Ranger Archive
Thread: Tracking the Elusive Vision...
"are they really going to listen to any of our new ideas?"
A good question. I have faith that Thunderheart can turn some heads if we provide a solid enough argument for our direction.
With that in mind, I have begun writing a treatise based on the ideas that are arising from this and the other threads on the same vein, so please keep the ideas flowing.
I should have it finished sometime next week, and I will post it here for the communities approval and then it will be off to the developers.
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?"
Ahah! Many of us took off in the wrong direction in this thread. Some of us made this into the bug thread and/or the StoP thread. I tried to address issues that would fit under this vision, but I think I failed in sticking to the original purpose of the post....How (and why) should we be the Ultimate Outdoorsman over being the untimate creature hunter.
My vision of the Ultimate Outdoorsman would, of course, include creature hunting, but encompasses more than that. First I will address what I said in a previous post.Some of our skills should not work within city limits (both permanant and Player cities). Camps are already covered by this, but camo sould also be limited. I think using traps within the confines of cities makes sense...think of rat traps or squirrel traps.
I also believe we were meant to stay away from cities for long periods of time, but not indefinately. Semi-permanent camps, or hunting cabins would make sense here. I do believe camps should allow healing to facilitate this, but not all things should be able to be healed, or else why would we ever go back to town? I think camps should give somemission terminals (through the modular camp idea), but I think a cloning terminal is well outside our realm of being an outdoorsman.
Next, I will address the PvP aspect of the Outdoorsman. Conceal should work against NPC's as well as PC's, but ONLY away from a city. Any kind of ambush I can think of (military, animal hunting, etc.) involves concealment. I think of the manyscenarios that have an ambush being performed by people either hding in a tree, or using the environment to make themselves look like the local flora (think snipers), and evennative americansused to wear buffalo skins to make themselves look like one of the herd. I know that last example applies to creature conceal, which we already have covered, but I was on a roll.
Now for creature hunting. I believe a Ranger should be nearly flawless at taking down game. We are supposed to have the highest modifier for creature knowledge, yet even when I used the uber LLC I couldn't match what a Commando (with a flame thrower) or even a creature handler could take down, niether of which had any Ranger skills, or any scout skills, other tha the prerequisites (I am using soecific examples from my guild). I know this stirs up the issue of Rangers being a support class, but the Devs are the ones who played the untimate creature hunter card. As it stands, Rangers are not good hunters, compared to all elite combat classes. With the introduction of vehicles, people can cover large areas quickly and don't have as much of a need for tracking, or terrain negotiation. We all agree that Ranger traps are broken, and that those of us that use traps, use the scout ones. Camps have no application to creature hunting except for the base camp idea, and should remain far removed from actual creature hunting (hunting blinds excepted,and will hopefully not be a "camp" per se).
I don'twant to includespecific ideas on how to negate theseissues, and they can be addressed in a later StoP topic. I have tried to give my vision of the outdoorsman without straying too much into the realm of fix this, or fix that. In the future I will be happy to address individual issues.
Very much has been said and I'm new to the ranger profession so I don't have much experience and don't have much to add at this time. All I have to say is this:
Ranger takes 140 skill points and 2 full trees. Out of all the professions that require 2 full trees to master Ranger is (in my opinion) the weakest.
Doctor, Combat Medic, and Commando are all (in my mind anyway) far superior to the ranger in terms of overall return vs skill points spent.
I think the devs don't realize this and they should be made too. A ranger doesn't offer nearly as much to a group as a doctor, combat medic or commando does. For most of the groups I've been in the camp given at novice scout is just as effective as the camp given to advanced rangers. This is just one example.
amen to the last post...
the REAL problem is, "How are we going to make it worththe skill points?"
I think it IS worthwhile now, but it could be far more so from the ideas on this thread.
NRaas wrote:
"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.
DOH! That's what happens when I try to assimilate over 100 posts.
NRaas wrote:
"Also, foraging at our level should give stacked items"
The reason we don't receive stacked items, is that would impede upon the Chef profession (same reasoning behind why Smuggler spices don't stack either).
Originally, the stacking was meant to be a plus for Chef, though nowadays it is not so much as no one uses Chef goods anyways (that will definitely change in the near future though
...snip...).
I beg to differ about the uselessness, as my crates of Breath of Heaven and Ryscate will attest 
. Their food is better and experimentable and ours is fixed (not to mention all we get is food and bait). I do not see the problem here, I say make them stackable. The stuff I forage is mirly petfood anyway...
NRaas wrote:
"Then don't show at all, don't even send the packets to the client until the first shot is fired. Try to hack that, I dare you"
The packets containing the coordinates must be sent that direct the main window as to where to draw your character...
- A hacker could simply use thosecoordinates instead and reenable the Radar.
They contain no coords of things you do not see nor should they. You have YOUR coords and things you see. You should NOT have coords to things you do not see. Only the server has that, and in it's local memory.If you are looking around and a ranger is in range and hidden, the server should not be sending ANY information of said ranger till he attacks you. If the hacker does not get data, how could he possibly synthisize it? He cannot use his own coords to construct your position. I think you misunderstood me there. If the client gets nothing, not a single packet, about a hidden target there is no way it can be "hacked".
Nope, not an inbalance in my eyes
"And this is where we part ways. For 140 skill points I submit this is balance in and of itself. If we can't fight better (due to the skill point drain) then by god they better let us hide better."
Remember that /conceal can be applied to other players as well...
- Meaning we could hide an army of good fightersand cause the imbalance that way.
. I call it an ambush 
If we separate the PC from NPC here, I don't think sneaking up on NPC's is that far out of the mix. Perhaps a compromise, limit the success to the Player being camo'ed stealth skill, making the Ranger class more desireable. Sure, we can protect someone from critters but say NPC's and PC's would require ranger skills, and the radar blank would only be a MR using camo, perhaps a roll that prone and crawling would have the greatest success here.
NRaas wrote:
...snip...
Fred_Skinner has asked me to "get a spine". So unless someone else has any absolutely brilliant ideas on how to proceed, I will direct the community down this path.
hehe, I said that? I think it was "we should help him get a spine" making it our responsibility to come up with good ideas . There was some waning support for you, which I didn't like and hopefully is fixed nowand hopefully we will be giving you MUCH support now. I think the "stunning news" about the NPC seeing through camo hit a little hard then, and the frustration was looking for a focus...
I know a great fishing hole on Rori, which may help
...snip...
----
I willcomplete this post now,as I appear to be getting agitated.
It's a big marsh/lake near Junkville."Their food is better and experimentable and ours is fixed (not to mention all we get is food and bait)."
Excellent point, I will consider that while writing up the forage part.
Raverbane wrote:
The things I think we need to see are the critter bonues actually working and working well. Lots more To hit and damage bonues. Across the board and in much bigger numbers. And if we are to be the best at fighting creatures, we need to be able to defend against them. Since, they introduced this nifty damage mitigation ability in the combat proffesions. How about the for Rangers, but versus creature damage? And learning to become resistant or immune to certain critter speacial attacks, as the Ranger goes up in level.
Fishing. Fish are a commodity that we could really benifit from, if Rangers could do it effeicently. Leave the rod and real fishing for Scouts. How about make it foraging, for Rangers? You stand in or near a body of water and when you forage, you get fish instead of food. And on the subject of foraging. Make the stuff we forage with something.
Now, this does sound like a fine idea
"I am curious what you have to say about MASH camps, as the only ones I have seen are on the show, and they had no defenses except I-CORE. Do you think a new thread is in order here?"
I am using MASH as a term to encompass the camps that promote health and safety, namely what our currently available camps provide.
- And the use of safety is defined as the absence of conflict, not increased defense during conflict.
I do agree a new thread is in order regarding the "vision" and "camps", but I want to finish up the /conceal thread before proceeding to another topic.
NRaas wrote: (in regards to cage traps)
- Actually since the request was only for Baby Creaturesuse in combatshouldn't be an issue.
I think this would make it somewhat useless as it pertains to BE's as it would hugely reduce the creatures they can sample. Most of the good BE samples come from creatures that dont have babies. I say just limit it to any creature under the BE level cap. To make it not useable in combat simply give us the highest aggro rating for that creature so the first person it attacks upon release is us. This makes a certain amount of logical sense, since we are the ones that caged it in the first place.
Cul
I see a lot of posts about restricting our skills to outside of city limits. Personally I hate the idea. Right now municiple zone boundaries are completely invisible and often make absolutely no sense what so ever. The municiple zone around an outpost on Dath requires me to go farther out from town to use my camp, a long ways past recieving the message about leaving the town, then I do for Moenia which is a major city. For city limits to be any form oflimit for our ranger skillsthe message 'you are leaving moenia' MUST represent when you can use your skills, instead of how it is now where that message means.... well nothing.
Further to that thought I am against the idea because a good majority of PvP takes place in or near towns and I dont feel rangers should be useless in the GCW. If you want to limit it to 'outdoors' then I am fine with that, buildings are a defined space and it makes sense that I shouldnt be using outdoors skills in the hallway of my house.
Cul