Ranger Archive

Nerf resource harvesting with lower levels of skill. At present, the myriad novice scouts can harvest about as well as a master ranger. Scaling this better such that only a % of available resources are harvested, according to hunting skill would redress many issues and make rangers a valuable profession. It would have a profound and welcome effect on the overall game economy also. Trivial to implement. I'll get plenty of hate for this, but I believe it would be both realistic and worthwhile.

An impoverished ranger,

concur; both needed and very easy to do for devs

In my opinion the quantity looted affects prices being set on hides/bones just as much as quality does.

I have come to the conclusion that a Ranger needs more of a benefit than Scout does when it comes to harvesting.

I think quantity is not the solution though. Allowing the Ranger a distinct advantage in quantity looted will only end up hurting the scout/hunters economy more than helping the Rangers.

I think the solution is quality. If a Ranger was putting up higher quality stacks then they can charge more. An artisan who is more interested in gaining skill than making quality items could by the lower quality stuff from the scouts.

The problem as I see it is the Ranger is looting the same low quality stuff the scout is. This puts the Ranger in competition with the scout. The faster the Ranger can loot the more the Scout will lose buisness.

But the game may not support different loot pools based on harvesting skill. If this is true then an aditional market may need to be created for the Ranger, (foraging rare items").

Disagree. Although quality is important in sales, the real reason a scout NEEDS resources is for traps and tents, and that they can manage easily at even 10% of the rate they get now. Currently many people take scout and get ability to harvest along with their primary reason for having scout - terrain negotiation. With every soldier, and most crafters taking scout for movement, large numbers of resources are being put into the market that are reducing the income of the dedicated hunter types.

Choosing quality is what is important, not getting a better chance at it. The resource system applies to hides, bones and meats just as it does to minerals, chemicals and flora. Over time, the qualities change. A good ranger will hunt many places far and wide, seeking out great resources. In fact, they can even employ scouts to do this (scouts, who would think they'd be useful for scouting) and when the animals are located, the ranger can use advanced traps * and better harvesting to bring in the large quantity crafters require.

* Note that using advance traps presupposes ranger AoE traps get some love, possibly a less trivial fix, who knows.

I also wanted to add, I don't think the scout needs protected here. A scout shouldn't be a primary income profession. An artisan is not a primary income profession. The best an artisan can do is sell components at the master artisan level. He is trumped entirely by elite professions. It makes perfect sense that the income potential of a scout be trumped entirely by a ranger. Otherwise, a few secondary skill points invested gives the scouts equal footing to one who has mastered scout and then made the even greater specialisation investment, forgoing other income potential. And that can mean the people who have plenty of other income abilities outreach the ranger using their own skills. Poor balance.

I agree with this whole heartedly. I think at best, a Master Scout should be able to harvest half of what a Master Ranger can. As it stands, there's not reason to become a Master ranger unless you want pretty camps and some crawl speed. Not going to stop me though! I'm only 4 boxes away, (2 scouting, 2 survival)

StarSprinter makes a great point, on the primary income profession. I was overjoyed to here what he had to say and agreed, until I hit the reply button and was reminded of the survey line of the Artisan.

I don't know about your server, but there are plenty of miners on my server, and they don't really need anything beyond artisan/survey 4. Many arguments here, but I don't want to get off-topic.

Regardless of that, I still like what StarSprinter has to say. The other problem with scout, is that right now, the 2 most "uber" professions are BH and CH (bounty hunter and creature handler). Sure there are nerfs and this and that, but if not the top 2, then definitely up there. Because of this, they will attract alot, alot, alot of attention to those professions. Why do I bring this up? because both of those professions require Explore 4 and Hunting 4, which requires alot of scout xp, which means, a whole lot of harvesting.

Now, the state of affairs is this, you will have alot of people, who will be doing alot of harvesting for the sole purpose of expierence. Therefore, you will see alot of low prices on the resources that scouts can harvest. That is one of the reasons why any true scouts/rangers who hunt resources, are having problems selling their stuff for decent money.

So, I think the solution should be better quality, and more of it. The arguments against the the quality issue are that it would be too hard to have better stat hide. Well I say, if you go kill a Rill, a scout who harvests the hide will get 2 units of Wiggoafo Bristley Hide. Then the a ranger comes along, kills a Rill, and then harvests that, and gets 12 units of Ciko Bristley Hide. Where the Ciko Bristley Hide has better stats than the Wiggoafo Bristley Hide.

Jehu
Wookiee Ranger, Talus, Corbantis

Point well taken Drezbizkit. It is necessary to gain scouting xp (by harvesting) for professions who have other primary income sources (or should). There is no need for anybody to gain surveying experience for an advanced profession, as the skill is not used as a path to entry and no advanced profession uses its experience. This is in itself a problem, and I feel that the removal of the miner advanced profession was a mistake. Artisans should be crafting, not doing large scale resource gathering. Yes, like a scout, they should have access to a reduced level of gathering via direct sampling, and possibly personal extractors.

I'm still convinced that the answer lies in a very simple change to the rate at which different skill levels can gather. I think balance does need paid to other professions too. I would be more inclined to look at quality being a viable solution if a similar balance was paid to other resources. Don't allow surveyors to sample good quality non-fauna resources, and only apply that ability to the miner. Furthermore it would be necessary to balance the requirement for better quality animal resources to match the requirements for high quality resources provided by surveyors to crafters. The simple fix is quantity, not quality - the ramifications of quality are more extensive. That doesn't make it wrong, but it makes it much less likely to occur in the near to mid-term.

I Totally agree with starsprinter.

Not being a ranger=more hides. how so?

Simple, you can save the skill point, use them in combat professions and get a lot, and I mean a lot more hides over the long run, who can harvest more a ranger or a BH/CH? they can effectivle kill more creatures than a Ranger/BH, Ranger/CH, alot more.

I think the solution is not enhancing ranger, that will just bloat the market even further, think about it they extra hides will still be there, the solution is to Nerf to oblivion the Scouts harvesting abilities, and when I say Nerf I mean at novice they harvest 10% of what they harvest now, and at hunt 4 they harvest 50% of what they harvest now. A master scout can harvest 75%. Novice ranger and up stays the same. That should relief the Market some. Tha way a ch/bh will have to harvest double what they harvest now to compete with us. Even then there probably going to do it easierbut will give us a fighting chance.

Bonus is that is probably a simple solution and will make rangers a little more usefull.