Ranger Archive

The developers have laid out a framework already. One with Camoflauge (sic), Camps, Traps, and Tracking.

This seems at odds with being a "creature" profession. For this to ever happen, we will need significant combat bonuses against creatures, new weapons, or to make the trap line so over-burdened that it's silly.

I am honestly not sure how we can do it given our constraints unless the devs back off at least a little bit. We have to be more than that. Are camps next to go?

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Seiryuu wrote:
The developers have laid out a framework already. One with Camoflauge (sic), Camps, Traps, and Tracking.

This seems at odds with being a "creature" profession. For this to ever happen, we will need significant combat bonuses against creatures, new weapons, or to make the trap line so over-burdened that it's silly.

I am honestly not sure how we can do it given our constraints unless the devs back off at least a little bit. We have to be more than that. Are camps next to go?

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I think the 'creature' focus is not so much about helping us kill the creatures, but helping us and our groups go through the process of killing creatures. Basically the support roles surrounding the hunt, rather then the actual shooting of said creature.

Thats my take at any rate, and I think that angle is doable given the basic tree structure we have now.

Cul

The Ranger profession requires the complete mastery of a novice profession...

...and because of the skill points involved, the ranger should be the king of PvE, while BH's and Commando's are the king ofPvP.

Right now, there ARE advantages to being a Ranger, but there aren't really very noticable.

Things that would make Ranger more superior in PvE (or "outdoorsman" whatever) could be done within the context of currrent skills:

• maskscent won't break, period,not in battle, not ever,once youhave +125 skillmod.


• creatures will take noticeablibly more damage from rangers, not just a "tohit" modifier


• rangerscan harvest bone, hide, and meat from the same creature


• rangers can /track animals and lairs, not just /areatrack


• rangers spawn missions without going to a terminal in the city


• ranger camps are semi-permenant,and don't "poof" away unless you log out.


• rangers can camouflage themselves against NPCs (trust me, real humans can NOT see snipers who are well camouflaged).


• rangers can run faster (not just crawl faster) than master scouts


• ranger traps can root, snare, & debuff creatures to provide real "crowd control" for groups


• there will bea ranger trap for every debuff or state effect that you can possibly think of

Then, Ranger will be 140 skill points very well spent.

What I would like to see happen with Ranger:

1) Drop camo line again...it is useless and I am actually not a master ranger right now because I had to free up some skill points and this is the line that went. I have used the camo kit maybe 5 times since it came out and I find that it is much easier to just use maskscent. This line should be changed to be a better maskscent. Scouts should not have the top of the line maskscent, we should. Theirs should break anytime they fight something or are aggro'd...ours should not. That right there would be differentiation enough for me in this line. If our mask/camo never works on NPCs, that is fine with me...but it should work great against animals then. Also, we should get a faster top speed in this line...not just the useless crawl speed.

2) Camps...been said a million and a half times -- we need permacamps. This line needs some beefing up, it is not enough to have just a larger camp, no reason for it. There are many good ideas around for the camping line, use any. Hunting blinds...make them heal BF with an entertainer...etc.

3) Tracking...we need to be able to spawn creatures or at least find their spawn points and be able to wait for them. Right now, tracking is not useful enough to justify on its own. As fo rthe harvesting bonus we receive...this is also not enough. We need to be able to perhaps harvest 2 or even 3 things from a creature.

4) Traps...again, the problems here are very well known. Nobody uses them once we don't need the XP anymore. The traps that we get in the Ranger line are not good enough to justify the skill point usage. I do like that they are AOE (sort of...one prob is that it tends to draw way to many unwanted aggros), but we need more (KD trap would be nice...dizzy...sticky trap...anything) and they need to be very powerful to make them worth using. If my traps never work on an NPC, that is also fine with me...but they should work very well on creatures.

Now, that is what we already have...so, what do we need added.

I for one am not a huge fan of a Ranger specific weapon. I have a weapon...I think that I should be able to use that more effectively against creatures on its own. To that end, we need to be noticeably better at killing animals than all others. I want a huge bonus to fighting creatures.

I think that we should be able to forgo harvesting an animal at all and be able to make a trophy out of it. Keep it intact and put it in our houses for decoration. This would just be a nicety...

Well, that is all that I can think of for now...maybe more later.

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Culdor wrote:

I think the 'creature' focus is not so much about helping us kill the creatures, but helping us and our groups go through the process of killing creatures. Basically the support roles surrounding the hunt, rather then the actual shooting of said creature.

Thats my take at any rate, and I think that angle is doable given the basic tree structure we have now.

Cul

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Great point..this may be a good way to approach the devs with our creature killing concerns (hopefully they won't say tracking is how we help ourselves and groups with hunting).

I've said this in a few other threads, but I'll reiterate here. I really think a ranger should be more skilled while riding a mount. Maybe we can use special attacks from a combat class while mounted, maybe we can track while mounted, maybe we can guide our mounts better and pass some of our terrain negotiation skills on to them. Dangit, I want to be cool while mounted!!

Well, if we're a creature profession, we need to figure out what 'kind' of creature profession.

If we are, in fact, the 'ultimate creature hunter', we'll need some sort of bonuses to hunting creatures. In what forms these bonuses come, is what I feel could be our class definitions.

For instance, I've been thinking about the traps. Some of the earlier traps are very nice miniature debuffs. Why not expand on that a bit more? How about, A thrown trap that does no damage, but lowers a creature's effectiveness versus a damage type (IE : a frost trap lowers the creature's fire resistances, a metallic solution lowers its electrical resistance).

Also, why not a trap that slows a creature's attack? A nerve toxin that slows the creature's response and reaction time,lowering attack speed by 30%- we'd be in constant demand on creature hunts

As for our Camps, I simply want more variety.

How about camps for multiple situations?

• Acamp for NPC combat. IE : An entrenched position, like with sandbags and barbed wire and stuff... that gave +10 ranged/melee defense for everyone in it. Cannot use it to heal, cannot summon pets or bikes or whatever, but stays in combat. Gives low EXP.


• Acamp for healing between battles. IE : High healing bonus, high buff bonus for doctor buffs, and you can heal BF in this camp... can't summon pets or bikes, vanishes in combat. Gives low EXP.


• Acamp for hunting creatures, like the hunting blinds - maybe allows more shots before the creature aggroes or something . Can't summon pets or bikes, can't heal you, stays in combat, Gives low EXP.


• Acamp for survival purposes. IE : Our current ones. Heals slowly, can pull out bikes and pets, vanishes in combat, but provides best camping EXP.

And lastly... the tracking/harvesting line. If the american indians can use every single part of a buffalo they kill, rangers should be able to harvest a corpse without waste. Once a player obtains Novice Ranger, they should have a new option appear in the harvest radial menu - 'All'. This will attempt to harvest all resources from the creature, but always at a large penalty. At the master status, someone using 'all' would get 75% of all resources they would normally get from a kill. If a /harvest meat would return 100 units of meat, the /harvest all would return 75 units of everything. If a /harvest hide would return 40 units of hide, /harvest all would return 30 of all.

Those are my humble suggestions. I know that not all of them are new and exciting, but they're truly what I feel would make me a viable class

NRaas,

Thank youfor taking the time to review our posts and for drawing conclusions from them. I agree that "most of the community seems in the moodto battle the developers on what they consider to be vision for our profession..." I alsoagree that "we can not hope to battle the developers head on and win..." and that "we attempt to expand the vision provided to include as much of what we feel the Ranger profession should entail, without overgeneralizing and losing the focus entirely"

What I'm trying to figure out is how to accommodate your last suggestion. I'll just plunge ahead and hope that I can do so in a clear and constructive manner.

My suggestion deals with a subset of the Ranger Profession, the Antarian Rangers. This group is a recognized part of the Star Wars Cannon and their history can be traced from their creation on the planet Antar over 600 years before the Clone Wars up until the present. For a brief history of the Antarian Rangers please see <http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=11265&ForumID=48840&TabID=93217&TopicID=310651>.

Many within the Ranger Professionconsider the Antarian Rangers an important subset. There are approximately eleven Servers with establish Antarian Ranger Associations and an additional 10 Servers with players looking for other players interested informing associations. For a quick look at this information see <http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=24858>.

So, what is itthe Antarian Rangersrequire and how does it fit into the Dev's vision? The Antarian Rangers are committed to assisting the Jedi in whatever way required. In some ways that commitment works very nicely with this presentconfiguration of the Ranger Profession. The Antarian Rangers of Sunrunner are currently occupied harvesting resources and looting gems, etc for the needs of the Jedi they support. But the Antarian Rangers commitment extends to the protection of the Padawan during that vulnerable period on their way to being a Jedi. It is here that the Antarian Rangers need a specific ability they do not yet have.

Imagine if you will a group of Bounty Hunters and Overt Imperialson a hunt with intent on taking the life of a newPadawan. The Antarian Rangers stand between these killers and the Padawan. In order to protect the Padawan the Antarian Rangers require the ability to engage the group the Bounty Hunters and Overt Imperials.

All I am asking for is theability toengage those intent on attacking the Padawan.

NRaas, what do you think?Can we include this vision within the vision of the Developers? Will youconvey and support this conceptin your discussions with theDevs?

I am happy with my role as "Combat Support".

I will even be happy as the foil to the CH, if and when we can trap pets, we gain a greater role in PvP.

I want the things we have now to work as designed/stated.

I want the things that were promised to us (camps, traps, whatever) given to us.

I am willing to wait a reasonable time. Hell, I am willing to send the Devs, mutants that they be, more pizza and pepsi to help them program the stuff.

But if we are relegated to some "go kill beasties" role, sorry bout that, I will protest. My threat to paint their houses still stands for making me master Chef should I ever want to go Jedi.

My idea of Ranger. I leave the city behind. I may or may not return for an extended period of time, as I can live and live well off the land. If it has four legs and bleeds, I can kill it, given enough time, traps and some luck. I am the master harvester. I am the man to ask about things that go roar in the woods. I can pass unseen, not invisible, unseen, notice the difference, through the wilds. When needed I can pitch a camp to heal the wounded. I should be able to track animals effortlessly, with an astounding accuracy.

There ya go -

JB

I am going to focus on PvP angle of outdoorsman, not so much as I feel it should be the prominant focus to the ranger class, but because I think its important that some GCW tools exist in all classes and that if I want to participate in the GCW I shouldnt have to give up being a ranger. As it stands now I think Ranger could use a lot of improvements, but I am happy playing the class in a PvE context and if all I ever planned to do was PvE I wouldnt change my profession at all, I would happily wait for improvements to the class and life would be peachy. However I dont only want to PvE and thus my focus here, because I honestly dont want to untrain my profession just so I can feel useful in the GCW.

How to use Outdoorsman Skills in PvP of which I think there is a lot of potential:
Wayfaring:
- I have used conceal/maskscent in a PvP context in that I was being chased and I angled myself right past a kimogila lair I had seen earlier. The chaser then had the option of continuing to go after me or deal with the kimo thats now attacking him. It was a lot of fun, however bugs with conceal/maskscent prevent this from being used to its full extent as once a mob has agro'd someone then our maskscent/conceal is completely ignored. Fixing this would be benifital for both PvP and PvE.

- The most obvious PvP addition is the use of camo kits to 'hide' us in a PvP context. Lots of things have been suggested in the past and overall I think the most reasonable is the idea that we wont appear on radar. We are still visible, just not via radar. A potential implimentation would be something like the rifle /takecover command. Basically you must be prone, have a camo kit and you wont be able to move or if moving only at a crawl. Soon as you attack or do anything, cover would break and you would appear on the radar. I think this would fit greatly with what TH has described as their vision for combat as being able to ambush would add greatly to the tactics employed in PvP. Keeping it to a non-moving or crawling speed helps keep its power in check. I also think this should be a master level skill so that it cant be just 'dabled'. Make it so its not useable in towns if you want to keep the outdoors aspect, though personally I think hiding in a garden in town is no diff then in the wilds. Maybe it just wont work inside buildings.

- Keeping the camo kits working on NPCs is also a help in PvP in that it lets a ranger and/or his group sneak past those pesky imp/rebel patrols.

- Other changes to terrain nav or burst will have benifits to both PvP and PvE.

Frontiering:
- The best PvP addition I have seen was the idea of a combat camp, trench, or whatever you want to make it. Something that we can use as cover in both PvP and PvE. Other people described this much better then I could, so I will leave it to them.

Tracking:
- Generally this is an ok line as it stands, though I personally think Player tracking range should be greater, atleast 1000m. With the addition of vehicles and mounts 500m isnt that great of a distance and a player could be at the edge of that and then on top of you by the time you finish the tracking graphic. The range extensions to animals and NPCs as well as adding lairs to whats trackable would also greatly improve things for PvE.

Trapping:
- The obvious addition would be to make traps workable on players as well as creatures, but I think its been somewhat clear that, that is the realm of BH's not us. However I think our traps should be useable on creature type pets, ie CH and BE pets. This will be of a great assistance in PvP while at the same time clearly sticking with the outdoors/creature role of the profession. Perhaps our to-hit bonus for creatures would apply to pets as well.

Those are my thoughts, hope they fall within the guidelines you setout NRaas. I dont think any of the above are outlandish or overpowering, but at the same time go a long ways to allowing us some usefullness in the GCW and still within the context of being an outdoorsman.

Cul

Well, here are my thoughts on this. I apologize for the length, I tend to get a little long-winded at times

Ranger, the Ultimate Outdoorsman: A Vision Document

The vision of Ranger in Star Wars Galaxies as the Ultimate Creature Hunter is far too constricting and limited in scope for most of those in the profession. I propose an alternate vision of Rangers: The Ultimate Outdoorsman.

Why Ultimate Creature Hunter does not fit:

• Too narrow minded/limited in scope.


• Seems to imply we should not play a role in the Galactic Civil War, a main component of Star Wars.


• Rangers exist in the Star Wars Extended Universe (EU), and are often much more than mere creature or big game hunters; they often use their skills as a outdoorsman in military and paramilitary activities – see Sector Rangers and Antarian Rangers for just a few examples.


• Does not feel very Star Warsy.


• Makes one of our most important skills (conceal) inferior to a scout skill (maskscent).

Ultimate Outdoorsman – a Star Warsiness/Logical View:

An outdoorsman can apply their skills to many areas, including Creature Hunting and Military/paramilitary activities. This is because many of the skills an outdoorsman possesses translate well into warfare.

Ultimate Outdoorsmen can serve as masters of stealth and tracking in a humanoid battle situation. This facilitates assassin and reconnaissance roles.

Much of the Outdoorsman’s skills derive from their need to survive for extended amounts of time in the wild. These skills include:

• Learning to conceal themselves and walk unseen and unnoticed in the wild in order to help them avoid aggressive creatures and to aid in hunting for food (sneaking up on their prey).


• Learning how to construct campsites that provide many of the comforts of a town and allowing them to rest in relative safety (repelling aggressive creatures).


• Learning how to track, more efficiently hunt, and more efficiently harvest resources from creatures in order to get food to survive on.


• Learning how to construct deadly and non-deadly traps to aid in the hunt for food.

All of these survival skills work just as effectively on people (pc’s and npc’s) as they do on creatures, providing the Ranger with a role in the Galactic Civil War and in other areas not covered by the Ultimate Creature Hunter vision. Here is how these skills could translate:

• The ability to explore areas and navigate terrain better than others, together with his ability to construct and use complex camouflage to hide, gives the Ranger the ability to act as a forward reconnaissance unit for a paramilitary group or as an assassin. They can also construct camouflage kits that other members can use in a sneak attack.




• A person would have less hope of seeing through this camouflage than a creature, as most creatures (especially big game) tend to have heightened senses of smell, hearing, and/or sight compared to humanoids.


• The ability to create camps to survive in the wild would be beneficial to a paramilitary group by allowing them to heal after a battle in the middle of nowhere. This is especially useful when the paramilitary group hunts down an enemy lair in the middle of nowhere. The Ranger’s ability to construct camps that repel aggressive creatures ensures that the group can heal in safety with no interruptions.


• The ability to track creatures by natural means (footprints, scent, bent blades of grass, etc) would work just as well against people. They too leave footprints, scent, and bent blades of grass, etc just like any other creature.

From a logical standpoint, making Rangers the Ultimate Outdoorsman would satisfy most of the people in the Ranger profession, as it allows the Ranger to be: the Ultimate Creature Hunter, the Ultimate Explorer, the Ultimate Stealth Expert, and the Ultimate Survivalist.

• This is not too unbalancing in my opinion because in exchange for the wider range of skills, Rangers give up much of the power associated with other professions. A Ranger can be the ultimate stealth expert, survivalist, explorer, and creature hunter, but in a one on one fight with another humanoid or against a really powerful creature, they would lose where others would survive and win.

Ultimate Outdoorsman – a Gameplay/Practical Implementation View:

In order to realize the Ranger as an Ultimate Outdoorsman, few changes would need to be made to the skill tree, as this vision is really an extension of the creature hunter vision. Most of the ideas detailed below are found in NRaas’ State of the Profession List (SotP).

The following additions should be made to the trees: (Keep the skill trees the same as they are now with the additions outlines below)

Wayfaring skill tree:

• Make conceal work against creatures, npc’s, and pc’s. Implementation against PC’s could be a severely negative to-hit modifier on the concealed player until they are hit or changing our radar icon to white so other players will think we are an npc.


• Make the Ranger’s terrain negotiation mean something besides improved crawl accuracy. Perhaps make Ranger terrain negotiation apply to mounts as well as to crawl speed.

Camping skill tree:

• The modular camp idea outlined in the SotP.


• Make hunting blind and other new camps in development part of the modular camp design (constructing a camp with a certain module would make it a hunting blind, etc).


• Make the camps actually repel creatures and suppress new creature spawns in the area if the correct component is included.


• Make all Ranger camps stay up even if the owner goes into combat so they can act as a base of operations.

Tracking skill tree:

• Add /track.


• Allow master rangers to harvest all 3 resources from any given creature.


• Continue to allow tracking of humanoids and creatures with areatrack.


• Allow /track to track humanoids and creatures.

Trapping skill tree:

• Modular trap design similar to the modular camp idea in the SotP.




• Each trap would have a triggering mechanism, an effect mechanism, and nozzle component.




• 
  

  The triggering mechanism could be an impact detector to make thrown traps or a trip wire mechanism to make traps that are set on the ground.



• The effect mechanism could include a dot causing poison, a sleep-inducing chemical, a dizzy-inducing chemical, and other status-effecting compounds.


• The nozzle component would be a needle if you want the trap to affect only one creature, or a mist releasing nozzle if you want the trap to be an area-affect trap.

This is just a rough outline of what I would like to see. Feel free to amend and comment on this, and thanks for reading.

It occurs to me that one main reason the devs pushed Rangers into Ultimate Creature Hunters is because they wished to differentiate Rangers and Bounty Hunters. Rangers would be the Creature Hunters, while Bounty Hunters would be the People Hunters. However, I believe that it is possible to separate these professions without removing Ranger’s abilities to attack people just as effectively as they do creatures.

The Pure Bounty Hunter’s purpose is to hunt down people. Hunted people often hide in cities and in the wilderness. The Bounty Hunter picks up scout skills to handle those marks that hide in the wild. However, they do not see the value in learning how to live off the land for an extended amount of time when they can use technology to hunt their prey and capture him or her quickly. They do not build on their wilderness survival skills because of this, and because they do the Bounty Hunter no good in a city where some marks choose to hide. Instead, the Bounty Hunter learns to track their marks using Droids designed to detect humanoid life signs, and rely on their gadgets, gear, and basic scouting skills to help them survive when they do have to go out in the wild. Since they are concerned only with hunting humanoids, they program their technology to ignore creature life signs when tracking, and they rely on their superior weapons training to protect them from aggressive creatures or humanoids instead of hiding. The Bounty Hunter’s technology method of tracking has a much wider area of effectiveness since they are using droids and satellites and other technology to track their prey.

The Ranger on the other hand, is concerned exclusively with surviving for as long as possible in the wild. They do not want to rely on technology too much to help them survive, so they learn how to track and hunt the old fashioned way, using methods that work just as well on humanoids as it does on creatures. They learn how to sneak around quietly and hide in the wild without relying on technology, and since they are not as powerful as Bounty Hunters, they use this conceal skill to avoid fighting creatures they do not want to fight. They also learn how to set up camps to heal and rest in the wild, and they learn how to create traps that can kill or capture creatures they need to eat to survive. They learn the most effective methods of harvesting resources from these creatures to reduce the amount of time they must spend hunting to survive. The Ranger’s natural tracking method has a limited area of use, as track and scent fade the farther you are from a creature.

In summary, the Bounty Hunter is concerned with killing humanoids. They use technology to do it, since they are in cities as often as they are in the wild. The main thing they bring to a paramilitary group is the power they possess and the technological gear they can use to help kill the enemy.

As an outdoorsman, the Ranger is not relegated to merely killing creatures; they are concerned with surviving in the wild, and hunting creatures is just one part of that overall goal. And as an outdoorsman, the Ranger gains skills that are useful and unique in paramilitary activities, such as the ability to hide from anything (humanoid or creature) and the ability to track anything (humanoid or creature) in a small area around the Ranger. This gives the Ranger the role of a forward recon unit in a group, with the benefit of stealth to help her.

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Khyron2k wrote:

How about camps for multiple situations?

• Acamp for NPC combat. IE : An entrenched position, like with sandbags and barbed wire and stuff... that gave +10 ranged/melee defense for everyone in it. Cannot use it to heal, cannot summon pets or bikes or whatever, but stays in combat. Gives low EXP.


• Acamp for healing between battles. IE : High healing bonus, high buff bonus for doctor buffs, and you can heal BF in this camp... can't summon pets or bikes, vanishes in combat. Gives low EXP.


• Acamp for hunting creatures, like the hunting blinds - maybe allows more shots before the creature aggroes or something . Can't summon pets or bikes, can't heal you, stays in combat, Gives low EXP.


• Acamp for survival purposes. IE : Our current ones. Heals slowly, can pull out bikes and pets, vanishes in combat, but provides best camping EXP.

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Those are pretty intersting suggestions, especially the no calling pets or mounts caveat. I sure hope the squad leaders don't stumble upon the highlighted camp...if the do, may the devs have mercy on your soul.