9 Merc Suggestions (of 15)

(Milwankerchief) #1

This was thought up over the course of 2 weeks.

1

  • Name: Mags
  • Gender: Female
  • Type: Fire-Support
  • Age: 33
  • Nationality: Finnish
  • Q Ability: Battery Powered Magnet: The BPM is a electromagnetic device. Left clicking activates Full Strength. This collects bullets shot by enemies in front of Mags as far as 6 feet. This will also tug on enemies’ guns, making it harder for the enemy to aim wall activated. Doing this requires much energy, and the battery must be recharged for 25 seconds. Left Clicking with the BPM activated Shrapnel Blast. All collected ammo will by blasted in front of Mags as the polarity of the magnet is changed. The more bullets collected by Mags means the more bullets shot by the blast. The can inflict massive damage, but as a huge spray area, like a shotgun with no barrel.
  • E Ability: (Dependent) Small Ammo Bag: If Mags is being played more as support, bullets collected with Full Strength can be converted into Ammo Packs to give to teammates or yourself.
  • Her story:

2

  • Name: Pickpock
  • Gender: Female
  • Type: Stealth/Covert
  • Age: 48
  • Nationality: Romani (AKA Gypsy)
  • Q Ability: Smokestun: A throwable object that releases a very fast plume of smoke that stuns any enemies in it’s radius. While vulnerable they are more vulnerable to Quickhands.
  • E Ability: (Contextual) Quickhands: Can only be used while standing near an enemy and looking at them. Quickhands temporarily steals the enemy’s Q ability. After stolen, Pickpock destroys it, so it cannot be used by her. The enemy must wait (Q Cooldown length + 65 seconds) for their Q to be returned.
  • Her story

3

  • Name: Lement
  • Gender: Male
  • Type: Support/Buffer
  • Age: 23
  • Nationality: Polish
  • Q Ability: Upper: Gives a stat boost to a character. Character will move faster, reload faster, play objective faster.
  • E Ability: Downer: Gives a stat boost to a character. Character will have more health, faster regeneration, less aimpunch, and stronger melee. Injecting both syringes into a downed teammate at the same time will stimulate their heart, reviving them. Injecting abilities into enemies will give them overdose, and have opposite effects. Injecting a teammate with a second syringe will sober/negate the effects of the first syringe ability.
  • His story:

4

  • Name: Trapper
  • Gender: Female
  • Type: Assault
  • Age: 28
  • Nationality: Mongolian
  • Q Ability: Bear Trap: Placeable, they are activated when stepped over by enemies. When activated, it causes immediate damage to the enemy and holds them in place until they can release the trap.
  • E Ability: Tranquilizer Rifle: Causes temporary sluggish movement, max health reduction, and melee damage reduction.
  • Her story:

5

  • Name: Musketeer
  • Gender: Male
  • Type: Assault/Sniper
  • Age: 34
  • Nationality: French
  • Weapons: Primary: Any Shotgun, Secondary: Pistol, Melee: Cavalry Sabre Sword
  • Q Ability: Muzzleloader: A .50 caliber gun that must be reloaded manually through the muzzle, which takes about 30-40 seconds and leaves Musketeer very vulnerable. It is always an instant kill, but only insta-gib if headshot.
  • Story:

6

  • Name: Mortey
  • Gender: Male
  • Type: Engineer/Fire support Mix
  • Age: 25
  • Nationality: Israeli
  • Q Ability: Deployable Mortar: When activated, Mortey sticks a Mortar in front of him, kneels down and aims the mortar. A marker in front of him will show him the approximate area where the shelling will land. 1-4 the OHEnce, but each requires cooldown.
  • Story:

7

  • Name: Talon
  • Gender: Female
  • Type: Recon OR Engineer/Objective Specialist.
  • Age: 61
  • Nationality: Peruvian
  • Q Ability: Target OHE (Ornate Hawk Eagle): By default the OHE will fly above and around Talon, spotting targets for Talon’s team. Q calls the bird to land on your arm, where you can command him to attack enemies, or press Q again, to let him scout.
  • E Ability: Scavenge: Sends OHE to the nearest ammocrate to deliver ammo to Talon and his team.
  • Story:

8

  • Name: Rigger
  • Gender: Male
  • Type: Engineer
  • Age: 30
  • Nationality: Emirati
  • Weapons: Primary: VP70 w/ stock
  • Q Ability: (Contextual) Objective Rig: Places a visible explosive at an objective. The bomb is defusable, but takes longer than normal bombs. If not defused, when an enemy completes a boobytrapped objective, the bomb will detonate killing that person, and killing/wounding other nearby people. This is useful for delaying the completion of the objective, or retaking objective once enemy as been weakened by blast.
  • E Ability: (Contextual) Wounded Rig: Places a boobytrap on a downed enemy. The boobytrap is a electricty activated explosive. it will be detonated if the wounded person is revived using the REVIVR or defibs, but will not activate if the wounded person is revived manually. The explosive is powerful enough to kill the downed person and anyone too close.
  • Story:

9

  • Name: Mustang
  • Gender: Male
  • Type: Assault
  • Age: 36
  • Nationality: Icelandic
  • Weapons: Primary: Stoner LMG, Melee: Battering Ram
  • Q Ability: Chain: Grabs a target enemy or downed teammate, and pulls them towards you. Useful for pulling downed teammates out of harms way, or enemies off of an objective quickly. Has a 45 second cooldown so it cannot be spammed.
  • E Ability: (Contextual) Human Shield: Picks up a wounded enemy and holds them like a shield. Mustang is able to use his secondary while in shield mode. The human shield cannot commit suicide or respawn, and must wait for Mustang to kill him, or have Mustang be killed. If a teammate shoots at an enemy human shield and kills him/her, they lose points for friendly fire. Once ability wears out, Mustang finished off the shield and moves on. If Mustang is killed with shield alive, the enemy can be revived once more or respawn.
  • Story:

If this is well recieved, I will post their stories, which I already have written for them. I give permission to Splash Damage and Nexon to use/modify any of these ideas if they so choose.

(Samniss_Arandeen) #2

Mags is alright, but I don’t agree with her ammo resupplies depending on absorbing enemy fire. The magnet idea is a great one, this implementation isn’t.

Pickpock? Smokestun is an OP version of Redeye’s smoke, and why bother putting yourself in danger of being seen and shot immediately for a pickpocket? You don’t get to use the Ability you stole nor even disable all the enemy’s Abilities. I’d rather play Mimic.

I like the ability behind Lement. Upper seems like it makes Engineers redundant, though. How long does the buff last? Would it be at all possible to add some Defibs and make a Medic class out of him? Can Downer have added health regeneration (that can’t be interrupted with damage)

How would one release Trapper’s traps? Why not just play Proxy and blow the motherfucker sky high with a mine? Tranquilizer sounds like a decent idea for a sniper primary, though.

Now Musketeer is where I really started losing interest. Muzzleloader doesn’t look or sound all that fun to play given you’re not doing anything for 30-40 seconds. Just play Vassili and get all the picks you can.

Mortars. I’ve hated these in every game I’ve ever played that had them. They’ve never been fun to use or to be the target of, and this doesn’t seem the exception.

The bird sounds like an interesting idea. This should be an objective specialist character, however.

Rigger’s boobytraps sound like an OP version of Proxy’s landmines that can only be placed in certain places.

Finally, we’re onto Mustang. What’s the chain ability? Did you not get around to filling in that blank? If so, that really makes me think less of all these ideas. Do you also realize how much of a slap in the face to all semblance of game balance or fun to prevent an enemy from respawning? What the hell is the guy playing shield supposed to do?

(Milwankerchief) #3

Thanks for the input, how would you have implemented the magnet idea differently?

Smokestun would actually be a very small, but quick plume of smoke, mainly for quickly sneaking through small gaps in cover and stunning enemies. In my opinion, all RedEyes does in this case is add a great counter to her ability. I like you mimic idea, but the idea of PickPock is more to give longterm disabilites to enemy players, not match the playstyles of your enemies. I originally was going to make it more so that PickPock stole all abilities, but I thought people would say it is too OP.

For Lement, I originally made it so that if you stick both drugs into a downed teammate at the same time, it would stimulate their heart and revive them. I will reimplement that, and good call on the health regen, I didn’t think of that. I think Buffs should last maybe not time, but lives, like maybe around 3-4 lives, it wears off. Upper would upgrade stats, but not to the same effect as just playing a normal engineer, so engineers still have their place, and even they can be buffed by upper.

Trapper’s traps are released by looking down at them, and holding F for 5-10 seconds.

If the reload time is the issue with Musketeer, that could be shortened. The idea for him was a Vassili for beginners, people who aren’t great with headshots. He is more adept at close range than Vasilli aswell, given that beginners arent always going to play Sniper from where the should.

I understand your frustration of mortars, but being killed by these isn’t too different than being killed by Arty’s artillery, except mortars are weaker. The idea for Mortey is a niche between fire support and engineer, so his mortars are exceptionally weaker than all Q abilities of standard fire support mercs.

I will implement your idea of obj. specialist, but could you go further in depth as to why you feel this way?

Rigger was actually one of my most thought out characters, though they were all thought out. Rigger is actually designed to be not like Proxy at all. His bombs are not designed to detonate when people are in it’s proximity. They are designed to give panic among the enemy team. Imagine it like this, you are playing defense on underground, defending the first objective. The attackers got inside planted the bomb and held it until the very end. Now you are the last survivor, and it’s up to you to defuse the bomb, but you see rigger left you a special gift. You can A: ignore it and disarm the objective bomb, sacrificing yourself once it is disarmed. Now your team has respawned without you and there is one less defender. or B: try to disarm the boobytrap first, and then disarm the C4, but this requires more time, and could cause you to lose. Same with downed teammates, you are playing medic, and a critical teammate is down, you A: know he is rigged so you cannot defib/REVIVR him, only help him up, which is riskier, or B: don’t realize he is rigged, go to defib him, and blow both of you up to smitherines, as well as any teammate who stood too close.

Also, thanks for letting me know about Mustang, I simply forgot to fill that out. You can check it out again, should be filled out this time. Anyways, you kind of hit the nail on the head, you aren’t allowed to respawn as a human shield. If anything you only miss one chance to respawn as human shield, his ability will wear out by the time a second chance comes around. It really isn’t game breaking at all. What do you do as a human shield? Same thing you would do as a downed enemy, nothing. If you think it would be more fair, it could be made so that human shields will be revived on sight if the mustang holding him/her is killed by your team.

Also, be sure to check out the other half of this series of merc suggestions.

(Samniss_Arandeen) #4

Even missing one chance to respawn because some asshole took you as a human shield is complete bullshit, and fucks over the respawn wave system by no fault of the dead person. That’s my opinion of your human shield idea.

The concept of boobytraps is another conceptually flawed idea that plays havoc with game balance. Fuse lengths, defuse times, the like are carefully balanced; your idea is to throw all that out the window. As for rigging bodies, consider how fair it would be for a Medic to make it to a teammate and revive them, only to get blown sky high because of the revive itself. I can accept dying as a Medic because I stepped on a mine in my haste to get my mate back in the fight, or because someone noticed me getting someone back up and took the shot on me. I can’t accept a Medic dying just because he defibrillated someone, aka just doing his job.

“Vassili for beginners” was all I needed to know that Musketeer is a horrible idea. You’re seriously going to make a n00b crutch so they can do artificially well at the game? People already complain the snipers are overpowered when it takes them a headshot for instant kill. Now n00bs are going to have a “for beginners” weapon that can do all that and more on a bodyshot. Yeah, real fucking balanced.

Smaller smoke. Okay. So what’s stopping me from just playing Redeye? I’ve got smoke, a way to see past it, a way to mark enemies…I want the enemy to have a long-term disability, I just headshot people with whatever weapon and kill them. I doubt sneaking up on a living enemy would ever work for long in this game.

When I die to Arty’s artillery, or to Skyhammer’s airstrike, or Kira’s laser, it’s because I missed an obvious indication or tried to dance around it, and deserved to die for it. Do you have any idea for seeing/hearing a mortar shell coming? I fear all the complaints from people dying with no warning or opportunity to prepare or avoid.

Trapper’s traps shoudn’t take that long to undo. 5 seconds maximum. Shooting disables them just like Proxy’s mines (though they have more health than mines), and you can free a teammate from a trap the same way you’d help them up. And yes, though you are trapped, you can still turn and shoot and use Abilities and the like. This is what booby traps should be. None of that rigger bullshit.

Those are the six I couldn’t bring myself not to shit all over, because I really hate shitting all over people’s ideas when mine can be just as hare-brained.

The magnet idea. You’re not the first one to think of it. There’s a Merc idea called Burlesque who does it similarly to you, just without that whole “convert absorbed bullets into Ammo Packs” crap. That was a terrible idea.

I’m glad to see the dual syringe to revive idea for Lement. While I’d like to have the option to have the combo on a context sensitive key, as pressing Q and E simultaneously is more than a little awkward when WASD move (and is only slightly less awkward for me. I have extra mouse buttons!) It’s one of the better concepts for a Medic I’ve seen, and one I hope to see come to DB officially. Do both syringes come out of the same reserve “pool”? If so, a stack of nine would do just fine for buffs lasting a minute, dealing the occasional revive. The addition of buffed health regen is to make up for the lack of healing ability.

As far as Talon having Objective Specialist? My logic is that the bird is a deployable, and from a gameplay standpoint, the bird could make for some impressive objective plays. A case could be made for making her a Recon class, though, with the bird being a spotter and all.

(Milwankerchief) #5

“Smaller smoke. Okay. So what’s stopping me from just playing Redeye? I’ve got smoke, a way to see past it, a way to mark enemies…I want the enemy to have a long-term disability, I just headshot people with whatever weapon and kill them. I doubt sneaking up on a living enemy would ever work for long in this game.”

What’s stopping you from playing RedEye is that RedEye and PickPock don’t do the same thing. It’s like saying why play Fletcher when Fragger also throws explosives. And headshotting isn’t giving a long-term disability, as they will respawn in >20 seconds. And if you have doubts about the sneaking, you haven’t played with or against a decent Phantom. The main point is the RedEye plays recon, whereas PickPock is an assassin.

Yes, shells from Mortars will make a loud whistling sound, so the other team isn’t 100% oblivious.

As far as Trapper’s traps, that’s spot on how I envisioned they would work so were in agreement there.

Here’s a link to 6 more ideas: http://forums.dirtybomb.nexon.net/discussion/16543/6-more-merc-suggestions-of-15#latest Your feedback and criticism is always valued.

(Samniss_Arandeen) #6

Except Redeye and Pickpock are doing exactly the same thing, just Redeye has better smoke and a way to see past it. 20 seconds is long term in this game.

As for sneaking? Phantom is not only semi-invisible, he only needs to sneak up long enough to fucking eviscerate the poor sod. You’re asking players to stay close enough to hold the Use key on them, completely visible and vulnerable the whole time, and leave a pissed-off Ability-less enemy alive to retaliate.