Ranger Archive

I can't find the post now, but someone else had mentioned that there should be some kind of "Tracking" skill for the Scout/Ranger path. At the time, I didn't see the need... however!!!....

I just made my first visit to an Explorer Mission Terminal, and it only took about 5 seconds to realize that Tracking would be of inestimable value to those of our chosen profession. To have to go out and kill 45 members of a creature species to complete a mission, with no waypoint or other guidance, it's just not worth the time investment no matter how high the pay. Even those that pay upwards of 8-9k... I could easily complete six or seven regular missions that pay 1200-1500 credits each in half the time it would take me to randomly hunt and kill 45 carrion spats, or mottled wrix's, or whatever the mission may require.

So... YES... I give a two big thumbs up vote for Tracking to be implemented along with our current skill set, and I've even put some thought(okay,a LOT of thought)into how it might work.

First of all, it only makes sense that it should belong on the Hunting skill branch. It could be one of those skills that adds points (+5, +10, etc.) as you go up in skill level. The higher your skill, the farther you can track your selected prey, and the more likely you are to accurately do so. I'll explain that in more detail below. Also, the higher your skill, the more difficult creatures you are able to track. (kinda like Artisans have new craftable items added every time skill goes up.... Scout/Rangers have newer, harder trackable creatures added as skill goes up).

When a Scout/Ranger opts to use the Tracking skill, they select the creature to be tracked from either a dropdown menu, or perhaps a new page on the Datapad?? The system runs a pass/fail check and gives the Scout/Ranger the results.... vague at low levels, more accurate at high levels. Perhaps a Master Ranger could even go so far as to get a waypoint, where a low level Scout might get "there are durnis nearby", or "you detect no worrts". As skill goes up, maybe you could determine a range... "there is a carrion spat lair approximately 800m from you", or a specific direction... "the gubba's came through this way and moved off to the NE."

Again, on the advancing skill concept, a Master Ranger might be able to detect his prey up to 5km out where a low level Scout only at a maximum of 500m. I just pulled those numbers out of the air... but you get the concept. Accuracy might come in to play, too. There might be a herd of the selected prey right nearby, but the skill check fails and says there are none. Or there could bea critical failure that leads the Scout/Ranger to believe that there is a durni lair 500m to the N, when in fact the durni's are to the E and the unskilled Scout/Ranger is actually leading his hunting party towards an aggro pack of diseased gurrcats.

This skill could be more complex, or less complex... but I thought if I put a fairly decent level of detail into this post, it might be taken more seriously. I'm interested in feedback, especially from our esteemed Correspondent... one of the best in a ll the galaxies, from what I've seen so far. [/end blatant suckup]

Those of us who came from EQ know that tracking is more than a shady possibility, its lack from SWG seems an incredible oversight. It was easy enough to accomplish in EQ, and, as anyone of us who relied on Rangers for years to track specific spawns, relatively accurate and bug free.
For all of the suggestions about how to make us actually desirable - or at all desirable - to the community at large (which I concur should be our main objective), this would be the most straight forward solution. One could even propose that the HUD arrows for finding waypoints are so applicable to the idea of tracking, that its absence where it is so obvious must point to a larger game design conflict.
And here's my wild theory, so let me know if it makes sense to you all, and more importantly if you believe it possible to overcome with a simple technical solution (the most we could realistically expect from the obviously overwhelmed class Devs): In EQ (as in most MMORPGs), your character was, for general purposes, entirely independent of the zone itself. Within a zone all the creatures that were going to be there either were when you entered, or spawned on a vast, but structurally dictated chart. These creatures would spawn and despawn indpendent of your actions (aside from killing them) as scheduled and thus the server could produce a list of all the creatures at any one time (limited for access by a simple skill modifier) because it didn't have to use much memory to know what was around, the list never changed - things just dropped off of it. The problem for SWG tracking is not that it lacks definable zones, but that it spawns creatures dynamically in relation to your movement and activity within your area. SWG is simply infinitely more complex than EQ ever was. Think of all the bugs the server has keeping track of stationary things like items within a camp, or how long it takes to produce a trap from your hopper. That's all the server queuing it up and waiting for verification to make sure the right tiny bit of data goes to the right person's interface. I mean, obviously I know jack crap about the technical specifics, but we're Rangers - we train ourselves to see the game world for details, so observe how the game reacts to other similiar data conditions (radar reliability..or lack thereof for instance, that you can't drop items the server would have to keep track of, etc.).

I'm not saying it can't be done, but maybe there's more to it than just that they don't want us to have track. I just hope it's not just some stupid reason like they don't want it to be like EQ.

Now /conceal on the other hand...that they could give back '-)

-Shibel al-Ada-
(ranger) Scout/Sniper