Ranger Archive
Thread: State of the Profession (Oct 8)
Ogo: I'd much rather all ranger craftables be made out of metal and polymer. They are dirt cheap and far far far easier to acquire than bone and hide. I can sell any old crap bone/hide for at least twice whan I can pay for metal or steel. I'm pretty sure this holds true for all servers. Quality doesn't matter.
I don't think any rangers were complaining when the field bases required metal and polymer, so why did they switch it in the first place?
"When I approach them concealed, I have no idea if they see me or not. I go prone and start taking pot shots to try and pull them a couple at a time. They all make a beeline for me, did mindshots and kill me quickly. Conceal did not break."
/conceal won't break until you take damage...
However, socially assistive creatures will be "told" your location by the creature that you attacked. 
- From the impression I got, this was the intended effect.
- In the future we could possibly push the A.I. developer to change this behavior.
"I see Dant kits only need the meat and hide so they fixed that one."
Yes, I'm quite impressed with this one...
- It was an 11th hour change to remove that darn Berry Fruit from the requirements, Bravo.
This seems to seriously limit the usefulness of camouflage kits. Unless I'm planning to run through the wilderness for several kilometers with shooting anything, it's not going to be worth it to use a camo kit, even with the flora component removed.
I've been saying this since the moment they announced camo kits. It is of such limited use that nobody will bother to use them on a day to day basis, especially since one can simply run around the roadblock instead.
Throw in the fact that it still doesn't work against all NPCs and will break quite frequentlyfor a hunting group of any sizeandyou'll realize thatwe've waited forsix weeks for an ability we'll use about as often as /rescue.
It's a novelty skill, like the eye-candy camps.
I personally would still love to see our harvested rescources be of higher quality, or get the ability to refine them after harvest.
Perhaps in the process of inproving the quality we would lose some materials, and at higher levels suffer less loss than at lower levels.
Hey gang, for the short time I was on last night, I made and played with some Corellian camo kits. They worked great. I put them on my small group, and ran through the swamp. None of us had them break at all from creatures. They did tend to break when entering combat, and it seemed only if we took damage. It was not consistant, when the /conceal would break and why. But it was only breaking from combat. They lasted a good while too, but not sure just how long. We didn't go more then ten minutes before getting into combat. Also, I used a public crafting machine to make them and I got 15% quality improvment and my stacks had seven.
I also tried mask scent a little bit, and it didn't break from combat. I was not taking any damage, so it seems that was working OK.
NRaas, it was still not clear if the enter combat/take damage thing was going to break mask scent only, or also conceal. Any feedback on if conceal is setup the same way?
"it was still not clear if the enter combat/take damage thing was going to break mask scent only, or also conceal. Any feedback on if conceal is setup the same way?"
/maskscent and /conceal will only break if you incur damage during the combat.
"They lasted a good while too, but not sure just how long."
My testing on Test Center showed that the concealment lasted around 25 minutes, if it did not break.
Someone posted about the fact that shooting a singleNPC in a groupcauses the whole group to aggro you. It would be cool to throw a rock, make a noise, or something similarto attract a single NPC's attention. It happened in Star Wars - didn't Ben Kenobi make a noise or something to get the storm trooper away from the tractor beam generator? However, I don't think this would technically be a Ranger-specific skill.
- Paks
OK a few comments on all the different posts on this thread.
I didn't care about polymer and metal in my camps and traps. It was such a small amount, and not to expensive to buy. The crafters have to buy our hides and bones so it I's still ahead by selling them those. But it's been changed so what ever. I agree with NRaas, we have these "HIGH TECH" camps, with metal polls, crafting stations, metal tables and chairs, metal or plastic tents/cabins and medical looking tanks, etc. It's not like we make as many camps as we do traps.They are not a major crafting item for us, in quantity.
Rangers should either give group terrain negotiation,(but I dont want to infringe on SL stuff) or give us flat ground speed increase, and maybe have apply to groups also. That way our group will still go faster, even on hills, but not as fast as us because we have terrain negotiation on top of that. I like this idea.
Along with that, Alpha, what I was thinking of on the terrain negotiation bonuse would not effect the scouts at all. The 50 points they get would stay the same. The change would be for the first say 20 points of rangers bonus would go to more running spead. Then the last 30 points of ranger bonus would go to the crawling. So basically a Ranger can run up hills faster then a master scout, and crawl a little faster. The scout would not be changed at all.
/conceal should stay on for creatures that dont break, even after combat and taking damage. considering it costs us, The mask scent has no cost so that's ok that it totally breaks when one creature attacks. But if we get a creature attacking us, only that creature should break /conceal.
The examine info being slim on some creatures. I have been getting this for about 3 weeks now, from Tat and now on Corellia. I also thought at first that maybe they didnt have that info, but since then I have noticed I see full info on those that dont have those stats, it just shows a zero or a -
Good job NRaas, doing a great job.
That reminds me. I went up to a player that was not grouped with me and applied /conceal to them. It gave the usual message. When they join the group I noticed they did not have the stat nose icon on their HAM bar. I targeted them again and tried to conceal them, but it told me he was already concealed and I could not apply. It acted as if he was concealed though as we ran through groups of agros.
Also, I noticed something different as far as the xp for /conceal. It seemed, not sure, that I was only getting xp for me passing agros and not when the others did. I know for a fact that I was getting xp for myself and anyone else I /concealed previous to update. Has anyone else noticed if it's doing this? NRas, do know how it's intended to give xp?
"When they join the group I noticed they did not have the stat nose icon on their HAM bar."
I've noticed that as well...
It appears to be a problem with information about the new group membernot being broadcast to other group members.
Ensure to /bug it.
"I was only getting xp for me passing agros and not when the others did."
A Rangershould only get experience once per creature. Ifthey were receiving multiple experience previously, I suspect that was in error.
If a player concealed by the Ranger walks up to an aggressive creature before the Ranger does, that check will produce the experience.
Either way, a Ranger should only get experience for one of the checks against any specific creature...
sbjnyc wrote:
Hobbbbit wrote:
/rescue doesn't work when two people are dueling (might've been intended this way).
/conceal doesn't work on NPCs of opposed faction while overt.
I don't agree with this one. It's unnecessary (you can always kill couple of small creatures to find out stats of the resources) and artisans don't have any option of finding out stats on resources, except /sample either.
Request for ability to determine resource attributes on a corpse before harvesting
Again, don't agree. Rangers shouldn't affect groups in anyway other then conceal. They usually hunt alone and join groups only to help finding targets and collect resources.
Request for Group Terrain Negotiation to be added to our profession rather than Squad Leader
P.S. Great job NRaas!
Rangers aren't artisans. The fact that artisans need to sample has no bearing on the fact that a ranger should be able to look at a creature and judge what quality of resources it has. This is a fairly intuitive skill that hunters seem to share. As far as killing small creatures to find out the stats of resources, easier said than done!
Rangers are pathfinders (wasn't that the name of one of our skills/trees at one time?). That means finding paths for others. While I agree that thje functionality of squad leaders needs to be improved, pathfinding has always been a ranger skill. Other than the fact that it's currently an SL skill, I see no justification for it beyond that.
To Nras: Great job. Was posting this on patch day a coincidence or can we deduce from this that the top issues are still issues even after the patch?
How about this as a proposal: /sampleHarvest
This command will yield ether a menu where you can simplysee the stats of the animals harvests or take one unit of each possible harvest, not usable on babies and flaged so that you can't sample again (for the later part).
Of course, if Masters get the ability to harvest all of the animal (all possible harvests, full quantity) this would be a moot point (or as Joey says: "The point is moo").
"This command will yield ether a menu where you can simplysee the stats of the animals harvests"
Odd... That is how the request is laid on in the State of the Profession list.
- The ability would provide a list window with the appropiate resource selections available on the targeted corpse (meat / hide / bone)
- Once a selection is made, a player would receive the /examine window for the chosen resource
- The player would not receive a physical resource, only the information regarding its attributes
- The ability could be used multiple times to receive the data on the other available resources
- The information could also contain whether harvesting the resource would produce a Fat, Medium, Skinny result
- The attributes consist of items such as Overall Quality, Unit Toughness, Potential Energy, etc