For example, if you're raiding, say, Empire, you're spending some serious time out of the wilds. Please make it not count against your timer? It only forces me and others like me to compensate by sitting in camo someplace wild for a very significant time after each raid. Arguably, you'd want to promote strife and raids and retrievals. Would also immensely help Tribunal rangers I think and any rangers who need to defend non-Outlander cabals. Pretty please?

And before you try to say I just don't understand, or that I didn't experience it, I did. If you are losing your "at home" in the wilderness time you are spending a lot of time doing things out of the wild other than raiding.

3/4 of your time must be spent in the wilds to be "at home." It's entirely possible that a long lived character in an underdog cabal spends more than 1/4 of their time attempting to raid/retrieve. Especially if you're playing a ranger that doesn't have great civilized options like Bedouins do.

I don't think his argument or solution is a very good one for different reasons, but your response is no good counter either.

Much easier to scrap the whole dumb idea of wilderness timer.

PS: Furthermore, even if he is including other non-wilds activities, it could easily still be the wide margin that is taking him over the cusp.

1) You're spending a lot of time leveling up in non-wilderness areas.
2) You're spending a lot of time sitting in civilized areas.
3) You're hunting people consistently on roads etc.

Maintaining a 75% wilds time isn't that hard, even with the additional condition that you're not Outlander.

With a Tribunal it might be a struggle, or need to carefully watch the timer. That's about it.

Also, there is an option for non-conventional ranger cabals like explorer, which, in essence, does precisely what everyone is asking for here.

One reason why I (personally) tend to be against these types of suggestions, other than the code work necessary which diverts resources away from other projects, is that this is a hard-wired class dynamic which, to some extent, enforces a style of RP on someone. Breaking down that dynamic might seem like an irritation for a lot of players, but would remove an incentive to play the class a specific way. Experience has shown, that in many cases, removing such incentives tend to diminish the flavor of how the class is played.

(Take, for instance, recent discussions on Villager Apps using healers, or issues I have personally seen where paladins skirt their code. Removing this barrier, in my opinion would be a sizeable leap towards converting the ranger class from a wilderness based ranger into a warrior with a handful of wilderness skills.)

>Maintaining a 75% wilds time isn't that hard, even with the
>additional condition that you're not Outlander.

I'm aware. Ranger being what I play 90% of the time. That's why I think the original complaint is unfounded. The response just wasn't a good one either. That doesn't change the fact that wilderness timer is a nonsensical mechanic.

>Also, there is an option for non-conventional ranger cabals
>like explorer, which, in essence, does precisely what everyone
>is asking for here.

Wanderlust doesn't do that. You still need 75% wilds time to be "at home" and receive the benefits of "at home". Wanderlust raises the floor, not the roof. In other words, you suffer less for lots of civilized time, but believe me even "comfortable" is no picnic.

>One reason why I (personally) tend to be against these types
>of suggestions, other than the code work necessary which
>diverts resources away from other projects, is that this is a
>hard-wired class dynamic which, to some extent, enforces a
>style of RP on someone. Breaking down that dynamic might seem
>like an irritation for a lot of players, but would remove an
>incentive to play the class a specific way. Experience has
>shown, that in many cases, removing such incentives tend to
>diminish the flavor of how the class is played.
>
> Take, for instance, recent discussions on Villager Apps using
>healers, or issues I have personally seen where paladins skirt
>their code. Removing this barrier, in my opinion would be a
>sizeable leap towards converting the ranger class from a
>wilderness based ranger into a warrior with a handful of
>wilderness skills.)

For me, the primary distinction here is that I don't think of rangers as limited to (enforced RP?) hermits and Outlanders. Rangers are very much warriors with a handful of wilderness skills/spells in exchange for the loss of weapon specs. The wilderness timer doesn't change that. There is no reason a ranger shouldn't make a great Tribunal. In fact, the classical ranger (fantasy in general, not CF) fits quite well as a Magistrate.

I get the argument you are trying to make, but fail to see any benefit to the mechanic. The only thing I can tell it accomplishes is unnecessarily limiting the range of themes a player can create for the ranger class. Something you seem to have indicated as a good thing, which I also fail to see how it could be.

(EDIT: This goes extra since the creation of ranger specs. Makes sense to force a BeastMaster, savage, or animist to spend time in the wilds. Not so much for the Explorer, Hunter, or Survivalist.)

Useless conjecture it may be, since the hammer already dropped.

Wanderlust doesn't do that. You still need 75% wilds time to be "at home" and receive the benefits of "at home". Wanderlust raises the floor, not the roof. In other words, you suffer less for lots of civilized time, but believe me even "comfortable" is no picnic.

I know that, but what people are asking would essentially make one of the largest perks of explorer redundant. Where wanderlust is concerned running at 80% capacity* and being able to spend as much time as you like in any terrain isn't really a crap deal. It's just not the 100% in any terrain that some people would lobby for.

RE: selectively wilderness timer-ing subclasses, I just don't see the return on investment to code something like that? We want to avoid any more complexity in subclasses, ideally. Explaining wilderness time to new players gets complicated if you need a chart pointing out which subclasses need to adhere to it and which don't, in addition to skewing class balance, invalidating explorer etc. I'm personally for not turning the game into a complex simulator, although occasionally the burden of pointing out some of my ideas are overly complex falls on other people too.

*Disclaimer: arbitrary figure here, not specific game mechanics info.

>I know that, but what people are asking would essentially make
>one of the largest perks of explorer redundant. Where
>wanderlust is concerned running at 80% capacity* and being
>able to spend as much time as you like in any terrain isn't
>really a crap deal. It's just not the 100% in any terrain that
>some people would lobby for.

Seems more like a minor, unimportant perk to me. Perspective I guess.


>RE: selectively wilderness timer-ing subclasses, I just don't
>see the return on investment to code something like that? We
>want to avoid any more complexity in subclasses, ideally.
>Explaining wilderness time to new players gets complicated if
>you need a chart pointing out which subclasses need to adhere
>to it and which don't, in addition to skewing class balance,
>invalidating explorer etc. I'm personally for not turning the
>game into a complex simulator, although occasionally the
>burden of pointing out some of my ideas are overly complex
>falls on other people too.

ROI is the only good answer so far, to not ripping out the whole mechanic. Unless it's flipping a switch, it's not worth the time and effort.

I have to continue the argument though, of course. You know how I love the "new player" point so much. I've yet to meet a newbie ranger that gets how it works currently, so if it's an argument against subclass breakdown, it's an argument against current system too.

I never ranked in civilized, never had a long spat of eq-hunting of civilized, etc. My only civilized activities are using the roads (not hunting on them, but a beeline from A to B) and spending time in cabals, whether it's raiding or retrieving.

I don't see why not counting the cabal spaces against rangers is a non-starter. I'm not talking about any civilized, just specifically about cabal spaces.

One step further. Just do away with the mechanic. It's silly.

Because I view it as win win if rangers come out of the wilds more.

More chances for their enemies to pk them. But the ranger had taken that into consideration and deems it worth the risk.

Instead the ranger knows he will suffer if he doesn't keep it to a minimum.

That said, I think if time raiding is a problem for you as a ranger you are probably being too power gamey. Raiding time isn't that significant.

Attachment #1, ( file)

>One step further. Just do away with the mechanic. It's
>silly.

Yeah, forcing rangers to spend a large chunk of their time in the wilds is counterproductive to interaction. Besides, it's not like they'd have any advantage in civilized, quite the opposite. What's next, mages needing to study 75% of the time in libraries or forget their spells? =)

(Side note edit: if this was done, wanderlust would need to be tweaked)

Wanderlust would still be fine, since it also allows different terrains to be treated as home terrain?

The higher "floor" of wilderness time is a side benefit of wanderlust.

The main one is all terrains counting as home much of the time.

nt

If you're scared, say you're scared.

#halflings

nt

Wilderness time is important in my opinion to the non-explorer ranger. A rangers skills are wilderness oriented and should be a function of how much time spent in the wilderness. The rp reason would be the more time they spend in the wilderness the better the would fight, camo, etc. in the wilderness. I am confused as to why everyone would not feel this way.

I would be in favor of more of this (similar thing on druid, thief and assassin hidden, etc.).

I don't feel that way because it doesn't make sense in the over all theme of the game.

Unless of course, we take your route, and add more like it. Which would be cool too. Skills degrade if they aren't used. Mages have to spend time sitting in a tower reading spell books. Etc.

Let's do this.

I would love love more of this.

I do not think 75% is a high number.

That being said I fear I would be playing with even fewer people at some point if there was more of this.

That's all that will be left

I'll be chopping trees in the forest to build my ranger cabin and you'll be sitting atop your mage tower scrying me for the PK.

Sometimes as a ranger you'd like to take the risk of ranking in civilised, say. Perhaps for rp reasons, perhaps because your group mates shine there.

But you know if you do you might be gimped.

So that's annoying as a ranger.

It's also annoying as someone who wants to pk a ranger.

Hence me thinking win win if rangers at least have the option to come out of the wilds as often as the want without suffering a mechanical penalty.

If I recall correctly the timer may work at area level rather than room level so doesn't always make good sense.