Board 8 > Hypothetical Mercs Topic: It's Been A While

(+) Yeah! (+)

So my friend roped me into playing League of Legends again some friend and honestly, League's newer characters are waaaay better designed than the schlock we worked with in M4. Here's my crack at one of them:

Jhin (League of Legends)
Villainous Male Human
Upkeep: 3/week
Min Bid: ???

Jhin is as he is seen in League of Legends and its ancillary materials., with an Infinity Edge, Rapid Firecannon, Essence Reaver, Youmuu's Ghostblade, and Duskblade. He may not use summoner spells.

This stage is beneath me, but I will elevate it. (Passive): Jhin prefers to be a solo performer. He will not share any knowledge he gains before battle with his team, though he will still cooperate in the battle itself within normal restrictions.

One... (Pre-Battle): Every week, Jhin may mark an enemy target. He will gain all knowledge of that merc's abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Two... (Trigger): After his team has used two non-trigger, non-Jhin abilities, Jhin will scout his target and their friends, gaining full knowledge of this week's terrain.

Three... (Trigger): After the third non-trigger, non-Jhin ability, Jhin will set up six hidden Lotus Traps in strategic locations through the terrain, though not within 10 feet of the enemy's spawn point. Lotus traps function as they do in League of Legends gameplay.

FOUR! (Trigger) After the fourth non-trigger, non-Jhin ability, Jhin will find his opportunity and shoot his target with a super-bullet, KOing them.

Upgrades

Ability upgrade: After FOUR! triggers, Jhin will make sure it's a work of art that everyone will notice. The target cannot be revived, and their body will be reshaped by Jhin's magic into a grisly spectacle with a massive lotus of flesh erupting from it that Jhin places in the center of the terrain. Upon seeing it, each enemy merc has a 50-50 chance of being either terrified or disturbingly fascinated with the "exhibit."

New ability
A costume, some makeup... a spray of blood. (Start of Battle): Jhin is patient, waiting for the exact right cue to let his drama begin. Every three weeks, Jhin may come to battle 30 seconds early disguised as a neutral NPC. He may choose when to put on his mask and become a combatant again, though the enemy team might start to suspect him 10 seconds after they see him.
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tag

I'm sorry film mercs, for I hath abandoned you
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Tag. Maybe I'll get around to some of the TV/Movie builds I had ideas for this week.
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my latest idea for a tv/movie merc was the Lucky Charms mascot so maybe I need to rethink
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Johnbobb posted...

my latest idea for a tv/movie merc was the Lucky Charms mascot so maybe I need to rethink

As a support, I approve of this.

As a combat merc, please god no.
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Actually, this one was almost done, might as well post:

Kylo Ren (Star Wars)
Villainous Male Superhuman
Upkeep: 5?/Week
Min Bid: XGP

Kylo Ren is as seen in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. (Pre-Battle) - Once every four weeks, Kylo Ren may KO one preselected enemy Merc that has battled on his team before. This includes Mercs that were Possessed over to his side, Mercs that were fired from his team, and Mercs brought in from the Available Mercs pool that have since been purchased.

UPGRADES:

(Character Upgrade; XX EXP)

Describe character upgrade.

(New ABILITY TYPE; XX EXP)

Youre nothing but not to me. (Pre-Battle) - Once every four weeks, Kylo Ren will persuade one randomly selected opposing female Merc of equal or lesser upkeep to fight on his side this week. Unfortunately, his persuasion tactics aren't that great, and the selected Merc will betray Kylo Ren one minute into the battle. Neither Kylo Ren or his team will know the betrayal is coming. This ability counts as a Possession.

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Terrain: Snokes Throne Room - The throne room, as seen in The Last Jedi. None of Snokes guards or any other First Order soldiers are present. Access to the rest of The Supremacy and the Star Wars Universe is prohibited.
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Kylo Ren v. Vader v. Palpatine who ya got
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Johnbobb posted...

Kylo Ren v. Vader v. Palpatine who ya got

Palpatine in a fucking rout. Not even close.

Palpatine > Vader > Kylo Ren.

Now if we are doing hypothetical Anakin later in life not hampered by injuries, he would win.

Kylo Ren isn't even in the same stratosphere.
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for what it's worth I know very very little about Star Wars
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I could see Kylo winning by backstabbing Palpatine while he's busy murdering Vader. That's what he's good at
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DeathChicken posted...

I could see Kylo winning by backstabbing Palpatine while he's busy murdering Vader. That's what he's good at

No way.
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Was hedging between a 4 and a 5 with this one, but, well...she does completely hand non-upgrade Jason his ass

Kay-Em (Jason X)
Heroic Female Robot
5/Week

Kay-Em is as she appears in Jason X post-upgrade, carrying her duel automatic pistols and railgun.

Afraid I'm gonna have to hurtcha now! (Start of Battle) - Every three weeks, Kay-Em may show off her tactical knowhow. She may pre-select an enemy merc during Wartime. Kay-Em will shrug off the first fatal blow to strike her from that merc (no matter her health), though any subsequent blows will damage her as usual.

UPGRADES:

Ability Upgrade

Kay-Em no longer needs to select an enemy for her ability, but rather the first fatal blow to strike her from any enemy in the week's fight will be no-sold.

New Ability

I'll be back on my feet in no time. As soon as I have some (Passive) - Kay-Em is immune to Injury effects, though KOs can still strike her as normal.

Terrain

The Grendel - The ship as seen in Jason X, currently freefloating in space. All areas are accessible, though the escape pods are gone.
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Or maybe just give her the Passive as a default and then on upgrade she's immune to KOs too
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make KOs cause health loss instead maybe?
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so when is draft mercs 2??
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Perhaps this time I won't vacation to Italy while in the playoffs
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guys I have the itch

new draft mercs please
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Actually I want you guys to help me make the Lucky build. Here I have 8 facts about Lucky's abilities taken directly from the back of a Lucky Charms box, and I want your help figuring out how each charm ability will translate to an ability in-game.

Lucky the Leprechaun (Lucky Charms)
Neutral Male Otherworldly
?/week (Pure Support)

There's Magic In Every Charm! (Pre-Battle/SOB?) - Once every 3 weeks, Lucky may grant one of his eight charms to his attached Merc, putting the following ability into effect for the week.

-The Heart Charm allows Lucky to bring things to life.
-The Star Charm gives Lucky the power to fly.
-The Purple Horseshoe gives Lucky the power to speed things up.
-The Green Clover Charm can bring luck.
-The Blue Moon Charm allows Lucky to become invisible.
-The Hourglass Charm gives Lucky the power to control time.
-The Rainbow Charm allows Lucky to instantly travel from place to place.
-The Red Balloon gives Lucky the power to float.

in other news I'm at the point in my life where I see a fucking cereal box in my apartment and instantly think "That should be a Merc"
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I know Kanz is starting to work on Mercs Imperium. Still have no idea how that works.
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Me either
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Chaeix posted...

so when is draft mercs 2??

ScareChan posted...

guys I have the itch

new draft mercs please

@ScareChan
@Chaeix

I'm working on some new rules right now. If you'd like to see more merx, I recommend checking out this primer on how abilities work and giving feedback: https://pastebin.com/prG0VSa8

The current plan is to start upgrading the M4 ruleset and mercs builds a bit so as to run a short test game with them. I want the ruleset to be clearer, more comprehensive, and once I'm sure it makes some amount of sense, introduce some tweaks to it to handle some things people disliked about M4 (like the power of paydowns). Likewise, I want to fix undertuned mercs, upgrade the ones that were boring or generic, and simplify the ones that were unnecessarily complex or poorly written.
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Hmm, for all the going through mercs trying to decide on what mercs should stay or go, there is a second question. What characters from what series deserve a chance to be new mercs? There's always more games coming out, characters that were missed, and potential remakes and the like out there to put characters in the lime light. Maybe before the next season begins, this should be talked about.

This is definitely a big deal, and it's something Kanz and I have discussed quite a bit. We really want to make sure the big icons get hit, but there should be some room for niche, possibly-unheard-of characters too. I'd reckon about 85-15 split.
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It's not like you'll go wrong having *too many* possible mercs, so long as they're good
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MacGyver merc who gets a roll of yarn, duct tape, and a stolen enemy weapon each week. Too broken for Tvmercs?
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DeathChicken posted...

MacGyver merc who gets a roll of yarn, duct tape, and a stolen enemy weapon each week. Too broken for Tvmercs?

I doubt it? Though it would kind of copy John McClane's whole schtick
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And yet far more memetastic
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ive decided i mostly disagree with kanz's ideas so im letting him run m5
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Anyway merc builds are like you know neat and all but what super actually matters is "cultivating the community". To touch upon what was mentioned before I think the matches need to be more dynamic. No one likes 5v5's. Especially when you get into having more obscure characters it just more or less devolves into strongest merc vs strongest merc. And this just isn't good for the game. Niche mercs are always going to find their way in. That's fine as long as they can be highlighted.

Basically I think M5, when ran, needs a full time "community manager". Someone that is like a Drakeryn. You know, on the shadow board for voting, but not actually an admin. The game, as a whole, needs to be emphasized as an actual game. A story needs to be presented. Instead of games being presented without much context. There were plenty of people that found M4 interesting but gave up on it because they didn't get it.

So the weekly results topic needs more flair to it. Create a narrative. We've read Drak's journals. Those are interesting in hindsight. So bring more of it into the present, from a third party viewer. I think that will be more fun.

Smaller fights are definitely something I feel strongly about. Votals were very strong early on. Smaller fights, more interest. Interest needs to be kept up, otherwise maintaining this community may as well just become an echo chamber.

I'd favor M5 over Draft merx 2.0 a hundred times over. M4 has come and gone. If 2.0 is to happen, new builds need to be added and a massive overhaul on banned mercs / abilities / terrains (hi Damus) needs to happen. And at that point it might as well just be a Mercs 4.5 so just go the full way imo.
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I'm not running a full game before I know the new rules I want to implement work anyways

Assume that if I run M5 it will have a 20 week testrun or so and if the rules are working fine by the end of that players will get a vote to extend it to a full season, and if not it ends there and M5 launches once the rules are fixed
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And yes any draftmerx would similarly have new builds and shit because we're way overdue for updated versions of previous mercs. That goes without saying. I didn't spend my time building up an ability primer and clarifying what abilities mean to run with old and busted mercs.
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I'll play mercs again
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I feel like 3v3 is an absolutely fine dynamic where every member of a team contributes, and it actually allows the numbers game to mean something. Also lets you get a trifecta of "melee dude, ranged dude, magic dude", but with, for instance, the melee guy being a speedster while the opponent's is a tank, necessitating a buff-based mage as opposed to a DPS mage, as opposed to the current format which is "what is the strongest attack? What does the opponent have to counter that? Is there a super bullshit strategy or broken ability that changes this? That person wins".

Of course that does limit potential team building aspects, which would make a stamina aspect desirable to encourage team variation, potentially lessened if the merc is hit by abilities (i.e. if they're hit by a pre-battle they don't get fatigued, if they're hit by an SoB fatigue counts as usual). Though this would need to be introduced likely around Week 20 or so in order to create a solid high-mid-low dynamic for each team to build upon.

I'm also up for events being a kind of literary core. It's already a time investment, so why not have "okay we're warring and sometimes these TRUE VILLAINS emerge and we gotta beat 'em up". Like the Robot Master event leads to some fun shit if you imagine Wily reacting in shock to half of his teams getting womp'd. From that point I feel as if some role-play elements could be added as well, i.e. "Big Boss fultoned one of your mercs before the match, negotiate terms with him". I think this is more practical than demanding lore every week (unless you're Drak and are just a machine). Just personalizing it more, I feel, would help drum up the support and enjoyment. And THEN it's the fight to the death tournament arc at the end, maybe some power of friendship final boss based on everyone the winner's beaten for... "I dunno I'll buy you A Hat In Time on Steam" or something.

also naoto should have better abilities, be angrier, and have access to a time machine
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I think this is more practical than demanding lore every week

I GM for a group of people that come up with shit that makes merx ability bullshit look tame every week

This would not be a problem if people were cool with making mercs more fluffy like that
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Zidane
3/week
Heroic Otherworldly Male

Zidane appears with the Ultima Weapon and his best non-broken equipment available at the end of FF9. [He cannot enter Trance.] [He has full access to his Trance moveset, but will start with half his normal health.]

(Passive) - Did You Know Zidane Can't Trance Because of __________?

It turns out, the Trance mechanic really didn't get fleshed out in lore. So unfortunately, Zidane can't enter Trance.

(Trigger) - Ye Olde Butt Pinch

Once a week, if an ability would render an allied, rosterable female unconscious or otherwise immobilized, Zidane will GO FOR THE GOODS!

(Trigger) - Hell hath no fury like a woman sexually assaulted

If his previous trigger occured and Zidane is rostered with her, he'll get a hearty slap to the face. A

(Passive)

Well Actually He Can Trance And it's Because of __________

Now he can trance, for arbitrary reasons! yay!

UPGRADE

Trigger 1a - Zidane had a change of heart and would rather PROTECT GIRLS like his famous skill! Zidane will intercept the first ability targeting a female. Once successful, it will go on cooldown for a week.

Trigger 1b - Zidane is going to sexually assault a woman regardless of her mental state. Just as long as she's targeted by an ability, he'll go for the goods.

START OF BATTLE - I want To Be a Canary!

Zidane, along with a random post rosters enemy mercenary, will be dressed as a canary. Any equipment that would be otherwise there will obviously be beneath the disguise. The enemy mercenary will prioritize in removing the outfit, and upon removal will prioritize Zidane's defeat.
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Ryoma (Fire Emblem Fates)
Upkeep: 3/Week
Heroic Male Human

Ryoma is as he appears in the endgame of Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations as a max level Swordmaster. He is equipped with the legendary katana Raijinto, has access to all his skills, and comes into battle with a single use Elixir. He will not attack Corrin under any circumstances, even if they were to be on opposing teams.

(Passive) Lobsterhead - Ryoma is immune to any abilities that would remove equipment from him. If targeted by such an ability, the ability will go on a one week recharge.

(Start of Battle) Dress Up: Fire Emblem Edition - Once every three weeks, Ryoma will encourage the enemy team to also participate in HONORABLE SAMURAI COMBAT. A post-rosters random enemy will come into battle dressed up in Ryoma's signature armor (helmet included) in the size he typically wears. They will gain a copy of Lobsterhead for the remainder of Wartime.

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Upgrades

(SoB Upgrade) Dress Up can alternatively be used on an ally for a two week recharge. They will come equiped with normally fitting Ryoma cosplay as well as a functioning Raijinto.

(New On EXP Purchase / Trigger)

(New On EXP Purchase) Family Ties - When this ability is unlocked, select a female allied mercenary. Ryoma will fall in love with her, earning an S Support rank with her!

(New Trigger) BURNING LOVE! - Ryoma will intercept the first ability that would target his selected ally, nullifying the ability usage and placing it on one week of cooldown. Once triggered, it will go on cooldown for four weeks.
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Happy Rusev Day, everyone.

Rusev (WWE series)
Upkeep: 1/week
Heel Male Human

Rusev is as he appears in every game that contains Rusev.

(Start of Battle) The Accolade - Once every three days, Rusev may begin the match by holding a pre-selected opponent in The Accolade. Rusev will begin at the opponent's starting position, holding them in the move. If it is Rusev Day, this hold cannot be broken by anyone other than Rusev's target, including assists; Rusev will be completely invincible to harm until the hold is broken.

UPGRADES

New Peacetime

(Peacetime) Happy Rusev Day - Every day, during Peacetime, Rusev may declare that it is Rusev Day. It will be Rusev Day. Happy Rusev Day. This ability is negated if Rusev is KO'd or injured.

New Pre-Battle

(Pre-Battle) Rusev Putria - During Rusev Day, Rusev may deliver as many Bulplexes to opponents before the match as there have been Rusev Days where Rusev has not used this ability. The Bulplexes deal incurable damage and will have been considered to have taken place when the opponent has the least armor on possible. Rusev may choose which enemies he gives Bulplexes to and how many individual Bulplexes out of his stock they may receive. He may also, optionally, give them Machka Kicks instead.

New Start of Battle

(Start of Battle) Rusev Machka - Once every four Rusev Days, Rusev may begin the match on top of a T-90 Russian Tank, complete with driver inside. If this is used in mid tier, Rusev will refuse to use the guns on the tank himself or allow his driver to use them, as he prefers to Machka himself. If this is used in low tier, all guns on the tank will be purely decorative.

New Trigger

(Trigger) Handsome Rusev - If a female mercenary in Rusev's match is hit by an ability on Rusev Day, Rusev will give them a cold fish to make them feel better. No matter what happens, they will be kind to Rusev and gain a Russian accent, considering him a hero beyond all other ability affects. How this affects their performance is up to voter interpretation. They also get to keep the fish. This ability can trigger multiple times.

(Cont'd)
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New Limited-Use Results Results

(Results, Uses: 0) The Twelve Days Of Rusev - Once this ability has been obtained, Rusev will count the amount of times the Rusev Day terrain has been used, the amount of cold fish given, the number of tanks Rusev has ridden by his own ability, the amount of ability-used Accolades he has performed, the number of Bulplexes and Machka Kicks that he has performed through his ability, and the amount of times it has been Rusev Day. What Rusev gains access to depends on the number he comes up with. Happy Rusev Day. This upgrade may be taken multiple times. Rusev may choose an option from lower on the list if he would like. Rusev's counter will reset every time he takes this ability.

0 - 12: Rusev will gain the key to the city. A terrain that he has fought on using Rusev Day will automatically be permanently added as a terrain option for him in its Rusev Day form.

0 - 12: Rusev may choose to be considered any upkeep he would like for ability interaction, so long as it is 5 points or less and it is Rusev Day.

13 - 24: Every Machka Kick Rusev delivers using 'Rusev Putria' will have a 12% chance of instantly KO'ing its target. Every Bulplex Rusev delivers using 'Rusev Putria' will have a 33% chance of stunning the opponent for the first 12 seconds of battle, dizzying them. However, the ability will go on recharge for two Rusev Days if either of these effects occur. This is a permanent upgrade.

25 - 36: If The Accolade is used on Rusev Day, it may instantly KO any mercenary of Rusev's upkeep or lower and negate all abilities used by that target.

37 - 49: Rusev may make his abilities other than declaring it to be Rusev Day unable to be negated. Even if Rusev is KO'd, if he declared the ability beforehand, it will still happen.

50+: Rusev may deliver a Machka Kick to every mercenary in the game that is not on his team. This has a 12% chance of KO'ing them, making them unable to be purchased during the next Peacetime by teams other than Rusev's if they are not part of any team. Rusev may choose an upgrade lower on the list in addition to this one if this option is chosen.

Terrain

Rusev Day - Rusev may choose any rostered opponent's terrain as if they were his own. The terrain will be exactly the same, except the Bulgarian flag will be hung everywhere. This terrain can only be chosen on Rusev Day. This choice will be made within six hours of the terrain bid being finalized, or it will be randomized.
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rusev is like an 80 in wwe 2k17
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I like the 3v3 idea. On paper it seems like it'd add some interesting strategy when it isn't so easy to cover all of your team bases due to the limited slots.
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DeathChicken posted...

I like the 3v3 idea. On paper it seems like it'd add some interesting strategy when it isn't so easy to cover all of your team bases due to the limited slots.

Other way around. It makes it impossible to stop the other guy from playing his game and makes postroster effects unbelievably broken. The less mercs you can field the easier it gets to field a top tier battlesquad simply because you'll have reserves - and lots of them. Look at my team for an example - you'd have to Remove at minimum four mercs to reduce my team's fighting strength in a 3v3 in mid, at least two and ideally three in high tier where I only had two on-tier mercs (because of Sorey, zerg and kefka), and like, seven KOs in low, without even getting into paydowns. If you want to play 3v3s you'll have to hand out Removal effects like candy and I think nobody actually wants that.
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This is why I suggested a fatigue system in tandem, to avoid oversaturation. Either that or a scaled-down econ game to make overall growth much slower. A cap to the number of mercenaries per tier would solve the same issue.

Additionally, 3v3's stunts paydowns greatly by pointing an even bigger target onto paid-down mercs, since the 2v3 dynamic is infinitely more debilitating than the potential recovery of the 4v5. We can go back to the M4's original intent of having far more SoB abilities than Pre-Battles before they got power creeped into irrelevance.

It's just that the 5v5 system does not work when you go to topic. 3v3 is inherently more understandable and easy to map out. Thinking from a purely "is this fun to argue" point, being probably the one guy who likes arguing the most out of everything in mercs.
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3v3 emphasizes 'strongest guy wins' tho

Like, when you have three dudes on the field vs another three dudes, having less battleworth is pretty catastrophic. It makes all those instances of "Dante SOLOS" even more acute because there's less and less in the way of a clearly superior merc eating the entire enemy team alive in the eyes of the voters. I get the idea of wanting matches to be easier to argue and more interesting, but the less dudes you have on the field, the less room you have to get creative (because people are particularly unreceptive to gimmicks as numbers shrink - I spent years arguing in MPFC, and my memory is pretty good about how most arguments tended to boil down to 'speedblitz' or 'too tough' and that was that), due to how hard it is to argue against better parameters as the match simplifies. There's probably a better way to do this than doing things that only make raw stats matter more and more.
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I feel it just changes the kind of merc that solo's. It goes from "who has the strongest nuke" to "who has the fastest draw that can kill". Makes a character like, say, Snake or Ocelot actually mean something as opposed to the dynamic of "you have a tank, you have a nuker, maybe you have Dante or Raiden, and everything else kind of supports that". Speaking as someone who fielded three mages all with Ultima equivalents, overlap is generally unilaterally ignored unless it's Bravely Default bullshit.

Just throwing together, for example, Cloud, Proto Man, and Yuna Vs Nier, Potemkin, and Snake, I feel that's a much more interesting dynamic than doing Cloud/Proto/Yuna/Knuckles/Bub Vs Nier/Potemkin (in a bubble)/Snake/Aerith/Wario. Sure, you CAN have arguments on Aerith heal stalling Potemkin, you can have arguments of Nier stalling as support, but with that many people on the field, people are gonna default to the ones they know, ignore more complex and nuanced strategy unless it's the only one being argued, and basically see this as a match of "can Team Snake hold out until Potemkin is free, and then what does Potemkin do past that?"

Compare to the initial set-up, and Team Cloud has a healer, but nowhere for her to hide behind. Team Nier has Snake, but Proto Man is significantly more durable. Characters compensate for weaknesses whilst both teams seem perfectly fine to field. Replace, say, Yuna and Cloud with Raiden (MGS), and suddenly Raiden's the world's biggest ability target AND doesn't have a team large enough to do the typical "try to get the bigger terrain and stall" strategy since a large amount of SoB's have a 15 second to 2 minute delay period on them. People HAVE to figure out who is Nier and what does he do, because he's not being lost in the shuffle with everyone else and amounting to "I guess he does one attack, what's his biggest one? Oh that one's slow". The format supports so many 1v1 specialist characters as well, which a majority of non-RPG non-MOBA guys are since usually cutscene hype occurs in 1v1 environments.

I don't think it's a clean answer, but I do think that argument topics in the first few weeks are far more palatable than those coming later, and I do think the numbers game is a big reason of why.
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What if roster sizes became more dynamic throughout the game? Start 3v3, move to 4v4 after a long threshold, then 5v5 approaching endgame?
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As someone who doesn't have much interest in actually playing but might vote in fight topics, the larger the roster, the less likely I am to vote unless I think it's really lopsided. I just don't want to bother figuring out a big melee. You don't have to factor this in but I think I'm a fair representation of your audience here.
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Those are fair arguments kamek, and I can see why you're arguing for 3v3s. I just have the following holdups that I really would like to see some solid countearguments for to convince me:

A) That this format would not make abilities either worthless or brokenly powerful depending on how many people a team has. I've explained this above, but to me weakening abilities like this is a big deal because abilities are one of the four pillars of mercenaries alongside social skills, capacity to pick and sell the right fighters, and strategic acumen. Anything that stands to mostly invalidate one of the things that makes the game so fascinating needs to have a really strong case made for it that it would strengthen what remains, IMO. I'm biased, but my second match vs Boko in the semis was my favorite moment of the game precisely because I combined strategy (buying Mac to squeeze out that last crucial KO on magus), tactically sound ability usage (finding the sequence that injured both Archer and the Lightnings and also robbed boko of the ability to respond and kill me in that round) and social skills (feinting boko the week prior with Surprise Entrance without giving him enough clues to realize just how he could turbofuck me) to achieve something that was greater than just posting hype vids and making sure I grabbed a DMC character for SOLOS factor.

B) That it would not worsen player mental health. Without abilities, players are helpless to control their own destiny, which is a really large part of why mercs causes so much burnout - you need a shitload of mental fortitude to step out week after week to face people you mostly can't convince and endure the uncertainty of not knowing how a match is gonna turn out. Intensifying player strain is one of the things I really want to avoid in whatever version of mercs I can make, to whatever extent I am able.

C) That we wouldn't lose tons of strategic depth from trying to fix the two issues above and others. My first thought about 'how do we fix abilities' for example was 'mercs in a tier straight up cannot participate in other-tier battles whatsoever, period', so ability slave accumulation stops being practical, but this has the side effect of denying matchups that aren't pretty rigidly structured to be 'mostly close', and it has knock-on effects as far as player enjoyment goes because you fuck yourself over really hard if you don't spread out your buys very evenly across tiers. Not enforcing a 'hard' tier split then opens up the issue of paydowns (and the answer I've been tinkering with to the problem of paydowns being SOLOS tier is not tenable in a 3v3 because abilities are overly impactful when you hit a critical mass of them), and brings us back to the problem of having to handle ability spam. Everything has ripple effects like that.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but I don't want change for the sake of change. Any changes we make to mercs should lead to a more intelligent design, not a more haphazard one. God knows we got enough of that already. So sell me on how we can avoid these pitfalls pls?
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First off, I totally agree with you in that ability manipulation is an impressively strong aspect, one that M4 cultivated incredibly well with revealing releases five weeks in advance so strategy could be formulated with specific combinations. Love that, don't want to take away from it. My main focus with 3v3's as a suggestion is that it makes fight topics both more inviting and potentially more interesting, as well as heightening the importance of Pure Support abilities and likely increasing their releases, as they were immensely valuable but highly limited tools during this past game.

A.) I find abilities that affect a match naturally more interesting than those that affect a mercenary or behind-the-scenes parameters. I'd rather, for instance, see a team built around "an ability that makes it ten times gravity" rather than "ten times gravity on a random post-rosters enemy". I feel that ability synergy with mercenaries, rather than other abilities, is the best creative process. Knuckles is a great example of this, with Eddv using him super effectively and fun in draft merx. Contrast this to his team in mercs, which was "I never want to fight this team it has like fifty counters that all stack". While that's great from a meta-composition standpoint and I fucking love Lloyd, it's not so much daunting to face it as it is discouraging.

B.) I don't feel as if it would affect mental health either way, aside from having less to deal with and think about and thus it's less of a burden to bare. From a starting standpoint, you're still gonna get Solo Shoto teams who don't know what they're doing and can't recover anyway, you're gonna get teams like mine where I had a bunch of junk and tried to make it work and didn't, you're gonna have teams like yours who had an initially flawed idea and rebounded gracefully with a developing web, and you're gonna have teams like GANNON's who are fun as Hell and just happen to combo into each other and work out really well and also Agahnim is there he's a cool guy. If I have a potential mid roster of Quiet/Mewtwo/Luca Blight/Jensen/Jaina against a potential of Exdeath/The Prince/Aigis/Ike/Alice, both teams still have a significant amount to deal with even only being able to roster three. The difference is, it's thoughts of "if Prince is rostered, would Mewtwo be able to mind read and learn of time powers to guide Quiet's hand? Well that would need a larger terrain, so I would have to win terrain bid. Perhaps if I flash bang Prince and put it on a smaller terrain, it'll work out better". Aigis and Exdeath still provide defensive options, Luca has to decide if it's worth it to go after the Exdeath KO with a 2/5 chance of success, Quiet's presence could probably solo anyone not named Aigis and even then that's possible. The fight isn't solved pre-topic, and I know that's not your preference and that absolute victory should be a thing, but any man with two hands has a fighting chance and all that bullshit. It's FAR more stressful to think you have something won and then see that it's not... and that happens time and time again.

C.) See above, really. Chains still exist, you just have less of an open board to manage. If you want to overstock for abilities, that's fine, but then you're losing the coin advantage toward terrain, which would be significantly more important in a 3v3 environment

Everything's gonna have pros and cons. I just propose 3v3 because, as a voter, I would prefer to vote in and spectate that kind of match rather than the meta war behind it. I LIKE that meta war, but it's the prevailing focus from a game that is, at its heart, "my team of fictional characters can beat up YOUR team of fictional characters"
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listen im sorry but if you get tko'd so bad that you cant field a relevant team in early to late game mercs (fielding 3 mercs) you probably deserve to lose anyway

or like you know, a leader found an exploit with broken mercs (i.e. Dizzy's kidnap + Nilin combo >> preselected targets)

anyway yeah, fights become too convoluted. casuals don't want to deal with it. fuck, i dont want to deal with it and having to argue it.
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Any thoughts about my graduated system?
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