Board 8 > Mercenaries 5 Test Run, Week 1 Peacetime: A Little War In Brand-New Earth

(+) Yeah! (+)

The following characters are BOUGHT:

Donkey Kong (Aria)
Darknite (Gravy)
Aigis (JC)
Samus (Eddv)
Raiden (Gravy)
Cloud (Mewtwo)
B.J. Blazkowicz (Eddv)
Mewtwo (Aria)
Bowser (Aria)
King K. Rool (Eddv)
Riku Furude (Boko)
Crono (JC)
Vivi (Mewtwo)
Kazuma Kiryu (Boko)
Leon Kennedy (Boko

now sorted by team for SIZING UP YOUR FRIENDS

Donkey Kong (Aria)
Mewtwo (Aria)
Bowser (Aria)

Crono (JC)
Aigis (JC)

Samus (Eddv)
B.J. Blazkowicz (Eddv)
King K. Rool (Eddv)

Darknite (Gravy)
Raiden (Gravy)

Cloud (Mewtwo)
Vivi (Mewtwo)

Rika Furude (Boko)
Kazuma Kiryu (Boko)
Leon Kennedy (Boko

Gourdon Pumpkin Head Freeman

I am finally catching up on mercs as they are bought. Very first one I open and I think you're going to be seeing a lot of "bahamut solos" votes from me.

FFDragon posted...

I am finally catching up on mercs as they are bought. Very first one I open and I think you're going to be seeing a lot of "bahamut solos" votes from me.

My lowkey stance WAS 'y'all let Mewtwo have Cloud for min????' last night

I don't think anyone made bad buys at all, but that was one of the top buys of the week, easily

People are sleeping on Frontiers Sonic.

I'm a fan of the King Samus combo

But seriously, Bahamut.

GANON1025 posted...

People are sleeping on Frontiers Sonic.

Nobody buying Mario made me a little sad but it was expected, I think he's too costly atm and might need to be less expensive a buy to be appealing

Nobody buying Sonic made me go 'ok I get he sucked in m4 but did you see this build?'

I pray it's not just me being a major sonic stan

I think its because 4/weeks are the least valuable upkeep tier when 6s and 7s are available right out of the gate

at least imo

Low-Mid tier is near useless imo

petition to change mercs to tiers of 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6

all say aye

Honestly that would probably make for better overall matches. With 7s being some sort of omega tier of their own that have to paid into any match.

FFDragon posted...

Honestly that would probably make for better overall matches. With 7s being some sort of omega tier of their own that have to paid into any match.

and honestly the difference between 3s/4s is much more negligible than most tier power differences so its nice having them in the same bucket

Sonic's on my list but I suspect he'll never actually make it to the top

Chaeix posted...

and honestly the difference between 3s/4s is much more negligible than most tier power differences so its nice having them in the same bucket

IDK about that. Alucard vs Crono is an ungodly shitstomp that you don't get from say...Jinx vs Crono, to name the diff between a 'top class 3/low class 4' and someone who pushes the limits of the upkeep bracket going up against a normal 3/week. Likewise with just letting Kirby run rampant on low tier for free, he's way too much of a force. I feel there's a much more tangible diff between 3 and 4/week than there is between high 5 and low 6/week, oddly enough.

More generally though, I think the real issue with changing things like that is that the 1/week and 2/week bracket is mostly going to lead to very dull matches due to too little offensive firepower. Like yeah, Mario, Vivi and DK can do stuff that's interesting, but imagine matches where Luigi is a genuine star of his own tier. There just isn't enough material there to work with without just throwing out scores of 'regular human, BUT' mercs into the mix.

And the difference between 5/6 and 6/7 is a lot smaller too.

And 1/2 matches have the potential to just be hilarious and close, whereas 3s generally run over everyone.

Probably too late to change now, but something to think about for the main run. I would support this change.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

but imagine matches where Luigi is a genuine star of his own tier.

Don't tease me with a good time

Honestly if I were to redo M4 I would have done it like this

Tierz
1-2.

3-4

5-6

7

I would also double paydown slot costs across the board. So if you want a 3 in a low tier it'd cost 3 slots. If you want a 4 that's your team. 5-6 don't get to come.

7s would need to pay down into high tier matches at 3 slots so that's their drawback. Possibly make some sort of mechanic where you can occasionally have a battle where 7s just go to town in high tier no paydowns needed.

Basically would make 3s and 5s your paydown guys. I think 3s and 5s were in a good spot in that regard in that they weren't grossly behind 4s/6s, so giving them that flex probably makes them worth considering over 4s/6s

But I haven't read how fatigue and stuff works yet. I am just comparing to the old rules etc.

I do also think paydowns need more of a cost in both slots and money to disincentive them overall and make them more of a last ditch short term hail mary tbqh

Lopen's idea would have made a superior m4 for sure though

KanzarisKelshen posted...

More generally though, I think the real issue with changing things like that is that the 1/week and 2/week bracket is mostly going to lead to very dull matches due to too little offensive firepower. Like yeah, Mario, Vivi and DK can do stuff that's interesting, but imagine matches where Luigi is a genuine star of his own tier. There just isn't enough material there to work with without just throwing out scores of 'regular human, BUT' mercs into the mix.

I still don't see an issue here!

I would love to see a bunch of 1 and 2 upkeep mercs duke it out tbh, especially because that tier would be very sparse on guns

I'd go as far as to say that without paydowns the 1/2 matches would be the most fun ones.

I do take your point about the availability of mercs though given that most interesting chars are 3+

For reference, here are the 1 and 2/week mercs of M4's initial launch lineup (weeks 1 to 5):

-Creeper
-DK
-Draven
-Luigi
-Mario
-Pac-Man
-Pikachu
-Peach
-Yoshi
-Tharja (kinda)
-Bub
-Bob
-Captain Falcon
-Little Mac
-Kain Highwind
-Garen
-Jigglypuff
-Wario
-Dan
-Serra

That's 20 mercs total, one of which can't be fielded without their linked battlemerc, for 24 players. And a lot of these mercs (Creeper, Bub, Bob) legitimately don't have ways to win matches on their own. It just doesn't seem like it'd be fun to invest in mercs to win 'lowest tier' just to avoid instantly losing the tier only for them to scale very badly even into the 3/4 tier. Are there ways to attack this dearth of mercs? Yeah, absolutely. But it feels fairly hard to make this tier interesting so that say...Walter Sullivan (to name a 2/week of yore) doesn't utterly dominate it week in week out. That's really the main concern.

That's why I think paying down a 3 for 3 slots would be a good compromise there. I feel like 3s are significantly better than 1-2s but not so much that I think they always win 5v3s. Especially with abilities in the mix. It'd also give you a lot more matches with smaller rosters in general which I think people generally find preferable.

(this isn't to say that a 'pillow fight' tier couldn't be fun to play in once in a while, to be clear. Just that having to prep for it one week out of three would be exhausting. If it could be done a bit more rarely, I think it'd be a fun happening, though)

greengravy294 posted...

Min on graystone

Also, doubleposting to say this bid isn't valid as it pushes Gravy past the 200 GP mark, in case anyone was wondering. Not today sir...!

I can't count

I would probably keep the tier boundaries the same, but make it harder or costlier to pay down. One of the main selling points of the move to the tier system was the fact that so many notable characters feature in the region of 3/week, and low tier gives them their fair dues of flexing their muscles. The problem in M4 was it was far too easy to pay down 4/weeks to the point it was never a purely low tier match outside of the early stages of the game.

(also you missed off Katarina)

I think there should be less bleeding of tiers in general though.

And having a reason for 1/2s to exist beyond pure support on a stick would be fun I'd say. They aren't doing anything in high tier anyway. Might as well make low tier an actual fight and have some better builds.

part of me wants to ditch tiers and just escalate the caliber of releases over the course of the game

probably make fights feel a bit stale tho

Also keep in mind if you went with that scheme you'd probably knock a lot of the weaker 3s to 2s.

For instance of our launch lineup I would consider candidates for 2...

Sagat
Crono
Bowser
Meta-Knight

But you'd have to think about it. Basically the "3" in a new low tier match would be a team captain of a 3 merc team. Honestly if you really wanted to split hairs you could probably make some mercs have a reduced pay down cost as a mechanic too since the base is always +2 slots for a paydown making +1 slots as a standardized thing that can be doable seems interesting. If such a thing were done I'd put all these guys at 3 with -1 slot paydown cost aside from maybe Bowser who I'm a bit confused about why he's in 3 upkeep land to begin with.

I could see that, as a watcher, there's been very few times that a paydown has been defeated by a concerted group. It might be worth creating lower tier characters that have abilities that can deal with paydowns in either abilities, or neutralizing combat power in ways to make them vulnerable to the lower tier character in ways, so if a proper play can be made, there can be a giant-killer as it could be.

Shoot, so I did Luis

In my defense, I think her launch build was legit unbuyable...!

FFDragon posted...

I think there should be less bleeding of tiers in general though.

And having a reason for 1/2s to exist beyond pure support on a stick would be fun I'd say. They aren't doing anything in high tier anyway. Might as well make low tier an actual fight and have some better builds.

So something we did set out to do is buff up our 2/week releases to the point they were worth rostering as a combo of combat and ability worth. Vivi is an obvious case here (we set him at 2/week to make him more attractive and because we couldn't in good conscience rate him at the same level as say...Lulu or Celes), but DK and Mario both have actual things they can do in a fight these days. We'll only know if we succeeded once we see at least DK and Vivi hit the fray, but it's our hope that these characters won't be completely brushed aside this time.

1/week yeah, we're explicitly treating that upkeep bracket as the 'battle supports' bracket which characters like Rika and Haurchefant make obvious. I do think they can help in battle via ability intereaction though. Banjo won a match for his team in the showcase just by being Banjo, which is something that would never have happened in previous iterations. If this can be maintained in future weeks that would be a sweet success.

LuisSera posted...

I would probably keep the tier boundaries the same, but make it harder or costlier to pay down. One of the main selling points of the move to the tier system was the fact that so many notable characters feature in the region of 3/week, and low tier gives them their fair dues of flexing their muscles. The problem in M4 was it was far too easy to pay down 4/weeks to the point it was never a purely low tier match outside of the early stages of the game.

(also you missed off Katarina)

If there's an argument for a 'pillow fight' tier, I think this is it btw.

'What if I just wanted to have a nice, cozy lowbie match?'

'yeah well im paying Estinien Wyrmblood to jump once and kill your entire army of 2/weeks, fuck you'

I don't think it's a good idea to make 3/weeks cost money to use in the pillow fight tier (this feels like a demeaning term to use -- call it 'Leon Tier' since Leon Kennedy can basically force something like this in a low tier week with Smalltime?), but having all mercs past 2/week take up one extra roster slot seems like a potentially valid solve. So like, Crono and Jinx would cost two slots to roster in Leon tier, Gordon Freeman would cost 3 and so on. This would make playing into the tier less financially ruinous since you're not paying paydown costs constantly (which is something I would very much want to avoid because the slowness of the econ side of the game in early weeks is already a significant problem), whilst also potentially allowing it to exist.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

I don't think it's a good idea to make 3/weeks cost money to use in the pillow fight tier (this feels like a demeaning term to use -- call it 'Leon Tier' since Leon Kennedy can basically force something like this in a low tier week with Smalltime?), but having all mercs past 2/week take up one extra roster slot seems like a potentially valid solve. So like, Crono and Jinx would cost two slots to roster in Leon tier, Gordon Freeman would cost 3 and so on. This would make playing into the tier less financially ruinous since you're not paying paydown costs constantly (which is something I would very much want to avoid because the slowness of the econ side of the game in early weeks is already a significant problem), whilst also potentially allowing it to exist.

could this same structure be applied to all tiers?

5/weeks take two in mid, 7/weeks take two in high, etc.

i've done no serious thinking about pros or cons, just spitballing

The big reason for the GP cost is to narrow down the ability targets and give a drawback to doing so.

But you don't necessarily need to implement that via GP. There is that whole fatigue mechanic that exists which would probably be sufficient.

But yeah more slots to me is where the money is for balancing pay downs. I'm not sure why this wasn't discussed more in the development. If there was one thing I felt M4 really did wrong it was pay downs.

It was universally agreed as a problem too