Should your squad size be any bigger than 3 mercs?

(Backuplight) #1

I imagine this has come up before, but now we’re in open beta and the number of mercs is steadily growing, how do people feel about the squad size? Personally, I’d love a fouth - but I think any more than that waters down the need to think out who is going in your squad. That said, would having four instead of just three already do that?

With the number of mercs I’ve worked to unlock, obviously I can only play one at a time - but there are moments during a match where I wish I’d brought Fletcher instead of Bushwhacker, or Kira over Nader. This “consequence” of having to pick your squad before a match is a nice concept, but it leaves me feeling that I should have an assault, objective and healer merc in my 3 slots. I don’t particularly enjoy healer, but I don’t feel like I can exclude it from my squad in pubs since you know the match is coming where nobody else shows up knowing how to revive. A fourth slot, for me, would let me keep my three roles, and then bring a double for flavour.

Thoughts?

(B_Montiel) #2

When ditching Dirty Bomb, SD had what seems to me a good idea : Force the players to do compromises. 3 mercs limitation, lock the weapon sets with specific augments. All this stuff forces players to think about what they are going to do in the upcoming game and what is going to be needed. Therefore, if you want to play fragger and select it in your squad, you’re somehow betting that you are going to be more efficient at doing kills than being medic/support/engineer (the one you erased from your squad, and yes, this should be the basic squad for anyone, this tends to be forgotten, I see too much fulltrolltrio squads recently). For me, this choice you need to do is very interesting. Having a fourth merc choice in your squad would allow to have a sniper or an assault class on top of the medic/support/engineer trio, and it would reduce the strategy required in this game, especially when you’re going on matchmaking or on pugs/scrims/tourneys.

(XavienX) #3

Seems fine to me really, there might be some cases where you would need more but so far it’s no biggie.

(brawnyJester) #4

The merc party limit size is there so that people who don’t have a lot of mercs aren’t disadvantaged.

Plus it forces people to make choices.

(avidCow) #5

3 is fine. What I really want to see is the ability to make completely alternate squads that you can swap out with the click of a button during pre-game lobby. Swapping out each merc one by one is a pain in the ass.

(Grave_Knight) #6

No, but it would be nice to have three squads to choose from before entering a match.

(D'@athi) #7

Wouldn’t do more than three for competetive 5on5.

Still on pubs with the “bring merc xyz with you”-missions, an extra fourth slot would be nice, so you wouldn’t need to drop a medic or an engineer, to take the missionmerc and the obvious “my team is this good”-sniper with you.

(elegantRoyalty) #8

well i certainly see the point and fully agree with the idea of limiting the squad size in the competitive pre made team environment, an area which i think 3 is actually too high for and it should drop to two.

I do not see it being such a desirable thing in the public server pick up vs pick up groups quick match, 0-2 slots are gone to quests straight off the bat , and as i stupidly bought a package i get penalised into taking mercs i outright loathe most of the time.
then i have to take a medic in case no one else does because thats pretty much an instant loss and same goes for a mission specialist.

so often theres simply no room at the inn for the mercs i actually want to play , or i choose to go in with a setup i know might gimp the the team. not a choice i think helps the game.

(Aazhyd) #9

I’d like more, but 3 is not a big problem. However, switching to a different merc is unclear displayed in game. I don’t know when hitting F1, F2 or F3 actually has an effect. The game should display which merc you selected for next respawn when you press them.

Also one thing I hate is game always starts with default (first) merc.

(Eddie) #10

Soldier, Engineer, Medic ~Perfect

(misspo) #11

4 WOULD BE BETTER :slight_smile:

(distinquishedSandwich) #12

That’s the meta game behind this. Assault, support, or objective.

(glossyFish) #13

I wouldn’t have as big a problem with only having 3 squad slots if the menus in this game weren’t so appalling. 90% the menus are so laggy I don’t even get the chance to switch up my mercs before the match starts.

(Smokahontas) #14

The squad size is fine as it is.

(Gwarh) #15

For a while I was thinking it would be better to have 5 slots, that way you could have 1 Merc for each role in the game. (Recon, Engineers, Fire Support, Medic, Assault)

But the more I play the more I think 3 is the right size as it forces players to make a choice on who they can bring and that they may not be able to fill every role during a match.

Makes it more interesting that way.

(prodiG) #16

I think it’s totally fine when the merc free rotation doesn’t suck like it does right now. I’m effectively stuck playing medic/engineer/fire support because most of my teams are all Vasillis and Rhinos. No room for fun soldier classes like Fragger, so the compromise I have to make is in some ways detrimental to how much fun I’m having.

When the rotation enables people to have access to medic/engineer/fire support and teams are a little more well-rounded, I don’t mind it so much. I’d be okay with having 4 slots in my squad, but I can totally understand and respect why 3 is the way it i s.

(D.C.V.) #17

I’d like it if they made it bigger for casual games only. It won’t mess with the balance in competitive but it will allow us to enjoy casual play a little bit more.

(reliableTortoise) #18

3 is ok i guess but more is always better in pubs…