Ranger Archive

Ok.. A bunch of things..

First off, I had a thought about why a lot of people are complaining about camouflage breaking so often.

I'm a baby ranger (1/1/1/1) and I JUST got Wayfaring I last night (heh.. hired an artisan to get some domesticated wheat.. good stuff).

Now.. My first kit had 3 charges (didn't bother experiment.. too far from town and I wanted to log). It broke near almost every red mob, npc or creature.2 of the three breaks had aggros on me, and the last broke through camo without actually breaking it (It was funny.. Maurauder chasing me and I got xp for him)

Now.. I thought about this.. and it made sense.. I think its a bit of a badly designed system (in a sense)

See.. When we reach Master Scout, we now have +100 on Maskcscent right? Which is why maskscent is (for me at least) very reliable at Novice Ranger. But when we get Wayfaring I, we only have +40 camo. The Maskscent doesn't affect that at all. So until we have Master Ranger, camo kits will NEVER be as useful as maskscent, right?

At least with the solo ranger. Their only use is with groups.

That make sense to anyone? Basically, way I see it, Until I'm a master ranger, I have no reason to ever use camo kits (I'd rather not get my group killed and get blamed for it ) and will instead rely on Maskscent almost exclusively

I was thinking of a way to fix this.. so naturally, I thought of the same thing that everyone was asking for.. Making us able to experiment on the effectiveness of the kits. I would much rather 10 highly effective kits of 3 charges each than 10 useless 10 charge kits.

BIG problem with that though.. We, unlike any other crafters, are completely dependant on very specific resources. Corellian animal bones, corellian bristley hide, etc.. So if we're going through a few bad resource days, we're pretty screwed. Our kits will suck (on that planet) until the resources shift again (and we're lucky).. whereas maskscent (for solo, of course) will always be reliable wherever we are.

Sorry for the long post btw.. I'm just tossing ideas around.. would love it if this turned into a discussion on 'how to make these kits work nicely ' I love the idea!

One final question.. What exactly are the factors in succesfully passing a mob? I know speed is one.. But the quality of the materials used in making the kit.. that only affects charges, right?

Thanks for listening folks

As it stands now, you are better off with Conceal as a Novice Ranger than if you are a Master.

It seems like there is some coding that is reversing our Camouflage bonus so that as you progress up the Ranger tree, you actually get worse at concealing!

So if you think conceal works badly now, just wait till you "advance" up the wayfaring tree a bit...

You may also notice that maskscent becomes more unreliable as you progress up the Ranger path. Some Rangers are under the impression that our conceal "bonus" is actually penalizing our maskscent ability.

Maybe you could help document this as you advance up the Wayfaring branch?..

Whether there is any difference in how camo and maskscent work for the novice ranger with unequal skills is probably hard to say. However, as a master ranger with 100 in both and several sets of camo kits tested on several planets, I can say quite confidently that maskscent and conceal break often, generate aggros frequently, and is borderline useless. It used to be that I could at least tell if the mobs in front of me were convinced that I wasn't there, or was some bush or whatever. Now that scouting exp is maxxed, I basically don't know until me or someone in my group gets aggro'd. And on Endor or similar places, that means you can get trains of high level creatures chasing after you. Not pleasant, and not what SWG's description of a Ranger entails.

Hmm.. OK...

Two things.

First off, from what I'm hearing (including what I've been reading on other messages along the 'Camo + maskscent is broken fix kthanks' lines), I'd say that it looks like there definitely is a problem (Nraas.. your turn ) with our modifiers.

Second, I'll definitely keep tabs on how maskscent and camo work as I work my way up the wayfaring tree, seeing as I'm leaving tracking till later, until /track actually makes it into the game (I want to see it from baby to full )

Thanks for the responses.

"I'd say that it looks like there definitely is a problem (Nraas.. your turn) with our modifiers."

- Well I can't say anything beyond what has been stated in other posts.

- The facts regarding my history with /maskscent and /conceal:

- I have never used /maskscent, I travel with a medic who does not like to be aggroed. So having me /maskscent would simply make the beasts notice him faster.

- As for /conceal, my play style leaves me on one planet for quite awhile. It just so happened that the planet I'm on now is Lok (and we all know how easy it is to make those camo kits ).

- I will be moving on to another planet soon, I will try out the camo kits at that time.

- I will do my best to test any changes added to Test Center and give you those results.

- But for now, I'm relying on the rest of you to provide results for those two skills.