[Collector]

MERCENARIES.

If you've taken a peek at almost any grinding area, you've probably noticed a few, if not all of the players killing monsters there have a couple of extra friends. These friends, depending on their origin, are capable of offloading absolute assloads of damage onto targets and taking the same amount before dying. Lost one? No problem; he'll be right back in the next fight like nothing ever happened. Mercs have a minimal cost for arguably the most powerful PvE ability in the game. I've abused them, you've abused them, the new player who decided to read the talent abused them, but I think it's about time they're removed as 'content trivializers' and put into a more comfortable slot as helpful buddies for those early levels.

I don't need to explain action economy to anyone here; we all get that more moves used and absorbed is good. So why, after all this time, is PvE content trivialized by Grinder McGee and his Snakemen Three? I love the PvE aspects of this game, but having a single talent tree remove any difficulty or reason to party up doesn't ignite my will to have fun beating up monsters for a bit. It can be relaxing, as a lot of other players could attest to. 

Personally, I've seen grinder after grinder enter the Wastes on Korvara without a word to anyone, then watched as they ran over any danger out there because they happened to have a set of floating eyes. This doesn't sit well with me, especially considering the in-character circumstances; if asked, do you think EVERY character with mercenaries would have a reasonable explanation as to how they managed to tame three otherworldly eyes? 

How feex?

I know a lot of hardcore grinders wouldn't be pleased should their method of chain LE-ing be nerfed to nothing, but I'm keen on having mercs be those low-level helpers so you can get up to doing things yourself.

Scaling Mercenaries

Let mercs scale with you until they naturally become weaker.

Monster scaling is a little bit wacky, but we can use that to our advantage. Since a level 1 Spatial Corrupter, Snakeman Twinblade, or any other monster is pretty damn powerful before level bonuses, letting player mercs scale to half their level would make early levels a breeze before evening out as they reached higher content. A level thirty corrupter isn't going to do all that much against Swole Twinblades that are over level 60; especially since they'll have trouble hitting them.


Recruitment Changes

Half it, chief.

When a monster is changed from a prisoner to an active mercenary, reduce it to one third its original level. These new goons will still be stellar for getting out of those early skill issues, but won't invalidate everything beyond that. They'll still make effective meatshields, mind you.


FP-Based Goon Wrangling

It's like herding cats.

Give Mercs an inherent %FP cost to exist on-field, based on monster level. Letting players choose if they want a gang of level 70 snakes that cost exorbitant amounts of FP to manage or a couple of meatshields changes the game from strength to efficiency. Grinders would still be free to trivialize a fight, but it wouldn't be in a sustainable form anymore; running back to the inn after every fight because of your snakes doesn't seem all that useful for anything more than getting a quick level boost.



TL;DR: Mercs trivialize most PvE content. Dev please nerf.

[Kazzy]

No. Grinders gonna grind. If people have their mercs as their IC that's well and good. But if they have their balls ripped off, people will just find another thing to do in their place.


Like just playing some sort of grindvoker. PvE in this game is already trivial.

[FaeLenx]

All this does is heightens the bar required to quickly clear content, thus making it more difficult for casual people to reach content.

At the highest level, the fastest grind is 4 people all with good builds. Mercenaries are turned off for that as they just take slow turns when you could have 4 rounds of quaking steps on a back attacked/boar bear trapped enemy group.

[Lolzytripd]

Yeah I don't like this suggestion

Personally I want mercs expanded with customizable human mob sprites like players and you can monoclass them and pick their stats.

[Collector]

All this does is heightens the bar required to quickly clear content, thus making it more difficult for casual people to reach content.

At the highest level, the fastest grind is 4 people all with good builds. Mercenaries are turned off for that as they just take slow turns when you could have 4 rounds of quaking steps on a back attacked/boar bear trapped enemy group.

This is just... incorrect.

The fastest, most efficient grind setups don't use mercs at all, like you said, but are done ALONE. Things tend to go more quickly when only ONE person has to take their turn; especially with grinder builds.

Casual players can reach content perfectly fine with the proposed mercs, they just won't be carried by them.

Also, casual players starting from zero don't have the ability to capture high-level mercenaries. If someone were to HELP them, they might, but players are still able to help them with the proposed changes.

[ThatOneHop]

"Okay, so I go grab 3-4 snakemen from the wastes because fighting there is trivial, so when I LE I can just clear content and get my minmax stats so I can gank people with my meta builds!"

No, nerf mercs. Get people to actually experience content with other people instead of relying on brain dead gameplay where, in a place that's supposed to be constantly IC, have people just get their ooc grind on and rarely even be IC until their grind is done.

[Lolzytripd]

"Okay, so I go grab 3-4 snakemen from the wastes because fighting there is trivial, so when I LE I can just clear content and get my minmax stats so I can gank people with my meta builds!"

No, nerf mercs. Get people to actually experience content with other people instead of relying on brain dead gameplay where, in a place that's supposed to be constantly IC, have people just get their ooc grind on and rarely even be IC until their grind is done.

Except you don't get ganked in korv, you can play cointoss dice games

[Tana]

God, can you imagine someone just going around with 4 snakeman twinblades and moonlight mercies for months?

This is transparently "I want it harder for everyone but me so I can get all the things and only me." Come on, now.

[Collector]

God, can you imagine someone just going around with 4 snakeman twinblades and moonlight mercies for months?

This is transparently "I want it harder for everyone but me so I can get all the things and only me." Come on, now.

Don't see where personal attacks come in here, but alright.

Almost like I used and abused mercenaries for ages as a safety net I really shouldn't have.

If we REALLY want to go down that road, can you imagine grinding with 600 damage tessens and four grindylows for months? You've exploited this far more than I have.

Mercs are broken, abusable, and not good for the game. I just admit it.

[Autumn]

I think that mercenaries should be nerfed, there's no reason they should exist to trivialize the levelling experienced based on half thought through opinions that grinders would grind anyway, the mercenaries as stated provide a very powerful boon to the low level grinding experience that promotes less party play and more solo grinding. It is never too much to ask that players should be asked to get people to co-op more often, it promotes roleplay in its most bare bones and newbie friendly experience. It helps much much more in that regard that people would tend to think.

I don't think they should be taken out back and shot in the knees, they exist as a talent pool to help out a ton in encounters, and after all you have to actually get those mercenaries first for them to matter too much, but given that LEing is a thing these should be changed to reflect that, so here is what I propose personally:

1) (Nerf) Adding Mercenary Level Scaling - 

Effectively this removes the ability to have mercenaries at a level higher than your own, this includes for end game when you've recruited lvl 80-90 mercenaries from dungeons having naturally higher scaling than your own.

This would cull down their usage in trivializing the grinding experience almost entirely, as they will be on the same level as you, and serve as an alternative to youkai during this time.

2) (Nerf) Removing Auto-heal from Mercenaries - 

As Mercenaries heal automatically after every fight and never truly 'Die' unlike youkai do, they cannot be subject to attrition at all, which just makes them better than Youkai in almost every regard, a grindylow will never get sapped of their FP, a snakeman twinblade will never be punished too harshly by just getting slapped in a fight.

Removing their Auto-Healing will help this a lot, I would say they can gain food regen from players like normal mercenaries tend to, as well as being fully restored by inns, to note, if a mercenary 'dies' they shouldn't be revived until the player has rested at an inn.

3) (Buff) Adding Levelled Skill Lists to mercenaries - 

As to compensate for the mercenaries levelling according to the player, and for them losing their auto-regen out of a fight, they should be given their levelled abilities so that they may operate truly as they're effective, for example, a firespitter would be much more impactful if it died, but had all of its passives. Or a Vect Wasp having Bouncing Stinger would start to make them pretty effective to have as well.