Ranger Archive

• 3. Do the developers consider any part of the "Outdoorsman" proposal viable? If so, which parts might possibly be implemented in the future?

My number one pick....Very good umbrela question....however it is very likly they will give a stupid answer like "We like the swiming idea" Or "Traps are slated to be adjusted in publish 15".....

I would much prefer a question along the lines or "what changes are being considered for rangers right now?"....May throw us a few small tidbits....i dunno

My other choice is number 9.....not that i think it matters much

Thanks for this Calc...here are my suggestions to be reviewed.


First Question
Qoute from Holocron:

"Rangers have very little that differentiates them from scouts. Once Master Scout is reached, Ranger is essentially more of the exact same thing."...In my mind this issue is of critical importance and largely trumps the rest of the Correspondent list.

When this was posted, in August, it was very true, now in April, very much is still the same. Most people see the only useful line of Ranger to be the Tracking tree. Is it in the Developers' scope to give Rangers a much more creative and dynamic system for creating custom traps(The ones at Master Ranger level affecting PC's in PvP with status effects), camps with variable uses and a camouflage system that is noticably better and more useful than mask scent?

The way I see it, this answers three questions in one. The heart of our debate centers around the usefulness of camps/ traps/ camo. By introducing a level of experimentation, customization and variation, we can really do some good things.

My second question to be considered:

Rangers, are supposed to excel at hunting and killing creatures, while it may be unbalancing to give Rangers innate combat skills, Rangers would like to have a Ranger specific weapon that would enhance their ability to take down a beast in the wild, some of the proposals have been the Trap Launcher or the High Tech Bow. While these items mesh with most Rangers' vision of their profession, does it correlate with the Dev's vision as well?

Message Edited by AgonThalia on 04-23-2004 09:21 AM

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theshagnasty wrote:
Did we actually get any response last time we did this, I'm sure that we have been through this process before..?

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This is the new way of doing those last questions over. It seems that it was too big to handle and that TH is breaking it up into a question every other week from every profession (half one week, half the next). Rather than picking which question to answer from the old lists, he is letting us ask the most relevant question at the current time.

Also, I would argue against asking the Outdoorsman question. The Devs will almost certainly answer with something like, "We like many of the ideas in that proposal. We can't say much about it until we have time to revamp Rangers but nothing is set in stone." Pretty much they will deflect the question by saying that Rangers don't have to be Ultimate Creature Hunters but that it might end up that way anyway. Leaving us exactly in the same position as we are now. Questions like these will really be more useful if we are ever in the line for a revamp.

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

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AgonThalia wrote:
Thanks for this Calc...here are my suggestions to be reviewed.


First Question
Qoute from Holocron:

"Rangers have very little that differentiates them from scouts. Once Master Scout is reached, Ranger is essentially more of the exact same thing."...In my mind this issue is of critical importance and largely trumps the rest of the Correspondent list.

When this was posted, in August, it was very true, now in April, very much is still the same. Most people see the only useful line of Ranger to be the Tracking tree. Is it in the Developers' scope to give Rangers a much more creative and dynamic system for creating custom traps(The ones at Master Ranger level affecting PC's in PvP with status effects), camps with variable uses and a camouflage system that is noticably better and more useful than mask scent?

The way I see it, this answers three questions in one. The heart of our debate centers around the usefulness of camps/ traps/ camo. By introducing a level of experimentation, customization and variation, we can really do some good things.

My second question to be considered:

Rangers, are supposed to excel at hunting and killing creatures, while it may be unbalancing to give Rangers innate combat skills, Rangers would like to have a Ranger specific weapon that would enhance their ability to take down a beast in the wild, some of the proposals have been the Trap Launcher or the High Tech Bow. While these items mesh with most Rangers' vision of their profession, does it correlate with the Dev's vision as well?

Message Edited by AgonThalia on 04-23-2004 09:21 AM

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Shortly after that, we received /areatrack and /camouflage. The rest of the promises on that list never appeared. While both were very useful at the time, /areatrack has become less effective with the introduction of player cities, mounts, and vehicles and /camouflage has gained many bugs (including breaking consistently on very low level mobs like kreetles and rasps and having extremely varied results with NPCs). The addition of player cities, mounts, and vehicles and the implementation of several new rules (such as calling pets/vehicles without a camp) have also further devalued many of our initial skills. This leaves us in a situation very similar to where we were in August (if not worse). We know that Ranger is not working as intended. We also know that only a very small proportion of the player base bothers with the majority of the profession (many Rangers know more Jedi than they do Master Rangers). Can we expect to see any significant changes to our skill set in the coming publishes or will we need to wait until after the Space Expansion is released? Also, is the majority of the changes likely to come in small bursts or is it more likely to come as a dedicated portion of a publish?

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This serves many different purposes. It let's us know if there is any time in the schedule for a significant update to the Ranger profession before a somewhat clear deadline (i.e. within the publishes currently on schedule). It shows our problems to the majority of the players reading the forum. And it tells us how we should expect the revamp to come along (i.e. as small changes over a set of publishes or as a proper revamp). We just have to word it in such a way that TH can't easily dodge the question with a response like, "Work with your correspondent to bring us your issues and we will try to fit them in where we can."

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

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Kiryoku wrote:

how about:

"would you come by the ranger forum and see some of our discussions? we've been feeling a little left out lately. /sniff"

or would that be like "wishing for more wishes" and thus illegal?

seriously though, i think maybe a vague question asking about an implementation of our "function" might be the best idea... it would show that the biggest problem rangers have is that we have too many problems... but you guys know better than me, you've been at it a lot longer...

i guess this would put me on the boat for number 3 ifi had to pick one... (it would mean they would have to come here to check it out... again..)

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Vague questions get vague answers .

Why do I feel like we're all a bunch of Oliver Twists asking in tiny voices, "Please suh .....may I have some mo'?"

At any rate...

I'm of a mind to support AgonThalia's suggestions. There is far more weight in citing Holocron's quote than in asking something that might get double-talk or another "Work with your correspondent" type response.

We could try to work in the Outdoorsman somehow within the question, but generally ...I'd simply be pleased in getting at least something fixed at this point. The best bet is pursuing something already promised to that end.

I'd say about 80 to 90 percent of us want harvest to be more appropriate to the skill points we spend beyond Scout, but with the release of the droid module upcoming- I just don't think we'll get it right now.

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theshagnasty wrote:
Did we actually get any response last time we did this, I'm sure that we have been through this process before..?

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No we didn't get any response last time, but that was a fiasco. This time we will get answers (one at a time).

Totally agree with going after Holo's "promises" as #1

I'd also be interesting in the calculations queries like Calc

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Calculus_Entropy wrote:

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Kiryoku wrote:

seriously though, i think maybe a vague question asking about an implementation of our "function" might be the best idea...

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Vague questions get vague answers .

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hehe, don't i know it... i guess i was too vague when i said that...i meant "general"... should have said "general"... heh

basically, i'm concerned that we won't really get another chance to flaunt our issues in this way for a long time... TH may plan on answering these questions once every other week, but he's a busy guy and questions frequently get pushed back... i really just don't want us to waste this on something they already know about, or we have plans to get through other means (ie. million monkeys harvesting bonus)...

i like agonthalia's (draknev, whichever you prefer) question the best (the first one).. i think it's general enough without being vague.. heh

by the by, what's going on in the scout profession, what are they considering asking about?... hate to end up like the architect/medic and entertainer/musician questions...

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Nemo0 wrote:

Personally, I think questions about creature knowledge or camouflage might be the best way to go. As it is, the traps are pretty much useless, we want them to change how harvesting works, and camps are pretty straightforward. My personal choice would be to ask them to explain all the different creature knowledge stuff. This would include stuff like:

Current Creature Knowledge:

• Ferocity


• To Hit (and how it relates to defense)


• Special Attacks (especially Unknown Attack--is that a real attack or are there several different ones they just don't have a name for?)


• etc

Former Creature Knowledge Skills (and why they were removed):

• Bone Type


• Resource Amounts (I'm fairly certain that the formula for calculating the amount harvested is (1.0 + Harvesting/100)*Resource Amount)


• Other stuff I've almost certainly forgotten (as it has been so long since I could see it)

Possible New Skills (mainly IF they are possible, I know we almost certainly won't get a when but we can stop pushing for it if it is not something that could be given to us without tons of work):

• assistiveness


• ranged attacks


• maybe most of what a BE can see on a sample?


• anything else?

This sort of question can be answered (although getting the answers might be a bit hard, we might need to simplify it a bit). The information can actually be useful. And we might end up having a few old skills reenabled while they monkey about trying to find out the other stuff (hmm, to get bone type and amounts showing again I just need to set the "nerf Rangers" flag to false).

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

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I like Lythender's suggestions (above) -- these are very specific questions that TH can research and provide definitive answers to. I'm afraid if we ask something too broad or we ask something that implies that the devs are going to commit to a specific course of action (ie., an outdoorsman proposal), then we are going to get a 'political' answer, meaning one that doesn't really answer or commit to anything. I think thatdevs have learned the hard way not to promise stuff before they are absolutely sure that they can deliver it.

Iseult
Master Ranger / Mediocre Pistoleer
Bloodfin

Having read the other prof's questions,

I feel we can do much much more in terms of a specific question.

some themes I think we need to avoid

The "when are we going to get" (insert issue here)
The response would most likely be:
The dev team and I are working on it and will be addressed when many of the other important issues are addressed.

The "what do you think of the Outdoorsman proposal" type questions
The response would most likely be:
Yes, we have seen it and it is on our desks, we like a lot of the ideas and are looking into it.

The "specific bug" question:
The response would most likely be:
We are aware that the last trap in the stack usually misfires, and we will probably fix that in either a hotfix or as a minor feature in a publish.

The "please visit our boards" question:
We know that they do visit infrequently, and rarely post.

I really like Nemo0's post about the profession. However, based on most of the other questions from the other profs, we should keep it to one or two sentences, nothing too specific....but nothing too general.
The strengths of his idea is that with specific questions, there is a good chance for a specific answer.

Draknev
The Last Ranger Correspondent
Subterfuge and Sabotage, Concealment and Camouflage:
Colonel: Rebel Alliance