Ranger Archive

Delta,

I'm not sure where the idea came from that yellow mobs were exempt from the random agro check. The patch notes said, "There is a chance that a creature that detects you while you are scent masked will attack you."Since it doesn't say anything aboutagro mobs only, I always assumed that it applied to all creatures. Mask scent could ALWAYS be broken by any mob, so why should the chance for agro be any different? I had always assumed that since MS was given a big boost to effectivness, the downside would be the chance of random attacks fromany creature. Here's my understanding/observation of how it seems to be working.

Detection: appears to be related to at least the "level" of the mob. The frequency of detection from nightspiders does not equal that of say, rogue fambaa's. (I've NEVER had it broken by what would be a difficulty 5 creature). This was a change to the previous situation where you couldn't run past a gnortlair without your MS being broken. Also, during the patch, the effectiveness was increased for agro mobs. Previous to the patch, if I had a harvester parked in the middle of a pride of tusk cats, I was hosed. Now, its not a problem. The frequency of breaks doesn't appear to be any more frequent than the random attacks from non-agro mobs of similar difficulty.

Note: My understanding was that the "Despite your camo" message was supposed to be very rare, in light of the increase to effectiveness. It isn't supposed to break with any regularity, especially at the higher levels. Again, the random chance for agro from any creature seems to be the "downside" of this phenomenom. The fact that it doesn't break MS when this happens is a GOOD thing. Although, some sort of message would be a nice-to-have.

I can't vouch for you assertion that low level scouts are getting "slaughtered" when using MS. Certainly, they should never be in more danger than a non-scout of similar ability against similar creatures. It seems that this should be re-evalutated. That said, I wouldn't expect that a Exploration II rating would work as well on Lok as it does on Naboo.

Experience: I would agree that there was supposed to be some level of experience granted for a successful "sneak." Back a few patches, you were able to gather a hundred or so points off a sneak. From what I understand, people figured out how to exploit this with a group of agro mobs and continually collect exp with little risk. They patched to combat this by putting in a delay in re-application post detection and by decreasing the points awarded by what appeared to be a nearly ten-fold amount. So instead of getting points in the hundreds, you now would only get point in the ten's. After the "big" patch, exp vanished all together.I suspect that this should be fixed. However, the benefit of the change to effectiveness was so large that the loss of33 points per sneak seemed totally trivial.

Summary: My expectations with respect to detection vs. random agro seems completely consistent with the current implementation. I don't spend much time on the more difficult planets, so I admit that there is room for error in my observations (some adjustment may be appropriate). However, there should always be some level of risk associated with this skill. Having a high degree of success against high-difficulty "red" mobs at the cost of the occasional agro from a "yellow" seems a reasonable trade-off. I would further say that once the camo feature is in game, the same dynamic should be maintained for the group. It would be a drag to think that you could take your group to someplace like Endor and traverse the entire landscape with zero risk. Some planets are supposed to be more difficult and I would expect the risk to scale appropriately. I wouldn't think that the success of Exploration IV on the harder planets would be any more successful than Exploration I is on the easier ones, and vise-versa.

As for the lack of experience with this skill, I could care less. Compared to other skills in this game, the collection of scouting exp required for exploration/wayfaring is pretty easy. Since I've never gained anything but trivial exp from MS, not having it now is simply a non-factor.

After many days away from the game but still being able to read these forums, I've started thinking that if something is actually "broken" with maskscent, it very well likely is the creature AI for certain creatures related to maskscent rather than Maskscent itself. Maybe something related to fercocity calculations in the AI or something??? I'm just stabbing in the dark here, so anyone with some inside information (Delta?) please chime in.

The reason I say that is that some people seem to think that maskscent is working nowhere near how it's supposed to, and others such as myself seem to think it's working as intended. From the feedback Delta relayed from the Dev, I'm still of the opinion that it's working fine, but I've seen in other posts by Delta that he want's maskscent fixed, so something must be broken or delta wouldn't be saying that, so I'm leaning towards a creature AI problem.

I'm still leaning towards the explaination that maskscent is working as intended, but those who think it's broken just don't understand the thinking behind it and we aren't getting any "real" feedback as to what it's supposed to be doing and tell us who is right (big surprise there, eh?), but maybe my experience is too limited (Rori, Lok, Dantooine are my main hunting planets, so maybe Corellian creature AIs need work???).

Summary: Many times perception becomes reality, and is there a company (besides insurance) that wants to tell the customer that they are wrong? A short "strategy guide" written with the guidance of a dev would go a long way to answering these questions of how it should work, but then it could hurt those of us who figure out how to use the in-game mechanics to our advantage over those who don't. I'm torn because I'm sure the dev's can't go on forever ignoring the pleas of those who are saying something is broken, but a big part of the enjoyment of the game for me is experimenting with the "features" (intended or not) and figuring out how to use them to my advantage (some might call it an exploit, others would call it good strategy, but if my intended ability is to be completely stealthy and I do something that is stealth-like and allows me to kill a mob a noob can't, it's not an exploit, otherwise just the act of logging-in after you've gained a skill could probably be called some kind of exploit).

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bennybanglong wrote:
I haven't receive ANY xp from Maskscent since the big patch, but Maskscent isn't being broken by yellow as often since the patch. I rather take the ZERO XP than haven't my Maskscent being broken by Yellow every minute. Maskscent is working out great for me right now.

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Here! Here! I agree fully with bennybanglong

Guys,

Maskscent is broken. It's broken in a way that is good for us now, but I can assure you all, with 100% confidence, that this is not the way it is supposed to work.

I got a head of myself - yellow mobs aren't supposed to be able to break maskscent as of the changes on Test Center. This was something I lobbied for and got, but not in the update. My mistake.

The lower level Scouts are getting slaughtered using maskscent because the yellow mobs are all attacking them whenever they have maskscent up. But it's not breaking - it stays up, but creatures that wouldn't have attacked them if they ran past without maskscent up are attacking them now. It's part of the change of "there's a chance that if a creature detects you, it will attack...".

In any event, this whole argument is moot because mask scent has been repaired and is working the way it is supposed to work on Test Center now - and we'll have these changes shortly.

B