Let's set the playerbase argument aside for a second.

I propose that the reason that people have more problems ranking is that rangers make up a far larger percentage of the characters logged in at any given time than anytime in the past.

Everyone that is not a ranger knows or assumes that it's not worth being a ranger if you're not Outlander. There are also assumptions about alignment that come into play with every other character.

Couple this with the fact that any ranger worth their salt that isn't hunting or being hunted is only visible half the time and no one is in the mood to ask these guys to rank. Depending on race there's a possibility they can't tank at all till 35, especially as they get closer to 35 but just start to plain slow a group down despite herbs. They also can only rank in the wilderness. As far as I know the only two wilderness areas people go to to rank regardless of class is Arendyl and Battlefield... and only morons or those trying to bait rangers to bash/fog/blind for racking up kills rank in Arendyl with a loaded PK range.

These are my thoughts as to why it's even harder to rank as a non-muter mage class or non-bard/assassin rogue.

Don't forget that half of the shifters are not suited to the type of group you're trying to put together, a shifter needs to be the first or second member of your group to decide how things go (i.e. they have the offense/defense focii) so that tends to make it less convenient for that class as well, people pass up asking a viable shifter because the focus isn't tattooed on their arm.

Of course, ranking is always difficult and rare if you aren't the player/character type to take the initiative and start asking people yourself, and I am this kind of leveller. But I would bet a large percentage of rangers are ranking easy and other folks as a whole find ranking slower than it was, especially since the imms are intentionally trying to dump both alignment level ranges into the wilds for the most efficient ranking at certain level ranges specifically so rangers can get kills. In short, I think the rangers are cramping the MUD's style in some ways and these are my theories why it's true for ranking in addition to the cookie-cutter prejudiced rangers that you're safer to assume is an Outlander looking to bag a body count.

edit: Another strike against rangers causing the levelling problem on CF, someone pointed out to me that rangers are very self efficient compared to any warrior build. This means a group of 2-3 rangers either is close to, or actually is more effective than the healer-warrior-muter or healer/muter-warrior/paladin-invoker/anti-paladin combo, and rangers are easy to solo rank in many cases than any other class (even as an animist, spam ambush every tick)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2008 06:41AM by scrimbul.