Ranger Archive

I just wanted to list the *outright* bugs and concerns about the Ranger Profession, as I see it,in one place.

Bugs:

1: Camps: Ranger-level camps do NOT repel agressive creatures. The last camp that seems to have this effect is the final camp in the Scout line. It only works on fairly low level agressive creatures.
(FIX: ) Make all Ranger-level camps repel agressive creatures as they were designed to - the higher the camp - the higher the creatures it will repel.
(WISH: ) Perhaps allow the final two camps - Field Base and HT Field Base - to repel agressive Humanoid NPCs as well as creatures. NOT rebel-imperial faction enemy NPCs, simply red-dot-agressive thugs/pirates/etc.

2: Peaceful creatures breaking Maskscent: Maskscent is being disrupted by non-agressive (yellow) creatures. There is little point to this since we gain no experience hiding from them, why let them break it?
(FIX: )Have Yellow-dot, non-agressive creatures check against breaking maskscent by HALF of their currentvalues orNOT break maskscent at all. I amassuming theact of "revealing" you is, in essence,alerting other creatures to your location. Peaceful creatures should not do this.

3: One Harvest Per Corpse: Currently only one person is able to harvestan individual creature corpse. According to both the game Manual and in-game splashscreens this is not the way itwas intended - the intended way makes sense. Just because I skin something should not meanthat the meat and bones are suddenly ruined. I understand the need to limit resource gathering and exp for a singlesolo player soone harvest per corpse perplayer up to the limit of the corpses resources should be fixed.
(FIX 1: )Enableevery creature corpse to be harvested to the limit of it's resources. One harvest per player per corpse.
(FIX 2: ) Better yet, Allowa single player to harvest a single corpse to it's resource limit but only allow the first harvest togain experience and modify theSecondand Thirdharvests toincreasingly lower levels.ie: Playerkills a creature with 20 hide, 20 bone, 20 meat. He decides his first priority is Hides so he first carefully skins the creature - trying to get as much undamaged hide as possible. He gains XXexperience and 20 Hides. His second priority is Bone so he harvests the bone, only getting 10 bone from the creature. and 0 experience. Finally, he harvests the meat. Due to theslicing and dicing he's been doing, he is only able tocarve 5 units of useable meat from the corpse - again getting 0 experience.

4:/conceal: Theimproved ability /conceal in the wayfaring line has NOT been returned to the game. Beta experience andgame documentation refer to this ability as a way tohide yourself visibly from your enemies. Taking it out during betaand not putting it back in is, in my opinion, an annoying oversight and aBug. Rangers are the "Masters" of Wilderness Survival,Camoflauge,Hunting, Trapping, and Travelling. Agreat hunter, or specially-trainedspecial operations operative using these very same skills can pass undetected in the most hostile of environments.
(FIX: ) Return the /concealskill ability to the game once you've ironed out the bugs it waspulled out for during beta. This shouldNOT be a very-low priorityissue nor should it be near the top. GiveRangers something that they know is actually *worth* thetime, experience, money, and *skill slots* they spent to gethere.

5: /forage: Currently foraging is nearly useless.There is a bug I am sure you've been appraised of where you get a message that you did not have enough room in your inventory and some items were discarded. This seems to increase in frequency the higher your skill. Thisneeds to be fixed. Also, atRanger-level foraging we are supposed to be able to find "rare" items. I have never seen such an item.Perhaps the rare items and the error are related?Thirdly, the items we can forage do very little in regards to duration. This is more of a general "food" issue in my opinion - affecting both us and Chefs.
(FIX: ) Find and fix the inventory message error and the rare items not appearing. Increase the buff Duration of foraged and crafted food items. (whats the point of me eating something that only increases a few pools by 40pts if it only lasts 20 seconds?)

Now onto suggestions and improvements -

1: Maskscent: There are many suggestions on these forums tomake maskscent less of a pain to use while still not allowing massiveexperience gain. I have NOT seen one reply on any of thesesuggestions. Probably my favorite suggestion so far has been to make mask scent give considerably less exp than itcurrently does while either:
A)Removing theusage delay.
B)Lowering the delay to something reasonable like 10-15 seconds. or preferrably
C)Reverse the timer so it starts when you USE the skill. Another suggestion is to make maskscent duration (if not brokenby a creature) ramp up with skill. Currently I think it's somewhere around 10 minuteswhen I timed it at noviceRanger. Perhaps make it 2 minutes per 10 skill. AMaster Ranger with 100 skill would be able to stay masked for20 minutes.

2: Traps: I have Multiple suggestions here.
First - The ranger-level trapping skill only adds 2 more traps. Think up some new trap types and add them in - much like the scout trapping abilities.
Second - At very high trapping skill, (say 85-90+) allow traps to affect humanoid NPCs as well. Not players in PVP, just humanoid NPCs that aren't classified as "creatures".
Thirdly, and last - In *addition* to Rangers crafting their own traps, allow Weaponsmiths to create and *improve by experimentation* traps! (more charges, increased effect - perhaps put them in the Munitions skill line) This does not mean anyone can use traps - leave it as a skill-based usage like it currently is. It would be nice if I was able to have a weaponsmith make a slightly more effective device which can be used more times and has a higher quality/quantity effect. IE: using experimentation a weaponsmith could create a trap which had a few more "charges" and lasts longer than a ranger himself could create. Say a snare trap with 10 charges which had the effect last near one minute. This would not make Rangers dependant upon weaponsmiths since we can build our own traps- it would simply allow us an option if we wanted to seek out a "professional" smith to get some improvements to our tools.

3: Entertainers in Camps: Simply put, allow entertainers to heal battle fatigue in the ranger-level camps (not scout-level camps) but do NOT allow the slow regeneration of battle fatigue while resting - like sitting in the cantina with no entertainer.

4: Duration and experience from camps: Several points here. Camps last roughly an hour before they fall apart. If you walk out of your camp for about 10-20 seconds it dismantles.
Please allow us to leave our camps for longer periods such as 30-45 minutes, before the camp considers itself abandoned.
Please allow us to maintain our camps for longer periods than an hour as well. Perhaps aHUD-message saying the camp is falling into disrepair. and allow us 2-3 minutes tousethe radial menu on the camp-sign to "inspect and tidy" the camp. This would allow another hour or so of camp duration as well as giving us our camping exp we've gained during that hour-period. Or perhaps make the cycles 30minutes instead. There is a lot of room for improvement here.

I can't think of much more at the moment. Everyone feel free to add to this if you find valid bugs.

I agree with all these comments but I would definitely place traps into the "bugs" category. I have been getting mixed results with both ranger traps, in terms of whether or not they are working. I have never seen any feedback to suggest that a trap has worked or failed and I can't tell if there is a noticeable effect on the mobs.

In any event, the line certainly needs to be expanded. Right now, we have an AoE blind as well as an AoE dizzy/poison. *shrug* I don't see the value. What we clearly need is an AoE root as well as an AoE snare. With the amount of time it takes to launch a single trap, it is imposible for us to do effective crowd control. Warning shot is the only way.

However, if we had AoE crowd control abilities then rangers would finally have a specific value in groups. Forget about your designated warning shotter, let the ranger keep the mobs at bay while the rest of the group takes them on one at a time.

/$0.02

I like some of your ideas, not a big fan of the weaponsmith creating better traps though.

The problems I see, this goes for all professions to some point, is that you gain too many skills at the lower levels. Rangers get all their (but 2) traps in the scout line, Pistoleers get access to all (but 1) blaster types in the marksman line. These are two small examples. The skills need to be spread out more. Scouts shouldnt have access to all those traps in the begining only to get 2 more once they become rangers. Pistoleers shouldnt be getting access to SWG5s, Strikers and possibly DL44s until they are pistoleers. There is nothing to shoot for if you get everything upfront.

Thanks for posting guys.

I didn't intend to say weaponsmiths would replace us as trapmakers. We would still be able to make traps exactly like we do now but if we chose to seek out a weaponsmith forslight experimented improvements to traps we could. Not to say everyone could use traps - Still just us and scouts. This one was just an off-the-wall idea anyway. Making traps seems to depend on trapping skill so I'd assume they wouldn't want to duplicate all the traps and make weaponsmithing versions as well. As an alternative, perhaps add Trapping experimentation to our line so we can actually do our own serious experimenting. Considering you need a crafting station to experiment this would be fairly balanced as you could not make these "better" traps out in the field.

Another suggestion I've seen which I forgot to add into the post (we have no edit abilities.. why?) is Tracking.

I see Scouts asking for Tracking in their forum and it sounds like a good idea if implemented properly. Personally I am of the opinion that a skill such as tracking should be an advanced profession ability and given to rangers, not scouts. We're the ones who chose to specialize into rangers. Many people in scout simply buzzed through the novice profession on the way to another advanced one. We are one of only two elite professions who *has* to completely Master the scout profession - we should get something worth our dedication (read: wasted skill points?)

Does others have any real bugs I've left out or constructive suggestions about the Ranger class? Start talking people! Sony can't read our minds. -speaking of, where is our ranger correspondent?

i dont know why everyone bitches about maskscent so much. if its not working for you, youre using it the wrong way. i didnt have the skill before they nerfed it, so i didnt have the ability to exploit it.

maskscent should NOT be used to gain xp. the xp given is just an added bonus. and honestly, i have no problems with SOME yellow mobs breaking it. we're not invisible man, theres some creatures that it just doesnt work on. i have run past many a yellow mob and had my maskscent not break.

the nerf they did on maskscent was one of the best ive seen. there was a problem (people using maskscent to run past mobs to gain insane amounts of xp), they took into consideration how to fix it, and added a timer, and the ability for some mobs to break it. BRAVO devs.

as to all your other points. they are right on the money. traps frustrate the hell out of me. we get WAY too much xp for each trap, and the traps dont have enough effect. and WHY isnt there more of them? i also really like your ideas about weaponsmiths being able to make specific traps. they could make all new ones that we cant. i dont mind having to pay for a trap that is kick ass. of course, only rangers would be allowed to use them. not scouts, not brawlers, no one but rangers. and if you pick up novice artisan, every trap or tent you make goes to crafting xp. you will FLY up that skill line. and it gives you experimentation points and gives a higher rate of success. of course, i had to give up the artisan profession because we dont get enough skill points to be able to dabble in a few different things.

i think rangers will get our "fix" day soon. theyre working on DE's and CH's now. hopefully they'll get to us soon. i dont think they put enough time and effort into the advanced professions as a whole. that kind of bites because everyone got to master so fast, only to have most stuff not work.