Most players are unhappy with Ranger Scouting and, more importantly, the time it takes to run a trail. However, instead of posting this in the complaint folder with a negative tone, I'd rather post it here with a positive one.

The main issue with ranger trails is that they aren't any faster than just running a regular travel script with the genie automapper. I completely understand that re-writing code is a ton of work.

Please, help me understand. Why can't we just leave all the existing code for trails in place and just reduce all the timers so they complete faster? Why isn't that an option? I genuinely am curious. It seems like such an easy fix. What am I missing?

I would make several other suggestions for companions and beseeches. Instead of gutting the systems and undertaking a massive project, can't we just quickly and easily remove the part of the code where the companion runs away or dies? Just take that part out. That would at least give Rangers some immediate relief until a long term robust system gets put in place.

Thanks in advance and hopefully this thread stays positive, helpful and constructive.

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-Nate

It's exciting to hear that you have projects and ideas lined up. I'd love to hear more when the time comes.

Personally, I always try to tackle the smaller projects first and knock those out before getting knee-deep in a massive system re-write. With that in mind, any suggestions I make for guild improvement come from a "low hanging fruit" mindset, such as reducing the timers on trails and making companions more permanent.

Another question I thought of was what ever happened to Tracking? When I first started playing a Ranger way back when, we had Tracking as a guild skill instead of Scouting. I could track <person> and stick to them like glue. It was hard to shake a Ranger who had a good track on you. What happened to that? Why was that taken away? It was such a fun and useful ability that I also thought made a lot of sense from a guild prospective. Would that be an easy thing to give back to Rangers since the code for the Tracking system is already written somewhere and proven to work? What are your thoughts on that?

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-Nate

I'll throw in a couple of ideas.

1. Scouting - with higher skill, roundtimes for movement are decreased through rough terrain (swimming, climbing, the ropes at rossman, etc) but skillgain remains the same.

2. Companions - possibly ditch existing ones and let us tame animal type critters to fight for us based on outdoorsmanship

I'm not sure if these are the best ideas I would primarily just like to see myself be able to actually use scouting for something.

Joke's on you, they're all chihuahua wolves.

But really, if I can come up with a good way to handle companions, there's a lot of things I'd like to make reality for them.

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NaOH+HI

>Joke's on you, they're all chihuahua wolves.

Perfectly plausible. And I bet a Ranger could train them to nip at the heels of foes and make them trip!

>>Whatever happened to Ricinus's pet core that was suppose to replace companions?

I believe he's been pulled to other projects and is juggling a new baby with a RL job and DR at the moment, but that's my best guess. I'm not sure about that particular project but I'd be disinclined to wait for it if I pick up companions, personally. I'd rather write something I know could be pulled into a pet core like that, which the current companions don't seem to be ideal for.

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NaOH+HI

what form companions take, i hope charisma plays a role in strength/abilities. i currently find very little use for it and dislike that it's a health pool against certain spells.