Ranger Archive
Thread: How mask scent is broke and why Rangers got screwed.
There seem to be a lot of confusion on if mask scent is broke or not and in that case in which way. Some say it's broke cause it's too good, some say it's working cause it never breaks, and some say it's not working at all.
I've been a ranger in beta and am a master ranger at the moment and do believe I now know the problem, even if some parts are still confusing.
Most people have noticed that it never or very rarely breaks. This is pretty much true and it has only broken twice for me since the patch, once against a giant dune kimogila and once against a low level mob on tatooine. The problem is that just cause it doesn't break that doesn't mean maskscent is working.
The first thing you notice is that creatures tend to stalk you a lot. Every creature thatknows how to stalk will do it. The strange thing here is that they only move out to the spot you were atand don't acctually move after you. Sometimes they do attack, but sometimes they just walk back... all this with maskscent still shown as on.
The big problem is of course that maskscent do acctually break a lot, not as much as before as they made the skill better, but it still does break. And now some will say "no, you're wrong, it never breaks for me anymore". The problem is that it does but that due to what I hopefully think is a bug it's not shown to the player at most times. You will eventually get aggroed by mobs even if you are maskedscented and even by small mobs as the maskscent may have been broken 1 minute earlier against something big, but you have not yet been told.
This was one of the good skills the rangers had, I liked the fact being able to travel without having to pay too much attention to creatures. It was also real usefull being able to access harvesters without worrying that there would be a rogue faamba breathing down your neck. Now it's unfortunatley useless and I find myself for the first time in weeks having to walk around even easy aggroes to avoid having to fight the whole lair.
Get this into your next report mineras, and until it's fixed I will /bug it every day after the patches. Most rangers don't require much to be happy about their profession (as we don't have much anyway), but this is acctually arequirement to workor there is very little that makes this profession even remotely usefull.
ok, i'm a commando, and my rocket launcher (that's a ROCKET LAUNCHER) has an ideal range of 0 m.
yeah, rangers got screwed real hard
Beener wrote:
ok, i'm a commando, and my rocket launcher (that's a ROCKET LAUNCHER) has an ideal range of 0 m.
yeah, rangers got screwed real hard
We dont even get anything that helps us combat wise, I'd gladly take a broken rocket launcher over the 2 broken traps we get...
get off our boards
All I want is some peaceful travelling without having to worry about being stalked by every creature under the blue while my scent is masked... is that so much to ask for?
*sigh* I guess it is. Devs, at least put it back the way it WAS if it's not going to get fixed anytime soon. 
Stalking doesn't mean it was broken. If it was broken you'd be aggroed at 50 meters by anything with an inkling to kill you. I've run around alot of aggro groups of mobs in the last few days and I've made some observations.
1) If you're running, the mob might 'sense' you (mask scent doesn't make you INVISIBLE, they can still SEE), and run toward the location you sensed you at... If you're moving by the time they get to that spot you're usually 50 meters away unless they are REALLY fast.
2)If a mob senses you and you're sitting still, they will aggro once they get VERY close, even without breaking mask scent.
3)Mobs may sense you and run in the opposite direction, this is particularly true for mobs that would normally run away if you weren't masked.
If you watch the mobs you don't get the ! or !!! or ? cues on the mob that they actually saw/smelled you, they just make movement toward something they're not sure about. You weren't actually seen/smelled, but they did detect something. This is totally realistic, if /maskscent was invisibility you could crawl through the grass sniper style and NPC's wouldn't see you. Its masking your scent/sound/sight from the less intelligent creatures, but even that isn't perfect. Consider the stalking a near miss, doesn't mean your cover was blown, just means you gotta do something, which is usually get out of the area where you accidentally stepped on a dry branch and made alot of noise.
I've noticed something peculiar with maskscent as well since the patch, but it goes beyond this. I used to get the occasional scout exp notice as I ran from one end of a planet to another, enough that not getting that exp at all over the past couple of days tells me that something is wrong. Has anyone else been getting it? Was it removed entirely from the game and I missed the announcement?
They only attack if they're pretty much point blank on you.. so a suggestion, just because your masked doesn't mean you can or should runpast aggro mobsat under 15 meters (melee will hit you at up to 15 meters) You are better off going around, but you don't have to keep a 65+ meter distance. Just give enough room that if a mob 'senses' and runs to where you were when it sensed you'll be 15-20 meters away. Keeping 15-20 meters away when running around masked is probably a good idea.. Its akin to being camoflauged something stepping on you. They'll know you're there no matter how well you blend in. And I do like the way it works now. Unless your mask fails completely you're relatively safe... relative to how close you wanna crawl to a mob and how fast they can move 
. But there should still be someincidends on your part because of a near miss, or their part because they stepped on you. A total failure flat out sucks, it'll bring down everything within 60 meters, but a near-miss just adds to the excitement Scouts have the same issues,though their mask scent totally fails more often, they do have the same near misses we have.
Fellstaff wrote:
2)If a mob senses you and you're sitting still, they will aggro once they get VERY close, even without breaking mask scent.
If you watch the mobs you don't get the ! or !!! or ? cues on the mob that they actually saw/smelled you, they just make movement toward something they're not sure about. You weren't actually seen/smelled, but they did detect something. This is totally realistic, if /maskscent was invisibility you could crawl through the grass sniper style and NPC's wouldn't see you. Its masking your scent/sound/sight from the less intelligent creatures, but even that isn't perfect. Consider the stalking a near miss, doesn't mean your cover was blown, just means you gotta do something, which is usually get out of the area where you accidentally stepped on a dry branch and made alot of noise.
If something aggros you, that should break mask scent. It doesn't most of the time. That is a bug as far as I am concerned.
I understand what you are saying about mobs sensing something is amiss but not actually knowing who or what it is. But shouldn't we get some sort of message alerting us to this? I know all about the ? and !! signs but everyone gets those. And itdoesn't necessarily mean the mob will aggro you whether you have mask scent or not. So for those of us who DO have mask scent, it would be nice to get some message like (to use your example) "Your footfalls have broken a dry branch, alerting nearby creatures". Since we were used to how mask scent worked before, we are all admittedly confused as to why things still stalk and aggro us without mask scent being dropped. At least a message like this could explain the creature's action.
Currently, mask scent has two failure methods. One is similar to the old break method which turns mask scent off. This happens rarely (for me at least), only Kimos and At-Sts break it. The second failure method is when a creature senses you, but doesn't break your mask scent. This second failure method is what is confusing people.
Mask scent works fine. The only thing that appears people want is notification when a creature senses you through the mask scent. Currently the only notification is when the creature attacks you. Some notification slightly prior to that would be nice.
Well i have to say that I very much think maskscent it working, I only recently became a ranger with this new patch and had explore 4 originally before the patch. The diehard test is that originally I went onto endor and the maskscent instantly broke whenever I gotwitin 64m ofanything, i went back now with the Ranger maskscent and I can run across country with it on without even once getting aggro'd even while burst running through a group of barkmite burrowers and aranae warriors. Nothing on Endor has yet broken the maskscent but I do see the Aranae warriors picking up a ghost scent of me and going to the last location I was at. This evenhappens while I'm standing skill, however they don't actually aggro until they get right up to me which is just how it used to happen with hermit spiders and maskscent when I was a scout.
So from that I'd say maskscent is very much working but I wonder if perhaps it's too potent now?
One thing i've noticed is that traps and maskscent ae related to the ferocity of the animal, I found this when i was on Corellia getting trapping exp on what i think was called a Snarnaff (they're sorta like a ronto only with spikes) and there was two versions. The normal Snarnaff and the bull snarnaff. Both gave the same exp when they were ensnared so I guess they were the same CL (haven't been back to check that with my ranger skills) however the key difference was that the bull had 8 for ferocity while the normal one had 0. The traps worked almost every time for the normal snarnaff but rarely for the bull so it would seem ferocity was the key factor.
Ah, but allowing us to know when another creature has sensed us would be too easy. Overhead map actually works fairly well, like a full screen radar