Ranger Archive

Ok if and when we get the concealment line back this is what I was thinking. For the sake of argument lets say they make it so concealment invises you to npcs, players and animals. I'm all for the suggestions that say as long as we are standing still we will be invis. Anyway, To me thisshould be akind of a crowning achievement for us rangers, thus I think it should be awarded at master Ranger. Wait a sec now before you go "**edit**". There are 3 types of mobs out there, animals, NPCs and finally players (players arent mobs per se) I would like us to progressivley move up the skill where being invis to players is at the master ranger slot. My reasoning is I dont want to see BH take 1 line in Ranger and be able to use the skill. We should have some skill that we do where people go, "oh must be a ranger".

/edit I know we are basically invis to animals with the mask scent skill, my main point here was invis to players. A skill that should be unique to Rangers not someone who takes 1 line in our tree. All classes should have some final defining skill in their master slot to make becoming a master worth the effort.

I agree, they should have to master Ranger for the Invisible skill.

Helton - Novice Ranger

Does the /conceal command working yet?

From a PvP standpoint, I would love to see an invisibility at higher cammo levels. It's very difficult to be a scout for a faction when they can see you clear as day, lying prone in the high grass with BIG LETTERS floating over your head.

Being a scout means being able to get up close and do recon. We need to be able to do this, in my opinion, with players as well as NPCs and creatures.

Eko Loki

Ranger, Tatooine, Scyllia Server

i think this is a solid sugestion. One that they might see the viability in. I just see it as something we are going to have to ask for tweeking in the second adressing of class issues. They are basicly overhauling the ranger line this round (in concept and skills). But im betting, that they will listen to the rational of this down the line. If we can invis against a npc, there is a natural asumption we should be able to invis against a pc.

I am a ranger/rifleman as are some others. Riflemen are currently discussing a possible ghillie suit that would do something similar for them. My suggestion for both however downgrades the suit and the ability you are discussing, but if used in conjunction could be very powerful.

The ghillie suit would make it so that you can't be tab-selected and no name appears above your head, unless you are selected. This makes it so that they actually have to click on you in order to target you, but with a good ghillie suit graphic and a good hiding spot it will be tough to find you, though you will be on the radar the entire time.

I also believe that there should be a ranger ability, at master level only, that takes you off the radar. This will assist in sneaking into enemy camps and gathering information, though you will still be visible (no name should appear above your head here either). This means that anyone watching their surroundings will have a chance to see you, and if they hit tab pointing in your direction you may be selected. Any attack will break this ability, but you can go anywhere with your normal equipment. This ability should also slow you to moving no faster than a walk, or crawl (since you can still be seen on screen crawling will be very useful). Crawling right up to someone will always be dangerous, but shouldn't break this ability automatically, it's alway possible that they simply overlook you until you fire.

Even when I've mastered ranger I still have enough skill points to do LLC 4/ BH pistol 3...so yes, I can be a BH and ranger.

I agree we should be able to hide from PC's, but not in the sense of suddenly being invisible. When we hit our Conceal at the Master Ranger level all that should happen in regards to PC's spotting us is that Our name above our head disappears and we go off radar. (Range modifiers ofcourse) We should still be visible if someone is activly looking for us using line of sight. I dont like the idea of being able to "Vanish" into thin air. If we are hiding behind a tree or in a large bush that is cool. But no dissappearing acts.

The idea of rangers being able to conceal themselves from players is not going to go over well. I love the idea personally (as a master ranger of course) but the yelling and whining from all the other classes would be off the charts if someone were to suggest this anywhere other then this forum.

I therefore suggest that before we make any requests about the ability for master rangers (and I agree it needs to be master ONLY!!!) to be invisible to players we talk about balancing issues.

I believe that Master Rangers should be able to blend in to the wild and not be seen by anyone. However the purpose should be so we can scout and gather information, not so we can sneak up on players and assassinate them. If any class should be able to sneak up behind a player and assassinate them it should be a commando. That is much more of special-forces type move. Our realm should be in the wild and not close up to players.

We have to come up with a way that this ability can be implemented without it becoming the ultimate griefer tactic or it will never make it in the game. I suggest the following limitations in order to have a snowballs chance in hell of ever getting this ability:

1. Must be in the wild. Could most easily handle it by using the same build zone rule as camps. If it is an area where you could build a camp (ignore the rules about lairs and player structures) then you can conceal from players. I would further argue that this should apply to our conceal skill in general as well but that is another topic.

2. Master Rangers should have to have a high quality (high quality materials and experimented, assuming they allow us to experiment someday) camo kit applied.

3. Master Rangers should have to be prone/crawling in order to be visually invisible to players.

4. Distance to target needs to play a major role. The closer you are to the target the harder it is to be invisible/radar cloaked. Perhaps Master Rangers should be able to be cloaked from player radar even while not prone if they are more then a certain minimum distance from the player. I.E. outside 64m you can be standing and cloaked from radar. If you are within 64m you have to be prone/cawling. I still think we should probably have to be prone in order to ever be invisible on the screen. And we should not be able to be cloaked from radar period within a certain distance like 20m or so.

5. This needs to be a skill that is associated with the ranger not the camo kit. Last thing we want is master rangers being able to make kits that make any player invisible to players. So this ability needs to require the best camo kits but also needs to be a special skill rangers get at Master.

These five requirements would be somewhat balancing but they do not actually address the primary problem with giving rangers a skill like this. That is the assassination/griefer problem. If anyone here ever played Anarchy Online they know what I am talking about. In that game Agents could conceal themselves completely from players, hide right outside the city gates, one-shot a player when they came out the gates, then run off and re-conceal themselves. I believe we need to make sure that in SWG, using invisibility/radar cloaking for similar tactics is not just difficult and dangerous but IMPOSSIBLE. I know rangers are going to say: “we cant one-shot players we are only rangers” but you all know it is possible to master both ranger and rifleman. A master rifleman with a T21 and headshot3 can one shot players so it is possible and I said we need to make it IMPOSSIBLE to use “Super-conceal” to assassinate players or it will never make it in the game. Here are a few suggestions:

A. One suggestion is that in order to be concealed from players you cannot have a weapon equipped and the act of equipping a weapon breaks the conceal and also paralyzes you for some period of time. The paralyze part is to prevent someone from sneaking up, equipping a weapon, killing one player, and burst running out before other players can realize what has happened. Because no one can catch us over rough terrain so we would be able to do use this tactic to kill one player every time burst-run re-popped. If this was implemented then as soon as conceal dropped you would be a red dot on enemy radar and unable to move or shoot for some period of time. However this wouldn’t technically make it impossible to assassinate using conceal and therefore I am not sure it will be accepted which brings me to suggestion B.

B. I have another suggestion and I know you guys are not going to like it but it may be the only way we will ever get the ability to conceal from players. That would be that in order to turn on our “Super conceal” that hides us from player radar and makes us invisible on players screens we need to have no weapons equipped and have nothing in our inventory including containers. Of course it would be nice if we could still have clothing but I would even be willing to give that up in order to have this amazing ability which in my opinion needs to be for scouting/reconnaissance purposes ONLY!. This way the other classes can’t complain that it is overpowering and unfair because we could only use it for gathering information. I believe that if we went to this extreme in our requests we would have a good shot of actually getting the skill. If this version was implemented we could relax some of the other requirements, primarily 4 and 5. It would not be that big of a deal to sneak closer to players and to conceal other players if there was no way you could possibly harm them. Still have to watch out for Ranger/TKAs getting too close, but to my knowledge TKAs can’t one-shot so it is not as big of a deal.

Personally I would be ecstatic if we got the ability to conceal completely from players with limitations 1-5 and A in place. But I would still be happy if we got the ability with limitation B in place and possibly somewhat watered down versions of 1-5.

What do you guys think?

problem is, those "bushes" are really only radial flora, and many don't play with them on, as they eat fps like hogs.

The only problem I see with this, is the whole stealth stuff from every other game. Being invisible has it's perks, but the problem will be the escalating scale of griefing that would happen, not only from epople who already have rangers, but by the huge amount of people who then become a ranger, just for this.

I think the only thing conceal should do for pvp really, is perhaps, not make you look aggro when overt or while covert with a TEF, perhaps no selection with tab, or, no auto attack back (sounds like a nice one for those prone rifleman, i mean, no more HAVING to use concealed shot).

They're not going to do anything to take you off the radar, because the radar was put in place for 1 reason, to limit people hacking. If nobody had radar, the few kiddies with a radar hack would own everyone, like they do in various mmo's. So, they gave it to everyone. Taking yourself off the radar would only affect people until someone hacks it, so they can then see you again.

I think there are ways to go about doing something in pvp with conceal, but when suggesting something, please think of how easily it could be used to grief people. There's already too much of it (/rescue is a good one) and there needs to be LESS.

I dont believe that we need true invisibility to players, simply eliminate the name above our heads and make our dot disappear from their radar. I a player is observant, they may see us, difficult in tall grass if we are prone of course. The ability should only function if we are not engaged in combat, and our name would appear if they click on us. That would make it /conceal, not /invis.

Obviously those of you that are saying that conceal causing rangersto be invisibile to playerswould be a huge griefer problem did not read and consider my suggestions regarding how to handle that. Briefly:require no weapons equipped or possibly require have nothing in your inventory at all before you can conceal against players. I really like the idea of the ghillie suit and I think it could be combined with my other ideas to make it impossible to use conceal/invisibility to players as a way to grief players.

You could require these suits and have them take up every slot including weapon slots. And put in a delay when un-equipping the suit. So you could put the suit on which would un-equip everything except maybe a backpack. Then turn on conceal and you would disappear off radar and become invisible to players. Now if you want to shoot someone you have to take off the suit which instantly makes you visible/targetable/and appear on radar and you are paralyzed for 20-30 seconds before you can move or do anything. This would allow us to use this ability for scouting and gathering information but not for assassinating which is not the realm of the ranger. That is more of a commando/special forces type skill.

The reason that just taking you off radar isn’t enough is that the flora is all optional and anyone in PvP can just turn that off. So you might think you are lying prone in thick bush but to them you are laying in the middle of a grassless plain. I guess one solution would be to turn concealed rangers into non-collideable flora that way if they PvP players wanted to turn on the flora then they have a chance of seeing us but if they turn off the flora then they turn off the concealed rangers. Then I would be totally fine with it not being invisibility. But as long as the bushes/trees that we hide behind can be made invisible then we would need to be invisible to actually hide from anyone.

Andthere should be an detection skill that scouts and rangers could have to detect concealed players. I believe there is an alertness skill in the game already. If they used that then anyone would technically have a chance to detect concealed players. Of course in that case i think scouts/rangers should get a bonus to that type of skill above other classess.

This has been brought up numbers of times, before Retail and the devs have specifically stated that they will not implent invisiblity for player to player interactionseither via view or via rader due to the griefing reasons.

but i wish master rangers could do this, and only the master ranger.