[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.

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.

Not true. With the way dancer currently is, if all players are active and attentive, 4 players is the fastest way to grind. The problem with actually partying is that only the party leader doesn't take 30 seconds to 2 minutes to take their turn on the first round of combat.

Which, really, is indicative that the real reason most people don't party up to grind is because it's ultimately a boring experience past your first run through. Most people in this community are on their 8th character and who knows which LE.

Wanting MORE grind time is just LESS RP time.

[Skullcatrons]

First of all, I will start by prefacing that nerfing mercenaries will just hurt the casual players, and normal players who's forced to grind for their gears. 

That being said, any kind of unnecessary nerfs to mercenaries will be a massive demerit to the current gameplay without serious considerations, and consequences it may behold.

That being said, I will first destroy this thread.

Mercenaries are an essential component to a class that cannot dish out massive AoE damages, or have solid consistent damage output due to gear variance, or lack of accessibilities. Classes like Mage, and Bard truthfully would not be so affected by the sudden nerfing of the mercenaries. But other classes like Rogues, and Soldiers may actually struggle. 

This is because some classes are just better than other. By suggesting to nerf mercenaries, you are straight up telling every single players who's playing a Soldier, a Rogue, a Duelist, a Martial Artist, to drop their entire character concept and just play a Mage, a Bard, or a Curate. 

Just so they can get that one gear they have to farm constantly on end for weeks. Trust me, we've players on mainland that spent weeks grinding out static dungeons on constant end to get that one specific piece of gears so that their build can actually work, since you may be surprised;

But some classes perform better than other because they do not need as much gearing as they are required.

Mercenaries are there, as a failsafe measure to help players who are forced to farm out maps hour on end.

In addition, grinding in a party is a profit loss.

Yes. That's correct.
Sigrogana Legends 2 have a system in place in which loots are split among the party-members. This is worse in Korvara, because only things that do not split among party-members

are when they're looting chests.

Every time you run a party in Terra Flamma, and someone else get the Purging flame. You could've been the one to get that Purging flame if you ran solo in first place. Every time you run a boss-fight in Meteorite, you end up having one or two gold-bars and mayhap nothing else (Cypelle is a guarantee).

By telling people to group up more, is only going to come off as

"Roll mage or bard and solo lol loser"

[Snake]

It would be really cool if mercenaries died in combat they died for real, and got removed from your party. I agree.

[Collector]

First of all, I will start by prefacing that nerfing mercenaries will just hurt the casual players, and normal players who's forced to grind for their gears. 

That being said, any kind of unnecessary nerfs to mercenaries will be a massive demerit to the current gameplay without serious considerations, and consequences it may behold.

That being said, I will first destroy this thread.

Mercenaries are an essential component to a class that cannot dish out massive AoE damages, or have solid consistent damage output due to gear variance, or lack of accessibilities. Classes like Mage, and Bard truthfully would not be so affected by the sudden nerfing of the mercenaries. But other classes like Rogues, and Soldiers may actually struggle. 

This is because some classes are just better than other. By suggesting to nerf mercenaries, you are straight up telling every single players who's playing a Soldier, a Rogue, a Duelist, a Martial Artist, to drop their entire character concept and just play a Mage, a Bard, or a Curate. 

Just so they can get that one gear they have to farm constantly on end for weeks. Trust me, we've players on mainland that spent weeks grinding out static dungeons on constant end to get that one specific piece of gears so that their build can actually work, since you may be surprised;

But some classes perform better than other because they do not need as much gearing as they are required.

Mercenaries are there, as a failsafe measure to help players who are forced to farm out maps hour on end.

In addition, grinding in a party is a profit loss.

Yes. That's correct.
Sigrogana Legends 2 have a system in place in which loots are split among the party-members. This is worse in Korvara, because only things that do not split among party-members

are when they're looting chests.

Every time you run a party in Terra Flamma, and someone else get the Purging flame. You could've been the one to get that Purging flame if you ran solo in first place. Every time you run a boss-fight in Meteorite, you end up having one or two gold-bars and mayhap nothing else (Cypelle is a guarantee).

By telling people to group up more, is only going to come off as

"Roll mage or bard and solo lol loser"

Hi, hello. I'm capable of performing all Korvara content solo, without mercs, and as a DESTINY DUELIST. SL2 is NOT a difficult game, and I'm sure almost any class combination is capable of doing content. If your build struggles, perhaps it's because your build doesn't work; not because mages or bards are broken.

As a notable anecdote, my solo, 1-45 experience was done with monoclass base duelist. That's right. No promotions, no mercenaries. It's not difficult, if a little slow comparatively.

Mercenaries are a crutch that've been alive for too long, and this only demonstrates it.

If a player wants to roll up a bard or a mage to grind, that's their prerogative; not mine. Solo grinders are going to grind regardless, as Kaz said earlier in this thread. You remove one exploitable grind mechanic, they'll move on to another (in this case, mages and bards.) 

I also don't appreciate my message being changed from "mercenaries trivialize PvE" to "Roll mage or bard and solo lol loser".

[Joseph Jostar]

mercs are in a hilariously overtuned spot and the salt in this thread is indicative of other problems inherent to the gameplay and grinding systems of the game - and frankly irrelevant to the argument.

how much better grindvokers and dancers are at grinding loot than other classes has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that mercenaries effectively let you stop playing the game manually at a certain point and are very commonly used to avoid having to interact icly with people whatsoever.

you can bold your text at whatever size you want with however many memes you like. (please stop)

'raising the bar too high to train' isn't proof that mercs are fine. that's just a symptom of the intense scaling in xp requirements for higher levels and the lack of available mobs to grind for most characters in korvara due to the small amount of high level monsters available relative to the playerbase.

'grinders would grind anyway' isn't even an argument.

some classes being explicitly slower at fighting and gaining loot than others isn't a reason for mercs to remain overpowered. it's indicative of the oppressive nature of wide-ranging attacks and the power inherent in AoE attacks and especially in the range granted to them by their various arbitrary shapes.

arguments about the inefficiency and profit loss are expressive of flaws in the way the game's loot is made available and distributed.

these are all valid issues in their own rights, and PLEASE go make threads to discuss them rationally (PLEASE, some of these are so painful). but they're completely irrelevant to this particular topic. keeping a troupe of high-level monster mercs on hand is both a big issue with balancing PVE content and a constant thorn in the side of roleplaying events - i've seen people bring their horrifying monstrosity mercs (grindylows, snakemen, spatials) into fights icly occuring inside civilized society as if this were a completely natural thing, trivializing the encounter to boot.

npc mercs are a really interesting idea that i don't want nerfed into oblivion, but we have to acknowledge there's an imbalance here and most of this is not occuring according to ic

[sadbot]

I agree that mercs should probably change. Saying that trivializing the content can also be done 100 different ways without them is entirely true, but I think that mercs do it in a very unhealthy way, particularly for new players. When you've got a full squad of mercs, you practically don't even have to play the game anymore. What you do as a player has much less impact, which can lead new players to essentially fall off the learning curve.

[Snake]

What sadbot said.

[FaeLenx]

Any change to mercs should be compensated with making the upper and lower level grinding much less awful and time consuming.

I'll admit, I don't like them. They seem silly, especially now that we have an always IC mentality.

But I don't like the 80+ hour grind required to fill out a LE any more. Anyone who says that it takes less time than that is either using some old Sigrogana grinding tactic like mercenary firespitters on pumpkins+clinic patients for that sweet %TNL bonus as their guide or they've never actually done it. This suggestion seeks to make that take even longer.

[Tana]

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.

[Joseph Jostar]

it's definitely fine for people to be able to play solo with mercs; i don't want them to make that unviable either.

it's just kind of brainless to do so atm with how powerful and self-sustaining they all are. personally i'd like to see these other problems seen to as well but am too lazy to make threads for them.