Ranger Archive

Snuck in without a word. There were already concerns posted prior to the patch that Rangers were going to have to give up 40% of their harvest if grouped with a group of non scout/rangers. There were calls for a group option prior to the patch.

Then the patch went live and were we in for a schock. Why were we getting so few amounts.. is this a bug, is this intentional? We talked and talked about it all over the weekend, Delta trieddid his best to keep his cool ("I'm not even suppose to be here today"),and we agreed to finally leave it to Holo to answer when he returns on Monday, at least we hoped.

Then when we do get Holo's answer, we're all left deciphering it, decoding it.. 4 parts scambled.. "Selling Holocron Harvest disc 2/4... 6K"

Some believe that his words are purposely cryptic, left without a definative answer for a reason.. others believe that it's obvious that this was intentional and planned. And still we're scratching our heads.

When I look at the post it reads as so..

Holo: "Hey uhh did you guys reduce the overall harvest amounts?"

Dev 1: Yes.. it would have been insane if a bunch of Rangers got together and took down a krayt dragon or something big like thatand flooded the market with a ton of hide..

Dev 2: Yea.. I mean we know these guys usually solo, but it could have been possible that a bunch of them got together and exploited or took advantage of that great new 60% rule we put in. We were being pro-active and rather than having to go through the hassle of the Rangers whining about how this was going to hurt some of them, we just coded it in without letting them know.

Holo: Oh.. well ok... I guess... /em scratches his head

Holo: Well what about when they're grouped with their pets or droids? I mean after all, if it's you and a pet, that's solo.

Dev1:It is? Why didn't you say that before?

Holo: I did. I posted it somewhere..

Dev 1: Well they're a group now. Sorry big guy, we had no idea. It's not like we read the boards.

But seriously, why is it that they felt the need to reduce the harvest but didn't think that we should be aware of it prior to the patch? I know that we Rangers, the logical and forward thinking clan that we are, would have raised objections then and sought a different route to prevent ninja harvesting.

-Japh

Japh,

I had a long talk with the Scout/Ranger dev about a month and a half ago, when the correspondent program first started.

We kicked around the idea of the 60% rule back then, as the ability of multiple scouts to harvest the same creature while grouping was a very important thing to us Scouts.

I really shouldn't do this, but I don't want you all thinking that the devs are idiots, or that they don't think things through.GreenMarine, I apologize if I'm violating your trust here, but I need the guys here to trust you all. Here's an excerpt of the emails that the Scoutdev and Isent back and forth:

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Me: Being a scout in a group is almost impossible because of the limitations of the "one kill, one harvest" problem. I know, based on what I've read in the holocron and the game manual, that this was notwhat you all intended, and that you are most likely working on the problem. But just to reiterate, you've got a lot of Scouts (myself included) who eschew joining groups because they aren't going to gain any XP from harvesting.Fixing this bug will go a long way towards making the Scout a happy grouper, and should fix some of the issues people have with camping XP. If the bug is difficult to fix, a possible solution that has also been bandied about is the idea of an autosplit for hides and/or XP from scouting in groups. That way each scout gets a taste of the kills.

Scout Dev: I actually resisted adding autosplit for a long time. I prefer players to work out these issues. It seems to be enough of a problem that I'm going to have to add autosplit. It's easy enough to do, although in huge groups some players might not get anything (since the yield might be less than 20).

Me: I understand completely what you are saying - the only problem here is that you've got some immature people out there who are causing problems, and the community is either unwilling or unable to police itself. Now, personally, I agree with you on this. I don't want to split hides 20 ways. (The community, by the way, is clamoring for this - there have been multiple requests about it this week.) I would prefer each scout in the group have the ability to harvest off of the creature - this gives everyone a piece of the pie and no need for
autosplit. How much more difficult would it be to allow multiple scouts to harvest the same creature?

Scout dev: I'm having a long as hell email debate here about group harvesting. Currently, I've coded a change to the system that allows everyone in a group to harvest from a creature. They get 60% of the resources and xp. If you degroup after the kill, you still only get the fraction (so you can't trick it into thinking you aren't in a group). Since groups naturally kill targets faster than soloers, this should give scouts a chance to build up scout xp in groups even though they get 40% fewer xp per kill. It's just conjecture though, hard to test by myself on my dev server The debate is surrounding the issue of the increase in organic resources this would inject into the game. Several of the other designers are worried this would crash the market for organics and remove the only way scouts have to make money with scout abilities. I'm not sure, because predicting game market behavior is tough. I'm also not sure if the influx of new resources is bad, provided we add additional things for scouts to craft that use up organics (or even increase the cost
of organics in other recipes, like bone armor).Do you have any thoughts in this? I ask you, because you have a better view of things from the player's perspective than I do.

Me: This is PERFECT. It's exactly what we've been looking for. And this will keep us from needing an auto-split. The ability to kill larger creatures faster will easily offset the reduction in XP and hides. This shouldn't be a problem at all. Scouts finally will be able to group without a penalty. This will definitely make 97% of the
scouting community very, very happy. Here's my take. Right now the scouting community is still feeling out the market and figuring out exactly how much they can charge for hide and bone that is reasonable and people will pay for. The market seems to have stablizedat around 3 credits per hide/bone/meat for regular quality items and 5 - 10 credits for the higher quality stuff. I have already begun to see many artisans "hiring" out Scouts to be exclusive suppliers of hide and bone, specifically when they need certain types, like Lokian wooly hide, etc. for their items. The infusion of more hides and bones will be a slow one. You've got lots of
Scouts out there who for an entire month now (me included) have becomeculturally conditioned to soloing in order to get XP. They're not going to automatically start grouping and pumping out hide and bone. It'll take a
while to adjust. And your idea to increase all of the bone and hide costs is legit. If Scouts have a great opportunity to get more hide and bone, upping the values on all of the traps and camps by 2-5 hides, as well as artisan and medical crafting will offset the flood of new resources coming in. What I would suggest would
be to let the harvesting change go live, monitor the amounts of hide and bone out there and once it starts spiking up you'll be able to tell that the word has gotten out and scouts are grouping more. Then you can bump up the crafting uses and no one will make too big of a complaint.You can also use the crafting XP that you mention below as another excuse to bump up the hide/bone costs for Scout only items. You get more out of them than before - and no one increases service without increasing the price.

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This is why I believe the whole issue that we're having now with the across the board reduction to be a bug, and not intended. You also need to realize something - the Devs have lives. They don't play SWG as often as we do. I'm a lobbyist. I don't go home and not and lobbying Congress in my spare time. Why? I do that at work. They don't work on SWG all day and then go home and play it, too. Holo isn't going to know as much about what we do as we do - WE'RE the experts, not him, and not even the Ranger dev. It's the difference between theory and reality. THEY know the theory, and WE know the reality. So it's a symbiotic relationship.

So now that we've identified that this is a bug - in my opinion, at least, we have - let's give the Devs a chance to sort it out and get back to us.

B

why is it they not just implement what the game says scouts/rangers are able to harvest different resorces from the same creature

it says this on one of the loading screens

ok this wouldnt allow a group of 20 harvesters to get a peice of the pie but now most people no longer have the points to have a bit of scout this is not such a problem any more. last couple of days i have grouped im the only one harvesting

i would prefer that and go back to the old resorce costs to make things. this 50 hides to make the top level camp is insane i cant see any where on the top level camp that looks like it is built with hides any way

even if they raise the metal and polymer cost one would still prefer to harvest hides for sale than to havest to make camps imho' not as though we have 10 heavy hide harvesters working night and day collecting the nesscary hides just to make the products we use to collect hides for sale

Giz,

Under the old way, a snorbal would give me 140 hide when I harvested it.

Imagine a group of 10 people with scout skills, each harvesting 140 hide when they kill one snorbal.

Now imagine killing 10 snorbals.

Now imagine trying to sell that hide to an armorsmith, who has 10 other Rangers ready to sell him the same hide you just got.

You'd be giving the stuff away. And we'd lose our primary means of making money.

It's all about economics.

B

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DeltaXi65 wrote:

Giz,

Under the old way, a snorbal would give me 140 hide when I harvested it.

Imagine a group of 10 people with scout skills, each harvesting 140 hide when they kill one snorbal.

Now imagine killing 10 snorbals.

Now imagine trying to sell that hide to an armorsmith, who has 10 other Rangers ready to sell him the same hide you just got.

You'd be giving the stuff away. And we'd lose our primary means of making money.

It's all about economics.

B

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/agree

Things Change , as a whole we either need to group more or deal with the cards dealt to us. I'm I happy about it Oh %$#% no I'm not happy, but considering what 2 master rangers + rest of group could harvest makes for some insane amounts of raw materials.
We either have to work with the system or struggle to make ends meat.

I know 1st hand , 1 email Armorsmith needs 3k naboo wooly, 3k scaley ASAP. , run to town get some gualama lair missions and milk out the lair, (x20) + shooting every peko peko , giant peko peko i can find. The whole time battling flaky maskscent and capper guards for scaley.

I drop a tell to the armorsmith, sorry but this new harvest #%!# has made , have to work even harder to get these hides , you mind if i jack up the price a bit, his reply NP how much do you want.

Xcr/unit + 2cr per unit on the previous rush shipment of 600 wooly on STAT status.

Outcome, 19k in my pocket from hide alone + 16k for doing missions - 4k for pet stims -10 k for new rifle = 29k more then I had 2 days ago. Does it take longer yes, but i just sucked it upped and charged in with guns a blazing and my 2 tusk cats in the lead. Even had time to cap a few rebel npc's with a friend .

Is it Perfect No, Does it make me mad that a Kaadua gives me 11 avian bone, yes. but in the end all it meens is more combat xp more ch exp and more money.

Medic's , Doctors want avian meat then guess what, you get all the meat we can harvest off every kaadua, d nuna, nuna we find and all you have to do is keep the pets alive. Is it fair, thats up to them, Since I'm not a combat class , I'm a service class. Some reject the idea, other jump on it
ITs what we wanna make out of it.

Delta I appreciate you sharing that insightful post with all of us. Let me just say that much of my post was tongue in cheek satire, I was teasing them a bit,and I know that they aren't dumb people making this game. Yea, perhaps I went a little strong but my perception of this is that it isn't a bug and that the devs decided this would be the best way to reduce the number of harvested organics entering the market, without thinking of what it would do the players who actually do that as their profession.

What's curious is that you and GreenMarine agreed that by upping the resources we use, that would reduce the influx, butdidn't they only increase the tent requirement and then tell us it was to bring it in line with objects used to grind for xp? Also it appears as though this was mainly created for the Scout community and Rangers weren't considered too much. I could be wrong, but that is what it looks like. Also you state that it will take awhile for the players to adjust to a grouping mindset to make the most of this, but many people were drawn to the Ranger profession because we enjoy solo'ing in PvE and occassionaly grouping. We like be appreciated in groups, but we don't want to be forced into it to make a living. That goes against what Rangers are all about.

I have come to believe that GreenMarine was right in that it should have been an issue players have to deal with themselves. I've been in several big groups where we all took turns harvesting and if you got ninja'd, you felt burnt but you dealt with it. I believe that coding the 60% was much easier than any staged complicated mathmatical algorithm that would have divided it up by number in group, or skill based by the ones harvesting, or any such alternative.

I really do hope it was a bug that they reduced it, but I read Holocron's post as it was intentional.. I don't know, that's just how I read it. He states that there is an overall reduction and never says this was not intentional. The way I see it there were two choices to make

1. Put in the 60% group rule with an increase in material for tents and traps. Tell everyone that they will be closely monitoring the amount of harvested organics entering the game and may need to adjust the rate lower if it appears that there is an increase. He stated it himself, predicting the market is tough.

2. Not do the 60% rule, but rather come up with another alternative that would meet the demands or make the hard decision that it's just not in the best interest of the game period.

Of course there's always the choice that this was the hard decision and this is the way it's going to stay in which case I don't know what I'm going to do.

It's not that I don't sympathize with people doing the scouting xp grind, I know, I did it myself. And I pray you're right and this is a bug, but if it's not, then the team made a hasty decision without testing or monitoring first. Rangers feel like we got heavily taxed so that the people lower on the xp ladder can spread the wealth at our expense.

But as I joked about in my post, we're right back where we were Sunday and still can't figure out if the reducion was intentional or not. I've been so frazzled and serious about this subject now for days, I lightened it up a bit. Didn't mean to offend.. at least not too much.

Again, Delta thank you for all your hard work and for taking the time to answer so many posts and following up with the dev team. I hope that nothing I've written about this subject has caused any bad feelings.

i have to agree there but who in there right minds kills animals for a living to get 3 per hide

what harvesting group besides rangers are forced to group to harvest?

i picked ranger because i like to solo now i am forced to group because the stuff i make costs more resorces than what i am presently harvesting

and i wasent talking about the old system i was talking about the system the game speaks about but was not implemented if it ever this i donot know

the system that the game sugested that is in was that if a creatur had 2 resorces 2 scouts in the group could harvest 1 type of resorce each if there are 3 resorces on the creature 3 scouts could harvest

under this system they would not have to worry about a hudge influx of resorces it would allow up to 3 scout/rangers in a group to get xp it would allow those that chose to solo or group with pets to not get penalised as no other profession i am aware of gets penalized for soloing

i am fully aware of the game ecanomics and is why i donot sell hides for cash is far more profitable to get novice artisan and place several heavy harvesters on prime resorces than it is to ply my trade

my biggest problem is the further up the pistoleer tree i go the harder it is for me to kill creatures when i used to be able to solo 50 hide mobs with ease i am haveing trouble with the same mobs although im 4 to 5 boxes further into the tree (now i know if i drop those 5 boxes im going to be no better off )

how ever i am happy this change suits some in the profession

Thanks for info Delta. After reading what GreenMarines responded to you, I might have covered where the bug of "Global harvest decrease" lies.

Currently, I've coded a change to the system that allows everyone in a group to harvest from a creature. They get 60% of the resources and xp. If you degroup after the kill, you still only get the fraction (so you can't trick it into thinking you aren't in a group).

Either it is some way connected to this (game for some reason thinks you havejust degrouped and lowers your harvest gain ... btw has anyone tried to degroup after kill ... does it lower harvest gain like in group?) or then the devs have intentionally lowered harvest gains globally, because of this.

The debate is surrounding the issue of the increase in organic resources this would inject into the game. Several of the other designers are worried this would crash the market for organics and remove the only way scouts have to make money with scout abilities.

Rather than waiting to see if the market does get flooded with organic resources they lowered the harvest to see what happens. In that case scenario devs are going to wait for couple weeks to see how this affects the market and react to that accordingly.

Well what ever the case is ... we got the short end of the stick.

Guys,

I guess we're just reading this differently.

That was the entire thought pattern in the emails that we had back and forth on this issue- and there is no mention of reducing the harvesting rates across the board. Like Ileria pointed out, the only thing there was the "ungroup/group" check, which is where I think the bug may actually be, especially since we've already had a bunch of CHs and others post saying that they can group, kill something and then ungroup and still get the same as they would get solo.

If you read through here, the Scout devs first instinct was to put in an autosplit, until I brought up the multiple harvest point - that was our idea from the Scout forums, as it was something we believed was already intended. So that's why he threw in the 60% rule. As for the increase in the camp and trap costs, that was again (as you can see) my idea, because if there was more hide and bone out there, the easiest way to get rid of it was to have us need more of it, so that it would be consumed before it hit the market. Again, something I thought was easy enough and not that hard on the community - which it wouldn't have been, had the overall harvestingbeen bugged.

The problem with the injection of more hide and bone was a completely legitimate one, because it was the easiest of all of the consequences to predict when you make it so that more than one scout can harvest the same critter.

The bad news from Holo's post wasn't that he didn't mention the overall reduction - by not mentioning it, it was a blaring omission, which reads BUG in my mind. The bad news was that grouping with Scouts, non-scouts or pets doesn't matter - it's any time you're in a group at all. I'm surprised that none of you have picked up on this and started yelling yet.

B

Thanks for the info Delta. I can't tell you how much it means to have you working for rangers too.

On this issue, my question regarding bug v intentional is the change to the examine screen. I like the better clarification on killers, but it also dropped the base level of resource you would harvest. Has anyone addressed that?

I'm betting on bug, but at this point I'm not a gambler anymore.

Roliando Cadeamai
Master Ranger/Novice Carbineer
Member of Naritus Rebel Alliance (NRA)

Evolutionary theory of the day: God nerfed the Dodo into extinction. Many, many eons ago, the Dodo started as the Phoenix, a great and wonderous bird. However, all the other birds bitched, so slowly God ate away at the beauty and power of the Phoenix until only the poor stupid Dodo was left.

As I'm sure many others have done, I have tested this group/ungroup theory. Typically when I'm harvesting resources I group with my cowardly gurreck. Now, I was out hunting Baggersets (to get the OQ976 herbivore meats for the Docs) and I was receiving 6 meats per kill while grouped. I attempted the ungroup and still received 6 meats. After this I remained ungrouped and killed one using my pet and received 10 meats. To further test this, I stored my pet and solo'd (albeit with damage now) a baggerset on my own. Still I received 10 meats. Now, not having killed many baggersets prior to the patch I don't recall exactly how many hides these used to drop solo, but I suspect that the number was somewhat higher than 10. This isn't during a resource shift either considering I have been doing this for the past 3 days. So my question to my fellow rangers is this: Concerning this particular MoB (and translating this across the bigger picture) are we seeing an overall decrease in the number of resources being issued from MoBs. Obviously in my example here we are seeing a 60% grouping algorithm at work.

Cyl~

Kettemore Ranger 2/2/2/3

Look, I will give my 2 creds here.

The scouts/rangers need change your mind about the grouping. The soloing days ended!If you want more organics to sell, the better you can make is group with other scouts/rangers. Go to a newbie zone and all the group members start to kill everything that moves, if you or anyone at the group see a chuba you shot it, each member attacking a different low level creature, each member killing a diferent low level animal. The group will make the newbie zone a slaughterhouse zone fast, because while one people needs 30 seconds to kill one low level animal, 5 people needs the same 30 seconds to kill 5 low level animals. When the slaughter ends, each and all the scouts that grouped can harverster all the corpses. With the newbie zone filled with corpses, you will get enough organics to sell or to craft what you want.

Then get the same group and go hunt big things.........because all the other players will start to complain that your group killed everything at the newbie zone (ummmm......now renamed corpse zone).

Anyway, the game mechanics never was thinked to make oneprofession a good soloer. All the professions need grouping or get things from other professions (buying things, for example). The devs say a lot of times that no one can solo a red mob (well, if you have 3 ATST you REALLY can solo red mobs whileyou are a novice any profession you get). There isn't this thing about the rangers are historically good soloers. The historic examples never were true soloers, they never get alone a lot of time, they ever grouped. Look, the better "historic" example (because the guy is almostcertainly fictional and not a true historical example)is Robin Hood, and all booksI read about the guy and all the movies I saw he ever grouped with that fat friar and Little John.

I can't stand being in groups most times if only because I have to keep running and stopping, running and stopping, running and stopping. There is NO crowd control to speak of in this game. Maybe if scouts had a CC type trap, such as a mez trap, that really works. I'm just hoping that's what the bear trap trap will be good for.

Besides, I'd be more willing to accept that we should plan to group more if everyone else who ran a mineral, flora, power, chemical, water, and any other type extractor had to group the whole time they gathered their resources with a decrease in production.

Whatever.. I'm becoming quite apathetic over the whole issue now.