LogFAQs > #972590744

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.