Ranger Archive

I have read, but been silent on this board for several weeks now. I felt the need to speak here though.

While I applaud your sentiments Delta,in the middle of the whining can come a good point: New patches that are extremely bugged and highly ineffective are frustrating. While this board has exhibited many of the good points you used to describe them, allow them a chance to vent.

I love the changes that our class is going through and am excited to see them (still haven't had a chance to log in today). If the existent bugs are as bad as I am led to believe on the boards (which is certainly no guarentee), then as a player I would rather wait a week and have a less bugged patch. I'm not naive enough to think a completly unbugged patch would happen.

Hence, I will most likely do what I did after the last big patch. I didn't play for several days because of the extreme bugginess involved in it. I see the same thing happening here. I will probably stay off through most of the weekend and let things calm down a bit, then see what happens.

However, is that necessarily right?

Roliando Cadeamai
Novice Ranger/Novice Carbineer
Member of Naritus Rebel Alliance (NRA)

Evolutionary theory of the day: God nerfed the Dodo into extinction. Many, many eons ago, the Dodo started as the Phoenix, a great and wonderous bird. However, all the other birds bitched, so slowly God ate away at the beauty and power of the Phoenix until only the poor stupid Dodo was left.

Don't forget a lot of these Rangers complaining, maybe 1st time offendors. (if not then I agree w/ u)

They don't realize that this is like the 7th time maskscent has been fixed broken and changed.

Now it's the 1st pass for /conceal, give it a chance, they will tweak it.

Just make constructive threads and say specifically what doesn't work for you, AND HOW YOU WOULD FIX IT.

That applies to camo kits and all patch changes, don't just say "I hate this!"

Tell us how YOU would make it better.

well put brisc!

i started out in this game as a pistoleer / architect. i made master arch, and got tired of many aspects of that profession. So i decided it was time for a change of pace - I had accomplished to goals i had set for myself going into architect - i made a little bit of money, and had a nice fleet of heavy harvesters.

so basically i am new to ranger - just made novice. i am not a l33t d00d - i didn't even know there were changes coming lol

so i made novice and the next day they come out witha patch with some serious ranger lovin in it. i am very excited about my new chosen profession.

so anyways, i agree - but it's not limited to this board - the whole forum is full of baby whiners and usually is so depressing i just quit reading after a while

Well Delta - you get5 from me for sure.

We ask the devs for some new features, and we got them. If the folks complaining (after only a few hours of play) have read the posts in the past, then they would know there is only ONE developer who handles Scout/Ranger and a host of other professions!! That one developer has to come up with all kinds of algorithms, concepts, solutions and ideas not just for our stuff but for a lot of things. Then it goes to the testcenter where probably 2 rangers are playing and testingand they determine the course for the rest of us.

Until some of these folks that are griping are willing to take time away from their usual play and hop on the testcenter, where their complaints might actually have some constructiveimpact for the rest of us, we will always have issues when new features arrive. So now it goes to the masses and lo and behold, it doesn't work as good as we hoped it would - what a surprise!!

Instead of just griping about the current situation, say thanks that the devseven listened to us to begin with. BUTlet's figure out how they can make it work the way we think it should.Put together some concrete advice that will help the ONE developer instead of making him/her feel bad about the work they've done!!

I have spent the day playing with the new stuff we have now..yes it has bugs and problems but it doesn't work too bad, in my experience. I had a few problems with the camo kits, such as having to drop novicemedic to get novice artisan because no one is selling the resources I need. But I managed to make a few camo kits for talus. In my opinion 3 charges is a little low for the amount of resources going in to it, and it breaks sparatically for no good reason and is inconsistant. The first conceal I used broke on a non aggro creature almost right off. The second charge worked great, I ran through 4 aggro npc camps with out getting a second look and it broke 10 min later on a bererk kahmurra. The third charge worked well for about 10 min before it broke..If they could make it more consitant and less prone to breaking as I think it should be it would be alot better. I have found several bugs with the tracking system such as on talus where there is a cave and houses near by, the tracking screen shows everything that is not on the same vertical level, such as animals in the cave or people upstairs in their house as being 1m to the west, when I know they are at least 350m away. I spend most of my time out in the wilds so I didn't have a real prob with the signs and such that others had but it was kind of annoying that corpses show up on the tracking screen. I figured out a decent way to use the tracking with the way it works now though..run the areatrack and find out what direction and distance the animal or whatever is away from you(assuming you have a high enough level to do so) and drop a way point where you are standing. Head in the direction it tell you and use that waypoint you just dropped to judge your distance. When you hit the appocximate distance you should be at keep at that distance and head one way or another til you find them..I am making bank on the hunt missions now doing that..if I dont get the animal I am looking for I hike for 600 or 700 m and try the tracking again..It works quite well

Jebus -lowca-

Jon,

Here's how I try and write when I'm writing to the Devs, or when I've got an issue that I want address:

"We're having problems with <x>. I kinow that this <fill in> is how this is supposed to work, but what's been happening is <x>. I think it would be a good idea to <answer to problem here>. This would fix <x>/make <x> easier to deal with."

That's an oversimplification. Here's a realistic example, using the information provided in your thread (I've still not been in game tonight...)

While I am very happy to see that /areascan was implemented in less than two weeks since the idea was originally provided to us, there are some issues with it as it currently stands.

First, the interface is poor. The layout is cluttered, and it is difficult to use. If this could be addressed by changing the layout, perhaps making it more like the waypoint monitor, it would make the skill much more useful.

Second, /areascan is picking up much more than simply creatures - dead creatures, items in houses, etc. are being shown as well. This is obviously a bug - we're only supposed to get creatures from using it.

Third, /areascan gives you information on ALL of the creatures in the area - even those from the same lair. Since the list is truncated at 50, you can easily only get information on two lairs worth of creatures, even then there may be multiple types that don't show. It would be great is this could be changed to show simply the distance to a lair, or perhaps if the creatures were the same it could say "multiple <X> distance/direction".

That's a non-whining, mature response to this issue.

As to the testing - I agree. This should have been tested more. Right now there simply aren't enough levelled players on Test Center to do the work the right way, and the changes to our elite professions (like Ranger) are getting hit with the most bugs. There are changes in the works - like the Correspondent terminals - but they aren't as high priority as other fixes, like the factory fix, etc. The Devs are still working the kinks out of the system. The game is just starting its third month guys! I know, I know...my "patience" spiel is wearing thin, but at least we're having issues with new skills and not issues with the same old bugs from three months ago.

I hope this makes sense.

B

Makes sense to me Delta , and I'll leave it to you or whoever else picks up the Ranger corespondent mantle to put everything in a nice way .

What I would like to see is NO IN-FIGHTING . We don't need posts that say " This sucks blah blah " with no details other than the poster is unhappy .

We don't need posts like " oh stop whining we got changes grow up blah blah " that offer absolutely nothing arguement at hand and only serves to distract people's attention and energy away from our common problem .

We should all be working together to attack the problem we all share .... the Ranger profession needs work . Suffice to say , the new additions to the Ranger class need work . In a few days when all the silly nonsense posts have died down we can come together , like we always do in this forum , hash out a list of things that aren't working , another list of things that aren't working well and send them off to Dev land and hope for the best .

I'm looking forward to working with you , Delta and everyone else here on coming up with those lists and making this profession something that I'm not always debating dumping the skill points out of .

Peace all

Max

I have been a Master Ranger for sometime now. I don't complain about the game much except for things I find rude to other players. Right now I see Rangers ripping other Rangers because they didn't like something. You know what when you pay 14 bucks a month I think you can have some complaints if things are buggy or messed up. I think most people that have been labeled whiners is really uncall for. If they want to gripe I say go for it. I find it pretty funny how if you complain you are supposedly a newbie or not a real Ranger. Please give me a break. Heck I expect Rangers to be militant if they don't like something!

My personal opinion on the changes is that they were nothing out of this world in being good or bad. Area scan worked alright and conceal I have yet to test it. It will not effect me in a radical way.I kept hunting and making money tonightlike I always do. I am past a million creditsometime agoand I just entertain myselfby helping people become Rangersor going deep in the woods and not seeing a single soul out there.

Well guess what Delta. I'm disappointed too. I think the camo kits were a good idea, and I bet finding the flora willget easierafter some time. The only real issuewith the kits isthe flora is so specialized that it will likely cause price hikes on those particularitems. Since we can't harvest flora making that particular item less specific would have been a good idea. I do like that you've made it so conceal can be used on other players so that I can make an entire group camo'd as well, but there is one glaring disappointment with the whole idea in my opinion.

Now that I've actually got the materials and tried it a little the first thing I noticed is that players can still see me. Although being camo'd from NPCs is nice the real use of camo would be in PVP, and considering that PVP looks to be the real end game of SWGI'd like to know why PCs were leftunaffected by it. Why not cause a detection check with any enemy players based on their skill level with their current held weapon? That combined with breakingconceal at the start of combat and making sure players can't become conceal during combatshould be enough to end any exploits while keeping camo useful, and more importantly fun. Now it just seems a toy that no one gets to see work since only NPCs are effected by it. Perhaps I expected too much from playing Knight of the Old Republic, but I expected to actually see my guy become invisible, or at least have other players not be able to see me. Maybe there are plans to make it useable against PCs and then it can become much more useful.

To be honest my plans coming into SWG was to become a master ranger. I realized quickly after the scout profession that ranger just wasn't going to be very fun for the amount of work that goes into advancing that class so I limited my advancement to the Wayfarer skill so that I would be very good at traveling, and so that I'd be able to use conceal when it became available. Right now I'm having much more fun with my scatter pistol and new light lightningcanon for my BH profession, and I'm asking myself why I bothered spending the skill points on Wayfarer. Of course the lightning bolt command is broke, butthe LLC isstill far more fun and usefulitemat this timethan conceal.

Imagine coming home from work, DLing the patch, and while in the game suddenly realize that conceal has become active! You get all giddy when you realize you have the ability to make the camo packs necessary to conceal. You then realize one of the requirements is a specific piece of flora that sold out of every bazaar on the entire planet. Plus it requires a specific hide from a creature that I can't find a mission to track down. Hours later you finally get the parts you need to make the camo kit. You make it. Then find that everybody can still see you! Not only that, but I find that mask scent is being broken like crazy despite the fact that I've mastered the wayfarer line, and I hear on the boards that conceal does the same thing. Now do you see my frustration? Myself as well as many other rangers have been waiting for this skill for a long time so please forgive us a little disappointment when it doesn't live up to our expectations.

Kharad,

I understand your disappointment, and I appreciate your mature response.

However, the issue here was based more on your expectations of the skill - expectations that I do not believe were pumped up anywhere. I don't recall anything about /conceal making you "invisible", etc.

One of the hardest things for the developers (and for lobbyists like me, as well) is to effectively manage the expectations of the players.

It sucks to get excited for a skill, and then have it turn out to not be as cool or great as you wanted/expected/thought it would be.

So you have a right to be disappointed. And I'm happy that you explained the reason for your disappointment and there wasn't a single "sucks", "worthless" or "**edit** don't the test this @*#" in your post.

B