Two mercs

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Mirthe, Apr 8, 2022.

  1. Vikrsa New Member

    I like the idea of two Mercs. Limited to two roles (Tank, healer, DPS) - only can have 2 of the three.

    Grouping needs to be changed as well.

    Maybe create a second class for boxed or botted charcaters, maybe a flag that daybreak allows that marks the second account as a boxed character. Flagging the account and giving it a different color name, so people could recognize it. A marked character would not be banned, but would have penalities associated it with. Lower exp gain, lower rewards, something that provides you merc like benefits but makes grouping with a live person more valuable.

    Example - I have a group mission I want to do, my options to doing it are (A) get 5 other live people, (B) 3 live people and 3 mercs (C) 1 live person and 5 flagged boxes.

    A - Gets the highest exp gain, gold gain and highest % chance for best loot
    B - Gets moderate exp gain, gold gain and mid % chance for best loot
    C - Gets low exp gain, low gold gain and very low % chance for best loot

    A - Also gets special buff that makes slight change to the mobs within the zone, 5% decrease in difficulty and upon completion of the mission gets a special chest and special achivevements not available to other group types.

    B and C dont get access to the buff and cool chest

    This would encourage real life players to move towards A.
  2. Iven Antonius Bayle

    Only two mercs is lame. I vote for being able to use all mercs at once to be able to build a full group. No need for other players that only want to rob my loot.
  3. HowDidIEndUpBackHere Elder

    I'd happily pay $15/month extra per account per additional mercenary if they were tuned a bit better.
  4. Vumad Cape Wearer


    Averaging the cost of mercs against the income they generate, it's more efficient to split loot with players than it is to pay a party of mercs.

    ADV loot already gives the group leader control of the loot. Any person wanting to set up a group to camp a specific item can let people know that specific item is claimed if it drops. Rarely is that an issue.

    Demonizing people with limited playtimes looking to get going faster is not helpful. There are greedy people out there. Lets not let them prevent good people from getting stuff done.
  5. DruidCT Augur

    There still needs to be a SIGNIFICANT benefit to having real players in the group (other than tuning content to be too difficult for mercs). It might be hard to do right, drop rates for things should be much less or you would never want to group with real people on an item camp. It might make an interesting alternate ruleset server.
  6. Vumad Cape Wearer


    Drop rates need to be higher, not lower. The reason people don't want to share loot is it takes to long to get. Iirc there was someone in Kael while I was doing missions camping a named that dropped an aug. They were there when I arrived. They were there when I left. It had been hours for them. They only got the named a few times and no aug. I think the bee in EoK BW took me like 3 hours just to get the hunter checkbox and I wasn't even at the whim of the RNG for an item.
    Klawra likes this.
  7. Bernel Augur

    One tradeoff might be that exp is not as good with multiple mercs. Additional mercs could help with doability of getting through content by adding extra oomph, but leveling would be slower. That way people would use double mercs just when they need them rather than leaving them on all the time. Adding a person would be preferable since you'd get the help and not have the exp penalty from the 2nd merc.

    They could also have it so that the the 2nd merc is a lower tier than your first. So if your 1st is J5, the 2nd is A5. If your first is A5, then your second is A1. Something like that would allow you to use a 2nd merc for a bit of extra help, but they wouldn't be at full power.

    To encourage grouping, they could only enable 2nd mercs in the F2P expansions. The expansions which are AA-only can only have single mercs. This way the expansions with active populations have lots of motivation to group, while the deserted populations can have people molomoloing on their own.
  8. Cicelee Augur

    Ideas like this turn the non raid content into purely a solo game. I don't believe EQ devs want their game to be purely solo outside of raids...
  9. Go Take A Nap Augur

    Why not just box another character or two? they are far better than mercs and by the sound of it most of you are live players with no truebox issues.

    Two boxing with 2 mercs is already super laid back easy mode.
    Imforfreedom likes this.
  10. Merika Journeyman

    Funny thing, there are programs that allow you to have your own mercs and also give dbg some extra subs ;)
    Klawra and Imforfreedom like this.
  11. Ironfoot Elder


    I dont think they get to chose that. It's pretty sparse out there. I have to constantly do stuff alone, because I'm the only person in the zone. I can go days without seeing another person out in the wild.

    Two mercs would help a ton... even if it was just goofin off doing hunters. But stuff like trying to do a merc quest in ME or Umbral? Fugetaboutit. Aint gonna happen. "Enjoy spending the rest of your life at 115 pleb! Because you aint evah gonna level!" However, if I could pop another merc, maybe then I could actually kill a bat.
    Vumad likes this.
  12. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Not everyone is actually capable of boxing well, or well enough, it's a skill that takes time to develop & manual dexterity is only a minor part of it, the important ability is being able to focus on multiple screens & multiple spell / ability sets across multiple keyboards/keypads - just look at how many people struggle to focus & play just one character really well then imagine them trying to box.....

    Mutiple Mercs is an idea worth exploring I think and may help to reduce the temptation to go looking for Automation software.

    One thing Boxers have to do is keep their whole team in Levels, AA, Gear, Flags, Zone Keys etc. a Merc needs only one of those things (Merc AA at least) & since they made it so mercs gain AA from things even while suspended a player who uses Mercs is more likely to drop a Merc for another player, Boxers are less inclined because they rely on those boxes but must also maintain them to keep them useful to the boxer.
    Klawra likes this.
  13. Ironfoot Elder

    Also like how the mood here is 100% "boxing is normal". That's why you have to box. People dont like that they have absolutely nothing to do if they cant find a group, hence people like me, who left to play a different game, thus reducing population even further, neccesitating even more need for box alts.

    Why not add more 'solo content' in the t1 zones? EQ2 entry overland zones are 100% soloable. Cant find a group? go do some solo quests. Why they have not done that here I cannot fathom.
    Currently there are 4 mobs (total that I found) in ME that are solo mobs. Allowed me to complete two-thirds of the ME merc quest... but bats? Yeh good luck! Just add more soloable stuff.

    Dragon scale hills farm was massive when they did that... but they didnt keep doing it. And I just dont get why they stopped... so I went to EQ2, and actually had fun.
  14. Laronk Augur


    • healer mains are viable. though i support multiple mercs
  15. Go Take A Nap Augur

    That is true, barrier to entry is lower and interchangeable class choices are more flexible for random needs.
  16. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    At the end of the day, mage dps is underwhelming. Now a necro merc... now yer talkin $$$
  17. Tygart Lorekeeper


    Awesome idea.
  18. Tygart Lorekeeper


    A lot of us do exactly this and have for a decade or more. The problem is there appears to be a big anti boxer crusade here on the forums. Eventually DB will cave in to this group.
  19. Bernel Augur

    It's not necessarily that they are anti-boxer. Some people don't want to play multiple characters simultaneously. They just want to play an enchanter or whatever. Boxing is fundamentally a different experience compared to playing a single character. I don't care if other people box. I'm hoping they add a way to play EQ without having to simultaneously juggle multiple characters. That's really how EQ was designed in the first place anyway. Although the game is designed for groups, the actual interface is designed for a single player controlling a single character. That's the kind of game I got hooked on and the kind of game I want to keep playing. Having multiple mercs would be fine with me. As long as EQ is doing all the juggling of those characters, I'm a-ok with that.
    Metanis, Skuz, Silver-Crow and 2 others like this.
  20. kizant Augur

    It's not that much lower. There's just a lot of bad mages in this game.