Board 8 > Mercenaries 5 Test Run, Week 6 Results: So Scream All You Like...

(+) Yeah! (+)

...'Cause we're all mad in here.

Aria defeats JC for the second time, asserting dominance in their newfound rivalry. He retains the better win record in turn. Both of their adventures in the Test Run have ended.

Mewtwo defeats Gravy, shattering his hopes of a 50% winrate, and putting himself in reach of the championship. Gravy's adventure ends here.

Boko, though unable to move on to the finals of the Test Run, stops Eddv's dreams of uncontested dominance (and a chill first week back at work). His adventure ends here, defeated solely by the two finalists.

Mewtwo and Eddv will wage one final tiebreaker match this upcoming week. Finalists, you may send in bids during this Results for the right to choose the tier the battle will be waged on. The loser will select whether they will be the defender or attacker. Good luck in your search for the lesser crown.

Assign EXP here, as normal.

Hold up, don't I win because I have the H2H tiebreaker?

The rules for determining the TR's winner are simple. Most winning team wins (no duh), and head to head breaks ties.

Wait what

Mewtwo59 posted...

Hold up, don't I win because I have the H2H tiebreaker?

The rules for determining the TR's winner are simple. Most winning team wins (no duh), and head to head breaks ties.

Eddv posted...

Wait what

Mewtwo is correct, and this means you are safe Eddv. Due to his 1-0 tiebreaker over Eddv, Mewtwo is...our Test Run champion!

We recognize your surpassing performance, and respect your skills, O leader of mercenaries. As such, we award you with the following prizes:

1) Automatic, guaranteed entry to the main game (or automatic entry to one person of your choosing, should you decide to gift it to another).

2) You may name one character of your choice you would like to see in Mercenaries, either a returner or newcomer. This character WILL come out in the main game at some point.

Your final standings are as follows:

1st: Mewtwo59
2nd: Eddv
3rd: JC
3rd: Boko
5th: Gravy
6th: Aria

(head to head used to break ties where possible)

With this, the Test Run is concluded! I will post a few questions for the players shortly, and we will begin post morteming the TR. It was a pleasure to admin this TR for you all, and I hope to see you again soon, everyone.

Thank you guys so much. I know Mercs is a tough and often stressful experience, even (especially?) in this condensed schedule, but you've been so great through the growing pains and we've learned so much.

To our lovely players who participated in the Test Run, we would like to ask the following questions:

1) Was it fun? This is our ultimate endgoal. The TR didn't have to be thrilling from start to finish, but did you enjoy it when all was said and done?

2) What did you most like about the Test Run overall? Any part of the game is fair to note here.

3) Likewise, what did you dislike most? Any part of the game is fair game for this, and so is our job as admins if you think we need to improve on something.

4) How did you feel about the new systemic changes such as AP, Bounty Hunters and others? Is there anything you feel needs to be adjusted in particular, after the already executed adjustments?

5) Were any mercenaries too weak for you to bother with? Likewise, do you feel any mercenaries are too strong?

6) What is the strongest merc in the unbought pool, in your opinion?

7) Any additional remarks you wish to make?

Oh thank god

I'll just say I loved the idea of Suicide Run 2B and definitely would have bought her were I playing

I would say the best unbought build was the Three Lords. Arguably undercosted for their combat worth and with useful ability flexibility that additionally scales into mid tier. Probably just released too late for anyone to realistically be able to spare the GP for them.

I'd like to see wartime abilities have limits per use per not week, but per block. (Set of high/medium/low) For being 6 weeks, it wasn't that excessive, but it was getting to just extremely small ability suites in the limited AP available, where certain tools were used nigh exclusively, because they were battle warping, as seeing only ko's or abilities that were extremely battle warping like Vivi's 5 minute KO or Leon's limb removal.

If wartime is limited in relation to block, you could free up some of the AP limitation to extend the use of AP as well, with knowing if you burn out your best tools in one tier, you won't have those even if you do paydowns for other tiers, so you might have a combination of multiple core, and backup characters or maybe even two seperate teams later on into the season.

It was fun yeah! Like I said, this is the only iteration of Mercs where I *immediately* wanted to play more. To be fair it was really short and my team was JUST starting to hit its stride, but that's quite a feat.

I liked that abilities were a bit stronger. I think AP is a nice system overall, I really like being able to just go for it every week instead of having to play politics and manage recharges.

Abilities are still a bit vaguer than I might hope, the tag system didn't help as much as I expected.

I don't trust my judgment on AP, I only really needed 1-2 of mine for the entire run. Bounty hunters were pretty cool but maybe need some sort of tweak so it's not just racing to bid first on them every week- maybe duplicates allowed, or a silent auction system?

Leon and Vivi are well documented. Cyberdemon seems kinda strong for a 4, but maybe that's just me being salty that kidnapping him backfired. Mario's pretty scary for a 2. Tails and RAY felt like steals. Luigi seems kinda weak now. I don't think JC ever figured it out but Aigis can get Labrys out way too easily imo, by targetting somebody who can't follow instructions. I'm bummed that DK's upgrades kinda anti-synergize; you have to really invest to get to 400%, at which point the fatigue blocks his active stuff that would benefit from 400%. Darknite seems real good but again that might just be because it burned me several times.

I'd have to look again but Three Lords seems like a good answer.

I really don't like timing based abilities (Sonic, Meta Knight, etc) on a basic level. Phantasmals are a neat idea, as much as I like fun abilities.

I also really like the little bios on the wiki, as well as the greater focus of this game not being a miserable time sink

I hope we can get a wiki with a search function >_> and team pages an stuff

AriaOfBolo posted...

Cyberdemon seems kinda strong for a 4, but maybe that's just me being salty that kidnapping him backfired

Doom fanclub in play I would agree with you

Mega Man having trouble killing a damn cyberdemon this is blasphemous

not doing my research to learn he can take 293857129837 chainsaw hits is on me, but if he can get kidnapped and tripped and then get serious "solos" votes in mid(iirc) that doesn't sound like a 4

Kind of surprised Batman with access to the Batmobile *and* being able to teleport whenever he wants didn't seem to get a lot of respect

vg batman is kinda just a dude though

the higher end of just a dude, but way outclassed most of the time

Yeah batman ain't it according to voters

I definitely saw Labrys potential, I just never got a good chance to use it cause it was nullified, or I needed to try and redirect an ability more than I needed Labrys as a body. Partially a function of doing abilities first as well.

I think Batman wasn't in a good team to utilize his potential. I think Rika was redundant with him as Batman is going to get good planning respect without more tries and he needed more firepower than Mega Man to back him up.

im kinda interested in playing the full ver, if i can

I thought Batman got pretty good respect when on the right stages. Just not memetic level respect.

Still think Rika is absurd. Was stuck on a team with relatively low firepower though.

The Doom characters felt weird to argue about for some reason. Had bo idea Cyberdemon was listed as a 4/week lol

Imo Cyberdemon SHOULD be a 4/week as I would take most 4/weeks to kill him 1v1 (and 5/weeks do so without any issue) but I definitely feel he was getting 5/week respect for sure

I will answer the admins questions btw, lots o thoughts

but I have question back!

whats the best estimate for a timeline on the main game?

Yeah I say scuttle batman. Boko had him not just super strong but with a full blown teleport and he still needed to get me down to .5 mid tier mercs to get much out of batman. The Batmobile is the only thing that makes him a 5 and honest to god: fuck that.

Re: Cyberdemon he has NO abilities AT ALL. He is just battle worth. He ought to be strong. Im not sure he would have been too too oppressive in low outside his terrain being kinda bonkers in low.

L

Onto the questionaire:

I did have fun. I think some abils need to be more strongly stated. I also think time stops and loops need tossed. Just not fun.

I think the best part was the new terrains made terrain bidding feel interactive and more strategic

I dont like the AP systems proneness to spam. It means every ability needs to be balanced or lightened in impact to avoid being overwhelming. Abilities being strong is fun if you get to cycle through them but even through 6 weeks things got pretty stale.

I mostly like the new innovations but the terrain bidding and declarstion system didnt have the rubber banding effect and i think contributed to the staleness that crept in at the end.

I think Tifa is a pretty lame build unless you have AP to spare which doesnt feel like its gonna be common. I think Meta Knight is very leon kennedyish where I desperately wanted to buy him but dont think id get anywhere close to 3/week respect for him. Meanwhile I think Neku needs...something. just seems really ticky tacky as is and is very easy to argue out of existence. I also think Sol is a bad merc as he stands. Hes pure overcosted battle worth and fighting game characters living on lore worth is a big ask saleswise.

Cooper and BT. His ability suite is insane and the big mech should be easy to sell. Also dont sleep on Estinien. A 4 week safe from a lot of fuckery is gonna be key to winning this game I think.

Lopen posted...

Imo Cyberdemon SHOULD be a 4/week as I would take most 4/weeks to kill him 1v1 (and 5/weeks do so without any issue) but I definitely feel he was getting 5/week respect for sure

I was, other than the last topic, only using him in situations where he was the 3rd or 4th most importsnt guy and where his main role was to face tank, which is his main value.

Fwiw I dont think his upgrade got any respect over where he started which is interesting.

whats the best estimate for a timeline on the main game?

We want to take at least a few weeks to finish out the week 1-5 roster (we don't quite have enough mercenaries for a comfortable week 1-5 start for a full season's worth of teams yet), and build up a buffer of releases for the weeks after. Once that's done, we'll probably launch the game, so like...a month? Maybe? Probably a month and then an extra week because Final Fantasy 14's new raid tier drops right around the same time and I will take time off to race for a week 1 clear so I wouldn't want to give Mercs' launch any less than my full effort.

1) Was it fun? This is our ultimate endgoal. The TR didn't have to be thrilling from start to finish, but did you enjoy it when all was said and done?

I had a lot of fun! I think the biggest obstacle is the time commitment to initial research but now that we're familiar with the mercs, the barrier for the main game is lessened. However, that's not necessarily true for new players.

2) What did you most like about the Test Run overall? Any part of the game is fair to note here.

I liked that it didn't feel super stompy for anyone, and that rematches between teams didn't end up being consistently boring. I also really liked the introduction of the AP system, but with the caveats I'll explain further below.

3) Likewise, what did you dislike most? Any part of the game is fair game for this, and so is our job as admins if you think we need to improve on something.

A few things here - this is going to effectively be my answer for Question 7 too since it's just all my general feedback.

• even though they didn't show up, abilities that require any extra time commitment (Meta Knight, Zenos) should be scrapped entirely. Just fundamentally they shouldn't be in the game. My personal biggest barrier to wanting to participate in mercs long-term is the significant time commitment, and I still don't want any abilities like that in the game. Picking a proxy isn't a solution because then you're just signing up a proxy to sit and f5 because of a shitty design choice. Remove them from the game. Straight up.
• Hard removals being balanced by AP cost and not recharge - we've discussed this as nauseum in the chat though.
• The declaration order was extremely stale but I know that there are changes being done to this. I would rather see the #1 team at the top of the dec order than be stuck in the bottom half of the dec order the entire game because I did well.
• I think phantasmals should have higher min bids. Most of the time, an ability is extremely valuable but isn't 50% of the reason why you buy a merc - especially when the strongest abilities are going to be nerfed for the main game. I think it should be closer to a 30% discount with abilities taken out of the picture, as opposed to like a 50-60% discount. I know that there will be bid wars but I am worried that someone will just stack phantasmals because having extra bodies is excellent ability insurance, and you're not at an economic disadvantage for loading up on them. Maybe a cap of like, 2 phantasmals per team or something? IDK. But I think they're a touch overtuned.
• EXP costs are way too high for a lot of shitty upgrades. The opportunity cost for getting some of them is just way too high, especially in the context of the real game where we're getting half exp (like Lea's ability upgrade being 25 exp in addition to the upgrade itself creating fatigue). I think 25EXP upgrades should be reviewed across the board in particular cause some of them just didn't look at all worth it. A lot of the newer builds don't have this issue as much but yeah.

4) How did you feel about the new systemic changes such as AP, Bounty Hunters and others? Is there anything you feel needs to be adjusted in particular, after the already executed adjustments?

I think the AP system is great but I do think that there's a massive advantage given to doing abilities second in most cases because there's no insurance if your big multi-AP ability gets cancelled. I don't want to invest in high AP abilities because of that. I haven't thought much about this suggestion but maybe if you have an ability countered, you get half the AP back rounded down (so if a 2AP ability is countered and you get the AP back, you can still declare a 1AP ability in lieu). That probably makes things extremely clunky though.

Bounty hunters seemed good by the end - this seemed evident when nobody was buying down to low week 5. BUT I do think that was partially because we had 6 players. With more people there'll be more buydowns and more risk of needing a BH.

5) Were any mercenaries too weak for you to bother with? Likewise, do you feel any mercenaries are too strong?

Here are some thoughts on some mercs, first the overtuned!

• Vivi (obvious ability reasons, should also be 3/week combat for even more obvious reasons imo)
• Liquid (I appreciate that sahelanthropus takes up every roster slot and costs a lot of money in low but unless you have a hard removal for Liquid it's an instant loss - a 'feelsbad' ability in low)
• Pamela (while I love her concept, I think that her Physical Immunity has some serious potential to be devastating in low tier against the right teams because it's so physical/weak gunner heavy. I don't think every team should be forced to buy a low tier magician simply because Pamela exists.)
• Richter (Vampire Killer in the real game every week is absolutely insane if you do actually make a proper Slayer build, and his upgrade ability being 0AP is busted. If someone had a chance to show how busted Richter could be, he would get nerfed, but I just don't think we had the chance.)
• K Rool (Kredits invincibility is absolutely insane and quite frankly just needs to go. I think eddv did a good job with Kredits but there was so much more to be done.)
• Eunie (honestly I just think the full removal upgrade is a bit overtuned - it's a weak hard removal because it's an SoB intimidation but being able to remove Cloud/Liquid/Samus etc for 1AP is just too strong. She's strong enough as-is without it.)
• Aigis (in a longer game with a proper mid/high anchor, her abilities become much stronger. She gets too much for 1 AP, but I do love that there's an interaction between her abilities for an AP discount. I think it's a mechanic that could be used on more mercs)
• Mash (her ability looks too strong at a glance but it's untested. Maybe apply recharge 1 if it actually works because of the 0 AP cost.)
• Crono (I love the idea of his build, but I don't like the polarity between 'borderline 2/week merc with an ability that's difficult to actually make strong' and 'triple tech wipes out an entire team uncountered'. It loads Crono's entire value into Triple Tech which is imo where it shouldn't be).
• Sonic (super sonic against 6/weeks in mid post-upgrade is way too strong given that it doesn't cost an AP and can't be countered without a hard removal)

And undertuned:

• Tifa (why would you ever get her over Squall)
• Jinx (she's strong but her main ability is overcosted. Delta and Jesse being at 1 AP but her at 3 is 'what')
• Joker (I think his ability being once every 3 weeks, targettingonly villains, and potentially *never* impacting the battle sucks. Also I think he'll get good 'jack of all trades' but not 'hard carry' 5/week battle respect so he needs a good ability. Right now there's really no reason to buy him over Aigis or honestly even Yu.)
• Neku (I get his ability requires creativity but it's creativity that only really works on a select few mercs, and even then, requires a different kind of research on psychological weaknesses instead of combat weaknesses. Strong combat-wise but hard to use. Also I kind of hate that his writeup says NEO TWEWY because he doesn't actually have any combat appearances in it. Somewhat misleading)

6) What is the strongest merc in the unbought pool, in your opinion?

Of the ones who I didn't mention above, and who I haven't heard being nerfed, probably one of the strong 4/weeks like Estinien, Snake, or Kirby. I didn't really count the 6 and 7/weeks because nobody could buy them lol. Honestly, probably Kirby though. Kirby with some customs and passives is strong.

7) Any additional remarks you wish to make?

Sora and WoL's abilities are too similar if you ask me.

Char limit lol.

also the fact that Trevor's Vampire Killer upgrade allows other abilities with Vampire Killer in the name to be declared multiple times is hilarious because Richter's Vampire Killer ability is a passive

it looks like there should be synergy but alas there is none

Re: Pamela, as a reminder she dies if her team dies for this reason. Not to say she isn't strong still, but there IS a method to argue past her. Or do you feel it's not enough?

Re: Neku, he DOES fight in NEO TWEWY. He's a playable party member, even! As far as his ability goes, do you think he'd be more playable if his base ability was swapped with the Light Puck (That Power Is Yet Unknown)?

Lastly for now, re: Tifa, the answer is 'because repositionings are bonkers good', IMO. Tifa is a worse fighter than Squall, but she makes up for it by having a super consistently useful ability that can be 'bursted' with if you really need a W. This said, we're aware she does need some tweaks to make her more consistently appealing.

Very useful feedback btw, ty JC. We're definitely looking at all these things! Much appreciated :)

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Re: Pamela, as a reminder she dies if her team dies for this reason. Not to say she isn't strong still, but there IS a method to argue past her. Or do you feel it's not enough?

Re: Neku, he DOES fight in NEO TWEWY. He's a playable party member, even! As far as his ability goes, do you think he'd be more playable if his base ability was swapped with the Light Puck (That Power Is Yet Unknown)?

Lastly for now, re: Tifa, the answer is 'because repositionings are bonkers good', IMO. Tifa is a worse fighter than Squall, but she makes up for it by having a super consistently useful ability that can be 'bursted' with if you really need a W. This said, we're aware she does need some tweaks to make her more consistently appealing.

Very useful feedback btw, ty JC. We're definitely looking at all these things! Much appreciated :)

Pamela - I think that its helpful in balancing her but it makes it an interp battle of does the other team realize they literally cant kill her?. And is the enemy team aware of the win condition being changed?

Neku - I wasnt able to find any gameplay videos of him though and when I asked you all you gave me was the cutscene where he shows up and doesnt do anything lol. So Im somewhat misguided but in any case researching his NEO TWEWY appearance is too hard in that case.

1) Was it fun? This is our ultimate endgoal. The TR didn't have to be thrilling from start to finish, but did you enjoy it when all was said and done?
I had an absolutely thrilling time. I really enjoyed this game. I enjoyed thinking about mercs and reading through the new abilities and just the regular game. I will be playing again.

2) What did you most like about the Test Run overall? Any part of the game is fair to note here.
Planning who to buy and how to create my team. Very fun!

3) Likewise, what did you dislike most? Any part of the game is fair game for this, and so is our job as admins if you think we need to improve on something.
Peacetime on Monday night. It ruined the non-mercs part of my week, and also distracted me at work. Heavily pushing for Thursday night peacetime.

4) How did you feel about the new systemic changes such as AP, Bounty Hunters and others? Is there anything you feel needs to be adjusted in particular, after the already executed adjustments?
Love them. AP feels like it could become a little bit restrictive with only 3 AP in mid and late game, but I still really like it. BH, post-nerf, feels fair and now 4s and 6s are actually playable. I like reinforcements in concept a lot. AP does become a bit spammy, but it is what it is.

5) Were any mercenaries too weak for you to bother with? Likewise, do you feel any mercenaries are too strong?
Weak: Wesker, King II, Slave Knight, Sol Badguy.
Strong: Possibly Kazuma or Vivi.

6) What is the strongest merc in the unbought pool, in your opinion?
After some additional deliberation, Master Chief ;)

7) Any additional remarks you wish to make?
I think that heroes and males are slightly overrepresented and there are minimal ways to target them compared to women and villains. Please release a cheap Boko merc! Kweh!

They're not aware, but I trust teams to realize 'oh, this is a ghost, bullets are going through her' fairly quickly. Even really slow on the uptake mercenaries will twig to that kind of thing, I feel? There's no info granted because what happened with Tusk's original build convinced us that voters will utterly disregard a character who's meant to be a tank if the enemy team knows how to bypass her. So we were OK with forcing unusual arguments out to keep Pam's value intact instead of turning her into a soft 1/week.

As for Neku, the thing is that in NEO TWEWY all the characters are interchangeable powerwise, so while it's not too hard to see him in a fight (a search for the superboss or final boss probably suffices?) it's not going to get you unique feats beyond how cool the moves look. Basically he's set to NEO because it's a huge plot hype boost for him that doesn't make him broken, but in combat he fights as he did in OG TWEWY with a few extra tricks and more visualization of how his stuff works in 3D environs. Limiting him to OG TWEWY would work but it both makes him harder to visualize and also there's no real reason to do so.

Chaeix posted...

Kredits invincibility is absolutely insane and quite frankly just needs to go. I think eddv did a good job with Kredits but there was so much more to be done

I did what I could but K Rool ate a shit load of removals and the one battle he couldve made a difference vs Mewtwo I fucked up my abil declarstion.

But yes "borrowing a gun from BJ" is among the more constrained things he can do.

I also think both Sans and Darknite need deep 6d.

Theyre both very thick very hard to plan against and mostly the abulities they grant are too fuckin good. Why would I ever buy Len, who has a good but not OP static ability, when those two are just bonkers insane levels of better than her?

MajinZidane posted...

Peacetime on Monday night. It ruined the non-mercs part of my week, and also distracted me at work. Heavily pushing for Thursday night peacetime.

I wanna second this.

War takes nearly 2 days before there are topics ready to go anyway ubless both sides are very quick with their abils and I would much prefer match topics Monday-Tuesday-Wendesday than Thursday-Friday-Saturday.

We're going to nerf Darknite's card preselection into being usable once per card, fwiw. So if Darknite's player wants to spend EXP to use Toon World and Enemy Controller guaranteed once across 41 weeks, more power to them. So if that makes any difference, consider the value Gravy got out of his week 1 and 2 draws for a good idea of what Darknite's overall power will probably be like.

It being a draw does help somewhat but I still think it needs to be a weaker suite of abilities in general because otherwise why buy a PS with ONE strong ability when you can have another with DOZENS of them some of which are OP?

Yeah I don't think you should be able to preselect period tbh with something with that many options. M4 CATS let you do it with a lot of options but it was limited use (basically limited use 2 if you picked the good ones) and had a long recharge. It also had 1/3 the options Darknite has.

You should be able to do a redraw or something. Or give it some sort of limitation on how often it can be used.

Because having one overpowered button is all you need.

That's a glib answer so let me rephrase it a bit: Darknite's balancing mechanism IS that some of its abilities are OP and he has a lot of them. Here's an excerpt of the math we did when mapping out Darknite effects, just so you can see the percentages at play:

-Darknite has 41 cards in the deck.
-Of these, six do nothing on their own (the four pieces of Exodia if you don't have the head, Saggi the Dark Clown, Trent). Percentage of nothing happening on your draw: 14%.
-Three abilities (Baby Dragon, Pot of Greed, Sangan) are fetches. You pay AP to do nothing to win this match this week (unless you incur fatigue and pay MORE AP, which, fair tbqh). Percentage of no effect including fetches: 22%
-One is Exodia. You need four of the above bad draws to use it at all. Percentage of no effect including Exodia if you don't have the pieces: 24%
-Four cards (Summoned Skull, Gaia the Fierce Knight, Flame Swordsman, Cocoon of Evolution) have fairly weak effects, from 'has horse' to 'is on fire', or have a good effect you never wanna use if your match is contested instead of having been beaten hard already. Percentage of no or minor effect draw: 34%
-Seven cards (Fortress Whale, Dark Magician #2, Dark Magician Girl, Crush Card Virus, Insect Queen, Mask of Brutality, Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon) have moderately good effects that can have good upside if you either get lucky, have the right team setup for it, or in the case of Crush Card Virus, drew a useless card to make it happen. Percentage of no, minor or moderate effect: 51%.

I could go into the upper tiers of Darknite's power and start breaking down exactly what the chances are of getting a given type of effect, but hopefully this makes the point. Over half the time, you'll draw something that either does nothing, does a minor thing, does something useful but doesn't help you win the match significantly, or does something genuinely good but it requires either a won terrain bid, the right kind of team, luck or setup to get value out of. Meanwhile, Len can target a merc you need disabled, guarantee get rid of them (unless they are good bakers I guess, but that's a very small amount of mercenaries), and you can't even juke it by not rostering the target because it'll go onto someone else, thus guaranteeing you'll always get some kind of value out of her. We rate consistency and reliability extremely highly, and Darknite doesn't have that once you axe Heart of the Cards repicks.

Sans is another story because his base abilities mostly kinda suck and are jokes, so he's reliable but is an EXP sink, and you can never reuse the good shit save a couple defensive moves. We may adjust him, but it's a case where we have to consider just how valuable he is when players are gaining half the EXP they did in the TR per match, because that changes the pace of ability acquisition dramatically.

EDIT: We could put a Recharge on Heart of the Cards, FWIW, and err on the side of safety. That is certainly something we could do. We'll see if that's a necessary nerf to make it fair on top of 'can't draw the thing twice' or not.

I don't agree one overpowered button is all you need. You use the cake as an example but there are a lot of times where the cake isn't what you want-- it all depends on what the match scenarios are.

Versatility does matter. Especially in a game where slots are a premium.

If you NEED abundant preselects on a 41 option RNG merc I think the merc is not well designed anyway and re-evaluating the other underlying mechanics should be considered.

I agree and I don't think you need the forcible selection, tbqh. What goes unsaid here is that you're not supposed to get value out of Darknite every week. Drawing a card costs absolutely nothing! The intent is fully that you'll have dud draws sometimes and have to bide on using something that week. What we saw of him in the TR was honestly a fairly weak usage of him that looked stronger than it was due to Heart of the Cards being overtuned. Fixing that should make Darknite fairly reasonable, I think. Spending 1 AP just to select a card is such a huge price -- basically everything Darknite can do becomes a 2 AP cost at that point, and a lot of it is frankly not worth that pricetag.

For what it's worth, Darknite's upgrade is also much less appealing to spend the EXP on with the planned nerf. There's a much greater opportunity cost when you're upgrading to preselect cards you can only use once.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

and a lot of it is frankly not worth that pricetag.

It's 2AP spread over 2 spends of 1AP which is easier to budget

I would be very concerned for balance if it had more than 2 or 3 cards worth 2 AP. And if doesn't have more than that why not just make it limited use outright.

I would concur with giving upgrade EXP costs another pass and consider whether they should be reduced across the board, mostly in the name of fun. Like, when you make a build and decide what abilities are going to be available on upgrade, do you see them as extraneous and nice to get if you prioritise them, or do you see them as the second half of the build that you're eventually able to unlock? At the moment they seem similar in amount to midgame M4 (once it was established the early releases were clearly too high), which was basically a scenario where maybe an average teams unlocks half of their available upgrades, if they're lucky. This was also evident in Draft Mercs where even with double EXP you were leaving A LOT of potential upgrades on the board and you needed to be highly selective what you unlocked. Yes, it's strategy but it also sucks seeing so much potential never reach realisation. Maybe an alternative solution to this is more upgrades that are time gated and unlock via means other than spending EXP on them.

If players buying a merc and immediately prioritising getting a specific upgrade is a concern, perhaps there could be a moratorium on placing EXP on mercs for something like 3 weeks after their release. Then adjust for late game releases of course.

I'd honestly prefer if mercs got more exp if they were used more.

It's some Pokmon EXP share bs that you just funnel EXP into a dude who just got there. Guys who have been on your team longer should logically have more exp than a guy who just joined. But the way it works now it's irrelevant

Leave exp costs as they are or increase them, leave base EXP generation as it is but give every merc passive exp generation based on whether they were rostered, use abilities, win matches/side topics, how long they're on your team, etc.

That does sound interesting but in fairness it also strikes me as the kind of idea that's nice to have when we aren't running the game anymore.

RE: EXP, my thinking is that it's one of the few really straightforward things in mercs, and to overcomplicate the game further (as it's already a bit more complicated than it was before - well-defined, mind you, but complicated), I worry in it getting overwhelming for those poking their heads in looking for what this all is. If we did implement a change, my current preference would be toward 'weeks on team' to gain XP, and to only start giving that out after 10 weeks or so, or at elimination cycles; that way, you can end up getting XP to polish off the pieces you founded your team around, and it wouldn't be an immediate stress on players to manage.

RE: K. Rool, the invincibility is based on his second boss fight in DKC2, wherein you dodge like a solid minute and a half of his pattern. Like, Diddy and Dixie manage that, and they're... honestly probably the weakest mercs combat-wise outside of Rika? If we defined that the enemy knew about K Rool's invincibility period, would that be enough for balance, or would you like more? In theory, whoever he's firing at is a LOT more adept than Dixie Kong at not dying.

RE: Darknite, funny card man heehee. I am fine with the idea of it coming with a recharge, I'd also like to field the idea of Heart of the Cards only being online coming after a loss, to both be more show-faithful in a desperation kind of deal and make it non-oppressive, while also adding the "card can only be drawn once via this method" stip. Just spitballing here for that sake.

I just think the versatility presented is being underrated especislly since even sans limited use stuff can be recharged.

The games only 52 weeks long and most of Sans upgrade abilities are match swingers if used at right time.

Darknites too honestly with 7 preselects on the 7 ones that swing matchups plus some lucky chancers

Truth be told I wouldn't even have mentioned EXP had it not been brought up. To me it's just a resource and there can be a scarcity or not, it's not a big deal. You kinda just accept that not every merc will be able to be upgraded and build your team accordingly.

But if you're going to redo it, redo it. I think just giving flat EXP infusions every once in a while for mercs that have been on the team for X weeks as Kamek was kinda saying is probably an elegant enough way to do it.

All I'd really want to see with XP is cheaper costs. I feel like I needed a lot of upgrades that I had to leave on the table: Tag Barrel, Sonic's Boom accuracy, To The Moon, heck the whole reason I bought Cranky was an upgrade abil that I proceeded to never unlock