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

(+) Yeah! (+)

The thing about K Rools invincibility is with the right steal from an ally, its not dodging telegraphed K Rool boss moves, its dealing with invincible K Rool with the BFG, some crazy vehicle, or a strong transformation.

I think transformations are the best example because with an active transformation he can use, its not K Rool anymore.

Whew. With all show matches concluded, it's finally time to start post-morteming the Test Run. I'll begin posting thoughts and analysis on the regular starting tomorrow. We will also announce changes, tweaks and other miscellanous plans as well! Stay tuned for details, everyone!

I'd also be up for joining the next round of this, because I am a deeply foolish person and never learn my lessons

DeathChicken posted...

I'd also be up for joining the next round of this, because I am a deeply foolish person and never learn my lessons

It wouldn't be mercs without you DC. Glad to have you with us once more. :)

If you want to join us as we start gearing up for the rebalancing, the discord server can be found here: https://discord.gg/M4vuvRFm

And here's the wiki, including both mercs and rules, if you wanna take a look (and yes, Bub is here too): http://mercs5wiki.wikidot.com/mercenaries-by-upkeep

DeathChicken posted...

I'd also be up for joining the next round of this, because I am a deeply foolish person and never learn my lessons

Yesssssss

Mercenaries 5 Test Run, Post Mortem

The Test Run has come and gone, and what a ride it was. Much to the admins' satisfaction, the roster had no weak links. Everyone fought tenaciously for their wins, and the teams each looked like they could beat each other and it mostly just depended on the tier and the setup. 'Any given Sunday' was very much in play here. In this series of posts, I'll provide a breakdown of what I saw, week to week, and my thoughts on it. Questions and comments are, of course, welcome.

Week 1

Week 1 was split in two halves.One was the initial buying period, and the other was the Panic Period (TM) once people realized bounty hunters existed. The buying period saw remarkably interesting team cores be formed, and overall, went as expected. The panic period, a product of several readers not reading the rules too closely, was very funny but also gave the admin team a few realizations:

A) Bounty Hunters could be spammed. People argued 4/weeks were bad independent of BHs existing, and on this point I steadfastly disagreed (4/weeks are, historically, the recipients of the most powerful ability suites in Mercenaries -- just see M4 Doomguy, Golbez, Flynn or Alucard for some examples -- they possess strong battle worth that can reinforce low tier but also brutal ability muscle as a rule). Being able to punish even a single 4/week by getting two or three 3/weeks, however, was certainly too powerful.

B) Bounty Hunters mattered they mattered too much, sure, but Mario vs Bowser and DK was a phenomenal look at the impact a clever BH pickup could have (more on Mario in a second). The mechanic needed adjustment to be fair, but it was worth fighting to preserve it.

C) War(time) had changed. The years and build tweaks had created a fascinating new landscape. Mario being not only useful but genuinely match-swinging was the obvious example, but Jinx, Sagat and Gordon Freeman being argued to potentially fight Samus was both terrifying and fascinating. Who would've thought that could ever happen in previous iterations of mercs?

D) We needed more money. Leaders bankrupted themselves into oblivion the instant week 1 hit. Even doubled infra gains weren't going to allow for even a single reinforcement to happen in a reasonable timeframe (except for JC, who saved some $$$ ahead of time). If the matches were gonna be more than cripple fights, a cash infusion was necessary. This applied to the main game, too -- 3 AP to use on crippling an average of three mercenaries was just too much. Overwhelming ability firepower makes matches too easy and undebatable. In general, my prevailing theory is you need AP + 1 viable battle mercs (read as: pseudo-support 1/weeks do NOT count here), ramping gradually to AP + 2 battlemercs over time (and will likely be AP + 3 circa playoffs time as teams go all out and deploy massive amounts of firepower at each other), to have a good and fun mercs season.

It was a good week, though. The admin team was pleased with the matches and the players came out to play. A good start for this mini-season.

Week 2

Not a lot to say about this week. In a lot of ways, it was a continuation of the first. The chief notable thing was that Raiden was paid down to mid...and lost, hard. Bounty Hunters proved to be a counter even to the might of full-fledged 7/weeks! Something had to give.

Results brought some notable changes. We deployed our first set of mercenary hotfixes to make some more appealing, we injected 100 GP into the system, and we began plotting fixes to bounty hunters. We had time, as next week was a High week, to get this right.

Week 3

I am a dissenting opinion and an absolute minority, but High Tier has always been my favorite tier to work out. Teams are at full strength here -- all of your options are available, and victory or defeat are entirely contingent on having built a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. The first of the two High Tier weeks did exactly what I hoped for: It Delivered (TM). Close matches, wacky matches, unique matches. No match this week was anything but a ball.

The cash infusion went live here, to immediate and positive effect. Teams came out and fixed their faces, so to speak, rounding out their comps significantly. Everyone's teams became significantly more complete by the time the dust on Peacetime settled. And this week, there were no Bounty Hunters, so we finally got to see 6 and 7/weeks (Raiden and Samus, honestly) in their natural environment, unshackled by counters. So, how did they perform?

The answer to that question is...complex. They both won, but it was two tough wins, all told. Close, tricky matches with lots of arguing back and forth. Raiden and Gordon defeated Mewtwo, a super fat DK, Bowser and some fodder (sorry Diddy & Dixie). Samus with her arm cut off used the power of her global supertaunt to draw fire off B.J: Blazkowicz, allowing him to grind down Mega Man and then tear Leon Kennedy and Kazuma Kiryu to bits.

That second match deserves a little elaboration. Cutting Samus' arm off is as devastating a non-KO debuff as they come. Her battle output was crippled. Short of hitting a mage with antimagic or something, it's unlikely you'll ever see a meaner non-Removal nerf. And yet...she made it work anyways. Voters believed in her to tank and dodge so hard and so well multiple other characters couldn't beat her. How's that happen overall? These were my takeaways:

-TERRAIN MATTERS. This seems like a very obvious thing to talk about, but it really has to be emphasized. One of the lesser quibbles with M4 (which I'm not even sure if anyone who wasn't myself noticed, really) was how simplistic most terrains were. By and large, the majority were just cage matches in disguise, or large open areas with no significant unique features. When designing mercenaries, we set out to fix that as much as we could, and this match was an excellent showcase of that. B.J. Blazkowicz's terrain, the iconic Castle Wolfenstein, was deliberately given the cable car or underwater tunnel approach, making it into an actual fortress to be conquered, instead of just a corridor shooter experience. Thanks to this, the defenders managed to entrench nicely, neutralizing Rika Furude's time loops in spite of the size of the terrain, enabling BJ and Samus to win several iterations of the match outright in the eyes of the voters.
-High Tier merc versatility. Samus DID lose her gun access, it's true, but she was more than just guns. Eddv posted convincing videos of her fighting in melee, dodging like a queen and employing sonar and scanners. These things weren't fight winners, but they combined to add extra intangibles on Samus' side that increased her odds of victory.
-High Tier resilience. Other people may disagree, but to me, High Tier mercenaries are star players. They are the flagships of your team, the poster boys and girls who lend their likeness to the team's banner, the pointmen who lead the charge and the first line of defense. They have to be dealt with, or they will win matches outright if not opposed by another High Tier titan in turn. Boko HAD to chop Samus' arm off, which meant BJ was left untouched. Failure to do so would've spelled an instant loss for him. And yet, she persevered. High tier mercs earn their value not just by performing in battle, but because they are just about the only mercenaries in the game who can be hit by ability hax and still be argued to play through it regardless of being debuffed or weakened. Their 'soft passive' is that you need 1 more ability than you think you do to actually keep them down -- sometimes even two -- and that frees up their team to run rampant and uncontested. Their mere existence is passive ability redirection and consumption. In short, they have clutch factor, and most other mercenaries just don't. This came up big here, as a Samus that was, generously speaking, 70% less effective than normal still won a match for her team.

It was, at least to me, a reassuring indication that high tier mercs still had value, even in a bounty hunted world, a world where mercenaries across the board were made significantly cheaper, except them. Buy one and they will carry you. They're worth their upkeep and price tag.

Week 4:

Bounty Hunting fixed rules went into effect this week. 1 bounty hunter per point of upkeep over the tier limit, 1 AP per 2 points over the tier limit, same as before otherwise. This made 4s and 6s much safer investments, and 7s could now tear up mid a little more safely too. Part of why these changes were implemented was just to correct overnerfing of paydowns. Another part, though, spoke to our design ethos: 'It's not our job to make a perfectly balanced game. The players will do that for us. Our job is to make a game that is neither broken nor braindead'. Bounty Hunters receiving +1 AP each made them too easy to spam abilities with. When most abilities cost 1 AP, this simply makes bounty hunters fire off all their abilities for free and that's too simple and linear. Reducing the amount of free AP gained introduced some choices and decision-making back into the system. Do you use the AP on this merc or this merc? Do you buy mercs that are pure battle muscle, or something more? It's a tricky problem with no obvious answers, and that's what I personally love about mercenaries. Your team, your decisions, your way. No ez-bake ways to coast to victory without adding your own genius vision to the mix.

On to the matches at hand, two were drubbings (by this point we were starting to notice some abilities were too easy to use every week. More on this in a future piece of the post-mortem). The third, on the other hand, was a spectacular styles clash between Gravy and JC and probably my highlight match of the Test Run. On one side, Gordon, Raiden and Pamela Ibis. On the other, a smattering of 3/weeks, plus Aigis as the sole mid-tier representative. The matched raged throughout the day so fiercely that teams were neck-and-neck every step of the way, and ended up in a tie. In the end, Kamek broke it with an extremely detailed tiebreaker vote, awarding the win to...JC. An absolute miracle. A kind of victory never before seen in the modern Mercenaries era (post-Wanglicious), if my memory doesn't fail me, and on home field terrain of the higher upkeep merc, too. So how did this happen?

The reason behind JC's surprise victory lies completely in the removal of the Broken Rule. For those unfamiliar with old mercs history or who simply lived through it and forgot it, one of the pieces of the match topic template that stayed with us since at least M3 (and probably M1) to this day was a clause that said, roughly speaking, 'nobody has access to broken stuff, including staus effects that aren't poison, use your own discretion'. This included revivals, non-numeric buffs and debuffs, CC, team teleports, and so on. During Mercs 5's planning phase, the Broken Rule was taken out behind the woodshed and summarily executed. The team believed that it made matches too predictable, and robbed a lot of mercenaries of everything that would give them an unique identity, reducing them to just firing off differently-colored identical dps spells, basic healing and 'how hard and fast can you hit shit'.

We replaced the Broken Rule with a new rule saying status effects may not necessarily work at full power, and started handing out more unique tools out freely to mercenaries who had them. Crono, for example, got his Life spell. Aigis, likewise. Eunie, a new arrival to Mercenaries, came in with a super mode that created illusions that debuffed opponents when struck. Sypha Belnades (a mercenary uplifted by giving anime feats to her) got freezing ice, and Trevor Belmont had his timestopping stopwatch. These unique edges all combined to allow the team to stall out Raiden, and drag out a slow, grindy win in the eyes of the voters. This served as a clear demonstration of an important trend to keep in mind: mercenaries across the board gained versatility and flexibility in this new iteration (and consequently, power). The baseline for what characters could do rose higher, and this meant overly linear characters effectively got weaker, relatively speaking, due to not gaining any additional strength. No one was hit harder by this than gunners, who are traditionally JUST sets of guns and personal skills, with no unique gimmickry. Being platforms of pure firepower, said firepower had to be the tits to be worth their upkeep compared to, say, a jRPG character who could buff, debuff, kill giant monsters with one swing of their huge anime blade, heal and revive allies. Toolkit flexibility matters! By removing the one source of flexible aid on Gravy's roster, JC managed to force the enemy team to play his game and won off it in spite of being severely outmatched. After this match, I made a mental note to evaluate characters under this new light going forwards.

Oh, and there was also the debut of an entirely new breed of mercenaries, but we ain't talkin' bout that yet. More on that in the next post. This is as good a stopping point as any.

Week 5:

This week was fairly humdrum. No matches were interesting, and there was not a lot to say here. Some nerds got bullied, really. If this week told us anything, it's that Low Tier is the most lopsided one -- the fact you lose access to so many mercs means you either went low heavy and have tools left, or you just don't get and god-damn whomped. Next!

Week 6:

Way back in the days when the Test Run was young, a certain new kind of mercenary was introduced. Built to address certain roster deficiencies (mercenaries trend, by and large, glassy and deepsy, much like characters in fighting game rosters -- unlike fighting game devs, we are interested in fixing this issue for the sake of fixing it, as team composition is very relevant for mercs gameplay), we introduced Phantasmal Mercenaries.

Deliberately low-cost mercenaries with prices somewhere around a third to half the cost of a normal battle merc, Phantasmals were conceived as simpler builds with a focus on battle power. The initial batch was, as an illustrative example, the Cyberdemon from Doom (1 and 2, not the new ones), Rathalos from Monster Hunter, and Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower. Phantasmals were a liberating addition to the admin toolkit -- with them, we could introduce well-liked characters with not that much depth to them without having to make a tortured build with shaky ability concepts, or add characters who were there only to allow for more varied teamcomps without depriving a worthier mercenary of their slot. Some could have workable abilities, but by and large they were meant to be fighters, and all of them, with no exception had no extra abilities to gain via EXP.

The theory was, Phantasmals could round out a squad at a solid price (and cost less upkeep than normal in turn to emphasize this), but would not provide as much ability hax as a normal merc in exchange. Week 6 was the week where Phantasmals finally came out to play, as four out of six teams (Eddv's, Aria's, Mewtwo's and JC's) deployed a Phantasmal in the final week. The result was filled rosters by and large, and a set of remarkably explosive matches. What was the conclusion after watching them go to town?

Smashing success...with some fixes required. Players responded to Phantasmals very positively, which came as no surprise. 'More mercenaries, and cheap' is just enjoyable in general. People love making themselves stronger, and Phantasmals provided a solid way to buy power without waiting for many weeks on end to slowly accrue infra. Of course, the new addition was not born perfect. Players worried Phantasmals were too good and too oppressive, and expressed concerns they were undercosted. As the dust settled on the matches of the week, this is what I saw:

-Phantasmals added lots of argumentative value to teams. They did their job correctly there.
-Some Phantasmals were a little underupkeeped. In some cases, this was on purpose (The Cyberdemon was priced at a tiny 20 GP and only cost 1 real upkeep because he had no active ability of any sort), but a few others were a little too cheap. Metal Gear RAY stood out as an example, an absolute behemoth of a 5/week tank that cost only 1 upkeep to field. Latter-day Phantasmals were not discounted to the absolute lowest possible upkeep point, and this was for the best, and neither were lowbie Phantasmals as a matter of course due to their overall availability, instead packing somewhat meatier ablities than higher tier Phantasmals to compensate. Overall, Phantasmals will likely not always be 1/weeks going forward, and adjusting some of the underupkeeped ones is probably a good idea.
-Phantasmals were, by and large, very easy to understand. People knew what they did quickly, and that was useful. Having mercs that don't take a lot of research to sell or grasp makes for a healthier game environment -- one main dish or two is sufficient, not every dinner should be a banquet!

In the end, notably, the team with the most Phantasmals (Mewtwo's) emerged the victor. His team had a rocky start, losing for free to Boko on week 1 in low, and again getting destroyed in week 5 in low by JC, but dominant performances in mid and high tier ensured his success in securing the Test Run's championship. This, interestingly, suggests to me that in spite of conventional wisdom saying you should build to win Low, punting low tier a little (just a little) and going mid heavy then flexing to high is viable. We'll see if this holds true in M5 proper.

And with that, the Test Run came to an end, with a few show matches serving as a coda. These ranged from solo duels of high tier asskickers, to mid tier duo battles, and culminated in a 3v3 high power marquee match between Sora, Sephiroth and Jesse Faden vs. Zero (MMZ), Kefka and Selvaria Bles where terrain split the latter team in half, leading to Team SSJ to score a dominant victory. A little anticlimactic, but hey, they can't all be bangers -- we'll have plenty of fun matches in the main game proper.

And with that, it is time to start talking about things that need to change based on the Test Run! More in the next post.

Changelog, Part 1: Systemic Changes

These will be line items explained in detail following their declaration. Please bear with me as I break them down bit by bit!

Item #1: Changes to the terrain bidding rules

Terrain matters. This is good! Terrains cost money to set up. This is very bad! The game already has the 'fight money with money' sink of paydowns and bounty hunters, which we believe does the job of throwing twists into the matchups just fine. It doesn't need to have another gold sink on top, as this just delays the acquisition of new mercenaries too much. To that end, we are introducing a new currency to the game: Terrain Points.

Terrain Points, or TP for short, are just what they say on the tin -- a currency meant only (at least at baseline) for terrain bidding. TP accumulates passively every week, just like gold, but unlike GP, TP income does not increase passively by winning matches. It is static, set to a rate of 1 TP per week. TP can be accumulated to a maximum of 5, and further TP gained while at the natural cap via passive TP income will be wasted! No 6TP just by chilling, no sir. Defenders will gain +1 TP while bidding on terrain by default, while attackers will win ties, same as always. We will be converting all abilities that interact with terrain bidding into TP over the course of the next few weeks. Our aim is to make terrain matter without slowing down the pace of the game too much, and as a consequence, create a more dynamic, strategic game. If you want to punt all your matches into the Waterball, you'll have to pick TP-drained targets aggressively and play smart, rather than spending great sums of gold on it. Good luck!

There is, however, another way to gain TP that isn't just waiting. Which leads us to the next systemic change.

Item #2: Changes to the Reinforcement system.

Reinforcement was a somewhat vestigial system in the Test Run. Intended to be a way for players to squeeze out more AP in a pinch, it saw very little use overall. Some of this was by design: it's meant to be moreso a midgame+ mechanic as it is now, a way to push past your limits to secure important, valuable wins. Some of this is the mercenary selections players made -- Reinforcement was granted manually to specific mercenaries, the kind of super high power ability users you'd hate to give up so easily. The driving ethos behind Reinforcement selection was 'if losing their abilities doesn't hurt, they shouldn't be able to Reinforce'. However, we still feel this system could use some more interaction, as opt-in periods of vulnerability make matches more varied and less stale. The implementation of TP introduces a viable outlet for this.

Starting in the following weeks, we will be converting several (mostly Low Tier-focused) mercenaries into Reinforcers, only able to reinforce for TP. Rather than a simple 'yes/no', mercenaries will now indicate if they can Reinforce for TP, Reinforce for AP, or not at all.

Why Low Tier? The answer lies in the next system change, but as a preview, we believe low tier mercenaries are the most impactful ability users overall. You get their abilities every week, they are a selling point, and they are the bedrock of firepower you use to tip the scales in your favor. This means their abilities get spammed, however, and that makes planning a bit boring. We want to add incentives to not use low tier abilities so much, and TP Reinforcement is a way to do so. Got a sick terrain like Castle Wolfenstien you wanna use? Send a lowbie out to reinforce for an extra TP to help you win the bidding this week! As always, we want to make the game less broken, and less braindead, and this should definitely help with the latter issue.

Item #3: Changes to the overall Low Tier Mercenary ability design

The above was the carrot. This is the stick. Starting in the upcoming weeks, we will start rebalancing most (but not all) low tier mercenaries to make their abilities either less available, less reliable, or both.

We saw what you saw, players, we felt what you felt, and we got the message loud and clear. No one is excited to see Leon Kennedy become Arms Chopper Guy (TM), or Vivi Ornitier become Your Motherfucking Life Ends In Five Minutes Kid (TM). Some of this comes down to altering abilities to be less universally applicable, but a lot of this is just that there's no incentive to resort to your more specific abilities when something works in most or all cases and can be used week after week.

One of our greatest successes this Test Run was rehabilitating Mario from being a joke merc to a meaningful battle threat, and Mario also just so happened to be a mercenary who received an avant premiere preview of how we want low tier ability hax to work. By default Mario's Cappy capture is powerful but random. You can't control who it's going to hit, only that it WILL hit someone. Thus, you can yolo it every week, but barring obscene luck, the results will not be similarly powerful week in week out. This helps make the capture more arguable, and prevents it from getting stale. On top of that, there's an option to make it reliably potent...but it comes at the cost of not using Cappy next week (or any other ability Mario may have at his disposal, for that matter -- thanks to JC for suggesting this change way back when, it was a good one).

Fatigue hurts. It gives players pause. it's a good pain to inflict on you guys to make you think about whether you'd rather overkill a match or leave some room for the other guy to win in exchange for less vulnerability down the line. We'll be using it, as well as low amounts of Recharge (Recharge 1 usually, maybe Recharge 2) more liberally, as well as introducing more 'called shot' requirements into abilities that are otherwise too reliable. Zagreus is a perfect example of this latter case, even though he's not a low tier mercenary. You'll see the finalized changes soon, but we plan to make his Nectar ability available by default out the gate...and make it so that THERE IS NO ESCAPE only works on targets Zag has gifted nectar to at least once (all credit for this idea goes to Eddv, who suggested this phenomenal balance change to us in private). THERE IS NO ESCAPE still remains super powerful, but now it relies on your ability to politic, wheel and deal to get it off successfully by default, instead of just being a braindead 'throw it out, #YOLO' move. In turn, we can then change Zag's possession upgrade from an obscene winmore into being able to use THERE IS NO ESCAPE on a non-Nectared target for Recharge 2 (perhaps 3, even), allowing it to function as a panic button at the significant cost of not having it available in future weeks.

The bottom line is: We want you to dig deep to make less powerful abilities work sometimes. We want you to have more than one viable ability strategy. We want you to think and plot to get your wins instead of just unloading your easy hax every week. We want you to be powerful, still! But we want players to have an incentive to run a multilayered game, and we believe nerfing the availability of Low Tier mercenaries' ability hax or its potency is a way to make this more possible by balancing out the power of each battle tier more properly (as if this is done, suddenly lowbie ability hax is comparable in availability to high tier mercenary battle presence -- so there's more reason to diversify your team instead of just investing in low super heavily to win without fighting). We are confident we can thread this needle, and make a more fun, exciting, and strategic Mercenaries without having to add more complexity this way. And we count on you, our lovely players and voters, to help us achieve that dream and spot mistakes we might make and help us do better. Together, we'll build a new, better game. Onwards and upwards, my comrades!

Item #4: Overall balance changes and fixes

This one is very straightforward. We want to tweak characters that are too good, buff up mercs that are too weak, and get every mercenary closer to parity with each other. This is technically not a systemic change, but consider this a preview of the tweaks we'll start implementing in the coming weeks alongside the larger rules changes.

Item #5: Clarification on revivals

Revives are good! We love that they are! But we're going to add a little clarification on how they work to the topic template. This change is being implemented immediately for topic templates in the wiki, as follows:

-Mercenaries are considered 'downed' when defeated, unable to be roused except through a revival technique. A revival technique cannot affect a mercenary whose physical body has been completely destroyed and will not relocate them away from danger (ex. falling off of the terrain, being impaled, falling in lava), unless it would naturally do so in its own universe.

This is just clarification on how far revives can go. Want to argue your team of badass bosses can deal with revivers? Sure, just convince the voters that dead enemies are becoming chunky salsa. You have a license for it now.

Item #6: More changes?!

This is not an official change, but rather a statement of intent. We are going to consider tweaks to the EXP system in particular! Players love EXP, we love EXP, and there may or may not be too little of it to go around. We may adjust it mid-game past a certain elimination cycle's conclusion to allow teams to power up faster. We may award more EXP for fulfilling certain conditions. We may implement no changes! We're going to take a good long look at this and have a think about where to go from here. This is Mercenaries 5: there are no sacred cows nor sacrosanct rules. We want the best game possible, and we'll examine and reevaluate everything to get there. Do not expect you'll ever be able to cap out on all your upgrades, though -- we're not interested in that. EXP allocation should still be a carefully planned affair, it should just not feel like you're drowning in cool shit to buy and can get none of it.

And that is all for now, my dear leaders! I'll see you next time once the TP rules are finalized and we start implementing targeted balance changes. May the goddess of victory smile upon you!

Well, I'm a week late, but better late than never.

Well, I came into this just hoping to get Mewtwo and have some fun with this. Then Aria put me in a bidwar for Mewtwo that I lost, so I decided to go tryhard. Looks like it all worked out for me. Looking forward to the real game now, and I hope I can carry over some of this success there.

And also, this is late and doesn't matter, but 20 XP on Zeratul's character upgrade. Man deserves it for how much he helped me out in the second cycle.

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?

Yeah, I enjoyed it. That first week was rough for me, between losing out on Mewtwo and then running into a buzzsaw against Boko. It got a little stressful after that since I was doing so well, but the Vivi's Bad Day week helped a lot by basically giving me a week off to reset.

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

I liked the AP system, which made it a lot less stressful to decide whether or not to use that ability. Some things were a bit too strong when you could just spam them, but I think it's a net positive that you don't put yourself in a bad situation in the future for trying to win now, with certain exceptions.

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.

It wasn't part of the game, but I have to agree with JC about Zenos and Meta Knight's time based abilities being unfun. The last thing any of us want to do is spend 3 hours pressing F5 on a wartime topic.

As for things that we actually experienced, I think it is a little too easy to spam some abilities. Some of them just ended up being no-brainers to use every week.

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?

As I said before, I liked the AP system. Bounty Hunters were definitely too strong in the first cycle, but I think the changes made in the second cycle helped balance them out.

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

Too weak:

• Tifa was a little weak with the way her ability currently works, but I know you've mentioned giving her some chi to start out with, which will help out a bit.
• I think Gael is a little weak as a merc that doesn't really have an ability for the first few weeks you have him even assuming you win every match. The KO and injury is a little much too. I know that ability can be strong, but I think it has too many drawbacks right now to be worth it.
• Jinx's ability is a little weak for something that eats up your whole AP allotment and can easily backfire on your team. I'm not sure I can think of a situation where I'd rather use that than spread the 3 AP out on multiple abilities.

Too strong:

• I think we've all heard enough about Vivi and Kiryu that I don't need to elaborate further.
• Liquid is pretty good with his variable upkeep letting him participate in every tier (even if I didn't get a chance to use him in Low), and an ability to let you get a backdoor 7 into Low and Mid. He stands out even more compared to the other variable upkeeps in Ashley and Kefka, the former who has a huge drawback to using his transformation, and the latter not having a non-paydown presence in Mid, as well as being iffy in Low.
• Zagreus's ability was really strong for something so early in the game. It didn't appear so much because Eddv misplayed it 2/3 times (putting Kiryu in the middle of a fight where one team is attacking a 10 year old, and Cyberdemon just doesn't play well with it, especially on a terrain where Cyberdemon's team is going to encounter the third party first). The changes you proposed should help with this a bit.

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

In the context of the Test Run, Ashley is probably up there. Not so much in the main game since you'll actually have to deal with the consequences of his ability.

In the context of the main game, I think it's The RED Team. They've got some strong abilities in their kit, and Medic gives them a chance to use them even if they get hurt. Maybe I'm underestimating their nerf passive, but most of those abilities are good, and losing a bunch of them just gives Medic a whole ton of flexibility.

7) Any additional remarks you wish to make?

Phantasmals are a pretty nice addition. My only complaint is that some of them have abilities that are too good for the "no ability muscle" that they're supposed to be. You have ones like Cyberdemon or RAY with no real ability at all, and others like Sabin and Ridley who have useful abilities. I think that should factor into their price a little bit more than it has.

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?

Yes, mostly, but there were a lot of really big pain points playing a high centric team. Would not recommend!

Mercenaries Changelog, Part 1:

Good evening, players and voters. This is our first batch of changes to the mercenaries revealed so far, posted here for posterity. Feel free to contact the administrators if you have any questions.

Atlas & P-Body + Banjo & Kazooie: Gained the ability to reinforce for TP as part of our revisions to the Reinforcement system: This adds options to these two mercenaries, and is fairly thematically appropriate too.

Bub + Bob: Gained a passive, codifying their music as an ability that can be interacted with. More a clarification pass than a rules change.

Diddy Kong & Dixie Kong: We're granting Diddy & Dixie a one-shot usage of their upgrade abilities on purchase. Our post-TR review of builds confirmed Immobilizing effects are, by and large, present on either mercenaries who really do not want to start near the enemy team (Bub, for example), or have ways to rig positioning in their own kits already (Tifa is a good example). As such, HOO HAH was simply not valuable enough by itself to justify buying Diddy & Dixie. They end up being percentage boosters for DK and nothing more...which is fine, to be clear, but the issue is that 1/weeks are meant to be wastes of a slot that make up for it with abilities or other benefits they provide every week while being not worth spending abilities on to put them out of the picture. Due to how Diddy and Dixie add zero value if anything happens to DK, it's far too easy to neutralize them as collateral damage of hitting the main piece of the Kongbo, making them an unattractive purchase. One-shot access to their actual value abilities should buy their team enough time to purchase them legally and start making Diddy & Dixie do work independent of DK.

Haurchefant Graystone: Added immunity to Morale-Affecting effects to both Haurchefant and his inspiration to go with the immunity to Mind-Affecting effects he already has. It was a flavor fail that he lacked this, TBQH.

Tails: We're clarifying Tails' Regen and Shell effects to apply as seen in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. These effects have had wildly varying usefulness across Final Fantasy, and we're not interested in people using this leeway to vote in bad faith. We don't expect this to happen, but why leave it up to chance?

Tingle: Tweaked Tingle's terrain-bid related abilities to let him win any ties on a bid on his terrains by default, to gain +1 TP on any bids on his terrains on upgrade, and to be able to grant his tie-winning effect and +1 TP on terrains he sells to others (not stacking with the previous ability upgrade for a +2 TP bonus, to be clear), effectively allowing Tingle to Reinforce for TP...but only for other teams. We aim to keep Tingle's value about the same and this should do so nicely.

Rika Furude: With great regret and a heavy heart, we must announce we are iceboxing Rika for the time being. She wasn't overly strong, but proved to be a very warping presence in the game, with her timeloops being both too confusing and also overcentralizing arguments. We will consider revisiting her build and fixing it up for a rerelease at some point, but disentangling this particular mess is a little too much effort for the time being. Maybe some other day.

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That is all for now. Stay tuned for more changes as we address further issues!

there's gotta be a kakera where Rika gets a good build >:|

also I would've eventually gotten some use out of Tag Barrel!....maybe!

Mercenaries Changelog, Part 2:

In this update, we will be touching upon our changes to our 2/week mercenaries.

Donkey Kong: Tweaked the wording on DK's embiggening passive to work off boosts, as opposed to total size (i.e. he will sustain fatigue at +300% size, not 400% total size), and likewise for his To The Moon ability. Additionally, added the option to control DK's size by setting it to a valid increment of the owner's choice during rosters, so as to avoid having to do overly unfun rostering shenanigans to keep him from being perma-Fatigued.

Ichiban Kasuga: Reworked Ichi's We Are Ichiban Holdings ability to convert GP invested into TP, at a rate of 3 GP per 1 TP. And yes, this means Ichi can surefire guarantee a win on terrain for an attacker against a defender before other abilities and reinforcements for the price of 15 GP. With this, we trust Ichi to be a valuable business mogul for his owner, and a hot commodity for leaders all around. Enjoy!

King K. Rool: Clarified that K. Rool's beneficial status effects are as seen in FF7R, and that nerfing abilities will still affect him post revival. We value his sneak attack highly, and believe there should be some counterplay to it. Make him drunk or as stupid as Big the Cat to ensure he doesn't decimate your team after reviving!

Vivi Ornitier: Massively reworked Vivi's ability to start ticking once the majority of both teams meet, reduced the timer's length to 30 seconds, and included an option to extend it by up to a minute (half that on upgrade) by declaring abilities from the afflicted merc and winning a bid to fight on their terrain, as a proof of their existence. Additionally, reworked his child death ability to work off a percentile chance, which also influences how much of a refund you get for his death. If you get tons of value out of Vivi, you shouldn't be getting the same money as if he died much too soon. Lastly, increased the AP cost of his base ability to 2 AP. This all should combine to make Vivi's ability far more situational and automatically invaluable than it was before.

Mario: Lightning bolt removed and replaced with a Mario Kart Boo, which will steal one non-primary weapon of Mario's choice from the mercenary nearest to him. This should remove an overly centralizing option while still keeping other forms of CC open for Mario to pick (such as Star Spirits), and add a little more play to the Kart custom. In addition, we are raising Mario's upkeep to 3/week in light of his phenomenal battle performances in the TR. Congrats, fat man. You've earned it!

I straight up have no idea how to interpret how Boo would actually work in practice

Chaeix posted...

I straight up have no idea how to interpret how Boo would actually work in practice

Instant yoink on a weapon from the nearest enemy. So like, say Mario is fighting, idk, Crono and Solid Snake. If Crono was nearest to him the Boo wouldn't really do much of anything. If Snake was closest, Mario can get himself an assault rifle or sniper rifle or whatever.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Instant yoink on a weapon from the nearest enemy. So like, say Mario is fighting, idk, Crono and Solid Snake. If Crono was nearest to him the Boo wouldn't really do much of anything. If Snake was closest, Mario can get himself an assault rifle or sniper rifle or whatever.

yeah but leaving what weapon he gets and from whom entirely up to voter interp (particularly when cappy is not used) sounds uh

difficult

the fact that you were like a machine gun or sniper rifle is actually completely emblematic of the issue because those are wildly different weapons

and Mario realistically does not have the knowledge to know what the best weapon to take is

Chaeix posted...

yeah but leaving what weapon he gets and from whom entirely up to voter interp (particularly when cappy is not used) sounds uh

difficult

the fact that you were like a machine gun or sniper rifle is actually completely emblematic of the issue because those are wildly different weapons

and Mario realistically does not have the knowledge to know what the best weapon to take is

The value lies in disarmament, primarily. It's much moreso a sort of unique debuff than a powerup for Mario, to be clear. If it was meant to be a buff to him we'd specify something about knowing how to use the stuff he steals.

but how do we know what the disarmament is

that's my whole point

it's just too ambiguous

GameFAQs Mario incoming

Super Mario 128 (each Mario is from a different game)

The Wonderful Mar101

GameFAQs Mario always steals exactly which weapon hurts the opposing team the most. Truly a blessing.

im just saying it now I will refuse to vote in any matches with the Boo custom as-is because its so hard to interp

its basically the same level of ambiguity as regen as seen in the ff series

I will say I'm not a fan of using FF7R baselines for people not from FF7R.

I said this before but the lightning bolt was never the problem it's Mario only having 5 custom options and wanting to pick the same one every time. I think the boo is straight up a worse idea than the lightning bolt. It's a nightmare to interpret.

I think there's a lot of potential for a Mario "feeling" build if there's a larger set of customization options but Mario has to use them up and refind them again. Ultimately I would like something like this.

? Block (passive) - Each Wartime Mario will find 1 Customization randomly from each of [Group A], [Group B], [Group C], as well as one additional random item chosen from a randomly chosen group. All items can only be used by him unless otherwise noted, and items may not repeat.

[Group A]
Fire Flower, P-Wing, Cape, Ice Flower, Tanuki Suit, Hammer Suit, Super Mushroom, Kuribo's Shoe, Fludd, 3 SMB2 Mushroom Blocks.

[Group B]
Metal Cap, Vanish Cap, Mario Kart Boo (steal a random item from a random post rosters enemy's battle write-up, chosen when rosters are revealed), Mario Kart Lightning Bolt, Starman 15s, 1-Up (revives to full health once per match), Warp Whistle (may choose to give to a teammate if chosen, may be used to teleport to anywhere on the terrain once per match), SMB2 Clock (freezes time for everyone but Mario for 10s), POW Block, Hammer as seen in Smash Bros Series/Donkey Kong Series, Mega Mushroom 15s

[Group C]
His current customs go here. As well as ideally some extras to flesh it out. A Smash Bros inspired item set would be neat for example. Mario Kart expanded to have Lightning Bolt, My Version of Boo, and a Spiked Blue Shell that will launch at the furthest enemy from him.

Customization: Mario may bring 3-5 items with him he has found from his ? block passive with him into battle.

Item Storage (results) - Mario may hang onto one item not chosen from his custom this week. He is always considered to have rolled that item as a choosable extra bonus item until he chooses a different item or it is used, and it will not be considered to be a repeat item. (Upgradeable to SMB3 style item window holding more)

The basic idea is

Group A - Low impact, but give Mario basic combat options. These exist to be used if you want to store stronger items mostly truth be told.
Group B - Theme here is high impact temporary power ups. Arguably as good as Group C situationally.
Group C - Bread and Butter complete power up sets as seen in M5 to give Mario legs. Since at least one of these is always rolled he should always have some good persistent firepower if he needs it.

If you think you have a match in hand, you store a Group B or Group C. If not you pick all Group Bs and Cs because you can store extras and aren't compelled to actually use the As you roll.

The more items the better, and shouldnt hurt too much. Mario should be versatile, powerful, and reasonably but not 100% consistent.

That's a better way to handle Mario I think. That Boo custom as written is going to be toxic.

Lopen posted...

Mario Kart Boo (steal a random item from a random post rosters enemy's battle write-up, chosen when rosters are revealed)

So the only problem with this is a lot of mercs, like BJ for example, have a ton of shit but none of it is listed in his writeup.

Eddv posted...

So the only problem with this is a lot of mercs, like BJ for example, have a ton of shit but none of it is listed in his writeup.

Yeah.

I mean maybe just reroll invalid targets or steal from the pool of all enemy customs instead and ignore the battle write-up

There are ways to do it point is

1. you definitely don't want to implement it in that other way.
2. Lightning bolt was never the problem to begin with, spamming it was.

Lopen posted...

Yeah.

I mean maybe just reroll invalid targets or steal from the pool of all enemy customs instead and ignore the battle write-up

There are ways to do it point is

1. you definitely don't want to implement it in that other way.
2. Lightning bolt was never the problem to begin with, spamming it was.

Well my point is there are plenty of mercs who SHOULD be valid targets that are not thanks to the way they were written up.

Yeah.

In m4 there are a few builds that pointlessly have the specific weapon in the writeup to enable that but it is hard to remember to do reliably

Mercenaries Changelog, Part 3:

In this update, we will be finishing an extra polish pass on a few 2/week mercenaries, and focusing on our 3/week mercs.

Mario: To further cement him as a legitimate 3/week and not just an upjumped 2/week, Mario has received a new character upgrade, allowing him to fish up an additional, high-power randomly selected item every week! In addition, his Boo will now function before battle begins, stealing one non-primary weapon of Mario's choosing from a random post-rosters enemy. This should be less disruptful than the old lightning bolt (which now lives on in the character upgrade), while still retaining the zany nature of Mario Kart. With these changes, we hope Mario has a bright 3/week future ahead of him. Jump up, superstar!

King K. Rool: We are changing K. Rool's filching ability to always cost 1 AP if he steals from a 4/week mercenary or higher. We have no issues with K. Rool getting good hardware on principle, as it's both fun and unique. Allowing him to filch, say, Mini-Nukes for free in mid tier weeks is too much, though, particularly with Kredits. It makes the sneak attack degenerate, when it's supposed to have some natural counterplay to it in mid and high. If you want it to be broken, be ready to pay up for it!

Amaterasu: We are happy with Amaterasu as she is now. We have changed Virtuous Deeds to allow her to donate TP, instead of GP to help with terrain bids, but are otherwise satisfied with her as she is right now.

Ashley Winchester: We've clarified Ashley's The Blaze of Disaster is completely immune to any form of ability interaction as a safeguard against dumb gimmicks like using Rika's (rest in peace, precious babu) base ability to no-sell it every week. We do not want people to dodge the price for this particular faustian bargain, ever -- you'll have to battle through it head-on with your hearts blazing to benefit from Ashley's powers, I'm afraid! However, recognizing that his lack of an active ability is a little painful, we've also granted him a new, cheap, low-impact ability, Accelerate, which grants him first strike in battle under all circumstances when used. Use this to foil ambushes or make creative arguments about him closing into melee! Lastly, we've clarified that Ashley reinforces for AP, unlike most mercenaries on this list, as he is really a Mid Tier mercenary who cheats himself into Low rather than a true 3/week.

Bowser: Bowser was likely the single most underpowered mercenary in the Test Run's entire roster, bought or not. As such, we're giving him a massive overhaul to firmly situate him as a valuable 3/week.

We are reducing his minimum bid to 40 GP from 49 to make him the equal of Mario and making his Lightning In A Bottle ability work on any Villainous mercenaries, not just those of specific classifications, enabling + Bowser's Minions to now work as intended against a wide range of useful targets. In exchange, we're applying Recharge 1 to his effect selection, turned to Recharge 2 should you choose the kidnap (we know exactly how good that stuff is).

We are also moving Showtime! to his baseline, allowing him to transform into more powerful forms from the word go! This should allow Bowser to serve as a better bedrock for a villainous team (perhaps alongside fellow Nintendo alum Ganondorf?), particularly as we've reduced its Recharge from 2 to 1, allowing it to be used much more often.

Lastly, we've swapped out Giga Bowser (which was debatably not even really an upgrade anymore) and replaced it with Dreamy Bowser, from Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, for a massive powerup with just a few Villains on deck...and added a very cheap character upgrade to let him become that form permanently. Bowser can now be exactly the scary low tier tank of your dreams you always wanted, and meaningfully scale up into Mid tier!

...Oh, and also, to play with his terrain gimmick, we've made him able to Reinforce for TP too. Have fun!

Crono: We are afraid of Triple Tech's potential to smash entire teams wholesale. Very afraid. As such, we are adding Recharge 2 to it when used. This does NOT apply to Dual Tech! You can spam that to your heart's content still. Its variability makes it a reasonable daily addition.

Eunie: As part of the global Low Tier mercenary ability adjustment plan, Eunie's Uh-Uh now has Recharge 1. Still strong! Just not a daily.

Ganondorf: We're pleased with the 'dorf as is and he fits the new paradigm just fine. We're giving him the ability to Reinforce for TP to give him that extra touch of versatility. Plus, it's in theme for the Triforce of Power warping Hyrule to his will!

Jacqli: As part of the clarifying pass, Jacqli now Reinforces for TP. EXEC_SPHILIA also received a clarification to make it so teams can counterplay it by killing Jacqli (and she can swap from support songs to offensive ones if her duet buddy dies).

Jinx: This world needs more mayhem! Jinx's A-NAR-CHY ability now costs 2 AP at baseline, and 3 AP when randomizing ability targets. This should encourage chaos nicely. We've also specified she reinforces for TP.

Kazuma Kiryu: Kiryu hasn't changed, but he was far too oppressive in the Test Run - mostly in an environment with few targets, which really was just Low Tier post-cash infusion. As such, we're not nerfing him further, but are holding him back for a somewhat delayed release to let players rack up that one extra merc or two that makes the crucial difference when confronting the Dragon of Dojima. He was fine in mid and high, so we're just not bothering him with requests to return to the Tojo Cla- ahem, Mercenaries until there's enough punks to put up a solid fight against him.

Leon Kennedy: Ahh, Leon. One of the hottest topics as far as the Test Run was concerned. His ability was too good, his battle worth absolutely nil in spite of more feats than ever before, and he more than anyone else exposed the flaws with the AP system that led to this Low Tier readjustment. Oh, and RE4Make came out right as the TR finished, meaning he had new material to work with.

As such, we've done a nigh-on complete overhaul of Leon's battle writeup (he now has every RE4Make pistol, the Striker and the bolt-action rifle, plus Krauser's Fighting Knife, Body Armour and it's been clarified he has every type of grenade just to prevent pedantic arguments...EDIT: And as an emergency hotfix because Mercenaries Mode came out, we're giving Leon his Mayhem Mode ability. Finally, a nice thing to set him apart!), and we've replaced "Your Right Hand Comes Off?" with something a little more suited to the remake's tone. He can now challenge an enemy mercenary to a knife-fight, and on upgrade, make that literal by starting them off in the center of the terrain, ready to shank each other out. We hope this will fit Leon's new RE2Make and RE4Make characterization a little bit better, while still enabling him to be a powerful playmaker nonetheless. For more details, please see his wiki page.

Lastly, we've adjusted Leon to 2/week, making him our very first true 2/week gunner (sorry K. Rool, that dinky-ass musket doesn't earn you that privilege). The significant changes to the Broken Rule had major knock-on effects on mercenary respect, and Leon was one of the characters hit hardest by this. A solid 3/week in M4, he exposed an uncomfortable truth this go around: when everyone else has access to CC effects, buffs, heals and revivals, gunners end up looking kind of bad by default. Their games naturally incline them towards doing nothing more than pure DPS as a default, particularly those featuring mundane gunners, which naturally decreases their intrinsic value. Would you rather have a guy with an assault rifle, or Tidus who can Hastega, Slowga, draintank, blind, silence and also do sick anime flippydoos, for example? As such, we opted to take a moment to reassess our views on gunner respect, and adjusted Leon accordingly. Better that he be a star in his new upkeep tier than widely considered the worst 3/week, eh?

Meta Knight: We've added Recharge to Meta Knight's base ability, increased to Recharge 2 for manually selecting its target, so as to keep him at parity with other Low Tier mercenaries (particularly the aforementioned Leon, who now has a fairly similar ability). He can now reinforce for TP, also.

Lastly, we've radically redesigned Meta Knight's Meta Samurai ability, removing the need to be present at any specific point during Wartime beyond vaguely being around for declarations (and even that is moreso to keep options open rather than being required). We heard your complaints about having to F5 constantly loud and clear, and his new Meta Samurai should preserve the timing element of the ability while adding a new component of skilful predictiveness to it that should bring meta (haw) heavy leaders great joy.

...We're still not adjusting Zenos' Reflexes ability though. If you have the reflexes of a geriatric old grandma, you can just go get wrecked wwwwww

Pamela Ibis: As part of the Low Tier ability rebalance, we are hitting Pamela's Barrel ability with Recharge 1.

The RED Team: We are applying Recharge 1 to Scout, Demoman and Heavy's abilities, plus Engie's Nope ability. They're too strong to bring out on the daily, and this should encourage a bit more cycling than before.

Scorpion: Repositionings are good. Repositionings are VERY good. If everyone else gets to be less spammy, Scorpion can't remain equally as reposition-y as before. We're adding Recharge 1 to GET OVER HERE to keep him from becoming overpowered.

Slave Knight Gael: Gael went unbought for a very simple, very fair reason: too much time taken to build up blood counters and no active ability to speak of to start. So we're addressing this by shifting Gael's abilities around, turning his berserking ability into his default (and applying Recharge 1 to it to balance it out). This should allow Gael to see play early on without being a huge gamble. You'll have to buy his blood counter price reduction upgrade or the painted world to unlock his blood counters, though.

Tidus: We're applying Recharge 1 to Tidus' ability at baseline, turning his final upgrade an optional declaration, and hitting that version with Recharge 2. It's very strong, and we would like to not see it spammed day in and day out.

Addditionally, and most notably, we are applying Recharge 1 to Blitz Ace also. You may have noticed it was pretty much just baseline abilities that got hit elsewhere. This is by design and to increase the power of full-fledged Low Tier mercenaries vs lowbie Phantasmals, allowing them to have consistent abilities they can always deploy. The ability to upgrade into always-on abilities is something we wanted to be a potent draw that can justify a higher initial minbid, but with the new TP system implemented, we fear that any ways to reliably win terrain (here's an easy one: have Gael on your team alongside Tidus, paint the waterball, and receive 2 TP on the defensive for free) would make Tidus absolutely obnoxious to deal with. By applying Recharge to Blitz Ace, we want to encourage mixing things up so as to keep the Luca Sphere Pool from being abusive. With any luck, he won't need further nerfings going forwards.

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That is all for now. We will begin work on the 4/week mercenaries sometime soon, hopefully!

Having played a few hours of Mercs mode in RE4 Remake, wow but Hunk is a rampaging killbeast (I say this aware that no one gave Leon much respect, but)

Good evening, players. You know what time it is.

Mercenaries Changelog, Part 4:

In this update, we are covering the changes our 4/weeks will receive. Expect this to be less extensive than the 3/week changes, as we are overall quite pleased by our 4s.

Alucard: Alucard can now reinforce for AP. We are also taking away the ability to benefit from the Alucard Shield's invulnerability death field. It makes him a one-note character and Alucard is too versatile to make him that boring.

Estinien: Estinien can now reinforce for AP.

Gordon: We weren't super thrilled by Gordon's performance in the TR. He wasn't respected as a 4/week should be, and he was mostly used as an ability defense bot. His Steam Sale was also not as attractive as it should've been because of a wording snafu. It now refunds GP immediately, which should make it way more valuable. We're also giving Gordon a new upgrade ability, let him shine in battle worth, and making him a lynchpin for certain teamcomps. Lastly...we're moving him to 3/week and clarifying he has no helmet. We consider him comparable to other 3/week gunners and this gives him a natural point of weakness to be exploited that keeps him fair. With this, he should be the star of Low Tier, instead of a weak pickup in Mid.

Juri Han: We're clarifying Gomen Ne to ignore the offending mercenary and exclude them from the target pool. Just correcting a flavor fail!

Kirby: We're clarifying Kirby can reinforce for TP and not AP. He's combat heavy, and so we don't want him to grant AP for free once you have your forms of choice.

Lu Bu: Adjusted Lu Bu's 59 GP bid to 52 GP to make him more competitive. He's good as is, but he could use a lil more competitive pricing, so here you go.

Neku Sakuraba: We think Neku's abilities are lovely and don't want to change them. However, Focus is a little hard to use, and situational. We're consequently moving it to an upgrade ability and pushing The Power Is Yet Unknown into the base ability slot (and giving it a new upgrade to suit). With this, we're confident Neku will be an absolute powerhouse, a true enabler for his team all the way.

Sonic the Hedgehog: Sonic is good. He's great, even. We couldn't be happier with his respect this TR. At long last, a redemption for M4. However, we might have swung the other way. Right now, Sonic gives you an unique ability phase no one else has access to, a free powerful debuff, guaranteed ability control, forcing opponents to be proactive instead of reactive in the Peacetime phase, and on top of that, he eats 7/weeks for free and his battle power is good now too thanks to Frontiers. On top of that, he even Reinforces. This leads us to an unavoidable conclusion. Right now, Sonic is the most powerful mercenary in the game.

...Yeah. I'll wait a moment for everyone to pick their jaws off the floors. Even we're surprised by this, and we're the scriptwriters who penned this particular plot twist. Somebody has to be the best, and we're OK with it being Sonic, but right he's a little too strong. His ability to persecute 7/weeks regardless of tier and destroy teams for having the temerity to pay down a 6/week in mid is too much. Something has to give. As such, we're adjusting 'Now Face It, You're Just An Enemy' to only pop if a 7/week is paid down, and turning his upgrade into a (very long recharge) effect to activate Super Sonic in high tier if a 7/week is around. This should be enough to make Sonic 'fairly the best', instead of brokenly the best. Look forward to your Mercenaries future, Sonic. It's going to be great!

(Also, changed Sonic's reinforcement to clarify it grants AP instead of TP.)

Squall: We're clarifying that Squall can reinforce for AP, and also allowing him to choose his ability he borrows when Drawing, at all times, without requiring an upgrade. Two layers of RNG to beat is too much to get a good draw, just one is enough.

Tifa Lockheart: Tifa is a great character, but she warms up too slow and that makes her dangerous to invest in. As such, we're giving her 3 Chi counters out the gate, and reducing her counter expenditure to 2 Chi counters spent at baseline (down to 1 with the upgrade as usual). This should make her easier to play into, which is all she needs.

Yu Narukami: We're perfectly happy with Yu, but he shouldn't be able to reinforce for AP given how you can eventually get enough Social Links to be content with. As such, we're changing him to reinforce for TP.

Zagreus: We're moving Zagreus' Peacetime ability to his baseline...and tying THERE IS NO ESCAPE to having used it on a target, turning it into a called shot by default (and turning his upgrade into a way to use it on any character, for a hefty recharge). This makes Zag a lot less oppressive by default, which should make him a fair and balanced character instead of an overly dominant pick.

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That's all for today. We'll see you soon for the next part of the changelogs!

Bonus update: In recognition for all the influential things his games pioneered, we have given Gordon Freeman the Gaming Icon tag. Congrats, Gordon, GameSpot Character Battle contest winner. You deserve it.

Idea

Make Gourdon a 4 week

Give him a passive where he's always considered rosterable in low without paying down but has no helmet if you roster him in low unless you pay him down.

I dunno just an idea.

if that passive is called anything other than pumpkinhead the people will riot

4/week

Pumpkinhead (Passive) - Gordon Freeman is considered rosterable for one roster slot without being paid down in low tier matches. He will enter battle without his helmet if rostered in this way.

Maybe make him cost two roster slots as a normal paydown and give it an ability upgrade.

Is Gourdon without helmet worth two slots in low? I dunno.

Against melee? Yeah.

Against another gunner or covered mage? Nah

So yeah probably 2 slots, 1 on upgrade. Basically if you want Gordon to be part of your low team after roster caps are hit you gotta pay exp. To me that's fair and would make him more appealing overall vs just outright removing the helmet.

Pumpkinhead (Passive) - Gordon Freeman is considered to be on your active roster and is rosterable for two roster slots, ignoring rosterability restrictions, but will enter battle without his helmet. This passive is disabled if it's a mid tier or high tier week, or if Gordon Freeman has been paid down.

Ability upgrade - When rostered with his Pumpkinhead passive he only takes one roster slot.

Lopen posted...

So yeah probably 2 slots, 1 on upgrade. Basically if you want Gordon to be part of your low team after roster caps are hit you gotta pay exp. To me that's fair and would make him more appealing overall vs just outright removing the helmet.

Pumpkinhead (Passive) - Gordon Freeman is considered to be on your active roster and is rosterable for two roster slots, ignoring rosterability restrictions, but will enter battle without his helmet. This passive is disabled if it's a mid tier or high tier week, or if Gordon Freeman has been paid down.

Ability upgrade - When rostered with his Pumpkinhead passive he only takes one roster slot.

i'm not sure the wording is totally clear here. is he a 4/week who's rosterable in low and then the paydown triggers the helmet? i got there in the end but could be stated more directly

So the reason we're doing it this way is threefold.

A) Gordon isn't a great 4/week. He got 3.5/week respect as it was, making him a feelbad pickup. Compare him to Zagreus if you want an example of a true 4/week gunner (though Zag can do other shit obv) and he looks real bad in comparison.

B) The helmet is kind of a necessity to make him reliably beefy but it's also dubiously canon. HEV suits have one in general, but Gordon's historically depicted without one. His iconic look is worth retaining, even if it makes him weaker.

C) Seriously did we want to have 'but do he got a helmet tho' arguments ad infinitum

It's not a choice we've made lightly. We don't like nerfing characters when everyone around them gets stronger. We do think Gordon gaining free lowbie deployment ends up being an extremely powerful compensatory buff because there's very strong reasons to say, buy him over Jinx or BJ, compared to something like an eventual, say, Bill Rizer or JC Denton. We'd rather someone as foundational as Gordon get to look cool and be strong in at least one tier than be the butt of every joke about battleworth in mid. Same principle as why Leon got an upkeep downgrade -- it's all about making mercs look good and not awful.

Chaeix posted...

is he a 4/week who's rosterable in low and then the paydown triggers the helmet? i got there in the end but could be stated more directly

His passive does the following

1. Removes his helmet
2. Makes him rosterable ignoring current restrictions.

He becomes rosterable low due to his passive (which also removes his helmet)

If you pay him down (or it's mid or high) the passive disappears so his helmet comes back on

There is probably a better way to word it but the intention is:

- Rosterable in low without helmet
- able to pay down low to put helmet back on
- helmet stays on in mid and high

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Same principle as why Leon got an upkeep downgrade -- it's all about making mercs look good and not awful.

I mean, in this newage Mercs Leon is barely a 2/Day.

That being said if Gordon never gets his helmet in game I actually agree with it being removed just all the time. As you can tell my half life knowledge is not super high. I thought he got it late game lol.