Mercenaries need to go core!
" Let me be clear: much of my reasoning and "point" stems from how mercenaries act RIGHT NOW. And much more general than you appear to be thinking, or even want to include in your thinking. The game not being balanced right now is irrelevant. Just as irrelevant as those who say "what does it matter if we add xyz broken things, its already broken". That is a non-argument. Balance is a CONSTANT battle that will never be perfect. But that is no reason to burn the whole place to the ground with abandon. Harvest NOT being added to the game as-is post-harvest was one of the BEST decisions GGG made in the history of their "balance" of the game. It was TOO MUCH power overall. Folks LOVE to complain about this historical decision, but they completely fail to speculate on what the game would look like NOW, had GGG not done that. We'd probably have 50% of the playerbase running around with BiS items by mid-mapping, trivializing any possible new content GGG could release. We wouldn't have a game anymore, or it would be so obscenely hard as to require BiS gear everywhere as an entry point. Where you seem to be completely unwilling to speculate or infer anything, I MUST infer because that is how you can have a productive pro/con, or really any potential conversation of any kind. And inferences don't occur out of thin air: they are based on history, examples, and experience. Regardless of how you personally see or use mercenaries, they currently offer an obscene level of power that no mechanic in the last probably 8 years has offered. To the point of being incomparable to any other mechanic that has ever existed. There were outliers WITHIN mechanics, such as exploding totems in crucible, but OVERALL the power level increase was nowhere near mercenaries. And that is PRECISELY the problem at hand: because of their overwhelming power, due the very nature of how the game works...there exists no solution where GGG can put them into the main game and maintain any semblance of balance while ALSO retaining their functions. And its funny, because its this point that you seem to very much agree with, with the remarks about GGG being unable to balance properly. My issue with them is that, given their potential power, adding mercenaries in ANY WAY will either result in them being completely and utterly useless bloat......OR a damage so great that it will be felt by EVERYONE in the form of future "balance" that requires taking them into consideration. Another example from history of this: the removal of reduced mana cost, attack/cast speed, from potions. These nerfs were a DIRECT RESULT of mageblood and 70% increased effect enchantments being in the game. Whether or not YOU had a mageblood. Whether or not YOU used the 70% increased enchant. Everyone was affected. Another example? Trigger skills costing mana. Because of the few builds that were able to maximize triggers, the entire SYSTEM needed to be rebalanced to account for the highest potential troublemakers. That is how balance works. And it is much much MUCH worse if the initial power creep is higher and also sudden. Balance does NOT consider individuals: it considers the whole, and almost exclusively from the tippy tippy top downward. I don't consider any of my posting to be hyperbole: I consider it to be a fully rational expectation based on years of experience both with power, power creep, watching and experiencing GGG's balance changes, and educated predictions. When I say GGG CAN'T balance them....I literally mean that. The way they are now, mercenaries CANNOT be balanced. Because the systems in the game make that impossible without a total overhaul. Unique items will continue to be a problem because the continue to exist. Making mercenaries unable to equip uniques doesn't solve this: it simply guts mercenary viability and variability. Being able to survive anything will continue to be a problem. If GGG were to make it so defenses function "normally" and need to be built....we are left with a merc that, thanks to AI, will likely be dead seconds into a map you ACTUALLY need it for. And if you gear it to survive....its left with nothing else other than being a meat shield. Having auras, curses, and other utility skills will continue to be a problem. Even if they were to limit this to one skill of ANY of these categories (ex: mercs can have 1 aura OR 1 curse OR 1 utility skill), this is still major power creep all by itself. If they remove this entirely....mercenaries cease to have any use beyond secondary dps. Which, thanks to the point above, wouldn't function when you need it. With ALL of those issues (and those not even being everything)....and with GGG being limited on time, as clearly seen across most of the last few years, I can INFER that they will do none of the above and either just completely trash them, or shoot themselves in the foot by not doing a PROPER balance pass. Opening the game up to another 3.14 blowout very quickly in the future. They simply aren't going to put the time and effort into re-making the ENTIRE system from the ground up AFTER the league has already been completed. Some good ideas I read in other threads that would actually make this work: some type of leveling or growth system, some type of skill customization, completely mercenary-unique gear like Huck n friends, etc. But all of those require considerable time, planning, and effort on par with an entire new league mechanic. Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Sep 27, 2025, 8:50:16 PM
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"Im intentionally limiting the scope of my posts here, your implication is correct. "You are picking this out of context. This is a logical/math thing. In my above example which you responded to this is relevant. Adding (not multiplying like current support Mercs) can then potentially even have an expected positive effect on resulting balance. "Of course there needs to be a cut of "functions". Especially the "functions" which act as power multipliers. And to me it also looks like GGG is unwilling to balance, see what they did with 'Vortex of Projection' and FROSS. I find it highly unlikely they are that incompetent, this looks like intentional meta creation. "My impression is rather that GGG dislikes balancing and likes "random" "reworks" and this is a symptom of that. "For balanced Mercenaries their "variability" needs to be gutted. And if I would add Mercenaries it would be an iterative process (unlike the one-time "rework" GGG usually does). And the first step likely would include a "unique and exclusive modifiers on Mercenaries have no effect" clause. So they would be able to equip unique items but not benefit from them like players. "This is a numbers issue which can be solved with iteration. Better Mercenary AI would be much better though. "The thing which makes Mercenaries different from most item mods is that they have a gameplay effect that isnt a simple multiplier. Auras on Mercenaries however are basically simple multipliers. So my POV is different: Mercenaries merely serving as "more" multipliers to players are superfluous. The main fun is if they actually do stuff on their own. No wonder it's lost, it's in the middle of the jungle!
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" yes but......that's what they are lol. I get that your "point of view" is not looking at them as such, but still that's what they function as outside of your point of view. They are the biggest "stat sticks" ever introduced into the game, whether or not you use them as such. I totally TOTALLY agree with your idea of what COULD have made them "fun" over straight up "power". The only problem is they were designed the way they were designed. I hate to draw a comparison to it, but that is pretty much the exact MAIN issue with PoE 2 right now. GGG had a "vision" of what the game would be, and yet they designed it in such a way where the only POSSIBLE outcome is PoE 1-style gameplay. And based on pretty much every patch so far....they recognize this and are leaning into it instead of attempting to correct. It is my opinion that they actually CANNOT correct it, because the fundamental design won't allow the corrections required to regain their original vision. Much is the same with Mercenaries: they have already been designed, and the function and role they play is determined by the way they work in this league. For GGG to change their role and function would require a complete ground-up rework because the way they currently work disallows any avoidance of them functioning as just another "more multiplier". They already simply screwed up too bad to recover, given limited resources and time. Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Sep 28, 2025, 5:27:16 PM
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I love that this post is still active, as if GGG hasn't already decided what they are going to be doing with Mercs post-3.26.
Our fate is sealed, and well find out in the next week or 2 what it is. Sit back and enjoy being ignored awhile longer while they work on POE2. It's the new way of life. “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
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"I'm actually hating this so much. Where are the damn teasers, GGG? |
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" The new league doesn't start until the END of October. Teasers rarely ever come out more than 2 or MAYBE 3 weeks ahead of time. I would expect that MAYBE we get the video and title reveal middle or end of next week, with real teasers still two full weeks away. Timeline for announcements is almost always the same when they announce a "release time" of the next league. They haven't ignored anyone (just yet). Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Sep 29, 2025, 2:35:22 PM
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Quick Example:
First teaser of anything in Mercenaries league was June 1st, with the league launching on June 13th.....less than two weeks later. And this was combined with a major expansion too. So assuming "End of October" is true for the release date of 3.27, no one should expect any news about it until the middle of October. Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Sep 29, 2025, 2:38:58 PM
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" Oh, you mean the league that came out 7 months late? That is what we are basing the expectation for news off of? I'm just saying, considering recent history, GGG would be well served to give us a few extra hits ahead of release. “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” Last edited by Piousqd#0073 on Sep 29, 2025, 6:15:56 PM
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^it was literally just the nearest example.....but its the same every league.
And considering how late it was, wouldn't you think the teasers and announcement would have actually happened EARLIER for that league than most others? That was TRULY being ignored hehe. You were the one that threw the "ignored" messaging in there....which is just a straight up lie. If we consider the last 8 years of historical evidence lol. It's like a young child throwing a tantrum without a fully formed notion of "time" yet. payattentiontomepayattentiontomepayattentiontome Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Sep 29, 2025, 10:35:10 PM
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"Confidently wrong. In the past we would have had the announcement of the announcement™ by now with teasers and memes slowly following shortly after. Obviously there isn't an actual community representative akin to Bex anymore and PoE 2 has the spotlight. It's expected but nonetheless disappointing. But I digress, a new player like you wouldn't know much about how good we've had it in the past. |
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