Anyone else just kinda hate the whole mercenaries mechanic?

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chaD#3533 wrote:

mercs are the best. without summon mercs, like the zombie merc or the fallen emperor merc, i wouldnt be able to kill a lot of bosses, or do niko's mines. they need to keep mercs forever.

But see....this is actually a great reason why they SHOULDN'T stick around.

I promise I'm not attacking you personally, or have anything against you accomplishing new things thanks to the power that mercs bring.

BUT

The reason you are able to beat these bosses and other content is not because you have personally improved or learned the bosses (which is the real intention behind the game)......instead it is because you simply have an automatically more powerful teammate that bypasses the learning process and potential build mistakes. THIS is a fancier way of saying that mercenaries dumb down the game, and especially build creation. Long term, they are actually most likely hurting YOUR progress without you even knowing it.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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chaD#3533 wrote:

mercs are the best. without summon mercs, like the zombie merc or the fallen emperor merc, i wouldnt be able to kill a lot of bosses, or do niko's mines. they need to keep mercs forever.

But see....this is actually a great reason why they SHOULDN'T stick around.

I promise I'm not attacking you personally, or have anything against you accomplishing new things thanks to the power that mercs bring.

BUT

The reason you are able to beat these bosses and other content is not because you have personally improved or learned the bosses (which is the real intention behind the game)......instead it is because you simply have an automatically more powerful teammate that bypasses the learning process and potential build mistakes. THIS is a fancier way of saying that mercenaries dumb down the game, and especially build creation. Long term, they are actually most likely hurting YOUR progress without you even knowing it.

Going that route, you cold make a point that almost every new mechanic dumbs down the game
Every new mechanic pushes power creep a bit higher and that itself make the game simpler, new farm methods lets you get currency faster if you simple youtube the strategy and enable broken characters with less knowledge of the rest of the games mechanics, you just know that one specific strategy, heck for some strats you dont even need to know exactly how things interact to make the setup work, just copy-paste the tree and scarabs and presto
Ditto for new items and new mechanics, those further push in direction to enable broken characters that let you demolish the game without interact with monsters, again, similar to farm strats there are instances that you dont need to deeply understand the mechanics that are scaling your damage or the defensive layers at play, just follow the flowchart given and you get by

Really understanding the game is optional at the end of the day, action rpg in general is a genre that enables copy-pasting and execution barrier is low, you dont need to really "get good" to clear top content, that is nothing new and its not something introduction of mercs enable any more than the introduction of T16.5 did

+1 for mercs to not go core.

I hate being forced to manage extra units unless I'm playing a RTS. Skipped the league and I'm not touching the game ever again if mercs go core.

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feike#6684 wrote:

Going that route, you cold make a point that almost every new mechanic dumbs down the game

that's not making a point, that is absolute fact. All new content that adds borrowed or even unborrowed power is making the game easier. Shaper (non-uber) was the pinnacle of the game. Before that? Act 3 Dominus. Now? Double Uber Shaper is pretty damn easy, let alone normal Shaper

The problem here is the scale of power on a single new mechanic. And the fact that the power is outside your own build.

Isn't this kind of crazy? The guy gives you two major auras

How are Mercs any different than playing in a party?

If we're arguing for removing Mercs then we should also require that the game becomes a Solo endeavour too?

Personally I love them as an addition to the game. They open up new ways of playing the game and regardless of the various positions of they are good/bad, overall I just find them to be fun.

Could the mechanic be improved upon? Certainly! But you can say that about almost any of the mechanics in the game.

100% hope Mercs goes core. Awesome job GGG.

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Aldora_the_Summoner#4021 wrote:

How are Mercs any different than playing in a party?

Several ways:

1) Party play requires coordination and socialization: mercs do not. This is actually quite a bigger deal than you might initially think....arranging a profitable and actually functional party is quite hard in PoE.
2) Party characters require incomparably more investment in both time and gearing to be as effective
3) Parties (most) require a split of loot found. Not every party is Empyrion no matter how much people think that's how it works across the board.
4) Parties ALSO GET MERCS! So.....already right there its ON TOP OF party play, not the same.

I mean....those 4 are enough to completely disassociate the two from comparison, but there are many many more that I didn't list because I don't really want to think too hard as I'm typing this.


I'd also add......you know its a problem when you are basically saying "how is this new system any different than one of the most broken and talked about problematic system that has ever existed in the game" lol. Even with all the differences in function, it shares many of the similarities of BAD interactions that exist within the party system.

Examples:
1) Additional party member power far exceeding the difficulty penalty
2) Additional loot exceeding the cost
3) Additional auras and buffs covering up fairly basic faults of supported build.

I know diablo gets a lot of hate here but I'll take you down a trip on memory lane for Diablo 3 for those who didn't play it seriously.

The "mercenary" in that game was called a "follower". For a long time they only received a few equippable pieces, they had 4 baseline weak abilities, they did no damage in endgame content, and they died to everything. Therefore, they were ignored by everyone.

Then there was a "follower overhaul" patch where they received a full set of equippable item slots (identical number to a player character), but more imporantly many unique items received the "emanate" feature. This meant that the listed unique power could be used passively/actively by your follower when that item was equipped. One popular follower item let you double the duration of shrine/pylon effects.

That "emanate" feature is analogous to the various uniques that are useable by POE1 mercenaries to help you in combat, except in POE1 it's not explicitly stated that works and what doesn't, so the wiki compilation exists instead.

The upgraded followers in diablo 3 still do no appreciable damage in endgame content, and they will still easily die without the appropriate defensive gimmicks (e.g. immortality relic). If the "emanate" feature was never introduced in that game, STILL no one would probably bother using a follower. Followers are also automatically disabled (they stay in town) in any partied content.

Back to POE1, unless you are mister money pants nolifer, your endgame merc is not doing appreciable damage in mapping/bossing. On the other hand, they probably can stay alive with some basic investment like life, armor, resistance caps, and some useful defensive skills (RNG).

So if we take away the unique item interaction benefits for mercenaries for most players, what will be left? A free aura and some more loot with a HP buff for the enemies? You don't even want those auras then? Who is going to run a mercenary then for no appreciable offensive or defensive benefit?

If mercenaries reach the core game, they will probably receive the harvest treatment where they are nerfed to hard into oblivion that they are relegated to the status of "ya they're in the game if you want them but why?" of something like harvest (ignoring the yellow juice gambling). It will be another thing destroyed for the fun of everyone because of the actions of a small few players who treat this game like a job.