The architect could quest for a few different new type of schematics. These being the Fish&Shellfish farm, the Eggs&Dairy Farm, and the Hide,Bone,and Meat Farm. Yes these could be better named  Each Farm takes up 4 lots. Also each farm has an extra requirement of special Biotissue I will talk about later and instead of power cost we have food costs to go along with regular costs. These farms can also be tied to a Ranger camp which I will talk about later when I mention the new camps. To find these new types of resource spawns we would get some similiar to the artisan survey line but only usuable by rangers so basically a ranger survey line. This would come with a few quests also to find the 3 new survey tools that we could use. These new farms would allow many of the under used schematics to become popular because the ability to gain resources in real numbers instead of 3 and 4 unit lots you find on the bazaar.

Again the forage skill should allow us to forage for the special reasearch data that goes into certain schematics. Forage always had the tag that specials items could be found, why not tie it into here to make it atleast somewhat useful Its not like its easy to forage and can be abused. Give us a chance to make loot an item that doubles or triples the effect of brandy Since it can be only used on 1 brandy it wount be too powerful. Heck any combination could be used here, like tripleing time which could be used in the low time schems or reducing filling. or whatever!

HEHEHE I want the forage skill useful for once. Every since beta I have been dreaming this skill would help me find great treasures. SO far though it has been nothing more than a nuisance. I would love to pull up a nice little item that could be added to something to make it a little better

Master Bio-engineers that are also master rangers can quest for special schematic/s that will allow them to make a special biotissue that supplies the farms with specific types of resources/creatures to compliment the new farm idea. you would need the Bio-engineer to sample the creature and the ranger part to make the schematic. Heck you could also do this without the req of being master bio-engineer, since they can just supply the ranger with the tissues. But I always tend to keep things harder to obtain Also these tissues can fuel the harvestors for 30-days at a time before they need replaced.

This just adds depth to the profession and also adds worth to another profession, how can that be bad

Lastly you would add more effectiveness to the Bioengineers sampling ability by adding in +5 to the top of all four branches of ranger and to master ranger giving the Bio-engineer a +25 to sampling. This would allow a bio-engineer who specialized this way to sample faster and sample higher level creatures so that they could be a little bit ahead of other bio-engineers. This goes good with the rangers superior animal knowledge and makes sense a master ranger could have a little info on helping make creatures

Oki reason for this is because many rangers have stated we need some type of weapon. By adding this we gt an equivilant of a weapon that suits us and wont make us anymore powerful than a creature handler with two lines of CH and the harvesting line in ranger. Which happens to be the only used line in ranger right now Giving creature handlers +30 levels really doesnt change them much. There are no huge creatures above level 70 that can be tamed and any made available in the future will be controlled by SOE. Also at present CHers can have 3 awesome level 23 creatures or they could have 3 creatures at level 33 with basically the same stats from a bioengineer. So really all this does is open up more content for both professions.

Lastly I think two new skills should be added into the Rangers old harvesting line. First one you get at harvest2 which gives you the ability to gallop with your mount non-stop. It may not seem like it makes sense that a creature can gallop forever but we dont see vehicles able to drive nonstop without refueling. Basically adding functionality to mounts that doesnt exist now. Next would be adding in Animal Calm in at harvesting4. I dont know if this should be tied to any skills to effect how likely you are to fail or not though. But I think this skill is needed generally and is very useful when trying to tame a rare baby thats attacking you Basically just giving a 25% chance to fail is all it really needs to be useful and wont allow you to abuse the command.

Next we get to quest for a special tool on everyplanet that allows us to track that planets big game. Yes I know I am adding in a ton of quests here But rangers are just that type of people, we want to hunt down our special items and not just have them all handed to us. These tools point us in a general direction and are tied to our ranger survey skill on how wide of a range they will allow us to see. We pick our game then follow the tool until we find a high scent of the creature and then use our FORAGE skill to see if we can dig up any clues on how close the creature is. If we are lucky will will forage a special item that we can add to the tool, then have it point us in a new direction where it might possible be. This happens a few times depending on how lucky we get and how tough the creature is to find in the wild. Basically making the hunt 15-30minutes long to have it special spawn the creature or npcs we are looking for.

There should be special Camps that act as houses for rangers, Just like merchant tents. They take 2 lots just like a normal house and can store 150items just like a regular house. Only rangers can make these houses and as you guessed it only from a quest. There are different house types can can get also. These are tied into the new farm idea because sme of these houses create a 100% spot withen a certain radius of a camp making each farm able to produce more. These camps should be able to encompass 10 farms withen its radius. I dont know how you would do this either by a true radius effect like a city with a bonus or have each farm able to tie into the house with a manual command. There would be different types of houses for each type of farm giving a good deal of questing for us

Wayfering really has no use. not unless you either upp the cap on run speed, or give us a perma sprint button along with a bonus to our vehicle and creature terrain negotiation. Or something along those lines. You did it for jedi so why not us

Message Edited by NikkiDial on 07-25-2004 07:59 PM

"keep range on tracking the same"

we definitely need a larger tracking radius.. a lot larger.

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NikkiDial wrote:

Oki I have done alot of reading on these boards and have come up with these ideas on how to easily fix ranger. There are no easy fixes for Ranger in my opinion. There are some small things that need to be tweaked, but these aren't "fixes". They are bugs. The things we need to "fix" us are complex balance issues as well as identity issues and the need to set the Ranger more in the Star Wars universe. As it stands we are an amalgamation of different ideas of Ranger and we need a "Star Wars Ranger" identity.

 

The first thing that came to mind is that ranger is a support class and as such should have many levels of depth and dependencies so that we can all find out how we would like to play our ranger individually. This brings me to 3 areas I would like to focus on. Right now Crafters, Bioengineers, Creature Handlers-Wrong direction, in my opinion. I don't want to serve these other proffessions. I want my proffession to work for ME. I hunt not just for fiscal propriety, but because that's what I want to do. I like hunting big game. I don't want to be a servent to MORE crafting proffessions. I want my skillset to work for PvE and PvP...not to have skills that are usefull only to another proffession.  and all around Big game hunters use us or could use our skills to complement their own professions. This should be US. We shouldn't be a support proffession for big game hunters. We should BE the big game hunters.

 

CRAFTERS

 

This is how crafters can take advantage of us and how we can compliment crafters. At present their are many recipes that are underutilized because of how hard certain ingrediants are to harvest.

 

*snip*

Many people have been begging for farms. I know how hard it is not only to gather these items in quantity, but also how hard it is to get anyone to do it for you. Right now on the Eclipse boards 5k milk is at 150cpu. Do you know how often these auctions come along???? Hardly ever, and thats even with those inflated prices. I dont see why we cant add ways to harvest more of these items and just make new schematics be more resource specific to add the variety. BTW when is the last time you saw someone selling fish???????

The coding is already in for fishing/miliking. As far as I'm concerned, the scouts can have this. Would I like a faster way to fish? Sure. A faster way to milk. I don't care, personally. I don't want to be an organincs harvester. I want to hunt. I love fishing, but I do it as a way to relax, not to make creds. I milked a creature maybe....2 or three times in game. Giving me a way to do it faster isnt' going to make me want to do it more. I don't see how this is a "fix". Sure it's more creds...but only if I'm doing something I don't want to do in the first place.

Second is our own natural ability to harvest some of these resources. As it stands we have a total of +50 to harvesting once we reach master. I say remove the bonuses we get throughout the harvesting line and instead distrubute it like this. +50 at camping4 +50 at wayfering4 +50 at harvesting4 +50 at trapping4 and +50 at master level. This would give us an additional +200 to our harvesting skills and would allow us to be the true kings of harvesting.

This here maybe a little too high but as it stands we really arent that different from a regular scout with Harvest4 except they have 63 more skill points than us at ranger harvest4. So why not give us huge bonuses at the top of each line so it cant really be exploited.

yep, a big boost is harvesting would be nice. As would the ability to harvest multiple times or gather all resources at the same time. But there is a "hunting" line in scout and the equivalent in Ranger...that line should be where the harvesting is. Otherwise, what bonuses would that line get? I believe that there are boxes where the only bonus is to harvesting and foraging...are you suggesting that there be an entire line for foraging. That's what would happen in you took harvesting out of it's own line. I see the desire to have it split up so real rangers can get a bonus...but how about having a line that has hunting and also bonuses at the other level 4's and master.

*snip*

Again the forage skill should allow us to forage for the special reasearch data that goes into certain schematicsHEHEHE I want the forage skill useful for once. Every since beta I have been dreaming this skill would help me find great treasures. SO far though it has been nothing more than a nuisance. I would love to pull up a nice little item that could be added to something to make it a little better

Again, while this would be "cool", it's not a fix to our proffession. I probably wouldn't forage that much either way. Not to say that's it's undesireable, but people could/would abuse this system. I would just rather worry about larger gameplay issues right now than fixing a skill that I don't think is even used that much. YES, they should fix foraging...but only AFTER they fix the big issues. This is an annoyance...not a skill altering skill.

Bio-Engineers

 

*snip*

My idea is to allow Camo to be unbreakable by creatures at master level. Hey, I am a Bio-engineer and was the 2nd CHmaster on eclipse. So I know exactly what mask scent is good for and what its not. Having it not break only helps shave a little time of of taming and sampling.

I think this would unbalance us a little bit. I don't mind having it break...as long as it's by a creature of suitable level. Fix the kreetle breaking it and I'm fine. I'd also like to see camo do something better than mask scent. Stealth for example. Modifying us so that it makes us harder to hit with Ranged Weapons while it is unbroken. That's what would "fix" camo.

 

Master Bio-engineers that are also master rangers can quest for special schematic/s that will allow them to make a special biotissue that supplies the farms with specific types of resources/creatures to compliment the new farm idea. you would need the Bio-engineer to sample the creature and the ranger part to make the schematic.

*snip*This just adds depth to the profession and also adds worth to another profession, how can that be bad

Personally, I think this detracts depth. A *deep* proffession is one that is self-sustaining or that has skills across a broad range. This is just "gimmicky". I hate throwing down innovative ideas, and I apologize for doing so, but this seems more self-serving than Ranger-serving. Yeah, it'd be cool to have schematics that are Ranger-specific...but parts for a farm just don't seem Ranger-ish. I don't want to get schematics that serve another proffession. It'd be like giving the BH's a schematic for a weapon that Rangers could use. It just doesn't click. If the CH's and BE's are the ones who most benefit from farms...give them the farm schematics. I want no part in the farm. CH's are farmers. I am a Hunter.

 

Lastly you would add more effectiveness to the Bioengineers sampling ability by adding in +5 to the top of all four branches of ranger Im a bioengineer, so I know this added effect wont really help us.*SNIP*

You had it right. This wouldn't help us. This would help BE's. Thus this is in no way a fix for US...but rather one for BE's.

 

Creature Handler

 

SNIP

 

Rangers have often had trouble with being a class without a weapon. So my idea is to add +5 to the top of all 4 trees and +10 at master to maximum creature levels for a total of +30. This would allow Master rangers to have a +40 creature out and give a creature handler the ability to have and TAME a +100 creature or have 3 good creatures out at Master level. Right now there are no game breaking critters that a creature handler could get out or tame given the fact that they would have to invest so heavily into this template. It would also open up a new range of rare creatures to collect for those rare creature handlers that would like it this way.

Oki reason for this is because many rangers have stated we need some type of weapon. By adding this we gt an equivilant of a weapon that suits us and wont make us anymore powerful than a creature handler with two lines of CH and the harvesting line in ranger. *snip*

Again, Ranger need something UNIQUE. The Ranger weapon isn't just for a better killing. It's for a unique set of hunting powers that make us into the hunters that we are called by the game literature. It's for a sense of identity. Giving us bonuses to-hit creatures should be a given...but it does NOT equate to a weapon. Creature toughness, disease resistances and combat specials are what would help us. Again, this idea serves a different proffesssion...the CH. I like ideas..but try to forgo adding skills from other proffessions to ours. Think of how this would help someone who's not a CH....well, it wouldn't. I don't want to use creatures...if I did I would have gone CH.

 

Lastly I think two new skills should be added into the Rangers old harvesting line. First one you get at harvest2 which gives you the ability to gallop with your mount non-stop. *snip* I don't think that's a Ranger skill. We should perhaps get SOME unique skill with creatures, but pushing them to the max non-stop would be a CH thing. However, I do think our TN skills should transfer to them. That would be all  the help we would need.  Next would be adding in Animal Calm in at harvesting4. I dont know if this should be tied to any skills to effect how likely you are to fail or not though. *snip* Again, this seems more like a CH skill, but I can see the justification behind it. perhaps tying it into the already existant /rescue skill would make more sense. The reasoning for adding perma-gallop is basically I want to see dang mounts again and adding this feature would make this happen. As long as vehicles are so much more better no one will really take the mount option except the rare occasions.I use a mount all the time. I hunt with a Bantha for two reasons: A) a loyal tank to back me up and B) Being slower makes sure I don't miss any natural spawns if I'm on a contract getting a specific meat.  A basic calm with a 60sec timer and 25% chance of fail would offer us just the right balance for this new skill and cant really be abused.

 

Big Game Hunters

 

First Tracking needs to be updated. As it stands now it is incredibly hard to find what you are looking for. First I would keep the range of the skill as it is. After that the next item I would change is the way you are directed to creatures. i would instead of listing everything in the area I would List the type of each one then you can click on it to be given a waypoint to that creature.

I hate general directions cause its just lame. With the limit on range I think that giving waypoints wont be harmful. You still have to be withen like 250meters of the thing.

In my opinion, waypoints are bogus with this skill. /areatrack is buggy, but is good the way it is. You can't look at the tracks and tell exactly where something is. Your idea is similar to /track, the Ranger skill we were already promised. hopefully we'll get it. But /areatrack should stay just the way it is, but should be fixed so that the spawn system doesn't give it problems. It should list lairs/creatures about to spawn...not just ones that have spawned.

 

Next we get to quest for a special tool on everyplanet that allows us to track that planets big game. *snip* I had a similar idea that I was putting in my OUTDOORMAN 2.1 proposal. My idea was a mission terminal that would give us a single, possibly rare creature. We would be given a last waypoint or something and would have to track it down.  Essentially, it would be the Ranger version of the BH missions where there are several difficultly levels of missions. The first would be near the mission terminal and would be regular creatures. The next level would be a larger area and a high-level creature. Hunting IV or Master Rangers would get a creature they would have to track accross a huge area and would be a rare creatureIf we are lucky will will forage a special item that we can add to the tool, then have it point us in a new direction where it might possible be. This happens a few times depending on how lucky we get and how tough the creature is to find in the wild. Basically making the hunt 15-30minutes long to have it special spawn the creature or npcs we are looking for. Again...I'm a simple man. I don't want to have to forage crap. I don't want to need more tools and more stuff that detracts from me and my prey. KISS...keep it simple, silly.

*snip*

 

Lastly Traps should benefit us more. Ideas such as multi-state effects such as a blind/stun trap and other combinations. Make some true AOEs like the brawler spin attacks. Have them effect all types of creatures,NPC, and PCs. There should be some that reduce the resists on something by 20-50% of a specific resistance. There should be agression traps so that animals dont try to run and warp when they get close to death. Heck just so many things that can be added here that would make traps useful.

Hey everyother profession gets state effects why not us. Not only that we want good traps that justifies our skillpoint expenditure. I cant see how this would effect anyoen negitively.

WE do get a lot of state effects...how about dizzy? lol. I belive we also have multi-state effect traps. We also have AOE traps. The problem is that they aren't usefull enough in combat. See the original Outdoorsman proposal for the ideas on traps that have been given.

One Last Thing

 

There should be special Camps that act as houses for rangers, Just like merchant tents. *snip*

This gives our special housing and adds a new depth to the farming system if it was added also. Depth it what drives a game.

You mean like a hunting lodge? I think I've heard this before...

 

OOOO Ya, forgot about this....

 

Wayfering really has no use. not unless you either upp the cap on run speed, or give us a perma sprint button along with a bonus to our vehicle and creature terrain negotiation. Or something along those lines. You did it for jedi so why not us

 

 

 

So everyone what do you think????

In the end, I think you had a lot of good, interesting ideas. I think very few of them could be described as a "fix". None of these deal with the current imbalance of Ranger. As per your ideas, you would need BE or CH to get a lot of the benefits of this proposal. I'd rather stay a pure Ranger and see that balanced.

 

The main issues for me are: Combat/Hunting effectiveness, a unique Ranger identity, and a role in the GCW and (to a lesser extent) PvP. Your ideas, while "cool" don't offer me much in terms of those things. That's not to say that they aren't good. In fact many people may prefer your solutions to the ones proposed by me. I am in favor of Ranger being the best hunters while also being usefull in PvP. Others may not see eye to eye with that vision.

 

Personally my idea for fixes come from the Outdoorsman, Fred Skinner, Calc, Owen-Lars, Paks, JB, Squidwalker, Fodder, Ebe and a bevy of others who post regularly on issues that, to me, are the core issues of this proffession. But like I said, I do not speak for all Rangers. I just wanted to put my 2 cents in here and say that if we had to vote, I'd say that I'd go for a different idea of "fixes"

 

 

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NikkiDial wrote:

 

First let me say that I was the second master ranger in the game, only beat out by being first by just 2days. No offense...but so what? That doesn't mean you're the end-all be-all of Rangers. You could've been the first...and it wouldn't change the fact that I don't agree with your opinions. This is my third time being a ranger, So I have seen it at many different stages of progress and from different viewpoints as my skill sets had changed. I see what you want to do but you are only limiting what a ranger can do. Been a Ranger since August of last year. So far as I can see there's really only been two stages: before the 1st revamp and after. Camo kits and /areatrack are the only skills that have changed. Yes, a few skills have been changed, or given to others in their publishes...but Ranger itself has only had one BIG change...so I thnk I've seen about as much as you have. And I'm not trying to limit Ranger. I'm trying to expand it. I'm trying to give it an identity that is unique and different. You suggest we get skills from other proffession. THAT limits us to skills that are already in the game. I'm a supporter of Fred Skinners' stealth proposal. I'm a huge fan of N'Rass's modular camping proposal. I'm one of the people pushing the Outdoorsman proposal which would give us unique skills. I think that speaks agaisnt your accusation of me wanting to limit the Ranger, personally.

 

Im not trying to be harsh here, but you have not considered all angles. Not all rangers want to PvP. Not all rangers want to Big game hunt. Not all rangers want exactly what you want.I know that. I even said that myself. Multiple times. I agree, not all Rangers want PvP. But as I said, I don't JUST want PvP. I want to be PvE centric...but with a skill set that *could* be effective in PvP. I don't want "uber"... I just want skill that translate across a broader range.  I add multiple layers of depth so that it can satisfy as many people as possible without unbalancing us as a profession. In my opinion, all you did was make us CH/BE clones. That's not depth, that's stepping on toesYou seem to want them to create a new big game hunting class and then drag it over and stamp ranger on it. No, what I want is a Ranger proffession that doesn't steal skills from other proffessions and has a unique identity. Well they already have that its called master ranger/master swordsman or any other combination of combat skills.

 

You want to PvP then pick up fencer, rifleman or TKM to go along with your skills sets. Thanks, but I'd rather have stealth Ranger much like Fred's idea. A unique PvP ability that could be effective both in PvE and PvP. Sure add in state effect bonuses, but you have to remember it wont be alot of them since it has to be balanced with any other class that might take up ranger. Add in a general damage bonus also but it probably wont be alot since other professions could use it also. Giving us a new weapon set that is all around good for everything though is impossible. That is why I picked the simple answer of just giving us animals which is inline with what a ranger should be and has been in other games. But this game HAS a proffession which is "inline" with that idea. It's called CH and it's a seperate skillset. At the same time I didnt want to take away from the creature handlers so I made it small enough to add to their profession and ours in an equal manner. a huge bonus in creature level is a BIG subtraction from CH. It's part of their uniqueness. I don't want to steal from any other proffessions the way that other proffessions have taken from ours.

 

You say we should be more than just harvestors you forget that we ARE harvestors and throw out ideas that let us harvest other items more effeciently. No, we are NOT just harvestors. and if we ARE, then I want that changed. I don't disagree that we should have larger harvest bonuses. I'm a HUGE fan of better harvesting. I even said that we should be able to harvest multiple times and have a /harvestall option. That's more efficient. What i SAID was that I don't want to move all our hunting bonuses into the top 4 boxes. Then say that harvesting all three items on an animal is a better idea. Well its not a better idea.  I have never wanted all three items from an animal. When I kill something to harvest its because I want a specific resource and the rest of it would be no more than grind material for another profession. Not true at all. A few weeks ago Datho leathery hide and Datho carnivore meat were both EXCEPTIONAL. Peopel were buying both as fast as they could. I would have been twice as effective if I could have harvested multiple times or multiple resources. And if everyone had this ability it would make our profession worse. Not only that it doesnt solve the problem with the inability to effectively gather eggs/milk/shellfish/fish and anything else that is hardly available.As I said...fishing is the only of these skillsets I use. And I hardly ever sell the stuff. If we could do it more effectively, sure, I might...but probably not. Even so, this isn't the big issue in my mind. A boost to fishing will not make me enjoy the proffession that much more.  Most of these items sell for 200cpu ++++ And still no one wants to go gather them. That means its broken and it only makes sense to put the means to harvest them in our skill set some how.

 

Once again I am not trying to be harsh so dont misunderstand. With your idea of big game hunting you wanted to throw away alot of it. What I wanted to "throw away" were the ideas bringing other proffessions skills into ours. I wouldn't like it if Bounty Hunters got /areatrack because that's a RANGER skill. I'm pretty sure a lot of BE's and CH's would feel the same about another proffession poaching on theis skill set. I DIDN'T WANT TO THROW AWAY YOUR IDEAS ABOUT FISHING, MILKING,ETC. I just don't think that they're as big as issues as combat effectiveness and a Ranger identity. I have no problem with us getting these skills, but there are plenty of skills that I would put before these. Basically just grab a mission and point me in the direction I need to go. Well that would be terribly unbalancing with people just creating mission after mission of krayts and gorax and other things. The devs wont give us anything like that. We need to pay to play in whatever we do. You want big game hunting you will have to come up with a system that consumes 15-30minutes of our time to justify the free spawn. Um..how about 2 seconds. IT WAS PROMISED TO US A YEAR AGO!! How can the 2nd Ranger in the game not know that TH promised us the /track skill during our last revamp?!?

 

Trust me when I say I want whats best for this profession. And the only way you will fix it in the longterm is either scrap the whole idea as it is now and make a new combat class I don't want a combat class. I want a hunting class. You know...like we're called in the game. I want to get big harvests...but I don't want to just "tag along" for the hunt. like you want or we try to incorporate everyones ideas on what a ranger should be without unbalancing it as a class. Because more people want more than just another pvp template again...just to be PERFECTLY CLEAR since you've misquoted me about 8 times now: I don't want a PvP class. I simply want skills that can be used in PvP. /areatrack is one example of a skill that, when properly applied, is usefull in PvP. Stealth is another good example. Modular Camping. A Ranger weapon that would be more effective in PvE, but not useless in PvP. I don't want a PvP skill set. I want us to be the Anti-Bounty hunter. They are designed for PvP...but they can use an LLC to hunt big game. I want the opposite. We should be designed for PvE, but should be able to use our skills in PvP. or just another pve template. What other PvE template? We should be THE PvE template!!Rangers can be crafters, hunters, killers, tamers(umm...that's the CH's job), cloners (what?!?) and many other things with their extra skill set points but they cant be all of that or even half that all in one profession. You have to lay the framework and let everyone choose the way they want to build their character.

 

There is alot more I could say, but Ill stop here for now.

I think you must have read about half of what I said because you didn't understand what I meant at all. I liked a few of your ideas. The only ones I have real issue with are the ideas that steal skills from other proffessions. The others I just view as second-tier skills. Except the harvesting bonus. I agree we should get a bigger bonus. I just think that it should be distributed the way it is...not put in the top 4 boxes. In what way does camping XP make you a better harvester? How about trapping? Makes no sense. Just keep the bonuses where they are, but make them bigger and give a huge boost to harvesting at master. Simple enough. The multiple harvest/harvest all would also be a great addition at master Ranger.

 

By the way, you don't have to repost every time you have a new idea. You have an edit button so you can just add on to your old posts...

 

see?
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Message Edited by Phenix1050 on 07-26-2004 03:16 PM

Message Edited by Nemo0 on 07-27-2004 01:48 AM

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NikkiDial wrote:

Stealth will never be introduced.

...

 

Just because TH has said something doesnt make it fact.

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