Well then what is a ranger at its heart then? If it is tied to a guy who runs around in the forest only, then that is weak. If he is only a tracker/hunter I could buy that, however I still think that is narrow. To me I think of them as a lightly armored warrior type who excels at doing specialized tasks (tracking, hunting, sword play, archery, banditry, horsemanship) I guess the bottom line is a more skillful fighter. Fighters strongly focus on armor and weapons and lightly on all other stuff, the ranger is opposite. Decouple the wilderness background and you can have urban rangers, bounty hunters, sailors, investigators, and on and on. If they can only have a wilderness background everything has to go through that prism. Not unplayable, just more limited.
Yes, elementalists, shaman, spiritualist, town elder, naturalist, scholar, I don't know. Uncoupled from a wilderness background it really frees it up, to be a lot more diverse though. Don't get me wrong I think a wilderness background makes a ton of sense for the class, but I dont want to be limited by it.
I know I really like that.
Bottom line is I don't want to be limited to the city rogue and the wilderness ranger, I want a wilderness rogue and a city ranger.
I don't think you have to worry about that yet.
Druids can hopefully change with spell choice to make any type of nature type: animals, plants, death, life, elements, spirits.
Rogues seem to be very customizable.
And possibly the same with ranger. I doubt they will be so narrow in scope.