"new merc with new primary or secondary every 6 and a half to 7 weeks for the rest of the year"

(Press E) #1

That’s 3 mercs, and 3 new weapons at least.
Now, I love that they’re adding more content, new mercs are great too, but aren’t mercs better as something that’s giving more time between release?

I mean, it takes time for players to actually get used to the merc, how to counter them, how to play with them, etc. And until players are actually familiar with the merc, they can’t really be balanced, because any balance info is likely skewed by inexperience.
It’s already very obvious that javelin is OP, no matter how you look at it. Insta-gib rocket with low cooldown, ammo ability that basically makes all other ammo givers useless, where as turtle was fairly underpowered at launch.

I’m not saying stop working on things, but I do think these things need time to settle in so they can be balanced properly, before adding even more mercs to throw off the balance more.

Edit: Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnI1XLm9z5k

(LuckyNines) #2

30 seconds is a low cooldown? feels like a fucking lifetime in an actual match.

(Mr-Penguin) #3

@LuckyNines said:
30 seconds is a low cooldown? feels like a @$!# lifetime in an actual match.

It’s one just about every spawnwave, which is faster compared to all of the other fire supports when you take cooldown and combat effectiveness into consideration.

(LuckyNines) #4

@Mr-Penguin said:

@LuckyNines said:
30 seconds is a low cooldown? feels like a @$!# lifetime in an actual match.

It’s one just about every spawnwave, which is faster compared to all of the other fire supports when you take cooldown and combat effectiveness into consideration.

“Combat effectiveness” ? Lol. The only differential between them all is health, speed and the fact javelin has the new fangled AR bishlok.

(Meerkats) #5

Imho, all required roles were fulfilled a long time ago and no merc following Stoker has been needed or particularly good for the game, as in if I could pick a point in time and delete all mercs introduced afterward, the cut off would be at Stoker.

Thunder and Turtle both slow down what is supposed to be a fast paced FPS, so they can’t help but suck.

Vassili is still perfectly fine, Aimee is just redundant and her ability alters what is supposed to be a finely tuned TTK formula.

Redeye… I get his smoke can have great tactical applications or whatev… but Dirty Bomb isn’t a tactical FPS. Still, he’s not a horrible addition if not for Grandeur. I’m on the fence on Redeye, but if I had pick to cut him or an earlier merc like Kira, I would cut Redeye in a heartbeat.

Javelin is Fragger, but with a vastly easier to use ability, and honestly? Yes, I am enjoying playing as Javelin ( r-r-r-r-r-r-rokkit ), but did Dirty Bomb really need a noobtube and more explosive spam?

List a role that is not already covered. No, Ivanka the infantry fighting vehicle does not count. If you can think of one, than maybe make that merc, because otherwise we’re just going to have even more redundancy. Great. That sounds brilliant. Please remember to represent the marginalized monkey community that plays Overwatch Dirty Bomb and make a Winston clone or something.

If Splash Damage really needs the cash, instead of new mercs, how about new merch. Like voicepacks. Jason Statham as Sawbonez? Yes. Gordon Ramsay as Fragger? Yes. Terry Crews as Proxy? It’s a new world out there. Iioka Kanako as Sparks? That’s money in your pocket.

(GatoCommodore) #6

@STARRYSOCK said:
That’s 3 mercs, and 3 new weapons at least.
Now, I love that they’re adding more content, new mercs are great too, but aren’t mercs better as something that’s giving more time between release?

I mean, it takes time for players to actually get used to the merc, how to counter them, how to play with them, etc. And until players are actually familiar with the merc, they can’t really be balanced, because any balance info is likely skewed by inexperience.
It’s already very obvious that javelin is OP, no matter how you look at it. Insta-gib rocket with low cooldown, ammo ability that basically makes all other ammo givers useless, where as turtle was fairly underpowered at launch.

I’m not saying stop working on things, but I do think these things need time to settle in so they can be balanced properly, before adding even more mercs to throw off the balance more.

Edit: Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnI1XLm9z5k

they did balanced turtle in 3 weeks or a month…
i say let em do it.

DB is either blowing up or having the last hurrah before their next project with wargaming is fine by me.

(Press E) #7

@GatoCommodore said:
they did balanced turtle in 3 weeks or a month…

Turtle is still pretty lackluster compared to other mercs though. Slow shield, lots of counters, etc. But if you do consider him balanced, it’s worth noting that when he was released, the last merc came out almost an eternity ago. That’s plenty of time to balance the other mercs. But when you’re releasing 3 in such a short time, it becomes harder to balance them before the next one comes out and just makes things harder to balance.

Idk, I love new content and variety, but I think @Meerkats has a really good point too. Adding new mercs is either going to become redundant with all the major rolls filled, or change the game into something it’s not, which will upset a lot of the people who like the game as it is.

(Drac0rion) #8

With Javelins release SD already proved how they struggle fitting a character into a role. If she was assault, she’d almost be balanced.

Also for the support abilities, we already had ammo packs and ammo stations, the new ammo sharing ability Javelin has makes ammo packs rather pointless, considering how much ammo she currently provides. For ammo stations you can at least use them as obstacles vs the enemy.

And for medics, we have two kinds of health packs, healing station and healing pulse.

I’m just worried, that with the amount of content SD tries to push out to get new players, they don’t pay enough attention to balance.
While the last patch had some nerfs towards the right direction, they were nowhere near enough to make a difference for most of the guns that were listed.

And while I’m getting to guns, how will SD plan to add more guns and keep them balanced?
Felix is still just a worse MOA, Simeon just a worse S&W and there are plenty others.
They don’t feel like different guns, they feel worse, they are worse.
What’s the reason to add more similar guns that will just push some other guns essentially out of meta and nothing else?

(DirtyBuns) #9

@Meerkats said:
List a role that is not already covered. No, Ivanka the infantry fighting vehicle does not count. If you can think of one, than maybe make that merc, because otherwise we’re just going to have even more redundancy. Great. That sounds brilliant. Please remember to represent the marginalized monkey community that plays Overwatch Dirty Bomb.

-A Sparks-style Engie who can Repair/Disarm from far away using a powerful wireless device.

-An Assault who can see through walls as the first ability and fire a rail gun that ignores obstacles as a second ability.

I dunno…

(KayDubz) #10

I want more maps and game types (like King of the Hill or Sabotage)…not more mercs.

(Press E) #11

@KayDubz said:
I want more maps and game types (like King of the Hill or Sabotage)…not more mercs.

I agree. Why SD wants to add more mercs is beyond me, they should know by now it’s one of the community’s least desired content additions. And now they’ve promised three of them. Why not just release them 1 at a time and see how things go, see if people immediately want a new merc?

The game’s merc balance is fine, more or less lots of variety, the only issue is that there’s barely anything to do with that variety now because we still have a relatively small number of maps. Maps that for whatever reason, SD seems to be reworking to be more and more identical to each other (cough-dome-coughcough)
At least add a new type of obj, geez. I’m sick of planting constantly.

(Mr-Penguin) #12

The only “niche” I can see needing to be filled in the Medic category is a ranged healer of sorts. Whether a gun or healing grenade or even just a particularly long ranged deployable, I’d like to see a ranged healer (though balance would be questionable).

You can make up as many crazy abilities as you want for Assault mercs. Engineers… not so much. Same goes for Recon.

(Meerkats) #13

@STARRYSOCK said:
Idk, I love new content and variety, but I think @Meerkats has a really good point too. Adding new mercs is either going to become redundant with all the major rolls filled, or change the game into something it’s not, which will upset a lot of the people who like the game as it is.
Don’t get me wrong, I love new content, it’s just between adding additional content that is redundant, e.g. a merc that doesn’t fulfill a new role or playstyle, and making sure existing content is working, polished and well balanced, I would pick having existing content improved.

The only merc I can think of that I think interesting, different and isn’t in the game is an ECM specialist. Make her a South Korean girl or something. She would have two abilities and a passive ability.

Her first ability is an ECM dart that creates a RF deadzone. Enemies inside the deadzone are comms isolated meaning they can neither speak to teammates or hear teammates on comms. The ECM dart can be destroyed which will restore comms after a brief delay.

Her second ability is a comms hack that lets her listen in on enemy voice comms for maybe six seconds. The enemy will not know when they are being listened in on, so if they communicate any information like how they will leave spawn, she can report it to her team and her team can setup appropriately.

Her passive ability is countermeasures. If you are alive and the enemy is listening in on your comms, after a second you will receive a notification, and you can relay that information to your team to stop them from leaking additional information. Additionally, it shortens the duration of the enemy comms hack by a little bit. This prevents our South Korean girl from completely cancelling each other out. You still get a second of enemy comms access and if your team decides to go silent, that’s still time your team isn’t communicating to each other.

Since her abilities have no tangible ingame effect, she’d have to have somewhat decent weapons, but overall, she should be easier pickings if cornered.

Now for her to work, you’d have to somehow force players to use ingame comms, because if they use say Discord, they immediately bypass all her abilities. And on a tourney level, you’d have to require all teams speak English or something and not use codewords or something…

So essentially, she’d never work. But it’s a cool concept that I would like to see in a game someday.

I also want to point out this is all me. If you use this idea, you have to give me credit. :smiley:

(Sorotia) #14

@STARRYSOCK said:

@GatoCommodore said:
they did balanced turtle in 3 weeks or a month…

Turtle is still pretty lackluster compared to other mercs though. Slow shield, lots of counters, etc. But if you do consider him balanced, it’s worth noting that when he was released, the last merc came out almost an eternity ago. That’s plenty of time to balance the other mercs. But when you’re releasing 3 in such a short time, it becomes harder to balance them before the next one comes out and just makes things harder to balance.

Idk, I love new content and variety, but I think @Meerkats has a really good point too. Adding new mercs is either going to become redundant with all the major rolls filled, or change the game into something it’s not, which will upset a lot of the people who like the game as it is.

I still think he should of gotten rifles…m4, timik, and the dreiss would of been well and set him apart from other engineers…right now he feels like a more defensive version of Bushwacker.

(watsyurdeal) #15

I am trying to think of what else they can actually do though. I mean we have Medic, Recon, and Assault left…what exactly more can those 3 have??? :confused:

(Outblast) #16

I have a feeling one of the new mercs will have a flamethrower.

(Xenithos) #17

Sigh… I’ll say it for like the 10th fudging time. Just nerf her hp by 10, and give her a slightly more obvious and slightly longer arm time on her rocket launcher when she is trying to actively fire it. This not only allows her to be squishier despite needing to be a front line merc (because of ammo) but somewhat similar to how Phoenix is balanced. You can CLEARLY see when he’s going to be healing teammates, with her, not so much. She could choose at ANY time to actually fire that thing. The moment the person clicks the mouse we need a warning.

Don’t touch damage, don’t touch cooldown, don’t touch anything else. Add those, see how she feels.

(scrub_lord) #18

@Meerkats said:

If Splash Damage really needs the cash, instead of new mercs, how about new merch. Like voicepacks. Gordon Ramsay as Fragger? Yes.

I would actually pay a ton of money for that. Throw a nade into someone’s mouth “IT’S FOCKIN RAAAAWWWWW!”

(Press E) #19

@Xenithos said:
Don’t touch damage, don’t touch cooldown, don’t touch anything else. Add those, see how she feels.

Well, the main issue with her is that she can pop out from corners and instagib mercs at full health. Cooldown is fine, but the damage is insane imo. No matter how long you make her delay, there’s still a lot of unavoidable deaths involved.

But regardless, this isn’t the place for that. This isn’t another “how javelin should be nerfed” thread, I’m expressing concern for why SD wants to add more mercs when where’s absolutely no need for them.

(BloodySin) #20

Staying away from yet more talk about Javelin, I’m personally all for a constant stream of new mercenaries for as long as their creativity goes - and even after that, there are plenty of ideas to be “borrowed” from other games for a theme, be it for weapons, abilities or hybridization of roles.