Ranger Archive
Thread: Questions about Tracking
2) Did i miss something about the usefullness of Areatracking ??
I explain my question :
- We cant track what is not up (seems obvious) ; and as far as i know, creatures (or npc) only spawn when you cross the area. So (i exagerate a little) : there is nothing to track, but things players forced to spawn. Am i right ? Maybe i missed something, or didnt understand.
I seem to be tracking up to 500 m or so in a radius from where I am standing, so the range would be about a kilometer.
Absent the players tracking (which scares people when you tell em where they are), I have noticed that if I track an NPC, lets say a Swooper, that character does not "spawn" til I get to a certain distance from that character. I see that Suzie Swoop is 300 m to my North, which covers a fair amount of distance, as North is somewheres between NW and NE. If I don't go there, does that mean Suzie doesn't exist, nope - she is there - she is a spawn who "lives" in that area. When I, or anyone else, gets with a certain distance, she spawns and pops in to play. I do this on a mission target - same deal - I take a mission from a terminal and when I do, the target "spawns" at the site, or it is there, waiting for someone to come close enough to see it. I dump the mission, the target remains, which is why Lok sucks, all the dead missions sitting there crowding up the countryside.
Think of it as the tree falling in the forest routine... unless someone is in the area to see it, the target does not spawn. And if you take a target near my target, I can get slammed by unexpected company. So you are running to your 'target" and some other critters or NPCs that were not on your areatrack pop in. Where did they come from? Maybe they arrived after you did your check, think of it like that.
Its not perfect, but then again, we are not perfect trackers. I still like it, it works mostly ok and is fun to annoy your friends with.
JB