LogFAQs > #908831189

greengravy294 posted...

victor "goddamn" sullivan got surprised by a random goon that gets turned on by his head goon and shot point blank

i mean i dont really have big respect for victor "goddamn" sullivan with his uc1 showings

This is what makes it a top tier moment, you got robbed by a guy who loses to mooks and the best part is everyone voted honestly there

KamikazePotato posted...

No amount of easing the players into a game is going to reduce the sheer time/emotional investment 'classic' mercs was. Even if players are having fun, it's unreasonable to expect them to want to play a game for THAT long.

I'm taking a pretty hardline stance on this one. If you want Mercs to be an easier game on the player and the voters than you have to reduce the amount of time to finish a round of Mercs. There is no round of Mercs that was improved by going on stupidly long.

I respectfully beg to differ. Mercenaries is the greatest game I've ever played in large part because of the commitment it requires. It's people actually taking the time to care that makes this game so memorable - if everyone took it casually it wouldn't actually be a game worth remembering. In that respect, I think it's a good idea to think of it as being most similar not to board games or even videogames, but to PnP tabletop RPG campaigns. Those games can last for years on end (indeed, I've played and still play in two games that are six and five years old at this point, and a few others have finished after a couple years of playtime), and it's all predicated on the players giving a damn. It's not a coincidence that those games have a massive social element too - and neither is it a coincidence that the divide between long term RPGs and short term ones is marked and intentional.

Moreover...Mercs is not a casual game, and no amount of cutting its duration will make it something it's not. Were you around for draftmercs? Because that game ran for 7 weeks of round robin and 8 of playoffs, and it still ended with a double ragequit in one pool and a forfeit-quit on the other. Even dramatically shortening the duration of the game didn't keep it from being very emotionally draining and mentally exhausting. If you've got another theory on why draftmerx had drama explosions in spite of being so short, aside from 'irreducible minimum investment and heartache', I'm all ears, because that's what it felt like to me.
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Shine on, you crazy diamond.