From a pool of 22 mercs, is there any chance.......

(Zalamael) #1

…we can get the merc limit per match increased?

I always bring Nader and Sawbonez along when I play (as I have a propensity to try and win every match, even in casual, and I do well with both of those), which leaves me a single slot for a fun merc.

That slot is often filled with a merc I am not interested in playing, due to a daily quest thingy.

So my question is, can we get the merc limit per match increased? Four would be good, but five would be better.

I remember when DB first came out, there were only seven available mercs, so only being allowed only three didn’t feel so bad. Now though, with so many options, only being able to bring 3, from a pool of 22 (soon to be 23), just feels too limiting, especially when there are 5 (IIRC) different classes with a pool of 22 options.

I would love to have my 2 mainstays, and a merc for a daily quest, and then Thunder and RedEye as fun picks. At the moment, the system you have feels like it is limiting the ability to play a variety of mercs in any given match.

For example, I was in a match earlier where we were steamrolling the other team while defending. I would have loved to have switched to a merc I rarely use, but I had Nader and Sawbonez, and then Phoenix due to a quest. It was a perfect opportunity to switch my play up and use a merc I rarely use, but I was limited in my options.

(K1X455) #2

how about players who haven’t unlocked mercs?

(kopyright) #3

@K1X455 said:
how about players who haven’t unlocked mercs?

More motivation to play to unlock things.

(n-x) #4

Can you imagine the 5 Merc cancer squad from hell every noob would have? Proxy, Vasilli, Phantom, Javelin + x (probably Redeye for smoking the own team)

(GatoCommodore) #5

@n-x said:
Can you imagine the 5 Merc cancer squad from hell every noob would have? Proxy, Vasilli, Phantom, Javelin + x (probably Redeye for smoking the own team)

this
i cant imagine those newbies bringing cancer squad because they bought the all merc pack.

(K1X455) #6

@kopyright said:

@K1X455 said:
how about players who haven’t unlocked mercs?

More motivation to play to unlock things.

More reason to increase competitive nature of DB and and lessen casualness the game

(Eox) #7

@kopyright said:

@K1X455 said:
how about players who haven’t unlocked mercs?

More motivation to play to unlock things.

Or it will just make them scream bullshit because they won’t be able to play what they want, while the absolute newbies will get incredibly confused because they won’t be able to play at all where most players of their levels are since everyone is already playing skyhammer or aura.

The idea of limiting mercs isn’t bad, but it doesn’t belong to official servers or CMM. Merc limit should be a custom server thing. That makes me wonder about what happened to rental servers… SD talked about implementing them a while ago. So far, only TAW and OCB got one (AIE clan’s server got removed as far as I know). Maybe it could be a thing for 1.0.

(AlbinMatt) #8

@GatoCommodore said:

@n-x said:
Can you imagine the 5 Merc cancer squad from hell every noob would have? Proxy, Vasilli, Phantom, Javelin + x (probably Redeye for smoking the own team)

this
i cant imagine those newbies bringing cancer squad because they bought the all merc pack.

And abusing all of the mercs in the same match. Wow, that would send anyone’s blood pressure skyrocketing.

(Artyrim) #9

3 is already a lot. If there was only 1 then we could have a nice balance here. More is not better,is just makes it even worst. Random useless changes make this game even more chaotic.

Imagine a match with only 1 merc/ person and only 1 type merc/team where you use that merc for the whole match and get used to your job.

Is better to change your card during the game than a merc

(Zalamael) #10

@Artyrim said:
3 is already a lot. If there was only 1 then we could have a nice balance here. More is not better,is just makes it even worst. Random useless changes make this game even more chaotic.

Imagine a match with only 1 merc/ person and only 1 type merc/team where you use that merc for the whole match and get used to your job.

Is better to change your card during the game than a merc

Not really, given that you would need people to pick the right mercs in advance. What if you have no artillery to destroy an EV, or no support to heal people? Whereas you can play and even win without a support, it puts you at a big disadvantage, but not having any artillery can be really painful when you need to destroy an EV. I often find myself using Nader’s nades to do it, because no one else brought one along, and she isn’t the best option for that (and that is with each player having a pool of 3 mercs to use).

Saying that, I tend to flex a lot in other games, I always go for the picks that the team needs when it needs it. This is why I always have Sawbonez, I like his Crotzni and his healing capacity, and Nader is there to provide more offensive pushing power. And I recently acquired Turtle, and he seems to be very useful for advancing the objectives to help win the match.

Also, in reference to some of the above comments, cancer picks doesn’t seem like a solid argument against having more choices available, as people who are predisposed to making those choices will do so anyway, regardless of having 3 or 5 choices available. Giving more choices wont suddenly change players to make them more cancerous, it will simply give the already cancerous players more options. However, it also gives the other players on the team more options to work around them, based on what the team is lacking (healing, artillery, ammo etc).

We all have our favourites, but there are times they are not right for the job and we need to switch. All I am asking for is more options to be a more useful flex, to help counteract the bad picks/team composition that can often occur. And also, because the missions often require a certain merc to be used, which is often annoying if they happen to be mercs I never use.

The only other option I can think of alleviate the mission issue, would be for the game to look at our merc usage, and tailor the missions to be favour the mercs we favour, rather than the ones we never use.

(Muddy Muddy Mud Nade) #11

I think the 3 merc limit is fine. The restriction makes people select their mercs more carefully depending on the map, which side you’re on, and who you are particularly good with. It would also prevent the “Oh, I’ll just throw this merc that I never play but have a mission for in the squad,” thing. Not to mention that it hinders the rock-paper-scissors aspect that people fear so much, so it’s not as Overwatch or TF2-y.
I could probably write a whole thread why I think the 3-merc limit is fantastic, but I probably won’t because I’m lazy.

(Zalamael) #12

@MuddyGrenade said:
I think the 3 merc limit is fine. The restriction makes people select their mercs more carefully depending on the map, which side you’re on, and who you are particularly good with. It would also prevent the “Oh, I’ll just throw this merc that I never play but have a mission for in the squad,” thing. Not to mention that it hinders the rock-paper-scissors aspect that people fear so much, so it’s not as Overwatch or TF2-y.
I could probably write a whole thread why I think the 3-merc limit is fantastic, but I probably won’t because I’m lazy.

I wouldn’t mind reading that, if you do decide to share your thoughts.

I guess my main issue, is that as a flex, I sometimes lack one of the five ‘classes’ the team needs, and sometimes my teammates make it worse due to their own selections (playing for themselves instead of the team etc). At this point, as much as I enjoy Nader, I am thinking of dropping her in favour of a merc that is more useful for fulfilling objectives, specifically an ammo/artillery choice, and maybe an engineer class (probably Turtle). And it gets worse when the mission system resets every 3 hours, and often has a specific merc required to fulfil it.

I would even go so far to say, that I regret unlocking the mercs I never use, and have no intention of using, because the way the mission system works, is it is only applied for mercs you have already unlocked (which is a good thing). If I had the option, I would re-lock Vasilli, Aura, Phoenix and probably a few others (as I never use them), and I am starting to wonder if unlocking more (such as Aimee or Rhino) is a good idea, as I will never use them, and I don’t want unwanted missions due to having them unlocked, as it will hinder my choices during a match. From a business perspective, that seems counter-productive to making us want to unlock/buy mercs.

Not sure how my suggestion would work in competitive/pro level play, someone from that side of the game would have to comment, but for casual, I can’t see it causing too many issues. Maybe have a trial period and a vote?

Anyway, just to be clear, the 3 merc limit doesn’t dampen my enjoyment of the game, it just causes occasional frustration due to not having a class that my team needs. Denying a flex player the option to fully flex doesn’t make for happy times during some matches :slight_smile:

(ThunderZsolt) #13

@MuddyGrenade make it 3 on attack, and another 3 on defense, and I’m satisfied.

Take Bridge for example, where you need

  • fire supports to damage the EV, but they are next to useless at defending the 3rd objective.
  • explosive spam mercs to take out the generator, the more you have, the better (also good on the last obj, but useless elsewhere)
  • an engineer to repair the EV, who is useless at defense unless it’s Turtle, because the only C4 objective is the generator which is easier to destroy with explosives. Also useless at last obj.
  • Aura for defending who is a bad choice for attacking

These mercs are almost required to win, in other words you have like 5% chance to win if the enemy team has these, and you don’t.

Also, it’s useful to have

  • Thunder/Fragger to lead the push (good on both sides tho)
  • A sniper on defending the middle of the map
  • If the defenders camp really hard the generator room with Turtle+Aura+ammo station, Phantom can help a lot

My point is, some of these “must-have” mercs are very situational or only useful at one side, and on top of that, you have the “get x amount of XP with y merc in your squad” which leaves very little choice.

TLDR:
I’m not saying that the 3 merc limit is completely bad, but it surely has downsides. I would love to read your opinion, why is it “fantastic”.

(kopyright) #14

@ThunderZsolt said:

  • fire supports to damage the EV, but they are next to useless at defending the 3rd objective.

Their ammo support abilities don’t seem that useless to me, especially since the next available ammo crate is too far away from the objective when defending. Or did you mean ‘attacking the 3rd objective’?

(geefunkster) #15

I get why you WANT more merc slots as I like to run a steady engi and medic and then have 1 slot usually filled with a mission merc. IMHO though, 3 slots is about right to give a balance between providing the player with options and retaining an element of strategy in choosing mercs. Having say 5 slots would mean you’d have a merc for pretty much every situation and would also make it easier for people to co-ordinate annoying teams made of entirely proxies or whatever.

I guess the furthest change I’d be willing to compromise at would be the ability to switch out a merc at mid-game.