Ranger Archive

While Nemo's list isdelightfully sneaky... I think it maystray to farfrom the oft repeated "give us a clear simple list". For some reason, I don't see the top six list you said was stickied, so going off the things listed by others, I just put them in the order that most appeals to me.

1. harvesting

2. traps

3. camps

4,tracking

5. camo

My order for Nemo's farther reaching list would be:

Message Edited by Shaylin on 04-05-2004 06:13 PM

Nice list nemo

1 Tracking tree
2 Trappingtree
3 Frontiering tree
4 Diversity
5 Wayfaring tree (i dont pvp)

1) Harvesting tree, with emphasis on /track command

2) Camo and conceal

3) Traps

4) Frontiering

5) Diversity

• Harvesting rates are way too low to support the economy
  
• /areatrack is full of bugs and the spawn system doesn't help because things don't appear as they should.
  
• Where is /track that was promised back in August?

• Scouts and Rangers are essentially the same right now. Rangers get almost nothing for the extra 63 skill points on top of Master Scout.
  
• What happened to all the ideas that would make us different than Scouts thatwe were promisedback in August?


• Additional Creature defenses might help us be better creature hunters, in addition to fixing all our other trees.

• What happened to the new traps promised back in August? Maybe a modular system would increase trap diversity?
  
• Traps almost never hit anything worth trapping. Give us some way of upping the trap effectiveness, maybe increase trap effect time, orjust give us a big increase in trapping skills.


• Let traps work in PvP combat (preferably PCs and NPCs as well--why can traps stop a rancor in his tracks, but not a meatlump or a stormtrooper?) Stealth should be on top of this, We need both.


• Traps are almost neverusedonce you hit Master Ranger. Give us some reason to use traps, we get **2** new traps that rarely work anyway. Scouts get a LOT more traps than that.

• Most Rangers don't bother with camouflage. Maskscent works just about as well with no resource cost. NPC reactions to the skills are unpredictable (either change /conceal's description or fix it to work right).
  
• Many Rangers believe that PvP stealth is one of the few skills that might make our profession worth the skill point cost. Even if it only works at Master Ranger.


• The abilty to crawl faster is not seen as useful, please think of a better bonus if you are not inclined to give us stealth.

5.Frontiering Tree (Camping and /forage)

• Previous changes made camps almost worthless unless you needed to call a med droid or a vehicle/pet/mount.
  
• Recent changes have made camps all but worthless. They need some value, preferably allowing Entertainers to heal BF.


• Forage is useless to us.
  
• What happened to the new camps promised back in August? We would like some sort of modular system for this too.

There you go. Hopefully that makes it clearer and easier to read, not that it wasn't good before - but I'm trying to think of anything that might give us an edge.

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Calculus_Entropy wrote:

1.Diversity (Make us different than Scouts, maybe something like extra creature defenses or some of the skills mentioned below or some of the skills promised back in August?)

• What happened to all the ideas that would make us different than Scouts that Holocron posted for us (from GreenMarine) that were in the works back in August? We need to be more than just meat gatherers IMHO.
  
• Scouts and Rangers are essentially the same right now. Rangers get almost nothing for the extra 63 skill points on top of Master Scout.
  
• Additional Creature defenses might help us be better creature hunters, in addition to fixing all our other trees.


• Perhaps a large bonus to fighting in the wild. The system is able to recognize no build zones and player city areas, so when we are out of those areas, perhaps we can get additional defenses and attack bonuses. This makes sense, as we are supposed to be the kings of the wilds. A ranger in the city---just isn't pretty. A ranger in the wilds---well, can't rhyme this one, but basically he/she rules. Perhaps something like a buff that we can only put on ourselves out in the wilds, that can give our defenses a huge boost. TKA is able to meditate away poisons and disease. We should be able to become one with nature and gain a boost from that. This could be a boost to our natural defense vs. state effects or something like that. I will organize a post regarding this idea so it can fleshed out more.

2. Tracking Tree (Harvesting and /areatrack)

• Harvesting rates are way too low to support the economy
  
• /areatrack is full of bugs and the spawn system doesn't help
  
• where is /track that was promised back in August?


• Increase our range. 500m is just not gonna cut it. And give us the ability to refresh our tracking window like the survey tools can refresh and show the highest concentration.

3. Trapping Tree (Traps that are actually useful, maybe the new modular ones?)

• Traps are almost never used once you hit Master Ranger. Give us some reason to use traps.
  
• Make Ranger Trapping more than just a bunch of skill mods. We get **2** new traps that rarely work anyway. Scouts get a LOT more traps than that. Maybe a modular system would increase trap diversity?
  
• Traps almost never hit anything worth trapping. Give us some way of upping the trap effectiveness. Or just give us a big increase in trapping skills.
  
• What happened to the new traps promised back in August?
  
• EDIT: Let traps work in PvP combat (preferably PCs and NPCs as well--why can my trap stop a rancor in his tracks but not a meatlump or a crafter. Give us something that works in this supposed "endgame" other than just supplying resources. Stealth should be on top of this. We need both.


• We need more options available to us in the trapping tree. For us to have only two traps smacks of someone just creating a trapping tree and filling it with the only two things they could think of instead of just taking those two traps and throwing them in one of the other trees. The whole trapping tree can be condensed and shifted to another skill tree and then we can have either a whole new tree dedicated to an entirely new skill or we can have only 3 skill trees so we can have some more skill points to play with.

4.Wayfaring Tree (Stealth, camo on NPCs, camo that works better)

• Most Rangers don't bother with camouflage. Maskscent works just about as well with no resource cost. NPC reactions to the skills are unpredictable (either change /conceal's description or fix it to work right).
  
• Many Rangers believe that PvP stealth is one of the few skills that might make our profession worth the skill point cost. Even if it only works at Master Ranger.


• For stealth, I would like to see the ability for a ranger to completely invisible in the wilds. The ghillie suit serves this purpose I think. Though this is a futuristic society, so why not a personal cloaking device? Something akin to what the Predator used. Something only we can use. Make it a quest item with limited schematic usage. It would also only be truly useful in the wilds as well.

5.Frontiering Tree (Modular camps or something else that actually makes them useful)

• Recent changes have made camps all but worthless.
  
• Previous changes made camps almost worthless unless you needed to call a med droid or a vehicle/pet/mount.
  
• Make this tree useful in some way.
  
• What happened to the new camps promised back in August?


• I am all for the camps in the Outdoorsman Proposal. It incorporates bits from a lot of other professions and promotes interdependance. This is important since it gives other professions more as well.

This points out that our entire skill tree is pointless even if it is a bit extreme. A few links to current threads might help a bit as well.

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

Message Edited by Calculus_Entropy on 04-05-2004 05:00 PM

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1)Harvesting - It would make Ranger a profession with it's own niche in the community without driving up the prices for huntresources up so immensely, which as it is now is killing economies on a lot of servers. I like the idea of maybe a novice ranger being allowed to harvest2 times of the same corpse and maybe the master ranger 3 times.

2) Traps -Traps in this game (like grenades) are virtually useless. The effects arent that noticable and while if they were it could be pretty neat, it should be something a ranger gets more variety of. More experimentation would be nice and PLZ let them also work on NPCs and other PCs. Then a ranger can actually mean something in dungeons and pvp groups as well. More variety and on ranger levels maybe also have some traps working against (N)PCs would make ranger a profession to ask along in groups. (Since it has no more use for camps) Thiso ne bums me out since i love trapping...

3) Area Track - Making it work properly is paramount... Best i would think is giving it an interface more or less like the survey device interface. Make an areascanner object if that helps and like the surveying skill allows range to change make it do the same for areatracking skills. The spawnsystem in this game makes it tough i am aware, but as it is now areascanning is next to useless. Areatracking for your team has no more use in the way of safety / protection since we all have swoops outrunning everything, and with the random spawns you hardly ever find something with it that u couldnt just find by tabbing your radar.

4) Camps - Amongst the coolest objects in the game. I still gasp with excitement when the master ranger drops his camp, sadly. The awefacotr is all he does it for since the no-camp-needed publish (why oh why??) makes camps useless. With bots carrying crafting stations and ppl being able to pull out their bots whenever, wherever it makes it even useless to even set up the camps for crafting station options.

5) Camo - Sad one has to climb another tree for soemthing not remarkably improved since maskscent one gets from scout. Have no-one ever seen me asking "Could u plz camo me" so as a marketable skill it is useless as well. Improvement would be camo working against (N)PCs, but then it would have to work proerply and one should be able to depend on it to work.

I think number one, no matter what, should be the promises made to us last August, all lumped together period. Have them explain what happened to all of the things that were "on the table" for us back then. This includes the /track ability, new camps, and new traps. The specifcally mentioned a trip wire trap, a hunting blind and some other things. If no one else agrees with me on that here is my alternate Top 5:

Camps: We need the existing ones fixed. They should repel aggro creatures as stated in the ORIGINAL handbook that came with the box. They need a reason to exist. Why can't an entertainer heal Battle Fatigue in a High Tech Field Base? The stuff from camp portion of the Outdoorsman Proposal works here.

Traps: As everyone else has stated, these should work on PC's and pets, as well as humanoid NPC's. They also need to be fixed in a moajor way. 50% of the time they fail, or we do not get an indication as to whether or not there was any affect at all. We need new traps. I'd be willing to give up some of the existing ones, or have them shifted around to have moer Scout and Ranger exclusive traps.

Conceal/Camo: I worry about bringing stealth up to the Devs folks. I really do. They really seem to be totally against any type of stealth in SWG. If we're going to propose it, I'd agree it should be at Master Ranger only. Camo kits should work against humanoid NPC's though. Hands down.

Diversity: We should be WAY more than glorified Scouts. This has been an issue since launch. Addressing some of these other Top 5 issues can go a long way towards helping this. Stealth would be a HUGE step from Scout. Increased harvesting (see below), the Hunting Cabin that we proposed forever ago, lots of stuff from the SoTP would all help in differentiating us from the Scouts.

Tracking Tree: We need the specific /track command that was promised us. N'Raas suggested a long time ago to be able to track lairs that haven't spawned creatures yet. The range on /areatrack and /track needs to be increased, particularly at Master Ranger. Obviously we need an incerasein harvesting. Agonthalia and I were hunting on Lok the night before last. At Master Ranger, I was harvesting approximately 3 more units of meat than he was at Tracking IV. We need more, and we need moer of a "trophy" or "medal" if you will for reaching Master Ranger. A bigger mod for Harvesting at Master would be a good start. Someone had mentioned a "refresh" button of some sort for Tracking which I thought was kind of cool too.

This Top 5 is not necessarily in order of priority. They are all priorities in my mind. I still think the Dev's need to look at the SoTP, and the Outdoorsman Proposal while looking at this Top 5. I also firmly believe that our number one issue should be what was already promised us back in August. It can't have just disappeared. Here's hoping that something will come of this......./emote crosses fingers as he prepares to apply complex camoflauge to avoid rasps..............