Ranger Archive

What are the plans, if any, to differentiate the Ranger profession from the Scout profession and will this happen in the form of a Revamp or can it be done via minipublishes/hotfixes?

There are many excellent points and the Ranger community has done an great job bringing many great ideas to the development team and the dev team has also been kicking around some ideas also. The plan is to improve their combat usefulness in the CB and address other items on the schedule under the “Correspondent Issues” umbrella. I know the answer will probably be seen as a little vague, but the truth is that we are focused on all of the item’s in JustG’s letter and that’s a huge development effort. We are focused on the things that have the biggest impact on all the players. On the brighter side, we do have a window of opportunity coming up for player correspondent issues and we will take a serious look at what can be done at that time.

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Now I'll try and go through each line and see what he might be trying to say. I am doing this with a more optimistic view so take what you want out of it:

There are many excellent points and the Ranger community has done an great job bringing many great ideas to the development team and the dev team has also been kicking around some ideas also.
They like the ideas we have been giving them. They are no longer focused on an entirely creature centric profession and are receptive to the ideas in the Outdoorsman proposal and potentially the stealth proposal (the link did go in with the last top issues submission). On top of that, they have some of their own thoughts on some cool skills but they are not sure if they can implement them or when they can try. The Developers want to work on this, they just need the time to get to it.

The plan is to improve their combat usefulness in the CB and address other items on the schedule under the “Correspondent Issues” umbrella.
Rangers skills should help in combat. We will be doing almost all combat rebalancing in the Combat Balance. Rangers will be included in that. The rest of your issues are seperate enough that they can be covered independently and we will try to do it as time becomes available.

I know the answer will probably be seen as a little vague, but the truth is that we are focused on all of the item’s in JustG’s letter and that’s a huge development effort.
We have a lot of stuff we are working on. We don't want to make any commitments because we can't guarantee anything and have lots of whiners who will complain about it if we try to. This is important to us but we have to take care of our more official "commitments" first to keep the hounds at bay.

We are focused on the things that have the biggest impact on all the players.
This can be taken in many ways. The best would be to think of it as applying to harvest rates as almost everyone depends on those resources. The worst is saying that there are not many Rangers so that will need to be taken account of when deciding what to work on. Given that Squad Leaders are getting a revamp, I think the Devs realize that underrepresented professions are that way for a reason. This leads me to think it might be pointing to the harvesting changes (possibly thrown in as a bone in response to the Million Monkey posts). This sentence is not really needed between the previous one and the next one but it is here. The main question is how carefully TH put together these answers.

On the brighter side, we do have a window of opportunity coming up for player correspondent issues and we will take a serious look at what can be done at that time.
There is time set aside soon during which we might have a good chance of fixing some Ranger issues. We know that stuff needs to be done. Hopefully we can fit something in that space.

The most promising thing in my mind is that he did not try to argue with the question at all. There is no indication of the usual "work with your correspondent" line. There is a definite acknowledgement that they have seen some of our ideas. The main indication is that the Ranger community seems to be going about things the right way but it takes time to get it done. I'm probably overanalyzing this stuff but I just wanted to point out what I find so promising about this response. Hopefully I'm not being too optimistic.

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

Well, mandalorian armor and improved combat combat usefulness are both welcomed additions

Top that of by improving our current features and I'm a happy camper.

Ranger|Carbineer might turn into a useful combo anyway

OK, I've now had the opportunity to read the answers to all the other questions (Scout was very wishy-washy) and more interestingly I've popped into all the related forums to see what their reactions were. With the possible exception of the Smugglers who seem generally chuffed, the rest are ready to kill someone. I wonder if this question and answer idea is even a good one?

Finally,if you fancy a giggle, go see the BH and Jedi forums, they are at 50,000 feet, its UPPERCASE everywhere LOL

I shouldnt laugh, but I'm gonna....

We await the CB to see whats what with our various combat choices, as far as the Rager part of our beings are concerned, looks like, perhaps, camps first..? Which is fine.

Nemo,

I do appreciate your optimism, it is definitely needed. However, the fact remains that if any of this was serious then why wouldn't Thunderheart come and post something on our forum, the Ranger Forum. When people don't have any answers or the answers they have smell of such funk that they know most people won't believe it they avoid conversation. I have posted here, on InLive, and I have made posts on various other forums just to try and draw Thunderheart here to say anything. I even went through the private message feature and sen tone to Thunderheart asking for any kind of response here on the Ranger forum. It has been near 3 days and nothing. Neither he nor another correspondent have come and posted anything to the Ranger community. And that makes the vagueness of the response even more suspect. Keep up your optimism though. Maybe, just maybe you will actually get that Legendary Slingshot that will undoubtedly "fix" us by the CB.

Uziel

Although I have said that I have given up any hope and all expectations,

My gut reaction was to read the TH post the way you did Nemo0.

My excitement is restrained, my expectations are on hold If what you say is accurate, then I will be sooo happy that I stayed a ranger.

I dont want to get excited just to quote this post 8 months later when TH asks us what we want rangers to be again

I am hoping...but im not expecting...

we will see.

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Serraphin wrote:

Nemo,

I do appreciate your optimism, it is definitely needed. However, the fact remains that if any of this was serious then why wouldn't Thunderheart come and post something on our forum, the Ranger Forum. When people don't have any answers or the answers they have smell of such funk that they know most people won't believe it they avoid conversation. I have posted here, on InLive, and I have made posts on various other forums just to try and draw Thunderheart here to say anything. I even went through the private message feature and sen tone to Thunderheart asking for any kind of response here on the Ranger forum. It has been near 3 days and nothing. Neither he nor another correspondent have come and posted anything to the Ranger community. And that makes the vagueness of the response even more suspect. Keep up your optimism though. Maybe, just maybe you will actually get that Legendary Slingshot that will undoubtedly "fix" us by the CB.

Uziel

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TH CAN'T post on a forum without attracting the flies right now. If you look at a lighthearted post JustG made on the BH forum a few days back (mainly indicating that he had been looking through their issues and that the Devs really do listen) the forum was on him like a pack of hyenas. He had to later respond to the same thread indicating that he had just been looking into some other issues, saw the thread, and decided to post. The Devs probably hate it. I hate it. In the pre Beta days, Devs could respond to anything without causing too much trouble. Now they can't. If you need information, talk to Calc. He is the main source of any info from the Devs. And even he can't always respond because the Devs don't want people to overreact (I'm not sure if he actually signed legal forms saying he wouldn't do it but it would almost certainly make the Devs remove him from the Correspondent position). My optimism is from the old forums, not the new. Nowadays, the Devs can't say anything until it is either implemented or they want suggestions on how to spend their time working on a specific goal. It really is a shame.

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

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AgonThalia wrote:
Although I have said that I have given up any hope and all expectations,

My gut reaction was to read the TH post the way you did Nemo0.

My excitement is restrained, my expectations are on hold If what you say is accurate, then I will be sooo happy that I stayed a ranger.

I dont want to get excited just to quote this post 8 months later when TH asks us what we want rangers to be again

I am hoping...but im not expecting...

we will see.

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I am more of a realist (read jaded and cynical). I won't shoot down the post because it is good to have some hope. I do want to make sure expectations are not too high, or else you will end up like me.

There is time set aside soon during which we might have a good chance of fixing some Ranger issues. We know that stuff needs to be done. Hopefully we can fit something in that space.

A mini-publish is essentially two weeks of effort. It takes TH two weeks to do 34 professions worth of one question and answer each. That isn't actual coding work, but a simple QA session and write-up.

Don't expect much goodness from a single mini-publish because that simply is not enough time to do anything complicated for anyone, much less several professions that can all use the attention. Little tweaks such as adjusting numbers are going to be more common during these, not the needed overhaul we need for most systems.

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A mini-publish is essentially two weeks of effort. It takes TH two weeks to do 34 professions worth of one question and answer each. That isn't actual coding work, but a simple QA session and write-up.

Don't expect much goodness from a single mini-publish because that simply is not enough time to do anything complicated for anyone, much less several professions that can all use the attention. Little tweaks such as adjusting numbers are going to be more common during these, not the needed overhaul we need for most systems.

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TH takes the 19 questions, brings them to the relevant devs. They have a couple of days to look up the answers and get those back to TH. TH's combines the answers and runs it through management for posting approval and posts it at the appropriate time. All in all most of the time is spend waiting for the relevant people to respond and get approval (this is as I imagine the process).

Let's say (fictional percentages) that 50% of the devs is working on JTL, 40% on the current publish, 5% on bugs and 5% on correspondent issues. One part of a publish would mean 45% devs working on those issues, 9x as much as normal. With that kind of manpower 1 mini-publish can do a lot of good.

Washell Olivaw, Ranger/Avenger, Eclipse

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Nemo0 wrote:

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Serraphin wrote:

Nemo,

I do appreciate your optimism, it is definitely needed. However, the fact remains that if any of this was serious then why wouldn't Thunderheart come and post something on our forum, the Ranger Forum. When people don't have any answers or the answers they have smell of such funk that they know most people won't believe it they avoid conversation. I have posted here, on InLive, and I have made posts on various other forums just to try and draw Thunderheart here to say anything. I even went through the private message feature and sen tone to Thunderheart asking for any kind of response here on the Ranger forum. It has been near 3 days and nothing. Neither he nor another correspondent have come and posted anything to the Ranger community. And that makes the vagueness of the response even more suspect. Keep up your optimism though. Maybe, just maybe you will actually get that Legendary Slingshot that will undoubtedly "fix" us by the CB.

Uziel

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TH CAN'T post on a forum without attracting the flies right now. If you look at a lighthearted post JustG made on the BH forum a few days back (mainly indicating that he had been looking through their issues and that the Devs really do listen) the forum was on him like a pack of hyenas. He had to later respond to the same thread indicating that he had just been looking into some other issues, saw the thread, and decided to post. The Devs probably hate it. I hate it. In the pre Beta days, Devs could respond to anything without causing too much trouble. Now they can't. If you need information, talk to Calc. He is the main source of any info from the Devs. And even he can't always respond because the Devs don't want people to overreact (I'm not sure if he actually signed legal forms saying he wouldn't do it but it would almost certainly make the Devs remove him from the Correspondent position). My optimism is from the old forums, not the new. Nowadays, the Devs can't say anything until it is either implemented or they want suggestions on how to spend their time working on a specific goal. It really is a shame.

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

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The only reason the Devs get so much noise is because they have kept amny professions or communities if you will in the dark. Remember we are customers and they are in essence contractors. They sold a bill of goods and in some way these forums are a quality control. In very oversimplified terms. Now, of course for many reasons SOE must try to balance our requests and concerns with other agendas but when they appear to outright ignore them thenthey will get a "verbal throttling" initially when they post. This should be expected. If they were keeping individuals like Calculus well infromed with credible information then they would not generate so much noise when they post. If they come and legitimately deal with the noise then the noise will soften to a humm, if not then we would be to blame. Right now though the glass slipper is on there foot and they are quickly becoming the pumpkin as competetors prepare very competitive products that are NOT from SOE.

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Washell wrote:

With that kind of manpower 1 mini-publish can do a lot of good.

Washell Olivaw, Ranger/Avenger, Eclipse

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Or a lot of harm, depending on your point of view.

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Serraphin wrote:

However much of the frustration that is vented is because essentially the dialogue is closed or one sided. We pay essentially for an ongoing beta. If something is promised it usually never materializes or is just outright a "fib". They use people like Calculus to try and keep the natives, thats us, calm.

Uziel

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They use people like Calculus to condense and sift through the contents of every post made in this forum and provide them with a clear concise list of the wishes and annoyances of the community. With 3 major developments going on (JTL, CB and GCW revamp) there is very little time to actually do more then the most urgent revamps/correspondent issues. While we all like to see our profession fixed first it is my opinion that the professions that were, being or are revamped were in greater need then us. They do seem to realise a lot of work on professions is in need of doing judging by the planned 10.1 publish of designer/correspondent issues.

The dialogue seems very one-sided right now (something they(TH) too seems to realize with the 19 questions threads) but there just doesn't seem to be any time at the moment to implement anything. Would you really like a dev response on each of our improvement threads saying: "We'll look into it when we have some time" and then nothing seems to be done with it?

As for paying for the beta, all mmorpg's are continually being tweaked, balanced, nerfed, expanded, etc. There will always be people looking for a way to "abuse" the game mechanics in more clever ways then the devs and betatesters thought of.