Ranger Archive

In regards to the stealth skills, or the proposed stealth skills. I feel that the proposed Hide command would be a perfect addition to ranger at the master level. I mean hiding from PC's. The ability to move while fully concealed would be over powering , however a stationary full conceal would not overpower the ranger profession. If the conceal were to break as soon as the first shot was fired, then it would be a powerfull skill but not over powering, even with the proposed ambush skills. As far as camping a covert faction scanner as Thunder suggested, well I beg to differ that this is griefing or being a cheap or dirty player. In order to place a faction scanner and get some one to walk in it is a real trick, even better than a full stationary conceal trick. PVP in this game is for the most part consentual, so how could a non moving totaly concealed target upset the balance of GCW if the skill was placed in the master ranger box and if it had an hour or half hour timer on the skill. I hope that the developers would examen this potential skill, and **edit** the "he ambushed me" posts and complaints(PVP is consentual in99% of all cases).Lets put our heads together and make something work.

I guess what I am saying is MAKE RANGER A THREAT IN PVP. Make us the feared Mountain Men.Make us unique and lets us contibute to the GCW.

Best Regards,

Easy-Exanip

Master Ranger

If the stealthier item was to become available for Master Ranger, can we not allow it to work when prone. It would give a bit more to the Ranger crawl speed ability. Don't get me wrong, I love my ability to crawl at an accelerated speed. It has helped in many situations. But allowing us to have a sort of stealth ability that goes on top of the crawl speed would be nice.

"We should have something that uses our conceal ability to some good use. Any ideas?"

I presume you don't consider the "to-hit" modifier approach, defined in the Conceal V2 thread, a plausible solution.

Most Rangers agree that having /conceal work as a "super maskscent" is not working out as well as expected.

If the developers come back and say they are willing to include humanoid NPCs in the mix, we still have the issue that the skillfails more often than not against the bigger opponents.

On top of that, we would need a seperate solution entirely for the PvP aspect (which includes Players, CH andFaction Pets), if the developers come back and state they won't addPvP invisibility.

Everything seems to hinge onhow the developers answer the questions poised. And they are talking their blooming time getting back to me.

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Thunderheart wrote:


Bingo. The problem isn't all the people who play the way they like to play. Developers would LOVE to design games for them. The problem is the min-maxers, the griefers and the exploiters. Folks who play the game for the sole purpose of ruining your game play.

Unfortunately, thats where a lot of design has to be focused.

If you could be invisible to players in this particular game environment (which is technologically different from DAoC which does have a similar type of stealth skill), you would be vulnerable to a lot of really mean, jerky stuff. Hypothetically speaking, you might get someone who figures out that if they use some stealth skill and hide over covert detectors, that they could catch people in an unfair trap. Or they might go invis and wait for you to be in a dungeon or something and then train a high level creature on you. There is no way to know what would happen. Im not saying its never going to happen, just that there are more important things to do first.

Off the top of my head, I'd much rather see the work this community has put forth on beefed-up camps in the game before something like that.

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No not bingo. The problem with stealth is that stealth is constantly being developed in a way that it lends it completely to being an offensive ability, not a defensive one. When stealth becomes an offensive ability or skill it is then that it becomes unbalanced.

I've been working on how to develop stealth in SWG over on the Smuggler forum and we've developed (through a few revisions) an interesting proposal at how to accomplish this. For those interested, read my thread titled "Improving Underworld - STEALTH" (please read down to third revision before commenting as it has gone through a lot of discussion). Forgetting for minute the inevitable argument of what profession should have stealth, let's just look at having stealth in SWG. The underlying premise must be that stealth should be used defensively only.

"Forgetting for minute the inevitable argument of what profession should have stealth"

Hey, if the Smugglers want stealth too, I'm all for it. As long as it doesn't work outside of town.

It would make sense that smugglers get stealth in the cities and Rangers get it outdoors. That would be perfect and it would add some good stuff to two professions that are lacking.

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NRaas wrote:

"Forgetting for minute the inevitable argument of what profession should have stealth"

Hey, if the Smugglers want stealth too, I'm all for it. As long as it doesn't work outside of town.

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My solution involved 2 types of stealth; one being a stealth suit which I think could be usuable by both professions. There other might be more suited to be a ranger-only form of stealth (where you are still visible yet do not appear on radar or the overhead map).

/bump for TH. C'mon TH answer us!

I disagree, rangers should be masters of concealment, like snipers in ghillie suits they should blend into the background and be almost invisible WHILST STATIONARY AND PRONE.

Camouflage doesn't work when you start moving, so if you attack or stand up you give your position away, until that point you shouldn't even show up on radar in my estimation (players might be able to click on you to target though).

Conceal should work perfectly well as a defensive skill, but breaks as soon as you attack anyone, moving whilst prone should make it liable to break, but it shouldn't be automatic (also gives a point to terrain negotiation over 50).

You should also have to remain stationary for say 30 seconds before the skill engages, you can just run to a location, stop moving and suddenly vanish.

Whilst I generally agree with the above post I think that you have to be able to do something whilst concealed, or why conceal, we are not spies or snipersgetting into position then concealing and remaining motionless in the hope that someone comes along.

Anything other than crawling should break it, but if you cant even crawl into range whats the point?

And total conceal is a no no for me, we should show as yellow dots on radar when prone, moving or not, but yes, another player should be able to click on our buts if we let em stick up in the air.

But, as I write the above line I can already see a problem, turn off grass, trees etc etc in your system settings and we would stand out like a crawling thing in an empty car park.

Ho hum - just cant win can I....!

I apologize for not taking time to read the whole thread, but I have an idea to avoid making us completely invisible to other players (if someone else has already said this I apologize for stepping on their toes).

-When a Ranger goes into stealth mode do not make them disappear from the radar to other players. Instead, have the Ranger show up as a yellow blip on the radar. Not only would this offer the requested Stealth, but if the Ranger's enemies are worried about Rangers, then it would keep them on their toes.

-Also, instead of making them invisible, maybe hide their name when in Stealth. If someone is curious about the yellow blip, make them come and find the Ranger. Or, (this is stretching it) change the nametag when stealthed from our name, to the name of a small defensely woodland creature, to throw the enemy off. Possibly even allow the Ranger to choose the title. There are not too many "fuzzy wittle wabbits" out. So the enemy would know something is up.

-If the Ranger can find concealing terrain, then with the properly applied camo let him blend in with the foliage. -

-If he moves, then the other player has a much better chance of seeing him.

-If he runs up on a player, they will know it is not a creature because of the speed (if the Ranger is smart he'll walk up or crawl slowly).

-Any shots fired from the Ranger will reveal his position. With a time penalty before he can return to Stealth mode.

Be creative while at the same time reasonable. It would not take much to alter the color of the dots a Ranger shows up as on someones radar. It would have the same effect on NPCs as /maskscent has on creatures, EXCEPT as soon as you fire on then it is broken. In the right foliage I have a hard enough time seeing shorter creatures; so in the correct posture a Ranger could hide in tall, thick grass.


Just a few thoughts.