Ranger Archive

I haven't been playing the game yet today, so I don't know if it's true, but from what I understand, /conceal no longer works against NPC's. I personally see this as a slap in the face for every devoted Ranger out there. I don't generally complain, and I urge all of us to form coherent arguments instead. I think right now the best thing we can do is do exactly what Delta and TH have been telling us: come up with reasons that /conceal should work (there is a seperate thread devoted entirely to this, I highly recomend that if you feel strongly about this, you put your two cents in) and what TH told us: to tell the devs how we see ourselves. If we present them a clearly defined idea of what our Identity is, it's easier for them to decide where we should go. So PLEASE, use this thread and the thread on /conceal to voice your ideas/suggestions. As Delta has said, complaining will get us nowhere, only our ideas can bring us through. Besides we're Rangers, and we don't complain, we adapt. so please, no flames, hate, spam, trolls, etc. Keep the threads clean so we can show them a united idea of who/what a Ranger is.

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about how Rangers can have a larger part in the Star Wars Universe. First of all, I'll be the first to say that I love being a Ranger, and going out on solo hunts and the like. I love having a near self-sufficient character that can be role-played very easily. But I think that we should have the ability to participate in a larger sense of the game. I've been racking my brain trying to think of a way that we could have a large improvement to our class in such a way that our overall class would not be changed.

I'm trying to focus on areas that the devs themselves consider important to the SWG experience. One way that many have discussed, is the PvP and GCW aspects, and the fact that we should have some type of ability in PvP that is Ranger-unique and will define us as a class.Believe me, I agree (as most of you know by now due to my rampant and over-zealous posting =p ). But there is another aspect of the goame in general that we are almost USELESS in, and that's the galactic economy. True, we have the ability to collect more animal resources than anyone else, but unlike other proffessions that can collect resources, we have no"harvester" with which to collect our resources.

Here's a proposal that I have been thinking about: the posibility that scouts/rangers would be the only class that could harvest wood and other "natural" elements without a harvester. Much like a ranger can't sample metal without either artisan skills or harvesters, it wouldn't be unreasonable that the "wilderness experts" know more about their environment then simply how to skin animals. A true wilderness expert would know the types of trees and flowers around him, using them to his advantage. We can already see an aspect of this in the /forage skill. If we don't know about plants and roots, how would we know a helpfull plant from a harmful one? This would simply be an extension of our current skills.

Of course, this would nerf other proffessions (which is something I don't like recomending), so perhaps we would get a bonus to harvesting natural resources that came from . This would still give us a new ability, and though it wouldn't set us apart like the first idea did, it would at least provide some new materials that Rangers could offer up on the vendors. Also, if they did allow scouts/rangers to have a "naturual resource survey" ability, it would be nice to see wood as a requirement for camps instead of bones. Honestly, I've never seen anyone make a huge campsite using little chicken (or chubba) bones =).

I think that bone would be useful in a new set of low level weapons (bone knife, bone sword, etc). My other idea is to have these bone weapons be used as the Ranger/Scout weapon class that we are all asking for. If we could get wood, we could make a bow, and we could use arrows like bait (you have to load them into the one slot) and the arrows would be made of bone. Thus, Rangers could have weapons that they have special attacks in. Just an idea that I think would satisfy a few of the problems that Rangers have-- our lack of good credit makers, our lack of good attacks, and our lack of an identity. Let me know what you think.

till next time, boils and grills: peace, love and Rangering

Okay, I hate posting over and again, but I was just outside shoveling (i LOVE the northeast!) and all of a sudden I realized why I Ifelt like the Rangers had no identity. It's not the lack of PvP skills, it's not the lack of good traps or even the fact people have so many perceptions of what a Ranger should be. All of these things add to how I perceive being a Ranger, but what i realized (forgive me if someone has said this before) is that we are the one proffession that isn't neccesary in an essential way to the game.

Without the crafting skills, there wouldn't be the various items in the game. There would be no T-21's if it wasn't for Weaponsmiths. Without Doctors, there wouldn't be ressurection outside of cloning centers. It seems every proffession has some utterly unique skill that is vital to gameplay. And while I love tracking, it's not essential in the same sense that weaponsmith skills are. Everything that we add to the game is already added by scouts. Believe me, I love being a Ranger. It's what I want to be. But it's hard to have a proffession that:

a) is near impossible to make a proffesion out of. It's hard to be a proffessional Ranger because we essentially have to do two jobs to get one job done. First off, we have to have SOME combat skill (to solo), so we do the same job as whatever combat proffession we choose. Then, we have to do the job of a artisan and collect resources (of course, this is true for scout as well). Yet scouts add the ability to harverst meat and bone, a very necccesary skill. I don't think it hit me until that moment outside that until we have something neccesary and vital to gameplay, we're not going to have an identity that we can all agree upon.

I maybe wrong, but i think that we need to work with the devs to find a skill or ability that make us as neccesary to gameplay as any other skill tree. Work with me, everyone, we could use some ideas...

Awesome job Phoenix.

Althoug I disagree with some of your points, your ideas are well thought out and, well, your ideas. You are definately right about how we need to find something that ALL types of rangers would have or do, such as tracking. Which you pointed out.

Yes, tracking is an across the board skill that all rangers of all genre's and worlds could do. Another thing that goes with that also, that all rangers could do, is HIDE THEIR TRACKS SO THEY CANT BE TRACKED. So what if in tandom with the tracking skill, we got a Hide Track skill. I'm think something like if you are being chased by some mob, you use it, and they have a chance of loosing you. The effect would be as if you were out of range and they just drop the combat mode and wandera way. But this could happen at any range away from you, say upto 10m. Anything withen 10m will ignore it.

The other big thing that ALL ranger have in common no matter what reality you're in, is camoflauging themselves with the environment, and going undetected. With all sences, sight, smell, hearing.

You mentioned how BH have Boba Fett, and Bossk to look at. Well we don't have something so easy to look at and that is probably why some people use characters like Aregorn. Not everyone has heard of Antarian Rangers, but every has heard of Boba Fett. There are actually lots of Rangers as the title in SW universe. Some one posted it here, I think in our top 5 response. Lots of military types of "RANGERS" from both the IMperial side and the Rebel side.

I see rangers as having these other skill in common among all Ranger types. Tactics!! Rangers are not always the most combat effective group, and the front line grunts. They are the support teams, they are the sneak in and get the job done team. They are "survivalists". Both outdoor and urban across the board. The rangers were the ones best at using tactics and sneaking around and "SURPRISING" the enemy. They would use things like snares, pits, claymoores, mines, flash bangs, etc. So why cant we get some skills that are very useful, even in combat, but only give you the benefit if you use them in a narrow method. What I mean, is not just spamming a special attack like BH and eyeshot. What if we got things like the sneak attack bonus I read earlier. Where if you are using camo, and sneek up on something you get one really good hit in doing a lot of damage, but its the first hit only. Or if we "surprise" something we get 1-2 really good hits in for lots of damage.

Your first point is harvesting. I like the idea of giving us a chance to get a scecial harvest. But I think many of us would just be happy if they let us harvest all three resources, or even two. This seems much easier to implement to me, and would make a big difference of us and scouts.

Your second point was tracking. Big agree here, we are still waiting for word on the /track skill, which was propossed by the devs months ago. Not something made up by us but by them. That would do exactly as you said, give us a WP to a creature, with chance of it being there, nothing there, or something else there.

The third point was camoflauge. As above all rangers have this ability. Read my thread about it woking on NCP to see my full thoughts on this.

I still think we should have traps. Maybe change the trapping line a little to reflect the rangers ability to sneak up and surprise enemies as I stated above. This would entail traps that work against NPC, some damage producing ones, and for sure more effective ones on creatures. The ones we have now are crap. This skill line should represent the fact that ALL rangers are adept at sneaking in undected, and surprising the enemy. Whether it be to make a first surgical attack that greatly reduces defences, or taking down defences, or setting up traps for the enemy to be "lead" to by the ranger, or what ever.

Rescue should be more useful, and mor like Taunt, so the target does not need to stop shooting. But this might be to much like Taunt, and some might have problems with that.

So lets here some ideas that fit the idea of a "RANGER" of all types, that we can fit into our profession.

First of all, as others have said.. great posts by everyone. I skimmed most posts and read chunks of what caught my eye, so if I say something that was already said just /slap me

The ideas that really stuck out were:

Multiple Harvests - Don't nerf those poor starting scouts hunting womp rats on tat.. just make us better!

Creature Cages - heck .. I would be willing to drop the camps or traps line entirely for this. I think there are several ways this could be implemented. In fact I'll try and seperate two ideas:
Crafting Cage: we already have some skills that in my opinion mark us as being "crafters"(to an extent) in fact THREE columns have skills that require crafting tools. Anyway .. this cage would be experimentable .. and it should require a lot of resources. This cage should allow BE's to sample dna without risk to themselves, at a slower pace or with a decay rate (such as that wild animals can't simply be tamed and kept in a cage the rest of their life, they would eventually die [sorry PETA] or maybe escape?) and that CH's could tame them while in the cage .. without worry of its parents eating them. Heres where the experimentation comes in: 1) experiment on duration of cage 2) experiment to increase the Clvl maximum for the caged; which should be capped (how many krayts you carrying in your backpack bob? - obviously this could be exploited .. people camping at krayt graveyard or other locations 'stealing' anything that appears)
I think this would be balanced, because while you would make a LOT of money off of the caged animals (and should) it should also cost LOTS of resources to counterbalance.
Hunting Cage: Pretty much a glorified trap. Soloing pikets on dant and vorritors keep getting in your way? Throw a cage over that annoying lizard (and this is humane I swear .. at least theres no soap to drop or cellmates named bubba [haha too tempting not to say])

BH's are the master of pvp, make us the master of pve! (vulnerabilty shots, to-hit bonus, damage modifiers, etc):
While I really, really like and would enjoy this idea, would it make the BH/ranger too ultimate?(look how much BH dabbling there is already just for /track) I'm already tempted to drop master and go 4/0/4/0 ranger/high lvl BH. However its not like BH are the most defense based characters either, maybe keep melee defense bonuses (and beef em up?) .. but add NOTHING to ranged defense? Commandos would still be the gods of dmg dealing along with the TK's. And since ranger traps don't effect humans, nor do the camo kits it wouldn't be much of a PVP ANNIHILATOR .. it would just make the BH/ranger a well rounded character that could enjoy hunting humans or animals yet not make them the "undisputed champs" of both. They're both trackers, they're both hunters, they're both survivalists. Makes sense to me.

I like ranger, I really do. Not because I can say "I'm a ranger, fear me inferior mortal!" but because I feel like an unknown contributor, I gather bulk resources that can't be gathered otherwise.. that doesn't just take riding my speeder bike 100m from my house to harvester and being rich (which invariably almost all artisan's are) .. that takes multiple sets of skills. I can rescue my groupmates (although I rarely ever do, in fact I can't remember the last time I did, but good concept eh?) I can create self-sufficient field bases that are not only appealing to the eye, but can change "hunting expeditions" from "guys get baz nitches, north, highest payout you can find.. you better all have speeders" to "well we're done with our missions .. but I've never been out this far .. its pretty neat .. and since we have a ranger with us we can heal up, craft some more ____ and look around some" (or for use in GCW and PA wars with ACTUAL uses other then buffing from docs) This makes me feel like an important role in the SWG universe (or galaxy, starsider for me ) If I could say all the above statements in this paragraph and seriously mean it, not only would I stop considering dropping ranger everyday .. but I would encourage others to do it, while feeling like I'm actually something in the game besides "hey theres a ranger, let me see one of those cool looking camps!"

A few things I forgot to add:

For the crafted cage, you shouldn't be able to solo grab something huge then find friends or even just a group to kill it. You should only be allowed to release it to the wild such as CH's do. Although RP'ers might enjoy it as like an aristocratic fox hunt .. it might be taken as inhumane, regardless I don't think it should be that way, others may have different opinions. I think it should only be useful to BE's or CH's.

Another thing that would have to be decided is whether or not the trap "breaks" or you can use it again.

Also forgot to mention that the resources used in this cage should affect its stats. Overall Quality effects the clvl it can hold, Potential Energy effects the duration before the creature escpaes .. stuff like that.

Also the other main point was the Antarian Ranger one. Honestly what parallel can be drawn to the ranger from SW other then the antarian rangers? I mean I guess there were probably trappers and what not in SW, but that would be like saying there were secretaries, lets make a class that collates! (which in my opinion would be almost as effective as ranger is right now hehe)

We should have something to help jedi. Antarian Rangers accompanied them for protection if I remember correctly, it should be just like that in SWG. New FSCS chars are afraid of going out, and rightly so (unless of course they're imp and have their guild accompany them with 10+ AT-ST's which I'm sure happens) what do rebels have to counter that? Rangers should be able to have a sort of /rescue that moves the TEF from the jedi to them, or conceals the tef on players.. that in itself would make it useful beyond protecting jedi. Back in beta I'm sure if the Dev's said "and rangers can protect jedi doing this!" people would have said "oh great .. another useless skill?" but this isn't beta ... everyone knows there are jedi now .. this would make us IMPORTANT.

Also I just want to mention my opinion on "nerfing" (maybe a dev will read this entire thread .. or at least maybe all the classes that say "RIFLEMAN IS OVERPOWERED **edit** NERF THEM! they will just want to be better)

Why make something worse? Although I agree if something is grossly overpowered it should be reconsidered, why not just make all classes good in their own way? When I was on tat trying to kill womp rats with my cdef and a maroj melon I wasn't thinking "god! novice marksmen sucks! pistoleers are overpowered!" I was thinking "wow, I want to become one of these elite combat classes.. not just putz around with this" and now that have tried a few I don't think "hey no fair, that guy can do something I can't! He should be weaker then me!" It makes me consider changing professions .. trying new things .. or figuring out how to become even better in the class I'm at. It keeps things fresh.

I always imagined that Rangers would have to be THE guides and lifelines on high-end adventure planets.

Sandly, mounts and now vehicles have made travel on these planets very easy.

Here's a thread with a drastic proposal that would both fit continuity and put the focus back on Rangers and Scouts in wild areas:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=29894

One of the above posts mentions that rangers don't have anyone good to look at in the Star Wars Universe as a role-model. Well, I think that a pretty good example (actually more than one) exists in the book "The Approaching Storm" which takes place right before Episode II. In this book, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Luminara, and Bariss receive the aid of two native guides named Kyakhtya and Bulgan (I hope I spelled those right). These two are master trackers, they know everything about the terrain and geography, the weather, the wildlife and flora, they are experts at riding their mounts, and a few other things I probably can't remember since I finished the book 2 months ago. My point is, if you want some rangers to look up to, check out that book.

On a related note, I think rangers should be much cooler while riding a mount.

That would be cool, except for the fact that EVERYONE uses speeders now. So instead of being the unrivaled masters of wilderness we'd be the slow guy in the back /gallop spamming his carrion spat.

From my experience, people use speeders for covering long distances, but use mounts when they're going to be getting on and off a lot, such as when checking harvesters, hunting, or whatnot. That way they don't have to worry about the obnoxious vehicle decay associated.

---

Dyraak_Sinh wrote:

...snip... My point is, if you want some rangers to look up to, check out that book.

On a related note, I think rangers should be much cooler while riding a mount.

---

Now tht is an idea. Allow us to use specials and area track while mounted or at least do more damage and let the mount fight with us (actually, I think you can do this now, using autofire and the mount if it has been trained to fight). As a RIfleman I would love to use Flurry 2 while ol' Simba spits rocks at the same time

Instead of trophy items how about new, (NOT EXISTING), animal component loot items are only harvestable by master scouts and or rangers.