Ranger Archive

Guys,

I think some of us are missing a pretty big point about the /areatrack skill here.

/areatrack isn't designed to let you pinpoint the location of a specific creature, creature type or player. It's designed to give you more information about what is in the immediate area around you. Kind of like what a real tracker out in the world would know by examining small changes to the environment around him. It's a "passive" kind of tracking.

The skill /track (which is still in development and has even been pushed to Test Center yet) is the more refined, targetable skill that let's you pick out a specific creature type, NPC or player and determine exactly where the player is - with waypoint level accuracy.

I think there is still some confusion out there about the differences between the two skills. Does anyone else get this feeling?

B

That doesn't mean AreaTrack has to be as useless as it is.

I wouldn't call /areatrack useless.

Was hunting on Talus earlier and found a pack of tortons(sp?) that I wouldn't have known were there but for the /areatrack ability. They were not on my radar and were not in the direction I was travelling.

So far Im digging the /areatrack ability. Just need it to stop picking up insignificant targets like house signs and player pets.

It is not useless. If you don't find what you're looking for in the general vicinity you should move a few hundred meters in a general direction and try again. If you try to find good mobs while near cities it is no wonder you get lots of newbie critters in your results. Out in the wilderness the results are much more useful.

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Gef_Ronimo wrote:

So far Im digging the /areatrack ability. Just need it to stop picking up insignificant targets like house signs and player pets.

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You obviously don't live on Tatooine then. Houses and Factories (yes, areatrack picks up on both of those) are EVERYWHERE. As someone pointed out in another thread, why can't it scan for lairs (or spawn points) without picking up on every single invidiual mob? AreaTrack is a useless ability.

Maybe it's just me, but I did expect somewhat of a graphical representation instead of the goofy and user-unfriendly tool we got now.

How about we get a sort of radar display pop up with arrows in it or something like the survey interface. It's really a pain to use as it is now and I for one don't have a clue at what range it is operating at which level.

I wouldn't think it would be too hard to give us a tracking device or something like that that gives us a nice graphical display of a scanner of some sort with a radar display on it that will show us blibs or arrows showing where which creature is to be found.

Ok, I might be asking for too much, but this is a technological age here, right? I've seen more technological advanced "looking" devices in our technological age (real life) to make lables for office supplies than I have ever seen in SWG.

Then again, I feel this goes for all the interfaces of the game, the planetairy map, the datapad, survey interface, etc. It's very bare bone in my mind. I'd like to see that fancy "high tech" tool with display and all that we can pick colors from, just like we can with our car stereos these days.

When I think Star Wars, I think "High Tech". Which means lots of technical gadgets and it should show everywhere, not just on a terminal that doesn't serve for any other purpose than show in a house.

I would love to get those technical looking tools. A survey scanner, heck make it look like a scanner on the the survey window, give us a real datapad that at least looks as advanced as a palm pilot does these days. And the same goes for the tracking, I like the skill and ability in itself, but to have to go through text based stuff, makes me feel I'm back in the Commodore 64 era again.

Kivech

I found area track very useful last night. I have Tracking III andwas about 1200m outside Kaadara last night looking for Kaadu for an explorer mission. I used area track and it gave me direction and distance to 4 of my prey (which was alsoa spawn point). I wouldn't have found them otherwise since they were about 300m to the South while I was travelling East.

How about if you click on the mobs name, it creates a waypoint to its last known location.

It definately is not useless....I used it on Tatooine last night. I was there for one purpose...I wanted to find a creature that I could use later on for a possible mount. Either a Dewback or a Bantha was what I wanted...I found both the dewback and the Bull Bantha....all because i used the new /areatrack command. these were both creatures that I already passed and had to back track. If it wasnt for this command I would not have found them.

Now...the things that could be a little bit improved.

I feel it could be a bit more then 500 m for the areatrack. not more then 1k is needed...but definately more then 500 for those times that we are way out in the wild. Less people seem to lead to less spawns let alone much in the 500 m range.

A visual animation of what is going on. This should be very easy to implement considering there was a post about this a few days ago from a dev asking us for more info like this.

Finally the time that it takes to do this areatrack. It seems to take a bit to long. I liked the results I had...but wouldnt have minded a few seconds off of what I was seeing.

Thanks for the info. apreciated

I'm absolutely loving /areatrack. I think it makes Rangers an awesome addition to groups with a CH looking for a specific pet. Last night on Dathomir, I grouped up with some people I had run with before and who were looking for rancors. It took some doing, but we finally got like 4k out of the outpost and started picking up a trail. In my opinion, that is -exactly- what areatrack should be.

Imagine this scenario from last night, wandering thru the dismal fogs of Dath, having to stop every now and then to look for spoor. This is the kind of thing that makes SWG fun again...

woops...the above applies with on addendum...

Make area track for animals only find animals, people for people, etc... I really don't care about how many vendors are near me out in the wild. And, if possible, removing dead critters would be nice, but I can understand if those are harder. At least finding dead critters makes sense, since at one point they were alive, and would have left tracks.

I love the /areatrack ability! I was out with some friends last night, it was late and we didn't feel like running back for missions. I used the areatrack ability, and popped up some leviasqualls and other decent mobs and we were off. DEFINITELY not useless.