Two Mercs At Once

Because leaders make people login and group! lol

as long as they are females i'm game, i've always wanted two girls at once

Every time I bring this up (or something like it) to help promote healthy play of the population we have left, I get bombarded with insults, cries it'll cut funding from boxers, and other diatribes. I still LOVE the idea and would immediately sub 2 accounts again if it happened.

Funny guy. I have done nothing you claim, and already answered that question. I'm not the one with a reading comprehension problem, pal.

Sure do. They keep people wanting to come back for more.

Ok, I am 2 boxing (All Access for 1 year each) and as I stated, if they made it possible to have an extra merc out it probably wouldn't change anything, account wise, for me. I would probably continue to use one account to buff a character on the other account. It would allow me to NOT need to drag (think follow) a character around just to have 2 mercs.

My greatest concerns are a) impact to DB's cash flow as in that keeps the game open b) It is a step on to the slippery slope of letting the Mercs Power Level the player and win the game.

Now then, I have said what the impact to me would be and my concerns.
I am asking you why would you add an account?

Perhaps if people just documented, *truthfully* what the impact on them was, there may be a chance to get some quality thinking on the issue.

The amount of people already using f2p accounts and third party software to afk kill is massive. I can literally go into every hotzone(or old ones) and places like Brothers Island, Shards landing, etc and find afk boxers that are run by illegal scripts or just merc killing. Infact i've run across lvl 100 f2p mages in pop zones that are even setup to autokill the entire zone and run specific paths to basically dominate the zone from low levels and reap diamonds, ts stuff, etc to sell. Daybreak is too busy dealing with TLP drama and boxers to really even look at this and its rampant on many servers.

I can't do group content easily with 2 chars and 2 mercs. 2 Chars and 4 mercs makes it much more viable. All group content is tuned to raid geared characters rather than group geared characters. Right now I f2p some to goof off, but I don't/won't spend money towards the game. Adding things that I would enjoy in the game would instantly make me sub again.

Group content is tuned perfectly fine for group geared players and j5 mercs. If you're f2p and trying to get by with minimal AA and a1 mercs, well, that might be your problem. Having 4 mercs with 2 chars will not fix that.

See, the problem with this isn't the game's problem, it's user error. And no, for the last time, they don't tune group content to raid geared people. Unless you picked two horrendously paired classes, two pcs plus the two corresponding mercs should be able to handle a large portion of group content. A few of the more difficult group missions probably not, but that's absolutely why they're called *group* missions. Even in raid gear, there's a number of them that one person playing 2 toons with 2 mercs isn't going to be able to handle due to a variety of factors. The only thing that indicates is that they're designed for people to band together to accomplish, and not for one player to afk auto attack their way through.

Stacking a full group of mercs to compensate for poor play, lack of gear/time/AA invested, or general lack of skill is a really dumb idea. There's a time and a place for dumb ideas, and it's called the TLP forum

Which is completely unfair. A single raid character should be able to roflstomp all content completely solo!

I'm putting in a petition to increase my warrior's solo skills.

On a more serious note, mercs were the dawn of a major turning point of the Everquest space-time continuum. The game evolved to a quest/achievement based system of trying to get as many checkmarks on a table as possible rather than staying as a grind exp, gear, stuff game. We slowly went from PUGs all over the place to boxers dragging along a couple of mercs to complete specific quests on their own time and schedule rather than people working together to accomplish something more grand than their own trophy case.

The grinding aspect of the game became the secondary nuisance and was shadowed by the achievement goals of linear gameplay (AKA go here, kill this guy, loot this item, hail this person, get reward). The exploration and sandbox style of EQ slowly turned in linearity.

While EQ had some semblances of linear progression, it wasn't the driving force of the game. A person could do progression, but it would unlock multiple avenues of gameplay. The start of SoD/UF brought linearity to the main stage where a person was dragged into a progression cycle to unlock zones, items, experiences on a tier to tier basis and were heavily awarded on top of this (exp bonuses, item bonuses, trophies, etc).

Mercs, I argue, were a major factor in the contribution to this style. They allowed seamless and effortless ability to begin progression while not interacting and wasting time getting people to join in on your goals. They covered the major roles of characters - tanks and healers - opening up different game play styles for classes that were previously excluded IE soloing as a warrior.

Adding the ability to send out more mercs would just further increase this issue that's lasted for years and will continue to last for years. I'll pass on multiple merc access on a single character.

I hear you Pika. It'll go well besides my Why-Can't-My-Raid-Geared-SK-Molo-the-Tower-of-Rot-mission-(with achievements) petition. Will be holding my breath for a thoughtful dev response to this obviously oppressive and unfair treatment of the remaining SK Raider community.

I guess maybe if you are willing to pay 14.95 a month for the merc and buy new expansions for it. NO seriously my answer is the same as Xianzu .... "No".

Daybreak seems to think afk killing with mercs is bad now.. afk killing with two mercs would be worse.

Afk killing won't affect anyone endgame in the last 2 expansions, last I checked afk merc killers don't kill in the TDS/TBM zones that you 6 box in. The only afk killers capable of killing in those zones are running illegal afk scripts to play the characters for them.

Sheex, well disagree still. The developers have repeatedly said that content is tuned such that raid gear characters can enjoy it as that is the desired audience. They make "accessible" content (read: weak mobs) for other characters. You can believe as I do or not, but being condescending doesn't help the discussion

Please cite evidence of Developers saying this to support your assertion. We'll wait.

No, they've literally never said this. They said that they try to make group content challenging for all people. How is this done? Anti-boxing and anti-merc mechanics. You need to follow mechanics, emotes, rules and have situational awareness rather than just blow junk up with massive dps.

This allows for events to require coordination and skill for both group/raid geared people, even though raid gear does offset the balance slightly because they can get away with less skill.

Let me rephrase the question then: is ok to have two mercs up per player under any circumstances then?

Is it ok if I box to get two mercs up? Why is that ok and my proposal not ok?

All the other points aside, they would have to code additional merc UI windows and /merc2 commands into the game, as well as introduce new systems and logic for a player running two mercs at once. And if they are doing that it's likely they would add scalability for up to 5 mercs.

That's no small undertaking. Judging by the speed in which this stuff happens I'd imagine a change like that would be 6-18 months out. Consider the opportunity cost. No, I'd much prefer that effort went into other areas.

Sounds like Heros and henchmen from Guild Wars, hope it doesn't go that way.

Are you sure you play eq? Apparently adding a 2nd merc tab to the current merc window is complicated? I've run all 3 mercs and never once had to need merc commands , although some may use the call assist button it sounds like you're exaggerating the amount of work needed......