Yeah, having read this thread, I still don't understand the problem with learning enough scouting for 150th

With 700 scouting, I can easily keep it moving steadily in a critter that caps combats in the 730-750 range (and by that, I mean if I set it to hunt every 75 seconds until locked, it will get there, but I typically don't set it that high since it's 8 seconds I can use in the meantime for something else). Yes it may slow down to a crawl at 1k in dillos, but that's less the fault of hunt and more the fault of... critter progression options.

As to scout having no impact on hunt... did Z's thing about scout boosting the ability to see hidden things with hunt get turned off/get proven to not exist, or do people just forget/pretend that isn't a nice perk to have over every other guild using hunt? >.>

>>Yeah, having read this thread, I still don't understand the problem with learning enough scouting for 150th

The problem with learning enough scouting for 150th is primarily that, unlike other survival skills, the number of keystrokes input versus the experience / ranks gained is pound for pound far less efficient. There is no REASON, other than gain experience in the scouting ability, to repeat the action every set period of time during a combat routine. It offers no benefit to the combat sequence, and in most cases is cause to either interrupt one's training, or leave one in a position of vulnerability for an extended period of roundtime with less experience / combat value than other similarly compromising actions.

Scouting experience associated with using the HUNT verb was never intended to be the action's primary reward - if it were then it's effectiveness would scale with ranks. The fact that it can be exploited as a primary method of training the skill is convenient, but it trains like the experience reward was an afterthought - because it was.

Go dance with something at level and measure how long it takes to lock evasion. Then measure how long it takes to lock scouting at level using hunt. Which one takes longer? Difficulty is not necessarily measured by the ease and frequency with which one can type a four letter word.

- Kart

That trickle is enough to reach your Scouting reqs for 150th way before you reach 150. So again, what's the problem in regards to learning enough scouting for 150th? Seems like by using Hunt alone you're able to easily reach the amount you need and never have to learn it again if you don't want to.

Is it the most efficient? No. Does it teach the best? Absolutely not? Should there be other ways to train it? Sure why not.

Still doesn't change the fact that Scouting is incredibly easy to learn and shouldn't pose a challenge to anyone trying to reach 150th.

>>The problem with learning enough scouting for 150th is primarily that, unlike other survival skills, the number of keystrokes input versus the experience / ranks gained is pound for pound far less efficient. There is no REASON, other than gain experience in the scouting ability, to repeat the action every set period of time during a combat routine.

Sure there is, you get more bang for your buck with hunt. You get perception/scouting/stalking all in typing 4 letters.

>>Go dance with something at level and measure how long it takes to lock evasion. Then measure how long it takes to lock scouting at level using hunt. Which one takes longer? Difficulty is not necessarily measured by the ease and frequency with which one can type a four letter word.

My god, you don't have to lock something to learn at max. You need to keep it above 3/34 to be constantly learning at max efficiency. The fact that people don't seem to understand that at this point in the game is mindblowing.

>>going to hook us up with easier / better ways to train it

This isn't what making skills more dynamic means

Once upon a time hunt didn't exist. There wasn't an ability on a timer that you could repeat every 75 seconds. There was going to arthe dale, tracking an npc, moving some rooms and scouting to it. You could argue this is less tedious than >hunt every 75 because there's some variation to it. In the end it was more tedious however, extremely painful and very unfun. Rangers have gotten ridiculously spoiled. You're given an ability that basically spoonfeeds you your guild ability while you train all of your other skills in combat and does so well enough that you can have more than enough for 150 without even trying and you complain that it's "too tedious." Then you should also complain typing "attack" is too tedious. As is load, aim, fire. Along with that just about everything that requires you input the same command over and over.

>I guess I have tried to explain why I feel like it is harder to train a few times now, so really I'm gonna just stop now. Having trained the skill for 14 years, and having reached a point where I am withing 5 ranks of the 150th req for it, my experience in training it and using it is obviously much different than yours. I'm glad you are having success with it. While I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the idea that the skill is what you consider to be very easy to train, I am also going to do my best to stop attempting to persuade you of it and go about my business.

>Also gonna try to stop the bickering - its useless and I'm really bad at it.

I understand, and we can stop the bickering. I guess I can't get you to understand either. Like the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water...

>>lots of whinging

Guys can we take this to a thread that I'm not monitoring for major concerns? I hate to be selfish but this really isn't helping anybody.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

>>Guys can we take this to a thread that I'm not monitoring for major concerns? I hate to be selfish but this really isn't helping anybody.

Yeah sorry man try to avoid the petty argument stuff these days but dropped the ball on this one a little bit - apologies to all involved.

A little more on topic - is Scouting going to fall into the 'getting a temporary experience boost' category since its getting a little bump in requirement?

- Kart

>>It may. The bump wasn't that big though - Most of the exp boosts are for skills that jumped skillset.

Thanks for reply - a small boost to learning scouting from using the trails & hunt verb would probably go a long way toward easing at little of the angst surrounding the train-ability / use-ability of Scouting while other avenues are developed.

Just my two cents.

- Kart

Why was the exp gained from trails turned to garbage?

Pathyn

Thanks for the reply Pete. I always loved training scouting by running trails. Trail running was relaxing and rangerly all in one lovely little lump of exp. Hunt is cool and all, but that 8 seconds can seem like an eternity when a 3rd or 4th mob engages me right as I hit the enter button...

Pathyn

>I totally agree---I love running trails and some of them have nifty day/night/weather/seasonal changes in them. By the way, Hi! Miss seeing you.

I'll third on this.

It actually went from being the least annoying grind in the game to something I grew to really enjoy.

it was a very "Zen" way to train scouting and helped contribute to the feel of playing a ranger.

I still use them for travel even if they are slower.

-pete

>Have it stack so that more ranks = either more trails or longer ones or quicker ones, or all of the above. :)

I've always thought that PTMs should work more like spell slots. As you progress in ranks, you get to store more trails. There should be two mechanisms for learning trails:

1) Blazing them yourself. This takes more ranks
2) Being taught them by another ranger. The trail would be identified by the name of the ranger who blazed it.

Scouting ranks would determine how long it takes to traverse the trail or if you can even do it. The higher the ranks in scouting of the ranger who blazed it, the shorter the standard travel time on the trail. Trails should be more favorable in speed with travel than they are now.

Trails that cross barriers should have an athletics component in addition to the scouting one. I'd probably suggest something that stores the barriers by zone and uses a tool built into the area building tools that stores the location of the barrier and the difficulty in this lookup, so the script doesn't have to figure it out on the fly. Then it becomes a simple comparison. Are you tall enough to ride the ride? Additionally this would provide the ability to create hidden barriers that don't show up in game yet and keep certain short cuts from being made unless the ranger had both high athletics and high scouting.

The idea here is that rangers who blaze trails can have their name passed down through the game as one ranger teaches another ranger the path. Paths can become lost if everyone who knows it stops playing until another ranger blazes the trail again.

Depending on how the barrier lookup is done it could result in an interesting exploration side-game to find rooms that let you blaze the trail with the shortest travel time and/or easiest athletics ranks between two areas.

-pete

Pete's scouting ideas...

I vote Pete for President!

Love your ideas and hope a GM takes note for something like it down the road (hopefully before I die--I'm 59 now.

Zinaca and her fully-grown raccoon, Shadow