Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?

@TheWheelie
I agree with all of these points. People really dislike rng having such a game deciding impact.

I will suggest that in addition to aoe it might be interesting for mercies to have a stun effect.

Care to provide solid argument ? Mercy = rng ??? Where does that come from ?

@TheWheelie said in Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?:

Best idea in my mind to not make it bad is to make it have big aoe but little dmg and do damage over time.

Decrease damage to 800, give it cloak, 5 aoe and halve its speed, worked out great for beetles 🙂

Beetles are actually a good unit now despite what ur big brain thinks so yes

@TheWheelie I think we'll file this one under "things only the balance team believes"

Yes just like nothas and mongoose. Wonder how that worked out

@TheWheelie said in Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?:

Beetles are actually a good unit now despite what ur big brain thinks so yes

I'll believe that once I see them used more often than once in 200 games. Or is the entire FAF community too stupid to understand, after half a year, that beetles are a good unit now?

@TheWheelie said in Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?:

Yes just like nothas and mongoose. Wonder how that worked out

@MazorNoob said in Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?:

I'll believe that once I see them used more often than once in 200 games. Or is the entire FAF community too stupid to understand, after half a year, that beetles are a good unit now?

Considering how bad people are at adapting and that LoL pros who get payed milions and are still often slow to adapt to new meta I can see a bunch of random faf players to be not so great at adapting to new stuff.
Even more when you consider how most of them are not even remotely interested in pushing the gameplay even further but just want to chill by doing the same shit again and again.

You hardly ever see beetles in pro ladder either, not even as a cheese option. I think I've seen them maybe twice, as sort of a counter to unmicroed mongeese/hoplites.

I should give up. I tried to make the beetle balance thread conform to every single feasible balance forum guideline and I'm still waiting for a response, instead the balance team responds on a whim to a single sentence "Are mercies good? Y/N" thread.

well i never agreed on the beetle change, so i wouldn't answer you on your thread as to why it has been design like that.

I think changing mercies is a bad idea because it makes faf even more mechanical. Mercies are a cheese mechanism, and a comeback mechanism much like tac missles. It offers alternative ways for games to take and therefore makes the game more exciting. Of course it sucks to be mercy sniped, or tml sniped, or old beetle sniped, or corsaired, but its a nice cheese thats super costly and all-inny. mercies have insane bt, so if you do your homework and scout and dont neglect air and radar and play zoomed out, they are super easy to counter.

Now i dont want to talk about mercies, but about the direction the balance has been going since im here. The game became more and more "be efficient in eco and grind down your opponent" style with less abilities to make plays, ie. Use units to conclude a game fast. If you remove mercies the games objective boils down more and more to "acquire mass to make t1 tanks to hold map"-style. Or in teamgames "be as greedy as possible and upgrade mex style", and i think thats boring. I like it when games have cheese options like fast ml that doesnt require half its mass worth of bp to be constructed within the relevant time window, or beetles to snipe acus, because thats exciting to do and punishes people who are lost in basebuilding and efficiency optimisation playstyle.

Oh and deribus please cut it with "please provide a replay" . We all know what a mercy snipe looks like and I think in general its possible to have an informed discussion about balance matters without looking at it. Anyone who needs a replay to look at in order to understand the matter shouldnt participate in the discussion, because clearly he lacks the imagination to provide relevant insight.

@BIG-BENNIS-MAGIC we don't talk about purging mercies from the game,we're asking for a nerf,it doesn't matter if you did scout them or not same for aa,their activation radius is just too big,you need to keep your aa too close to the acu and even in that case you'll kill at best 3 mercies only and no,they are not costful.
the only bad thing that might happen when you build them is the early stage when your opponent is going t3 air in any other case it's efficient to build them(considering they will connect in the end).

also that's the reaction you'll get when sniped by some only aeon boy.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCHtnfKRjk&ab_channel=TotallyJustABean.
live with that.

queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

If you nerf the activation radius, they become unusable, because they are countered by 50 mass t1 AA.

I agree with Bennis, it is nice to have cheese tactics available, and the essence of cheese tactics is that it can go either way : if you're spotted you lost the game or you just put yourself a lot behind (you've all experienced the situation where your air player made corsair/mercies, failed to kill, and all the team gets strat bombed).

Aeon air is very average/mediocre right now in my opinion (bad t1 bomber, no fighter/bomber, mediocre T3). I think having mercies available is the only reason you see aeon picked in teamgames air spot really ...

i wouldn't call restorers bad and the t2 gunship is also a very good burst damage for hit and runs,same for swifties,why would they get another strong unit if they have op com,op navy,strong land?

queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

cheese option aren't lacking. The issue of mercy in comparison to other cheese is that it is "press key to win".
It's just the philosophy of cheese pushed to the max. 0 skill involved, just cross finger. Honnestly a different design would be way more useful to the gameplay.

The main issue of Mercies is the fact that even if a player foresees them and prepares in advance there is a good chance he will still die. I think the design behind Mercies was simple, if enemy has AA next to his ACU he lives, if he doesn't then he dies and you win. While discussing if such mechanic is healthy for the gameplay is another topic the main issue right now is that because of the activation radius which is 25 (that's quite a lot, for comparison the vision of an ACU is 26) and the fact the projectiles that AA shoots needs to reach the mercy before it can transform itself into projectiles that cannot be stoped creates the situation where even if you have a lot of aa around you then if it's not between your ACU and the mercies you will still die.
On the other hand the Mercies are extremely annoying to use due to their fuel constraints and the fact that a single intie can get in kill a few even if you have a bunch of your own aircraft escorting the mercies.
Right now I am playing around with a Mercy rework and I have a couple ideas but there is nothing concrete as of yet.

I think lowering the activation range would be enough. It would turn the use of mercies from punishing aggressive players to punishing out of place ACU's who don't have aa/inties in their unit mix. I think the major issue with mercies is aa doesnt have enough time to shoot at them and that you can brute force them through a decent amount of t1 aa by tanking the t1 aa fire with inties.

I like mercies, mind you, as an aeon player I'd rather have some sort of reuseable bomber, but I get swifties so it's fine.

I think tweaking their activation range is a good slider to dial in on a good place for them. I have also seen the idea of the ground AOE thing as well, but think it would be best if (somehow, I know the code isnt there) the AOE duration stacked instead of damage. Like, really get your com out of there my man, pay attention. Or perhaps giving them other abilities, like an alternate 'conversion attack' that has enough umph to convert a 2t mex? Nah, that would be a unit called a 'missionary' or something. Or a wide EMP effect. Just spitballin.

You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!