Ranger Archive

I think everything else works pretty good just fix the harvesting reduction, please, please, please.

-- YP

I have been exclusively using conceal all of today. I have tested it on both corellia and talus on the lowca server and the main problem I have found is the inconsistancy of it. I was lucky enough to get enough resources to make enough kits to last me all day,and all tomarrow. One charge of the camo kit will work great, I can walk up to NPC's and /tag them and walk a way with out a second glance, while another will break and the NPC will go aggro against me before I even enter weapon range. I have found that it is working really well against animals (for me at least), but it is really inconsistant when it comes to NPC's. The problem I see with the tracking, besides the obvious bugs that have been listed numerious times, are it's range..in my opinion that should be increase to 1000m because our personal radar can be increased to that range. The second problem I have with tracking is using it in low to no traffic areas..unless some one has ran through the area recently it will often times show that nothing is in the area, however as you move a hundred meters andthings start to spawn. This is a problem for me because I prefer to hunt in the low to no traffic areas of the map so I have less of a risk of killing all the animals that are a part of someones mission. Other than these issues I am having relitively few problems with the new changes.

Jebus -lowca-

Master Ranger

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BabyRancor wrote:
My personal responses to your post -

Again I disagree. Conceal doesn't break against creatures - if they see through it it stays on. There are some question marks as after it supposedly wears off you still get messages saying you are concealed. The duration is quite short though, and it seems that since the skill is different, it is actually less effective than MaskScent for a low level Ranger.

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Conceal does break, against creatures and NPC's. If they see through it, it comes down, just like maskscent, and like maskscent, it takes 30 seconds to reactivate. As an example, I crawled up to a Dragonet and it's baby(something I was never able to do with Maskscent), tamed the baby, stored it, then brushed up against the parent as I walked away from it(and it started to crawl away from me.) all of a sudden I get the familar creature has detected you despite message, and thought it was the dragonet...it wasn't. It was a carniverous dewback further out and it was charging to my location. I tried to reaply conceal but it said I had to wait, then the dewback went aggro, followed shortly after by the dragonet..I was able to burst run away up a hill and get away.

Mask Scent works! But it does not work as well as it did before the patch! I thought at first it was bugged as well, but now that I think about it, it was not bugged at all. When a creature aggroed you (YES, while your scent was still masked), it was because it noticed movment, and went to investigate. And if you were still lingering in the spot it ran to check out, it would NOTICE that you were still there. The trick was to keep moving until it lost interest.

Conceal worked on NPC's. However, it worked on NPC's that you could take out with only Marginal Combat Skills. Tougher NPC's? Will break it every time, or see right thru it. As Novice Rangers, yes. But C'mon, MASTER RANGERS are pulling AGGRO left and right. Even with Mask Scent, as susceptible to frequant breakage as it is, if FAR more reliable than the Conceal ability is. I like a Challange, but but pulling and entire group of Nightsister from 60+ meters away, is pretty rediculous.

The Harvesting of Animal Resources is, well, a joke. Even grouped, you would have to beg harvests from other group mambers to gather enough resources to mkae more than one bloody camp, and even more so to make a Cammo Kit (again that is ill effective).

Tracking could be improved, but for now, it will work fine. at least it does not get us killed. However, you practically need to be in Eye's-View of a critter before you can bloody well track it.

Camp Costs? Brilliantly done. Although, I think that the High Tech Field Base Camp Kit taking Bone and Hide rather than Polymer? <Chuckling>"Yup! Them Floating Chairs and that Chess table was made from the HIGHEST quality of bones that you can find here on Naboo!" <--- I think my point is made.

I would only ask that Fishing be sped up. I mean for those of us who are finding it a necessity for either Guild Members or Friends, it is WAY TOO bleeding boring, and the rewards too SHALLOW for us to spend HOURS gathering even the small quantities that people require to actually do ANYTHING with.

I hear "Be Patient" and "Give it Time". I aslo hear "there are not that many people on the TC that can test these changes". well, I AM patient. I AM giving it time. Id does not mean that I cant post a proposal or gripe abut the changes, right? And as for the latter? Who in their righ tmind is going to create a Character on the TC, and spend the CONSIDERABLE amount of time that it takes to RE-BUILD a character to Ranger Status to test the bloody changes within the month that it takes between the changes are prpposed to the TC and the time it goes live? I have WAY TOO much invested in my current Character adn things that need to be done to jump over to an even LESS RELIABLE server and start anew. So unless you are one who is currently doing this, or until they will allow those that subscribe to the TC to create even a Novice Character in Hybrid Professions, IT IS NOT BEING TESTED to the degree that it NEEDS TO BE before being released to Live Servers. End of story.

Feagan Martin -- Master Ranger / Master Creature Handler / Pistoleer -- Bloodfin Server

Maskscent seems to be working pretty well for me (ranger-2/2/3/2). Seems to be fairly reliable and the exp rolls in pretty quick with it.

Harvesting is really a kicker though. Besides the reduction taking place, the increased material requirements on top of having to gather non-trivial amounts of components for camo kits really hurts. I don't mind having to gather stuff for the kits, but on top of the general reduction, it slows things down considerably. I suggested on the scout board the idea of doing a "auto-split" similar to EQ with respect to harvested resources. Seems that had they done this it would have a) given guaranteed loot to all scouts/rangers in the group and b) would have eliminated any problems associated with the speculated addition of resources to the economy. I don't recall any particular complaint of under/over availability of organics prior to the patch. Just a heavy dose of people getting ripped trying to share harvests in some organized manner. The current "solution" seems to have introduced an entirely new economy/balance problem. I wonder if its going to take more work to code for all the impacts of the new system vs the work to code a selective auto-loot.

As for the /areatrack ability, it suffers from the same problem I thought that would preclude even introducing this skill: dynamic spawns. Once you get out about 2km from a population center (if even that far) there is nothing to track. As an intro skill to the targeted version, I suppose it's ok. However, I haven't seen any real boon to myhunting efforts.I was hoping to get a leg-up on the explorer missions. However, the critters I need to hunt aren't typically found wherepeople are likely to be moving with any regularity, i.e. nobodyto "create" a spawn. Nothing spawned= nothing to track.

As for exp for fishing.. I guess its better than nothing. At the rate you actually land a fish, I can't see this moving the exp bar any faster. Fishing is just too slow and the current exp returns too small to realize any real benefit.

Machs N'ihx - Kettemoor

BabyRancor - A creature seeing through conceal does break it for me.

From reading this board it almost looks like the bonuses are not applied properly as you move up the tree to master. I am getting lots of aggro from creatures that never aggroed me before, both with maskscent and with conceal.

Delta when I say "never aggroed me before" I am referring to the time before the 1st big patch which broke maskscent by giving no xp etc. Anything white to me or less would NEVER break maskscent before. Now light blue breaks it, even a lone light blue. Previous to that 1st big patch I had to get pretty close toeven red mobs for it to break. Now I am getting aggro from across the screen. Also I am getting xp for kreetles, before the "no xp for maskscent patch" I did not get xp for low level mobs.

I am bothan master ranger with +115 camoflauge and I am better off not using either skill at this point

Guys,

I think some of you are misunderstanding me when I'm talking about the introduction of hides and bones into the economy.

You are all focusing on the micro - what affects you, and you alone.

I'm trying to talk about that macro - what affects all of us. Maybe you can't find a group that will let you have all the hide and bone, but some people will. And that's a lot of hide and bone.

Keep in mind - because the reduction (if it is really a reduction, or simply a bug) affects us all, no one has an advantage here. We're all in the same boat. We all need to find ways to match what we were making before.

And I find it hard to believe that all of us who have played long enough to hit Master Ranger or something along those lines don't have enough in game friends to help them complete their orders, etc. One of my PA members gave me 5k worth of hide and bone last night - just because I asked.

I will stress this again - we need to find out if the overall reduction is a bug or intentional first. This is, in my mind, the most important issue before us caused by this patch.

B

"I will stress this again - we need to find out if the overall reduction is a bug or intentional first. This is, in my mind, the most important issue before us caused by this patch."

- Shouldn't you be able to find this out easily? or is the communication between you and the Devs only one-way communication? if you have any way to get some answers from them it shouldn't be too hard for them to answer if it's intentional or not.

Delta... You've said numerous times that we must find out if it's intentional or a bug but you sound like you hope that it's intentional. You sound like you're preparing us for the worse and that we should already be thinking of ways to deal with the inevitable news that we are stuck with what we now have. And not only that, but it's a good thing.

I agree with you on every other issue from /maskscent to /area and I agree that the devs are heading in the right direction but just need to tweak and adjust a few things to get it right.

I also understand that the group harvest has been something you fought hard for as the Scout Correspondent, and it was a great accomplishment, but all I'm saying is it needs retooling. As it currently is implemented, many Rangers like myself feel as though our primary source of income has been severly undercut, we're not much better than a master scout with regards to harvest, and that anyone who's playstyle it was to be a harvester primarly has been nullified. And many harvesters do solo and should NOT be forced to group, although I disagree with you that the change forces us to group more often, but rather solo further for longer periods. But the ultimate answer is whether grouping or solo, we'll never get back to where we were.

I still say that every unhappy Ranger should PM Holo tomorrowwith a brief message stating they are upset with the harvest change and that we want to know if this was intentional or a bug. Be polite, be courteous and be respectful, but let's get an answer first thing.

Japhy,

Trust me - I'm not at all happy with this stealth nerf, and I'm hoping that they tell us that its a bug and they're working on it.

Like I've said before, I can handle nerfs, I can handle changes, etc. What I can't handle is a lack of communication, and that's what I'm more angry with than anything else.

I've already PMed Holo, and I'm going to send an email to Xahn and Q as soon as I know they are back from vacation.

I do want us to be ready if they tell us that the reduction was intentional, because we need to work together to get it changed back to what it was before. There were enough changes and hide/meat/bone sinks added with this update that an across the board cut was premature, in my opinion. So I want it fixed as much as you do.

But I don't want to fly off the handle and scream NERF! when it could simply be a bug.

B

I feel a whole lot better reading that Delta. Thank you very much.