Ranger Archive
Thread: Final Week 2 Submission
LastEE wrote:
Good Job Mineras. Another vote here for keeping you longer. Now my rants:
Harvesting: I should be able to get everything from a creature... Hide, Bone, Meat - all 3 at ranger level and maybe still have a trophy left over like I get when I go fishing.
You mean like it is advertised in the loading hint screen? I like the trophy thing A LOT
Knowedge: If I can't have the above (actually, even if I can), I should be able to know everything about that hide before I take it... I'm not going to waste my time on that squall if I know I can get better hide from the torton 50m away. (Mabye we do get that, I'm only at hunt2). Point taken about making our own field notes and learning from experience (imagine that)... I guess our ranger network should share this info then. My first submission: Ahazi Rori Male Plains Tusk Cat: Decay resistance 873, Malleability 376, Overall quality 449, Shock resistance 624,Toughness 144... now I just wish I knew which stats mattered to different professions.
Sounds good too, I just don't want anyone to post this information. I know it sounds selfish, but I don't want another profession reading our posts and "stealing" our info which would make our knowledge useless once everyone knows it.
Foraging: Yea, that's broken right now... with anytihing over 1/2 full inventory, everything seems to get discarded
Yeha, what happened to we are supposed to be able to find resources no one else can? What's the Milk and Eggs current situation? Are they gonna add strange new exotic buffs in the future?
Conceal: Yea, nothing hurts more than to be stalking a voritor lizard and have an NPC suddenlty appear from behind that was over 100m away when you started after the lizard and whack you while you're trying to crowd-control.
Can someone explain how conceal worked in BETA and how it is supposed to differ from camo, maskscent etc. And what is "sneak?"
Mineras wrote:Week 2 Submission.
Core issue: Rangers have no differentiation from Scout
1. Wayfaring: increased crawl speed is extremely limited in value. Mask scent is broken by non-aggro creatures, yet no xp is given when mask scent is successful against them. The community feels that wayfaring should continue with enhancements to foot speeds, both run speed and burst run efficiency. Wayfaring rangers should be able to run farther faster, even over flat ground. The community continues to be VERY adamant about the return of /conceal, the ability to hide from NPC's, and most agree from PC characters as well at the master ranger level.
2. Hunting: the higher level creature knowledge, where it shows what special attacks a creature has, always lists NONE as the special attack. Doesn't tell us if a creature is a social animal (assistive), which is something Rangers should know. Creature to hit bonus only applies to ranged weapons. Community is unanimous that the creature to hit should apply to melee as well. Harvesting resources doesn't provide a significant quantitative or qualitative advantage over a master scout. A Hunt Master should have some type of skill or distinct advantage over a Master Scout, and all the information gathered by creature knowledge should be something that transfers into some type of group bonus.
3. Frontiering: foraging - foraging rare items always results in item discarded because inventory is full, even if inventory is totally empty. Foraged items don't stack, so any real degree of foraging skill use can overcrowd inventory space. Foraging has all the same requirements as sampling resources, yet provides no xp for success (must stand still, take action and mind damage, and wait for the skill to cycle, just like sampling, but no xp is given for success). The community is unanimous, as are many entertainers, that entertainers should be able to heal battle fatigue in camps (or at least in field base type camps). As most crafters and many players have droids that serve various purposes, a power droid or power station that recharges droids would be a very useful addition to camps that would encourage other players to visit/stay. In fact, Luke used a small power generator to power R2D2 when he set up his camp on Degobah, just prior to meeting Yoda. Field base camps have large pavilions, yet when it rains, they don't stop it. It would be very nice if it didn't rain inside tents (and would also help substantially with immersion and role-play), especially on planets like Dantooine, where it is actually better (and safer) to stop and wait for the rain to let up.
4. Trapping: Many of the community feel that trapping is more 'bait and wait', meaning that traps are set, and then you come back to that trap after some time has passed to check and see if anything has been caught in it. An idea would be to have small devices that operated like a harvester for minerals/chemicals, meaning you pay maintenance, and perhaps some power, and in return you get a resource. As many rangers struggle to maintain an adequate supply of hide and bone to support crafting thrown traps, camps, and selling enough to afford interplanetary travel, small havesters that resulted in meat/hide/bone would free up the Ranger to spend more time hunting challenging creatures instead of slaughtering masses of easy creatures to maintain their supplies, and would also allow them to sell more bone and hide, purchase their other supplies, and actually spend time doing more 'Rangerly' things than easy destroy missions so that they can afford to remain armored, equipped, and supplied without being constantly in the poor house. In essence, combat traps, and non-combat traps.
5. Group Value: Currently, rangers bring very little to the table as a member of a group. Camps are more eye candy than truly valuable assets, traps are nice, but the very sporadic reliability of trapping (meaning there is no way of telling if root is going to last 2 seconds or 2 minutes, and the same quality/effectiveness trap may produce vastly different results when applied), ranger traps are area effect, which is extremely limiting of their value (and they are bugged), wayfaring basically allows you to crawl faster and maybe go undetected by light blue or green con non-aggro creatures, which is essentially valueless to a group scenario (and pretty valueless to the ranger, too), crafting camps and traps provides general crafting experience, which is completely useless to the Ranger who has no desire to be an artisan (most rangers), the only combat skill rangers have is /rescue, which is next to worthless, as it almost invariably results in the Ranger's swift and bloody death.
Rangers should be able to bring more to the table for grouping. Their intensive knowledge of creatures, ability to travel in rugged terrain and ability to conceal themselves from creatures are all skills that can be shared with others "shoot the belle bol behind the rear leg for maximum effect" (creature to hit/damage bonus for group), "stay away from the gurrcats front paws, as the claws will crack bone armor" (group defensive bonus), "use unscented deodorant" (group mask scent). Simple things that provide an appropriate, modest bonus. The rangers themselves would have a much greater bonus to those areas, but those bonuses and abilities would make Rangers far more valuable and desirable to groups hunting creatures. At the pinnacle of Ranger skill, the community feels that the Ranger should be able to use these skills against NPC's, and at the master level, vs. other players.
Suggested Reading:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1060
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1422
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1443
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1569
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1973
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1976
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1999
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=2010
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=2111
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=2189
/cheer Mineras
My 2 cents:
1) As it has been already suggested i would like very much to see a tracking ability to enable rangers to track any kind of mobs from a long distance. The higher the ranger the bigger the creature he can track. (could be a path indicatedlike Waypoints).
2) Trap could really catch creatures. A device or equipment requiring credits for maintenance and power. the creature could be just rooted. not dead all the time but sometimes only immobilized. that could enable CH to tam creatures this way (if its a baby) and we could make some cash with this.
3) Improved camps and more different models at each stage. And crafting experimentation could make possible to improve camps or add some special devices in it. (like powerup on weapons) orchangecamp design (number of chairs etc..)
4) canoes.. i would like indian style boats 
5) A special ranger armor please.
6)Some kind of invisibility to hide in the field. Would be useful once in large pvp battles.
Thks mineras for your work.
Wow, my first time on the ranger boards - great job Mineras - good to see a corr. who is on top of things and supported (and supportive) by their community. Looking forward to learning more about this line.
Cheers
Taikong / Radiant Bioengineer
" think the increase in Prone movement that we get in Wayfaring should be given to Marksman. They need it much more than we do. I feel this should be replaced with increase in foot movement speed and an increase in Burst Run speed as well. "
I'm Rifleman/Ranger.. and I disagree. There's no reason why weapon skill should affect crawl speed. (Riflemen are the main ones who go prone btw.. and rarely do we even need to crawl) - And it's a must have for me anyhow. I need that extra crawl speed for when my target moves away and I have to crawl closer.
you are correct sir!
The problem with weekly reports is that there is no Weekly feedback from those reading it... so how on earth are we to respond or have any sort of dialog...
It seems to me that right now its just a bunch of... "oh yeah.. please fix this and this and this and this and this..."
and then next week its... "oh .. and um... you might want to fix this and this and this... and maybe this.."
and then next week its going to be... "hey... we can't think of anything more to fix.... .but you might want to fix this and this and this..."
.... whats the point? if SOE doesn't start responding with information that allows us to participate in the development of our chosen class... then you might as well stick your head out of the window and scream "Fix Rangers!" and it may have just as much effect as your posts...
I realize the Devs can't give Mineras any real info about what might be coming, but they need to provide SOME sort of feedback along the lines of polls or questions or something that allows our efforts to be more constructive than... "can you please make is to that my droid can go inside the tent".
- Zarn
I did get some specific feedback from the designer, but since that info has not gone to in development and isn't "officially" announced, I can't directly say anything yet. Believe me, I want to tell everyone.
I think if it didn't take so much effort (not that this is a bad thing by any means) to build a strong character people would be less inclined to care, however since you do have to plan where you want to go (backtracking represents a great deal of wasted effort) it's crucial to have a certain amount of foresight into what the skill trees will look like, especially the Elite professions that have major xp reqs to level up...
For instance, if Ranger won't ever have /conceal in the Wayfaring branch of the profession I probably won't pursue it as a complement to Rifleman.... I'll just do BH like every other Marksman/Scout out there..
gripe gripe gripe whine whine - you're doing a great job Mineras, I'd like to mention that as well
To paraphrase, I was a master engineer, master businessman and nearly master domestic craft just from making traps and camps.
Obedaia Jetletter
Ranger et al.
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