Ranger Archive

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Nemo0 wrote:
One thing to notice:
Ranger is currently 140 skill points for Master.
BH and other hybrids are 121.
Single novice combat profs are 106.

Dropping the cost of each Ranger skill box by one point (except Master) brings the cost down to 125 skill points. It would STILL be the most expensive profession in the game. It would also be the most expensive novice elite in the game by a long way (i.e. hard to dabble, which might be considered both good and bad). 125 skill points for the mastery is a more balanced number than 140 but they can't really make an ID like claim.

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QFE!

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Landorien wrote:

well.. seeing as both traps and survival is by far the two hardest to fix branches of ranger they can take it out, and thus justify making the prerequisites scout 4040.

Let's face it traps can NEVER compete with the efficiency that states are inflicted by automatic weapons. Its not bloody possible unless they give traps SUBSTANTIAL power like several minutes long roots, -100's of defense, forced knockdowns for extended time etc, which of course they cannot do because that would be unbalanced. Ignore the fact that we can't touch humanoids or androids, and that you get rooted for several seconds whilst launching our magnificent traps of mass selfdestruction.

Why in the world should ranger be better at hunting creatures than everybody else?

Just take traps out completely instead of giving us false hope with their continued existence.

Replace it with a line of Rifles, so we can make us of that awesome +10(or was it 5) -to hit for ranged attacks instead, with the same effects but inflicted by rifles instead of useless bloody traps so we can at the very least compete with the nonranger professions as far as efficiency is concerned.

Since tents are then a matter of choice, we replace that branch with true survival skills which in this game equals nothing else than melee, ranged, state, and dot resistance. lots and lots of it.

Tadaaaaa, new working profession with an old name.

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Owen-Lars wrote:

Hey Lyth, do you think dropping ranger to 125 (1 skill point a box) and gaining an extra 15 would be a good boost?

The idea sounds apealing to me yet im not sure what extras i would pick up. Perhaps a bit of pistoleer (as a bh) or some more sl perhaps?

Would you guys be interested in a simple skill point reduction like that? Its prety easy to do i supose and would allow us to come more in line with other professions in terms of how much we can support ranger skills in our template. There is still obviously a lot to be put on the table in terms of making ranger skills count towards the template but its definatly a start and would mean a lot more balance (in terms of skill point usage).

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I'd be much happier pushing to make Ranger worthy of the higher skill point investment. Because it's the most SP cost, people with ALWAYS complain because people will always feel they're cheated by not picking up all professions. yes ranger costs more... now let's make the profession into something worthy of the highest skill point investment.

I suppose we need to make sure that the devs didn't leave us at the highest sp usage for a reason. Maybe they had big plans for us.

MWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHA....whew...I am felling much better now...

I would MUCH rather have some combat/defense mods than a reduced sp cost. The higher sp cost is a good foundation from which to get those mods.

al-djinn'i

Master Ranger

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Owen-Lars wrote:

Hey Lyth, do you think dropping ranger to 125 (1 skill point a box) and gaining an extra 15 would be a good boost?

The idea sounds apealing to me yet im not sure what extras i would pick up. Perhaps a bit of pistoleer (as a bh) or some more sl perhaps?

Would you guys be interested in a simple skill point reduction like that? Its prety easy to do i supose and would allow us to come more in line with other professions in terms of how much we can support ranger skills in our template. There is still obviously a lot to be put on the table in terms of making ranger skills count towards the template but its definatly a start and would mean a lot more balance (in terms of skill point usage).

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Well, there are a lot of things to consider with such a change. On the one hand, we have the "make it worth it and I don't care" argument. On the other hand, we have the overpowered profession balance problem.

Many people just want Ranger to be worth the skill point cost. But how does one quantify the worth of 19 or 34 extra skill points (current cost vs other elite mastery costs)? For the same skill point cost as Master Ranger, a Master Rifleman can pick up 0004 in Pistoleer. This is a significant power increase (a root attack, lots of defense, and an AoE among other things, if I remember correctly). Compared to an MBH, a Master Rifleman could only get up to Marksman Pistols 4. This is a significantly smaller power boost than 0004 pistoleer. Balancing a single mastery to be worth 1.25 Elite masteries is hard. You will either end up with a couple of overpowered skills or you will have to add several extra elite level skills than you find in other professions. The first option (overpowered skills) will not work (it leads to FotM professions). The second option is a good one assuming that enough useful skills that fit in the profession can be added without overpowering any one skill tree. The main difficulty here is finding enough skills that are a good choice for any Ranger.

Given the skill based system in SWG, it is often a better idea to give players the freedom to choose several extra skills that they want instead of trying to fit everyone inside one set template. An increased skill point cost leads to a need to make a profession "worth it". But everyone's idea of what is worth having is different. Look at the old MBH (triple mastery one). Lots of people liked the idea of being a Bounty Hunter but everyone had a different view of what a Bounty Hunter should be like. Trying to make one Bounty Hunter profession that fit all of them, was semi balanced, and still useful was almost impossible. The Ranger skill point cost is not nearly as bad but you still run into the same problem. There are several skills that really fit the profession that almost everyone would want to have. Then there are a few other skills that some people want and others would rather have something else. And you even have a few skills that only a few people want and that many others think do not fit the profession. It is likely that you could make a full balanced profession (i.e. one that costs a similar number of skill points to the other professions and has a similar power level) with most of the skills that everyone wants and a few of the skills that some people want. Then you need to decide what to do about the extra power. Do you balance the skill points and let players choose their own extra skills (like a Master Ranger/Master BH picking up some good healing skills or a Master Ranger picking up Master Combat Medic or Master Smuggler instead of their current mastery)? Or do you start filling the profession with skills that some people want but a similar number of other people would not want?

I personally am a big fan of choice. I doubt it is possible to make Ranger "worth the skill points" and not make any Rangers feel like they are still wasting their skill points (either on non existent skills or on skills that they have no reason to use). I think that dropping Ranger's skill point costs slightly to bring it into balance with the other professions can still lead to a strong self contained Ranger profession and allow players to use their extra skill points to pick up a few extra skills that they want. I would expect that leaving the skill point costs as they are and balancing the profession to those skill point costs will lead to most Rangers ending up with some skills that they would rather not have (or rather have another skill instead of).

But balancing is one of the hardest things to do in a game like this and it's very hard to say how powerful a skill is until it actually hits Live for a bit. My personal recommendation on this matter would be to revamp Ranger so that it is a fun, worthwhile, and complete profession without touching the skill point costs and without adding buffer skills. Then, once it hits Live for a bit, decide what the relative power has ended up being. If it seems to have a similar power level to the other professions, drop the skill point cost. If it seems slightly more powerful than the other professions, leave the skill point costs as they are. Such a change is one way and it's very hard to decide where to put the skill point costs before we really know what the profession is going to look like.

heres the main problem with the ranger lowering skill point cost it would have to be drastic because I was just happening to be looking at pistols today to see if I could get a good stopping shot that fourth column would require me to use near30 points (14 for marksmen pistols, 6 for novice pistols and then another 14 to fill the last column of pistols) I don't think cutting points is really an option anymore but if it happens I think the time of me being a master ranger will come to an end. Will keep some of the scouts abilities (terrain negotiation) but will move to a more advanced and deadlier combat class......lets face it ranger is a state of mind and it would be insane to continue with non working skills.

Message Edited by Zetargos on 07-21-2005 06:25 PM

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Owen-Lars wrote:

Eventually i think the skill points have to come down if we want any serious attention. The reason being is that its much more easier to balance a skill point balanced profession that one that have 30% more skill point cost meaning 30% more power. Im not sure what will happen and im happy to go with what the community want but i think ultimatly if ranger is going to be made into a profession that can fit in the game we have at present, we need a change in scope and thus a change in set up.

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What the man said. We can safely have our skill point requirements reduced because Ranger skills don't affect PvP. The only thing we need to be "balanced" against is the harvesting economy, where we have only a marginal advantage post-CU, and general XP grinding, which will always be found somewhere.

But as I've argued elsewhere, we could also axe the Survival tree requirement since it's a completely cosmetic skill. In the long run replace it and Frontiering with something else, but what's the adverse impact if Rangers can build useless-but-pretty camps without also building useless-but-ugly Scout camps?

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Calculus_Entropy wrote:
I suppose we need to make sure that the devs didn't leave us at the highest sp usage for a reason. Maybe they had big plans for us.

MWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHA....whew...I am felling much better now...

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Awww CRAP Calc, you HAD to go andsay that.... now where's my tin foil hat....