Ranger Archive
Thread: New Ranger From Flurry--Hello
I am a new Ranger on Flurry. (2-1-3-2). I jsut started perusing the Ranger forum and wow. There seems to be a lot of Bad Juju. Would anyone be willing to catch me up on what is so wrong with my chosen profession and who our apparently absent rep is.
Thank you in advance for any assistance,
Uziel (RECON)
Rifleman/Ranger
ranger correspondant is: Calculus Entropy, and he's actually pretty good considering he's trying to get the devs to look at a profession that is not inherently "star warsy"... we should be getting some new info soon, on the harvesting detail he has just submitted to them...
as for what's wrong... most of the information can be found in the Outdoorsman thread, stickied at the top of the forum... occasionally some of us go off on some topic or another, but there are far too many of those, best bet is to stick to the stickies...
most of the bad juju latelywas just a venting session, there's a whole lot of built up frustration in this profession... this forum really is the best for discussing things rationally...
glad to have you serraphin
Well, first let me start by welcoming you to our forum.
As for what you are seeing, let me try and clear things up a bit. Our (fellow player) Rep is Calculus_Entropy and he is far from absent. The major complaint with the Ranger profession is that it doesn't do enough. That's probably not very clear so let me explain a bit more below.
All of our skills work to some extent (yes, there are bugs but they do most of what they are meant to). They just don't add much to playing. Traps work nicely if they hit. But they rarely hit anything I fight when solo and work even worse when I'm hunting in a group. Our harvesting bonus is minimal (a Master Ranger harvests less than twice as much as a Novice Scout). Our camps do very little other than look pretty. Our Camouflage costs a lot of resources to make and provide minimal bonuses over maskscent (mainly because of bugs, it would seem). Our Terrain Negotiation mainly applies to crawling (and most people use speeders to travel, not crawling). Our /areatrack skill works nicely but has a limited range (especially in this day of the speeder) and can only track what is already there (usually not much on any planet with player cities if you are out hunting alone). It also has a few minor bugs. I could go on but I'm guessing you will see the point (especially if you consider that most of these things apply to the Scout prereq as well).
As you might see, we love our profession. But the skill point costs are extremely high without giving nearly as much effectiveness as could be expected. If you compare what we get with what a Doctor gets (as an example, mainly because they have the same skill point cost), Doctor seems like a much better use of skill points. The main reason you are seeing this manifested in complaints is because the Devs keep making changes that further devalue our profession without keeping their promise (from back in August 2003) to differentiate us further from the Scout profession. The Ranger profession is a lot of fun. But it has limited usefulness (that you mainly notice if you compare it to other professions). As a Rifleman, I use my rifle most of the time I hunt. Something similar should be true of my Ranger skills. Despite this, I almost never use traps or camps when I'm alone (the camps are good for being visible from far away when assembling a group, the traps can be fun if you are helping a much less experienced player fight stuff). I do use /areatrack but am often finding nothing. I do use camouflage occasionally but usually switch back to maskscent (because of the lack of a resource cost when the camo keeps breaking).
I hope this helps a bit.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server
, Congratulations!!
Let me explain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
For me, the biggest complaint is: it's a lot of skill points to reach Master Ranger for very little in return. And a lot of people have looked at exactly what Ranger is supposed to do ("ultimate creature hunter" according to the developers) and said - *NOT*!
We are nothing but glorified Scouts, not really that much better or *different* from them. Holocron himself, many moons ago, said in response to this very issue "In my mind this issue is of critical importance and largely trumps the rest of the Correspondent list." But what was done about this? You be the judge.
The community has come up with numerous great ideas since then and posted them in neat stickies at the top of this here forum - and has gotten squat back in retun except for an occasional "plese send in your top N issues" (where N is any number from 1 to 5).
You ask, what's wrong with us?
We make big camps that people go "oh" and "ah" over, but that's about it. Then it rains, people see the rain coming through the big solid looking cover and then go "ha ha" at us.
Camps used to be the de facto vehicle & pet launching pads of the game. I'm not saying that's a good thing but it least they *had* a use. Now that people can just pull them out of their pockets anywhere, camps are basically useless.
We can make camo kits that kreetles love to chew on and can seemingly detect with ease. We can even put them on our friends so they too can be kreetle chew toys. Or we can just not bother with camo and do as well or better because we aren't wasting time & resources on something so ineffective.
We can crawl around really fast (as opposed to regular crawling speed that is). This is actually a useful thing for the riflemen out there who like to conceal shot the heck out of everything from max range. Then again, they can stand, stay mobile, and do as good a job.
We can forage some rather odd, if somewhat useless, plants & herbs, the likes of which even a Novice Chef would scoff at.
We can harvest 30% or so more resources per kill than your average Master Scout. Unless that Master Scout has a tin box (aka droid). In which case we better have a droid too if we want to maintain our percentage.
We can track things that are within sight (ok, that's an exaggeration, but I'm on a roll here!) but can easily miss a lair full of Rancors 125m away (that haven't spawned yet).
We have Ranger traps that... Um. Well, ok, so we have Scout traps! Actually, I'm not even sure if we have those anymore either since I haven't used *any* trap in months. Can anyone verify we still have Scout traps? Thanks!
And for the last bit there, our rep is Calculus_Entropy! He's doing the best he can under the circumstances.
Ogo wrote:
Let me explain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
.Message Edited by Calculus_Entropy on 04-27-2004 02:56 PM
Kiryoku wrote:
Ogo wrote:
Let me explain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
hahahahahaha....
/wipes tear from eye
Great movie. Easily in my Top 10 favorites
.
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
Kiryoku wrote:
Ogo wrote:
Let me explain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
hahahahahaha....
/wipes tear from eye
Great movie. Easily in my Top 10 favorites
Before anyone decides to ask, it is from "The Princess Bride". If you would have otherwise asked, go watch it instead.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server
Again, Thanks to all of you for the welcome and quick summation.
Uziel (RECON), Flurry
OK, here is the hierarchy:
I am the go between the peeps and Thunderheart.
Thunderheart is the go between the Correspondents and the Devs, but can also be a direct link from the Devs to the peeps.
Thunderheart also gets to deal with every forum, sifting through the posts there.
As you can see TH is very busy with the forums. On ething that I will note is, a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes where you guys can't see. That does not mean that anyhting major is coming to us, but there is certanly discussion all the time about the Ranger and Scout profs (and all the others as well). So, do the Devs hate us? Nope. Are we high on the list of Dev priorities? Nope. So we wait....
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
OK, here is the hierarchy:
I am the go between the peeps and Thunderheart.
Thunderheart is the go between the Correspondents and the Devs, but can also be a direct link from the Devs to the peeps.
Thunderheart also gets to deal with every forum, sifting through the posts there.
As you can see TH is very busy with the forums. On ething that I will note is, a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes where you guys can't see. That does not mean that anyhting major is coming to us, but there is certanly discussion all the time about the Ranger and Scout profs (and all the others as well). So, do the Devs hate us? Nope. Are we high on the list of Dev priorities? Nope. So we wait....
Will continue to wait patiently
Ebe
To the best of my knowledge the devs seldom if ever read or respond to the forums. They don't respond to complaints in the forums regarding game mechanics either as far as I know. They do respond to in game bug/CSR tickets. Has the Ranger community ever decided to pick one aspect with Ranger and have every Ranger willing across all the servers open a Bug report/CSR ticket in game. This would send a message to developers and get their attention the only way that matters to them. With an open andtrackable ticket. We could all send our tickets to be pooled in one location. Just a thought, but right now it sounds like we are squeeking but on the wrong wheel.
Uziel