Ranger Archive
Thread: Ranger Revamp: The Focus (Tier Names)
Owen-Lars wrote:
Waste i dont uderstand why you are using examples from real world when infact in the real world ranger can mean many many things. Park Ranger, Military Rangers etc. Infact in SWG there is a wide range of rangers alot of those around policing, even force related. Saying that a ranger in swg cant have military training just because of a real world example doesnt make sense.
Because the words we choose invoke a view based on real world examples. If you want military training, that is what the combat professions are for.
Like you said, commandos in swg are different from those in the real world, is it so hard to think that a mix of military and survival like ranger skills can fuse into a fun profession to play?
You also have to be careful about treading on the territory of other professions.
At the end of the day we are not asking for a gun nor a sword etc so we should not have a brawler or marksman pre-req. We already have a weapon which are traps, CH's have a weapon yet they do not have a combat pre-req. SWG rangers should be a mix between survival and recon, they have stealth, they have traping, they have survival and they have hunting, i dont see why advancing into a recon role would be bad?
Having a recon role isn't bad. Having a recon primary role is. For recon is a military term. That is a combat orientation.
Why is the name ofthe key roleso important to change when they cover the same points, give the same message and ultimatly do the same thing (i.e. we will still be called rangers)? The only difference being that one role highlights aunique direction the other is just an advancement over scout.
Like you originally said. Names are important. It needs to be both descriptive and accurate. Forget about what you know the game for a minute. Lets say you just picked up the game. You start up and you start looking thru the professions to get an idea of what you want to do.
Look at the branch titles. They will give you a certain impression. You will expect certain things from them based on their title. If the title isn't accurate you'll be disappointed.
Ranger isn't suppose to be anything other than just an advancement over Scout. That is why they have that pre-req. Just as Rifles is just an advancement over the Rifle branch of Marksman. TKA is jsut and advancement of the Unarmed of Brawler. All elites are extensions over their base profession.
We are working for a unique profession here and role that supports it, not bits enhanced over scout, we dont and never wanted to be super scouts, we want to be rangers and be effective in our own right, having survivalist as our primary role only projects the image of doing something a bit better than scouts. Recon gives the same skills and ability under its name yet projects an image of uniqueness and image of purpose and ultimatly a role that no-one else has.
All professions should be unique. However you don't discount the pre-reqs as that is the skills they are built upon.
Right now this is true (except for tracking which is a unique skill we have different from Scout). In the future hopefully it will be different. The possible usefullness of wilderness survival has really capped out at scout. To make us a viable profession above scout we need those unique skills. Hopefully stealth/recon will be one of those.
Plus you do realize what the counter for your argument is don't you?
Make it a requisite that you maser marksman to get novice rifleman and make three of your four rifle lines useless and then we will be comparable. 
Vorpaks wrote:
And I think this is what about 50% of the Rangers see themselves as - but what is the use for this kind of Ranger in the game? RP is nice and all, but useful skills are better in my opinion.
Nothing wrong with wanting useful skills. Nor am I say you shouldn't have them. It's the direction of those skills that we are talking about.
Yes there are military Rangers as you put it. But people are mistaking the two Ranger types. They see the title Ranger and assume the military kind. Which helps prove my point that words mean things. And titles are important to avoid confussion.
And as I said. Since there is no military pre-req, an expectation of military Ranger is misplaced.
Well first - why? And second most Rangers do have a combat profession. The roles and skills of Ranger are meant to enhance this profession. In the ambush example you listed above this seems to work perfectly. THe Ranger skills allow for the concealment, the combat skills allow for the beat-down afterwards.
And the combat skills come from the combat professions.
I disagree - I think a lot of military skills would help a wilderness survivalist and I KNOW a lot of military personnel are trained in wilderness survival.Ala Greg Brown even.
Few military skills are useful in wilderness survival. You don't use small unit tactics when hunting deer for example. Nor are a lot of military personnel trained in wilderness survival. Generally it is only special forces units and pilots. They make up a very small percentage of overall military personnel.
Would there be a problem with asking for weapon certs? Is remaining a triple master profession necessary? And why are weapon certs automatically "military" skills? I use my weapon skills for hunting mainly. And I use my weapon skills to kill storm troopers. The weapon itself is not one or the other - its how you use it. And that is an RP choice, not something that should be decided by what profession you take.
Weapon certs aren't military skills. They are however combat skills.
Is crawling speed really useful in PvP? If traps worked on NPC and PCs they would be military skills - using a weapon against a person is no longer hunting, it is war.
No. You can use a firearm without any military training and still kill someone. A hunter without any military skills can track people. If I make a trip wire trap for an animal it will also work against a person. Thosre aren't military skills.
Our kind is.
Agree.
That is what we are hoping for.
Agree
Actually Ranger does not have a defined vision - that is what we are creating here.
Disagree. Professions are defined by their skills and pre-reqs. Which is all Scout based.
What would be the point of doing this? Our main skill right now is organic resource collecting - are you saying we should follow around combat professions and harvest what they kill? This sounds extremely unnattractive and unfun. No, to PLAY Ranger you really do need a combat profession.
Agree. And something needs to be done to make Rangers more useful overall. However that should be done in the context of their role.
You guys type too fast.
Sorry if any of this is out of order. I am confused on one point - how did "military" and Commandos come into the argument? I thought we were talking about stealth recon here? I have to reiterate Commandos=not stealthy at ALL. Rangers=stealthy (or so our camo suggests
Here is how it came in. There are two meanings to the word Ranger. The outdoors version and the military version. In the military context Ranger is just another name for Commando. Commandos (true meaning not SWG which is where your confusion is) are stealthy (to an extent).
Phew, I know I missed a ton.
Recon may sound better. But it is also inaccurate. Though Survivalist may have some negative connotations. So do Assassin and Commisar. And those are both less descriptive of the skills they represent than Survivalist would be for Ranger.
Vorpaks wrote:
Right now this is true (except for tracking which is a unique skill we have different from Scout). In the future hopefully it will be different. The possible usefullness of wilderness survival has really capped out at scout. To make us a viable profession above scout we need those unique skills. Hopefully stealth/recon will be one of those.
Which indicates we have to find ways to make those skills useful again. Stealth/Recon isn't the issue.
Plus you do realize what the counter for your argument is don't you?
Not comparable. Your arguement here is that some of your branches are useless. That just means we need to fix them. But they still need to be extensions of what leads to them.
Owen-Lars wrote:
Nope. Riflemen do have a role, pistoleers do have a role. You cannot become the sniper with marksman skills, you cannot become the machine gunner without getting rifleman, you are simply a character that shoots using a rifle, not a rifleman.
I think you are missing the point. All Rifle skills are derived from the pre-reqs. Rifleman are super Marksman Rifle users. The machine gun aspect comes from that extension. But it is still an extension from the base.
Rangers are and will need to be an extension of the base. That doesn't mean they aren't unique however. You take those base skills and expand upon them.
The problem derives if you are asking for abilities that don't derive from that point.
I'm not against what you've suggested. It sounds good. I don't like the terms as it derives from a starting point that you don't have. It has the potential of giving a false impression. And has the very real possibility of being used as the starting point to latter intrude on the territory of other professions based on the perception of the title.
If the primary role is Recon. What is recon? The gathering of intel on an enemy force. That means not just locating them. But also finding out what equipment they carry. Does that mean Rangers should have the ability 'look' at another players equipment to see its stats? Or should something like that, if in game, be the territory of Smugglers?
Also note that Recon deals with enemy forces. It has nothing to do with hunting. Other than hunting people.
Ifyou start making them like military Rangers (Commandos). Then you will start seeing requests for other Commando abilities based on what the RL versions can do. That is where we will see the treading on other professional abilities.
It won't happen short term. It's a long term thing. But it will happen.
No waste, there is noFIREARM orMELEEpre-reqs. Take alook at our tree, we already have a weapon,traps. Theres are not firearms nor melee weapons yet are still pure combat related. Advancing upon this is just one of our justifications for becoming MORE military orientated. Stop thinking that you need to be holding a firearm or sword in your hand to be military orientated.
Traps are not military. They are combat or hunting but military they are not.
InROTJ i sawEwoks using traps insomething id call a MILITARY operation.
They used traps such as a trip wire and the log crush. But they didn't learn those from a military view. Those are extenstions of hunting traps.
Which is a great reason for your traps to work on NPCs and PCs. But don't confuse those with military training.
Nor would I call the Ewoks in those scenes military. Primitive socities like those are highly unlikely to have a military. They were hunters. The scene was a large scale hunting operation.
Waste93 wrote:
Vorpaks wrote:
Right now this is true (except for tracking which is a unique skill we have different from Scout). In the future hopefully it will be different. The possible usefullness of wilderness survival has really capped out at scout. To make us a viable profession above scout we need those unique skills. Hopefully stealth/recon will be one of those.Which indicates we have to find ways to make those skills useful again. Stealth/Recon isn't the issue.
Plus you do realize what the counter for your argument is don't you?Not comparable. Your arguement here is that some of your branches are useless. That just means we need to fix them. But they still need to be extensions of what leads to them.
Exact;y
Which is where the recon application of our skills comes in. It seems we are actually agreeing here except on the part about people expecting Ranger to be a combat-oriented profession and the thing about pre-reqs. People already come into this profession expecting it to be combat oriented. They come in expecting to be able to do the things we've laid out and are dissapointed when they find out they can't. Then they come to the forums and ask why and suggest ideas... and NRass Calc and Owen take those ideas and turn them into documents like this. We are not creating an expectation, we are defining an expectation that is already there and has always been there.
To say flat out that Rangers can't have skills that support combat because we have no pre-reqs in a combat profession has too many exceptions to be a set in stone truth. We have one whole line (traps) that is completely combat-oriented. There are several other combat-support professions that so not have pre-reqs in combat professions. And why impose limits like this anyway? The ability to mix and match skills to your character and combat style is one of the great strengths of SWG. Ranger can add a really unique flavor to combat if we are allowed to use them against PCs and NPCs. I would hate to see that potential be discarded for a pre-conceived notion that already has several notable exceptions to it.
Vorpaks wrote:
Exact;y
Which is my concern. By labeling those as such and giving the primary role as Recon which is a military term and useage, it sets an expectation and future expectations based on it.
If you say the primary role is Recon, people have an expectation based on that. And they also will base future requests based on that. If Rangers primary role is Recon (gathering intel on the enemy) then is it that much of a jump for someone to decide that Rangers in that role should say have the ability to determine the vulnerability times of bases. Isn't that after all gathering info on the enemy (Recon)?
To say flat out that Rangers can't have skills that support combat because we have no pre-reqs in a combat profession has too many exceptions to be a set in stone truth. We have one whole line (traps) that is completely combat-oriented. There are several other combat-support professions that so not have pre-reqs in combat professions. And why impose limits like this anyway? The ability to mix and match skills to your character and combat style is one of the great strengths of SWG. Ranger can add a really unique flavor to combat if we are allowed to use them against PCs and NPCs. I would hate to see that potential be discarded for a pre-conceived notion that already has several notable exceptions to it.
Not disagreeing with you here. Some things I'd like to see for Ranger other than those mentioned. Damage bonuses vs creatures. Damage bonus would work with any weapon being used. Poison/Disease/State resists vs creature attacks. Creature damage mitigation. There is a large host of ideas such as these that can allow Rangers to augment. And allowing Rangers to combine with whatever combat profession they want to allow a variety.
Though I'm not sure I'd say there are several other combat augmentation profession that don't require combat pre-reqs. Creature Handler would seem to be the only one. Unless you are counting Doc as a combat augmentation.