Mercenaries

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

I can see your point but how is this different from having the appearance slot for yourself?

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

Lawl, still doing it I see. No where did I say they should be on the same ground as a good player. Read it again. Didn't say that. I don't really know what "ideals" I'm "spewing" other than saying I can see how mercs will be useful for unfortunate situations I see in the game right now. You know what killed lower level grouping more than mercs ever could? SK's and RAF and having a high end player base.
Anway, I think customizing the mercs would be a lot of fun as long as it's not Marketplace based. Any customization is a good thing!

If you use the appearance slot for yourself the item becomes attuned to you and you cant give it to an alt. Therefore you are not using the mercs appearance slots for 'extra' bag space.

Lempo@Everfrost wrote:

Because I DUO. I'm not grouping anyway. Many of the people who have expresed support for mercenaries have NO INTEREST IN GROUPING outside of their friends. So it would have absolutely 0 impact on grouping if we are maybe able to do slightly more than what we do now with mercs. It might have a BIG impact on whether or not we continue to subscribe.
As for Lalen and his "constructive" posts, I stand by my comments. Spamming a thread (and that is what he has been doing since mercs were announced) with the express purpose of trying to get mercs nerfed to the point of uselessness (before they've even been added to the game) is not what I call constructive. Regardless, I know that he and others have way more time to post than other people do, and there's not much that can be done. Hopefully, SOE can filter out some of the noise and take everyone's opinions (yes, even his) into account regardless of the signal-to-noise ratio.

Gninja wrote:

The diffrence is I can't trade items I put in my appearance slot with other players or alts. A merc gets it, you can pull it right back off and then run back to the broker and sell it (with the current reception). Either the item should become attuned to the merc (or the player) or the merc eats it to prevent this. Having those extra slots will bring into effect banking items too... For instance if a merc is a tank and only has say 4 visable slots on the merc but really 8ish slots you can equip (such as feet and some other visables aren't usually visable on plate armor) the extra slots can be used to bank. True it can be used the same way on a player but the point is, we're effectively doubling this oppritunity and making it so that it doesn't have to be attuned to be banked.
Perhaps if the player had to attune the item before giving it to the merc it would become a bit more reasonable allow this two way street of appearance items.
EDIT: Ok so the problem with attuning to the character first is that if a character is a plate class and wants to give something that has a mage requirement, this isn't going to work out so well if the merc class is a templar... The simplest solution seems to be to make the merc attune the item to itself and all is well.

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

This I am fine with. Customizing the merc is a great idea, and fun, but I think giving a merc something should pop up the attune dialogue box, (assuming the item is attuneable). You should still be able to retrieve it, but it should be attuned (and therefore untradeable) at that point.

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

I think for the first time since i've read any of your posts, i completely agree with you, with what you said in red.

As far as feedback on mercs, obviously the upkeep for them will be different i hope, as far as how much plat/gold etc it costs to maintain them, as 35 plat in eq2 is a lot different than 35 plat in eq1. I currently have i think 400k plat on my main in eq1, and just over 100pp on my main in eq2. I also like the idea of interchangeable<sp?> mercs that a previous poster suggested, and have the rest hang out in your house. On one of my characters, i have a tavern set up in the basement, would be kind of cool if they could hang out there. I also hope that you will allow any race of merc to be any class in eq2, like you have with playable characters. In eq1, certain races couldnt be certain classes-would have been cool to have an Ogre healer, or high elf warrior. I look forward to the mercs, and it will be interesting to see how they are implemented in eq2

what happens when a merc dies? Does it take a fee? How do we "resummon" them?

It's been a long time since one of mine died, but as far as i know, they are put on a few minute timer, once the timers up, you can "revive" them-i dont remember any costs associated with it, aside from the fact that i "think" it resets your payment timer, so you end up having to pay upkeep when you revive them. Thats how it works in eq1 anyway.

Marnus@Antonia Bayle wrote:

As I said, I'm generally not the selfish one. You can best bet if I say something it doesn't include the effects of just "me".
The plat requirement needs to be rather considerable or at least equate to what could be earned (from loot selling on the broker) in the zone they're in. EQ1 mercs are dirt cheap -- if you don't believe me go look at how many people are afk in the lobby just wasting way that merc time while afk. That shouldn't be something to be seen here without making us go broke.

Adegx@Permafrost wrote:

I hope there is the respawn thing they have in EQ1 and an extra fee to cover the merc's repairs.

Will there be scaling based on the zone you are in?
As an example, my 90 Ranger can get to and solo the last named in probably the easiest level 90 instance (Deep Forge) in Ry'gor armor. However, I wouldn't last 20 seconds against the easiest mob in the hardest Drunder zone. That is a HUGE range. So if the mercenaries don't scale they will either be way overpowered for some 90 zones and/or way underpowered for others.

When they die you will be required to pay their upkeep imediately when you attempt to resummon them again. There will also be a cooldown so you cannot resummon them immediately. They also cannot be switched out during combat.
There are no plans to have them scale to the content they are in or zone they are in.

I Myself as a Soloer Like the idea of Mercs and think it will in a way help people who like me enjoy the freedom of soloing.
Here is afew things i might suggest to add to Mercs:
Backpacks: As a hired hand it would be only fitting that a Merc help carry things. If its a fear of them becoming portable banks. Make them require being emptied before being stored or switched with another merc.
Loyalty: If you have merc and focus on having them as a primary companion in your travels it should gain a sort of favor with you. If the merc should die though this favor will drop. Things gained from favor could be anything from An increase in the merc being better at fighting, having better health/power, or even costly slightly less.
Appearance mounts for Mercs: Not sure if it was planned to begin with but have not heard about it. If nothing else how about it having the same appearance of the mount the player themself is using ?
Merc faction: As you have a merc out with you and make kills with it Have it generate small amount of faction that over time will grant you access to better/differant types of mercs you can acquire from a merc contact or some such.
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Honestly Make the things useful to people like me who enjoy having the freedom of soloing. And yes i know a bunch of people are going to be crying that it will take away from their groups and raids and such. but .... hey your group/raiding content is stuff i will never do/see thus taking away from what i can do.
Just my thoughts.

Umub wrote:

I think they are leaning towards no scaling in this situation, because someone just coming out of previous content could be grossly outweight by a current content oriented merc.

A lot of people seem to assume that the arrival of mercenaries means the immediate and automatic removal of any incentive to group. I saw a LOT of these same arguments on the EQ1 forums before mercenaries were released in that game. What actually happened? Almost nothing changed. People who liked to solo suddenly had an easier time of it, and people who liked to group together used mercenaries to fill in the gaps in their group until a friend or guildmate could take it's place.
Reducing the group size to three and halving the difficulty of content? I'm sorry, that's just a patently ridiculous suggestion. 'I don't like the idea of mercenaries so I demand that the devs should completely re-write how the game works, thus shafting any established regular groups?' Please stop being insulting.
Mercs aren't going to magically replace actual players with perfect performance. In EQ1 I honestly can't say how powerful they did get, I never used anything but journeyman mercenaries, but they were never as good as an actual player. They did surprisingly well, but a real player always outperforms one. I have no real idea how they will be implemented here or how much like the EQ1 mercs they will be, but I hope it's fairly close as that system works fairly well. As a player who often plays solo, I am looking forward to them. (Though, if my Conjuror can't have out his elemental pet alongside the mercenary, there's little sense in using one with him, I have to say.)

Gninja wrote:

The first part I like (I hope that it stays this way)
They really shouldn't be able to be swapped in an instance.
I don't understand what the bolded part means, it sounds like they will be useless in lower level zones if they belong to a higher level player.
Also very important.
Mercs should not be able to circumvent the mandate on key mobs.

Ranger1017 wrote:

SC, Mercs, Historic Mergers... Hmmm Are you sure nothing happened or is this just simply more empty rhetoric? Great quote from Quiptos, "Its bad when you zone into the guild lobby and have to turn your graphics down when there are only 40 players in the zone because there are 40 more mercenaries" -- really sounds like no impact on players choices at all.
Ranger1017 wrote:

When the majority of folks are running around with 3 mercs to a group because they'd perfer (as some people have already commented that if they could get by with 3 people THEY WOULD) it is essentially the same as my idea. It is not insulting to call a rose a rose, or a thorn a thorn -- not accepting the fact you're a rose or a thorn is insulting your own self.
Ranger1017 wrote:

They did magically replace players in EQ1 and still do so today. I only ask that you login to EQ1 and ask in general chat what players have observed since their release in the ability to get an end-game group. You might be floored. Hopefully this does not happen here, but that grim possibility does exist. If the devs stick to their words unlike in EQ1, there should be no issues with player replacing.

Lempo@Everfrost wrote:

They mean that a merc won't be more powerful in Drunder than they would be in a less difficult equivalently leveled zone.

Lempo@Everfrost wrote:

to the bold/underlined/italisized: A player asked if they would scale to the content you were in... such as if you were playing in Faydwer would the mercs be less powerful and more powerful in say DoV. The dev said no.