From: Drakeryn | #364
I'd love to get rid of Drak's idea of "persuasion > power" though, because it makes me think Drak doesn't believe half the crap he says in matches and may as well turn the whole thing into "who can lie and rally the most in 24 hours" and a popularity contest.
From an objective standpoint, I very much dislike the whole "popularity contest" aspect of voting, and I see that as the biggest thing that needs to be fixed in M4 (although I don't see any easy solutions to the problem). I am not advocating that kind of thing at all.
I'm talking about winning over neutral voters. Not through personal favoritism or rallying, but through skill in debate. In fact, personal favoritism in voting runs directly counter to my vision of the ideal mercs, because it blunts the impact that a leader's arguments can have on the outcome of a match.
In an ideal match, you'd have, like, 20 casuals milling around. When I say casuals, I mean people who have no loyalty to either leader. To them, it's all about the powers and capabilities of the mercs in the match. And then the leaders play tug-of-war with their minds.
This is pretty much what everybody should want out of Mercs BTW - Drak phrased it poorly before, but winning over the guys who have no previous opinion is, to me, a really important part of Mercs too.
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