Ranger Archive
Thread: State of the Profession (Sep 12 / 2003)
So, while overall the idea is good, the consequences can be devastating.
The profession needs something worth staying for. As it stands right now, I can't justify the points for fancier camps. The 'Ahhh' factor for Field Base lasted a week.
The traps I rely on the most are at the scout level.
Maskscent works better at the scout level.
Forage and rescue are worthless.
Nobody even knows if the To-Hit bonuses are working, let alone detectable.
Areatrack, a nice idea, but I just hunted for three solid days trying to use it to my advantage and out of 75 attempts, I could count the number of times it helped me on one hand.
While it's a nice idea, conceal isn't worth the cost or hassle, and I doubt I will ever find myself in a situation I couldn't run past or around, or fight through if need be.
Terrain negotiation is nice, but it was just as good at the scout level. I don't crawl much. Okay, ever. And when I'm grouped, there's not point outrunning everyone else. All it means is that I stop and wait for everyone to catch up.
Creature knowledge, nice, but not necessary. I can always jump to an online database and find more information than exists under 'examine'. Especially the obvious, important data, such as pack assist.
Creature harvest, again nice, but nothing spectacular. So I have to do an extra lair or two to compensate not having it.
If the promised Track ability is as efficacious as areatrack, 'nuff said.
Now, if they change some of these abilities, I may change my opinion a little. But I want everyone to ask themselves honestly, ifyou went back to Master Scout level, would your average day change very much? I don't think mine would.
Believe me, I want it to work, I want it to be worth it. I've played a Ranger in every RPG on the market in the last 20 years. But I need something stronger than my affinity for the class typeto hang my hat on.
I have two more bricks to Master. Perhaps there's some world of difference onceI'm there. But it sure doesn't look like it from here.
And just as an aside, the one promising change that I see making us more important, the rest of you are screaming bloody murder about: the reduction in harvest resources. If anything is going to make this profession more important, that's it. If the resources become more scarce, the crafters will become more reliant and the hunting and harvesting experts, us.
Let your galaxy's market settle in for a bit, and we'll see how much better it is to get 20 cr per hide rather than 5cr per.
Concerning the harvesting cert idea.
Rather than only letting rangers harvest from high level creatures.. Why not give us a possible chance to harvest something extra when we do harvest from high level creatures?
Example: Group of people take out a big bad monster. Group consists of however many people + 2 scouts + a ranger. Scouts get their 60% harvest, ranger gets his 60% (on an aside, maybe our 'bonus' could be removing that 60% cap) and then.. 'You find something in the creature's stomach'.. some rare weapon that it's swallowed (or knowing this game, a high quality fishing pole) or something.
Oops, forgot to add that I would like to get schematics to make some small little trinkets from animal organics, like scyk tooth necklaces and razorcat hide cloaks.
At least that would give us a market for novelty items! 
Maybe you can make the resources harvest by a ranger of a better quality. Make it so things made from a ranger harvest resouces is much better. After all the more xp you have the better you can do things like tan hides. Not just a larger amount. That should make a larger demand for ranger resources and will not cut out scouts. Example maybe makeitems 5% stronger if make by resources harvest by a ranger then a scout. Could even showthe classwhen you examin an item. So you know the item will be stronger and why.
Allthough I like the though of being able to find rare items when harvesting.
/forage inventory full bug!
The reason it drives me crazy... See, they've promised that forage will have a chance of us finding some rare items. They've also said that the reason we get that bug is because of some problem with the rare item database (or something like that).
So everytime I see that 'some foraged items were discarded because your inventory was full' message, I go nuts wondering what it was that I could have foraged
Of course, /forage should be in the SCOUT bug list. Sorry all
"Of course, /forage should be in the SCOUT bug list."
- Our two professions are so intertwined, it is quite difficult to separate them.
- I agree though. /maskscent and /forage should be issues confined to the Scouting profession.
- However since they do affect us, I will list them here.
- Don't expect them to be part ofany Top 5 list though, I will leave that honor to DeltaXi65. 
I like Ki-gu-gon's idea. And I think it would be easier to implement for the devs. Let Novice rangers harvest any 2 resources from the same creature, and allow master rangers to harvest all three resources from the same creature. This not only makes sence as far as what Ki said, any true, good hunter leaves almost nothing behind from his skinned animal. But it rewards the ranger for getting so high and spending so many skill point etc. It keeps us on the competative edge in the resource market and being able to sell more then one item.
If I go hunting ronto, and say kill 100 of them, and Im master rangers. I not only have a stack of about 400 plus leather hides to sell, but a stack of 400 bones, and a nice large stack of high quality herbivore meat to sell to doctors. Instead of only going for the meat or hide, which everyone else with novice or master scout will be doing.
I really dont like the idea of the harvesting certifications, as they have been suggested thus far. But I like this idea a lot.
Rangers really need some Weapon power added to the class. I really like the idea of Ranger but the profession as it stands is pretty useless to a group. Great for exploration. Lets face it though this is a PVP game in the end and for a profession to viable in the long term, they have to be able to fight.
Suggestion. Make mask scent an invisibility skill. Even if only out of town. Remove the restrictions against it working on humanoids. Definitely add serious ranger bonus to not only hit but defend and damage vs creatures. A few natural remadies to disease poison... stuff like that might not hurt.
Tracking:
If i were SWG god i'd give rangers the ability to add a type of creature to data pad. Then when they go to track they can select that creature and if it is within X number of meters it gives you it's current waypoint. Example: Durni (any kind), Wookie, Human...(no names). As you progress in ranger extend the range from say 500 meters at one to 2000 at master ranger.
some of these suggestions i know would mean a major change to the way the profession is working, but this is the best stuff i could think of.
Trix
jmatt wrote:So, while overall the idea is good, the consequences can be devastating.
The profession needs something worth staying for. As it stands right now, I can't justify the points for fancier camps. The 'Ahhh' factor for Field Base lasted a week.
The traps I rely on the most are at the scout level.
Maskscent works better at the scout level.
Forage and rescue are worthless.
Nobody even knows if the To-Hit bonuses are working, let alone detectable.
Areatrack, a nice idea, but I just hunted for three solid days trying to use it to my advantage and out of 75 attempts, I could count the number of times it helped me on one hand.
While it's a nice idea, conceal isn't worth the cost or hassle, and I doubt I will ever find myself in a situation I couldn't run past or around, or fight through if need be.
Terrain negotiation is nice, but it was just as good at the scout level. I don't crawl much. Okay, ever. And when I'm grouped, there's not point outrunning everyone else. All it means is that I stop and wait for everyone to catch up.
Creature knowledge, nice, but not necessary. I can always jump to an online database and find more information than exists under 'examine'. Especially the obvious, important data, such as pack assist.
Creature harvest, again nice, but nothing spectacular. So I have to do an extra lair or two to compensate not having it.
If the promised Track ability is as efficacious as areatrack, 'nuff said.
Now, if they change some of these abilities, I may change my opinion a little. But I want everyone to ask themselves honestly, if you went back to Master Scout level, would your average day change very much? I don't think mine would.
Believe me, I want it to work, I want it to be worth it. I've played a Ranger in every RPG on the market in the last 20 years. But I need something stronger than my affinity for the class type to hang my hat on.
I have two more bricks to Master. Perhaps there's some world of difference once I'm there. But it sure doesn't look like it from here.
Amen brother, well said (love your sig, jmatt btw
). Even with the current changes, I don't feel any better about my abilities than my girlfriend's char who has only novice scout skills. She masks scent as good as me, I still use the same traps she does, I don't bother with the high tech field base kit and use the same camps as she does, she harvests just about as good as I do, and she runs up hills as good as I do.Oh, I did beat her in a crawling race once... yay!
They have yet to implement any Ranger specific, class defining skills for us. Maybe in the future, yes. Track will be cool, but is that what our profession will be known for? Every BH in the game will also have track, as well as many others.
I was talking to my brother the other day and told him I made Master Ranger. His response... "so what does that get for you? a title?" I thought for a minute and then had to admit, yep, that's all it is.
Yes, it looks like we are going in the right direction, but we're not even close. NRaas, I hope you can make some more progress in fleshing out this profession.
Thanks,
3) ranger traps that work, and higher percentages of hits on all traps (especially scout level traps)
I agree with this. It says that the higher skill we have in traps the more successful, yet at Master Ranger I fail to trap even the lowest lvl critters from diff 5-20. It lands about 3 times out of 10, and with the resources slim to none on harvesting now, I find it pointless to use traps anymore since they don't work anyways. If I can't land stuff on low lvl creatures, how am I spose to land them on the higher lvl guys?
And about the mask scent. At first it never worked and always broke, but the patch before last fixed that where it worked fine and at master, I only got tagged by higher lvl creatures, now I can't get by lvl 19 aggressive creatures without getting spotted. Not to mention when I do get spotted, I get locked in combat mode even after everything is dead. Kind of retarded.
Why don't you guys have immediate fixes like other online RPGs? Instead you guys wait the whole month and make everyone all bitter because someone broke something and no one will fix it till the next patch date.