Ranger Archive

Ranger Calc here: It has always been my theory that they broke (not nerfed) it in a publish, and didn't have the time/desire to fix it. I was easier to say "It was never intended to work that way" which is the typical response when they nerf something. Little did they know, it was intended to work that way (they must not have done their homework) as illustrated by the in game definitons AND the original proposal brought up byHolocron in theRanger correspondentfeedback thread that is stickied. These are my opinions and I have nothing to back them up.

Message Edited by Calculus_Entropy on 04-07-2004 04:56 PM

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Nemo0 wrote:

When we were told conceal is meant to be creature only, I think it came from a Dev who was not fully aware of what had happened previously. I wouldn't worry about it too much until we get a revamp, though. It's unlikely to matter until then anyway.

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I seem to recall reading in publish notes that they had intentionally removed the ability for camo to work against NPCs. Rangers saw the patch notes long before it actually went in, and we were outraged. We never heard about it again - presumably, it went in, but we don't know.

Ah, the ancient tale of /conceal. Here is your basic answer:

Those descriptions havn't really changed since beta(long time without attention huh?).

In beta, there was a /conceal skill for Rangers. It didn't require kits and worked just like Mask Scent. The difference? /conceal worked on NPCs while /maskscent worked on creatures.

/conceal was then removed from the game in beta because it was felt that it was too game breaking.

So live comes along, our class is in turmoil, everyone is sitting there reading this description about a /conceal skill in our tree(the same one you are reading now) that we don't have anymore, so we request that it be added back in, even if slightly changed.

So, September comes and we get are only additions to the Ranger profession ever. In it /conceal makes a return only as a "better mask scent" that requires components to make kits and also can be used on others.

Here is the thing, when they re-implemented it they remained fuzzy about saying whether it shoudl or should not work on NPCs. They never actually came out and said it would. They implied it might, but never said specifically it did. To add to the confusion, the description in the tree of /conceal is based off the /conceal skill that was in Beta which was completely different than what we have now.

As to if we will ever get an exact answer, probably not. And, the devs themselves may not even know anymore. Greenmarine was long taken away and moved on to other projects instead of giving him time to fix the scout based professions(Scout, Ranger, SL) and Smuggler to which he was assigned. Thus, because they pulled him away, sadly and to all our extreme frustrations, these 4 professions have been stuck in limbo for well over half a year with nothing to show for it.

I seem to remember a statement that the person who first put in the /conceal stuff had thought it should work on NPCs, thus why the info in game says it does.... But then that person was taken off of ranger tasks and the new person(s) decided it should never have been that way, thus the "mistake".

Cressida

My problem with conceal is that it works most of the time. Unfortunately, a stray NPC in a spawn will aggro me without breaking conceal. Hell, I'll get scout xp for passing an agressive spawn of NPC's while passing on my speeder. If I'm overt, stormtroopers will not notice my presence. If I"m tef'd, still no notice. If I just killed a ST from 35m or beyond, the kill will go unnoticed and I'll still be unnoticed up until the time I attack another ST.

When on Dathomir, I run circles around nightsisters (for which I have -5000 faction points). It seems to work overall. It's just a bit buggy in my eyes. With my mask scent/camouflage clothing, I'm able to ride/run/mount passed giant dune kimogilas without detection. I love /conceal