Scout Archive

Fellow Scouts,

SOE finally did it to us. /maskscent has been nerfed with the addition of a delay. Now whenever you are detected it will take ~ 1 minute to turn maskscent on again. You will receive this message: "SYS MASKSCENT DELAY"

With this nerf exploring runs to Lok and Rori are impossible. Do not go to these places without a group or unprepared. It is virtually impossible to travel safely alone.

I had been following "PhoreverAPhan's" thread and it worked great for me. Luckily I got 40,000 xp using this system before they nerfed it and I am only a couple hours of harvesting away from CH.

I know there are those among us who have called this an exploit but I don't believe it was. My travels through Lok were the most exciting, dangerous, and most scout-like thing I had done yet in this game. Had it not been for this skill I might have never had the opportunity to see the imperial outpost at the volcano, shudder upon narrowly avoiding a flock of Flits, or observe a herd of Kimogila at play. Maskscent alone did not keep me alive there; it was only a tool that when used correctly resulted in xp for exploring - and isn't that what the point of being a scout is all about? Should there not be a skill which aids us in exploring without nerfing it to the point where exploring takes an hour to cross 500 meters of creature populated lands? The scout is no longer viable asthe explorer it was first intended to be unless higher tiers of scouting (E.g. Ranger) allow a player to overcome this nerf.

Yes, scouts were making great xp with this skill. And due to this skill scouts were exploring the galaxy and discovering new places and creatures. Their reports were exciting players' minds about the adventures and wonders ahead. Too bad SOE nerfed us and made the scout doomed to follow the groups as a harvester.

Long live the brave scout, who fearlessly wanders into the wild!

~ Neth

I totally agree. I had so much fun running from things last night.

I shouldv'e known sleep was overrated!

Wow... and if I'm not mistaken this has been change w/o notice or post change notes... Not sure that I ascribe to SoE's customer service policy on this one.....

Who knows.. by tomorrow this time (w/o warning) this might be a Barbie rpg... :/

Guess changes are on a need to know basis and the customer just doesn't need to know..

As PeNaNce said, there was NO announcement of this Nerf. I checked everywhere.

Add to that, SOE's 4 minutes notice of a server restart today left me on Lok in a field of reds with no time to get to safety. So when I logged back in I had to find out about this nerf firsthand... and in a hurry. Needless to say, I died. (I posted this on the SWG Discussion Forum - "Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.")

SOE really screwed up this time. This nerf destroyed the whole intent of the scout as an explorer class. I wish I could find Holocron's post a year ago about the explorer-type players and how he loved playing them. I wonder what he'd think of playing a scout now?

That's just so insanely typical.. I was really looking forward to explore using mask scent, and get some good xp at it.. Now i will have to kill 10000000000000000 mobs to gain novice creature handler.. This is really bad

Typical that a class gets nerfed when i start it.. just the story of my life i recon.. Well.. Dunno if i am going for scout/creature handler now.. A LOT easier to get pistol/range ++ typical..

What is the point of a scout if scouting is useless? I was thinking a scout was the one eg. running and scouting out where the best place to attack a lair of dangerous critters or similar.. now with that delay and the insanely inpredictble use of mask scent dropping a lot at random times, scouting is not doable at all..

Recon i might start sumtin else all together.. Sad.. was enjoying it so far, but now the whole idea of possibly scouting it is totally useless

While perhaps not an exploit, I can understand the problem from Sony's end of wanting have a way to decrease the amount of time required to get that much scouting experience. Personally I have been very frustrated with the knowledge that the only way to get scouting experience had been harvesting creatures, I just found out about this abilities for another form of scout XP last night, but wasn't able to use it since I still don't have Exploration II. Now I will not get to use it in the same manner of everyone else, which is fine.

What worries me is that it does drastically change the type of player a scout can be. I am primarily an explorer according to the Bartle scale, and was drawn to the scout because of that ability and role. The change, if it really is as bad as you say with the timer, will make this that much more difficult. So my questions to you guys who actually have been to the more difficult areas are this:

• Does it truly make that much of a difference on where you can go, ordoes it simply slow you down?


• Would a change to decrease the experience gain by X amount be a better option to camaign for?

Personally I can understand the pain of long development times, because that is generally what has made me leave a game in the past, routine boring development. But as long as there are new places for me to see, and interesting challenges, I'm usually happy. While not trying to be the "SOE Fanboi", I am curious if the change is honestly good in some format...

Here's a couple observations after testing this new nerf for the last hour while on Lok:

Based on something in PhoreverAPhan's thread about not being able to visit the same creatures repeatedly and a creature's memory taking 3 minutes to clear, I set up a 4 minute cycle between 3 Giant Flit nests on Lok.
I am a zabrak with explore IV.

1) The Sys maskscent Delay timer is exactly 1 minute.
2) The new patch/nerf is very buggy. I often received the message, "A creature has detected you, despite your attempts at camouflage!" yet didn't receive the corresponding "Your masked scent has worn off," and then continued to earn xp. Only to have the delay take effect long after I had left the vicinity of any creatures.
3) You can turn off maskscent and turn it back on with no delay.
4) The built in delay sometimes goes into effect long after you have been detected and then can take a lot longer than 1 minute.
5) Often I approached creatures with /maskscent up yet received no xp and no system messages about failures. I checked to make sure I was not revisiting any group without visiting two others first, and assured that well over 5 minutes had passed.

Using my above method of visiting 3 lairs in a 4 minute period I was able to make about 2000 xp in one hour; far less than the 12000 I made yesterday while exploring. The reliability... or lack of reliability of this patch makes exploring far too dangerous.

Please research this buggy new nerf and make /bug reports so that maybe we can at least get a consistently working nerf.

~ Neth

This is such BS...

It makes me sick to think that the scout can no longer scout and do what everyone thought the profession was for.

I have never once bitched about this game until now...do your research before going out and f'ing us over SOE.

SOE: Sucking Off Elephants.

Thanks for making the scout such an exploration class...can't wait to harvest ten billion creatures.

Like a previous poster said, nerf the XP...not the ability. It's not the XP we loved the skill for.

-Solara Syn-

I totally agree with nerfing the exp instead of the skill. SO how about this SOE give us something else like mask scent that will get us from point A to point B like maybe an item that we can use to maks scent since you screwed us all. That way we still have the 1 min timer on the skill but we can choose to make an item like mask scent stimpack kinda thing that still gives us the ability to scout but doesn't give us exp.

Luckly I got to Yavin 4 last night and got all but 2.5k exp needed for creature handler. Now they are nerfed too because you have to use mask scent to approach the aggro lairs to get a baby.

Or another fix could be this... I don't know how many times my mask scent has dropped because of stupid yellow mobs (yellow = non aggro) How about you atleast make it so they can't drop our mask scent. I'm not worried about yellows killing me only the aggro mobs.

SO instead of just complaining I'm offering suggestions on ways to not kill the most needed profession in the game. I mean seriously how many professions need scout to get to. THink about it, hopefully you'll do the right thing and give us the ability back with less exp or something. Ohh and a notice would be nice on something like this, if i hadn't hit my exp levels last night I would give up on the whole **edit** class.

I have thought a bit about the xp way to nerf, and that would be a much better way.. BUT.. do not nerf it as a regular, cos that would again make things bad..

I mean.. I am running around light blue mobs, and get 13 scouting xp.. This is small enough imo. The problem was that you could use mask scent on really red mobs, this getting very much xp per mob you got a success on.. It would be stupid to make this xp less, because when my skills get very high, and theese gets lover "level" to me, i would not want go only eg. gain 1 xp or similar..

So.. how to prevent the "exploit" thing of this? 2 Ways i recon..

1. Make a "roof" on how much xp is possible to get..

2. Make it so that if a monster is WAY red for you, mask scent will fail immediately

Choice 2 would make more sence, but might again bring the problems of the exploring scout to a similar nerf again.. So.. Best bet would be to go for #1 (perhaps in a combo that people mentioned before.. a longer time between each time you actually gain the xp).

Please.. Do NOT make it as it is now tho..

This is SUCH BS!!!

i finally got EXP3 lastnight right befor they shut the servers down. i was right about to leave off to Yavin IV to get some xp to hit Creature handler. right now i am a Transdoshan Master unarmed w/ vibroknuckles. well when i logged on today after the patch i went to there only to find the full effects of the patch. First off.......IT DOESNT WORK. i dont know if its Me cuz im a Trando...or if the patched just nerfed it. i dont recall the notes saying they nerfed the creatures resist or anything. only the delay. that really suks!

SO what am i supposed to do now? Its SOO HARD to fight in a group to get big creatures and ALOT of them are scout.....makes no sense.....U have to Make a cycle on who gets a turn to harvest...i can dish out like 300-400 dmg on berserk....but i still cant take really hard creatures alone that give good AMOUNT of HARVEST XP.

DEVS....u guys made the maskscent practically USELESS now.....GJ! (sarcastic)


As said above NERF THE XP.............NOT THE SKILL

Harvesting is just retardedly LONG......and irritating in a group filled with scouts...and those little creatures that give like 40xp......thats just retarded to hunt them for HOURS AND HOURS.

That's funny because I spent all day on Lok with no problems with my /maskscent. They need to make sure the game is balanced. You came in at launch so expect these kinds of changes. Now you can't run around with /maskscent on constantly... so what? It shouldn't be that way anyway... what is the point of the toggle if you can constantly reapply it? It is more of a applied skill now.. only to be used when it is actually necessary.

I also agree with nerfing the xp not the skill. I used this to travel safely through dangerous wilderness areas ... you know ... kind of like a SCOUT would. Whoever said that creatures would still attack you was wrong - I've run through the middle of groups of reds many MANY times and as long as my mask held, I didn't get attacked. I've also had it fail when I was out exploring and survived because I immediately re-applied it before I got attacked and thus survived. And I've had it fail and been attacked before I re-applied and died because of it. I think this removes a great deal of the "scout" in the scouting professions. How can I go ahead of my group to scout when I'm going to get mauled the first time mask scent wears off? Both the manual that comes with the game and the official strategy guide refer to scouting as a solo friendly profession. How can that possibly be the case now?

SOE - please fix this problem. If you're not going to, please explain what problem you were trying to address because itdoesn't appear to bethe xp problem. Were scouts not supposed to be able to travel safely through the wilderness? Were they not supposed to have some level of safety going ahead of the group or going out solo? What I'm getting at was were we abusing not just the xp but also the purpose of mask scent itself? I guess it could be used just when you were trying to approach dangerous creatures but doesn't that make it CH and BE skill?