That is where you are wrong. Three professions are nothing but military. Combat Medic, Commando, and Squad Leader. Those very terms indicate they are military. As do a number of tier names including Sniper, Gunner, Soldier, Assaulter, Grenadier and a host of others. They indicate that those skills are military in nature. The list is even longer if you include the para-military or dual use names. Rifleman itself can be a military name for Infantry. Carbineer has a similar dual use.
Ever hear of a lone sniper shooting innocent civilians in a town? They might have military training but the military will not claim responsibility for that person's actions. Similar examples can be pulled up for most of those, especially in the context of the game.
A purely military role would indicate that you could only use your skills in the service of the military. That is exactly why players can't sign up to be Storm Troopers--they are military units that don't get a personal life. Yes, they might get a bit of leave but they are usually on the job and have to do what they are told. Players are not meant to be military. Their skills or titles might be used in a military fashion (they can even get military ranks) but they are not sitting around, forced to do what the Empire/Rebellion tells them to. That wouldn't be fun.
On the other hand, you seem to be making this a discussion of semantics. The main point of a game is to have fun. The titles are there to add flavor to the game and give some idea of the types of skills a player might have. Many Rangers believe a role centered around Recon would be fun. There is no balance reason why we cannot be given that role and our prereqs are not completely divergent from that role (significantly less than a smuggler's skills stemming from pistols and unarmed, I would argue). That is enough of a reason to implement a role. Having semantically accurate titles is a bonus--this thread does ask for title ideas so that this can be achieved. The Ranger tree needs a complete revamp, not just a few upgrades. There is no reason we can't push the Devs towards any role that we believe is justifiable, fun, and balanced. A single role is not enough for an elite profession but it helps discussion to think of one driving role and several sub roles. The Ranger community (at this time) appears to believe that Recon sounds like a more fun role than Survivalist. Being that this is a game based in a fictional universe, that is a reasonable argument.
As for the titles, they don't completely define the skills. Just because we have a recon focus doesn't mean that all the recon skills in the game must go to us. Commandos are not the only heavy weapons users, even if they are heavy weapons specialists. But we would like to be the best suited for recon and there is no current reason why we can't ask for such a role. There is also no reason we can't use something like the High Tech Field Base as a recon post with all sorts of sensor feeds from satellites and everything (have you seen that thing?). On the other hand, we would still need a slicer to hack into an enemy computer system.
Again that is hinting at class interdependancies which i love. We would be able to get certain info, by visual analysis, research and satalites but then you also have smugglers who could use our htfb to gain more insight into more specific intel areas via slicing.
Such areas could include finding vuln times for bases, the stats on a certain weapon, the skill layout of the players at the base, id even go as far as to say listening in on conversations, now that would be fun. Two different intel roles from two extremely different professions, i like that idea.
Ok time for my 2 cents on what the rangers teirs ought to be.
Primary role: Woodsman: This role places us as survialists, hunters, terrain negitiators. We live in the wild, have the ability to live off the land and negotiate large distances. By being woodsmen we have the largest ability to be both efficent at creature harvesting and foraging (wither that includes medical forageing it's a disscussion for another time) as well as building camps, hides (camaflage that s in the form of a temp structure similar to camps), camoflage, traps as well as other equipment we are required to use.
Secondary role: Recon: This role comes with the use of rangers as a robust character in any party, wither it is to advance infront of a party giving vital information back to the leader of a party, or wither it is tracking down a large creature for hunting. In cases of hunting people we provide detailed information as to their party size, and what they are equiped with (could be a faction war?). With creatures it could be the statics, how much of a challenge it is to kill.
Ok with this Teir the aim is concealment, wither it's from players or animals the ability not to be sensed is vital for the rangers. With concealment, this can work in the form a ghilie suit, to masking their own scent, to building a hide, or just simply blend in with the outdoor enviroment . (before wasted get's on my case about ghilie suit (anyone calls them a gila suit and I've got a few nightsister rancors to meet them) they are used by scottish game wardens and were NOT used by millitary until WWII, and before you ask yes they are still used in places by scottish game wardens (more in the protection of endangered wildlife)).
Teir 2: Terrain negotiation and Tracking: (pathfinder)
box 1: Basic Tracking and terrain movement box 2: Improved tracking and Terrain movement box 3: People tracker Adv terrain movement box 4: Exceptional tracking and terrain movement
The idea behind the pathfinder is that they are able to move through terain with nearly or none at all terrain negotiation. Also with this tree our ability to track anything in the area or on a more specific mannor if hunting a spectific prey able to zone on on that target and follow the trail, though this may wearout with time and elements.
The idea behind this teir is that an Outdoorsman is able to construct a wide varitey of items which a ranger is required to use as well as experiment on their quality, wither this is traps, constructions, hunting equipment (blow darts, bows, whatever), camoflage, and the list can go on. As the outdoorman goes through the teirs they receive more adv toys to play with. Also Camps become reusable, meaning while their up they will lose condition points as well as general wear and tear from basic use (similar to verichles atm). Also to increase the usefulness of rangers we have portable dataterminals which allow those of the Roguish\military proffessions the ability to gather information wither it is faction detectors, local area stalite detection, or simply allow last known position of targets or send false information across the network of datapads extra.
The idea of this teir is the combat section of rangering, here we benifit through trapping and our combat abilities against animals (and yes in general combat abilities. As the ranger progresses through the hunter teir, he learns about creatures, what are their habits etc, and about the kills, what are the prime choices of meat, and what are the best hides. As the ranger progress this ability increases the ammounts of units types increase, as well as when group hunting, the ranger also gets an increase of the ammount they harvest (for example basic group harvest atm requires 40% given out therefore a ranger should be able to expect a better harvest even grouped. Also in this skillset the ranger is able to use a combination of traps/weapons to create traps of larger scale and or capible of effect NPC's and players. also on the side of exceptional hunter a sudden kill option could be brought in to make it more worthwhile, the sudden kill means exactly that, takes the fun out of combat but instead it give's better quality meats, not allowing the animals to tense up extra, this would either effect a ranger specific weapon if ever brought in) or just a general combat weapon. As well as that we would also various combat bonouses (defenses etc, well combating animals is pretty much like fighting 13 yrold jedi )
Message Edited by Huntseeker on 12-27-200404:46 PM
Karimicu's Sukkarius Master Ranger\Bounty Hunter CAUSAL FIZZ PLAYER VT-49 Decimator R.A.M.B.O {Ranger Armoured, Mobile Base of Operations} Y8-Minning ship RAMBO II {Ranger Armoured Mining Base of Operations}
I think ranger is a cool profession but suffers from a lack of variety.
Camps should, in addition to getting bigger, offer increased variety. What about the ability at Master Ranger to repair vehicles at a camp? Make the requirements for making the camp include items such as power to reflect this.
Give Master Rangers the option of buying a faction camp kit that they then add to a camp so that they can, when overt, errect a faction camp complete with a small turret and recruiter. Maybe make rank mean something and allow better faction kits as the ranger's rank improves. Maybe eventaully add small fortifications, trenches, something along those lines.
Allow camping kits that produce a mission terminal.
These should not be all in one camp, but multiple choices. And the list of items needed should represent the strength of a camp.
These are just a few ideas regarding camps because camps come into play making a ranger a valuable addition to a group. But what about a small percentage reduction to encumbrance when wearing organic armor? Or ranger specific weapons, nothing uber just different.
I've just read through this page of the thread, and wanted to comment on a few emerging themes. I'm splitting this up into two parts, philosphoical and practical:
As ranger is now, we shouldn't really be called Ranger, we should be called "Hunter", or even "Master Hunter", that's what we are, because are so creature orientated. The only thing we can do towards non-creature entities is /areatrack them, then additionally we can provide player service/support by means of camoflauge and camp healing (albeit incomplete; we lack battle fatigue healing).
As has been said, a strength of "ranger" is that we have no other prerequisits but scout, which means we are free to choose any other profession. This is a strength because it means you don't have to as combat orientated as most rangers are. You could go ranger/bio-engineer for example, and use your stealth to help you get your samples. To get more mainstream though, we have the freedom to go firearm or melee, which does create a big difference to how a character functions.
With this freedom in mind, if we look inwards to "ranger", we have both combative and non-combative abilities. From here, we must start thinking of "how to think outside of the box" and to question what a ranger is.
"What IS a ranger in SWG?",
and then from this we must ask: do we want to flesh out both our combative and non-combative roles or do we want to just focus on one or the other?
The role of recon has been brought up. As has been rightly said, recon can be done with or without stealth. However, you must ask yourselves, in what SWG-related context could a character actually perform recon? (regardless of stealth or lack there of). The actual act of reconnaissance is to gather information on your ememies/opponents. Well in SWG we can already do this, you use the chat box! The only further way I think this could be realised is by a group effectively using a "recon" skilled player as some sort of "sensor probe"
Let's go back to the posts which said ranger is perhaps too creature orientated. First lets look at the combat-effective side of ranger. If we want to be less constrained to creature combat, we have a problem. Every mention in the past of giving rangers some sort of offensive capability towards NPC and/or players has been met with fierce opposition, both on this board and elsewhere. (For the record, I think we should be able to use our traps on everything, the only differences between people and creatures would be the relative chance of success, imho).
Combining the above two paragraphs, we tentatively come to the issue of stealth. At this point we have the same problem as riflemen do with conceal shot in PvP. SOE have said they'll never allow stealth against players, because players could find external programs to crack other players stealth and hence render a stealth system useless.
Progressing from that a little bit, perhaps, rather than Ranger having combat pre-requisits, we could have a whole raft of skill mods bestowed onto us as we progress (i.e. skill mods for all combat professions, only "active" once you take novice in a given combat profession). Not only would this reward people who specialise in a single combat skill, but it would also assist those who choose to split their skill points between different combat professions (for instance you take carbine or rifles, and a melee profession to finish off anything that gets up close to you). However, then we must ask, should these skill mods only apply to creature combat?
Well all of the above covers the possible combat dimensions of what we do. Let's talk about non-combat things. Personnally, I think some sort of herbalist skills should be added, this would add a whole new crafting dimension to what we are. This is possible that we'd step on territory of chefs and doctors, however other professions overlap, so why shouldn't we?
This is perhaps a personal bias, but I think that whatever ranger becomes, it should ahere to two rules. Our abilities should enhance and be useful to a group, but at the same time, we should be far more self-sufficient in the wild when we're alone than any other profession. Here's my suggestion, we forage for ingredients to make poison/disease cures, however we need to be in a camp to do this. Therefore, it forces the use of camps (perhaps crafting station would be required), and it makes foraging more useful. Yeah okay, this isn't too far out of the box, it's still relying on existing skills.
That's all for now.
Message Edited by DaveG on 01-04-200502:25 AM
Freelance hunter and pilot - Available for hire. Correcting the timeline, one Jedi at a time. Sheriff of Mos Aga'me, 1KM West of Mos Eisely, Tatooine, Farstar. IGN: DaveG I didn't use buffs or uber armour, so why did the combat revamp have to spoil my game? John Smedley and SOE: Reap what you sow
As you can tell by my post count, I dont post here much. But after reading through this thread, which started out so great, I'm inspired to comment. I've been playing the ranger since I started in swg, it's part of who I am. In RL I was an infantry soldier (86-94), 14 years ago I was a team leader for an LRS team (used to be called LRRP). We were all about stealth, our job was to sneak in, recon some critical point (for days at a time) and get out alive, which meant nobody ever saw us. Being an army ranger, to me, is not about being in a ranger bat, it's about being an elite, you don't learn to shoot a rifle at ranger school, you learn about patrolling and small unit tactics (and how to stay awake and alert when your body is telling you it's about to give out). Being a swg ranger I see myself in a similar role, in my group of friends we go hunting with me tracking for targets, and especially with tough ones like sisters I head out and get in range of them to see what's up first, using camo. Then call out to the rifles what i think is the best avenue of approach. Recon is an important skill, if it's not the ranger's job in swg, then who's is it? This is what ranger means to me, please don't anyone here lecture me on what ranger SHOULD mean TO ME. I've been so excited to see all the great ideas in this forum and hope that the devs will use them, but I also trust the devs to keep the class balanced with the other classes based on their big balance project.Sorry I wrote so much.
My comment on the tiers is that in each tier I think the level 4 box should include bonuses for the group that the ranger is in. He's the group guide and leader through the wilderness, while the SL will lead them in combat and confer bonuses to them there, the ranger should be able to give the team some skills. terrain neg may be an overlap, get a bonus from SL for efficient formations and the ranger also for efficient pathfinding.
"You don't learn to shoot a rifle at ranger school, you learn about patrolling and small unit tactics (and how to stay awake and alert when your body is telling you it's about to give out)"
This is also how i feel about the situation. Rangers in swg have so much potential and so much room for development. I have never wanted to be a super scout and its the top concern in my eyes for our revamp. We should definatly take what we learn in scout on board but ranger should be ranger, an elite proffession in its own right.
Put it this way:
You go to scout boot camp, you learn how to trap, hunt, conceal, survive and gather information. To learn this basic skills you use them on targets and prey that are less of a threat to you, and refine your techniques.
Then you qualify for ranger camp. You take what you have learnt and learn how to become a ranger. You dont learn how to be a better scout, you learn to become a ranger. This may involve enhancing aspects of the skills you learnt at scout boot camp but they are not advanced scout skills, they are ranger skills and part of what make you a ranger.
So you get into ranger camp, you start learning how to pathfind, how to lead a group through rough the wilderness, how to gather intel, how to move without getting seen and how to use the wilderness as a weapon and tool. The skills you learnt in scout boot camp give you a basic understanding of the areas you could cover in ranger but these are ranger skills and are not designed to just enhance what you already know. They are meant to take what you know use it as a foundation to learn something else, to learn ranger.
I think also as much as we rangers don't want to be super scouts that the scouts don't want to be lesser rangers.
Why can't we have a whole tier of ranger that is all about the combat aspects of being a ranger? Have that tier include recon and ambush skills. Some may say that would encourage dabbling, so what? If dabbling is so bad then each of the elite professions should be just 1 skill box that costs lots of points. Characters in swg are so diverse because of our ability to dabble. My thoughts on tiers run a bit like this:
1. Wilderness movement. Skills include movement and camo from critters. Skills are conceal, lure, distract.
4. Pathfinding. recon and infiltration skills, people and player tracking, rescue and people/player traps.
so if ranger means to you hunting, go 4040, if it means combat support maybe 4004, make herbal enhancements go 0400, but there will be some good top end levels of the skills in the master box to bring it all together as a true master of it all.
I think also as much as we rangers don't want to be super scouts that the scouts don't want to be lesser rangers.
Why can't we have a whole tier of ranger that is all about the combat aspects of being a ranger? Have that tier include recon and ambush skills. Some may say that would encourage dabbling, so what? If dabbling is so bad then each of the elite professions should be just 1 skill box that costs lots of points. Characters in swg are so diverse because of our ability to dabble. My thoughts on tiers run a bit like this:
1. Wilderness movement. Skills include movement and camo from critters. Skills are conceal, lure, distract.
4. Pathfinding. recon and infiltration skills, people and player tracking, rescue and people/player traps.
so if ranger means to you hunting, go 4040, if it means combat support maybe 4004, make herbal enhancements go 0400, but there will be some good top end levels of the skills in the master box to bring it all together as a true master of it all.
Now that approach I like.
While it's great to have people with their master Ranger tags and all, if the profession as a shole is able to offer ways for players to enhance their characters, be it by specialising in one or two lines OR using 'ranger' as the core for their character and picking and chosing in other profs, that's got to be good for us, the players and the game itself.
We need to be fully fleshed out 3d characters, not simple 2d cartoons.
Right then, my tuppence on the situation. Firstly let me say I am not a ranger. Have just finished scouting and it was where I was looking to go next which is why I came here to find out more about it. To find this discussion raging. So rangers, military or frontiersmen, or both. I was looking to do ranger because I wanted the whole, go anywhere, live off the land, hunt anything idea. Which is great, however surely one of the fun part of swg is groups and taking on either other players or npcs. And I end up feeling daft that, a) a trap that can hold a creature 5 times larger than a player can't affect a humanoid and b) I can hide from creatures with superior senses but can't avoid a group of hostile npcs. So to address what I'd like and what I feel about the character:-
If the Primary Role is recon/stealh = great, If I can hunt down and track squills, bantha's, etc I sure as hell should be able to follow a bunch of noisy storm troopers. The other thing to look at with this is where did scouts/rangers first come from. They were trackers, bushmen/woodsmen who then adapted their skills to track/hunt people as well.
If the sub roles are Hunting Guide = great, but would be nice if rangers were at the front of a group and leading it, called on for our skills as wilderness and animal experts.
Survivalist = I like the idea of being able to know cures for poisons and possibly being able to manufacture and use/sell poisons as well? Use of plants/herbs as medical uses I like the idea of too. The further up the tier you go the better your poisons/medicines get? Someone mentioned a tent as a ranger's home. The idea of keeping one tent instead of making a new one each time. This to me seems a good idea, not necessarily as their home but it seems very wasteful to make a new one everytime you want to camp.
Ambush/Trapping = Trapping to me has always been 'taking something alive' As opposed to swg which has traps as differing grenades really. The idea of being able to sell a live creature would always seem to be a better way of making money then selling it's component parts. As for ambushes, not sure how you would set them up. To me an ambush is lying up in wait for someone/something. So unless you know exactly the route a convoy/herd/squad/person takes I don't know how you would pull this off. Unless of course you could mark a trail...the equivilent of dragging a bloody corpse over ground to leave a trail for something carniverous. Think Chewie on Endor with that carcass of meat. Or in the case of an npc leave a trail of loot, empty food container's that kinda thing to lure them in. Even, perhaps at the higher end of this tier the use something electronic which sends a signal/ emits pheremones to creatures to lure them in. Or perhaps a radio signal to lure in npcs.
So maybe I'm barking up a tree here, but my general opinion is someone who is capable of tracking, hunting and trapping a wild animal should be able to do the same to npcs and players. However, if the Ranger character is going to undergo a revamp do I want to wait until it has before learning ranger skills or is all this wishful thinking with no time scale? And also as has so rightly been said, there is an awful lot to be said for hybrid chracters. If we were all rangers plus 1 weapons speciality would be a boring world.
Hi Ymegaar, if you do go ranger, let me know as a fellow Farstarian!
Just a small penneth and I imagine it has been said before, but I've always been disappointed that the Master Ranger/Master Rifleman template which is common and which I have gone down is so sp heavy that I can't even get a sniff of Creature Handler... something I think it makes sense for Rangers to have as part of their template/hybrid look.
sand, soil and sea d'nara ci-iki, master ranger, FarStar
Keep watch over the worlds, Encourage the faithful, Restore the lost, Build up the community; so that you may be amongst those who are truly known as a Master Ranger.
First, a ranger is a hunter. Now whether you choose to hunt an animal or a person... you're still hunting. Get it? Ok. So next, what to do about it.
Primary Role - Survivalist My reason for this is because life is above all else. You can die for a friend, but you still saved his life, so you're in fact a survivalist. You just didn't survive your life.
Sub-roles - Recon, Hunting
Tier 1 - Frontiersman - I know what you're all thinking. This is a given. However, I got a few ideas to spruce this up a bit. I still do not know the reason why people are allowed to spawn vehicles outside of cities or tents. The devs should never have allowed this as a tent became basically useless. Secondly, with Robot droids all over the place, it makes a camp even more useless. So here's some new ideas. Someone wrote earlier that a ranger really wouldn't need to have a house, because he should be able to just live in a tent. I like this idea. And I want to expand on it a little bit. In the beginning you make a tent. Then you're able to add a few items. Then you're able to add another tent to add even a few more items and so on and so on. Now the next part is kind of complicated, so stay with me.
SWG is an online game. It's online to get people to interact with people. Not to be lone heroes. We're meant to work together. So my idea is if you have a tent down and another ranger comes to town. He can just add onto your tents and before you know it, you have a mobile base. Secondly, this thing about the doctors sitting in front of the spaceports annoys the hell out of me. So only allow them to buff people in a medical facility or in a camp. And secondly, lower the numbers that a person can heal by using a droid. Make it higher in a tent.
A camp is for food, rest, heal, planning, and preparation. So, only allow people to eat in camps as well. And damn it. A camp entertainer should remove BF. Ok. Now for planning and preparation. Preparation comes with the ability for you to make better traps and this should also be the only place where you can add power-ups to weapons.
Now I know what a lot of you maybe thinking... he's gone nuts and wants everything to be used in a camp. Well, like I said... this game was created for online play to create interaction. So MAKE the players interact. Ok. Enough said.
Tier 2 - Hunter - Camo is used here to get in and out of places. This should work for real players as much as NPCs. Make it so they can't see a blip if a person has fatigues on. Then, don't allow that player to be TAB'd with the tab key. The only way the person can attack back is by /target whoever or by actually looking around and clicking on them. Line of sight needs to be 100% for this to work, though. Secondly, it'll actually make people night fight. When real fights actually occur.
Tier 3 - Recon - Information of [target] shall be given here. Instead of /areatrack to select a player, animal, or person, they should all be one. With the ability to just push a new tab button at the top of the screen to filter out information. Secondly, information should be a lot more fun to play with. The longer you're /areatracking a specific target, you should be able to get more information. You're skill level will just determine how long you have to /areatrack a target. Soooo, time for some examples of what I'm babbling about. Let's say I select a specific person from /areatrack. Right away I'll be given direction. A second or two later, the distance. A few seconds later, his health. A few seconds later his entire HAM bar. A few seconds later, what Armor he has on. A few seconds later, if he has a pet out or if he's grouped and with who. Then you can start getting information about that group. And maybe if you've been there watching this person for 5 to 6 hours or so, you should be able to hear spatial information from a few hundreds of meters away, immitating that you bugged him. Something like that.
Tier 4 - Assault - Quick assault or ambush. Either way, when you hunt an animal, you wait for it to get into perfect distance, with a clear clean shot. When you strike at a person or group, you all should have the ability to get a first couple shots in as they *panick* so you can eliminate them quicker.
A ranger is more than just a hunter. It's the one survivor.
Message Edited by surreal_entertainment on 01-18-200511:11 PM
well i'm not even a ranger, though i have considered going the direction once or twice...
A couple guildies (1 who is and 1 who has been master ranger) and I got talking last night about a "ranger revemp" (we were thinking of professions other than smuggler that needed a revamp and got stuck on the cool things about ranger )
Anyway i'll give a description/idea of what we came up with as well as the sort of things we assumed or set as standards for the sake of not getting tied into too many things.
What we decided on first of all was that a master ranger should be a pve-focused temp, or more appropriately the pve profession of all pve professions. essentially the pve solo class to trump all others. A Master Ranger should be able to leave "civilization" (cities, outposts etc) for days or even weeks on end, only returning to town to purchase a new weapon, food, or travel from planet to planet. This would have to mean that a ranger should be able to avoid civilization and still withstand the combat-oriented "obsticles" such as wounds and Battle Fatigue.
THE BIG IDEAS WE HAD:
First off, we agreed that repealing the vehicle and pet calling abilities anywhere in the wild and restricting them to camps or greatly handicapping them (eg move the call time from 15 sec to 1.5 or 2 min) would benefit the profession. it would make camps more viable and useful, even if only for a limited use.
Camps should act as a PvE fortress. they should not disappear during battle to start, and should keep mobs of all kinds outside, as well as provide nearby members who are grouped with the ranger bonuses such as defense, accuracy, and possibly speed. Camps should also act as a "home away from home" for a ranger by (again) keeping enemies out and providing the ranger with battle fatigue and wound healing abilities (more depth below) as well as defensive bonuses, etc. to allow the ranger to be able to survive out in the wild better.
Master Rangers (only) should be able to harvest not just hide, bone, and meat, but all three at once. we felt this would provide a huge bonus to using the large number of skill points to master ranger and prevent dabbler templetes.
creature to-hit bonuses and accuracy and speed bonuses to ranged weapons. going along with the "stealthy, sneaky, jump-the-enemy" style of play, we thought a bonus to ranged weapons would be appropriate. nothing drastic, such as +5 when you hit master to accuracy and speed as an added bonus. Creature to-hit could be integrated into a tree and be more significant, supporting the idea that rangers have extensive creature knowledge and thus know weak points and how to hit 'em "where it hurts" more. effectively this could make either an accuracy or damage output bonus, but only on animal mobs. could be only for ranged or both ranged and melee weapons.
Healing. Again continuing the idea that rangers should be able to remain in the wild for extensive periods of time, we decided that again damps could be a solution. a camp would provide an accelerated wound AND BF healing rate, though the overall rate would still be slow and dependent on the camp's type (eg high-tech field kit would give 2x the rate as a given lower-level kit) this would ONLY apply to rangers, the feeling being that a ranger is confortable enough in the wild that the region itself would be enough to relieve the ranger of stress. scouts would not benefit from this skill, and the skill would allow different amounts of healing. BF would, for example, be only healable at master while health, action, and mind wounds would have heal speed affected by a skill mod. the other option we came up with was essentially wound medpack stims that could be constructed from materials foraged in the wild. they would require small amounts of resources such as "herbs" which could only be foraged for, would only be usable on the ranger who created them, and would have a highly-diminished effect on others (the ranger who crafted them can use them on himself/herself for a good heal, others recieve essentially nov medic woundpack heals). they would act as essentially a wound medpack, but would be called "wilderness survival kits" and again could only be used by the creating ranger. The idea behind this is that the ranger is in tune enough with his/her surroundings that he or she knows what things can heal them and how to apply them. the "natural herb medicine" of sorts.
Forage. not sure if rangers get this ability atm, but if not it needs to be added, and no matter what the circumstances, it needs to be increased. could be a skill for rangers allowing master to get more resource that novice.
More Camps. Not sure what everyone else's thinking, but imo the camps that you place on lok should look different (in both style and color) than the camps on dathomir. this could be either different camps for different planet, or just a different appearence when dropped. either way, similar plaets such as corellia and talus, lok ant tatooine, naboo and rori could have the same camp. It's completely an appearance factor, but would nonetheless make sense and look cool. (and i'll add that appearance is apparently important to the Devs because of the large amount of recent decoration loot added)
Well there's the ideas we came up with. hope some of it gets added to some extent. i'm sure i could pull 4 trees out of it, but i wont' bother for now.
My only real disagreement with this is the focus on Recon...
Don't pull Ranger away from the Hunting focus, but as a Ranger add to it the aspect of Wilderness Warrior, something like this:
RANGER: As a continuation of the Scout profession, Rangers improve upon the basic skills while adding to them skills more suited to combat in a wilderness environment. Hunting skills switch focus to include skills neccessary for surviving combat in harsh environments.
Tier 1: Wilderness Negotiation (Wilderness Survival Expert) Travel in the wilderness is more than just knowing how to climb hills or swim. Camoflague and Scent Masking allow travel without attracting the interest of locals.
Tier 2: Hunting Techniques (Expert Hunter) Hunting is still the lifesblood of the Ranger. Knowing not only what to hunt but also how to hunt are skills magnified far above that of the Scout profession.
Tier 3: Guerilla Warfare (Guerilla) As a wilderness warrior, Rangers excel. Their skill set includes abilities that change their Hunting focus from animal to sentient beings.
Tier 4: Wilderness Ambush Tactics (Ambush Specialist) Traps, be they for man or beast, are important to the Ranger mindset.
To prevent "1-Tier Wonders" the skills modifiers should be spread throughout the Tiers so that no single Tier mastery can give the highest skill mod's, perhaps such as...
Tier 3- Camo, Terrain negotiation, group mods, man-hunting, camps
Tier 4- Traps, man-hunting, creature knowledge
No one should be able to get the majority of skill mods without mastering two tiers minimum. This should also be done for Scout to prevent people from attaining most hunting skills with only 29 points spent.
Or in the case of an npc leave a trail of loot, empty food container's that kinda thing to lure them in. Even, perhaps at the higher end of this tier the use something electronic which sends a signal/ emits pheremones to creatures to lure them in. Or perhaps a radio signal to lure in npcs.
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