We're currently the board with the highest number of posts and threads by a fairly large margin, not just limited to the other scout classes. Hurray! The bad news is that when you look at all of our topics, the majority aren't for discussing strategies or talent builds or equipment (as you generally see on the other class boards), they're almost unanimously trying to get developer attention for the class. Look, I know that I don't log on to the forums just to whine for the sake of whining - odds are, neither do the rest of the users that have combined for nearly 60,000 posts on this board. There's a percieved problem here, and unless we're all just the victims of mass hysteria, or are (down to the last of us) complete noobs who don't know how to play our class, this might mean you should probably consider an evaluation of the Ranger class. Rangers in top raiding guilds have largely already betrayed in order to stay competitive - not because they want to, but because they feel that it's the only way to be of continued value to their raid. The levels of frustration are mounting, not only by your utter lack of communication and willingness to be open with us about the specifics of what's even on the table, but by the road of complete inaction you've decided to take in regard to the Ranger class. In spite of droves of feedback both in early Sentinel's Fate beta and live through present day, there has not been a single change to Rangers since early January, with no hope in sight for seeing changes any time in the near future. There's a problem here, and you've been ignoring it; worse than that, you've been ignoring us. You can joke about it, you can call us whiners, but at the end of the day you're alienating your customers. We don't want you to swoop in and overpower us - we only want to be able to be viable in the class that we love in the game that we enjoy. We're willing to work with you to make that happen - be willing to at least speak with us.
I'd like to second that politely. I have played the ranger class in eq1 and eq2 and been entirely comfortable with the fact that they are very different iterations of the same idea. Many of us who play rangers do so because we enjoy the idea of the class. At different times it has been a brilliant class to play and at other times entirely awful and depressing. I've not played much in the last nine months - the odd writ is all - but I have read the boards and have years of playing experience prior to that and the experience has been the same for a long time. Most of us enjoy making the most of our class. We are not looking for a nerf to other classes or a tweak that overpowers us for a month or six. We are simply looking to be able to take the characters we have invested months and years in and use them in the way we want to - and the way we were told we could and should. A well-tempered dialogue here about issues, timescales, feasibility etc might produce unexpected dividends of understanding on both sides - I am sure there is as much we could learn about the technical complications that the Dev team has, just as we can explain the frustration of being a T1 DPS class that is barely functioning at the bottom of T2 (that from my own parses before SF). Ker
/signed For the record, I have never been as close to betraying or outright quitting the game as I have been these past two months, which is a real shame because I've been playing nearly since release (there was about a year in which I did quit due to release issues which made the game rather unfun; came back and found it much better, have pretty much been here ever since. Even when I quit near release I was not nearly as discontent as I am now, I just had less of a community pull to hold me to the game). I've been in four betas now, and never have I seen the kind of flurry of feedback that we had in SF beta, with so very very little response. SOE, I hate being an alarmist, but you are losing customers over issues like this. Waiting years for desperately needed improvements while watching every other DPS class, including T2 classes, get farther and farther ahead of us on the parse has pushed me to the limits of my frustration. I like this game, I love the people who play this game, I love my raid group, but seriously. My account is cancelled and will be up in a few days. At that point I will have to sit with my debit card in hand and determine whether the friends I've made here are worth giving SOE any more money only to have them tell me that class balance issues that have been left to sit for years are still not as important to the developer team as coming up with new Battlegrounds improvements. Heck, given the silence lately, even being told ranger issues are considered less important than X flavor of the month game hype feature would be an improvement. Oh yeah, and good job on that new bow you put into the new Hole zone with the exact same damage rating as hardmode Tox bow (which in and of itself has a pretty pathetic gain over easymode Tox bow), while melee weapons continue to gain and gain and gain in an actual progression curve. Does Theer even drop a bow? Have you guys just given up completely? All I want is a solid answer on whether rangers are going to get any attention at all. An entire GU cycle with absolutely no improvements/fixes/changes whatsoever to the class when you've known and acknowledged how dire this issue is since at LEAST late January is ridiculous. The prospect of waiting until mid-August (over half a year by that point) to see if you throw us a bone is insane. The last thing that could possibly be called developer feedback on this problem was Fyreflyte proving he/she has absolutely no understanding of how the class plays and putting the final nails in the coffin on whether we would be able to keep the most lauded (which is ridiculous in and of itself) feature of our mythical (the answer was no) as well as one of the major (heh) fixes of the expansion (that is, removing the minimum range on our AEs. The answer again appears to be 'no', since this has never been acknowledged or addressed). To whoever is making these ridiculous calls: come on, man. Class balance is one of the fundamental keystones of any MMO. Fluff PVP and new newbie zones (much as I very much love Halas, which was, oh, that's right, DELAYED), are not nearly as important as the basic mechanics of your game. Did the class balance man hours get spent designing that ugly as sin and expensive as hell for what you get station cash mount or something? Someone up top needs to learn to prioritize.
kartikeya wrote: I absolutely share this sentiment. It's frustrating to feel as though attention is being delayed to the class in favor of throwing in new carrots. New Halas made me forget about my Ranger's problems for a total of the five hours it took my little illusionist to make it through the newbie zone - and then it was raid time, and all of them came right back again to smack me hard in the face. This may feel like a low priority issue to the higher-ups, but class balance can be the difference for a large portion of your fanbase having a good experience with the game or having an extremely bad experience with the game. As it stands, I've been having a bad experience with my class since late Rise of Kunark.
For good reason, rangers have the most reason to complain of any class other than maybe brawlers. Not only are there problems with the class in general but it seems each update to AAs only makes the gap between rangers and assassins larger.
Althought I do not post often, I do try to check these boards from time to time. Honestly, at this point, I would just like to see ONE dev post SOMETHING, ANYTHING. I can't believe the lack of developer communication. What are we paying these people for? /shrug
Weva wrote: smokejumper did make a post in the Radio silence thread in the general gameplay forum you might want to check that out.
It's nice to see the devs around the board every now and then but I read and reread smokejumpers posts a couple of times and just because he is responding in a thread started by a ranger about class balacing issues his post doesn't mean anything to me. all I read was "yes we are looking at class balacing. when where and if it will affect you we will not tell." a general idea as he put it usually means we know if we are looking at class x, y or z but no nothing is said about that prob because they know already that they have no plan to look at the rangers. cause telling the rangers that ohh sorry we are not looking at you in the balacing issue cause we think your fine would prob trigger and avalanche of angry rangers im guessing by the end of their balancing we will end up in a the same boat that we are already in but maybe we atleast have one bruiser sitting next to us atleast they are not lonely anymore and we got someone to play drinking games with while the others are off raiding. Now I just wanna point out that no I do not wanna quit the game, no I do not intend to end my subcription, no im not gonna betray im just gonna try out other stuff in the downtime and since this game has so much other content to offer I might find something to fill the gap with in the meantime. but a boast/fix/improvement or what ever you want to call it that do affect rangers I'll believe it when I see the change notes until then it's prob better to do what smokejumper said. say nothing and keep working and present the plan when it's ready that way the devs save themself from being lynched by the community when implementation A that got present got substitute with implementation B that angered the community. If A haven't been seen atleast we cant say that it was way better then B and go on a rampage about it. I do not want lunch, I want breakfast.
I am just replying to as many "Please fix the Rangers" threads as I can at the moment in order to show my support. I am EQ2 Release Ranger, created Nov. 9th 2004, and I have also never been so close to quitting EQ2 all together as I am right now. I do not want to betray to assassin and I do not see myself doing so, I'd rather just quit. Please fix the Rangers.
