Ranger Archive
Thread: The Top 5 Bug Responses
/conceal is realy a passive/defensive skill and allowing it to be effective against NPC's doesn't detract from the Uber Creature Hunter vision. It should be incredibly effective against creatures, but consider this; If a person applies a camouflage effective enough to fool an animal with heightened senses and which is much much more aware of their environment, why wouldn't that same camouflage work against a civilized humanoid which in general doesn't rely on its senses as much as an animal does to spot danger. If it must be nerfed, or "fixed" as the devs would have it, make it less effective against NPC's or force it to break at 32m or something, I don't even care if I don't get EXP when concealing againt NPC's, but please don't let them take it away.
I beg you NRass to please fight for us on this one.
As for the urgency for attention towards us from the Devs, I personally think we are one of the more better off professions and to wait a while till the cycle comes back to us is no great travesty.
[gripe]
conceal doesnt even have its own icon
i feel like an magician, all my skills are impressive to other players the first time they see them, then players start to look at what they actualy do and how they work
and the devs tell us we will get new traps and new camps and then we get put on hold for mounts playercities and vehicles, and then we get rotated out of development
[/gripe]
and thats how i feel
First of all, Camo should work on NPC's. They don't wear the stuff in armies to hide from rabbits, and good hunters are essentially invisible to human eyes if they're good. It's simply a side effect and made our profession just a touch more usefull.
It was also the only reason to use camo kits, where the requirements to make the kits outweigh the advantages by far.
We should be the best creature hunters in the galaxy, by far. Soon.
The last time I used a trap was about 3 weeks ago, camo was two weeks ago, I never used /rescue when it was live, last time I used /areatrack effectively was also weeks ago. Creature to hit bonuses are essentially useless if you're any combat profession(or melee). Maskscent is now in the scout tree...
I've never actually needed any of the ranger camps.
What's my most useful Ranger skill I have right now? I can crawl really fast. This is invaluable for crawling races around cantinas and houses.
I sort of hope that they completely remake this profession, like what they're doing with the Smuggler. At the same time though, it's a given that Ranger is going to be somewhere in the back of the pecking order, and it's going to be a very, very long wait until we can actually do something useful in this game.
Anyway...all this doesn't mean I won't still be a Ranger
Little confused here...
We are to be the ultimate creature hunters and we are given nifty little abilites to do that like traps and area track. My question to you Nrass and your to GM is arent the humanoids in the game also creatures? Why should we loose conseal vs. NPC's when it already doesn't work on PC's? We are given area track NPC's and PC's are they then also going to remove those componets? Conseal should remain as it is anyone who has ever been in the military knows that if you are good at your camouflage they the chances of someone seeing you are almost nil even with advanced detection devices.
I'm currently enjoying the ranger profession and still plan on mastering it first, despite it being by far the weakest of my professional options.
Conceal
As per the above posts, if this does not work on NPC humanoids this entire tree is worthless. Please don't nerf this, bar camps this is our only distinctive feature.
Camping
Very distinctive for the profession and graphically pleasing. However, if grouped I will invariably have a medic with me. The healing times although nice in principle are therefore irrelevant in groups. Increased healing times are useful if a Master Fronteirsman and soloing, but irrelevant before that as I will want my camp open atleast the 5 mins that it takes me to heal from incap to full, just to gain some xp benefit from the camp. That said the ideas about base camps and actually repelling creatures would make this tree very worthwhile. Longer lasting foraged buffs (even with correspondingly lower effects) would make foraging more useful in group situations.
Tracking
I've found this useful for hunting whilst soloing, but utterly useless if in a group of 3 or more. Spreading out on mounts or vehicles and looking for mobs is far quicker than stopping and tracking. In particular, it means that my ranger is running behind the rest of the party as he is on foot and tracking whilst everyone else is covering more ground on mounts. Master of wildrness travel indeed! The additional accuracy bonuses against creatures are nice here, especially if kiting as running on the move cuts down allot of professional accuracy mods. However, this is only really an advantage if stacked with another advanced combat profession (which is fine as game balance does need to take multiple professions into account).
Trapping
Used correctly, I do find this tree immensley useful for kiting, rooting and creature debuffs. That said the actual ranger traps don't seem very varied and the debuffs they offer seem to make to dissernable difference to my group or my soloing ability. The main advantage of the ranger branch of this tree is that my higher level scout traps stick allot more often.
Despite the above I still ove the ranger profession, although more for roleplaying reasons than any benefit it offers compared to other in-field (i.e. combat, medic etc.) professions
NRaas wrote:
On the other side, I am saddened about the "loss" regarding /conceal.
So...uh...don't just take it lying down, then. Fight. Fight like a pit bull to make sure we can keep it. Go into the Correspondent Forum and kick ass and take names.
It is a FREAKIN' STUPID IDEA to make camo ineffective against NPCs. It defeats the whole notion of "Rangers are more than just 'Scouts, only moreso,'" which was why camo got in the first place.
You're the correspondent. You're a good correspondent -- one of the best I've seen on the forums. So explain to the devs why changing this would be a bad idea. Preferably with words of only one or two syllables.
VolstedGridban wrote:
So explain to the devs why changing this would be a bad idea. Preferably with words of only one or two syllables.
Just say ''we don't like your plan'' 
I was pretty irritated when I started reading this thread, and I was planning on channeling that energy into a nice ball of flame for our apparantly absentminded developer greenie-marinie, but nothing I would have said hasn't been said 3 different times already here.
So I'll just /agree with the discontent over hijacking one of our best perks and point out that the carbineer chargeshot bug has been there since the dawn of time (the one where they can kd spam infinitely) and they have been *allowed* to keep it! Why, then,are they harpin on us for having a chance to avoid being force choked by that nightsister spellweaver?
Actually, conceal does have its own icon, goofy-looking though it is. It basically looks like someone playing peek-a-boo with a toddler -- hands over eyes, with a smile. (Or did I assign that icon to a macro? Hmm.)Other than that, you're absolutely right and I agree whole-heartedly. We get a few oohs and ahs here and there as newer players see the camps we can make and see the pretty lights that some of the traps make, but the novelty wears off faster than /maskScent on a novice scout with Exploration II.
The only truly beneficial things that rangers seem to have over scouts is public crafting stations in our top two camps and the limited ability to see what creatures are nearby without having to run in a circle (though that actually helps the /areaTrack ability out). If /conceal doesn't work on NPCs, then it will become nothing more than /maskScent2, giving only alonger duration since in my experience it breaks just as much as /maskScent. And because scout is a prerequisite for a number of elite professions and many people want the benefit of terrain negotiation from the exploration tree, there aren't many people without /maskScent already, so the ability to apply it to other players isn't very helpful.
I am glad that we were one of the first professions to get some attention after all the major bug fixes and such, but there wasn't really much done. I can understand that they have lots of expenses, but there is obviously a shortage of programmers working on profession fixes and upgrades.
Well i move for a vote of no confidence in both the developer and the correspondant of this profession.
Negative. N'Raas has my full unwavering support. He will reply to the dev's with our concerns as soon as he returns from vacation. He has done a fine job, and as Volstad mentioned is probably the best correspondent in the game. I only say probably, because I haven't seen them all. He is the best I have seen.
The developer on the other hand..........
Keito_Temreh wrote:
Well i move for a vote of no confidence in...the correspondant of this profession.
/veto
NRaas is intelligent, articulate, and has repeatedly demonstrated his love for the Ranger class and his desire to see it improved and fleshed out.
On the Great Big List(tm) of "People who are responsible for the problems experienced by the Ranger class," the top of the list is the SOE Devs. NRaas is somewhere below Drew Carey and Deion Sanders.
I gotta say I am thuroughly disgusted by the response. We have had nothing since august and they reply to a bug list and it basically says 'working on it' for 2 of 5 items. Is that working on it like they are working on the things they promised in August?
The only other item they even bloody mention is to say that camo shouldnt work on NPCs which basically makes camo completely and utterly useless.
So in a nut shell the Ranger class as I see it:
Camo line: ok now, bit buggy, going to get nerfed to being useless
Camp line: ooo big fancy camp, ooo big fat deal
Tracking line: ok now, though the way mobs spawn makes it far from reliable
Trap line: super buggy and frustrating to use, totally unreliable, best traps are scout traps
So in short SOE you can shove it. As for the no confidence thing on NRaas totally unsuportive of this idea. Not only is the response not his fault, but he is a **edit** fine coorespondant all around.
Cul
Keito_Temreh wrote:
Well i move for a vote of no confidence in blah blah blah...
1) do you know that correspondant is a volunteer position, not a paid position?
2) do you think that YOU could do a better job?
3) do you realize that our developer, greenmarine, is responsible for other professions besides ranger, including chef and smuggler, as well as heading projects like player cities mounts and vehicles?
N'raas posts in 80% or more of the threads in this forum. He is always helping people and answering questions. The lists he puts together for greenmarine contain more than just 5 suggestions or 5 issues; it's not only a mile long, but it's also as broad in scope as it is articulate, covering everything from known issues to wish list items.