Ranger Archive
Thread: Time to rock the old boat. I say remove foraging!
Owen-Lars wrote:
There are certain situations where you can have similar abilities to other people and not be stepping on their toes.
I think foraging covers that. I would still use my brandy and my canepe, its just id also use my (self applied only) ranger buffs too. There are tonnes of situations where classes/professions can share certain characteristic or abilities but still remain their own unique class and not step on each other's toes.
To me being able to survive in the wilderness is not stepping toes, rather doing something i feel we are entitled to, just as medics are entitled to heal, riflemen are entitled to use rifles and ch's use creatures as weapons.
The last thing this game needs is more buffs imo.
Owen we all agree to a certain extent. The problem is that we are in a skills systemwhich meansif you want to be able to heal and cure states you need to add medic/doctor to your template. Replicating skills is not the name of the "game" (even under different guises). Currently lots of people go doctor because of those abilities.Giving them too us on the cheap, and /foraging is cheap compared to crafting, is not really on imo.
Personally I feel its best to "take" some of the jedi abilities (since many of thier abilities replicate other classes but with force costs) such as /animalscare and /animalcalmvia theuse of forageditems.
Owen-Lars wrote:
This part concerned me a bit though (just because i think it should be a big part about being a ranger):"in no way could make us a better survivalist then some guy with a swoop and a ticket to Coronet when he needs to healup/recover"Thats exactly it, we wouldnt need to head to a capital city in order to recover/healup, we would be able to survive. That guy on a swoop does not survive if he goes to coronet, he gets someone else to help him thats all. If foraging fullfilled its potential we would be able to survive in the wilderness, not only that makes ourselve better whilst out in the wilderness
We already have the ability to heal up using our camps - but very few people use that ability. Why? I believe it is because the ability is too weak. I've healed off mantigure and kimo diseases using my HTFB, but two or three times of waiting hours for a single disease to wear off and the joy of being a survivalist - not needing to swoop back to civilization - had worn thin. However, any healing ability that is stronger will begin to step on the toes of other professions. If you get an ability that is strong enough to make medics obsolete - there are going to be a lot of unhappy medics and docs and anyone else who spent the 15 points to pick it up.
I have more arguments, but the fact I had to log in this morning is making nervous. Whenever that happens my submit button ceases to function for a day or so - so Im going to test it now and come back later this afternoon.
Edit: Woot! It worked!
Be back later 
Message Edited by Vorpaks on 01-25-2005 08:11 AM
Okay, second part of what I wanted to say. It was mentioned that Rangers should get their toughness/resists through things that they have foraged rather than have it inherent to the character. I would tend to disagree (partially) with this. I think having inherent bonuses is a very important starting place for any skill.
For example, I recently asked a Doctor about how the bonuses to buffing work and the answer made me realize that the key to getting the most out of your skill is, like much in this game, the ability to stack. I have never played a Doctor character so my understanding is limited and anyone with more xp feel free to correct me. 
At the very base of a Doctor's buffing skill is the inherent ability mod, +100 to wound healing. On top of that you can stack BE clothing for an additional +25. On top of that you can stack the food bivoli. On top of that you can stack the mod a droid gives you. And on top of that you can stack the mod a City specialization can give you.
Going through this list was almost a mini-history of how buffs reached their current uber status. And that does not even take into account all the things you can do to the buffs themselves. SO the lesson I took away from this is that the more options you have to stack, the more able you are to make your skill the best it can possibly be. And it starts with that base, inherent bonus.
Then you have to take strategy into account. This game puts limits on you which forces you to make choices. A Ranger's choices are much harder than a buffing Doc's since we use our skills for combat. Our havesting skill for example - we have the inherent bonus, (no BE clothes), the food, and the droid which all add to our ability to /harvest. However, food is a big choice when you are using specials and getting hit. Do you take the veghash for greater harvest? Or do you take the Ahrissa for more mind regen? Or save that stomach space for an emergency vercupti? The droid is also a choice - a time choice. When you are constantly on the move is it really efficient to be sinding it after each harvest, waiting to call it, trying to get it back when it runs?
Whenever you have to make a choice like this the least efficient or least available will always loose. Docs have a choice between BE clothes and tapes, and BE clothes will always win since they are more available and therefore less expensive. I have a feeling that foraging will always be less efficient then food, or too complex to be efficient (like camo vs. maskscent) and therefore will always loose. It would be cool, no doubt. But I think we all know how it feels to have our skill tree burdened with something cool (HTFB) that just isnt very useful in the long run. I'd hate to have another loosing skill.
I don't think the developers would ever remove a skill from one of the basic professions so I imagine the foraging skill will always be there in Scout. But why not take the foraging mods out of Ranger and turn it into something more powerful? Possibly something that can stack? Something that doesn't have to compete with an existing skill/product?
Message Edited by Vorpaks on 01-26-2005 06:43 AM
- Herb #1: This herb contains a chemical that naturally increases the bodies' healing agents. When eaten, it promotes an increase of blood clotting agents, meaning that a person who is bleeding uncontrollably could take this herb and the body would naturally stop the bleeding much faster than it would have otherwise. This herb's healing properties can be much more localized when mashed up and applied to wounds. When this is done, the wounds are actually healed by the body, with minimal chance of scarring. While the herb is very powerful on scrapes and scratches, deep wounds will still need to be attended to by a doctor.
- Herb #2: This herb has been used for centuries by travelers as a means of fighting the venoms of dangerous creatures. When eaten, it slows the heartbeat of the person, slowing the rate at which the poison spreads. The poison will still have it's effects on the person, this simply gives the person more time to seek proper treatment. When applied to the bite, this herb greatly assists in both absorbing and dilluting the poison, which ensures less poison is spread to the body. This has the effect of shortening the duration of the poison. Very strong poisons will be made less effectve, but not completely negated.
- Herb #3: This herb, discovered by early scientists during their first forrays into medicine has come into disuse due to faster and more effective medicines. However, in the field, there is little better treatment for any range of illnesses from the cold to much more serious diseases. When eaten, it increases the white blood count of the body, which slows the rate at which the illness can spread. The disease will still run it's course, this allows the person to seek proper help. When steeped in hot water and rubbed on the body, this herb protects the body against further disease and also seeps into the bloodstream to help dispell the disease, greatly shortening it's course. Very strong illnesses will not be blocked or cured by this remedy, though they will be made less effective. Note: Because this remedy requires hot water, it can only be applied inside a medical center where there is sterile water or in a camp where there is a fire to boil the water.
- Herb #4 The chemical precursor to many of todays' exotic spices, this herb allows a person to push themselves harder than they normally would be able to, without damaging the body. This has the effect that when somebody needs to sprint away from something, they are actually able to move faster than they wouldwithout this chemical in their body. They also use less of their bodie's resources to do this. When powdered and heated in a small amount of water, this herb can be applied as a cream to the body, which invigorates the body and makes them able to perform taxing activities like sprinting much sooner than they would have been able to do it. Because this requires heat and clean water, it can only be applied in a medical center or in a camp.
Learning About Herbs
Each herb will have a different name of course. What I'd really like is if each herb had a different name on each planet, each with a different level of effectiveness. Perhaps due to the darkness on Dathomir, most herbs are bitter and coarse, making them less effective, but the herb that increases stamina is far and away the absolute best in the galaxy. Now this ensures that a Ranger would have to know where to go to get the best stuff, making sure a new player would have to learn as they progressed.
Now, there are several ways to make a new player "learn" other than simply travel and get everything. You could gate access to the more powerful herbs, meaning that while a Ranger has a 50/50 chance of finding one of the herbs as opposed to the old, crappy forages, a new scout would only have 1 in 1000 chance, and that chance goes up as that person gets more foraging skill. Another way, and something I think would work in addition to gating the powerful herbs is to not describe what an herb or anything else does until a person tries it. Throw in a few forages that have a small negative effect on players as well. Another game, I beleive Morrowind III, did this. When you looked at a plant, it didnt' tell you what it did. If you then ate that item, it told you what effect that plant had. Sometimes it was good, others it was bad. You didn't know until you tried.
That, I think, would be great. Go to a planet you've never been to and you find a new plant. You examine it and all you see is it's name-- no idea what it does. It looks a lot like the plant you found on Dath, but you never know. When you eat it, you feel like you could run a marathon. From then on, you know the effects of that plant. So the next time you /examine it, it lists what the effects are.
Another way is to simply make it like /examining creatures. The higher your foraging skill, the more information you see when you examine it. Either one of these solutions encourages a player to "learn" the effects of plants, though in different ways.
Summary
I attempted, when thinking of these ideas, to avoid things that other people can provide. In the instances where I dealt with disease, I attempted to ensure to word it such that a person would not assume a Ranger could cure any disease or poison on their own. In fact, the remedies I thought of did not deal with healing it at all. When you eatthe herbs for poison or disease, they simply increase the time between ticks, essentialy making the poison last longer, but not diminishing it's effects. When applied, the herbs slowly dispell the poison or disease, eventually removing weak ones. When you have a serious disease or poison, however, the herb will do little, only weakening the effects slightly. In these instances, it is better to eat the herb, to give yourself a longer time to find a doctor.
When thinking about the herbs, I considered that we want to be survivalists. To that end, I made sure that some of the herbs had to be applied in a camp. The reason behind this is that while it's easy to apply an herb to a cut or wound ora bite, oftentimes there is no specific place to apply an herb. In those instances, I think it's better to make the person throw up a camp. Not only will this increase the frequency with which people camp, but it'll give people time to relax between battles.
Anyway, I think this basically covers the Multi-purpose herb idea. The other thing I'd like is if there were more herbs than just these 4 (I'll need help with ideas, of course) and I'd like to know if people think that we should be able to apply the herbs to others, or only be able to give them the herbs to eat, while non scouts/Rangers couldn't apply the herbs. Oh, and should Rangers be the only ones who can apply herbs to themselves? Scouts could eat the herbs, but not have the know-how of how to apply them. Do you think thats a good idea?
Message Edited by Phenix1050 on 01-25-2005 05:34 PM
I didn't want to say so-and-so said... because then it would appear I was disagreeing with that person personally, which I wasn't, just the concept.Now, um...
*is slowly crushed underneath the weight of Phen's proposal*
sorry its just i thought it could of been about me heh
Vorpaks wrote:
*is slowly crushed underneath the weight of Phen's proposal*
Phenix1050 wrote:
*****
You madman! That's not a skill, that's an entire profession!
I'm totally blown away again by the time, effort, and joy of the profession put into all these proposals. And I am completely and totally jealous that it probably took you about 15 minutes to come up with it and write it all out whereas it takes me and hour and a half to write three paragraphs!! /grin
I am still left wondering however, will the benefits it provides be worth the skill investment, the game time investment, and most of all the developer time investment necessary to make it happen?
Will people think to themselves I want to be a Ranger so I can do _blank_ the way they currently do with /areatrack? Or will it end up being another camo skill? Working as intended, but not useful enough to inspire?
If it is useful enough to inspire, how powerful would it have to be? Would it be powerful enough for me to break combat with the reaper or kimo, pitch a tent, and apply the herb? Or would I take it like a wookiee, finish the hunt usingmy food and spice enhancements, and heal up afterwards using the15 points I've invested in medic to deal with such situations?Considering the length and strength of a reaper disease it would have to be pretty powerful and either remove the disease completely or reduce it to nearly nothing. And I can't help that think if a Docor saw that, no matter what the justifications (and I do recognize them), they would be pretty PO'd. That's why I prefer the innate method (/evil), it is hidden and therefore not open to as much finger pointing. I did catch the stacking part of the proposal - but then you just end up back at the beginning of this paragraph.
I could go on... but I still have a list of things to do for work. One last thing I want to point out. In the case of forage the innate bonus you would get is the +10, +20 etc. to your foraging skill. There would be no innate resistance to disease, damage by creatures, etc. (see Ranger toughness proposal... somewhere...). How many bonuses can we realistically expect to have in a profession -- how many additional skills can we realistically ask for? Are we willing to trade the +10, +20 to Ranger toughness for the +10, +20 to forage? After all, they would end up providing the same thing.
Please don't feel I am bashing your ideas (this is why I usually avoid replying to idea threads with anything but encouragement). You know how impressed I am and how interesting I find it. I just am not convinced it would be the best use of the time and skill lines we have available to our profession.
Roleplay I can provide on my own, out of my own head. Usability I cannot. I can certainly push it to its limits - I think everyone who plays Ranger has done so - but in the end you feel as if you are forcing your skills to let you do what you want, rather than have them enable you to do what you want. And if someone comes along who can do it better (as in the case of two combat profs harvesting more efficiently than a ranger argument), it will cause a lot of bitterness and eventual disillusionment.
Ok... back to work... /sigh
Phenix1050 wrote:
Vorpaks wrote:
*is slowly crushed underneath the weight of Phen's proposal*it's really not all that big, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're being crushed under the weight of it's sheer brilliance.* is always happy because he is so deluded. and drunk.
But of course!
Owen-Lars wrote:Hehe i knowYeah nice proposal phen, i have lots of comments though, just wanting to see if i have a go ahead to post my take on it
/poke
Ya... you have to!