Ranger Archive
Thread: Tracking the Elusive Vision...
"Rangers should not be just creature oriented"
In this game system, they are designed to be such, and seem to have been following that philosophy from the beginning. Though lately, it has become clear that the focus has narrowed too drastically to be acceptable.
"the devs are busy."
Aye, and someday soon they will be busy focusing on our profession.
I am not worried about how long it will take to implement some of our suggestions, just that there is a possibility of them getting implemented at all. 
Now it may take several profession cycles to implement everything, so its best to get the visionset in stonenow. That way thedevelopers won't continue too far off on a tangent, making it harder to reel them back in later.
I've been on vacation for several weeks so I just went through and tried to read thousands of old posts, and I read most of them here but not all... so I appologize if I'm simply repeating what someone else said, but I want to make sure we have a true representation of what everyone in the ranger community thinks on this topic, myself included.
Hearing that the devs thought of the Ranger profession as nothing more than creature hunters almost made me cry. There are at leastfive major things wrong with this approach that don't take that much thought to figure out:
1) This vision leaves rangers almost completely out of the GCW, unless the devs are making creatures and pets (*cough* **edit** *cough*) a bigger part of the GCW than they're letting on.
2) The devs propose making all of our abilities work only on creatures, but we are the only class with such a profession - the Bounty Hunters, supposedly our equal-but-opposites, do not have to worry about their weapons only working on humans and not creatures.
3) This may not immediately make rangers into a combat profession, but it leans us way too much towards combat, and opens up more potential for us to become a combat profession. I think most of us don't want Ranger to be a combat profession
4) This vision makes it impossible to be an outdoorsman but not a hunter. (Whereas the opposite is still true - ya don't need Ranger to be a good hunter :smileytongue
5) It just doesn't make sense. Things that work on animals work on humans. Period. Humanoids are just moreintelligent animals. In many cases, the relative intelligence of humanoids is debatable.
For these reasons, I STRONGLY support the Ultimate Outdoorsman vision. This vision not only avoids the aforementioned problems with the Ultimate Creature Hunter vision, but has a number of advantages:
1) None of the other professions (save Scout, which is like Ranger Jr.) have this outdoors focus, so this vision will make it easy to not step on other professions' toes.
2) This makes Ranger useful in the GCW as support for military operations (we'd have to pick up a second profession to engage in the actual combat effectively).
3)This vision provides for a number of interesting teamwork methods between Rangers and other professions. A Ranger/Bounty Hunter team would be ultimate, for instance - the Bounty Hunter can track the prey to their region, and then his Ranger friend picks up the trail so they can pinpoint his hiding place. Ranger/SL combinations for creating camps that serve both defensive and resting purposes (much like tailors and architects combine to make the merchant tents... which only merchants can place). The possibilties are endless (or at least really vast) - and would help make the game more multiplayer.
4) Limiting our abilities to the wilderness instead of to animals is just so much cooler.
5) Ultimate Outdoorsman makes ME happier. 
Umm.....you can jump. I do it all the time. Look in your keymappings. I like to be running along and jump when I come to a little ravine.
AMEN
CavemanGamer wrote:
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.
My Vision Of The Ranger Profession: Part 1of3: The Surface & Vision:
I am sorry about the extreme length of these posts; I feel to forward and share my vision of what the ranger profession should be I must be detailed. Also this thread includes ALL the details of how to improve the profession, not just one.
Opening Comments:
There have been so many great posts suggesting ideas. I love the way the Ranger community is working together in this way, rather than arguing and harshly criticizing ideas to the point where a potentially great suggestion is thrown away due to someone’s adamant visions of what THEY want. I bow to all who have contributed and give thanks for making this profession much more involving and enjoyable than could possibly be achieved in game with the current state of the Ranger profession.
First Thoughts:
The Ranger could be defined as ‘The Ultimate Outdoorsman’, ‘A Hunter Of Unmatched Knowledge And Ability’, ‘A Soul Bound To The Environment By His/Her Love For Exploration’. All these are acceptable and widely associated with the concept of what a ranger is and should be. The purpose of this thread is to advance upon these common perceptions and clearly identify the purpose, design and advancement of the profession we all love……. The Ranger. I will attempt to forward my thoughts on how I would like to see the profession in the future though my personal visions and potential designs.
The Surface:
The surface in regards to this thread is how others and ‘outsiders’ to the profession perceive rangers within the game. At present we are often viewed as "The Advanced Scouts", "The People Who Explore The World" or "The People Who Make Those Big Camps". This should not be the case. My vision of how rangers should be perceived on the surface is:
The people who are at home in the wilderness, the ultimate creature hunters, shadows in the forests, guides of the hunting parties.
To make these perceptions reality, subtle and also major changes need to be made. One of which is the main abilities of the ranger need to be redefined and enhanced. Another is to allow our profession to accommodate other additional professions into a template that enhance our own and our character.
Inside The Mind Of A Ranger: The Vision
Delving into the minds of the ranger is next on the list and capturing how we feel our profession should be viewed internally. My views on the ranger profession looking outwards and my feelings as a ranger at present are; it’s a profession that offers little other than a few abilities that have failed to reach their potential and fail to make our class unique and defined as was supposedly a top priority to the developers.
I would like to feel clearly defined as the hunter and explorer with abilities that represent these definitions. To feel I belong in the wild, belong on the road and can create personal comforts and items from the wild, in the wild to help me LIVE in the wild.
The hunting side of this profession needs advancing somewhat to a level that when a player chooses to create a template of ranger + an elite combat profession he/she is much more effective at hunting. I don’t want to have more chance of hitting a creature as that surely belongs with the combat profession (after all the combat profession gives the skills and abilities of how to use the weapons), what we should have is the knowledge to kill creatures and animals using those abilities. We should be able to hunt more effectively doing more damage to the target, as we will know where to hit to get the most damage. Having a ranger in a hunting party should be beneficial in ways that enable to group to hunt better and attack creatures more effectively.
Also on the hunting side, traps should be useful to a ranger; they should be effective to a level that a ranger rarely fights without them, fights with them and kills the prey using them. Ranger made traps should be a formidable hunting tool that others lust for in envy and amazed by in complexity and ingenuity.
On the exploration front I know nearly all of us want some sort of evolution regarding our camps. I want to feel like my camps are helping others, the camp components are usable by others and are not just eye candy. They should be essential to a ranger’s survival, an extension of his personal survival abilities and should allow him/her to perform actions inherent to home life in the wilderness in a basic form. They should protect him/her from the dangers of the wilderness and allow group members and passers-by to feel the benefits too.
Exploration is not just about camps however, a ranger in the wilderness should be accustom to running over treacherous terrain, conditioned to ascending steep hills at great speed and traversing expansive plains at a pace to which a normal person could not imitate.
Rangers when hunting or exploring should be able to slip in and out of enemy territory without knowledge of them being there. Be able to sneak past aggressive beings in the wilderness without presenting themselves. Be able to control physical movements to avoid detection on many fronts such as sound, scent and visual.
A ranger should be regarded by himself and others as a being that respects the wild and is able to use it as a tool to survive, hunt and explore. We should feel proud of our abilities and others should view us as mighty hunters who excel in the wilderness often going unnoticed by travellers and animals.
The Position Of The Ranger Within SWG
I would like to present my ideas on where the ranger should fit into SWG. My vision of what the ranger should be is detailed above as the ultimate outdoorsman able to hunt and survive in the wild. It’s sister profession should not be scout (a more acceptable image would be a ‘stepping stone’) it should be the Squad Leader. The skills of a ranger should help others in the wild and exploration, and the squad leaders should help others in combat and exploration to a degree. If my changes were implemented Rangers would be clearly the people to hunt creatures with and explore with. The squad leaders would be the ones to go hunting npcs and pc’s with. They enhance a group’s combat ability and help them along the journey. These two professions have clear and distinct purposes but also have a close link in that they both have the ability to help others and group members. If you want the more group leader/combat leader profession take squad leader, if you want the more group guide/hunting specialist/explorer choose ranger. But if you want the Ultimate Outdoorsman Template, choose ranger and squad leader. This template should have design features within them that compliment each other and create an ultimate (semi-elite-elite) profession. You would be the Ultimate Hunters/Explorers/Group-Leaders/Survivalists and a major part of a group (but ill leave expanding on this for a later date once ranger has progressed enough).
Ok part two following, thanks for you time.
My Vision Of The Ranger Profession: Part 2of3: The Design:
Inside The Mind Of A Ranger: The Design
For the ranger profession to fulfil its potential it must be restructured and enhanced in a way that advances the existing set-up and builds upon that by adding new abilities.
Ok my vision has clearly been defined in part 1 and now I shall present the ways in which I would like to achieve those visions.
Hunting will need some extensive work if the ranger is to become unique and effective in the common perceptual trait of what a ranger is……..A hunter. To start things off we should not have any to-hit bonuses. These bonuses should be given to professions that teach in the arts of combat such as rifleman and pistoleer for example. After all, its these professions that when learnt, enable someone to use the weapon effectively and accurately. Instead we should be given a certain mod or ability that increases the damage taken by creatures with our weapons. Possible solutions are listed below:
Reduced Resistance: Making creatures have 75% reduced resistance to the weapon type you are firing at master ranger to represent your ability to hit around their resistances and target their weak spots. I feel this could be used instead in having a damage multiplier as it would seem as if we are using our creature knowledge and environment knowledge in our combat to give us bonuses rather than just making us hit harder.
Damage Multiplier: An alternative to these two solutions would be to give us a damage multiplier of say 1.25 or 1.3. This would show that we could attack more effectively using our existing skills and would represent our abilities to target a creature’s vulnerabilities.
Weapons & Hunter Abilities: The idea for a new weapon in the form of a bow or hunting rifle has been thrown around with a shot skill that is only available to that weapon and is very interesting. It would need to be a very powerful weapon or shot to be any use to us over existing weapons and maybe certain variants of the weapon could be used as you progress through the tree giving up to medium armour piercing at master level weapon. Also it MUST be creature only or non-pvp. The solution could be: at novice ranger you have the ability to craft and use a ‘Basic Hunting Bow’ and are given a ‘Hunter Kill’ shot that has very high damage modifiers. The basic bow has low accuracy and low damage and no armour piercing in relation to existing weapons. At level 1 hunting you have the ability to use and craft ‘A Hunting Bow’. This weapon is advancement over the basic level weapon in that it has higher damage output and slightly more accuracy but still has no armour piercing. Progressing through the hunting tier to level 2 you get the ‘Advanced Hunting Bow’ weapon. This weapon has higher damage levels and is moderately accurate also featuring light armour piercing. It is crafted using the standard materials however it requires a certain looted item like Woolamander Bone Fragment for the armour piercing arrow heads (better to not have charges as bone fragments are rare loot items.) At level 3 in the tier enables you to wield the ‘Hunters Power Bow’. This weapon is more powerful and has much better accuracy over previous weapons and also has light armour piercing. To craft this weapon you would need a Woolanmander Bone Fragment and an Albatross Feather for the arrow’s guide feathers and arrowheads. These two items produce the AP rating and increases the weapon’s accuracy due to high quality feathers. Level 4 would give you a new hunting shot, ‘The Bring Down’ shot. This show immobilises the creature for 10 seconds giving the ranger enough time to help group members to escape, create a time window to escape themselves or aid in the hunting process. At Master Ranger, he/she is the ultimate creature hunter, using stealth and hunting tactics to kills the prey. This box grants the ranger the ability to use the ‘Thunder Bow’. This bow is much more powerful than any existing bow and his highly accurate. It has medium armour piercing and the bow is faster than all existing bows. The name ‘Thunder bow’ is due to the unavoidable low profile sound that resonates from the bow when fired due to the advanced natural pressure launch mechanism. (Ok I’m having fun thinking up details on this weapon, ill be quiet about this and post something later advancing on this area) The weapon will be made of an Albatrosses Feather, Woolamander Bone Fragment and a new loot item such as Reptilian Flyer Vocal Pouch etc. The use of looted components would make crafting these weapons much more interesting and is a unique way to get a ranger to use his/her hunting skills to acquire the items. Would also make the rangers weapon very important to him/her as it takes them a lot of effort to make.
Timed Damage Increase: My last possibility would be to include a combat skill that activates for 30 seconds (much like aim in its purpose) and increases damage and accuracy. The bonuses would stack with existing abilities so you could pistol whip and get the bonuses on top of you normal pistol whip shot.
From these 5 possible solutions I would prefer the new weapons and skills approach as it really does enhance the hunter side of the profession to an insane level. So much more interest would be generated and people would have so much more fun hunting to the point we could reclaim our crown as the Kings and Queens of the creature hunting grounds but only along as these weapons are better than existing weapons. The resist approach is also good as it encompasses everything rangers are, in that they know how to attack a target and know its weaknesses. It would make low level creatures or creature with no resists ordinary targets however so the damage multiplier option could be considered to make a more common bonus rather than just a high level creature-hunting bonus.
Hunting with traps should be dynamic in that we should be able to use traps that best suit the environment and situation. The use of modular traps would be a very clever solution that would allow rangers to have fun preparing for their hunts by making traps best suited to their prey. Experience with using traps would play a large part in being able to select the right traps for the right prey and would enable experienced rangers to refine their techniques after they have mastered the profession to advance their hunting abilities. Traps doing ALL current status effects should be available to use through modular crafting by using some basic chassis traps. The chassis traps should have certain modules that can be swapped around to make custom traps such as snare, blind, stun etc.
Exploration is a very important area of the ranger profession and needs some refinement and advancements to support and enhance the profession. For starters the /conceal ability should have a very low chance of it breaking and should be divided into 3 sub-conceal abilities. The first being Conceal. This ability allows you to conceal yourself from NPCS and creatures and has great success in concealing the player. When concealed using this method your character’s face and body (underclothes) appears to have camouflage applied to it (a lot of us wanted this for a long time). The next conceal method is Advanced Concealment. This ability takes you off the radar in pvp and gives you the bonuses that normal conceal does. When using this ability the player appears to be wearing a camo kit such as the sniper clothing in the military with wildlife in its design and can only be used at master level. The third and final conceal ability is Group Conceal. This ability is essentially a cost effective way of concealing a full group. It has the same effects as the basic conceal ability but provides the ranger with a cost effective solution when camouflaging over 6 people. Available at wayfaring 2.
The last section continues on the exploration factor into camps, exploration in the game world and the use of rangers in groups. Thanks to everyone who has read this far.
My Vision Of The Ranger Profession: Part 3of3: The Design:
Inside The Mind Of A Ranger: The Design……… cont
Area Tracking has become a major feature of the ranger profession and was a very welcomed addition, however fundamental flaws keep it from achieving its true potential. The main problem is the radius of the track is limited to 500m at present; only a few seconds ride time on a vehicle to recon. A much more acceptable 1000m radius scan would make this ability much more vital to rangers. The ability to locate spawn points would be welcome and could be included by calling this spawn track ability ‘Migration Tracking’.
Track ability we are told is coming, but how long we will have to wait remains to be seen. Until then ill forgo presenting my design as it will most likely be the same as the developer’s design.
Over the months many people have submitted very interesting and unique ideas on how we could shift the profession forward in regards to the camping line. The one very detailed and exciting camp idea that stood out from the rest was the Modular Camps V3 posted by NRaas. I had grand designs of different types of camps and how they should be implemented but this collection of ideas really hit me full on in the face. I was instantly drawn into the details of it and amazed by how good this system would be. Therefore anyone who has not already reviewed this design, should do so now with my full recommendations. This system would be the perfect platform to re-launch the whole image of the ranger profession. If you wish to see the details of this superb post please use this address link:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=31335
Terrain negotiation and run speed are failures in my eyes in regards to the advancements from master scout to master ranger. I think we can all say the ability to run up hills as a master scout are only slightly less than those of a ranger and I fail to make up any considerable ground over a master scout over a hike in the mountains. To enhance our profession I would be ok with keeping the terrain negotiation mods the same and not having a big difference in up hill speed in exchange for the increase in running speed our profession rightly deserves. Even a little increase to that of mounts for example would be significant enough to distinguish us as the wayfarers and explorers of the galaxy, something that is extremely lacking in the profession so far.
Last and certainly now least is the ranger’s effectiveness in groups. At present we can offer nothing than to pitch tents and conceal everyone (costly). Advancement in our profession should include changes and enhancements of the things we can bring to the group, whilst respecting the squad leaders out there by leaving their profession’s uniqueness in tact. Camps would be a very good way to increase the ranger’s status as a group member especially with the Modular Camp V3 proposal. With those changes, demand for our services would increase and surely the enjoyment level of knowing you are contributing to the group in a unique way would advance this profession greatly. An ability to spawn creature lairs or mission in the field (or track them in game context) would be a very welcome addition. It would allow rangers to get missions for the group out in the field not require them to return to the terminal to get them. A ranger would be very powerful addition to a good hunt then. Other group based abilities have been detailed within this 3 part post including the group conceal ability and better area track ability. All of which would add to the ranger’s group appeal.
Thank you so much if you have read my ramblings and hope you liked my collection of ideas. I just hope that they will do some good or maybe bring to life the dev’s imagination drive.
Thanks again.
Thor