mobs or PCs one bit.

I agree with the above poster, that I played the name only the last 2 weeks my account was active, because the class itself is utterly boring and tedious. My soloing ability against animal mobs is no better now (with all Ranger skills at 3) than it was at Master Scout. You'd think a Ranger would be the near-uber soloing class. Well it isn't, even with my TK skills, and I ave nothing worthwhile to add to a group since high level camps are not much, if any, better than a basic scout one.

This class needs some serious work to be fun to play. Otherwise, we are just glorified hide harvesters.

My guild knows I plan on coming back in 3 months or so, after classes are fixed and gameplay is balanced a bit more. But if they don't do any significant changes to Ranger, I won't be back.

I think we should get xp for hunting in the vicinity of our camps also. it should be like a real camp...you set up and go out to hunt. instead camps are basically just there for us to sit around and do nothing but sit there and wait till xp caps.

so basically survival xp should go up as we hunt around our camp. geez i hope sony see's these great ideas...especially the camp with cloning possibilities

Good job. Well thought out and clearly communicated. I like the critical thinking on these subjects. Here's some feedback (whether you want it or not, hehe )

1) HARVESTING:
I really like the idea of harvesting multiple resources from the same critter. I espicially like the notion that it increases with level. This would make life much easier in gathering BMH (bone/meat/hide). However, how would this affect the market if all of a sudden these resources became more plentiful? Price would fall with demand. I destroy BMH all the time if there isn't a medical student nearby to donate to. I think that one way to help this would be that if, say, all three resources were gathered off the same critter, it would be in less quantity than if only 1 were harvested. Even in true life skinning, boning, and um, de-meating(?), there is some material loss. As it is, BMH is plentiful and IMHO providing SOME these to the community should land on the shoulders of the Ranger, to a certain extent (please see below).
Double or triple dipping on an already harvested critter is supposed to be in game but it is currently broken. Actually, it's been a wile since I've seen the splash screen that claims this to be an option. This would be good for the Ranger profession, but not for the scouting profession, like the splash screen suggests. I like your idea. However, how would this play out if one Ranger could harvest all three resources? Would the other Ranger in the group get none? Just curious. This stuff is all connected.
Animal resource BASE quality should be up to the animal. There should be a modifier to this number that is affected by the aptitude of the harvester. For example, Carrion Spat on Corellia yield an incredible 1000 quality bone. How could this be improved? Ranger Rick is on the job! Master Ranger Rick can harvest the same bone but get, say, 1100 quality from it. Of course this would kill the market for budding scouts and rangers so it would need tempering that only devs can do.

2) CAMPING
I don't like shared xp for camps. For no reason other than a game mechanics thing.
Semi-permanent camps is sooo rad. How I wish this were true.
More powerful Ranger camps is something that I've often fantasized about (gutter mind!). How do the temporary Rebel/Imp bases get built in the bush? Combat Architect? No silly, Master Ranger with the appropriate faction! I know this is way off mark, but it could help legitimize us in the GCW b providing a shelter complete with turrets. I know that this will probably seem lame to everyone except me, but I had to plug this idea Anyway, back to subject, cloning facility would be killer. How cool would it be for some guy/gal to get wacked out in the middle of nowhere and see your facility pop on the cloning list? Yes, it would need to be named on the list to prevent griefing. I'd be pissed if I picked closest facility and it was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by angry mobs, then the griefing ranger poofs the camp. Hmmm. Maybe if this cloning facility worked on groupmates only. This is a tricky one.
Facing orientation could be kind of fun.

3) TRAPPING
This entire skill line needs an overhaul. I simply don't get it. It's almost as if it was stopped mid-stream creation. Capturing animals is a no brainer. After all that's what "trapping" means.

4) TERRAIN NEGOTIATION
I have a feeling that the same team that worked on trapping also worked on Terrain Negotiation. Were they all killed in a horrible short bus accident? This skill is soo worthless, I wanna cry /wipetears Ok, much better now. Crawling fast was good for a 5 minute laugh, then it turned into an insult. I should at least be able to move really fast while on one knee...hehe
I hold my hand up for a longer duration, lesser penalty, and shorter recovery time for /burstrun. Just this simple tweek carried out over a few boxes would help tremendously.

5) CONCEAL
What more can be said about getting this skill back?



Sorry, Chambered, I didn't mean to clutter up the thread, but you did offer good suggestions. Cheers, mate

Tracking-

I agree we should be able to track, however, NOT like it was in EQ..no way. I have ideas how it should work...but, bear with me...I am workin on little sleep

Location (Tattoine should be the easiest...well, or hardest due to the frequent sandstorms, and other planets may be easier )

Type of Animal (well, every animal has a different Paw print...some are similiar,tho )

Training (obvious )

Is the Animal bleeding? (blood trail)

I dunno, just something there I'd like to throw out...more on the way..after some sleep

Althought I never played a Druid in Everquest, the tracking skill does sound like a useful tool to use. It can also be implemented in different ways.

• Locate any mob with a particular type of meat/bone/hide


• Locate a class of mob in the game


• Locate creatures that fall under a partuclar difficulty rating

Just a though, since we should have an ability to find creatures faster than other classes considering we are supposed to be able to live and thrive in the outdoors. But with the skills we are provided we don't even know what's out there.

best suggestions i've seen on these boards!! Thanks man

Thanks for all the feedback, was thinking this thread was gonna sink to the bottom, good to know I didn't type it all out for nothing.

I've always liked the Tracking idea - and it seems to only make sense that we'd only be able to track creatures we've studied. I suggested a while back in another thread that Rangers get a 'beastiary', which could be tied in with this Tracking ability really well. Basically, everything that the Ranger 'examines' gets stored into his own personal 'beastiary', like anotherdatapad that captures all the information about an animal and stores it for later viewing. It could function as an interface for the tracking menu rather well, just have the 'track' button pop up on the radial menu. If actual creature trapping is ever implemented, a tracking option would be extremely usefull.

On the subject of sharing XP for camps - having everyone get full XP could be abusable in the end. But dividing the XP up among scouts/rangers within the group is a good suggestion. With the grouping requirement, that meanspeople running by and 'leeching' XP away wouldn't be a problem. And as long as the better camps give more XP overall, I think everyone will still be happy - and it would still eliminate 'ninja camping',and the higher level camps would still be used when available.

I would point out one thing regarding the quality of harvested meat/bone/hide: All of the resources come from one of a few specific types that have predefined names, stats, etc. Only a certain number of these resources are available, just like with minerals, flora, and any other surveyed resource.

That is, there are only a few different types of bone, types of meat, and types of hide for the game to choose from when giving you the resources you are harvesting. Choosing which one is "better" really depends on what you plan to use them for, since some have good decay resistance and crappy overall quality, and vice versa, for example.

Not to mention that if they did get around this problem, you'd end up with a whole bunch of stacks of 60 hides, one from each critter harvested, instead of a few stacks with hundreds in each.

I'll mark this thread as one for putting in the correspondent report.