Ranger Archive
Thread: Conceal V2.0
I don't pvp probably never will, not my thing. So taking away the conceal vs npc and making a pvp conceal makes me lose out.
Why not make the pvp conceal require master ranger and the NPC/animal conceal remain like it is?
I want them both, I want it all.
and there is no reason why we should not have it. The real cost of making changes to the conceal skill (ie :Developer time) will be the same no matter what we choose. I'd rather have a skill that is everything it should be than a half-arsed stopgap untill the next time they come round for a character balence pass on ranger.
but if i have no choise and _must_ settle for a crippled skill I say modify the old one.
modify it into something that stops me being hit so easily.
Gwee-Godo wrote:
New system. Old does not work anyway so scrap it. I am tired of being a glorified scout and want something unique.
Agreed 100%. New system.
Anything to make /conceal worth using in game.
SquidWalker, those are brilliant ideas.
Conceal in cities:
Realistically, the same skills and knowledge is used when hiding in a city as when hiding in the woods. You get cover and stick to the shadows. But I do absolutely think that it should be harder or have less of a benefit in cities than when in the wild.
On /sneakAttack: I went and read up on the history of the U.S. Army Rangers a few days ago, and learned that a big aspect of the early Rangers was stealth, sneak attacks, ambushes, getting away unseen, and raids. Basically, fightin' like the Injuns. The /sneakAttack ability belongs to no other profession as much as it does the Ranger (at least, based on that idea of what a ranger should be, and the concealment abilities). I agree with TerasBatham about the progressive levels of the ability.
Another thing I got while doing history research was the use of shadows for combat stealth. Seems this was a staple of the early Army Rangers, and fighting at night was preferred. I think that for Rangers to be affective in humanoid/PvP battles, they would have to learn to use the shadows at the same time they learn to use camouflage to blend into the surroundings.
The time of day should therefore have a direct affect on concealment. Perhaps moving from -20 to the Ranger's effective skill during daylight hours up to +40 when shadows fall (arbitrary numbers for example's purpose). Combine this with a skill penalty for city concealment and Rangers will see a very marked usefulness for the skill at night, while being mostly unable to use the skill during the day. In my opinion this fits with urban warfare in every way. Leave city combat to the Commandos during the day, but Rangers rule the night.
Another idea might be to actually allow /conceal to be constant, whether it's broken or not, but have it's success constantly checked.
In other words, you move up to something/someone and get success checks for as long as you move (If you stop and you weren't seen, you won't have a chance to be seen again until you move). An NPC humanoid can succeed in seeing you despite the concealment, but a few seconds later he might "lose you" as you move to a new position. In game mechanics, this would mean that the NPC probably stops moving and looks around, trying to find you again, until either you move and he gets lucky and sees you, or he loses interest and walks off.
In PvP this could have the effect of dropping you from targeting, minimap, and overlay map detection, and making your name disappear. But, this would have to be directly proportional to your distance from someone else. Checks against your concealment would be made on the enemy player's end. Past a certain range it's not likely that they'd "see" you at all (by this I mean, your name would not appear above your head, you wouldn't show up on the map, and they couldn't target you without using their mouse, but you would still appear visibly in the gameworld). If they succeed in their check to see past the concealment, they get a system message saying that they've detected a hidden enemy, and the concealed Ranger now appears just as everyone else. But as the Ranger moves he "finds new concealment" and forces the enemy to make another check.
They might no longer have the Ranger targeted if they fail the check, forcing them to target manually, or get close enough that the concealment is absolutely ineffective. (Something like a range modifier of +50 @100m, +20 @50m, -200 @5m) Combine all of this with the darkness modifier and city/wilderness modifier and Rangers would be a horrifying opponent in the woods, but would have no reason to try concealment while in a city during the day.
I fully agree with the New system. I think the current ranger skill tree gives too little when it comes to PvP.
Just an after thought, and it is off thetopic of conceal, put how is /track coming along?
With the reading of some others on this I have a new revision for the "city" part of conceal. Our conceal still works in cities, but less effectively. Remember the effectivness is based on your camo skill, and is what determines if someone spots you and thus breaking your /conceal. I say when we are in a city boundary(inside where it says "you have entered Coronet") there is negative modifier to our camo skill. Thus making more likely someone will spot us, and anyone we applied /conceal to, and break the /conceal. Once the /conceal is broken, we no longer have that defensive mod.
I understood the shadow thing, dayligh night time thing. But I'm trying to think of playability as well. Not to mention the fun factor. It would much less useful and I'm imagining not much fun if /conceal only worked in cities at night. So I'm taking the different modifier idea for daylight night time. Non PvPer wont really care about it in the cities, there are very few agro NPC in the cities. It's mostly for PvP play. So lets try to keep it playable and fun.
"I say when we are in a city boundary(inside where it says "you have entered Coronet") there is negative modifier to our camo skill."
What about places like fort tusken or the nightsister stronghold. In that type of a place where there are tons of mobs around you should get negatives too.
Hey, squidwalker, I'm curious how your /sneakattack would work in pvp, it seems to be perfect for creatures and npcs. I just got through reading it again. If the enemy player sees you on screen, they can simply initiate combat and your /sneakattack is lost. It would require you to really not be seen on screen and some hit and run tactics.Howwould you haverangers still be on screen yet unattackable while concealed? Theuntargetable idea? The white dotinstead of redon radar?How could thatwork?
I still can't help but think that some other profession could be more suited for city /conceal. I mean think about smugglers, wouldn't it be more logical that a /conceal in cities would allow them to....smuggle better. Or the commando, I always think of rambo, considering the urban warfare. Also, there is plenty to do out in the wilderness that would be fun with the proposed /conceal and /sneakattack. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE being able to /conceal in cities, but keeping in with our "vision", balance, and fairness to other proffessions, I can't help but see both sides to the argument. The ideas so far mentioned do make sense tho, so we need some nraas help here.
New System!!!
Come on devs!!! Give us something to help us participate in this GCW you keep pushing!!
And I don't mean by making us an ueber slave/grinder for the rest of the community!! If this GCW is supposed to be so important to this game, then why leave out one of the most popular combat roles in rpg? Or in any space combat series or movie I 've seen for that matter. It seems that in each of these, the "Ranger" is like the elite space fighter or at least a capable one!! Heck, read your own freaking knowledge base and you will see countless references to various Rangers in fighting roles. Some work as guards, militia or others helped Jedi, but they all seem to be able to handle themselves in combat, not just creatures.
Instead of trashing the hard work the devs have done with the tree (altho they were a bit lazy in developing it by just extending maskscent to npcs -couldn't even find time to design a new icon), I'd like to see the functionality change.
If they don't want to give us an invisibility function due to exploiting or too much power(even tho DAOC seems to have the invisibility well-figured out by balancing it with assassins), then maybe we can have something a bit less "powerful".
To keep in line with the conceal motif, perhaps it's functioncould be changed to reduce our detection range on the radar. In other words, players would not be able to see us on their radar until we were close. The range of detection could decrease as you go up the tree, with a huge bonus to Master Ranger.
Maybe Master Ranger could almost be on top of a player before they get detected, or even better, Masters get the ability to "conceal" their group. This would allow "surprise attacks" (or "sneak attacks" ala SquidWalker) when doing raids, etc. You can bet Rangers wouldfinally bea useful additionin faction raids. (They will probably say this is something left for squad leaders.)
If the devs want a counter to this, then give a /reveal command to another profession that doesn't get much say-so in this ongoing GCW conflict.
Whatever they do, they better do something useful and fast or this profession is gonna be a "could have been a contender" one that folks only master for their holos. I've been a staunch supporter for the profession since the beginning and have no immediate plans for dropping it - even for holos, but I have to admit, it is getting harder and harder not to think about learning something a bit more useful to the game.
Terrain negotiation has been nullified with the introduction of mounts/vehicles so that skill is useless. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, after all, this is Star Wars!! But if you're gonna make a skill obsolete, at least replace it with something new!!
No one cares about our camps beyond the basic scout camp because no one uses them for anything other than popping mounts, pets, or vehicles. (When's the last time any of you have put up an HTFB beyond grinding or showing it off every now and then?)
And finally, our traps are useless for anything other than grinding the tree or soloing. Most traps don't do anything so we make crates of p-darts and glow-wires and use those for soloing. And I rarely see anyone use a trap when hunting in a group - you don't need them when fighting most mobs, and the ones you could really use them for (krayts, etc.) they won't work on.
So yeah - my vote goes for something new!!