Give actual Scouting Abilities back to Scouts and Rangers.

supafreak69 said:

It's a sandbox. You dont really need to see why somebody else would want the scout to have scout abilities., so they could play the outdoorsman. Just as I dont need to know why anybody would want to do a spin group.

We already lost ranger. Dont get me wrong, the new version is cool as heck, but it shouldve been a new class. You dont need to understand why people want to play a scout and build a camp out of hide and bone, and set up a camp while out adventuring.

That's all my friends and I ever do. Without that, it just feels weird. Master scouts forced to buy mass produced Glamping kits to take with them. Cant even scrabble together a basic teepee.

To hell with just using beacon clone camps as a spawn point for faceless nameless mobs of strangers. I appreciate the utility but not at the cost of losing the original purpose of scout and ranger for solo and small group play.

And why should scouts give a dip about whether architects may have less to sell, if scouts get back their rightful abilities? If any other profession had a core ability taken away and given to some other class, and asked for it back, why would they care that the usurper class would make fewer credits?

Id do away with modules altogether if it came to it. But let architects sell modules and the metal bunker elite camps, and let scout make the rest camps.


Scout for camping.
Architect for glamping.

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agreed

I'm new here so take that for what it's worth. I was super excited to come back and get some ole serotonin injections of playing my old toon again. A transdoshan ranger/scout/pikeman (now lancer)

May not have been the best build in the world. May have smelled a bit funny from being out in the wild for long stretches, may dress a little funny but if you needed milk and eggs....he was your guy. Then I'd roll a chef alt, open a little bakery on the edges of a city somewhere and just vibe.

What's this, oh snap rangers got stealth, that's cool. Don't mind if I do pick a little bit of pockets while I'm out and about. Credits from meat lumps, milk and eggs from bols. Meat and hide from all the things. Ok wow these traps are aoe? Oh my they're pretty strong too. Oh just wait until I finish grinding and can make some tents and noisemakers.......oh, wait a minute where did they go?

Again I'm new so the toolbox they gave us is still pretty new and cool (aoe traps with DoTs) stealth, picking ze pockets....but man oh man I wish I would have educated myself before I got excited about it. Still think I'll always carry ranger on my transdoshan but le sigh, it's gonna be an adjustment for sure.

Ideas:
Tracking was always pretty niche and always really lacked a need for it. Maybe if I could have an ask for tracking to come back, give it an hour cool down, only useful for tracking animals BUT..... Make it spawn a heroic or stronger than average monster specific to the biome or planet it's used on. It can drop slightly better loot than that mob WOULD drop or a trophy or Big Game token that can be used at an NPC vendor for trophy items for decorating, gives us a reason to buy houses to show off our collection. Mid to high level mats to sell to crafters, I don't know gives us a reason to stay in the wild. I know treasure maps kinda do the same thing but man oh man is taking down a big animal only you can find, so much more thematic and fun

You could even make it a toggle or group buff "On the hunt" and give a boost to group accuracy against animals *shrug*

I like the idea someone mentioned of the big boojie camps needing components from other crafters to benefit from, that would be easy enough to give basic camps back but the field camps or hight tech camps that have mission terminals requires me to pick up some factory crates from my architect buddy if I want it to provide rested xp or survey bonuses yadda yadda

I don't know just my .02

I've never heard a dev say this, but it pretty much has to be true - if NGE code allowed it we would have had tracking a long time ago. Everyone wants it, but no NGE (or NGE code based) server has it.

Support this in general.

Specifically bringing back the “Ranger feel”. Those camps back in the day were important. Have rangers make camps (maybe scouts make lesser camps).

Some possible Benefits of camps:
-Can rest and heal wounds. Speed of healing scales with ranger skills.
-Increased harvesting (milk, eggs, hide etc) within X distance of camp. Distance scales with ranger skills.
-Medical emergency, doctors can shuttle port into camps.
-Evac. Master Ranger can “shuttle” out of master camp.

I just joined this server and was extremely confused as to why my scout couldn't craft basic deployable camps and traps. They weren't in my draft schematics nor in my generic crafting tool. I saw that with learning certain skill boxes I was getting +trapping but couldn't find any way in which I could actually use this outside of getting Master Scout in which I get a single ability. I played SWG from beta through to the NGE, however that was two decades ago and I can't remember if these things were in CU or not. I loved being able to hunt, harvest mats from said creatures, and then using those mats to craft utility items. TBH terrain navigation, traps, and camps were the entire point of the profession. Ranger was exactly what it was supposed to be. A giga scout who could use the strongest and most advanced traps, could harvest rare mats, could track creatures and people alike, and could make the biggest and baddest camps. Only the huge camps with metal and advanced materials should require architect and surveyed materials such as metals.

yeah, i'm confused AF. New to SWG, my scout has a whole set of Traps skills, none of which grant any traps? and all are required to get to ranger...which has a few "advanced" (upgraded from what?) traps. I've spent most of my play time trying to figure out how I'm supposed to trap only to realize it's been eliminated but they left the skills (they just do nothing except as sinks for xp)?? why dafuq would I play scout or buy these abilities?

Yeah, no. FTS. Ima go play something that makes sense.

furballtiger said:

yeah, i'm confused AF. New to SWG, my scout has a whole set of Traps skills, none of which grant any traps? and all are required to get to ranger...which has a few "advanced" (upgraded from what?) traps. I've spent most of my play time trying to figure out how I'm supposed to trap only to realize it's been eliminated but they left the skills (they just do nothing except as sinks for xp)?? why dafuq would I play scout or buy these abilities?

Yeah, no. FTS. Ima go play something that makes sense.

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Bye?

I'm new around here too. In the dark days of the ancient past I experienced Pre-CU, CU, and NGE, and I'm taken aback at how close to gutted Scout is as a profession.

This may be a case where adding back some abilities to SCOUT may be worthwhile. As it stands, the profession seems almost useless except as a waypoint to bigger and better things.

Perhaps adding to it traps which ONLY affect creatures would be appropriate, for a start. The original camp features were useful as well for the "outdoorsy types". SCOUT was a very helpful profession back in the day.

Raising all the trapping abilities into RANGER is perhaps a bit much. Mind you, I really like what I see in making RANGER a viable combat profession. Giving RANGER traps the ability to affect humanoids seems a very positive thing. I NEVER understood why they didn't to begin with.

Given that the decision was made to move RANGER into more of a combat oriented realm, it might be appropriate to regress some of the creature oriented skills back down to SCOUT and make them operate ONLY AGAINST CREATURES. That could be the big difference between the 2 and it would positively improve the usefulness and playability of SCOUT.

Starlancer said:

Back in the day, when I played the original SWG, I played a hermit Scout/Ranger character. He wandered the wilderness, rarely visiting settlements, living off of the creatures he encountered. He tracked animals, trapped them with real traps of his own making, hunted and harvested their skin, meat and bone, then built himself camps (and food) from those resources and healed himself while he rested out in the wild. He could sustain himself almost indefinately without the need to ever meet another person, should he have chosen to. When he did need resources, he could hire himself out as tracker, trapper and hunter.

This does not exist in Restoration. This hermit character is impossible in Restoration.

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Yeah i have been going crazy building a weapons crafting tool but no traps. looking at all the skill trees.. where are the traps... oh they dont exist.. kinda silly..

Scout and ranger classes need the camps and traps for sure. I can see this game is different than PRE CU - SWG and maybe you can avoid the camps and needing them but that was some of the best times - i played a master ranger for the longest time. with rifleman. the traps then camps ... made it worth it when you could pitch the camp up and rest recovery.

PLEASE PUT THESE BACK IN. ill plug away to get BH still but takes the fun out of this part of the game for sure.

I have a lot of fond memories from Live surrounding the camps Scouts could put out. Both randomly stumbling into someone's camp when wounded and exhausted, and having random people stumble into mine. It led to great spontaneous interactions. I'm feeling their absence pretty sorely. The absence of traps is frustrating too. It seems like the Trapping skill line is totally dead except for the express purpose of going into Ranger. I get that Ranger has humanoid/pvp traps, but why can't Scout have traps that only work on creatures? The feeling of survivalism juxtaposed with these massively high tech settlements was one of my favorite parts of the vibe SWG had back in the day.

I support the creature tracking. It should not be the only thing the ranger does - all the new features are great! But it seems a nice added bonus to be able to help speed up the finding and harvesting of chef resources

I would love this. Give camps some QOL boosts, like a built in mission terminal, a way to ward off aggressive creatures (maybe at higher levels of camp), boosts to creature harvesting within a radius of the camp, etc. doesn't have to be huge, or even directly combat related. But could be a fun add-on for flavor and to give these professions a bit of the taste of their old purpose.

I support further identity development for Scout/Ranger.

Camps seem to be something that could be specialized by a Ranger. Rangers could add improvements for wound healing/ Doctor buff durations increase enabled via droid use etc...
Maybe camps give a buff of their own for creature harvesting if you sit at the camp fire for a few minutes... Higher level camps increase the buff duration/potency of the buff.

I'm not sure how creature tracking would work given that you can just search for the creature via a mission terminal, but the concept is neat.

Vambrace said:

I support further identity development for Scout/Ranger.

Camps seem to be something that could be specialized by a Ranger. Rangers could add improvements for wound healing/ Doctor buff durations increase enabled via droid use etc...
Maybe camps give a buff of their own for creature harvesting if you sit at the camp fire for a few minutes... Higher level camps increase the buff duration/potency of the buff.

I'm not sure how creature tracking would work given that you can just search for the creature via a mission terminal, but the concept is neat.

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PreCU used to have tracking ability on ranger or scout which would give you a list of creatures/npcs and then you could track them down. A bit like bounty hunting or /findfriend.
Alternative way that would work out great too would probably the same way surveying is done.

Love the idea of harvesting bonus in form of buffs from camps

totally agree trapping took ages to get was one of the most fun parts of scout

Speaking as someone thats played more than one flavor of swg and appreciated each, the Ranger here is kinda that in name only...

Its pretty much just the pvp Spy Class mixed with BH on Legends and Live. Technically Cloak ally did get stuck with smuggler.
Giving Scout and Ranger more to do here will be a good idea but what the devs are gonna focus on is gonna be hard to pin down.

I am throwing my upvote in here among the 200 Pile so we do get some more crafter linked or open world made roles.
When Comparing the Systems Rangers old Mechanics and Doctor's old crafting mechanics are something I miss here.

I get Docs gotta be the way it is, but alot of people seem to really want the old Ranger biz. Camp related abilities and tracking of npcs might be a prestige for ranger to level perhaps without having to bonk the Current functions of ranger in pve and pvp by changing too much.

Im not sure honestly what specifics, but most these comments have some ballpark of the idea of what the devs should probably do.

Suggestion: Rare Tameable Creatures

With the Wilderness update, I think it would be great to add rare or exceptional versions of tameable creatures to the wild. Rangers could use tracking and creature knowledge to help locate these animals, giving Ranger another useful wilderness role and making finding a baby or egg exciting again.

I don't think this should replace Bio-Engineers or make them less useful. Instead, Bio-Engineers could be part of the process. Maybe a rare wild baby or egg has unique traits, better potential, rare abilities, coloration, or other advantages that a Bio-Engineer can then modify, enhance, incubate, or otherwise develop.

The idea would be for wild-tamed creatures to have the potential to be special rather than always being inferior to a good BE pet.

Ranger finds the rare creature → CH captures/tames it → Bio-Engineer helps improve or develop it → CH raises the finished pet.

I think this would give all three professions something worthwhile to do together. It would make exploring and finding babies or eggs exciting again, give Rangers another valuable role in the wilderness, keep Bio-Engineers important, and make finding a genuinely rare animal feel like an actual discovery.