Ranger Archive

"So are we pretty much waiting untill the next cycle for the top 5 requests posts? Camps that don't disband, new traps, etc.. etc..?"

I am hoping that the Powers That Be will devise a more efficient response system after the rather sorrowful progress of this last cycle...

• They have alluded to such a change, but have not yet released their plan.

Hopefully in the new year, we will see a much improved system where we don't have to wait two months to receive half our answers.

I hate to say it, but conceal becoming useless against NPC's, is the straw that broke this Rangers back. I had high hopes for ranger to be the ultimate in combat outside of a city. As soon as you stepped into the wilderness, you we're in my territory, and if I don't like you, you better watch your back.

I know at least one of the new traps that was kicked around, the "trip wire", was specifically said to work against NPC's. That was one of the major reasons I held on to ranger for so long, for the ability to at least sneak past NPC's, or be able to kill them more efficently.

I have not used maskscent or conceal to travel ever since vehicles went to live. Tracking is still a great tool, but that is the only thing that I still use in this profession. I think that the ranger profession needs a major revamp in order to remain a viable profession.

I'm still going to come to these boards, because it is a great community to be a part of, but I will be dropping my ranger skills as I need to so I can persue a profession that can be more rewarding for me.

Hopefully future development can persuade me to return to the profession that I had very high hopes for.

First, I’d like to thanks NRaas and the Devs for their hard work in getting this list put together and back to us. For the most part, I like what I see. Now, some comments:

• I’m fine with being the Ultimate Creature Hunter, although if this is the case I don’t understand why the devs have not given us the ability to use traps on Creature Handler Pets.

• I am quite disappointed by the fact that conceal is not meant to work on npc’s. To me, this was the main advantage of the skill that made it worth the cost of resources. As far as I can tell, there were 4 perceived advantages to conceal over maskscent: the ability to hide from npc’s as well as creatures, a slightly higher chance of not being detected by a creature when they check against it, the fact that conceal lasted longer, and the ability to conceal others.




• I don’t use conceal on others very often since I chose ranger in order to play as a self-sufficient character and I don’t group very often (and when I do group, it is with other rangers in my guild).


• The chance of not being detected is not really that much higher than maskscent’s chance.


• The longer duration is not really very significant, as it is not too difficult to reapply maskscent at any time when it is safe by quickly unmasking/masking again (I in fact have a macro set up to do this).

In short, without the advantage of hiding us from npc’s, conceal just isn’t worth the cost of hunting for resources and crafting the camo kits required to use it. If this is the way it is going to be, then I would like more emphasis placed on the wishlist item in the Ranger State of the Profession to allow Rangers to conceal ourselves without the need for a camo kit. I might even go so far as to request that conceal’s requirement of camo kits be removed altogether.

I feel that without the npc-hiding ability, conceal is inferior to maskscent. The requirements of gathering resources and crafting camo kits are too high in relation to the small remaining advantages to make it a superior skill.

Ok, now that I’m done with that (I got a little long-winded I think ), I’ll close by saying that these are my only concerns with the responses, and I look forward to seeing more improvements made to the Ranger profession in the future.

Thanks for reading, and happy hunting.

"if this is the case I don’t understand why the devs have not given us the ability to use traps on Creature Handler Pets"

Thisshould bealluded to in the Scout feedback, once DeltaXi65 gets permission to release it.

"I would like more emphasis placed on the wishlist item in the Ranger State of the Profession to allow Rangers to conceal ourselves without the need for a camo kit."

Yep, I am all for an improved cost-benefit for /conceal now that it has "lost"thisadvantage...

• As I stated in another thread, I will be reviewing the SotP in the new year, and we will definitely be emphasizing improvements for /conceal.

----

As for myself, I am of two sides with the feedback:

• On one side, I am ecstatic that we now have a direction for the profession


• On the other side, I am saddened about the "loss" regarding /conceal.

I expect the forum to be brimming with responses across the board once I get back from holidays...

• Should make for some interesting reading.

And with that, I wish you all a Merry Holday season, and Happy New Year...

• NRaas signing off for the year.

Oh...my...lord. I'm biting my tongue nearly in half here. This is insane! The top 3 of the top 5 get NO mention?! Camps not repelling aggro creatures has been an issue since DAY 1! I don't care that we had some attention paid to us in August! This should have been fixed. Period.

Apparently they haven't even "looked into" the trap problems, and conceal wasn't supposed to work against NPC's to begin with. N'Raas I cannot adequetly express what a huge letdown this is. I am actually angry. The excuse that we were already paid attention to holds no water with me. We still deserve to have our bugs fixed, and to have them not even acknowledge the top 3 of our bugs is a proverbial slap in the face. We waited all of this time......for this?

My irritation knows no bounds right now. We continue to be the most incomplete (not broken) profession in the game, and it does not matter. Oh, and let me address the "ultimate creature handler role". To say it's disheartening to see the developers take up with a large contingent of Squad LEaders and label us as nothing more than hunters, is the understement of the month. We are and should be sooooo much more than this.

Am I the only Ranger upset by this turn of events? Anyone? JBMat???

Yep, I am all for an improved cost-benefit for /conceal now that it has "lost" this advantage...

If that is their choice, okay, but what is the point at all to /conceal if it will only work against creatures? A whopping 3% greater chance of not failing if the CL is low enough? It is a waste of a command. They might as well pull it and give us back +maskscent.

The only point to conceal is that it works on humanoids.

(Truthfully, with faction now working, it is pointless. Aggressives that like you will not attack, and aggressives that do not like you ignore it anyways.)

The developers have deemed our profession to be the Ultimate Creature Hunters.

Pardon me, but if humanoids are not creatures what are they? Driods? Rocks?

The main idea for conceal was to cover us from prying human eyes, to blend into the enviroment we know so well and be unseen. Please forward this question to the DEVs I would like to see what their response is.

Sweet baby monkeys, I am feeling the nerf bat pretty hard this week. See my signature to find out why

How can they even consider removing the NPC camo ability? It's insane! What does that leave us with? Let's count the magical Ranger abilities:

1) Bigger camps - Useless with player cities, since your travel is now instant and there are medics 1km from the Krayt Graveyard (3 cities on Radiant!). Additionally, vehicles make trips so fast that you can whiz on over to a city with a gaping head wound for medical attention.

2) Traps - Yawn. Sometimes I would get bold and try to nail Krayts with them, but that was before this patch. I can't find anyone who's willing to risk their entire cache of creatures in a 20-minute battle they're almost sure to lose. But that's ok! Just clone and jump on a swoop for the 1km ride back!

3) Camo - DOH!

4) Tracking - Face it, without the ability to see further and/or use it while on a vehicle, it has become pointless. Hunting groups don't want to sit and wait for a ranger to track 500m when they can cover it on a swoop without slowing down.

I've loved this profession for months. Even though it never really provided a huge advantage, I enjoyed being one of the few hunt masters in the galaxy. What we really need is more love, not "fixes" that adjust something that was possibly unintentional, but extraordinarily useful, fun, and in no way unbalancing.

Wow.

We waited all this time for a response on Ranger issues for this? It's not even our top 5 issues, it's not even the top 5 bug responses.....it's only a response to a couple of bugs.

blah.

Well, I'm not sure what in my original reply to this thread warranted a one-star, but I was looking it over and thought I should clarify my view on conceal.

I very much believe that conceal should work against npc's and even against other players somehow in pvp. I agree with many others in this thread who have stated that camouflage designed to work against creatures with heightened senses of smell, hearing, and sight should work just as well or even better against humanoids. I also agree with many others who have stated that creature hunting skills can translate directly into warfare. In short, I very much believe that the vision of Rangers as Ultimate Creature Hunters leaves room for us to be effective in humanoid warfare.

As I stated in my original post, however, if the decision has already been made to not allow conceal to work against humanoids of any type (npc or player), then I expect to see some new benefits provided and/or a reduced cost for using conceal.

So why am I writing all this? Reading over my original post, I saw that it did not make my main point clear. The most desired outcome of this correspondent program with regards to conceal to me is to change the devs' minds and make conceal work against humanoids. If they refuse to change this position however, I would expect them to make conceal worth its cost some other way.

Thanks for reading.

Just want to add my disapproval to camo not working against npcs.

The onlyreason I've stayed a ranger is higher harvests, and the abillty to travel unmolested/ sneak past things.

With bikes, terain negotiation is null, and I've never used traps except to level. Dropping everything but the harvest tree and mastering ch is looking extremly tempting.

So BasicallyConceal = maskscent? I see no difference except you need to craft stuff for it and you can apply it to others... so why not just make conceal into maskscent and stop "fooling" everyone! I mean it's just a name change and let's us apply it to others... it's not really a DIFFERENT skill.

I recall when starting Ranger that in the skill tree were descriptions of camoflauge from pets, npc's and the top PLAYERS.... dont tell me you didnt intend to have us camo from NPC's... you INTENDED to have us camo from players! Then you just ... took it away..