Ranger Archive

Here are my initial , very dissapointing results after using areascan most of the morning .

I have Tracking IV . I was interesting in using the new tracking ability in tandem with the new exploration missions . I am testing on Lok .

Ahhhh man where to begin ...

First of all , the interface is awkward , ugly and uninspired .A block with three options ( animal , people , players ) . Pick one and the game will scan the area . This is all text messages and no new visuals . " you begin to examine the environment for information " .

An incomplete and inaccurate list of some of the animals in the area comes up ( range seems to cap at 500m ) after about 30 seconds . The list comes in the same generic ugly interface box , and there are no options for the entries other than scrolling up and down the list . If there are 7 or 8 monsters around a lair , it will list each and every one of them . So , on Lok you get

A flit ...NE320m

A flit ...NE320m

A giant flit ...NE320m

A flit ...NE320m

A flit harasser ...NE320m

A flit bloodsucker ...NE320m

A flit ...NE320m

A flit ...NE320m

and on and on for every lair that is around you for 50 entries . The list caps at 50 . Suffice to say that " aFlit lair " or " a group of Flits " will do here , there is absolutely no need to list every member of the herd in the search .

Furthermore , after each entry you will get directions such as NE 320m ... well the genius that designed the round area radar decided to use an arrow , a ball and two dashes to indicate N , S , E and W . So needless to say it is inexplicably UNINTUITIVE and clunky . Sure , it's only a matter of time fore a player realizes that " ball " is South , " arrow " is North and the two dashes are relative to those . Why bother ??? Why isn't it just N , S , E , W . That's just a minor gripe tho .....

The real dissapointment comes in the actuall using of the skill . Now I'm near Master ranger and like I said , tracking IV . I used Areatrack and came up with a herd of Snorbals 400+ meteres to the East .... and tha's it .

I walk 120 meters to the South and a whole flock of the animals I was looking for are right there . They did not show up on the Areascan , despite being less than 150m away , while things that are 400m away are showing up . Things that did show up on the list were not there . One listing showed an animal 1m away from me . Wasn't there ( yes I looked under my boots ) .

Add to this the inherent problems with monster spawns in general ... there is a dense " Asteroid Belt " of monsters , lairs and enemy NPC's around every single city due to unfinished or abandoned player missions .

Because tracking is listing every animal of a lair , and stopping when the list hits 50 , you get a short list of 7 or 8 lairs within a 500m radius of you , when there could be dozens more . Potentially the ones your looking for .

The information that does come up is incomplete and inaccurate and slow . There is no visual indicator to point you towards your targets , only text indicators in a clunky and unintuitive directional interface .

So ... basically this skill has no value , or just about as much value as our previous " tracking device " , the Tab key . Out in the wilderness , when you have penetrated the gauntlet of player missions debris monsters and lairs , I ran for a solid twenty minutes without encountering another SINGLE LIVING SOUL . Dead . Nothing . Of course the tracking skill is useless here , as well and just tells you " you aren't able to determine anything from the tracks in the area " . Whoopdie doo .

This skill needs HUGE work . I am praying that our other additions are not as poorly designed as this one is ... I really am . I would like to continue playing this game but this addition has ironically made it seem more hollow and shallow than ever . I hear the Coneal is not working well , either .

Well , those are my experiences with this skill and if anyone begs to differ PLEASE post , I want to be wrong about this . I want anyone to show me how this works well , or even works .

Peace

Max

Nicepost and you raise some good points. I don't have much constructive to add at this point, but I think a nice animation added for tracking would be cool. Something like a unique kind of crouch/squat (as long as it doesn't look like we're taking a crap). Maybe have the character reach to the ground and bring his hand up to his face like he's closely examining it.

Hi Max:

I agree with you on several points, but I am going to give it a shot, Yeah, MaskScent breaks alot (to durni's for me, at Ranger Wayfaring II) but I think we can work around it.

I tried the /areatrack, with a known monster selected (type and distance). It was 52m due west. I faced SE. I did an /areatrack, and my result was said monster, 57m west. So, I might be totally off on this, but I think the direction our avatar is facing is not calculated in the output.

I think a nice animation would be sweet, but yeah, not look like we are crapping (although that would be kinda funny in certain towns.

I have not played enough with the /areatrack to comment completely, but it is a start. A nice interface would be great, and a grouping tree (kinda like the bazaar items) would help. The 50 item cap seems like it would be difficult in highly mob populated areas (like around the Imperial outpost on Dantooine). Maybe even a filter of some sort, like /areatrack carnivore or /areascan gubber?

Thank you to the Dev's for at least helping make the Ranger different from Scout2. I am sure in the days/months to come, we all will be very pleased, and that hunting parties will be actively recruiting Rangers.

Don't take my comments as a flame of your post, I think you have very valid issues. Keep up the good work, Max, and if you are ever on Wanderhome, give me an /tell and we can hunt together.

I just tested /areascan by facing each direction and running the scan. It does not matter which direction you face, you still get the same results.

Also to me /areatrack looks like code that was copied and pasted right from the /find command. Thus the interface.

I do hope they allow us to filter it somehow...

Vidmo

For those of you that want an animation for /areascan:

Make a new macro called "/areaScan", give it an icon that is not as annoying as that stupid moving figure (I suggest the "eye" icon), code it as follows "/areatrack;/combarea"... Voila! Animation added, stupid icon removed!

At least its a quick fix untill they get around to adding an appropriate animation (if ever...)

Good idea on the macro Ki...

The compass directions work fine for me, and it doesn't seem to matter what direction I'm facing.

The 50 entry truncation is the most annoying part of the ability. I thought it was just limited range and didn't realize it wasn't listing everything. Add to that the time it takes to use, and you can complete a hunting mission more quickly by running around and using Tab. If they eliminate the truncation, and increase the range a bit, it would be much more useful, and I could start taking nothing but hunting missions.

Jamga
Wayfarer/Huntmaster/Trapmaster/Pistoleer/Medic

Ok, I think I have just found what JonSee is noticing. Area track works, but its implimentation seems to be exposing something about the way creatures spawn. I'm way out in the middle of nowhere right now, and the *only* spawns that appear i the list are ones that I have seen already or are otherwise in close proximity to. It appears that creatures simply don't exist if someones not around to make them spawn. Therefore, when you area track, your list is empty except for what you very likely know about already. Tracking works like a charm in higher traffic areas, but out in the stix *you* are the only one making spawns happen, so area track can't tell you anything you don't know already.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I would use tracking to find specific animals in remote places, which it doesn't seem to be useful for.

Firstly let me say this,

I havent used it yet, iwas tobusy playing with the camo kits last night, well trying to get the stuff together to make one of each and then actually going to the planet to try it out. SHould be doing this tonight and will let you know how it goes.

But a question,

at the moment we have /areatrack - human, npc or animal or soemthing along those lines?

As it stands itspretty simple in its form, but are we going to get the ability to eventually be able to /areatrack snorbels (someones suggested this easrleir) and then it scans for snorbels in the area?

If this is the case i dont think anyone has any grounds for complaints.

As it is, i think if that is implemented it will probably make us over powered. What would stop every single one of us from getting the explorer missions, which can pay extremely well, and jsut doing them all day if we can target a specfic creature? I dont think that was the reason for the implemenenation.

Correct me if im wrong, buti was under the assumption that this skills was there to head you in the right direction, not simple make a waypoit to where your next skill is.

With the Camo kits, the ability to Track, i honestly think Ranger (as it should be) is fast becoming the elite PvE character.

Give the area you are searching a once-over, take a moments rest, then /areascan.

If you make a quick jaunt across the dunes and back, you will likely spawn creatures appropriate to that domain.

At least this works for me... Then again, I have two 20+ level pets with me and they tend to up the spawn levels.

Some people are looking for an instant fix with /areascan, but that is what /track is destined to be. I would suggest that we be patient with this Tracking Lite as I'm pretty sure the Devs will tweak this ability to make it more intuitive and usefull fairly quickly.

I am glad to see my initial and dissapointing findings with this skill are being echoed by by you guys . It's clunky and needs work .

I wholeheartedly agree with the poster who noticed how spawns work ... they simply don't exist until a player ( us ) comes along and " trips " the wire in the game that tells it to spawn some stuff .

SOOOOOOO , like I said before areascan , in it's current form , with it's slowness , inacuracies , clunky interface and limited results with frustrating multiple listings for the same lair ... is simply NOT useful to me in any way .

Said it before , say it again ... running around with with the Tab key is just as effective for me . Hopefully tracking will make it better , sure hopefully they will tweak Areascan and those are things we will all wait for and hope they are good . But weren't we waiting and hoping that areascan and conceal would be good ?

I dunno , keep up the good testing I guess , and maybe someday in the not too distant future things will be at a point were Rangers really are the undisputed kings of PvE .

Peace all

Max

Some initial responses to JonSee's post, with the caveat that so far I've only been able to try the skill for about five minutes before going to work this morning. I'll post more once I've run it through its paces.

First of all , the interface is awkward , ugly and uninspired .A block with three options ( animal , people , players ) . Pick one and the game will scan the area . This is all text messages and no new visuals . " you begin to examine the environment for information " .

Just my 2 credits, but I don't mind the interface. I'd rather have it this way than in my chat windows where it would scroll off, or in a radar sized visual display that's too small to show much textual information. Now an interface similar to Surveying might do the job better.

An incomplete and inaccurate list of some of the animals in the area comes up ( range seems to cap at 500m ) after about 30 seconds . The list comes in the same generic ugly interface box , and there are no options for the entries other than scrolling up and down the list . If there are 7 or 8 monsters around a lair , it will list each and every one of them and on and on for every lair that is around you for 50 entries . The list caps at 50 . Suffice to say that " aFlit lair " or " a group of Flits " will do here , there is absolutely no need to list every member of the herd in the search .

If the accuracy is buggy, that should definitely be fixed. As someone mentioned, however, the way mob spawns are coded might dictate that our ability simply can not detect mobs the game hasn't spawned yet, because no one has gone near there. I hope that this can be dealt with, but if the programmers say it can't, there may not be much we can do about it.

I do agree that listing mobs by lair/group would be much better, for several reasons. One, lairs or non-laired groups are what we usually go looking for anyway. Two, listing by lairs/groups would keep the listings under 50. Three, in terms of immersion it's more realistic that we could say "there are some dune banthas off in that direction," than that we could look at the tracks in one spot and instantly know the gender, age, and exact numbers of every living thing within 500 meters.

Furthermore , after each entry you will get directions such as NE 320m ... well the genius that designed the round area radar decided to use an arrow , a ball and two dashes to indicate N , S , E and W.

This is an issue with the compass labeling, which was a controversy in itself some time back (you should have seen the cryptic Aurabesh symbols that were used prior to the current ones), and has nothing to do with Ranger abilities. The big triangle is north; you'll get used to it pretty quickly.

Add to this the inherent problems with monster spawns in general ... there is a dense " Asteroid Belt " of monsters , lairs and enemy NPC's around every single city due to unfinished or abandoned player missions .

Also completely unrelated to /areatrack. I think having the ability list by spawns/groups as mentioned would make this a non-issue for our purposes.

The information that does come up is incomplete and inaccurate and slow . There is no visual indicator to point you towards your targets , only text indicators in a clunky and unintuitive directional interface .

This is a rephrasing of the first issue, the text-based interface. Let's put our request in for a future improvement to something along the lines of the Artisan Surveying interface, and roll with the present one until then.

So ... basically this skill has no value , or just about as much value as our previous " tracking device " , the Tab key . Out in the wilderness , when you have penetrated the gauntlet of player missions debris monsters and lairs , I ran for a solid twenty minutes without encountering another SINGLE LIVING SOUL . Dead . Nothing . Of course the tracking skill is useless here , as well and just tells you " you aren't able to determine anything from the tracks in the area " . Whoopdie doo .

Again, this is a problem with spawning code in general, and not /areatrack. I agree that it sucks to run for ages and not find anything at all, as realistic as it may be. Personally, one of the things I've been looking forward to using /areatrack for is not magically generating creatures in those empty areas, but showing me 'this area is empty' so I can save time by going elsewhere.

This skill needs HUGE work . I am praying that our other additions are not as poorly designed as this one is ... I really am . I would like to continue playing this game but this addition has ironically made it seem more hollow and shallow than ever . I hear the Coneal is not working well , either .

It looks to me like it's spawning in general, and the game's ability to know what's been spawned, that need huge work, not this skill. The interface needs spicing up, and the list should be changed to lairs/groups, and the detection code should be investigated to see IF it's buggy, but beyond those things we're still just at the mercy of random spawns. As for Conceal, I'd be interested to read any specific experiences you've had with it, but I have to discard vague hearsay as useless for forming any opinions or responses about it.

I must agree with the poster on all accounts, the interface i personaly dont care about but i understand what your saying.

I do think there needs to be an ability to specificaly search for something, as people have said previously, there should be a /scanarea <name>. And no Tookrak this doesnt make us to good with the explorer missions. As it is those missions are worthless, i can run 10 normal missions and make more money faster before i hunt down all THIRTY to FORTY-FIVE mobs that i need for the explorer mission. I would see this as a perfect tool for rangers to make money, or assist groups in finding what they want to hunt.

Imagine you as the ranger leading the Kimo hunting group. Wouldnt it be better than, hold on 30 seconds guys.....yea all i got was 50 perleks and snorbals...

I'll have to stand by everything I originally posted on this thread this morning .

The one concession I'll make is perhaps it could have been worded in a nicer way . But that's not to say I'll be changing the way I post any time soon .

I'm going to give the game a few days to digest the changes , give the boards a few days to cool off and then I'll repost these issues with any new info I get from using the skill . I'm going to give it another shot using some of the tips posted by people that are finding some use out of Areascan .

Good hunting all and Peace

Max