Older players and Mercs

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Old and retired, Jun 24, 2022.

  1. Old and retired New Member

    I know this will catch tons of flack but here goes. I know how the game was meant for live players to group together, hell that's the way I always played the game. By getting into a group and playing all day and night sometimes. But now after 23 or how many years it's been. I still have the joy of wanting to play, but I don't raid and I don't stay on long enough to start or get into a group. As a matter of fact, most of my play time is when ya'll are working or sleeping after a night of work. My point is. Wouldn't it be possible to pump up the mercs for people like myself and others who don't raid and don't have the time to group up? Although my mercs flat out suck. AA;s are maxed but they just don't seem to get the job done? Please be nice with your responses and help us older people find more potent merc's.
    Metanis likes this.
  2. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    Are you trying to play to far above your level? Just cause a lot of players are in the last expansion and calling it easy and giving the rest of the players inferiority complexes is no reason for anyone to follow them blindly. I always am behind but thats ok cause I am playing to relax nowdays, unlike the 5 night raiding I used to do. Its much more fun to complete older content, progressions, tasks, special rewards etc than to get into the last zone in the game.

    I have a healer merc (117) that can keep our group of 6 alive in most zones up to the last two expansions - I am not playing in those yet. Same for the tank merc (116) . The dps merc is only a little (115) lower than the rest and gets himself killed frequently. None of them have max AA. And I cannot remember the last time I looked at their armor.

    I also do not follow the "standard" advice of what stances to run them at. The healer is set to balanced, the tank to aggressive and the dps to burn (that's why he dies so much but it gives the rest of us time to alter our attack lol)

    So maybe it is not your mercs but where you are fighting?
  3. Old and retired New Member

    I'm level 120 bumped up against 121. I've found myself going back and doing a lot of tasks I missed and enjoying it. It took quite sometime to get to 120 but I did it. I was just thinking that some adjustments could be made to merc's when just playing by myself.
  4. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    You'll have to be more specific. Which mercs, in what situations, etc.

    I've been using mostly melee mercs lately, and really have no complaints. For a while I used a tank merc with my druid, but found that I needed to exclusively pay attention to healing him, so I did little DPS, and he did little DPS, so that was a non-starter. That was before the tank merc DPS bump, and before the DoT revamp, so maybe it's better now, but I haven't gone back and tried it. From what I hear, the healer mercs are decent. I use one, but am in content that doesn't really challenge it, so I can't say anything too useful from personal experience.

    I understand your plight, though. Same for me, not enough free time, not at regular times, and short play sessions. Groups will never happen, but I still love the game.
  5. Mirthe Journeyman

    I suggested the idea of two mercs being allowed, and it was pretty well supported (11 likes, plenty of positive replies). If you think that would help your situation, you might consider liking it or replying too. Devs sometimes pay attention to ideas that get lots of positive feedback.
    Metanis likes this.
  6. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    And in that same vein, you might consider boxing another character. Now, even if you didn't want to play 2 chars (alt-tabbing, whatever), you'd still have two mercs then ;)
    Wdor likes this.
  7. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    The original concept of mercs was three tiers (Apprentice | Journeyman | Master) where the Master tier was meant to be a raid-level Merc. Before mercs launched, the Master tier was scrapped.

    I'd support a higher tier merc if locked behind a massive wall of progression. Something like TBL chase item evolution requirements.
    Old and retired likes this.
  8. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    But it is us lower level players who need the stronger mercs. Higher level players can easily do chase items solo. We can't.
    Wdor, Stymie and Nennius like this.
  9. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Two mercs would be fun. I don't think will happen. But the thought of it is interesting.

    A healer and a DPS merc. Hmmm
  10. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Might as well make the "Master Tier" merc a monthly sub perk.
    Wdor, Metanis and Old and retired like this.
  11. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Shhh THAT could really happen.
  12. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    They’ll need to do something to be more accommodating to the older folks. Better mercenaries would be a huge positive.
    Metanis, Stymie and Old and retired like this.
  13. Nennius Curmudgeon

    A walker mount, or a wheelchair mount would be cool. And a new spell "Cure Broken Hip".
    Flatchy, Mesc, Metanis and 2 others like this.
  14. DruidCT Augur

    Make the second a Bard and he really doesn't _have_ to do much, obvious he CAN do a lot but just giving you a second merc and singing combat/defensive melodies you can go a long way.
    Wdor and Tatanka like this.
  15. Arkanny Augur

    I played PSO2 for some time, its a more action type mmo with 4 player groups, and they had an interesting buddy system where you could hire offline players characters as mercs to help on your mission.
  16. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Do the offline players get a cut of the fee?

    Asking in jest, really, but willing to be surprised ;)
  17. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Thinking about this more, it actually makes some sense.

    Put the Master tier merc access in the Hero's Journey achievement. You can complete HJ with the Journeyman merc. Then rewarded with the Master tier merc. Then pay an extra $2.99/mo or $50/yr for access to the master merc.
    Wdor, Metanis and CatsPaws like this.
  18. Old and retired New Member

    A higher subscription would be a cool idea. I would pay an extra $2.99 to $4.99 a month
  19. Kaenneth [You require Gold access to view this title]

    \

    I would love this even if it were purely cosmetic; assign a PC skin with name/armor/weapons as shown on the character select screen (maybe find a way to add Nimbuses/Nimbii), and 'hire' any other character on your account as a 'merc' of the same archetype.

    Would only have stats and abilities of a regular merc, but would be a lot of fun (to me at least)
  20. Stymie Pendragon

    That would be really cool.

    If our alts were to gain regular or merc experience at the same time, it would be sort of like boxing without having to box. I could have a lot of fun playing around with the combos and such without all of the tedium and frustration of manually or broadcast running a number of characters.

    For those that have almost no luck putting together a group, this would open up a lot of leveling choices. It could also benefit players with lower end machines, since the servers would hopefully be able to take on some of the load.

    Also, a version of what we're talking about already exists. It's possible to enable bots on emulated servers to add to your group, and they've had it for a number of years that I know of. I didn't spend much time messing with it, but I remember it working in general.

    For the most part I dislike boxing, but I see the value in it. If Daybreak were to implement something like this, I wouldn't have a problem paying a reasonable monthly, perk type, fee.
    Wdor and Dre. like this.