Ranger Archive

I would love to be able to make a living on selling hides/bones/meat, but I gave that up long ago and make more money with less effort other ways. The harvest issue is still a problem for rangers though. Our new conceal traps usually require 1 or 2 quite rare resources from each planet. I spent about 30 minutes getting help from my artisan friend setting up flora harvesters on naboo and then I spent abotu 6 hours trying to gather 1000 of each needed camo kit resource. I still only managed to get 500 herbivore meat as only Dappled gualamas and gnorts are common enough and drop the right resource. The Dappled gualamas give about 20 and the gnorts 6... it takes me more time finding the hide/bone/meat for the camo kits than it take me to fix the flora.

And on top of this the conceal kits are pretty useless. I'm a master ranger and decided to try one out by walking into a group of maulers. Fantastic I thought, no one spotted me... but when moving away from them it broke (why?) and all aggroed on me.

The last day before patch was my best hunting day ever, I think I might have gathered like 20-30k resources that day, or even more..

And you're wondering why they're taking resources out of the game? I don't harvest that much in two weeks of play.

"The last day before patch was my best hunting day ever, I think I might have gathered like 20-30k resources that day, or even more.. "

As said, this was me and a few friends of mine hunting big game ALL day. but let's compare it to in-organics.. say you have 6 Medium harvesters put on 75% sources then you get 1800 per hour. times 24 hours is 43200 resources.. that is one man putting some harvestors out, and doing NO WORK.. we were like 3-4 guys working all day to get that amount of resources..

I can confirm with a 100% guarantee that harvesting across the board was reduced by at least 40% (even while solo).

If SOE stealth-nerfed this ... rather than being a bug ... I will have lost all respect for them. Funny how they keep changing things like this and don't communicate it -- let alone the fact that their internal testers don't catch things like this (and the sheer fact that Mask Scent and Conceal barely work at all now).

At first I didn't like it, but now it doesn't bother me so much. I make most of my money hunting and selling hides and other resources. If I am getting fewer hides, so is my competition. If fewer hides are hitting the market, then my prices will go up. Groups aren't really a threat because they tend to go for the missions and just havest whatever drops while I tend to go for a specific type of resource. The only part of these changes I don't like are not being able to group with my pets, but hopefully this is something they will fix soon. Probably sooner than they will fix the pet pathing.

Last week before the changes I received 3 separate orders on 1 day for 12,000 bristley from one customer, 18,000 wooley from a second... and 35,000 leathery from a third. I laughed and worked my butt off to fill the first order and turned away the other two (despite that they were long term and good customers).I simply could not provide that many hides in a reasonable amount of time.

Then I went on a business trip and didn't play for a week...

Upon my return...well, I gotta just laugh. If I get similar orders from skilled tailors and artisans then they are just out of luck. Whether or not this was an intentional change by the devs, it has taken some of the fun out of running a hide/meat/bone business. Perhapsboth the market and Ican adapt, but right now I just don't feel like playing for the small reward. And since I enjoy soloing with pets and the harvest for this play style has been mega-nerfed... well, the game just lost some of its original charm for me. Oh I did notice that as long as I keep my pets ungrouped that I can improve the harvest... but then I run around grouping and ungrouping them repeatedly... ungroup, kill critters, harvest... group... to see if everyone is ok... rinse and repeat. Certainly I have these commands hot keyed... but role playing the changes is crazy, and its not fun either.

My 2 credits for the correspondant/devs...

We have to keep focused on this and not allow the change to hold. They need to re-evalute the 60% group harvest and come up with something different. Perhaps we should all write a short message to Holocron and also make crafters know how this is going to effect them.

Less material to buy,more expensive when we have it resulting in higher prices, resulting in fewer sales for them especially with the mission payout decrease. All around, a very bad decision by SOE and very poor planning.

I wanna put my head through the monitor whenever I harvest. On a mob I would normally get 49 hides from, I know get around29 solo and 17 or 18grouped with just one other person.

Japhy,

The changes are going to hold - simply because there are far more people who are benefitting from them than are hurting from them.

We do need to get a definitive answer from the Devs on whether or not the apparent across the board cuts were intended or a bug - that's where our focus should be right now.

B

If it was a bug, why should they hold?

And there is no reason some sort of compromise can't be reached or some retooling of the 60% group harvest be retooled so Hunt Masters aren't shafted! I was loving my character but this has completely drained me of any enjoyment for the style of Ranger that I play(ed). I'm also discouraged that the correspondent is on the other side of the aisle with regards to this issue.

Hunt_Master, you hit the nail on the head. The devs obviously do not know the market for hides, bone and meat as well as we do, because I can tell you there is absolutely no overflow of any of them in any of the planets I sell on, Coronet, Naboo, or Tat. And there isscarcityofsurplusanimal harvests that are actually good. For example, I have never been able to keep Tatooine wooly hide on the market at 5 credits per unit, and I see people selling them for 7 or 10. On the other hand, the markets are flooded with well-priced water, petrochems, and inorganic minerals.

Now, though, well, getting half of what I used to is going to be bad for my customers. I feel sorry for the novice artisans just starting out with 250 credits and the ability to maybe kill a kreetle, if they're lucky. Now they can buy um, nothing. After making half my money off the resource markets for 6 weeks I can tell you that we will not have a surplus of goods, we will have a scarcity.

Also, this doesn't effect just the economy and novice artisans. It will affect prices in the game as a whole. And not only that, but my group relies on me to get herbivore and avian meat so our medic can make stims. I really on the medic to keep me alive in combat. In a group of elite players, far less people have scouting skills than in a group of newbs, where everyone has it. That's how it's supposed to work out, right? We get better individually but more interdependent as a group.Well now I have to work twice as long to get the same amount of meat. Doh, guess that wasn't thought out, just like nobody bothered to go into their own game and observer the resource market situation.

-- YP

The amount a harvest yields should have remained the same. Tell me how two people can get 120% of an animal's hide.

If we simply had an option to switch harvesting on, off, it would have answered the ninja-loot problem and preserved the abilities of a solo ranger, which most rangers prefer to be, because they're frigging rangers, we like to be out all by our lonesome.

-- YP

<<I'm also discouraged that the correspondent is on the other side of the aisle with regards to this issue.>>

After a little time to think tonight, I want to apologize to Delta for the inclusion of that line. I know you alerted the devs to the issue and I'm sure you did it without bias. I was equating it in my mindto a union shop steward bringing an issue to the company but didn't agree with the complaint, and that was wrong of me. I think Delta is a fine Scout representative and intellegent poster and Ranger. We might not see eye to eye on this issue, but he's a stand up correspondent nevertheless.

I'm just way overheated with this topic. You probably wouldn't notice, but I haven't complained about one other issue (not even the pistol nerfs).. I usually can deal with any change or any nerf, but this one touched a nerve because it strikes at the heart of what I do in the game. I was going to be a squad leader for pete's sake and was so enticed by the role of hunter,that I decided to become a full fledged Ranger.

And I'm sure if they ever nerfed the amount of minerals extracted by 50% there would be cries of anguish all over. And miners don't even have to work the whole time for their goods. So when Hunt Master says he collected 20K of hides by hunting all day, think about a miner that can get that amount of steel by setting up a few harvestors in a decent spot and then walk away and do something else. I can't believe someone followed up with that that's the reason we got nerfed.

I believed I said all I can say on the subject (hehe). Doesn't mean I'm done with it, because I'm passionate about seeing my playstyle restored once again. These boards are the only voice I got and I'm using them, but I won't be postingnearly as much on the subject as I have. If in a month there's still no change then I will consider where I'm at and if I want a change in profession. Holo says they really want to see us happy, there's only one thing he needs to do to make me do a little dance.

I agree with Johao'Carl Baptis, this change will drive prices down as there will be an oversupply. This will probably make the solo hunt-master worthless (which was my main way of playing the game). As an example, tonite I saw 10 people in a group killing creatures, all 10 had harvesting skills. That means for each kill the group got 600% more than a single kill before. They were making about 15k herbivore meat an hour. This is *much* *much* *much* faster than was possible before. If they had 20 scouts in the group they could have made 30k per hour with the same amount of kills. They were doing this as they all belonged to the same PA and they wanted resources for their doctor/medic/chef's. They pretty much said that they would no longer need to purchase organics from the bazaar etc, as they could get them much faster now at no expense.

Like a lot of things in SWG, it sounded good in theory, but for many people it will have horrid effects in practice. Specifically those who made their living hunting for components.