Ranger Archive
Thread: Tracking the Elusive Vision...
I just have a couple of additions to my first post that I somehow left out *doh* These arereally simple andjust my own personal desire:
First, something I've been wanting ever since the Field Bioscience line got changed to Tracking: I'd like the "Hunt Master" title changed to "Tracker." Hunt Master is too close to the Scout's Hunter title in my opinion, and I just think being a "Tracker" would be cool.
Next, I think the Wayfaring line should be renamed Stealth, with its title of "Wayfarer" changed to "Stealth Master." With this title change would come a shift of emphasis in this line from exploration/terrain negotiation to concealment and stealth activities. The terrain negotiation and burst run negotiation should still be there and they should possibly be beefed up, but the main reason a Ranger would pick up this line is for the stealth abilities. To accomplish this, conceal should be seriously beefed up (make it work on any pc, npc, or creature, possibly lengthen its duration, etc)and one or two "stealth attacks" should be added to the line.
Both of these changes are inspired by my desire to differentiate Ranger from Scout. These are two fairly small changes and one is completely semantic (Tracker), but every little bit helps, eh? 
"Their lives and livelyhood depended on how much game they could down and how much meat/pelt they could harvest."
Agreed, though I would not restrict the idea to rifles persay, but rather bonuses over whatever style of weapon the player has chosen.
"why not give rangers the same thing in the form of a meat, bone orhide harvestor."
I think we tried to push that through a couple Top 5's ago, but half the community shot the idea down.
For the moment, it is on the back burner, stewing in the Wishlist portion of the SotP.
"Why do I have to be stuck with a Spat?"
You aren't... If you want a higher level, pick up CH. It is the price the player must pay for the reward.
"Sure, but only when we are the leader and it is against animals. (Don't want to step on those SL toes.)"
Aye, we mustkeepaware of how far westray into the SL camp or risk getting shot full of holes.
My own thoughts on how to make rangers more worthwhile without any 'unabalancing' abilities or abilities which impinge on other professions:-
Traps
AOE - The AOE effect on traps is too small to have any noticeable effect. Occaisonally 2 creatures may get caught in a single trap, but only if literally pressed shoulder to shoulder, it needs to be increased.
Trap Speed - By the time I have throw a trap in group creatures are normally at least 30% dead. Can we not have any increase in throwing speed as increase in Advance Trapping.
Macro Commands - Commands to throw specific trap type, e.g. /throw adhesive mesh. Lag often makes dragging traps to hotkeys a major pain in combat. This would be aHUGE playability enhancement for me. Presumably combat medic and commandos can benefit from similar commands.
High Level Creatures - High level creatures simply seem immune to traps. They should, of course, be more more resistance, but when 8-10 traps thrown by a master trapper have no effect something is wrong. How about a LOW RESISTANCE trap that reduces a creatures resistance to (i) state effects generally; or (ii) trap induced state effects. Effectively a resistance debuff to enable other traps to actually stand a chance of working. If there is no change change to our ability to effect higher level creatures (whether by skill level or the suggested low resistance resist reducing trap) then there needs to be an acknowledgement that traps are not designed to effect high level creatures at all.
Ranger Traps - The existing ranger traps are useless. This is well debated so I won't whine about it more. My own ideas for what they are worth (several of these are already well know)
Lure Trap - To entice creatures to it in order to aid in single pulls. To be useful this trap would need to be low resistance (would only be used against high level creatures in practice) and (if successful) work comparatively quickly (say within 30 secs).
Fear Trap - A trap to causes creatures to flee. Either single target for crowd control or AOE so if a group is mobbed a ranger can throw down the trap and give people a fighting chance to leg it. This would look impressive and be useful without being at all imbalancing. The existing coding should exist (for Warning Shot) already.
Slow Trap - To reduce a creatures attack rate. This would be highly useful for some creatures and I'm sure the Devs can balance out the slow percentage for game purposes.
DOT Traps - Damage over time traps (presumably poison based). Not sure if this interferes with combat medics specific abilities though.
AOE snare - For crowd control. Already well debated.
Trip Wire - A placed trap with a high chance of causing knock-down if a creature can be made to walk over it.
Bounty Hunters - There is a call on the BH board for Bounty Hunters to get traps effecting NPCs. Please don't do this, it will spoil uniquiness of our profession. I'm not calling for them not to get similar enhancements, but just make these unique (non-thrown) fired weapons to stun, entangle or whatever. This is more in the Star Wars image anyway and keeps our professions unique.
Cammoflauge
I don't understand why this should not work on NPCs as well. It remains more useful than Mask Scent this way and I've never heard anyone cry out that it is too tough an ability. We are outdoorsman please allow us to keep this generic ability. Mask scent not breaking (regardless of skill level) doesnt sound like a viable alternative to me as it opens up exploits for free scouting xp.
Unless this has been fixed recently, a number of resources for this skill are skill difficult to find.
Forage
Remove any buff food with a duration of less than 180 seconds. It is simply a pain to find and delete it from the inventory. Failures reports would be preferable. Reduce the rate that fish bait is obtained as this occurs to often.
Add eggs and milk to the forage lists, helping both rangers have a small income and chefs at the same time.
Frontiering
Camps need to repel creatures - To prevent exploiting camps as 'safe zones' I envisage this occuring in one of two ways: (i) anyone engaging a creature is ejected from the camp; or (ii) being in a camp prevents a creature from detecting you unless you already have its aggro. Depending upon how this works, maybe introduce a timer preventing camps from being erected within say 30-45 seconds of combat.
Camps not to go down when the Ranger leaves it.
Explorer/ huntingmission terminals in High Tech Base Camps. This would save the inconvenience of returning to town to collect missions, would greatly enhance the 'outdoorsman' feel and look very impressive when in groups.
Increased fishing results as frontiering skill rises, similar to harvesting for the tracking line. Maybe also additional egg yeild from lairs on the same basis. Neither of these are overly useful but would add to the trading aspect of the game and the over 'feel' of the profession.
Tracking
Ability to track lairs - preferably also stating creature type, unless this creates coding difficulties.
Waypoints - Presumable the creature can still move away from the waypoint, but would save a great deal of aggrevation.
Range - The range is too short for the skill to be useful in groups as it is far easier and quicker to spread out and search for things (though it still seems to work well when soloing). I understand that ther may be coding difficulties with increasing the range (speculation on my part not fact).
Rescue
Needs to work regardless of whether the target is attacking otherwise seems pretty useless in groups.
Creature Knowledge
Added information regarding (i) Bone type; (ii) Creature speed; and (iii) aggro radius (assuming the later exists).
Wayfaring
Increased running speed - now mounts and vehicles are around this surely cannot be unbalancing, especially if tracking is to be used effectively (i.e. we keep stopping to track).
Additional swimming speed would also help a little.
To me a decent selection of the above make rangers useful and retain the feel of the profession without introducing any great game balance concerns or treading on other professions toes. A number of these are extremely minor 'image building' abilities, e.g. increased fish, milk and egg harvesting that can help the trading aspect of the game.
One thing that might make us more useful would be if the terrain actually needed negotiating.
It is possible to run from Wayfar to Takai on Tatooine without breaking so much as a blister. The sand storms of Tattooine are legendary, yet they have no effect in this game. The swamps of Dathomire are supposed to be riddled with disease, but they're not. For the most part, PC's see the only use of camps as a place to call their vehicle or pet. Add exposure as a factor. Wookies running around the Dune sea should burst into flames, Mon Calamaians should dry up on the desert planet.
If the populace is FORCED to seek shelter from the elements, then they will start seeking out Rangers.
You know something that I think should make the developers say that? Is looking at the ranger forum and looking at other profession forums. I'm blown away by how non-flaming and non-juvenile the Ranger forum is. My other profession is pistoleer, and all you hear in there is flaming and people wanting to nerf other professions and other professions wanting to nerf pistoleers. But here we have a very tight-knit community, and we're taking care to NOT indirectly nerf other professions. Obviously we're rangers because we think it's cool, not because it makes us more powerful. Maybe if you point such things out, we'll get a little more consideration than the professions full of l33t flaming and such.
NRaas wrote:
Whatwe need to do is put togetheradecisive piece of writing that will show the developers what they would bemissing by not following our path...
- Something that will make the developers sit up and say: "Holy crud, why didn't I see that before?"
I will just end up posting pseudo random thoughts that pop into my head so bear with me.
Creature handling - added pet levels should be distributed high in the trees. For a +5 put it at master. If a + 10 one in each lvl 4 and the rest at master to reduce the powergameability. (ohh I made up a word)
Terrain negotiation - uses the percentage increase for crawling and adds it to swim speed, running speed. Use it as part of a calculation for reducing recovery time to next burst run. Also add a skill to let us fight in the water. Keep in mind however that squad leaders will be able to add points to anyone with scout skills to get these bonuses as well as combat medics if they are based on the current terrain negotiation skill. Is this bad, I don't think so but others may disagree.
NRaas wrote:
We have the concept of the hunting blindandthe concept of the M.A.S.H. likecamps that provide security and healing capabilities to those in need.
We also have the concept of the fortifications that interest in the Squad Leader. Encampments that provide a tactical advantage to a team ofdefenders.
But where is the line between the hunting blind and the fortification?
NRaas, you bring out my best ideas. I'm definitely glad to have you as a correspondent. So we want more teamwork in the game, right? We want to be able to build modular camps, right? But we don't want to usurp other professions.
Why not have pieces of modular camps that can only be made by others? A bacta tank component made by Doctors which increases the healing in your camp. A fortification component made by a Squad Leader that gives you combat bonuses in the camp. Something made by a BE or CH that makes pets heal faster. A garage component made by Master Artisans. The Ranger could make his hunting blind, sure, but with the help of other classes, he could make a serious field base.
Heck, if we propose this idea, it might get similar things done for other professions, where an item crafted by one class requires or is made better by an item crafted by another class. Required teamwork in SWG? It could happen.
I am definitely in favor of some fishing bonus too.
fish traps, foraging in water, whatever.
Off topic I know, but an important observation has been made with which I strongly concurr....
You know something that I think should make the developers say that? Is looking at the ranger forum and looking at other profession forums. I'm blown away by how non-flaming and non-juvenile the Ranger forum is.
At the risk of sounding elitist I have noticed that also. I often wonder what the DEV's think about us lot and on reading many of the forums I should imagine it's not a lot really. I know that there are many bugs, and I know that many other "balance" issues dont balanceand I know that we are paying all the time we play this game, but still, some of the threads are very negative indeed and I really wonder why so many of them stay judging by their posts..?
"We are not stepping on their toes by asking for camps like they also want. ours should at least be equally as useful."
Yes, our should be equally useful. But that does not mean they should have the same purpose, simply that we could be useful for healing and recuperation, while they are useful in combat situations.
"I like the idea of the pet 'blood hound' and here is why if feel that bounty hunters can't say anything about it. Our pets would not leave the planet, like their droids. This would be a cool way to put the /track command in."
Excellent ideas.
"Adding a couple working traps and camps is just not going to put us on par with a comando, who I think we all know is the 'ultimate creature hunter,'"
As I said previously, the Commando may be the best at killing the creature once they find it, but if they can't locate the darn thing they could be hard pressed to do anything.
That is what should put us in a higher league than the Heavy Damage Dealers, the ability to locate the creature. Of course, a little extra combat bonus once we do locate the game wouldn't hurt either.
"Does our player tracking ability get taken away and give to the BH's?"
No. They have their Droids that serve the same purpose..
- Though we may have to restrict our tracking ability to outside of city regions to be consistent with the vision.
"Do we loose HT field bases to the SquadLeaders?"
The HTFB serves as the perfect Rest and Recuperation facility... While I suspect the Squad Leader is more interested in Fortifications that provide advantage during combat situations.
To this end, we will probably have to give up the idea of a MASH camp that does not disband during combat, and cede that philosophy to the SL.
I still consider the nondisbanding Hunting blind to be a perfect addition to our profession, provided its advantages are geared towards the creature side of things.
"Does our few action damaging traps go to the Commando's?"
We have damage traps? Tells you how often I use them... 
"Do we loose our fast crawl to the Riflemen?"
The Fast crawl is useful to professions other than Rifleman. This is actually the first time I have heard this idea,is there something brewing in theRifleman community that I should be aware of?
"Why not have pieces of modular camps that can only be made by others?"
Actually, my post on the original Modular Camp thread stated the exact same thing, so we arein definite agreement here.