Scout Archive

Lea,

The money issue was my "pet" concern - not one directly related to the rest of the community, but a small wish-list item that I'd love to see adjusted. I've heard others complain about it, so I thought I'd throw it in there.

You are having much more luck selling hides and bone on the bazaar than I have. I do go through a lot of hide and bone crafting traps and camps now, soI don't usually sell as much as I should. I'll have to use your method here and see if I can make some money off of it. Thanks for the tip!

B

It does seem that you are paying attention and keeping up with the issues concerns of the Scouting community, so let's keep up the good work.

Malborka

Aspiring Ranger/Rifleman, Talus/Endor, Tarquinas Server

What would be cool for the camp would be taht little Computer terminal that you set up works like a Harvestor Interface.

Number of Visitors, Time up, Exp earned, etc.

I am pretty sure all of this is already tracked by the game. Just display it.

Also i agree that we should get survival or trapping exp for crafting our items that are Scout only. Where else can you get those skills?

Why can't we get exp when a trap fails? We still made it and threw it.

Just a few ideas.

"Why can't we get exp when a trap fails? We still made it and threw it."

Probably for the same reason that we don't get XP for when we fight a creature but lose.

Fishing is honestly one of the hardest things I've attempted to do so far, I'm surprised it doesn't give back more rewards. I don't understand the problem, but I can fish for hours (very literally, not sure what I'm doing wrong) and only catch two fish.

Sounds like Realism to me my Fishing Friend.

Reminds me why i hate to fish!

Well here is my opinion.

Experience:

Honestly, the current Survival XP rate isn't too bad to me because I'm trying to have fun and not grind up to Ranger. I usually use my artisan skill to scan for some sort of resource near where I am hunting and setup camp on/near a high concentration. I usually stay at a camp for 6 minutes so my wounds are reduced by 10. This negates the need to sit around in hospitals a long time while in the city and increases your camp XP. While waiting in camp I will sample for resources and use what I get to either craft weapon powerups or save them to trade to my artisan friends.

I can see why crafting a camp-kit would give Wilderness XP and crafting traps would give Trapping XP but wouldn't SOE then have to give crafting weapons Combat XP etc etc. Changing the XP would cheapen the artisan professions.

Foraging should get experience!!! It is hardly any different then sampling for a resource. Maybe for experience for each attribute effected multiple the bonus by the time, sum these up and then divide by a number (500-1000 for example) to get wilderness XP. I can't think of anything relating to survival in the wilderness that is more pure than foraging for food, I'd put that above camping for the purity factor.

Abilities:

Foraging is nice and under utilizied. It could be fleshed out a lot by making what is foraged non-random. Make what you find dependant on your surroundings (desert, ocean, grasses, etc) Make some items very rare any only found in specific locations in dangerous areas and have a great bonus to them. This would make exploring the wilderness fun and give us something very unique to motivate us to get off the beaten path and truely scout! Yes, this would be a lot of work and I know there are MANY things that would take priority. Perhaps this could even be bumped up to Ranger.

Traps/Camo/Stealth at the scout level can be left affecting only creatures I believe. However, when moving on to Ranger (aka Scout II) we need the ability to affect NPC's and PC's in some method. Perhaps variants on a couple traps that require more material or a higher complexity ( to counter the cunning of sentient species). Because SO MANY people are pursueing the Scout line giving them extra powers in PvP will only serve to make most PvPers more powerful (no net advantage) since they will add Scout to their skills. Leave the affects of camo on PCsto the ranger or commando lin(or both) line(s). I'd love to see at the ranger level a circle around me on the radar showing the range at which other PCs will be able to detect me (based on movement/stance/camoflauge ability). But once again, that needs to be taken up at the Ranger level. However, this same sort of sort of circle would be nice to get an idea of our mask scent success rate on mobs.

So overall, I am happy the way scouts are but there obvious areas for improvements. I do not want to see them end up being as powerful as a hybrid class however since it would take away another goal once I master scout.

Camping will sure be a lot easier once this patch goes live and we can camp anywhere (sans cities). But in truth I was never sold on this complaint. Sure, it is really annoying on the limited locations we have but this is "Wilderness XP" we are going after. Forcing you to be out in the wilds made a lot of sense to me (wasn't thrilled on implementation). I would like to see an XP modifier based on the distance to the nearest building. Say take the current XP (rate of XP gain and max) and be able to have it go up or down as much as 50% based on that check on building proximity. Just having the build-zone check ignore harvestors and their like would have been satisfactory to me.

One more thing on traps. Being able to place a trap in a fixed location ahead of time would be great! I never expected traps to be a form of a hand grenade. Make us limit the number of traps we can place on the ground or something to control this but this would make Scouts much more believable. Also, maybe this could be a method to allowing traps against NPCs and PCs? Luring your oppenent into a trap/ambush sure sounds like fun to me!

Chris

Helfats Os'Fey - Bothan Scout on Corellia - Intrepid

never did understand why it takes less points to go from novice ranger to master range, than it does from novice scout to masters scout

I dunno, might correspond to dimishing returns.

Good e-mail. Especially the part about Camping. I'm not very far along, so may be a bit clueless about some of the other issues you've discussed, but Camping is one of the most important for me right now. It's really hard to get in the experience. I really only have the time to stop and rest if I've been trashed. (I guess I can be happy with the targeting problems I've having because of that. I have to stop and heal up for 15-30 minutes just attacking a Nuna lair now).

The other major thing is trapping. It's difficult to always use this. Particularly when I'm on the run, or doing a destroy mission. The other thing is that I can only use it on the really weak monsters, so that means grinding outside of town with the weakest creatures. And then more grinding to make traps.

I'd like to suggest scout crafting points be awarded. If I could get points for the camping equipment and traps that I build, that would be a tremendous help.

The only problem I have with your points was the question of the mileage meter for Scouting xp. The problem is one hyphenated word. "Auto-follow."

All it takes is one guy at his keyboard and twenty guys can hit their auto-follow key's and go afk while the one tour guide racks up their xp for them.

It's just too easily exploited.

One idea I posted on another occasion to help with the Maskscent problem were items that would give you temporary boosts to your camouflage skills. A "ghillie suit" that would work so long as you stayed in the prone (crawling being allowed with higher level suits) and "hunting blinds" that would work if you remained motionless but would let other people you were grouped with benefit as well.

That's my two vents... er, cents.

"Democracy is the worst form of government... until you consider the alternatives."

Winston Churchill.

to me the single biggest area that needs to be fixed is the use of traps in pvp and npc mobs in game.

Silverjohn,

That's a good idea - the ghillie suit. And I've thought about possible exploits to the explore line - I like to think the best of people, but obviously there are going to be some who'll try it.

As for the other post above on trapping - trapping is absolutely one of the easiest things to gain XP in quickly. All you need to do is put your traps on the quickbar and ripple them off in each battle against a creature, and you'll get trapping XP like its going out of style. It's honestly to the point where you can max out trapping in days worth of hard playing - which makes me think that its bound to get hit with the nerf bat eventually. Check some of the other threads for tips if you are having difficulty with traps.

B