Mercenaries in SoD ???

[Genadinee]

First up NO NDA broken.

Patching an OLD Beta Patcher results in a pile of Mercenary UI files being downloaded, so thoughts on going the Guild War route of hired NPC to fill a Group.

Good or Bad : Discuss

[Hulkling]

Frodlin was begging for this for like 20 years now so warriors could solo. /shrug

[Normy]

Well, if they design them as poorly as the shrouds, then I don't expect them to see much use. IF they go in anyway. However, the concept seems nice.

I wouldn't trust a computer companion to do a complicated task, like heal or CC. But for basic DPS, that could have some uses. Would be real interesting how the control of such a complicated NPC would be. Like pet controls on crack?

[dindaur]

thats true, how well these will turn out is still anyones guess.

if done well though they could be nice basically giving people a secondary option to boxing when they need people but people arent available.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

A: This should be in the general. I read it at work, where I cannot reply, and came home to reply to it, but couldn't find it... Just an opinion, but it should be up in the main page.

2: !!!

yellow: <this concludes my demonstration of monk counting> OMFG! that would be AWESOME! Incorporating it would be interesting, and hopefully they don't make the mistakes they have in the past of watering something down so much (shrouds) that it is BARELY useful.

My implementation thoughts: 1 mercenary per character. Basically cutting the group size need in half. This would help a lot. I would totally 3 box forever, 5 boxing gives me a headache, and I am only good for about 2 hours of 6 boxing.

Other path would be max group sized on mercenaries. I think the revenue cost would be exessive though. Why multibox when you can just have five mercs. I think there must likley be a limitation, to maintain some kind of socializing and social order. How would they be implemented in PVP comes to mind as a question.


As far as key roles, I can't see them doing CC, as that is a complicated decision tree, but I can see healing. I believe that one of the uses of a banned (MQ)program was to box a healer. As I understood it the healer would be set on certain parameters E.g. CH at 60% health , else if health <30% int CH cast quick heal, else if health < 10%, interrupt quick heal cast instant heal else instant heal is on cooldown, continue quick heal.

I dunno. I might have gotten carried away on that if then else statement, and it probably isn't logical but the point is, that you could fill key roles in a limited way. Perhaps having to give a set of 'orders' to the healer, that would be followed. Always heal bob the tank, unless bob the tank is at full health and punk the monk is at <30%... Or, never heal anyone but bob the tank.

In any case, I am certain that implementing mercenaries will pull me, and probably 3 accts of mine back in to EQ.

[shiftie]

did he just admit to using MQ on an open board?

[knytul]

na, common knowledge is that MQ uses Macroes to do its bidding. The one he explained is what is called a Healing macro. Basically common coding using IF statements. If Name < 60%, Cast ## else if Name < 30% cast ##.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

[Normy]

Ha, the truely innocent wouldn't even know what MQ was...

Anyway, this got offically announced as being part of the next expansion. As for a healing bot, while there could be easy code to implement it, I don't see it as being likely. I'm a programmer myself, and could come up with the basic code structure that COULD work, but then the NPC bot would become superior and would likely replace alot of real life people if they are good use.

Imagine having a healer that would never be stuck in chat, never be afk, never have a pet walk across the keyboard, never have virus definitions window EQ out, never have a language barrier, ect. In any content that a CH spam would be enough, I'd probably prefer the bot over a RL cleric (unless a guildie or RL friend). So i don't think Sony will allow it to be that good.

I'm much more curious to see how this will work with raiding, and where these mercs can be picked up from. If they can be "summoned" of a sort, then they will be more useful. If I have to drag them from the PoK to whereever, then a little less useful.

What I am imagining would be an extension of LAA for this. It would provide some new ranks of LAA for those who are maxed, and it would make a certain amount of sense.

[Brohg]

I'm betting they don't zone.

[dindaur]

i just got out of the fan faire panel for merc's

they zone, there's gonna be two archetypes, tank and healer, to start with. the guy who is in charge of coding this seems pretty sharp and i was pretty impressed by the presentation. the group window is also going to be changed a bit. you can now see mana bars and endurance bars for everyone. merc's will take group spots. they can die. they res you when you die if they're able. they're not fully controllable, they have their own ai script, so there is no pet window style deal. they'll follow you, and you can set how aggressive or defensively they play. the tanks will fight anything that has aggro on you. the healers can also dps, as well as the tanks. the guy who is implimenting this was stressing how open ended it was and how they could add more to the system fairly easily. also like we all heard a few patches back coin is now weightless and the mercs have an hourly upkeep of platinum cost. different races will be available like dragons.

oh yeah the limit is one per person, and theyre supposed to be restricted to group content ( for now ).

[knytul]

lol, so instead of 1 person 6 boxing...1 person can 3 box w/ 3 mercenaries...oh how the times have changed. Need a healer for ur group of 5 ppz, someone go grab a merc and we can get started...Hell as a pally, gimme a merc that is a shaman and ill never have to group again...hell ill be solo'n from 80-85 easily enuf.

Ooh, put 3 merc's in an easy zone like loping plains and let the 3 mains afk while the mercs kill everything...2 kill, 1 heals...

[Normy]

[Opfor]

[knytul]

exactly, find an easy but good xp spot, find a mobs solo spawn point, let the merc fight it alone to make sure he can. Once the mobs dead, just sit there. Merc will kill that mob all by himself while ur afk, any damage u take will be regenned back while being on Mount. AFK Xp loop. Even if ur killing say Light blue con mobs...and u sleep 8 hours that nite. given most mobs are on a 20 min spawn cycle, thats 24 mobs you killed while afk.

Say a solo mob gives you 5% aaxp (just throwin #'s out there) per kill. On that ratio in 72 hours (weekend), thats 1080% aaxp gained, or nearly 11 aa's off of a Single mob (no adds). Say ur merc can handle 2 mobs easily enuf, or 3 mobs....

Can you put a price on an AA now?

[Opfor]

Assuming the mob doesnt run, to get friends, that the merc kills the mob before the mob kills it. Assuming that simple proximity aggro is enough for the merc to go off. Seems like a lot of if and assumptions IMO.

Never mind that really you will be killing 3-5 (being generous) mobs killed per hour for a total of 40 in 8 hours, even at 10% a kill (again being generous), that would give you 4 aa in 8 hours.

[dindaur]

the merc's didn't seem like they had much dps

[Hulkling]

Mercs are going to be a massive chage to the game overall. SKlug is a freakin genious lol. Theres still some bugs, but hopefully they'll be ironed out before launch.

[Opfor]

I have so much hope for them.

[MiniChu]

[Normy]

[Opfor]

Search the thread SKLug said you dont get credit for being AFK while your merc does all the work.

And 1 AA is about $1.00 Knytul (according to the plat scammers).

[knytul]

Then that opens up the door for mages then. Get a Tank Merc, go into a camp w/ pet and afk. Tank merc holds agro while pet destroys the holy hell out of mob. Most undead mobs dont run so no issue there..

Or

Should healers be worried? http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=137478
Should tanks be worried about being replaced by Merc's?...

Usually i dont like to jump the gun on things, but this is one of them things that isnt leaving a good taste in my mouth in the overall Gameplay of EQ. Almost like its gonna destroy the group game and push people more toward Soloing...

[Genadinee]

All depends on your point of view, if you have a nice fixed Group then mercs will do nothing for you. If your happy to 6 Box again none issue.

But if you can maybe 2 box or worse only truly Solo then mercs will allow you to play with the LFG tag above your head rather than sit in GHall / Lobby / PoK for hours on end.

Personally I 2 Box so getting a dedicated healer will take alot of the stress from me (assuming merc healer is any use), will also allow me to benefit from Group Leader AA's

[Normy]

I can forsee some uses, but if going into truely hard content I really don't see a merc healer replacing a real healer. They can't replace the Epic click of a cleric shield, they can't replace the the various abilities of a real cleric, and I doubt they will have the mana pool of a real cleric. Example, I can't imagine a bot keeping me alive in a Crystollos group.

[dindaur]

they gave us a live display of the cleric healing a ranger. the ranger was tanking a yellow con mob. ranger got down to about 30ish percent hp and the heals began to come. the devs mentioned a cleric merc will duck a ch and cast a fast heal if it wont land in time. they'll also auto buff you when you first get them. i had the impression that if the ranger had been tanking two mobs then the cleric would not have been able to keep up. then again it may have had more juice in it than what we saw.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

[Opfor]

[shiftie]

It is bad enough that a mage pet can out tank a group geared knight when it is popped out of the mages mangina... now they are making npc's with real tanking/taunting abilities I find it hard to believe this will improve grouping abilities for tanking classes unless the pp cost is really high.

[Opfor]

I think that alot of people are making some pretty big leaps in logic. IMO people need to calm down and A) check out beta see what they can/can't do first hand, b) calm down.

[Vasei]

They pretty much hinted that a player with half a brain will be able to outdo a mercenary. Sounds like the AI is going to be intentionally crappy. This leads me to think that unless they screw it up horribly (not an impossible thing), you're only going to have trouble replacing a merc if you tend to join groups and go afk. Or just button mash while watching TV.

And exactly as Bigcat pointed out, you'll have ACTIVE groups still looking for someone to replace the merc. This is a huge benefit over people just puttering around getting bored because they couldn't survive without a tank before the merc. I'd much rather join a group in progress than try to assemble one from scratch from semi-afk peeps.

Deep breaths.

[Normy]

Yea, there is no real reason to jump the gun on this. Actually, since Hulk seems pretty happy with this direction, that puts some of my anxiety to rest. He's never purposefully walked us into a brick wall.

As far as a pet out tanking a group geared knight, I've not seen that in action. Most of the time a pet will get eaten up faster than a knight with 300+ hp gear in most slots, and that is bazaar geared these days. Plus if the group has ANY melee in it, a tank is needed over any pet.

This will have more people out actually grouping places, which could be a great change. Not everyone uses the LFG tool, and I see groups advertising for people frequently in common areas like the lobby or PoK. Boredom leads people to log. I can remember quite a few times where some guildies and I are trying to start a group, are not 2-boxers with a pocket healer, and spend 30 minutes trying to get something together. Usually by then I'm considering logging and finding a movie to watch or something.