Mercenaries need to go core!

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downthetunnels#7946 wrote:

Just to clarify: my suggestion is about letting a second character you’ve leveled be available to play as a merc, but with the same restrictions real players have. This would simply use the game’s existing party size limit and isn’t aimed at the current situation - it’s more of a forward-looking idea that would allow to address some of the issues we are facing currently.

This is actually a REALLY COOL idea that I could get behind: a way for the solo player to create a party for themselves that compares to regular party players. No unfair advantages for ANYONE in the equation. Those already playing in a party would not be able to use these "extra" characters, but any player can use any amount of them to reach the maximum 6 party members.

The only reason I currently DON'T play in a party is simply because I have no one to play with regularly. But if I could create my OWN party, even if controlled by AI, that would be fantastic.

And that might actually make this game feel like more of an ACTUAL "multiplayer" game if that multiplayer option were really and truly available to everyone without compromise.


OFC even an idea with that would require a total rebalance of EVERYTHING in the game environment....or an overhaul of party bonuses and penalties.




A big problem AGAINST such an idea is just the sheer fact that, no matter how the game is "described", it really ISN'T designed for multiplayer. Maps are too small. Loot is too frequent. Speed is too great. Support is too strong. Etc. Making party play easily accessible to everyone doesn't fundamentally "fix" the innate problems that party play has within the PoE game structure.

For example: running a single secondary character that uses all the purities means every single other character you raise can completely forego resistances entirely. Rather game-breaking...even in solo play.

Skills were developed and released with very clear indication that they were thought about within a SINGLE PLAYER environment: we were never meant to equip ALL the auras at once. And yet here we are: able to do just that with even a single extra character, let alone 5 extra (Or ELEVEN extra with mercenaries). With drastically increased effect at that.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

It's through BALANCE and forethought that build diversity thrives:

That would be cool. Unfortunately GGG doesnt seem to like balance.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Here's the problem with the whole idea that "solo players did get a lot more fun".....its true ONLY right now. ONLY within mercenary league. And it won't last, its been proven time and time and time again. It is EXTREMELY FUN to mess around with sudden massive amounts of power: that isn't in denial. But the trouble comes when that type of power becomes "Normalized", which it WILL if added to the core. Think about the various systems and levels that have been "normalized" throughout the years of development in this game.

Ex: You think those same solo players would have the same opinion of mercenaries if

1) monsters were rebalanced to counteract their newfound power. This is literally how EVERY new league begins....balance changes according to the new OVERALL environment.

2) Mercenaries were rebalanced so as to be damn near useless at low-mid levels of investment a la running T17 maps pre-merc league. That's the likely way mercs would be introduced, if at all.

3) Mercenaries provided such an extensive power boost to party play, that the trade market becomes even more lopsided than it has ever been before: dominated by the few who can maximize a new 12-man norm.



The only reason it is so well received RIGHT NOW is because the balance is off. Wildly off. Harvest-y off. History tells us it will not and cannot remain that way.

People have FUN playing games with cheat codes on such as god mode, or unlimited ammo, or 10x aura small charms a la D2. But what does that eventually lead to? Massive, complete and utter burnout and trashing of any future game development. The initial feeling of too much power is VERY FUN, but its probably the most fleeting feeling you can have in ANY game, across any genre.

Speaking for myself: You are wrong implying/saying that the fun part of Mercenaries is the power. Its not. I consider (friendly) Mercenaries the most fun addition to PoE in a long time. I dont like the Mercenary league/s much though. Dont like hostile Mercenaries bad QoL & "random" threat level. Nor the new T16.5 map stuff. Phrecia event was more fun for example, also played more then. (And I only play SSF which may have some impact on these things.)

Bump for mercenaries to go core!

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Zrevnur#2026 wrote:

Speaking for myself: You are wrong implying/saying that the fun part of Mercenaries is the power. Its not. I consider (friendly) Mercenaries the most fun addition to PoE in a long time. I dont like the Mercenary league/s much though. Dont like hostile Mercenaries bad QoL & "random" threat level. Nor the new T16.5 map stuff. Phrecia event was more fun for example, also played more then. (And I only play SSF which may have some impact on these things.)

I agree, balance track record is NOT good. That actually forms most of my opinion of why mercs cannot go core in ANY way because the balance will be awful at either extreme.

If I am wrong implying that the "fun part" of mercenaries is the power....then may I ask what exactly you find fun about them? And how whatever you are about to say doesn't literally translate to "power".

If its because the mercenary enables a build that wouldn't otherwise be possible....that's power creep. The same as if you hooked up with an aurabot that covers the holes in a build. The act of enabling new builds itself is NOT a problem: the way mercenaries go about doing so IS.

If its because it allowed you to complete more content...that's power.


We had no way to customize or level them so it most certainly wasn't "raising" a merc.....


The only possible scenario I can remotely think of that someone might have had fun with mercs that WASN'T because of their absurd power would be if YOU acted as the buffer for your merc, and your merc became the dps. Utilizing links and such. Every other scenario of mercenary-usage is the very definition of "borrowed power".

And borrowed power is certainly FUN. It's just not healthy for game longevity.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

then may I ask what exactly you find fun about them?

I dont think I can exactly pinpoint 'fun'. However one thing which really stands out for me is that the gameplay with Mercenaries which can deal (some) DPS has much better "QoL" because I dont have to personally click on every little mob. This is also achievable with some builds without Mercenaries, but with Mercenaries most 'old' builds can have it.
And another fun part comes from having another layer of variety.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

And how whatever you are about to say doesn't literally translate to "power".

If its because the mercenary enables a build that wouldn't otherwise be possible....that's power creep. The same as if you hooked up with an aurabot that covers the holes in a build. The act of enabling new builds itself is NOT a problem: the way mercenaries go about doing so IS.

If its because it allowed you to complete more content...that's power.

Clarify my previous 'fun' vs 'power':

First defining 'difficulty': How long it takes to achieve the goal (beat boss X, level to 100, Delve 6000, whatever).

So lets assume 2 realities

Reality A) PoE 3.27 comes with Mercenaries. It has difficulty X if a Mercenary is used and slightly more if not.
Reality B) PoE 3.27 comes without Mercenaries. It has difficulty Y.

Now if X == Y then I would prefer reality A.
Thats what I meant in my earlier post. It has absolutely nothing to do with power. (I would prefer PoE to be more difficult than it is now anyway.)

Edit: If that wasnt clear: 'Power' := -'Difficulty'

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Zrevnur#2026 wrote:

good explanations

Mercenaries, as they exist NOW, are fundamentally a HUGE power increase with very little downside. To use your comparison, X currently >>>>>> Y. As such, the vast majority of people clamoring for their inclusion in the main game are based on this interaction.

It appears to me that you like Mercenaries for their ability to act like summons: offering dps without having to manually control it. But if that's the case (and is the only case)....then we already have that in the form of minions. For unique attack patterns, we have specters. If we want mercenaries simply for something NEW....this would not accomplish that.


Now back to your X vs. Y comparison: It is my belief that, due to the entire nature of what the mercenary is based on all that we know about them now, and all that I can infer GGG will DO to them in order to work them into the base game.....x will never be anywhere near == y.

GGG can do three things with them:
1) Neuter them entirely a la Harvest: x<<<<<<y, to the point of them being totally useless bloat

2) Keep them the same: x>>>>>y, breaking any future balance of the game.

3) Find some middle-ground through a total rework: but GGG doesn't do this. They've pretty much NEVER done this in their entire history of balancing content. And why would they put all the work needed to do this into a FORMER league mechanic? It would require soooo much more work than all the reworks they did on Harvest crafting before it became "acceptable" to them. And they are not in a position to put in nearly as much focused work as they did back then.


Perhaps not as ubiquitous as maybe I said in my previous post, but I would still say that 99% of the draw of mercenaries lies in the POWER of the mercenaries, and that power is too wildly out of control to be included in the game permanently. And it would be useless to bring mercenaries into the game in neutered form.

Even the things YOU enjoy out of them - variety, minion-like dps - only function BECAUSE of their power. They only offer variety in builds and play because they offer something not obtainable otherwise, at a degree where it is felt. That is thanks to their overwhelming 'power', even if that power is solely found in utility rather than dps. Actually, the LEAST power creep that mercenaries offer is in their actual dps. Sort of why I also said earlier that the only example I might think of where mercenary usage does NOT fall directly into power creep is if you use them for THEIR dps. But if you DO use them for that, what happens when they no longer survive without survival gear? What happens when you will inevitably be forced to CHOOSE dps w/ no utility, or utility w/ no dps?

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

As such, the vast majority of people clamoring for their inclusion in the main game are based on this interaction.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

but I would still say that 99% of the draw of mercenaries lies in the POWER of the mercenaries,

Dont want to guess about other players.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

But if that's the case (and is the only case)....then we already have that in the form of minions. For unique attack patterns, we have specters. If we want mercenaries simply for something NEW....this would not accomplish that.

The combination with other builds is new, also wrote that above. You cant just add minions to some random build. And the respective minion builds (esp in SSF) have issues like the dependence on 'aggressive' and on +minion skills which I dislike. Those minion builds are a small part of the spectrum of PoE builds with this particlar 'QoL'. With Mercenaries however I dont have to play something in that small part of the build spectrum to get this particular 'QoL'.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Now back to your X vs. Y comparison: It is my belief that, due to the entire nature of what the mercenary is based on all that we know about them now, and all that I can infer GGG will DO to them in order to work them into the base game.....x will never be anywhere near == y.

GGG can do three things with them:
1) Neuter them entirely a la Harvest: x<<<<<<y, to the point of them being totally useless bloat

2) Keep them the same: x>>>>>y, breaking any future balance of the game.

3) Find some middle-ground through a total rework: but GGG doesn't do this. They've pretty much NEVER done this in their entire history of balancing content. And why would they put all the work needed to do this into a FORMER league mechanic? It would require soooo much more work than all the reworks they did on Harvest crafting before it became "acceptable" to them. And they are not in a position to put in nearly as much focused work as they did back then.

Yes GGG did bad with Harvest. Also dont like the Settlers adaption, they kept the parts with the worst micro/QoL.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Even the things YOU enjoy out of them - variety, minion-like dps - only function BECAUSE of their power.

If we are discussing the potential future of Mercenaries: Disagree. Simple example:
I have a build which is good for doing small area DPS but requires manually aiming at enemies. It does 1M DPS. I dont like manually aiming at every wimpy enemy so I get a Mercenary which does 500k DPS. It also has small aoe, basically its a duplicate of my build with less DPS. To compensate for the extra power GGG in their great wisdom(*) makes it so that all hostile mobs take 40%(**) less damage. According to my above definition of 'power' there is no effective change in player 'power', the game however plays better.

(*) This is hypothetically, not referring to actual reality.
(**) Exact number doesnt matter here, feel free to vary.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

But if you DO use them for that, what happens when they no longer survive without survival gear? What happens when you will inevitably be forced to CHOOSE dps w/ no utility, or utility w/ no dps?

Dont know what you are trying to say here. Just like the rest of the game, you need to make choices.
Not surviving due to bad AI is annoying. It leads to the player having to do extra things during gameplay which is the exact opposite (bad QoL) of what I want (good QoL). But making their survival bad is not necessary for balancing them. If they would have good AI so that the player doesnt need to do extra things during gameplay for their survival then I wouldnt have an issue with putting their survivability into the balancing though.

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Zrevnur#2026 wrote:

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

then may I ask what exactly you find fun about them?

I dont think I can exactly pinpoint 'fun'. However one thing which really stands out for me is that the gameplay with Mercenaries which can deal (some) DPS has much better "QoL" because I dont have to personally click on every little mob. This is also achievable with some builds without Mercenaries, but with Mercenaries most 'old' builds can have it.
And another fun part comes from having another layer of variety.

Forgot one thing which is quite notable in principle:
Mercenaries cant be "copied" so easily (as other build parts) and cant be traded.
They function like particularly distinct account bound items. For trade league this is entirely new and I have in the past wondered why I didnt see any complaints bringing this up with the wording (account bound items) I used here.
Anyway one thing I dislike about PoE is that its too much (for me) about preplanning/copying builds/progression and then executing this in the game. I would prefer it if more of the strategy would move from planning/copying into the gameplay. Mercenaries are (at least in principle) a step in this direction.

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Zrevnur#2026 wrote:

If we are discussing the potential future of Mercenaries: Disagree. Simple example:
I have a build which is good for doing small area DPS but requires manually aiming at enemies. It does 1M DPS. I dont like manually aiming at every wimpy enemy so I get a Mercenary which does 500k DPS. It also has small aoe, basically its a duplicate of my build with less DPS. To compensate for the extra power GGG in their great wisdom(*) makes it so that all hostile mobs take 40%(**) less damage. According to my above definition of 'power' there is no effective change in player 'power', the game however plays better.

That's called "power creep", right there. You gained 50% power from a mercenary, and because of that GGG would be forced to buff mobs. Thank you for illustrating EXACTLY my problem with mercenaries going core. That exact scenario of "breaking even" would be so so so rare, to the point of not truly existing, yet the game would still need complete rebalancing for an additional 50% power available. And not all "power" is measured in dps of course. The utility that makes the game "play better" that you describe is ALSO power creep. Removing or working around a downside that may have been specifically programmed into the game to BE a downside. We saw this play out in real time with the rise of trigger skill builds and changes to mana usage.

You have some interesting points, but I wholeheartedly feel like the situations you describe can likely be attributed to an infinitesimally small fraction of the players who want mercenaries to go core. If not completely unique to you.

I appreciate the different perspective, but when a new mechanic goes core the niche examples are not good rationale to bring into the argument. With any set of data there exists outliers: the point of analyzing data is to compensate for the outliers before making any conclusions.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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Zrevnur#2026 wrote:

If we are discussing the potential future of Mercenaries: Disagree. Simple example:
I have a build which is good for doing small area DPS but requires manually aiming at enemies. It does 1M DPS. I dont like manually aiming at every wimpy enemy so I get a Mercenary which does 500k DPS. It also has small aoe, basically its a duplicate of my build with less DPS. To compensate for the extra power GGG in their great wisdom(*) makes it so that all hostile mobs take 40%(**) less damage. According to my above definition of 'power' there is no effective change in player 'power', the game however plays better.

That's called "power creep", right there. You gained 50% power from a mercenary, and because of that GGG would be forced to buff mobs.

The 40% less would be attached to the Mercenary like their "Party bonus" right now. Otherwise Mercenaries would be obligatory. Its also not right to call this "power creep" because its equal to "you and your stuff do 40% less damage". You can just see it like a breakable unique which gives an automatic attack but comes with a 40% less damage downside.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Thank you for illustrating EXACTLY my problem with mercenaries going core. That exact scenario of "breaking even" would be so so so rare, to the point of not truly existing, yet the game would still need complete rebalancing for an additional 50% power available.

The game isnt balanced properly right now. So making random changes does not require a rebalancing. Its going to be the roll of a dice whether the resulting (im)balance is going to be better or worse. (This is referring to my hypothetical example, not expected reality of GGG doing bad.)
And Im not sure what exactly your point/problem is. And using hyperbole like "game ... need complete rebalancing" isnt helping. And my impression is you may not be expressing the actual potential problem/s (more multipliers kind of) properly, except for the "GGG is going to mess it up" one.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

And not all "power" is measured in dps of course. The utility that makes the game "play better" that you describe is ALSO power creep. Removing or working around a downside that may have been specifically programmed into the game to BE a downside. We saw this play out in real time with the rise of trigger skill builds and changes to mana usage.

This is included in my definition of 'power' above. Which is the base for the 40% less in my example.