[Collector]

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'll go purely off these four points for a moment. In this specific case, It'd be balancing for players who;

Grind alone;

Grind for an 'ungodly boring' 20 hours, and feel unfulfilled with the rewards;

Believe they should be able to clear everything alone;

Believe that PvE is effectively divorced from roleplay.


I don't think balancing for that kind of gameplay is a good idea, or healthy for an always IC environment AT ALL. I acknowledge these points, but they don't change anything; mercenaries shouldn't trivialize content for any of these reasons, or at all. I also think it's a bit of a stretch to imply that nerfing mercenaries would kill the number of people doing content; PvE or otherwise.

I've been forced to make concessions with a lot of the game systems on Korvara. I used to keep almost all mechanical content separate from anything I did IC when I played Sigrogana, but that's not something I can do on the new continent; and you know what? It's not really that bad, man. It's what you make it; including mechanical PvP. Even IF you were to take a purely mechanical standpoint on mercenaries, they still drive level 1 characters through almost anything that isn't necromancer.

It's time to remove the taxi.

There's no sinister ulterior motive to make going at it alone unviable. Players, including me, will just adapt to other ways of doing it that aren't abusing level 70 snakes. That's it.