[Autumn]

For the sake of the few actually arguing the point in good faith.

This thread is:
1.) Ignoring the fact that some people don't only play when other people are available
2.) Ignoring the fact that pve is ungodly boring when you have to do it for 20 hours, and no, making it 'harder!!' won't make it more fun, because the rewards are lacking
3.) Ignoring the fact that the game is intended to be able to be played solo, as is Dev's want, because it is his game
4.) Ignoring the fact that pve is effectively divorced from the RP anyway(PVP isn't supposed to be the way to resolve conflict in the current flavor of the month, Korvara. Korvara being what supposedly prompted this thread).

'Grinders will just stay grinding' isn't an argument, but neither is, 'Well I could do it, so just get good, scrub'.

Will this really encourage people to RP, or will it encourage those that have OOC friends to grab them OOCly and spend 0 time RPing? Will it just discourage people from even bothering to touch pve and kill pvp? How about those people whose builds are pure support, what do they do when they get on and there's 0 players around for both RP and pve?

Obviously, only touching mercenaries wouldn't do these things, but mercenaries aren't the final goal, going by the repeated conversations in OOC.

For what it's worth, this comment I'm making is coming from someone that has levelled multiple characters from 1 to 60 without mercenaries, from mage, destiny duelist, curate, destiny soldier, MA, and so on. It seems like a poor idea to try and stop people from being able to exist alone if they want, because some people are salty others can level.

I think it would be natural that people would argue in good faith, some people don't want the experience to be completely trivialized by certain aspects that exist, because then some might ask themselves "Well why am I not doing that?" And its a completely reasonable thing.

Lets address the facts that you have brought up.

1.) Ignoring the fact that some people don't only play when other people are available

Adjusting Mercenaries is hardly able to impact this, it isn't exactly hard to solo play the game unless you're a base class gamer, fresh out of the gate with no equipment, then the struggles become a lot more real. (Mercenaries won't matter here quite as much, having to actually get them first)

2.) Ignoring the fact that pve is ungodly boring when you have to do it for 20 hours, and no, making it 'harder!!' won't make it more fun, because the rewards are lacking

This is an opinion more than a fact unless you are not taking proper breaks in between the grind, in which cases you can roleplay perfectly fine during which, I see no issues with that. Even managed to do so on Sigrogana with a character of mine, Ester, all while juggling mapping on the side.

Sure, doing PvE for 20 hours can be a bit boring, but so can everything without moderation, the game is designed to not keep you out of the loop for too long, that's why so many convenient quality of life features exist at the end of the experience to catch you up when you do take a break, so that even if you are away for too long, or want to roleplay your character for a bit, you can just as easily expedite the gear stage of the process with enchantments, material change kits, quality tools and weapon parts.

Again I will state that nerfing the impact of mercenaries on the early game is not going to make most of the game harder, its just going to stop you from being able to steam roll it entirely and without question.

3.) Ignoring the fact that the game is intended to be able to be played solo, as is Dev's want, because it is his game

I don't think this is actually true, I vaguely remember Dev coming out on occasion to state that partying is the preferred and intended method of playing the game, which Korvara stresses very much so for its own unique experience to the game, leaving solo play as an option regardless of this, mercenaries should HELP with this experience, not roll it over because you snagged one that is clearly much higher levelled than you.

4.) Ignoring the fact that pve is effectively divorced from the RP anyway(PVP isn't supposed to be the way to resolve conflict in the current flavor of the month, Korvara. Korvara being what supposedly prompted this thread).

This isn't a fact when multiple people are seeing it as fun to do bossing and levelling, over the standard arena slog of content looping PvP over and over, you can do the grind while being IC and use it as a chatroom effectively, I have seen no difficulty from people regarding this in my time in Korvara so far, and quite frankly the Always IC nature of it has been a bit of a blessing. Korvara captures the adventure aesthetic real well.

Korvara may be flavor of the month, it also may not be, its a bit too early to tell, but citing it off as such immediately, after the time and effort that went into making the whole experience sounds a bit spiteful almost.

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In the end, fixing Mercenaries to not make further LEs laughable doesn't mitigate the experience the game has to offer, I think it goes without saying that most people tend to think that LEs are overrated, the stats from aspects is a little bit noticeable but never needed, the most useful feature you get from it is the +1 to a crafting skill level and even that has been brought up for debate now, given that its a feature that isn't necessary for LEing to have.

Yes it will encourage people to roleplay, at least in Korvara anyway where just OOCly grinding is not an option most are allowed to simply do. And quite frankly as someone who has gone through multiple LEs on Korvara, it is only a matter of OOCly hitting up a buddy or asking if anyone wants to grind, and then letting the IC of it sort itself out, and that is how an always IC environment operates, it even benefits the game in a lot of ways.

I don't see anything else in this thread that specifically targets any other method of grinding aside from the weird meme post about mages and bards.

In the end, none of us want to completely remove Mercs from the game, even in my own post on the first page which got swept up pretty fast, I specifically state that chopping its knees is a very bad option, but it is undeniably too strong for early levelling in this game, now that is a fact.