Ranger Archive

Have any of you played Star Wars: Knights of the old republic? Basically the characters used personal cloaking devices. You had to have the necessary skill to use them too.It looked exactly like the Predator in the movies except the characters had a sneakinganimation where movement was slowed to just a little faster than a walk which is similar to sneaking in Tenchu, Metal gear solid, Anarchy Online, etc.Perhaps the devs couldhave the characters sneak instead of be able to runfor balancing.I guess a point can be made that if LucasArts approved such technology 4000 years before the setting of SWG that it's safe to say that such technology still exists. I do thinkthatit's perfectly logical tohaveagraphical representationof our ability to conceal, whatever form it may be. Anyway,justa thought. I still agree that pushing for total invisibility is pointless if the devs already said it's not gonna happen. I would be happy with the negative to-hit modifier mentioned, and some offensive advantage as well. I can't stress it enough that following the same logic for added defense should be applied to offense as well. Perhaps only rangers could have the added offensive abilities such as a sneak attack command or added damage percentage on firststrike onlybut be able to camo others for the defensive advantage.

NRaas wrote:

So you like the fact that there is no chance that it will work in PvP, or is not supposed to work against Humanoids?

Umm OK not exactly what I meant. Just that it hides us from agressive, anything, can be put on others, and stays up a long time, and only comes down if something breaks it or times out.

Yes it would be great if it worked did something for PvP. I still think the simplest thing to give us here is a negative to hit against us if we are concealed. Easy game mechanics it seems, and it's any kind of "invisibility" of any shape or form. It makes, sence too. If I'm wrapped up in complex camo making me blend in with my surrounds, people may know where abouts I am, but wont be able to make out my shape. That means, they can shoot in the area around me, but don't exactly where my body is in that brush, and thus won't be very accurate in shooting at me.

This bonus would be across the board, animals, NPC, and PC.

As a Wookiee, I need /conceal to hide me from NPCs so I can get around. I can't afford to take even one or two hits.

I'd rather see /conceal NEVER have a use for PvP than to have it stop hiding me from NPCs =)

Sorry to double-reply but:

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TerasBaham wrote:
Have any of you played Star Wars: Knights of the old republic? Basically the characters used personal cloaking devices. You had to have the necessary skill to use them too.

...

I guess a point can be made that if LucasArts approved such technology 4000 years before the setting of SWG that it's safe to say that such technology still exists.

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Bingo! Precedent. That game rocked, by the way.

"Would a higher quality suit improve the"to-hit" bonusor the success rate?"

"I presume the details defined in the SotP are still acceptable for inclusion?"

Most definitely.

Also regarding one comment you made about the possibility of one of your ideas straying from the outdoorsman vision (being to high tech I believe):

This is our central problem in my estimation: We are Rangers yes. But we are also Rangers in the Star Wars Universe. Who is to say "in a galaxy far, far, away" that Rangers camoflage units are not similar to the one used in Predator? "Ultimate Outdoorsman"? Yes. I can work with this. In the Star Wars Universe.

Perhaps I've stumbled as I type, onto the thing I was looking for to broaden this vision of ours, not just with /conceal but also with camps and our other concerns as well.

Thoughts?

This is our central problem in my estimation: We are Rangers yes. But we are also Rangers in the Star Wars Universe. Who is to say "in a galaxy far, far, away" that Rangers camoflage units are not similar to the one used in Predator? "Ultimate Outdoorsman"? Yes. I can work with this. In the Star Wars Universe.

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This is very true. Outdoorsman of today do not limit themselves to technology that cavemen used! Some of them use state of the art technology. Look at GPS's. They use satelites to pinpoint your exact location! That is some high tech stuff. Why on earth could we not use a high tech concealment unit sort of like the Previously mentioned Preditor thing. Outdoorsmen does not mean antiquated and incapable of using technology. We are not classic D&D style rangers, and we do not live in that world, so why limit ourselves to it? I have never personally used it, but someone did mention that in KotOR they used personal cloaking devices, so we at least have a precident. Can we agree on that, and if so, can we come to a concensus as to whether we would like this sort of Preditor like effect to be the visual representation for /conceal? Or is a visual representation not important to everyone else? I personally dig the idea, but it was my idea so I am clearly biased

I too love the idea. I find the visual aspect of concealment very important because it adds to the immersive feeling of the game. But keeping in mind that if one profession can use it, why can't others? We have to set a clear path or at least one supported by everyone which means we first have to define the "behind the curtain" details of /conceal first. Then we can focus on the visual aspect of it. In Kotor it was "scoundrels" that mainly used thisability but if Iremember right every classcould conceal themselves via the itembut it didn't mean anything if you couldn't use abilities that support it.Really, a "Spy" or "Agent" profession would be more suited to in-city concealment. To remain consistant so the dev's will consider our ideas we have to tie every idea to revolve around the favored "Master Outdoorsman" so that everyone is happy, dev and player alike. Then we can request those cool visual representations of /conceal.

I realy like this idea. In order for it to be effective to me, however, I think it should work like this:

with /conceal on you have all the effects of /maskscent automatically, plus you get the negative to hit bonus, and it is a wicked negative to-hit bonus. Maybe not so good at low levels, but at level 4 and master let's say the chances of hitting a /concealed character are very low, like a 30% chance of taking a hit. Maybe lower maybe higher, I'm not sure how the game actually figures hits and misses and all that so I don't know what's reasonable so forgive me if I'm not talking in the proper terms here.

The kicker to my idea is that your cammo is very effective so player's and MOB's can't see you well enough to hit you, but once they do finally land that first or second hit, your /conceal is broken immediately since now that they've hit you they can spot you easier since they've "tagged" you. This will give players a slight advantage for a little bit in battle, but allows other players to counter-act it by using /aim or something to boost their ability to hit you. If the player who is /concealed is good enough and his opponent aint too bright, I should think that a very good /conceal combined with some strategy could allow a player to win a fight without even suffering any dammage.

Furthermore, attacking a creature in the wild while /concealed would confuse the creature for some time since they would be unsure of where to attack being that they can't quite see or smell you. After you soot it a second or thrid time, it wises up and heads in the direction it is being attacked from and then sees you. attacking a creature like this from multiple directions using multiple /conceals could be a very effective use of "strategy" that is somewhat lacking in this game IMO.
Or Maybe just the animal you attacked will aggro you but all the others who may normally join in and assist would just stand there with a question mark over their heads wonering whats wrong with their pal that he's attaking that bush?
I also imagine using /conceal in PvP would affect player pets. the hander could tell the pet to attack you but again, the pet is confused at first since he can't see or smell you so he doesn't attack until the hander breaks your /conceal by shooting you. In this case, your /conceal would also be broken if you shot the pet.

I would think also, but I wouldn't push for this, that it would make sense that range would have an effect on the effectiveness of this skill too. at 64m you'd be near impossible to hit with the best /conceal on, but at 5m when the player/mob is right on top of you, well it's hard for me to imagine that at point blank range you'd be just as hard to hit as if you were at a ranged distance so the /conceal would be less effective. Maybe to make it simple, if the player/mob is within 15m of you the effectiveness of your /conceal is dropped by half.

Basically I see just a constant slight boost to the negative to-hit bonus as long as /conceal is on kinda boring, so I think of things like this to put a bit of challenge and strategy into it.

Fix the skill of Conceal, don't try to revamp it.

A couple points...

1- The Ranger community wants changes to certain things and additions in other areas. I think a good percentage of replies to this thread are based on based on that emotion.

2- A tiny percentage of Rangers are reading the forums. Don't consider the reaction here to be a true gauge of community reaction.

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TottCophii wrote:

Fix the skill of Conceal, don't try to revamp it.

A couple points...

1- The Ranger community wants changes to certain things and additions in other areas. I think a good percentage of replies to this thread are based on based on that emotion.

2- A tiny percentage of Rangers are reading the forums. Don't consider the reaction here to be a true gauge of community reaction.

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But, those that donot take an active part in working on our profession really don't get to complain. It is like NOT voting for the PResident and then complaining about who wins the office.

I just saw a movie named "The Hunted", with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro. It was awesome, during the movie I noticed things about it that made me think of rangers and about what kind of vision I had in mind for the game. There's everything from Hunting cabins, traps, lot's of tracking(even in cities), and of course concealment. I couldn't help but notice the similiarities of the two main characters of the movie to what I always thought rangers would be like. Anyway, kinda funny to compare a modern movie completely unrelated to star wars to rangers in swg. You guys should rent this movie not only cause it's really good but also to help construct a vision of ranger even if it's not your own. This movie represents my ideas such as the /sneak attack(which is all throughout this movie), justifies tracking in cities, gives ideas for traps, and solidifies why rangers should be able to conceal themselves against humanoids and thereby gain both defensive and offensive advantages in combat. Anyway, go grab that movie and tell me how you liked it.

"with /conceal on you have all the effects of /maskscent automatically, plus you get the negative to hit bonus, and it is a wicked negative to-hit bonus."

Ok... The reason I seperated /maskscent out, was because if we include it in the /conceal skill we run the risk of the developers associated it with the camoflauge skill value.

If command is kept seperate, we are guaranteed that the skill will continue to use the maskscent skill modifier.

My suggestion is that the /maskscent applied to other players be associated with the camoflauge skill. That way, you would need to be a Master Ranger to apply a Master Scout level of /maskscent to another player.

"but once they do finally land that first or second hit, your /conceal is broken immediately since now that they've hit you they can spot you easier since they've "tagged" you."

Hmmm...Even if you caught a glimpse ofa concealed playeronce, it does not stand that you can locate him easily the next time you look.

Anyways, we would need to chuck out the /sneakattack request if we did it this way, as there would be little reason not to perform the action everytime you enter combat, if the concealment was going to drop anyways.

"Furthermore, attacking a creature in the wild while /concealed would confuse the creature for some time since they would be unsure of where to attack being that they can't quite see or smell you."

I can go with that...A little lag time to get a couple shots in before the creature locates you.

"that it would make sense that range would have an effect on the effectiveness of this skill too."

Interesting suggestion...

But come to think about it, don't accuracy modifiers on weapons perform that action already? And the effect would be rather detrimental to the melee players among us.

[Edit: Added last paragraph... Darn Submit. ]

Message Edited by NRaas on 01-10-2004 02:03 PM

Perhaps /conceal should be completely revised to simply be a "negative to-hit" modifier across the board and drop the invisibility idea entirely.

• Leave /maskscent to completely hide from creatures.
  
• With that we could even ask for the ability to use both skills at the same time.

The new skill would have the advantage of being usable against Creatures, Humanoids, Players, Pets, etc.

I saw you post this in my thread on /conceal. I like the negative to hit mod idea greatly, and as I think I said, it makes sence. If my outline is blended in, and I'm hard to distinguish from the local flora, then actaully hitting me will be difficult. You might see some movement in the bushes and think I'm over there somewhere, and thus start shooting. But that doesn't mean you'll hit me. So for that I like it.

The onlything about this I don't like is we now don't have a way to travel across planets with ago humanoids. To point out some examples of planets with high numbers of agro NPC, Dathomire, Dantooine, and Lok come to mind. And along with that, I cant keep anyone else hidden form them either. I have hunted many times on those planets, with rangers and non rangers. We like the fact that we don't have to worry "to much" about getting interupted by NPC while hunting animals.

We will now get attacked by every agro NPC on the planet. Oh sure maybe we all have /conceal on so it's harder to hit us, but we still have to stop and combat with them. Which means we are not fighting animals. Which means we may have to rest after fighting the NPC before fighting animals. Which means we might have someone get killed before even getting to the animals. As I said in my thread about it, this would make it much less fun. And this fun factor we know is a big thing for the devs. Pirates, Moks, Night Sisters, Marauders, not fun to contend with when all I want is to hunt critters.

So basically I don't like the idea of taking away the "hide from agro animals/NPC" from /conceal. But add the features of the negative to hit mod. I hate to even think about this, but if they get stuck on taking away the ability from it working vs NPC, then your idea is probably the best way to go. But I don't think we should propose it as our first choice.