Scout Archive
Thread: Have Scouts been Marginalized?
Paracelsius wrote:Well FUna, I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
TN v. Vehicles -- I'm not driving to my hunting lodge -- I'm driving to my target, dismounting and starting to shoot. There IS no rough terrain in SWG -- while it may look rugged there is no falling damage -- making it essentially flat. You can cross the roughest terrain in the game at full throttle on the most delicate vehicle available. And I'm not sure where you get the idea that non-scouts have a tougher time than scouts -- vehicles go plenty fast up hills. Do you dismount at the bottom of the hill, run to the top and then run back down to your vehicle? I don't and I suspect you don't either.
There's a "big picture" you're missing here. You can't always drive right up to that lair, jump out, and start shooting...especially if you're running faction missions overt or with a TEF or attacking aggro MOBs. You have to park 70-100 meters away to safely walk in and pick your targets off. I don't know about you but in any instance where my targets may BAF I try to get into a position where I can take them one at a time WITHOUT them BAF-ing. This can be done if you pick your targets correctly and have patience for them to spread out.
Also, you're not understanding my point about the hunting lodge. Again you're missing the big picture. You drive out to a location in your indestructible vehicle, and get out for combat on foot. Once you are on foot terrain negotiation comes into play. We do engage in combat on difficult terrain to navigate on foot. This is the point you miss. You obviously glanced over my post without comprehending it. Scouts will always continue to have an advantage in PvE and PvP when on foot over non-scouts due to terrain negotiation skills. We can kite and/or escape from MOBs, NPCs, and PCs by running uphill -- many times without resorting to burst run. Fact is we engage in combat on foot not in vehicles and therefore terrain negotiation continues to be an advantage.
What you fail to see is that moving about on foot should never be a primary mode of travel. Primary transportation is, and should be, vehicles. Secondary should be mounts. Foot travel should be a last resort or for those who can't afford other modes of transportation.
Traps -- I think your arguement presumes a class based system rather than a skill based one. Other professions you choose should not mean that skills in an unrelated profession become useless. There is no such thing as an "elite class" and this is not a balance question -- it's a fun question. Combat suffers from a lack of diverse, meaningful, actions you can take -- fixing traps would help this.
I don't see a need for fixing traps other than making them more reliable. For now they do what they claim when they function. I will say this again, Scouting is a STARTING profession and as such is more useful when combined with other starting professions like Marksman. Elite combat professions make Scout traps obsolete by out-damaging their usefulness. This is the very nature of the starting vs elite professions. By design you can "outgrow" your starting profession by increasing skills.
Like I said, Scout traps complement the Marksman profession, but as you progress in elite professions (I'll refrain from using the term "class" to avoid any more picking of nits) the scout level traps just become obsolete. This is a GOOD design to encourage true "outdoorsman" characters to move up into Ranger...more on that...
I should need to make a choice between using that trap or using that gun -- right now there's no real choice involved. BTW, have you tried the ranger traps? There's nothing elite (or even particularly useful) about them.
I think I mentioned beefing up the Ranger traps...I suggest you re-read my post. I could quote myself for you if you like.
The Ranger profession is broken; thats for sure. It needs to be the "elite" class for scouts to graduate to. Unfortunately its an incomplete class and needs work. The ranger profession's traps should be something that complements elite combat professions (Pistoleer, Carbineer, Rifleman and the elite melee combat professions) and most effective on big game. As it stands the most useful trap in game is a Scout trap: Adhesive Mesh. This shouldn't be and has been acknowledged to be a problem.
Camps -- I'm not a big fan of camps as a place to call stuff out. But on the other hand I don't see these advantages you talk about. Camps are a good place to get your secondary stats healed while you're afk -- otherwise I don't use them for anything BUT calling out pets and vehicles. Heals and bufs come from droids more easily than from camps. I don't see a lot of entertainers out in the wilds healing mind wounds. I know camps are "supposed" to repel creatures, but in my experience this has never worked. Cure disease and poison are also medbot functions. And I don't know about your groups, but the only time I see groups using camps now days is when someone is trying to grind their survival skills -- otherwise people just move to the next spawn and heal on the way. Camps used to be a touch of civilization -- but with the spread of player cities they are now essentially obsolete on any world that allows building.
There's one very excellent point you made. Player cities HAVE diminished the role of camps, especially on Naboo, Corellia and Dantooine.
Its unfortunate you haven't seen the other advantages I've discussed and maybe you belong to a guild lacking teamwork or group with some lousy people. I know in MASC we used camps over the weekend as a meeting place at the Nightsister Cave before starting our first raid to get buffs from docs and 2 entertainers. We then camped again to wait for the Nightsisters to respawn for a second raid healing our wounds, getting re-buffed and having a nice safe place to hang out while we waited. The camp did keep aggro MOBs away except when members of the group attacked random MOBs nearby. In that case they caused the MOBs to attack the rest of us but it wasn't a shortcoming of the camp.
I find camps to be invaluable in places where there are no player cities (yet). When camping the Krayt graveyard someone always had a camp out to heal between battles. It was an indespensible resource.
Starting profession -- In a skill based game the designers need to provide a reason for all professions to be fun, whether they have pre-requisite skills or not. If I choose to play a scout and add additional skills to it as skill points allow, that should be every bit as viable a choice as if I were to choose a second tier profession with a large number of pre-requisites.
True. But also there are skills you grow out of. Starting skills shouldn't be something you need as an elite character to remain "fun". Starting professions can be replaced or "outgrown" as your character matures. Some aspects of scouting, such as traps, do become obsolete as you're skill with weapons increases. Its a nature progression of skills. If you fail to see that you fail to see the aforementioned big picture for your character.
I'm a bounty hunter. Complaining that my traps are no longer useful once your character progresses higher in the skill tree or can afford bigger weapons is like me complaining that the rifles branch of Marksman I had to get is useless to me as a bounty hunter. Rifles were once a big part of my play style, but I've outgrown them much like I've outgrown most of the traps and will further outgrow my scout traps. Its a natural progression of skills. With any skill based RPG system there are skills you outgrow in favor of others. Traps vs weapons are one of them.
I guess the only thing I agree with you is that the sky is not falling. Scouting is a very solid profession that was more entertaining than most, to start. On the other hand, I don't think that gives the designers carte-blanche to ignore providing entertaining new changes to this profession. I would like to see them evaluate how much content they've diluted from scouts and to add some additional stuff to make up for it.
Regards,
Oirff
I don't think they are diluting scout skills. That's my point. Scouting became something it shouldn't have been because of the lack of vehicles and player cities-- a primary mode of travel via Terrain Negotiation and a primary healing center. Scouts are now what they were supposed to be from the start and some of us are finding we've outgrown some of the skills due to changes in play style brought about from recent changes.
But as a starting profession, new players will find it just as exciting and entertaining as we did because they won't have the resources we have now like a home in a player city, a vehicle/mount, or high-powered weapons. What needs to be done is beefing-up/fixing the Ranger profession to give high-level characters something to complement their combat skills like Scouting does for low-level combat characters.
You have to see the big picture here...the Scout profession isn't for fleshed-out, mature characters...its a starting profession.