Phantom’s invisibility is supposed to achieve the same effect to your opponent as ET’s covert ops disguise. Since both teams look pretty much exactly the same, it makes no sense to have a disguise, so rather than blend in with the enemy team by looking like them, mind as well make it so that your enemy can’t see you.
Pretty much everybody is like an assault merc, but what differentiates assault from other classes is the heavy weapons. Fragger has the K 121 LMG. Thunder has the other LMG. Rhino has his minigun, and Nader has her grenade launcher. All these weapons, if they were in Brink, can be only used by the heavy body type, and like the Soldier class in ET and ETQW, is the heavy weapon class. You can say Fire Support X, or Recon Y is has Assault qualities because they kill enemies, but so do the Field Ops, with the airstrike and arty strike, and Covert Ops, being able to use sniper rifles. It’s just a different way of doing it.
Stoker can’t carry heavy weapons, and what differentiates fire support from other mercs is the give ammo ability more than their other abilities. The other ability of the fire support also has a very long cooldown compared to the Assault class. You may say that all fire support has some sort of weapon from the sky, but Stoker could easily call a Mortar team from afar to launch long distance molotovs, and it would achieve the same effect. Let’s say in a 8v8 server, you have 3 assault, 2 medics, 1 engineer, 0 fire support, and 1 recon, and you are trying to figure out which merc to pick. I think that you would pick the fire support merc for the ammo ability, so if the class icons are actually beside the merc, in game, you can count the number of players who could give ammo. It also makes it easier for me to look at one icon that tells me that these players do the same type of job, instead of keeping track of 4 different merc portraits that tell me they do the same job. Now me, when I count how many fire support mercs is on my team, I count how many ammo givers, not how many people killers.
It also makes it so that newbies don’t have a squad of Sawbonez, Aura, and Phoenix.
Here are the abilities that make a class what they are, abilities that no other class can have, and how Splash Damage probably classifies the mercs.
Assault has heavy weapons
Medic is heal combined with revive.
Engineer is objective specialist
Fire support gives ammo combined with ability damage with long cooldown.
Recon does the same stuff as Assault, but in a manner that you see them, but they don’t see you. Vasili and Aimee through being far away and having a long range scope, Redeye through smoke and IR goggles, and Phantom through being invisible.
There are abilities that don’t make a merc a specific class, like fletcher’s sticky bomb. If fletcher lost objective specialist, and instead can carry heavy weapons, he would be Assault. If instead of objective specialist, he carried snipers, or can throw smoke, he would be a Recon. If you combined Fragger’s grenade ability with Objective specialist, that merc would be an engineer. If Fragger switch his grenade ability with Stoker’s molotov ability, Fragger would still be Assault because of his LMG, and Stoker would still be fire support, because of his giving ammo ability. Other abilities that don’t make that merc a specific class is Turtle’s shield and Thunder’s concussion grenades,
The only hybrid classes I can see are classes that combine any of these 2 abilities. Heavy weapon, objective specialist, healing, reviving, and ammo giving.
Combining objective specialist ability with heal, revive, heavy weapon, and any recon ability would not be balanced.
Combining heavy weapons with heal, revive, objective specialist, and ammo (only if his weapons aren’t ability weapons) is not balanced.
Combining heal and/or revive with heavy weapons, concealment, objective specialization, and any ability that kills lots of enemies would not be balanced.
There are 2 hybrid mercs I can say is balanced. One that gives ammo and revives, and one that gives ammo and heals, and that’s all I could think of. The reason only this works is because you still have a singular focus in your roles. Just be the guy who tosses stuff to teammates.
If Splash Damage did release hybrid mercs, their 2 roles wouldn’t be as good as 2 mercs who each had one role.
Hybrid mercs can also be solved with a hybrid icon. It isn’t that hard to make a half cross half wrench.
It’s already too late, but I made a suggestion that Stoker should be assualt, carry molotovs and a flamethrower. Thunder should be fire support, have the ammo station, and have a lightning stirke ability that stuns enemies. What makes Thunder an assault, even if his concussion grenades can’t kill anyone, is his LMG.
If hybrid mercs were to be done, I’d rather have them done right, not a jack of all trades master of none type of merc, and not one where there is an imbalance in the type of role that merc does, for example, if that merc is better at objectives than at healing, even if he is a medic engineer hybrid, that merc would be an engineer. It also has to be balanced. The hybrid merc must also have a singular focus. Don’t make a merc where it can both effectively heal and do objectives, or one that can kill enemies effectively and do objectives effectively. It takes away from the teamplay aspect.
Another thing about hybrid icons, the icons have to be color coded too. That way, if there is a hybrid icon, I can just look at the color, rather than slowly look at the symbol, otherwise it wouldn’t be different from trying to process 4 different merc portraits into the same class.
It is also easier to track 5 classes than 20 mercs, assuming that Thunder, Aimee, and Turtle will be released soon. Imagine the game had 100 different mercs. Just by looking at the player list, without a class icon, can you quickly tell how many players whose role is to heal or revive you is on your team? You’d have to process a lot of merc protraits and associate them with healing or reviving, which can be fixed by having class icons. It is easier to process 5 things than it is to process 100 things.
