Ranger Archive

A very excellent idea was bought up on the boards not to long ago to add creature tracking to the ranger line. In other words you type /creaturetrack or whatever and a menu pops up with the creatures you can find. You pick one and boom a waypoint is generated to that creature. I've been giving this some thought and here is a way I feel it could possibly be implemented. Thoughts and comments appreciated.

Add a new command /creaturefind which allows you to "track" a creature based on skill level andcreature range level. What I mean by creature range is your ability to track a mob is limited to a certain radius which will increase as you advance in the Ranger tree. We are Rangers we should be able to track a mob.

Upon typing the command a menu comes up with all the mobs up to a certain level for that planet within a certain radius. When you select a mob (say a durni) a waypoint will appear to the closest location of the selected mob. The waypointwould be static and not moveunlike the waypoints for destroy missions. If the mob is destroyed or moves then when we arrive we can type /creaturefind again to see where the mob moved too so this would be the equivalent of tracking the herd on the move. This will allow the ranger to track a mob instead of blindly running around in the name of exploring. We are Rangers masters of the outdoors we *should* be able to track specific creatures. As we advance up the ranger tree our ability and range will increase allowing us to track more advanced creatures over a greater distance.

Like many of you I too have set waypoints when I found interesting creatures only to return at a later time to hunt and find that space empty. While there is always a place for exploration of a country side (I enjoy running on foot from one city to another just like all rangers) when I wish to track a specific creature this would help. These worlds are huge by design and trying to find a specific mob can be a lost cause if you have to hunt through an entire planet.

This skill can be given at Novice Ranger and should be ranger only. The reason this should be a ranger only skill is we must have SOMETHING that separates us from the scouts.

This skill can be integerated into the bioscience line and can be based on CL. For instance a Novice Ranger gets the /creaturefind command and can find creatures up to a CL of 10 over a short distance.

The breakdown could be
bioscience1 +10CL +5 Creature Range
bioscience2 +15CL +10 Creature Range
bioscience3 +10CL +10 Creature Range
bioscience4 +15CL +10 Creature Range
master ranger +5CL +5 Creature Range

So by this suggestion only a master ranger can track a level 65 mob but they can track them pretty much across the entire planet.

Just as a noob CH can't control a rancor a noob ranger shouldn't be able to automatically find one.

Thoughts, suggestions is this a good idea or does it suxors?

i like this idea.

Maybe just nitpick or want to make this feature even better (more to my liking), I have to say that tracking a krayt dragon, realistically, is probably easier to accomplish than tracking a nuna. Nunas are small, leave small footprints, etc. So, why wouldn't a master ranger be able to track a krayt dragon that leaves a footprint the size of the squad hunting it?

Perhaps instead of basing it on challenge level, we can just base it on success rates, like surveying. Maybe you sometimes track an empty spacethat a mutant womp rat may have habitated.

It shouldn't be TOO hard to implement, like you said...it could use a similar system to the one generating missions. I don't know the specifics of mission generation though. I can only assume it picks a spot with given distance from terminal and moves it if necessary.

One question...what if there are a lot of rangers in the same area? Do they generate the same mobs? Or if all rangers wanted to be silly, could they all gather and spam one type of animal to create a massive surge or kimogilas? Would be kinda weird...maybe dangerous

I think we should be able to track though...but I'm not so sure the challenge level is the best way to categorize things. Especially with low level animals...it conflicts too much with missions around the city, I think. I think one should be better able to spot smaller details as they get higher up the ranger tree. So, while a novice ranger can't spot tracks of a wrix at one spot, the master ranger can because he's more keen on details. So, that's what I think...success of finding a good track starting point goes up with level and you have an increased sense of which way an animal or herd is headed, while the novice only has a general sense of the movement. Something like the cardinal directions for novice, while the master can exactly which way to go and how far he might have to run. Just my two credits thrown in from what I can brainstorm.

-Z

bioscience1 +10CL +5 Creature Range
bioscience2 +15CL +10 Creature Range
bioscience3 +10CL +10 Creature Range
bioscience4 +15CL +10 Creature Range
master ranger +5CL +5 Creature Range

I think this is a most excellent idea I agree that only high level rangers should be able to track the high level creatures. True a kryat dragon do leave a huge footprint, but they are very scarce, a durni on the other hand is all over the planet so theprint willprobably be nice and fresh.

Also it will keep a lot of the dabblers away : )

My theory is if you want to uber in pvp, you go BH, if you want to be good at both pvp and pve,you go CH.

Bu if the hunt is your thing The ranger should be the king(should be)

Along with the ability to track a particular creature:

Have a generic /track ability. When activated the system would occasionally kick back messages informing you of the creatures in the general viscinity.

"You have noticed Krayt Dragon tracks"

You would then switch to a specific /trackcreature <type> command and hunt that particular mob down.

I think it should work much like the way surveying for resources is done. You could get a tracking tool, use it and you get a big list of creatures you can track, you select one then click track, now it will give you a read out of percentages, the higher percent the closer the creature is. So if you have a percent of 30 to the left and 25 to the right, you know the animal is to the left, the higher up in ranger you are the larger the area you can track in.

Or maybe we could get a special animal to track for us, much like a BH uses a seeker droid, rangers could use huntings dogs or a hawk like creature to track for them, you would tell it what to search for it would go out and come back and give you a WP of where the creatures are.

I not only LOVE this idea its a rangers duties to track. Tracking for rangers only makes perfect sence. Along with tracking a ranger should also get the skill for better camoflauge against human types. Soemthing along the lines of hide skill. It should work like the masking scent as in running you loose 10% and walking you loose 5%. prone or crawling you gain 15%.

Long live the ranger!

I like this... however, some of it is not realistic (and sounds too much like EQ track). I think that we should be able to attempt to track and discover "paths" that may lead to creatures. As we get better at tracking we learn more and more about the tracks and become better at finding specific creatures.

The only problem with implementing this is that it doesn't seem that the programmers considered the ability to raise specific skills over time (just specific branches) and that will probably make it harder to put into the game. However, if it can be implemented in some way then it would be fun to learn to recognize different tracks (if that is all we would see) and follow them to a layer or creature.

Maybe I am wrong... but dont creature layers spawn at will as you move across the terrain? To track a spawn would mean that lair have already been populated, which I dont believe is the case. Perhaps tracking could send you to a "known location" for a creature type.

V'Losh

No hyper I wouldn't want a mob to be generated. I would want a waypoint to an already existing mob. You know like when you are in the middle of nowhere and you see an interesting mob that was already there and think cool. A waypoint would be generated to an ALREADY existing mob.

to gef_romino. . . ooohhhh nice!

Not sure about spawn rates. I know I'm just frustrated when I set a waypoint to a really cool spawn come back later and boom nothing. Also while I like exploring as much as the next guy (hence I'm a ranger) I don't want to just blindly run around looking for things to hunt also.

What I want is a way to be able to track creatures since we are PvE hunters. This was just my way of doing it. Never played EQ so I'm not sure how it was done there. I also would hope it could be integerated into existing skill trees hence the additions to the bioscience lines.

Thanks for all the suggestions and the good rating, glad I could FINALLY contribute something to the community.