Ranger Archive

Awww ... this centric, that centric, it's making my head hurt! lol I think Phenix has the right idea. We shouldn't define our profession with a single description, but rather define roles in which rangers have in the game in general. For example, as Phenix said, we should have a combat role that is creature centric. Thus we should have skills and mods that enhance creature killing. We should have a content role of a survivalist. Thus we should get skills and a HAT that protrays us as a survivalist. We should have a utility group role, a role that plays necessary non-combative actions for a group -- like recon actions. It seems the first thing we should do is determine what roles make up a SWG profession in general and how this roles are defined in the ranger profession. That way, we have a better idea what someone means then he/she says 'creature-centric'. And face it, we have allllllllllll the time in the world to do this. By the time we get a revamp, not only would we know exactly what we what, but we'd probably have the code all ready written lol.

Um, we have two trees that heavily involve creatures, and two other trees that involve creatures to a lesser extent. Camoflauge works on Creatures and NPCs. Traps only work against creatures. Creature Harvesting Bonus, Creature to-hit modifier, Creature Knowledge, Tracking Creatures and NPCs and Players (I consider tracking playersto appeal to Bounty Hunters more than us as a feature of our profession.) How many of our modifiers have the word "creature" in them?

How many trees to BH's have? Which state "NPC" in the description or name?

BTW, Bounty Hunter missions are content more than an aspect of their profession.

Technically I would say "Creature Centric" does mean a heavy focus on creatures...

They devs have certainly maintained that idea the few times we have gotten a response about what our role is. Creatures and nothing else. Not PvP and not NPCs. ("Camo working on NPCs is a bug", anyone?)

To me, claiming BH is "NPC Centric" is correct as far as their content and some skills, but incorrect as far as their combat abilities are concerned. Their NPC focus is on marks, the rest applies equally well regardless of the target.

Were Ranger to be smiliar but replacing the NPC with creature, then a good balance (assuming similar skill point costs) would be reached. That means one branch that deals with creatures and three that give benefits regardless of the target.

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Calculus_Entropy wrote:
You guys DO know that the term 'creature centric' does NOT mean creature only right? BH are NPC centric and still do well against critters. Why do you assume that if we are 'creature centric' we won't be able to attack NPCs?

EDIT: Don't proofread AFTER you hit submit.

Message Edited by Calculus_Entropy on 09-08-2005 08:40 AM

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BH do well against creatures as well because their attacks work on creatures. Our attacks do not work on NPCs.

Last time we had Dev interaction 'creature-centric' was the term used when they tried to explain why we would not get traps working on NPCs and player pets. That's why creature-centric has such a bad ring to it here. You should know that

Of course, balance was a term used as well, but as we can all clearly see now; they found a way to balance it so every profession could get crowd control specials that work like our traps and introduce /cover in a way that isn't overpowered. So there's no excuse anymore really

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dodtri wrote:
Awww ... this centric, that centric, it's making my head hurt! lol I think Phenix has the right idea. We shouldn't define our profession with a single description, but rather define roles in which rangers have in the game in general. For example, as Phenix said, we should have a combat role that is creature centric. Thus we should have skills and mods that enhance creature killing. We should have a content role of a survivalist.

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um...you totally misquoted me.

Combat role should be that of a survivalist- enhancing our combat profession in all areas of the game. No creature-specific bonuses in combat.

Content role should be that of a wilderness expert-- big game hunting terminals, modular camping, and harvesting.

And Calc, Bounty Hunters are more famous for hunting player Jedi than NPCs in this game, so try to keep that in mind when making comparisons between us, who represent 1/3 of the enemies, and them, who representthe other 2/3 of the enemies.

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BioEngine wrote:
And Calc, Bounty Hunters are more famous for hunting player Jedi than NPCs in this game, so try to keep that in mind when making comparisons between us, who represent 1/3 of the enemies, and them, who representthe other 2/3 of the enemies.

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Its a shame that this is their function in game too, since it was so rare in SW that the one BH who successfully terminated a jedi was conscripted to be a template for an entire army of clones. Maybe they aught to think about adding in the Elite Elites after all, on top of all of the combat professions with the same scale as jedi XP, as a counter to having a single alpha class. Perhaps this could be the method to introduce all the extras many classes have been clamoring for like dual wielding elite pistoleers...

Have we answered your question yet?

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Phenix1050 wrote:

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dodtri wrote:
Awww ... this centric, that centric, it's making my head hurt! lol I think Phenix has the right idea. We shouldn't define our profession with a single description, but rather define roles in which rangers have in the game in general. For example, as Phenix said, we should have a combat role that is creature centric. Thus we should have skills and mods that enhance creature killing. We should have a content role of a survivalist.

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um...you totally misquoted me.

Combat role should be that of a survivalist- enhancing our combat profession in all areas of the game. No creature-specific bonuses in combat.

Content role should be that of a wilderness expert-- big game hunting terminals, modular camping, and harvesting.

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When I said "I think Phenix has the right idea" I meant that you used diferent discribtions for various Ranger roles rather than using one blanket description for the whole Ranger prof.. The actually discribtion of these roles came from me, just as examples. What I was trying to say is that we should decide what roles a prof has in SWG and what these roles are in the ranger prof.. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I honestly think the only difference between BH and Master Ranger is the fact that BH's use technology to find their targets and we don't. BH's also usually only hunt people, while a ranger usually hunts animals. What's to say that an Urban ranger wouldn't specialize in tracking people targets through crowded cities using techniques learned from the wild though. This is the problem I have. We are technically the same concept as a BH only Rangers do most of their hunting in the wild. It makes sense that we should get some sort of combat boost, at least more so than we have now. Could this be what people are trying to get at. I mean let's compare hunter to hunter, apples to apples.

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HornedSandRanger wrote:
I honestly think the only difference between BH and Master Ranger is the fact that BH's use technology to find their targets and we don't. BH's also usually only hunt people, while a ranger usually hunts animals. What's to say that an Urban ranger wouldn't specialize in tracking people targets through crowded cities using techniques learned from the wild though. This is the problem I have. We are technically the same concept as a BH only Rangers do most of their hunting in the wild. It makes sense that we should get some sort of combat boost, at least more so than we have now. Could this be what people are trying to get at. I mean let's compare hunter to hunter, apples to apples.

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The point is, i think, ranger at teh mo, is a support profffession, we gather resources, we craft traps and camps, we can heal with camps and apply states with traps and we can apply camo. Yet none of these support areas are really that useful in comparison to what other single elite proffessions can have (CL54).

For Ranger to be truly effective we need,

1. Traps that work better than other state applying attacks.

2. Proper stealth.

3. Defense mods.

4. Offense mods.

5. Our own combat method.

This wouldnt make us uber, but would allow us to be the best in a hunting role, yet as viable as others in other types of combat. In other words we gain a parity with other professions.

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Calculus_Entropy wrote:
You guys DO know that the term 'creature centric' does NOT mean creature only right? BH are NPC centric and still do well against critters. Why do you assume that if we are 'creature centric' we won't be able to attack NPCs?

EDIT: Don't proofread AFTER you hit submit.

Message Edited by Calculus_Entropy on 09-08-2005 08:40 AM

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They probably assume that based on present experience. Two imporant skills Rangers have is harvesting and trapping - Both of these are creature-only abilities.

Take a MBH/MR template - The BH skills help the Ranger skills kill the creature. Although, the Ranger skills don't help the BH skills take down a mark (not withstanding tracking, which is passive non-combat).