[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;511578]That “Freedom” is actually what is keeping you enslaved to a set strategy.
Sure in public none ranked it can be cool to play what ever you like.
In match making with this system you are forced to play the most effective Mercs at set times during a map. If you refuse to do so you will be made out to be a feeder noob that does not know what hes doing because “everyone knows you need 3 Skyhammers for the first objective” and “what noob would play Arty inside on underground OMG!”. Having a draft mode removes this aspect in some ways and allows for a much more diverse group of strats for each map and objective. Having a Proxy on defence on White Chapel where if playing “perfectly” you would have had an extra Skyhammer really changes the way you need to play. Taking down the EV with mines would also force the attackers to either accept the EV will go down lots of times or push in front of it to clear the mines. SURE! you can do this with the 3 Merc system… The thing is, if you was playing to win, you would not because taking out the EV is easier with other Mercs. The problem is you need that Proxy for when you attack to repair the EV… Picks and Bans would force some crazy strats and cool plays to watch.[/QUOTE]
First of all, who cares what other players say you ‘obviously’ need to do. Player attitudes about the meta-game shouldn’t be balanced for, it will shape itself just fine.
Then, limiting the amount of duplicate mercs, or keeping each merc ‘unique’ is only going to lower the diversity in a game. Why? Because it pulls all the possible team combinations back to the mean.
Unique tactics are born by having a select bunch of mercs compounding their niche into a super-niche and overwhelming their opponents that way. Eight skyhammers blowing the bejesus out of the opponent team right at the start of a match to secure the first objective is not only amazingly difficult to organise, it’s also incredibly difficult to execute.
And Skyhammer is just your example. But imagine a battalion of turrets slowly being placed, replaced and repaired, slowly moving towards the objective step by step. Epic. Eight proxies with criquet bats are still incredibly scary and the same goes Eight phoenix constantly reviving each other. I don’t think eight naders or eight rhinos need much illustration.
And those would just be the ‘super niches’ the huge achilles heels already balances the most of it. The real scary stuff is six niche mercs backed up by two perfectly complementary mercs.
Figuring all these things out adds flavour to the game. They’re not going to happen often because they’re difficult to execute and highly risky. If a particular tactic becomes so prevalent it starts to become too common then the merc itself needs to be adjusted (rather than capping it’s ability if used by multiple mercs).
Stacking mercs is what creates the diversity. Not being able to stack them and forcing teams to have a diverse set of mercs will only make all the teams more similar because you just disabled all the outliers.
Your concern about players feeling forced into tried and tested tacitcs however, IS a huge risk when you start limiting duplicate mercs. That’s when ‘the proxy’ of the team ‘has’ to immediatly repair the EV otherwise that player is a noob. ‘the sawbonez’ of the team HAS to do his medic duties and ‘the skyhammer’ needs to be the teams ammo caddy. Because only one player has this role the team will feel no qualms about making such demands. They’ll even start blaming that one merc for not doing his job. “We lost because our Nader didn’t do her job”.
