Scout Archive
Thread: DEVS Here's what's WRONG with scouts...
-pooka
I read through the entire thing, as Scouting is my deal.
Some of the points are valid, but I think the overall message totally misses the point about being a scout.
Being a scout is like being a marksman. Nearly everyone is going to pick up your skill. But not everyone is going to focus on them. 90% of the things P00ka complained about, in my opinion, were simply stylistic ones - not actual problems with the character itself.
No player in this game is going to pick one thing and that's it. No one is JUST going to be an entertainer. No one is JUST going to be a medic. Doing the exact same thing over and over and over and over isn't fun. And considering the fact that other than Scouts, Marksmen, or Brawlers, the other three basic professions will take two steps out of a city and get devoured by a baby Chuba if they didn't have at least some cross-referenced skills.
I don't believe it is possible to play a character without having more than one profession. And even if it were, why would anyone want to?
I'm all for adding little perks to the Scout profession. Sure, having maskscent that works well would be great. Sure, having traps that can kill people and animals would be great. But I don't need them to enjoy the game, and I daresay most of us don't either.
You get what you put in. I loved working hard to get to Master Scout. Sure, not all of the grinding was amazingly fun, but I get a lot of pride out of teaching new scouts their first levels, or watching them wonder as I set out my improved tent at how I can do that. That's what the game is all about - figuring out what parts of it are fun, and then playing them that way.
Brisc
This top post is WAAAAY off. I am going BH, so As soon as I started (as a marksman) I went and paid 100 creds for novice scout. For like the first week, I only grouped with my roommate, who has the same professions. We had NO problem gaining here and there in each profession. I am on level 3 with every skill, close to 4 in wilderness and on 4 in trapping.
TRAPPING ROCKS! I can take out most mobs with 1 Bone Spur....and a shot from any gun, since the damage froma trap can't be lethal. You are missing something.
Another thing is that Scouting is a BEGINNING profession. Even if you master scouting, you still have like 160+ skill points leftover! Who expects to stay that way? That would be like an Artisan mastering Artisan and going no further.
I hate to be so blunt, but you are missing a lot. Scouts rock.
Pooka and company, I think several of you are rather confused about what a "Scout" is.
"Two days ago i could run by greater womprats and even pet them, half the time i enjoy touching the creatures more then killing them. now i can't get close enough as it fails and then i ahve to wait 60 seconds. By then i get trashed by every freaking red con'ed animal i was trying to walk past if i can't burst run my arse out of there in time."
Scouting at its most basic level, is the ability tofind and avoid the enemy,discover the best path through the wilderness, pass through these areas without a trace, and survive with nothing more than what you carry with you.
That's not just SWG scouting - that's what they teach you in real life as well.
It doesn't mean you are Dr. Doolittle - (although it can transform somewhat into that.)
There is nothing wrong or "broken" with the scout class. There is quite a bit "broken" with many of the perceptions here however.
Regarding experience, you believe that pitching a tent should give the same XP as fighting an animal? Please share with us where you draw the reference from.
Obviously the skill in setting up camp is much more dangerous and life threatening?
I beg to disagree. Get over it.
Where exactly does it state that you should only choose one class and nothing else?
Nowhere.
The DEV's stated in betathat you are given enough skill points to completely max out 2 professions, and 1/2 of a third.
So the only limitation is in your mind friend.
Don't let the attempts of some to find exploits or "work the system" detract from what is truly a very powerful class - and completely self - sufficient. Add a second class of your choosing, and the Scout is truly an ideal explorer - which is exactly what was stated and envisioned.
May your skills prevail,
Jec D'Jardin
Filthee french scout and jawa hunter
Corbantis Galaxy
I agree with some of the statements about scouts. I am scout from the beginning, and solo most of the time.
The MS thing is messed up and they need a fix for the fix soon. Some of the better suggestions I have seen are make it have the 60 second delay when you first get it, then at next level it goes down to 30 seconds, and at the third level it goes down to no delay. And Or, they should make it more effecive and usefull, and giving more xp when it works. If they changed it so it actually worked more often, then that would help with the fact they nerfed with 60 sec delay.
Second thing, is Scouts are not as different from other professions as you think. Artisans can collect what they need for survey stuff with only artisan, but in order to get hides and bones they need scout. Thus, as you kept saying, they need to pick up another proffession, just like Scouts do. They also are dependent on others to buy their stuff, or they have no use. The pure marksman is dependant on at minimum, the medics, for healing, and the artisans for weapons and armor.
If you notice, there are almost no pure professions out there. The reason, people get bored with just just the one, or they need some skills from the other to be effective, or because they are going for a hybrid. I picked up marksman almost right away, so as you said, I could actually shoot and kill things. I didn't mind, it made me very useful for other things. So all the proffessions are dependant on other ones for something or other.
The traps are useful, even for soloing. You shouldn't knock them seeing as you said you have never used them. As I said, I solo most of the time, and use traps all the time, and it makes killing things easlier and faster,and so that I can actually take down whites and yellows by myself. They are also useful in groups. The key to traps is to just use the right ones for the situation. You know, tactics. I think the higher level traps, maybe Ranger ones, should be effective against non animals. Even if there are only 2-3 traps that are usable against anything, it would be helpful. I understand the why traps are for animals only, especially for Souts. But the Ranger is a much more advanced profession, and they are going to be useful against anything being hunted, including non animals. Not everyone like hunting animals, and as players get more advanced, hunting animals won't be the big drive. And the Scout/Ranger is pretty useless for the GCW, other then camps. And others can use camps, but just can make them, so that is stretching it for camps. When we all start getting higher up, and getting involved in the GCW, Scout/Rangers are nothing special, just another gun.
The harvesting thing I agree with. We should be getting more xp from more difficult creatures when harvested. We should also be able to harvest things at higher hunting levels that no other profession can get, but yet they need. What I mean is, say a medic needs a special organ off of a certain creature to make a special medicine. Well, the only way to get it, is for a Scout of say level 4 hunting, to kill and harvest that particular creature. Same for artisans and chefs. They should need special ingrediants for high level stuff,that only a high level scout can get. Makes the scout proffession useful.
Camps, need to be changed. I think at higher leves, maybe even up into Rangers, camps should be semi perminant. What i mean is that they dont disband just because you got into combat. I should be able to go anywhere within say 50m of my high level camp, get into combat, and my camp wont disband. This way they are much more useful, esepcially in a group, and when I am maxed out for skill, I don't care about xp anymore. Its very annoying to be in my camp, have something attack me and the camp disbands, especially when there are others using my camp.
Thos are my thought, Squidwalker
Hrmm just an idea to give the scouts some other form of XP,
How about FISHING, I always thought hunting and fishing go hand in hand. Sure leave it so everyone can go fishing if they want as a past time in the game but give us scouts some XP for doing it.Maybe add higher lvl fishing poles to catchlarger fish as our hunting lvl goes up. Its also totally logical. Man has always hunted and fished for survival. Then again if that came in eventually we'd have some griefers looking for large boats out on the lake retreat on naboo. Its a gorgeous area and would be awesome to get a lil r'n'r out at the retreat while gaining a little bit of XP fishing away on the lake.
Sure the mask scent thing is nerfed from what it was, but just yesterday i was out taking down a bocatts lair. Right beside it was a nest of Kreetles. I left my maskscent up and went prone to snipe out the bocatts. I noticed it kept saying i was getting 29 XP over and over. I think your different postures also effect if a creature sees you or not. Since i was prone right in the middle of a kreetle lair with maskscent on i racked up a couple hundred XP then went and harvested the bocatt lair once i took it out. The maskscent for me seems to work right againstaggro animals quite a bit of the time. Its just that go anywhere withing 70 meters of a yellow and it instantly drops. Why is it that i can hide from the po'd creatures but not the passive grass eating ones, or the Shaupausts lying around half asleep?
> Scouting at its most basic level, is the ability tofind
> and avoid the enemy,discover the best path through the
> wilderness, pass through these areas without a trace,
> and survive with nothing more than what you carry with you.
LOL this couldn't be farther from the truth. Scouting, at it's most basic level (Novice), you have exactly ONE way of getting xp for the Exploration and Hunting branches - killing creatures. Even if they "fixed" /maskscent, it's obvious that they no longer wish for it to be a viable means of getting xp (if 100ish per success is too much, then clearly they want it to be far lower.)
> Regarding experience, you believe that pitching a tent should
> give the same XP as fighting an animal? Please share with us
> where you draw the reference from. Obviously the skill in
> setting up camp is much more dangerous and life threatening?
But, you see... It's backwards. I never mentioned pitching tents, which (at the moment) yields FAR MORE survival xp than anything else in the scout profession. Too bad it's survival xp and not scout xp. The xp cap on pitching tents is 600 PER TENT. Last I checked, it's impossible to get more than 100 scout xp for harvesting even a yellow con.
Squidwalker,
> Artisans can collect what they need for survey stuff with only
> artisan, but in order to get hides and bones they need scout.
Actually this is not true. They aren't required to get anything - they can trade for or buy 100% of their materials from other players (and many do.) I have THREE artisans on my friend list that give me creidts x 10 trade value on weapons and armour. Everyone makes out.
Conversely, I would like to see you explain how I can "buy" corpses to harvest.
> If you notice, there are almost no pure professions out there.
Explain this: How does a marksman go from novice to master without picking up, say, Entertainer or Medic along the way? Can a scout do the same? No - not without slumming on newbie mobs the ENTIRE time, and even then there would be far more down time than if you had weapon or un-armed skills.
-pooka
Boost exp? You have got to be kidding me. I reached master scout in the same time I reached Pistol Specialist. That's 1/4th the time it took me to get to pistol specialist. Scout xp is soooooo easy to get.
Shaneith wrote:
Two things for scouts.
1. Un-nerf the Maskscent....What I mean is make it work effectivly but give extremly low to zero exp. (I would rather it worked than give exp)
2. Boost exp, when it takes nearly double the hours of some professions to obtain master status, then something is wrong.
My point is this - no matter how you slice it, it SUCKED for me. I saw ZERO xp from anything but harvesting corpses. I spent so many countless mind-numbing hours killing newbie mobs (one after the other), that I came up with a VERY efficient key layout to help the process (I plan on sharing this in a new thread - so that eveyrone may have the shortest route from A to B until they give us another viable means of getting experience.)
I may very well be the first CH on Valcyn (I posted it in the CH forum, and got no replies...) But for me, not seeing one bit of the nerfed xp made it even more irritating to grind out that much scouting experience with harvest. For me, that's what the class was reduced to - a harvester of corpses. I just wish there were alternatives to the meaningless grind that I was forced to sit through. Yes, I have about 8k units of bone, hide, and meat in my inventory - that will come in handy working up Organic Chemistry. But the scouting xp just left a bad taste in my mouth. I may never play another profesison that is based on the scout class, unless these issues with xp and dependance on other classes are resolved.
-pooka
I find that VERY hard....no....impossible to believe... How did you get scouting xp so fast? Unless you were the only scout in some "big game" groups, I dont' see it possible to get even Exploration and Hunting before Pistol Spec. Were you using /maskscent?
-pooka
p00ka wrote:
TheNothing,
I find that VERY hard....no....impossible to believe... How did you get scouting xp so fast? Unless you were the only scout in some "big game" groups, I dont' see it possible to get even Exploration and Hunting before Pistol Spec. Were you using /maskscent?
-pooka
I only used mask scent like 4 times the entire time. never really worked for me. now that I am in the ranger line it actually works really well at hiding me.
Actually I solo'd the entire time. The few times I did group, I wouldn't get hardly any scout xp cause I had to share with the rest of the group the kills. That's the main reason I solo all the time. Makes it cake to lvl hunting.
After hitting master scout, I harvested a bunch of low lvl animals for around 1 1/2-2 hours to get enough xp for ranger. <shrug> Seems way too easy to me.