Board 8 > The Mercenaries CE build review topic part 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

KanzarisKelshen posted...

It'd still be pretty bad because the options are very inconsequential.

Which is why I said "even if some of the options need changes"

What if "Coins For Bowser" was a Results ability on its own that gave a certain percentage of GP spent on mercs during the next Peacetime's purchases? Or Revolution somehow evening GP for the upcoming Peacetime with potential debt being possible? Or make Appearing Act as Bowser force rosters himself on the opponent's team during the next Wartime, Giga won't trigger while he's there, and he's a dick?

Just passing on ideas to make it less benign or flesh out something we already have.

speaking of Booker and Songbird, I'm curious if anybody thinks one of the combos I built my original team around but never used actually would have worked:

http://okami.wikia.com/wiki/Rejuvenation + fixing the whistle after it breaks from C A G E.
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Wouldn't buy because the whistlebreak is ability enforced and done prebattle/SoB to control Songbird

would buy for weaponry that explicitly breaks after use or whatever tho
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greengravy294 posted...

Lopen posted...

huge block of text to digest that has no clearly defined purpose other than to dick over a leader

hello star dragon sword

xd

Star Dragon Sword serves a very clear purpose you guys are just bad at reading
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Yes that purpose is 'make Neclord fair for lowbie while still making him more than a generic castyman'

people just forgot about the SDS for some reason tho
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What I mean by unclear purpose btw is that when you use Bowser Party it's unclear what you're actually gonna get.

You've got:

- GP steal
- GP steal
- GP steal that may not actually be useful depending on who it's used on
- Alter GP based on winners/losers
- Randomize declaration order
- Join team of the opponent
- Swap attacker/defender status
- Let someone else use this ability
- No effect

Now the first two GP steals are generally always useful and follow a similar theme. The remaining are situationals that don't have full overlap on when you'd want to hit em or what team you'd want to use them on, so basically they may as well be duds most of the time. So overall the ability is almost never worth using.
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And since it's a random, it's not like Man Behind The Curtain where you can always pick the schedule switcher either

which yes, means Bowser Shell is just better. You COULD spend a couple man-hours redesigning Bowser Party...but why bother when you have a perfectly serviceable and fun ability that's led to some interesting matches before? Keep it simple!
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Right. That's the kicker. That's why Mario Crossover or Vanille's thing were good abilities despite having a similar mishmosh of effects.

But if there's very limited overlap in the intended use, it's random, and there's a significant recharge, that's a bad grabbag ability.
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Even if they won't be used for Bowser Party, I would like more ideas for weird things that abilities could do.

Just going off of Bowser's various Bowser Space results...

Reverse Curse - Flip his tier's declaration order for the week
.
Bowser Curse - One pre-selected team (including his own) may drop one to three spots in the declaration order (random or Bowser's choice?)

Imitate Bowser's Voice! - One pre-selected enemy mercenary gains the personality of Bowser, as he appears in whichever RPG would be most detrimental, probably one of the Mario & Luigi games, and Mario Party. They will demand to be the 'king' of their team at all times and will try to be a dick whenever possible.

BOWSER'S Big Blast - Every mercenary leader except for Bowser's chooses a color in Peacetime. All but two of the colors are bombs, KO'ing a random mercenary of <upkeep>.

Bowser Mini-Game - Side topic where mercenaries compete in a Bowser mini-game. Because I want people to argue about Snake's 180 IQ helping him in Fruits of Doom.

Kamekguy posted...

Just going off of Bowser's various Bowser Space results...

Reverse Curse - Flip his tier's declaration order for the week
.
Bowser Curse - One pre-selected team (including his own) may drop one to three spots in the declaration order (random or Bowser's choice?)

Imitate Bowser's Voice! - One pre-selected enemy mercenary gains the personality of Bowser, as he appears in whichever RPG would be most detrimental, probably one of the Mario & Luigi games, and Mario Party. They will demand to be the 'king' of their team at all times and will try to be a dick whenever possible.

BOWSER'S Big Blast - Every mercenary leader except for Bowser's chooses a color in Peacetime. All but two of the colors are bombs, KO'ing a random mercenary of <upkeep>.

Bowser Mini-Game - Side topic where mercenaries compete in a Bowser mini-game. Because I want people to argue about Snake's 180 IQ helping him in Fruits of Doom.

All of these are amazing and we need more.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Wouldn't buy because the whistlebreak is ability enforced and done prebattle/SoB to control Songbird

would buy for weaponry that explicitly breaks after use or whatever tho

the ability says it is broken, not permanently broken forever and cannot be repaired.

I'd like to second a opinion!
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Even a repaired whistle can't beat bold text. So nope.
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Let's move on. There are very clearly two camps Bowser falls in, and we can decide which later.

Here's Captain Falcon http://mercsce.pbworks.com/w/page/111838975/Captain%20Falcon

@Kamekguy

Falcon was crap because he wasn't in a car.

I put him in a car.

Now he is less crap and his terrain is still race car track but without the bullshit.

Falcon Punch is still powerful but limited to villainous and not necessarily a kill on most of the higher end targets it could hit. But he hits you really hard.

I have high respect for F-Zero cars running over Thrall so I welcome the change
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A) Give Falcon his feats (and gun) from the F-Zero comic explicitly. May as well give him every edge you can so he has at least a BASELINE of respect.

B) He still needs some basic and simple ability for his base. Even something as simple as a 'Show Me Your Moves!' random postrosters taunt will do.
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Also I would like if the F-Zero cars were still present because that made Big Blue actually unique and useful as a terrain

otherwise it's just a random racetrack and you may as well sub a Gran Turismo stage in or something
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oh yeah bring back the cars on the terrain, best part of that bad m4 merc
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up?

Ok, I guess we need to move on. Hey @Kamekguy can you work on a revised Captain Falcon build given what people have said?

In the meantime, Cao Cao http://www.puzzledragonx.com/en/monster.asp?n=1231

Er, http://mercsce.pbworks.com/w/page/112132444/Cao%20Cao

...Why is the second Ambition a fucking results ability if it works on a MATCH TOPIC?!

KAMEEEEEEEEEEEEK (fake edit while I was reading further: oh so it just remembers the amount of times Cao Cao has Ambitioned it up. This doesn't need to be its own ability, it can just be part of the Trigger and say 'All leftover instances of Cao Cao's declarations of ambition will be tallied up and added to a global counter during Results, and stocked for future matches' or something like that.)

(Double fake edit: Are these ambitions meant to be per-team or global? It doesn't say and is not clear.)

(Triple fake edit: The morale boosts/deboosts probably shouldn't stack or you can make someone suicidally depressed to the point they kill themselves with four or five procs. Also, why does the deboost only work if Cao Cao is rostered alone? That shit makes no sense)

Besides that, the 20 ambition KO is super crap (full random KO????). Should be either postrosters of preselected-group-of-five random. Phoenix Blade doesn't work as written because it's supposed to hit multiple enemies (and maybe hit a single enemy multiple times?) but Cao Cao is explicitly only capable of using one option per wartime (+horsey). This merc just needs a lotta work. Right now Phoenix Blade is by far the best bang for the buck, the catapult is sorta good if used right, and the big prize is hot garbage. If it's fixed so Phoenix Blade is spammable this will only make it worse - would you rather have ten Phoenix Blade attacks on Sora that he can't dodge or one KO on Bob? You tell me which is more valuable. Same for seven/eight Phoenix Blades vs three seconds of freezing. If it was like 15 I'd understand, maybe, but 3??? Most of these abilities need repricing in the worst way.
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I like caocao, no issues with the build, but why is he firing catapults through the air at the terrain? :D

To respond:

-I put F-Zero Cars as a terrain upgrade. "Start on the cars" was the worst nightmare of interpretation. Like it's cool but... no. As someone who has done it, you don't want that.

-Will work on a minor ability for Falcon pre-upgrade. Fine with giving him comic feats, less fine about the gun because it's shown once in a comic panel and I'm hesitant that someone will go through and find some obscure background information on Zoda that makes the gun super powerful or something, because then you have to quantify "what would be a good firearm in the F-Zero universe", and it feels a bit awkward to the Captain Falcon character who's been a showboating hand to hand guy in his most popular interpretations.

-Meant for it to be global.

-Perhaps releasing the 'one per wartime' on Cao Cao would be preferable, then? Yeah I'll take that out, if you wanna dump everything, go wild.

-Cao Cao's catapults cannot be stopped.

-Changed KO to one random target out of four. Not a fan of post-rosters resolutions as a rule of thumb because that shit is damn strong and ages really well. Would rather do out of a group.

-Clarified that Ambition is universal. I like it being its own stupid Results resolution ability for the sake of clutter and because it does, in turn, do something different. Keeps the model from being wall of text-ey and allows it to be more on the joke about HIS AMBITION and whatnot.

Yeah this looks a lot better now. I'd still buff the freeze arrows because this REALLY REALLY SUCKS atm (you know how many times I yolo'd with pudge's 50% hook chance for a 5 second stun, post upgrade? Zero. It was worthless because any pulled enemy was already super dead. Three seconds doesn't stop people for long enough in almost any terrain), but the rest looks reasonable after polish.
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Freeze Arrows I always felt was an ability that synergized better with others - something that has the effect of a Bowser Shell where 'they can't dodge it because frozen' or another mercenary starting near them, as well as potential for terrain fuckery or stuff like Geese's ability. Cost is high for that though, I agree, will edit

This build's concept is A++ though.
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Yeah, I actually really like the concept - it's funny but also good. It just needed polish IMO.
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up

Cao Cao is finished, correct?

His ambition cannot be completed.

I think it's fine now, though.

The only other thing i could think of is have the ice arrows chill a person, slowing their movement for the first x seconds rather than a stun, (and counting as a freezing effect) But Cao Cao has great ambition, his build will do him well.

Let's move on to Catherine then

http://mercsce.pbworks.com/w/page/112861024/Catherine

kinda feel like we need to put down reasonable upkeeps right now for all the mercs. like i dont know a good chunk of the mercs in this game so i dont even know who is supposed to be higher upkeep for instance. i was trying to go through a release schedule and the best i got for week 1 was like maybe 3 people (samus, seph, and cole? dunno if hes supposed to be super strong)

anyway catherine seems fine for an early release to me. she might be a bit weak, but i think thats okay if her cost is rather low.
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Also Link should probably just be scrapped for his incarnation in Breath of the Wild because 1) it's a new game and 2) BOTW wasn't in any other Mercs so why the hell not and 3) Link should probably command actual respect for once with his cool stuff in the game.
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Catherine I designed as a low-value model meant to combine with abilities that make targets villainous or have villainous-based synergy. One of those "not great on her own, meant to bridge others together" kind of models that can be bought on the cheap and has nebulous positive effects depending on the team.

works for me

next
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greengravy294 posted...

Also Link should probably just be scrapped for his incarnation in Breath of the Wild because 1) it's a new game and 2) BOTW wasn't in any other Mercs so why the hell not and 3) Link should probably command actual respect for once with his cool stuff in the game.

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but i haven't played BotW yet so I don't have any input.

So no proposed changes to Catherine?

Why not just have multiple Links? Works for Megaman, X, Volnutt, EXE, etc.
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Because nobody actually respects other links lol

Not worth it!
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Well, since no one has anything to say about Catherine, let's move on to Celestia Ludenburg

http://mercsce.pbworks.com/w/page/111372589/Celestia%20Ludenberg

EDIT: Her name is listed as 3 different things in that build.

Yup dangan ronpa translations are awful and have plenty of shorthands.

Anyway just came up with the idea while watching a Mega Man X Command Mission playthrough, thought it'd be fun and more interesting than traditional luck-based abilities

Spider for mercs

I wonder how much respect BOTW Link will actually get. He does have his downsides, like how weak his version of the Master Sword would be in mercs.
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I dunno, would it be particularly weak? In plot he takes down some nuts things with it still. Plus, balanced out with the plasma sabers and whatnot.
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I just mean the fact that if he is not facing Evil enemies (and what is considered evil is VERY strict here), it can quickly "break" and become completely useless as it charges itself back up for ten minutes.
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Any input on Celeste or whatever her name is? Or should we move on?

I dunno, that could mainly be a gameplay mechanic. You see Link in memories fighting with the master sword a few times and completely destroying enemies that don't even count as "evil" in gameplay. One memory in particular is pretty insane, like by all means in gameplay there's no way he should've been able to take out that many enemies with just the master sword.

But either way, he gets balanced out by probably being given other weapons, like the ancient weapons, the hero weapons, elemental rods, his runes, his powers, all arrow types, etc.

Things like powers, Stasis+, and ancient arrows seem pretty nuts. Like unless he's hardcore gimped, he HAS to be at least a 4/week with his crazy bullet time combined with those.
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Skyridge87 posted...

Any input on Celeste or whatever her name is? Or should we move on?

Straight Flush shouldn't be rollable unless you use a full deck as a special exception. Two postrosters prebattle KOs every five weeks is insanity - to give an idea, pulling that bullshit off in M4 required Kyo Kusanagi, Nilin AND a KOer and came out to several weeks of recharge more. Given the extremely high odds of nailing that with both her ability upgrades obtained, it should flat out not be an option if you rig.
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