Ranger Archive

I'm a Ranger, one skill away from Master, and guess what, its camping left to complete - no surprise there.

I'd love to post some additional ideas but really cant improve on what is an excellent post with some good debate. So far I have really been working towards Ranger with no real idea why, kind'a liked the sound of it nothing more.....

The closer I get, and i'm nearly finished remember, the more i see little point in keeping the Master level. The idea of being able to make a camp and get my bike or mount out when the systems stores it on me half way between towns is appealing, but I dont need to be a Ranger to do that, lowest scout is all I need. I like the idea of being able to harvest resources from beasties, but again no requirement to be a Ranger again.

I have therefore to agree that a Ranger is nothing more in reality than a dedicated Scout, traps..? Ok they are nice but a few Grens thrown in the air are far better at bringing down a creature...!

I am only about halfway up the skill tree's on Ranger so far and by no means know everything but i will add my tuppence worth.

1. First and foremost is the ongoing discussion as to whether NPC's should be able to break conceal.

The arguement that if it works on Animals it should work on Npcs is not valid in my opinion as the majority of NPC's come from advanced civilisation ( this IS Star Wars remember) and will almost certainly have personal Radar similair to the one each player has. That said there are also some NPC's that would be unlikely to have Radar such as Tuskan Raiders due to the lesser Technological base they live with. So i would think that Conceal should ONLY work against a limited categoryof NPC's.

Secondly, IF conceal is broken by an advanced race NPC a ranger should be able to use his highly attuned senses to avoid a surprise attack to a certain extent. As has been repeatedly mentioned, Rangers spend a lot of time outdoors and is is obvious to me they would have developed thier senses to a higher level than townsmen. Perhaps this Alertness ability can be set so it works only in wilderness areas and a ranger is actually at a slight disadvantage to surprise when when his senses are blanketed by a Cities background noise,smells and general lack of verdant greenery.

Effectively this would give a Ranger SOME advantage in his domain but disadvantages in the domain of others.

2. Creature combat, NPC Combat and PVP

There have been a great deal of suggestions passed back and forth on this forum but the one i like the most is the idea of a critical hit of some kind against Creatures. This could be enhanced however to effect PVP also. Again using the template that a Rangers Senses are finely attuned in the wild, why not allow the Ranger to make use of terrain better than any other class in the wild. By this i mean the following, Give a Ranger a dodge capability when on rough (Non civilized) terrain. Once outside of city limits allow the rangersexpert agility and balance work to for them in PVE and PVP. Again whilst in cities the Ranger would lose these and as he feels uncomfortable in built up areas he could perhaps suffer some sort of penalty as he is not used to dodging Droids and vehicles all the time like a city dweller would be.

3. Tracking

This is where a Ranger should be able to come into his own. Tracking should be enhanced to the waypoint scenario allowing him to track for specific animal types over great distance. Not for Player chars however as a Player can jump into a speeder and leave little or no trace of his whereabout's but an animal will ALWAYS leave tracks a Ranger could get a great deal of information from. Limit the Player tracking to general direction and enhance the animal side to the waypoint system.

4. Traps

This is where i feel the Ranger is severely lacking. A scout has a great deal of traps whereas a Ranger gains only 2 with his expertise. A Master Ranger should havea trap that captures an animal instead of simply slowing it or immobilising for a limited period of time. A Master ranger should be able to craft (WIth a great deal of effort and resources) an animal CAPTURE trap, This would allow the Ranger to do one of three things.

(A) Release the creature from the trap like with creature habitats. ( an unhappy agro mob released onto a battlefield could create a certain amount of havoc although it could turn on theOwner as well. Releasing a bees nest into a Rebel, Imperial Base would create a distraction etc.

(B) Sell the creature to a CH or BE for use in thier own professions. ( aBE would be able to extract DNA from animals suppied in this way at the same rate he can in the wild without the need for the time spent hunting, a CH may find it easier to get that pet he wants if he contracts a ranger to get it for him.)

(C) Kill and harvest the creature to its full potential (ie harvest all three resources at his leisure).

A further use of the Creature capture traps could be to use SOME of them as traps themselves. A Trapped herbivore could be used as bait to attract the big Carnivore you really want.

Needless to say i dont know how much of this would be possibly in programming but i do feel this would give the Ranger some uniqueness and with some manipulation by the Devs would not imbalance the Profession over the others. If we are to be Creature hunters (which i thoroughly agree with) then let us BE Creature hunters.

Ack! Eye strain!

That was a lot to read, but some good points. To me, here's what makes ranger a bit different than the other elite professions (well, ok, except maybe doctor) - We're nothing more than an advanced form of a beginning profession. Everything else advances on a specialization of a beginning profession, or a combination of two professions, or something like that, so that the elite profession is a unique hybrid or a clear specialization. With ranger (ok, and doctor too), we end up being the same as a scout, just a little more advanced. So for spending 140 skill points to master ranger, we're not too different from a master scout. Most other elite professions either cost fewer skill points to master, or are a lot more unique.

I don't know what my point is. I guess that ranger is just sort of a weird case. It really is a sort of support class, like a doctor, so I think what might make being a ranger great would be skills which would complement any other class, such as better combat abilities while mounted, or some of the luring/trapping ideas that have been proposed.

I really hope the dev team has some sort of ranger task force trying to figure this all out.

The most glaring weakness behind the Ranger profession are the total lack of weapons capable of increasing a Ranger's ability to take down creatures. The most effective creature hunters in the game now are commandos and TKM's. Why is that? Well commandos have quite the collection of weapons capable of inducing large amounts of damage in a short period oftime. TKM's just spam knockdown and a huge creature comes tumbling down (quite hilarous to see a melee person drop a piket.../judochop). What does a Ranger have...weak ass traps...that are usually duds. So if you want to be a great hunter you have to spend most of your skill points on Creature Handler or an elite combat profession, such as pistoleer, TKM or rifleman.

In order to improve the Ranger profession and make us great creature hunters either give us somespecial attacks vs. creatures (excluding traps), invent some traps that actually inflict HAM damage to a creature or introduce ranger specific weapon varieties. It would be nice to have at a ranger's disposal a variety of different traps/weapons that may cause fire, acid or cold damage because what good is it knowing a creature's weakness if you have no means of exploiting that weakness (unless of course you have invested your skill points elsewhere to attain the proper weaponry).

In its current state Ranger isn't the ultimate creature hunter's profession. We're more like the ultimate creature hunter's assistant.

Just checking back and already I've seen some good ideas. The idea that Rangers should be able to harvest more than just a single type of material is excellent. We need something that will make people go "hey, I wish I could do that" and they aren't talking about just a scout skill. Just taking this idea and running with it: wouldn't it be interesting if Rangers could level up this ability? As you progress in skill, you can harvest more resources. The kicker would be that at Master Ranger, you could have a "harvest all" option that would grab all three at the same time AND would also loot the corpse of all items, thus saving valuable time and effort (not to mention removing the occurences of forgetting to loot the corpse of high level creatures.

I alsolike the idea of combining some of the Ranger trees to allow for the new ones. If we are going to be a proffession that has most skill points taken up, with barely enough room for a basic combat proffession, we need to have new abilities that set us aside from scout. Almost everyone has a little scout, since the terrain negotiation and camping abilities are nice. But what we need is a reason for people to take up scout that defines us as a group.

I would also like complement Dyraak_Sinh on his point that we basically serve as support (especially since we can't have campt that remain active during combat, so we sit). Unfortunately our support roles area little less valuable to people. Which would you rather have with you: master doctor or master ranger....hmmm....well, actually, I'd say Ranger for the companionship, since I know that a Ranger would be a good person....but most people would agree that doctors coming in and bringing back the dead is a little more useful than the rescue ability or the tracking ability. and sorry for the other poster whose name I forgot, I am replying to Dyraak's message, so I can see that name.

Once again sorry about that long, long post but I was on a friggen ROLL when I wrote that. Please continue to post ideas or where you feel the Ranger proffession should be headed. We won't be able to have a central vision unless we discuss where we all think Ranger is headed. Forget what the book and other things say, where do YOU think we should go. TH said we need to show him our identity before he can take it back to the devs. Lets get some discussion going on this issue.

Up until about a week ago I was a novice rifleman/master ranger. I got my ass beat one too many times in PVP by bounty Hunters who had 'eye shot.' So I dropped rifleman, master ranger, wayfaring iv, trapping iv and trapping iii so I could have enough skill pts to get a little up the bounty hunter tree. I didnt want to have to do this. I loved being a master Ranger. This was what I wanted from the get go. However, I'm also a member of the Anatarian Rangers. As we all know, the AR protect and serve the jedi, but how could I protect them? I was the world's worst PVPer. If a group of bounty hunters came looking for the jedi on my server how could I help? By camoing the Jedi? No. By making a really cool looking camp? No. By trapping the bounty hunters so my Jedi counterpart could flee? No. I was of no use to anyone unless I was killing or tracking a critter. Right now my plan is to drop everything, but 1/4/4/0 in Ranger. And climb up that dreaded BH tree.

So in refernce to this post...I would like to see some kind of combat tree. Or at least make traps and camo effective against PCs. I agree with everything the original 'post maker' had to say. I think you have some great ideas there. I'd be more than willing to put my name on it =).

I'm worried about Rangers because we lack a central guiding principle that most, if not all proffesions have. Weaponsmiths craft weapons and they have schematics no other proffession has. Pistoleers shoot pistols, and they have skills that no other proffesions have. Rangers have two unique abilities, neither of which defines us as a group. we can track (inefficiently) and we can rescue(inefficiently). Scouts can trap and hide from aggressive creatures, as well as move through terrain faster. Rangers aren't defined by our skills. Bounty Hunters hunt people with their skills. Rangers...track?...rescue? These don't seem like "class-defining" skills like other proffessions have.

I'd like to thank Thunderheart for his terse little messageon the top five bugs responce thread.It shows at least Devs are LOOKING at our boards. Whether or not they get what we're saying is another question alltogether, but I think it is important that we note that, as he said, we as Rangers don't have a defined sense of who they are. There are many different views of what a Ranger should be. As there should be. Right now we have no skills that give us an identity. Bounty Hunters can see themselves as Boba Fett if they're movie fans or they can just see themselves as the best proffession for killing NPC's and PvP. THEY have an identity-- they're good at killing humanoids.

Rangers don't have this. We are according to all the descriptions, the ultimate creature killers. But in what way do we see this? We have traps that are, in most regards useless (although I found that rooting creatures is usefull, especially when combined with glow-wire traps to increase their vulnerability). We also have a slight to-hit bonus. This isn't exactly a defining skill set. Bounty Hunters recieve special attacks and certifications as a part of their identity. Their attacks hit for massive damage and as such they are great killers. We as Rangers do not have a defining ability, except for tracking, which is usefull only when soloing, and when on foot. We are so divided because there is no one way of seeing Ranger because all of the different views(survivalist, army ranger, aragorn, etc.) are valid because ANY of these views could conceivably have the skills we have. Army Rangers can track just as much as Aragorn can.

In other words, we need to either a new skill set that defines us or try to define ourselves and then ask for skills that correspond. Since the Devs choose our skills, and not us, we cannot just create a new skill for ourselves. Thus the best responce WE can give to the devs(and to NRass) is a single, unified understanding of who we are. This is near impossible given all the opposing viewpoints. However, there are certain things that we can all agree upon and certain things that while they may not appeal to all, have to be understood by all in order for Rangers to make progress.

First of all, we are playing a Star Wars game. That means that everything you do in the game revolves around the Star Wars universe. So those of you who keep bringing up Aragorn, you NEED to stop. We cannot base our class around a character who exists in another "reality." We all agree that Aragorn was cool and that he had a lot of abilities that Rangers have (i.e. tracking), but we are not playing a LOTR game. The same goes for those who try to compare us to Army Rangers. We are playing a game based in an alternate reality. Thus any comparison based on real life is intrinsically flawed because it's not based in the same understanding of reality. Basically, you don't see Aragorn or Army Rangers using or fighting against blasters or light lightning cannons because they don't exist in either of those "realities". Why then should our understanding of Rangerdom be based onTHOSE "realities"??

Thus our Rangers must be Star Wars Rangers, because that is the reality in which we have chosen to play. The Antarian Rangers seem to be the closest parallel that we can have in Star Wars. Thus it would seem intelligent for us to base our characters around this understanding of it. We shouldn't necesarily change the entire skill set to coincide with this idea, since each person wants to play their game their own way, but we need SOME idea on which we can say "yeah, I want to be good at __________", much like the people who choose bounty hunters can say "yeah, I want to be good at killing people in PvP". They all have at least one thing in common. They may all have different ideas of what a bounty hunter is or does, but they have a Star Wars based idea of who they are. They use Star Wars weapons and droids and they fit into the overall scheme of Star Wars.

We as Rangers do not. Some want us to be more creature-fighting heavy, some think that we should have more PvP abilities. I can see both, but the trick is to find some things that EVERYONE can say that they took this profession up for. There can be different ways to play the Ranger, but we need a core set of values. I'm not entirely sure of what that is, because like everyone else, I have a unique way of looking at this proffession. However I will tell you what I THINK are things that define us asa class:

First- creature harvesting and knowledge. This could be utilized more effectively, I think. Besides giving us info that is generic to the creatures, it would be usefull if every animal had a "weak spot" andspecific weakness or resitanceto states like dizzy knockdown. These would be unique to every individual creature (i.e. graul 1 has a weak mind but is hard to knock down, while graul 2 has a weakness to health attacks and is easily made dizzy) This would make Rangers invaluable to hunting expeditions since they would then be able to tell you which attacks to use against a target to maximize damage. Basically a Ranger could analyze a targets particular movements and get a good idea of what that creature is weak in (i.e. creatures who act "dumb" would have lower mind and those who aren't coordinated would be easy to dizzy). Different animals of the same type don't always act the same, so each indiidual creature would have different sets of strenghts and weaknesses. Plus, harvests at this level should give more options. We are MORE than scouts and that includes being able to harvest resources that scouts can't. This would be implemented by randomly allowing us to "harvest" rare items, such as skulls or stacks of better meat. Thus while scouts could get the basic resources, we would be able to get the best stuff out of an animal, the things that are unique or more usefull.

second-tracking. I think this needs to stay, since it is right now the one useful feature. It could stand a few changes as well. I think ALL Rangers agree that you should be able to "focus" your search to a single animal, in essence following one set of tracks. In doing so, you can no longer focus on seeing all the local creatures, but you recieve a WP that would represent where the creature could be. The idea is that a skilled Ranger would be able to see how "fresh" the tracks are, and knowing how fast a creature generally travels could determine about where the creature would end up. This would get more and more accurate as you went up. Also , it would be nice at high levels to see the type of creatures that generally live in this area, even if they are not spawned yet. I.E. if there is one area (such as the krayt graveyard) where krayts generally live, a good tracker should see that generally, krayts live in this area, even if some haven't spawned yet, thus allowing for skilled hunters to know what to expect from a given area.

third-camoflage. I think most people agree that this should work on NPC's if we are going to retain it. if not, it needs to be gone. Why use camo when it takes resources and offers no clear bonus over mask scent. It doesn't matter what reality you base your character on, in any of these, the Ranger has the ability to hide from humanoids. Also, to be useful in PvP, it should apply somehow to the GCW. Whether on battlefields, Rangers can't be auto-targeted or targeted using Tab, (the idea being that the player actually has to make visual contact with us an manually target us) or some other skill such as rangers under "cover" can't be targetted by base defenses such as turrets, we need SOMETHING for the GCW. These are just suggestions, I'd appreciate seeing lots more.

things that we might be able to lose are a lot more abundant. Traps don't fit in to everyone's understanding of a Ranger. Perhaps with them gone we could get a more defining skill set. Ditto with the increased crawl speed. Not everyone isa Ranger/Rifleman (which uses this bonus best, attacking by sneaking into and out of range while prone). Thus this skill in no way defines us. The creature to-hit bonus is nice, but without special attacks or increased damage done to animals (since if we are going to be good at hunting animals we SHOULD how to bring them down/where to shoot them, etc.) it is useless. I hit creatures more, but if I can't deal them good damage, who CARES??? Rescue also seems odd, but I actually think it should stay.

Rescue seems like a skill that Rangers have little use for, but perhaps it could be taken out of traps (and trapping removed entirely). Rescue would be an advancing skill- at first (at Novice Ranger) you could only help out players of your own faction from NPC's who would then aggro you. As you level you have a modifier that would allow for the possibilty of rescuing without being aggro'd (you make a distraction, but they can't find where it came from). As you level, you get to save people from creatures and eventually, other players. This would be implemened by having all people targeting your rescuee automatically turn towards you (or you succesfully distract and they can't see you, they turn away from their target) and send their next attack round towards you (or they would miss it if they didn't target you). You would aquire TEF's as neccesary for helping and the ultimate rescue ability as Master Ranger would be to /Rescue members of opposing factions. The idea here is that you are such a good person, have rescued so much, that you would be willing to save someone of opposing faction (they could still attack you, this is the risk you take...plus you get a TEF from your own faction.

This /rescue tree would be paired with another skill that would be modified as you went up. This should be something that ALL rangers would find usefull as a definitive ability or something that made us unique. Not sure what yet. I can't have ALL the ideas. I did this postorriginallyin the"Top 5 Bug Responce" thread,and nowI'm setting this post as a seperate thread because I actually felt that this should be discussed as a community and i'd like to see more ideas that give rise to a more definitive picture of the Ranger. I added a few new ideas that I had as I re-read what i wrote.

Please do the same- come up with ideas. This thread is about what people think should define being a Ranger. The more ideas that people have about what is CENTRAL to being a Ranger, the better the chances of finding what most people want and see. I hope that this post can somehow be used to help our situaition and we can somehow be made the better for it. If you read this post and you are serious about being a Ranger, I think you owe it to everyone to at least put your two cents in because as more peopleexpress their vision of what a ranger is, the devs can get a better understanding of what it means to play as a Ranger.

I thank you for your time (if you've read this far, it's probably taken a fair amount of time) and I hope that together we can bring Ranger back to life (okay, it's not dead yet...but the doctors are concidering pulling the cord--then again that might be for the best)

To me, the bottom line is that Rangers need some sort of combat skills.


Putting up camps and crawling fast isn't going to help us hunt. The passive creature to hit bonus is almost worthless, especially if you're a melee profession, and damaging traps are completely useless on higher level creatures.


Why use any Ranger skill against a creature(..and there's very few we atcually can use against creatures) when you can be a commando and take any creature out in a fraction of the time, and get almost as many resources from it.


We need fewer frilly skills, we need some that are actually usefull for our purpose, hunting creatures.


A passive damage modifier would be nice, modifier increases as skill and experience increases and is only useful against creatures.


Another nice skill would be a 'Vulnerability shot'. Something that, when activated and after passing a roll gives a massive damage multiplier or results in instant death in some cases. Rangers have creature knowledge, we should be able to use that in combat against creatures by exploiting weakness we have learned exist in certain creatures. Everything has a soft spot(even the mystical TH I'm sure).


Bottom line is, in the context of this game Rangers are supposed to be the masters of PVE. As it stands we have basically nothing usefull that augments our PVE combat skills. Which obviously puts us at a bit of a loss. The Ranger elite class takes a heck of a lot of points to attain, and as the BH is pretty much master of PVP, Rangers should be the uncontested masters of PVE. And that means we should be the most damaging by far to creatures.




On another note: the Ranger boards are without a doubt the most civilized and enjoyable to read through on these entire forums. The most constructive threads around can always be found right here. Pretty odd considering we're a bunch of wilderness junkies.

PS - That was an awesome post Phenix1050, no need to apologize whatsoever.

I have seen a wealth of creative ideas concerning the feature set for the Ranger profession and I have every reason to believe that we will continue to be able to generate ideas. Butthree main components in the SWG system, PvP, PvE and the presumably the GCW, are in a constant state of flux, and so the problem with petitioning for this or that feature is thatonce we get the developer's time to work on our cause, we find quickly that our skills have becomedevaluedas these underlying systems shift around us. In fact, this is how we came to be so underperforming a class: we were custom configured for a GCW that never materialized in the way the developer envisioned. I believe what they wanted to see was a massive, player generated&RP drivenGCW, complete with forward battle posts, scouting and recon, and organized strike teams stretched across the plains of the planets. What they got was initially a pointless series of Hatfield'svs. McCoy's skirmishes between Anchorhead and Bestine (in which the Ranger played no role), until of late the experience has devolved, as an number of people have observed, into Deer Hunter 2.0. Ironically, the Ranger still plays a marginal role here because the commando has aquired unmatched creature slaying capabilities as an unintended consequence ofthe attemptto counter-balance the AT-ST (if my chronology serves me faithfully).

My point is that we should focus our energy now on engaging the developement team about the role of the Ranger within the larger SWG system (the skill set willcontinue to be tweaked over time, andwe will continue to generate good ideas concerning that skill set). If that meansdrivingTH, the developement staff, and the GCW advocates toward a well defined gameplay system so that we can be a well defined component of that system, well then I say Rangers, lead the way. If we really want a sustaining and well defined role for our class then I implore you to realize that this is the battleground for workingtoward such a goal.

Is sufficient to say that the Ranger is the ultimate creature hunter? Hard to say without more information concerning the vision forSWG. How would we get there? Clearly we are not this today. What does it mean for commandos and other groups if this is in fact to be the case? How plausible is this role?

I know that when I initially took Ranger profession, I anticipated that it would be a class that was the conduit between the PvP and PvE systems, and that we would be using our mastery of the environment to deliver a tactical advantage to our respective factions within the context of the GCW. Currently the CH alone exsits in this strategic space. I want the Ranger to have some room there. The Civil war was the most underdeveloped part of the Star Wars series, serving as little more than a backdrop for the main characters and their soap opera. I want to give it some flesh, and I want the Ranger to be critical there. Fortunately, since there is no GCW to speak of at the moment in SWG, there is still time for this to debate to take place. If we are hunters only that's fine, but it means that large chunks of what is done by other professions might have to be moved under Ranger, since currently this is all there is to the game.

My call then would be for the developement team to communicate the structure of the SWG moving forward, complete with our role in that structure. Then we can talk meaningfully about our "role".

One comment.

We keep saying that rangers should be the ultimate creature hunters, but commandos or TKM's are. And maybe that's true in a way. I don't think that I as a ranger should be tougher than a commando, as they're a combat-focused profession. I think we need to make a distinction. Rangers SHOULD be the ultimate creature HUNTERS, even if something like a commando is the ultimate creature KILLER. Who's going to take down an elephant easier, the guy with the rifle who stalked it across the plains, following its spoor and its tracks, and knowing where it would go for water, or the guy who was dropped in front of it with an RPG? Obviously the RPG will destroy the elephant faster, although that guy with the rifle will probably be skilled enough to drop the elephant in a shot or two.

(This post in no way condones the hunting of elephants. Thank you, and Merry Christmas.)

So there have been lots of ideas to make us better HUNTERS, including better traps, lures, better tracking, stuff like that.

My favorite ideas are

• critical hit mod- representing a chance to do increased damage (double, triple, etc)


• capture- a trap that would actually trap a creature, not just trip it (^_^)


• semi-permanant camp (the lodge idea)


• modular camp when combined with squad leader is forward command center (i love this idea!) complete with automated defense systems (turrets etc)

Alot of people are asking for waypoints in the area track. When we were told about area track for the first time by holocron, he said there would be 2 skills: area scan and track. area scan would give a snapshot of the creatures/npc/player around you, and track would spawn a creature for you and give you a waypoint to it's general area. I have no reason to suspect that they have abandoned the track skill, they did say after all that it could be quite awhile until we had any more additions.

I personally would like to see more pvp usefulness. Tracking player movements is fine if you combine it with /who rebel(imperial) and can check the faction of players. The problem with this is that you are relying on your enemies to not use /anonymous. In most cases, people don't even know how to go anonymous, so it works without a hitch, but I do not want to rely on the lack of knowledge of my enemy to be useful (^_^) I think it would be nice if there was a column in the player tracking screen that displayed the factional icon if they were overt. And the /areatrack results need to be sortable for cryin out loud!