I liked it but as mentioned before:
Missing functions in game for it, making it hard to “hotswap”, potentially getting your team kicked from cup if you fail. Hopefully ingame funcrions can come soon.
Works ok now, if people have starter packs, + have bought a merc or 2.
Works less than ok if a player doesnt have 5-8 mercs to play.
Would work better with maybe 15 mercs available
Highlander is fine if mercs were balanced (mostly sawbonez - aura) and we had more to choose from each role. Now I would like to see 1 Heavy rule, (others are free to use) and when more mercs for each role come out, we can use highlander.
I don’t want to get forced to play 1 merc for a whole map, I understand the point of “hard-decisions” but why can’t we make small decisions through out the game to affect the out come? Much more enjoyable to play at least.
It felt really fun to play in general so good tourney!
Buffs to nader: +10hp, Gibbing with grenade launcher should be possible too. I don’t mean like insta-gibbing, but when you kill them with launcher and they are on the ground and you hit a new shot to them it should gib the body, I don’t at least remember gibbing anyone with the launcher, or if I hit them it doesn’t explode instantly to gib them at least.
But in the end I agree that the game lacks a bit in tactical depth. I still have couple things in mind what I want to test out in scrims / tourneys, but I feel like it’s “unnecessary” to actually try it since you can just kill everyone and do what ever u want.
[QUOTE=LiNkzr;528070]
Buffs to nader: +10hp, Gibbing with grenade launcher should be possible too. I don’t mean like insta-gibbing, but when you kill them with launcher and they are on the ground and you hit a new shot to them it should gib the body, I don’t at least remember gibbing anyone with the launcher, or if I hit them it doesn’t explode instantly to gib them at least.[/QUOTE]
Yes please! Ive never seen a nade gib a body, even if you lobby 3 nades on one incapacitated aura, she still keeps rolling on the ground.
[QUOTE=prophett;528062]We argued about this a couple of weeks back on TS. I stand by having more mercs available for use will translate into more strat variety
ie;
I can choose between fragger, skyhammer, and sawbones = more strats/more unique strats, capitalizing on the strength of each of your selected mercs depending on the situation.
I am locked to Skyhammer = While I might be forced to find more creative ways to make him more effective in less than ideal situations, it translates into less variety in strats.[/QUOTE]
This is a fallacy…
From watching literally hundreds of matches of DB (pugs, scrims and matches) I can say with conviction that the only time you see Merc switches is at objective change or game state change. (when I say game state change I mean as in Linkz plants with bushwhacker and kills out to Vasseli to cover) The only other time you really see players changing there Merc is when they have hit a brick wall and nothing is working. it is like a panic reaction and in the vast majority of cases you see them switch Merc for two or three spawns and then switch back when they realise it made no difference. Only exceptions to this rule really are Linkz, Chicken and Zups but even then they normally just rotate between two characters each.
Please understand I am not talking about number of possible strats… Sure giving more options = more potential strats…
However, the more potential strats, the more likely one is to be simply stronger than the rest.
Especially when you never need to weight up your choice vs potential downsides (because there is none really).
The risk vs reward is almost insignificant apart from the small things we see now like giving a Fragger up to have a sniper.
As a team knowing you have a player that is crazy good with a certain Merc on a certain objective means you can weight up the risk vs reward of taking X merc on Y map because even though you know your going to struggle to attack the first phase, they have no chance if you get to the second phase. and bla bla bla.
I know we won’t agree on this but hey need to try and preach when you can right…
“A gentleman can withstand hardships; it is only the small man who, when submitted to them, is swept off his feet.”
Confucius
1 fragger rule should be enough for now.
Almost every team ran an aura just because of necessity. Same with some other mercs like nader, arty and so on.
since we are having a quote off:
necessity is the mother of invention
i challenge you to find a more hardcore cliche!
You used a misquote -.-
“Adversity is the mother of progress.”
Mahatma Gandhi
[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;528080]You used a misquote -.-
“Adversity is the mother of progress.”
Mahatma Gandhi[/QUOTE]
whatcha talking bout!
I didn’t play but
While it was overall more enjoyable to watch with the 1 merc rule (less instagibs, more diversity, terminal)
I found it also more chaotic and harder to understand what’s happening, might be because of the speed that the light mercs add. Fragger and sawbonez trains were easier to watch i think or is it just me?
[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;528076]This is a fallacy…
From watching literally hundreds of matches of DB (pugs, scrims and matches) I can say with conviction that the only time you see Merc switches is at objective change or game state change. (when I say game state change I mean as in Linkz plants with bushwhacker and kills out to Vasseli to cover) The only other time you really see players changing there Merc is when they have hit a brick wall and nothing is working. [/QUOTE]
I’ve switched (or asked someone to switch) in just about every scrim i’ve participated in (that’s my experience with it and I enjoy having that choice available). While this doesn’t occur as often as it would if we had the full range of mercs to choose from, it does happen.
My famous quote;
I definitely enjoyed watching this more, even though we got less exciting games due to v586 being too strong (but kudos to INI for making it at least a little bit exciting in the end).
I also am completely with Pixel for a change, and I don’t think this is a question of better or worse, just preference. We’ll just have to see what catches on, as both “sides” keep campaigning for their respective views.
Before the tournament I wasn’t really sure what I would prefer, with a slight preference for locked mercs. After the tournament I feel much more strongly that I would prefer the locked mercs, due to how much I enjoy having a closer association between players and unique mercs. I just find it more enjoyable to watch this way, and feel that the required commitment creates more interesting stories. While I can’t speak as a competitive player yet, being able to completely focus on one merc during a round also appeals to me.
Of course I can still see the benefits of being able to switch on the fly, I just find the arguments for the other side more convincing.
I also am really warming up to the draft possibility. I think going down this route could add a lot of depth and interest to the game, and perhaps elevate it to a level above the traditional SD formula. For instance I would quite like to see players being pushed out of their comfort zones, and being forced to deal with circumstances that aren’t ideal (just like we now had with players being “forced” to play Aura due to lack of alternatives).
A concern with that of course is what happens if players don’t have access to enough mercs. I don’t know how LoL handles this, but a simple work around would be to give all players access to all mercs in competitive draft mode. Perhaps forced to default skin or something.
I think the 1 merc limit was fine and dandy, but kinda difficult with the limited merc selection. Once we have 20-30 mercs I think this rule is a no-brainer. Until that point it will be somewhat restrictive.
There is definitely something to be said about exclusive draft system, where the first pick has to be between fragger or sawbonez, cause the other team will call dibz on that.
Wed need at least 18 mercs for that to work though.
i think multiple formats are welcome, and i dont necessarily think the comp community should fixate on one comp style for all
I enjoyed having only 1 fragger per team although rather than having artificial limitations put into competitive play I’d still rather see the mercs be finely balanced so that stacking fraggers isn’t the be all and end all.
The balance is okay right now but with a little work I really don’t think it would be hard to have every merc be viable.
The engineers are already both viable
Both medics are viable
Sniper is viable
Fragger, nader, skyhammer and arty need some very slight balance changes and we’d probably see varying team comps without any rules being imposed, which in my mind is the ideal solution :] Wouldn’t be hard just keep tweaking it til there’s no definitive team comp
[QUOTE=titan;528118]I enjoyed having only 1 fragger per team although rather than having artificial limitations put into competitive play I’d still rather see the mercs be finely balanced so that stacking fraggers isn’t the be all and end all.
The balance is okay right now but with a little work I really don’t think it would be hard to have every merc be viable.
The engineers are already both viable
Both medics are viable
Sniper is viable
Fragger, nader, skyhammer and arty need some very slight balance changes and we’d probably see varying team comps without any rules being imposed, which in my mind is the ideal solution :] Wouldn’t be hard just keep tweaking it til there’s no definitive team comp[/QUOTE]
There’s a difference though between viable and desirable. You can make every merc viable, but then people will still settle on a FOTM and stack it up as much as possible. The only way to ensure five unique mercs would be to have five essential roles, but that’s really hard to do. Right now we have about two essential roles and a couple of situational ones. And even then we’d probably see the same five mercs over and over.
The way I see it is this: If the goal is to encourage teams to run five unique mercs, then the Highlander rule does no harm anyway. So why not stick with it and ensure that slight balance issues don’t make the games less interesting again?
I guess cause I don’t think we do need 5 unique mercs, having an aura instead of a sawbonez on attack is a nuisance and forcing everyone to play a unique merc is just us forcing team play into a game that’s really about tdm… fix the root issue of the game instead of bandaging it. If no one is taking field ops by default why not just fix it to make it an essential class, you know, like a class based shooter 
Just my opinion anyway I don’t massively care about this particular issue just think the game should be tightened up a little by SD instead of by the cups
MOVE OUT! COMING THOUGH!!!
OK Son, when you say “I’d still rather see the mercs be finely balanced so that stacking fraggers isn’t the be all and end all.” it sounds like a totally fair statement. However, its not easy to balance something that is almost binary. For example, Thunder can survive a direct hit from Fraggers nade and survive a snipers headshot. However, Fragger will still be selected because of his nade. What I am getting at is that Fraggers worth is really all based on his ability to kill + gib instantly without being seen. if you removed that ability we would see people just roll with two thunders because then the core fragger would be really just not as strong.
In my honest opinion. I feel all “Assault” role Mercs need a much closer looking at. So far Splash Damage have failed to deliver on a role based game and instead its still heavily based on the 5 classes. ie, “Forced to take an Aura” because your forced to take a “Medic” and people asking for “1 Assault rule” really says it all. I still believe the way to balance fragger is to make him stronger but change the function of his nade away from 1 hit instagib.
Duno if I agree I think that any number of nerfs could bring fragger off his thrown even if he keeps the instagib grenade. take 10-20 hp off him, give him 1 grenade instead of 2, further nerf the crazy lmg. Any of these would bring him further into line and when other mercs like rhino and thunder come out they probably would be decent picks in relation to fragger. Would I take a 160hp thunder over a 130hp fragger… I would definitely consider it. Plus there’s a big thread about field ops with some great ideas on how to make them more relevant and if we see changes like that also coming into place you’d see field ops also become an essential pick like medic and engi. At that point let people run as many fraggers as they want and let the team which utilizes all of the (hopefully one day) useful classes destroy them. In my head that just seems like a better more well rounded game than one where certain mercs are so strong we have to limit them ourselves.
I’m a bit tired so hopefully that made sense… lol, i go sleep now
Didn’t play in the cup, but the only “problem” I had with it(when playing scrims/pugs) is that the merc pool feels too small to allow this sort of system at the moment. The choices you have are very limited, for example Sawbonez, imo, is just 100x better a medic than Aura is but there are no other medics than those two so with highlander rules someone gets forced into playing Aura which from what I’ve heard from most people feels really(REALLY) forced, regardless of if she is weak or not. Same applies to Arty.
Like I said before, it does make the balance more clear, before the ‘balance’ was Fraggers being strong because there were just always 2 or even 3 of him. Now Fragger isn’t nearly as ‘OP’ because he doesn’t stand out nearly as much anymore. Sawbonez and Skyhammer become much higher capability mercs compared to him because the fragging isn’t only on Fraggers shoulders anymore, which I think is a good thing.
I do think a lot of people would still like to see a ‘class based restriction’-system where you have free choice in what mercs you pick to fill roles. So you’d have 1 Soldier/Heavy(things like Fragger), 2 Fire Support, 3 Medics, 3 Engineers, 1 Covert at a time. I think for the size of the small mercpool right now this would feel a lot less restrictive. It means the killing potential is the same as in Highlander mode but it doesn’t force people into ‘the one merc that is left’ for some roles. F.E you could have 2 Skyhammers instead of 1 Skyhammer and forced 1 Arty and you could have 2 Sawbonez instead of 1 Sawbonez and forced 1 Aura. And inb4 people go ‘but Arty/Aura isn’t that weak if you use him/her right’, I agree they can be very effective. But this is about finding the middle ground between free choice of mercs and ‘forcing’ team composition. Also in the long run restricting with this class based system means that people have to stay within ‘restrictions’ even if there are more mercs similar to Fragger. When the game gets bigger with a much larger merc pool it would mean that there are maybe 6 Fire Support mercs, with Highlander that still means that f.e WhiteChapel can still be 4/5 Assault roles just wrecking the EV all the time or people running 3/4 ‘Fragger-esque’ mercs again because there are more high damage output mercs available. It will be slightly different as in that there are different mercs on the field, but the meta would likely turn into something very similar to what we had before Highlander. The way I(and I know plenty of other people) see it this system has less downsides than the other ones. Especially long term.
Ofcourse there is the ‘road between’, where you have Highlander+Class based restrictions. Where you have 1 merc per team rule and when the merc pool gets larger you restrict how many of a specific class mercs you can have. This is a decent middle ground I guess but it does mean that merc balance has to be spot on across the board for people not feeling like they are being forced into lesser mercs too much(there is always going to be a certain level of ‘forcing’ its unavoidable but if 1 merc in a role is clearly better somethings off we can all agree I think).
Edit: only problem with last said system is that it would have to be restricted from within the game to avoid people accidentally(or abusively) switching to other mercs, but then again that should also be the case for Highlander mode.
Disclaimer: haven’t played.
I could go on for long about the subject, but I think only one thing is of utmost importance: letting teams draw mercs from a pool without return makes the merc balance have too much impact on the outcome of the match. In my opinion this is a no-no, both teams should be on equal grounds in this regard. Having a constantly changing ‘meta’ might have worked for DotA, but I predict it will be a major pain in the butt in DB to have to constantly change your personal merc pools as the patches come along.
That being said, 1 merc rule was as fun for me to watch as the first cup, although admittedly with only one fragger per team on the field engies and fops got more exposure and that’s always fun. Aside from 1 heavy and 1 recon limit I think the rest should be unrestricted, at least until more mercs come along.