Ranger Archive

One of the key things for all Rangers, the ranged, the melee, the critter molesters or the ninja trackers, is getting out their in the boonies and seeing the interesting bits and bobs the game has hidden away.

Exploring tends not to get mentioned much as it's one of the things we don't get any XP from and, other than adding to our badge collection, is something you tend to do 'for yourself'.

There's something really special about heading out alone into the desert on Endor, walking in all that bright flat sand and just 'being there', or heading up into the mountains on Talus looking for good snow and finding yourself in the very corner of the map where the invisible walls stop you wandering into that next valley... if you get there and feel your heart drop because you can't go any further, then you're an Explorer.

There's just no badge for that tho.

One thing I learned toady, is a majority of the Rangers here HAVE to have a high score under the killer category.

What's left to explore? Anybody with a speeder, a camo kit (bah!), and time to kill can explore anywhere they want. If weather had a detrimental effect on speeders and their owners, maybe exploration might mean something.

al-djinn'i

Master Ranger

I am not sure if it should be part of fixing ranger as it should be part of fixing the game in general but the "in the wild spawns" need to be fixed. The invisible walls should be expanded or additional portions of the in game planets should all have a location that can only be reach through space travel e.g like Kash. Once on that part of the planet there should be no terminals except maybe the explorer term. These worlds could be for the explorer. Need a inspiration buff? Better have a camp. The creatures that drop trophies or special loot should be on a random location spawning system excepting content type spawns such as the Krayt Graveyard. Way too many of the important creatures are at known static locations. How many of us honestly still need to track a GDK or the like. I just pull up my waypoints for them and generally find them with ease.

Exploration is definitely important for me personally. I wasn't excited about the new expansion until the dev chat said the world wouldn't be pathed. A whole new world to explore and new creatures to tame or battle against. Excellent!

Some of my best moments in game have been discovering the little details the worlds contain. One of my first acts as a Ranger was to run all the way to Lok volcano (before speeders or player cities). The change from orange packed dirt to white ash, and the details of the mountain itself was amazing. While I was there I snuck up on some red cons and "counted coup" (a game we used to play where you would maskscent and sneak up on the biggest baddest creature you could find and take a screen shot of you petting it). I was standing in the middle of the lava pit, trying to tame a baby snake I had found there when all the sudden things errupted from the lava. After watching them for a while I realized they were birds, streaming fire from their wings and tails. Needless to say I went to sleep that night with stars in my eyes and dreaming about SWG.

Before speeders (and POIs) went live my datapad was the pride of my character. I know many rangers who ran tour businesses, taking people to remote places on Yavin or Endor or even Corellia that few had seen before (it was a long run). I had spent most of my Scout life on Dathomir, hunting spider meat for my BE/CH husband, so that particular planet was my speciality. At one point I could navigate pretty much anywhere without using waypoints (I always followed the wrong one anyways when I used them).

But as was said, player cities, speeders, POIs, uber armor and buffs pretty much ended the exploration and survival game. I still explore but it is more for personal enjoyment and RP then because I get professional satisfaction from it. Back then we did it because we were best suited for it, best able to avoid nasties, best able to move over the terrain, etc. Ranger felt useful because you were the guy who knew things, the one people wanted to lead their group across a planet (and someone who could quickly run back to town and fetch the Doc from the cloner), your skills had a benefit. I would love to have that back, but it would be no fun for other people. Crafters are still extremely unhappy that they cannot check their harvesters on planets like Dath or Endor, or even Tat without dying, and who can blame them? I have a feeling telling them to "pick up Ranger" wouldn't go over well.

So uh, I guess Exlopration now is more of a lifestyle than a professional choice. I think it will always be an important part of the Ranger profession because the very word "Ranger" draws people who are interested in Exploration and all the other things Rangering implies. It should remain a part of the profession because otherwise these people will come to the profession and feel disappointed, no matter how many other skills we get. I think the reason you have not seen the word "Explorer" per se in our stickies is because it is implied in the word "Ranger." Most of the "Ranger" suggestions and and ideas are geared to make us better explorers, better survivalists, better Rangers. For example, the "Recon" and "Stealth" threads are concepts that most of us, I believe, think of as extensions of the exploration concept. Just as defense and combat mods are seen as extensions of the survivalist concept.

I don't think we see "Explorer" and "Combat Support" as an either/or situation. We have always been both, but like I said changes in the game made our skills in these areas less useful or obsolete. If we are revamped I know we want to end up even better at both than we were at launch (when even the developers said our initial skill set was weak and needed improving), though maybe in different ways, more suited to today's game. It is definitely very important to us.

I think that the most common reason you see a lot of people interested in the "Killer" aspect, is simply that to accomplish anything in this game from a Ranger perspective involved being able to kill things as part of the process. You want to explore - its helpful to defend yourself effectively. You want to make camps - that takes resources. You want to hunt for resources - well needless to say you have to kill something to harvest it (and trying to harvest something that isn't dead should produce instant aggro to my mind, not just an error message).

Exploration is *definitely* the top of my list for elements that interest me in Ranger. PvP is on the absolute bottom of the list for elements in the game that are of interest. I just don't care about PvP at all. I did in DAOC, but not here. SWG has a massive universe with thousands of things to see and places to go, and the amount of exploration you can engage in is amazing.

I think Ranger as a profession should provide substantial Melee and Ranged Defenses but not Offensive Bonuses. I think we should be inherently tough, but the only offensive bonuses we might be due would be in Creature combat for hunting purposes.

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Vorpaks wrote:
Exploration is definitely important for me personally. I wasn't excited about the new expansion until the dev chat said the world wouldn't be pathed. A whole new world to explore and new creatures to tame or battle against. Excellent!

Some of my best moments in game have been discovering the little details the worlds contain. One of my first acts as a Ranger was to run all the way to Lok volcano (before speeders or player cities). The change from orange packed dirt to white ash, and the details of the mountain itself was amazing. While I was there I snuck up on some red cons and "counted coup" (a game we used to play where you would maskscent and sneak up on the biggest baddest creature you could find and take a screen shot of you petting it). I was standing in the middle of the lava pit, trying to tame a baby snake I had found there when all the sudden things errupted from the lava. After watching them for a while I realized they were birds, streaming fire from their wings and tails. Needless to say I went to sleep that night with stars in my eyes and dreaming about SWG.

Before speeders (and POIs) went live my datapad was the pride of my character. I know many rangers who ran tour businesses, taking people to remote places on Yavin or Endor or even Corellia that few had seen before (it was a long run). I had spent most of my Scout life on Dathomir, hunting spider meat for my BE/CH husband, so that particular planet was my speciality. At one point I could navigate pretty much anywhere without using waypoints (I always followed the wrong one anyways when I used them).

But as was said, player cities, speeders, POIs, uber armor and buffs pretty much ended the exploration and survival game. I still explore but it is more for personal enjoyment and RP then because I get professional satisfaction from it. Back then we did it because we were best suited for it, best able to avoid nasties, best able to move over the terrain, etc. Ranger felt useful because you were the guy who knew things, the one people wanted to lead their group across a planet (and someone who could quickly run back to town and fetch the Doc from the cloner), your skills had a benefit. I would love to have that back, but it would be no fun for other people. Crafters are still extremely unhappy that they cannot check their harvesters on planets like Dath or Endor, or even Tat without dying, and who can blame them? I have a feeling telling them to "pick up Ranger" wouldn't go over well.

So uh, I guess Exlopration now is more of a lifestyle than a professional choice. I think it will always be an important part of the Ranger profession because the very word "Ranger" draws people who are interested in Exploration and all the other things Rangering implies. It should remain a part of the profession because otherwise these people will come to the profession and feel disappointed, no matter how many other skills we get. I think the reason you have not seen the word "Explorer" per se in our stickies is because it is implied in the word "Ranger." Most of the "Ranger" suggestions and and ideas are geared to make us better explorers, better survivalists, better Rangers. For example, the "Recon" and "Stealth" threads are concepts that most of us, I believe, think of as extensions of the exploration concept. Just as defense and combat mods are seen as extensions of the survivalist concept.

I don't think we see "Explorer" and "Combat Support" as an either/or situation. We have always been both, but like I said changes in the game made our skills in these areas less useful or obsolete. If we are revamped I know we want to end up even better at both than we were at launch (when even the developers said our initial skill set was weak and needed improving), though maybe in different ways, more suited to today's game. It is definitely very important to us.

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Remove 18 patches and an expansion and we can have that back.

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Phenix1050 wrote:

Exploring, like socializing, is more about the person than the profession. On wanderhome, I have a short little Bothan who's my RPing "cantina rat". All I do is go around, talk to entertainers and push spice. He's my social toon, and I have zero entertainer skills. Exploring is the same way. I can be an explorer as an Entertainer (though I might get munched).

I think pushing for us as an enhancing profession is our best bet. I certainly would hate to lose camps, which is our most "explorer-type" skill. But in the end, with vehicles and mounts, anybody can zoom around better and faster than we can walking. C'est la vie. Making us usefull in combat, as an enhancement to our "killer" side, won't stop most of us from exploring. I still love walking around Naboo sometimes, just fishing or whatever. But I know that that's my personality more than my profession. As somebody with just FS camping skills (can use a basic camp)I'd still do a lot of camping and fishing.

One of my main proposals a while back talked about camps and how they are implemented in the game, I think you hit upon the very same issue yourself here. Camps fail to have a purpose in the game in part because of the mindset of the weekend warrior camps, with a tent and a fire and maybe if we're lucky someday, even a hunting blind. Id be curious to see a platoon out in the jungles of vietnam that sets up camp and how they go about securing themselves against whatever might be out there, be it enemies or animals. Camps as military installations in a forward environment have existed as long as armies have existed and yet in the game there is really no function that makes this possible. Camps should be the next step to a base, the difference being that a base would arguably always have soldiers/defenders around whereas a camp ceases to be a camp as soon as the platoon moves out.

Sadly, theresvery little way to have "explorer" content. The explorer terminals are it-- go here and get money...wahoo. In the end, I'll be an explorer with every toon I have...no matter what my template is. But that doesn't mean I think it's the best platform to build a profession around. Like entertainers, having a real function in the game is important. Role playing and socializing is something most entertainers choose to do as well, but it's something that anybody can do, regardless of template.

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Temujin23 wrote:

What's left to explore? Anybody with a speeder, a camo kit (bah!), and time to kill can explore anywhere they want. If weather had a detrimental effect on speeders and their owners, maybe exploration might mean something.

al-djinn'i

Master Ranger

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I found a second oasis on Tatooine the other day, I had thought there was onlyone. There might even be more I suppose.

three bodies of water on Tat that I know about.