Ranger Archive

NRaas and fellow rangers, lets put up the results of how our conceal is working after the update. What I am refering to is, does it work, do you get xp, does it hold up well and not break easily, and is it's duration long enough? Also, give your experience with it breaking from entering combat.

So far my experience with conceal have been good, at least better then they were. It holds up very well, seems to be lasting a decent amount of time, and I get xp for it, on both NPC and creatures.

Possible problems or differences: It used to give me xp for everyone I applied camo kit to when they passed agro. It does not seem to anymore, only for me. It used to do this, and I think that's valid. We did apply it, we are keeping our group safe, we should get the xp for it.

Also, I'm getting inconsistant results with it breaking or not breaking with combat. I already posted in scout forum about mask scent. NRaas report was that mask scent and conceal would break in combat "if you took some damage". Well my mask scent breaks as soon as I shoot and make a hit. When I was in a group, the conceal I aplied to everyone would sometimes break on some but not others when getting into combat. I need to do some more testging on it, but I don't think its working right in that regards.

Considering the costs and hassle of conceal, it should only break in combat against the target. It should stay on for everything else. This is justified by both the cost of conceal, and that mask scent does break and it makes a distincsion for rangers. And it's a bigger insentive to use the new ranger skill compared to using mask scent. If the Devs insist on making conceal break in combat, bad idea, then it had BETTER not allow things that checked against it already to attack us. This is currently the problem with mask scent. I check against 6 creatures that are agro. I attack one, but they all suddenly attack me. Delta says it's not supposed to allow the others to attack but it does. Conceal needs to be at the least like that.

If I'm attacking a lair of agros, I should be able to use conceal to keep the others from getting me: A) if they already checked agains my conceal B) these animals are assistive. Not to mention if some different types of agro creatures or NPC spawn near by while attacking my lair critters.

Conceal is working for me. I am wandering into groups of hard red aggros, wrix mainly, and looting lairs. I am walking up to targets on missions, swoopers and Imps..again, both hard red aggros, and nothing is happening to me until I initiate fire. I have been applying it to others as well, and they walk right past the "evil Meatlumps" to go do their missions.

I agree with Squid tho, conceal / MS is breaking once damage is taken, be it me or my target. Istood there quietly and not had it break when my partner fired, tho it broke once I engaged.

I disagree with the break only against your target. I think animals are smart enough to see a herd mate being hit and wounded. Ok, I know about buffalo, shoot them one by one. Maybe that can be incorporated into the game, but until then, assume that once you engage a target our animals are smart enough to figure out where you are attacking from (noise, movements, muzzle flash, smell).

And what's the deal with these "scout animals"? Seems they are the ones breaking camo and MS more often than other creatures.

The cost of camo on the starter planets is small. I can get the stuff for Corellian kits by walking outside my house on a normal day and harvesting for maybe 3 minutes.

Overall, I think it is working better.

JB

I love it. I ran out of Dath Kits and switched to mask scent and realized quickly how much better conceal is.

**edit** I love conceal. I have done some amazingly stupid things with conceal and lived to tell the tale. How about standing in the middle of a group of witches on Dathmir and giving them all a kiss. LOL I had too.

Call me crazy, but I love cammo as well, now that the flora is gone. The one problem I have with using cammo is this. It goes away in cobat. Yes, I can see how it would in a RL situation, animals are dumb, but not brain dead. Two Squirls talking "Hey, what's that bright flash over there..hmm, lets go see, Hey, the flashy thingie just killed Earl, lets go attack it." But why go to the trouble of cammoing? Mask scent costs no resources or time to do, and when I go hunt, I set out to kill something.

I find it great to go from point a to b, but only if they are a looong way apart. If they aren't, mask Scent and finger over the burst key work better, and cheaper.

My .02

Jekker

I think the problem with mask/conceal is that along the way it has worked in so many varying degrees that we can decide which version we liked better...

There was a period about 3 weeks ago where I was utterly undetectable with maskscent....

Now granted, I think I was too uber and it NEVER broke, but now it is SO FAR away from that version that I get pisssed.

BALANCE is not something that SOE is good at, in fact ,I don't think SOE knows what the word means.

And for people who suggest walking or crawling past the enemy I say, we never had to before so it's hard to adjust to that level of action, I don't like that our movement speed affects the effectiveness...

I just can't keep track of the changes is my point...so I really never know if it's "working as intended" because I don't think SOE know what it "intends"

Okay, conceal works when traveling from a to b, that is fine and good. When i want to explore, it is nice. Although it worked great before this last publish.

Conceal does not work when in combat. Patch day +1, camo broke when hit, this is they way I was led to believe it would work. Patch day +2 (Hotfix) camo breaks when initiating combat. I don't mind it dropping when I get hit. However, I just made a nice collection of kits, found all the resources needed by hunting with maskscent (which breaks in combat also) when I first land on the planet. I took the time to gather the resources needed.

Why does camo completely break when initiating combat? A combat break of camo, should only be a TEF situation (if the break is not a bug). When finished fighting, why should animals that are 80m away be able to see me when I walk/crawl by? The extra charges in Camo kits gets depleted fast. If you go out on a mission and kill what is there, you still must deal with the next wave of combatants. The lairs take less damage until all waves are done, and the lair will spawn these waves while hitting it. If I have to reapply camo after the first wave, and then after the second wave, and again when traveling to the next mission, or back to town, it goes fast. Yes, I could use maskscent, but why? I am a Ranger and should use my Ranger abilities to its fullest.

Camo should not fall to every animal around. Before patch if I attacked an agro/assistive animal, then I got a few hits in before he knew where I was. His alertive friends knew. Not all of them but most did. However, Camo did not fully drop. It would last its full run. I could move to the next group with Camo still intact. On non agro/assistive animals, I could pick them off one by one and not worry about the others. Now I have to reapply each period of down time.

I don't know what to do. I only want to know if this is truly the way Camo was supposed to work. I hope we can get an answer in the upcoming week. Then I will decide if I need to change my hunting ways.

Alkharan bandits don't even check against camo. You never get the detect message, you just get the "camo has been dropped because you are in combat" message when they start shooting at you. Are there other npcs/mobs that camo isn't working at all on?

I think my big beef with camo breaking in combat, was that before my Ranger skills gave me the ability to hunt better. I liked that the idea that I could get a few more shots off with my rifle before they found me. This usually meant I could kill them.

My view, is that we shouldn't be indefinately invisible while in combat when we have conceal on, but it should take slightly longer for the creature/NPC to find us than not wearing camo (assuming it didn't break by combat). For a rifle, it was perfect, because I could get 3-4 shots off, before it "charged" me. Then I'd throw a trap (and hope it sticks).

Baer

Naritus Server: Baer (Rifle, Ranger), Cache (Smuggler, Chef)
* Live to die another day. (Baer)
* I have yet to receive the "You can not lose anymore wife faction." message. (Baer)
* A wookie is never naked (Rroark/Zamook?)
* Remember that time in Star Wars where they sat around sampling for ore in the desert
  for 2 hours straight? That was great! (Cai?)

It's working well enough that I was able to go Krayt hunting with my non-scout friends without getting jumped by all the yard trash that hangs around the area. Granted the yard trash can be fun, but when you are on a limited time frame for a large group it's nice to bypass most of these nuisance encounters.

Additionally we were able to get into position at pretty close range before we hit the dragon.

I love camo, and so do my friends, we are all sold.

I never used camo before the update (Master Ranger, too). I was pretty excited to get the chance.

• Valarians and Meatlumps can smell me from 80m away, camo'd or not! My faction with these guys is maxed at -5000, so no biggie. I stopped bothering with camo while on Tattooine and running through a high pop. Valarian area. Too expensive and it was breaking every time.


• Breaking on zone lines -- I was camo'd up, running up to Mos Taike. I get the camo broken by combat message. Huh? I'm going into town... no combat, no aggro creatures... Weird. This happened a few places, on different planets. My best guess is that there is a bug where camo breaks when zoning. Can anyone replicate?

-- Elysa Kamekazi, Master Ranger/Pistoleer/Entertainer, Intrepid

Camo is fine but it is still aggravating at times. Kreetles still occasionally break my camo and NPCs that are supposed to have already checked conceal instantly aggro on me.

If I am on a mission to an aggro spawn (like a Thug) I cannot avoid getting aggro whether I have conceal or not. It aggros me as soon as it appears on my map so I can't even use /conversationstart.

Camo is dropping the moment I am aggro'd and has nothing to do with how much damage (if any) was done to me. And if creatures were fooled by my camo earlier they will aggro on me as well. Is the check frequency that short?

Deoka,

I've seen this too and I have wayfaring 4. It seems that mobs you have high (-5000) faction with they don't check at all. Nothing, they see you and attack. I've had this happen with meatlumps, ragtag kooks, swoopers, valiarians, etc, etc (I have -5000 for all).

Its almost like camo is being bypassed.