Ranger Archive
Thread: State of the Profession (Sep 12 / 2003)
You missed some concerns.
Rangers who group with other players often outrun those players and leave them in the dust. Rangers need group terrain travel skills to help the group move quicker through the terrain. It only makes sense when travelliing with a ranger that you would move more quickly.
And rangers should not outrun other group members! If a ranger uses autorun and the rest of the group follows the ranger, a good ranger would pace himself not to outdistance the group.
Autofollow or follow has been busted for a long time. SOE fixed follow for pets and droids why not for other group members. You constantly are getting stuck on protrusions from buildings, rocks, trees,sticks,and installations both in town and out of town. Why even have a follow command if you make it very easy for those following to loose the person they are following?
Brugh wrote:You missed some concerns.
Rangers who group with other players often outrun those players and leave them in the dust. Rangers need group terrain travel skills to help the group move quicker through the terrain. It only makes sense when travelliing with a ranger that you would move more quickly.
I always mention this and get shot down since it is a Squad Leader skill already and they suck about as bad as us. I definitely think that should be a Ranger skill but I think we're in the minority on that.
Un4tun8 wrote:
Think, how that will affect groups. Grouping is means to hunt high level/size creatures. So, only rangers will be able to harvest these creatures in groups. Although it may solve the dreaded 60% harvest issue by replacing it, in the end it will piss everybody off, especially scouts. Scouts will have to look for "newbie" groups hunting "newbie" creatures or forget about harvesting while grouped.
On the other hand, group hunting krayt dragon for pieces to be included into armor/weapons will absolutely have to include master ranger (who might then set an exorbitant price on what he/she just harvested).
Not good.
So, while overall the idea is good, the consequences can be devastating.
As far as I know Rangers as the only profession that requires planet specific hide for crafting. I was an Interior Designer (furniture maker) and all the hides Ineeded were available from low level creatures. (Wooly hide being the most precious but available from Corellian bunny rabbits.)
Currently, when I need resources for my tents and traps, I just take out an Explorer mission for the lower level creatures. The group hunts with my PA are pretty much for Pistol xp only. Harvesting with such a large group is a joke. One bone? I have even offered a 2:1 trade for the planet specific bone/hide/meat but the Scouts still insist on harvesting. When I need these, I end up picking off single creatures, incapping, and hoping the thing bleeds to death before I get up. Then I do it again, and again, and again.
As for outrageous pricing? Tell me a revealing flesh wrap is really worth 8k. As with any new economy, it takes time for things to settle. Tiny treasures from Krayt dragons might be worth a fortune in the beginning but not forever.
To all, try and seperate your "other" profession aside while considering changes for Ranger.
Thank you all for debating this issue. Made my day.
What I would suggest would be a fundemental change to quality when harvesting (as was briefly mentioned before). Something along the lines of creature harvesting skill having a fairly large impact on the OQ of the rescources (maybe as high as 50% oq master scout, capped at max qualit obviously) an having an equally large impact on the secondary stats like maleability through the ranger tracking skills (which I believe still has harvesting skill mods).
Admittidly it is not very realistic that an animals bones would be tougher when harvested by a ranger over scout, but the playablitiy and control over product quality trumps that in my opinion. The reason I think as high as 50% bonus to values would be good is due to the shifting nature of natural rescources. If you find some good realy low quality stuff, say 50 quality bumping it up to 75 isn't going to make a big difference, but finding mid level quality, say 600 and bumping it up to 900 gives us an edge in the market over the artisan with novice scout. The artisan would be completely reliant on tracking the shifting rescources and travelling like we all are now, but we would be have a much wider array of prey to get desirable goods for sale and would not be so helpless when one of the high end rescources shifts to lower quality.
I don't know about all you, but by the time I reached novice ranger a larger segment of my client list was getting a little picky about what specific types of rescources they wanted (Dathomirian leathery, endorian wooly etc) and there is nothing I dislike more as a supplier than telling a good client that their business is going to have to be put on hold untill the rescources shift to a usable level again.
TRAPS: I dont know if anyone else has noted this or not...but the last charge in a trap seems to simply not work very often for me. I see tha throwing animation, I see the landing animation and discharge of the trap contents, but I get no message at all regarding success or failure to effect the creature.
While we are on this subject of traps, has anyone tried to use either of the 2 ranger traps lately? They were almost completely broken back when I earned those 2 boxes and I have not tried them lately to see if they work or not.
TRACKING: As it stands the tracking window is cool, but is obviously in it's infancy(I hope). I should be able to look for somwwhat specific types of creatures, up to a certain range away, or mayby even a certain direction. Any of these would help with the LONG list of mobs that we are going to get on any well-stocked planet. I understand that this is Track V0.1 or some such, but as it grows I want to register my vote for these types of enhancements.
Lastly, on the subject of Traps. This and Track could be our defining skill. I want to eventually see real damage come out of traps. Either to the Action pool (snare, mesh traps), or Mind pool (spur, sonic, noisemaker). As it is we cannot effect the health of mobs to any real extent in any skill from Ranger(or scout for that matter). As a Trap Master I can Almost zero out a newby level Wamp Rat's action pool with a Phec dart, but againse creatures that 'con white to me I see very little to no effect from the trap on the pool.
Thankx for reading this
Torx
- Ok I've added a link to the most up-to-date State of the Profession list to my signature.
- I will try to change out the State thread weekly, so as to not clutter up the forum with my own posts. 
- For those of you who want to see the latest additions, you can use the link to get the most recent list.
I have absolutely noticed that my /maskscent is virtually worthless since reaching Master Ranger.
I have been mostly on Naboo over the past few days and with the exception of Hermit Spiders, just about every red dot I get near detects me at 62-64 meters. Camo kits also have lost their effectiveness since I got Master Ranger. The day they became available (and when I still had to finish Advanced Trapping IV), camo kits and maskscent seemed to work very well.
I happened to get Master Ranger right after the 9/12 patch. So, I have not been able to tell if they altered maskscent and conceal or if Master Ranger has a bug in it for these skill. But, what i am seeing is definitely not "right". Low-level scouts can hide from creatures better than I can now.
Tyr - Kettemoor
but the multi and unique harvest was already debated and we were going to bring that up on the next wave of the '5-point issue' list. I think we determined the same thing: fix the multi for other scout/ranger (like the manual sez) and/or allow multi resource harvest and include a unique harvest for certaind creatures that it would make sense for.
"fix the multi for other scout/ranger (like the manual sez)"
* gasp *
- You read the manual? And believed a word it said?
- We'll see what pans out when the developer gets back to work.
- I want to see where we stand before choosing any issues to list as a Top 5.
"there are some old threads that covered some of these things"
- Come on everyone, I want some links to these threads.
- I know they exist, but we have buried them so far back in the forum it's a might difficult to find them. 
- Anyone ambitious enough to find the gems?
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=2189
d'oh, those were the camp threads. They are good ones tho
ooops, I guess that was my idea after all -
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1100
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1032
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1087
The conceal issue
Why bother to use it when U can use the maskscent, (it works almost perfect for me) it takes to much time to gather the components, so I can save the time by using the MS.
So I recomend that either a new line of skills or that the conceal skill differs more from the mask scent!
Im a Ranger/Rifleman and for me the take cover skill combined with MS would be more than enough concealment so Im not realy interested in the conceal tree at all! I would prefer another skill instead, like mele def. from animals or diferent animal combat skills, like +animal damage, becouse as a ranger you would probably know where to hit to cause the max amount of damage on an animal.
Aethlon Surbaa
Rifleman/Ranger/CH ---> Bria