Ranger Archive
Thread: Final Week 2 Submission
Week 2 Submission.
Core issue: Rangers have no differentiation from Scout
1. Wayfaring: increased crawl speed is extremely limited in value. Mask scent is broken by non-aggro creatures, yet no xp is given when mask scent is successful against them. The community feels that wayfaring should continue with enhancements to foot speeds, both run speed and burst run efficiency. Wayfaring rangers should be able to run farther faster, even over flat ground. The community continues to be VERY adamant about the return of /conceal, the ability to hide from NPC's, and most agree from PC characters as well at the master ranger level.
2. Hunting: the higher level creature knowledge, where it shows what special attacks a creature has, always lists NONE as the special attack. Doesn't tell us if a creature is a social animal (assistive), which is something Rangers should know. Creature to hit bonus only applies to ranged weapons. Community is unanimous that the creature to hit should apply to melee as well. Harvesting resources doesn't provide a significant quantitative or qualitative advantage over a master scout. A Hunt Master should have some type of skill or distinct advantage over a Master Scout, and all the information gathered by creature knowledge should be something that transfers into some type of group bonus.
3. Frontiering: foraging - foraging rare items always results in item discarded because inventory is full, even if inventory is totally empty. Foraged items don't stack, so any real degree of foraging skill use can overcrowd inventory space. Foraging has all the same requirements as sampling resources, yet provides no xp for success (must stand still, take action and mind damage, and wait for the skill to cycle, just like sampling, but no xp is given for success). The community is unanimous, as are many entertainers, that entertainers should be able to heal battle fatigue in camps (or at least in field base type camps). As most crafters and many players have droids that serve various purposes, a power droid or power station that recharges droids would be a very useful addition to camps that would encourage other players to visit/stay. In fact, Luke used a small power generator to power R2D2 when he set up his camp on Degobah, just prior to meeting Yoda. Field base camps have large pavilions, yet when it rains, they don't stop it. It would be very nice if it didn't rain inside tents (and would also help substantially with immersion and role-play), especially on planets like Dantooine, where it is actually better (and safer) to stop and wait for the rain to let up.
4. Trapping: Many of the community feel that trapping is more 'bait and wait', meaning that traps are set, and then you come back to that trap after some time has passed to check and see if anything has been caught in it. An idea would be to have small devices that operated like a harvester for minerals/chemicals, meaning you pay maintenance, and perhaps some power, and in return you get a resource. As many rangers struggle to maintain an adequate supply of hide and bone to support crafting thrown traps, camps, and selling enough to afford interplanetary travel, small havesters that resulted in meat/hide/bone would free up the Ranger to spend more time hunting challenging creatures instead of slaughtering masses of easy creatures to maintain their supplies, and would also allow them to sell more bone and hide, purchase their other supplies, and actually spend time doing more 'Rangerly' things than easy destroy missions so that they can afford to remain armored, equipped, and supplied without being constantly in the poor house. In essence, combat traps, and non-combat traps.
5. Group Value: Currently, rangers bring very little to the table as a member of a group. Camps are more eye candy than truly valuable assets, traps are nice, but the very sporadic reliability of trapping (meaning there is no way of telling if root is going to last 2 seconds or 2 minutes, and the same quality/effectiveness trap may produce vastly different results when applied), ranger traps are area effect, which is extremely limiting of their value (and they are bugged), wayfaring basically allows you to crawl faster and maybe go undetected by light blue or green con non-aggro creatures, which is essentially valueless to a group scenario (and pretty valueless to the ranger, too), crafting camps and traps provides general crafting experience, which is completely useless to the Ranger who has no desire to be an artisan (most rangers), the only combat skill rangers have is /rescue, which is next to worthless, as it almost invariably results in the Ranger's swift and bloody death.
Rangers should be able to bring more to the table for grouping. Their intensive knowledge of creatures, ability to travel in rugged terrain and ability to conceal themselves from creatures are all skills that can be shared with others "shoot the belle bol behind the rear leg for maximum effect" (creature to hit/damage bonus for group), "stay away from the gurrcats front paws, as the claws will crack bone armor" (group defensive bonus), "use unscented deodorant" (group mask scent). Simple things that provide an appropriate, modest bonus. The rangers themselves would have a much greater bonus to those areas, but those bonuses and abilities would make Rangers far more valuable and desirable to groups hunting creatures. At the pinnacle of Ranger skill, the community feels that the Ranger should be able to use these skills against NPC's, and at the master level, vs. other players.
Suggested Reading:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1060
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1422
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1443
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1569
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1973
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1976
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=1999
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=2010
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=2111
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=2189
Excellent post. Well written and covers much needed group. I vote NOT to have you rotated out. you are doing good work and keeping you at your post will only further benefit us.
Richard
Master Ranger / Sunrunner
nice... I am very interested to see when we get some goodies. From what you told us the other day stuff is coming but with all the other bugs and issues I can't see how we'll get anything actually in-game for at least a month or so.
Good job anyhow though!
Mineras, one suggestion. Perhaps in your next report you could add to your support of Rangers gaining trapping experience for making traps by referring to the fact that Entertainers get Music experience for creating musical instruments.
As to the correspondent rotation issue, I believe Q mentioned in another thread that correspondents would be reviewed monthly but not necessarily rotated out on that frequency. I think he left that open door just in case some correspondents didn't turn out to be so good. Fortunately we Rangers don't have that problem. Good job Mineras.
One other thing about trapping, I'm quite happy with traps that debuff. I wouldn't want to exchange them for more "harvester" oriented traps. Those debuffs will make us more group friendly when the Ranger traps are fixed.
I'm not opposed to "harvester" type traps, I just want to see harvesters added to our repertoire, and not replace the exisitng traps. 
Nice list. Looks like we're finally getting to improvements, because the bugs are represented. I think for next week, we should suggest our new Camp designs.
BTW, Mithras, when can you post that email from the Ranger designer.
Very nice job. (!) Thank you for a well written and explained post. /tip 10000
1) ability to see if a creature has a ranged ability.
2)shows aggro range, like will a creature attack when you come into view(64m), are kind of close(30m), or in its face(10m).
3)ability to see if creature can do any other type of damage besides Kinetic
4)under armor rating, instead of 0, 1, 2, 3 could you replace this with none, light, medium, and heavy like we find on weapons and armor so we can equate it better.
Thanks