Use of Mercenaries

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rex
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Use of Mercenaries

#1 Post by rex » Thu Feb 21, 2013 12:05 am

Hello,

Recently I have found people using mercenaries to block exits when they are not around/online. Although I have no problem with this, I do have a problem when there are also undeads in the room. I understand this makes sense when you are in the room with the undeads and the mercenary in your team. It does not make sense when you leave the mercenary blocking a room when you are not in that room simply because the undeads should autoattack the mercenary.

I understand that OOCly you know that the undeads will not attack the mercenaries but ICly it makes sense that they would.Although the code for game may let you do something it doesn't always mean you should. In this instance, I think it is abuse of the code.

Thoughts?
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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#2 Post by Phelan » Thu Feb 21, 2013 8:10 am

Why shouldn't the merc block? I am paying him to do it, so he will do it.

The undeads don't attack certain mercs, when they are part of the masters team, else undead attack them.

Mercs reset at their startlocation after a certain time when the person who hired the merc is offline.

So, I don't see where the problem is.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#3 Post by louis » Thu Feb 21, 2013 8:15 am

I somehow tend to agree with phelan. Mercs offer tactical options, and I cannot see a reason why those should not be used in game - also gives the mercs some better usage instead just being demoted to harvesting helpers. :mrgreen:

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#4 Post by Zehren » Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:21 am

I find this use silly, but then, I find the teaming mechanism silly, so it is not the exact use, but the overarching method. Giggle.
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louis
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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#5 Post by louis » Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:42 am

Zehren wrote:I find this use silly, but then, I find the teaming mechanism silly, so it is not the exact use, but the overarching method. Giggle.
Why so? Shouldnt it be this way? Eg, if you order your merc to fart "god save the queen", shouldnt he simply do so? He already got his payment, or?

In this case you tell your merc "Stay here and block until I return".

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#6 Post by Zehren » Thu Feb 21, 2013 12:18 pm

louis wrote:
Zehren wrote:I find this use silly, but then, I find the teaming mechanism silly, so it is not the exact use, but the overarching method. Giggle.
Why so? Shouldnt it be this way? Eg, if you order your merc to fart "god save the queen", shouldnt he simply do so? He already got his payment, or?

In this case you tell your merc "Stay here and block until I return".
Ordering a (group of) mercenaries to block somewhere is entirely fine, methinks. What makes this use silly (as far as I inferred from Phelan's comment), is the undead nearby.

Based on the different definitions of mercenary on thefreedictionary.com, we can easily define mercenaries as "a warrior working for monetary/material gain".

Now, the situation with the undead and mercenaries can be described as thus: Using teaming mechanic (such mechanic being OOC methinks), Phelan (based on reply in this thread), raises undead in a place, tells the mercenaries to block, tells them the undead will not attack them as long as they are with him... and then leaves, leaving the mercenaries alone with scary, mindless undead. (If the mercenaries were Sathonite, this would be fine, methinks. Presumably, based on lack of Sathonite mercenaries IG-thread, the mercenaries were not Sathonite, and thus did not have any guarantee anymore the undead would not attack.) The mercenaries have already been paid, Phelan has left... No further monetary or material gain by standing around like dorks and crossing fingers for the undead not to attack...

Time to f***in' bolt.
:mrgreen:
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Aslak
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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#7 Post by Aslak » Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:46 pm

Hello,
as I just died to such a useless death trap and will also be completly unable to ever retrieve my stuff from the road I died on, my views might be a bit biased.

But in my eyes it is just a extremly cheap way to kill and annoy as many people, specially young and weaker, without putting yourself into even the slightest danger.
It might be possible IC, but it is simply OOCly gamebreaking, and personally I am just thinking if I really want to play a mud where players are encouraged to use such tactics as nuclear weapons to simply kill whomever that passes that place while sitting miles away in a secure place.

Heavily pissed, po Aslak.

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arxthas
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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#8 Post by arxthas » Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:05 pm

Might as well just add that I agree with Zehren on the teaming thing. It's entirely OOC and doesn't make much sense if you take it as real in game. A "team" is a group of people standing near eachother or working with eachother and so. There's no mystical, invisible cloud involved.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#9 Post by ganandorf » Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:45 pm

I don't think the REALISM of leaving the merc in the same room as the undead should even come into question here, i think its irrelevant even though this is posted under roleplay.

The main question should be whether or not leaving traps like this is okay? One that unless you can bodycheck the merc out of the way fast enough or kill the merc, mean instant death without a sathonite having to actively do anything after setting it up.

What if a trap like this was set up in those two areas between elvandar and derring that lie on the road, and only have two exits? What if instead of just using one merc to block each exit, what if two sathonites hired two mercs each and got two mercs on each exit?
Last edited by ganandorf on Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#10 Post by Aslak » Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:47 pm

Beside, using Mercs to block access to mercs is also a nice idea.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#11 Post by arxthas » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:00 pm

ganandorf wrote:I don't think the REALISM of leaving the merc in the same room as the undead should even come into question here, i think its irrelevant even though this is posted under roleplay.

The main question should be whether or not leaving traps like this is okay? One that unless you can bodycheck the merc out of the way fast enough or kill the merc, mean instant death without a sathonite having to actively do anything after setting it up.

What if a trap like this was set up in those two areas between elvandar and derring that lie on the road, and only have two exits? What if instead of just using one merc to block each exit, what if two sathonites hired two mercs each and got two mercs on each exit?
Well.. I don't disagree with that. I was just thinking about the 1000 of ways that's inconsistent with everything else said about pvp so i didnt want to go there. But sure - I think the way pvp is done in this game is totally harmful and broks every aspect of RP. But anyway, Im not gonna open any bottles. I think letting the OOC code (teaming, in this case) trump the reality is always wrong, so I left my argument at that to avoid repeating discussions.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#12 Post by Phelan » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:05 pm

It looks like I managed to make my point.

When someone else uses three mercs to attack Phelan, that is completely legit.

When medium to small sized chars use 3 mercs to reach high level player areas in order to mine, train or whatever, there is nothing wrong with it.

When an evil char uses mercs to kill people ... Oh my god!

Mercs need an overhaul, they are too powerful and don't encourage any team work.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#13 Post by Allurana » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:14 pm

The difference is whether the player behind it is actually actively participating in the ambush, or offline/doing something else while their NPC trap does their dirty work for them.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#14 Post by arxthas » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:19 pm

I disagree to that Phelan. Mercenaries are fine. The more the merrier.

I think some people need to think in general about how they "roleplay" their "character" instead. And perhaps consider a bit more often what's real and what's code.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#15 Post by Aslak » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:24 pm

Phelan wrote:It looks like I managed to make my point.

When someone else uses three mercs to attack Phelan, that is completely legit.

When medium to small sized chars use 3 mercs to reach high level player areas in order to mine, train or whatever, there is nothing wrong with it.

When an evil char uses mercs to kill people ... Oh my god!

Mercs need an overhaul, they are too powerful and don't encourage any team work.
The difference is that with only mercs in team, you can control whom you kill and whom not. The difference is that you at least put yourself into danger if you are present at the fight. But using things like that just means you kill the next random char who walks by without any control and not even putting yourself in the slightest bit of danger.

I do not know how good mercs are, I have never used even a single one, so cannot say if they are too strong or not.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#16 Post by ganandorf » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:26 pm

Allurana wrote:The difference is whether the player behind it is actually actively participating in the ambush, or offline/doing something else while their NPC trap does their dirty work for them.
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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#17 Post by Phelan » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:31 pm

Allurana wrote:The difference is whether the player behind it is actually actively participating in the ambush, or offline/doing something else while their NPC trap does their dirty work for them.
That's what mercenaries are for, doing the dirty work for money, no questions asked.

Another thing is, if for example Taniel mercenaries make sense.

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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#18 Post by Aenima » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:33 pm

Phelan wrote:It looks like I managed to make my point.
When medium to small sized chars use 3 mercs to reach high level player areas in order to mine, train or whatever, there is nothing wrong with it.
.
well I will take this comment personally as I do this all the time to mine and I will say this - the mercenaries that are supposed to be able to 'tank' are actually teribbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbble. They cannot tank for shit without assistance (healing them, running away to aid, making them move back, etc.) In the end I have opted to just tank myself and let the mercs help kill (just so I'm not there for like 10 hours)

That being said, archer mercenaries are quite good and to an extent I can understand if one would think they are overpowered

Also Phelan, you using mercenaries - I have no problem with that and I imagine no one else does, but I do think that just hiring mercenaries and leaving them sitting around to trap people is a misuse of them and seeing it from the point of Aslak - a rather dirty trap.

I understand mercenaries should take orders and stay to those orders so long as long as you've paid them (and for the 'duration' they've been paid for) - but just leaving them around to do work for you, I think that is rather unfair, not so much in the sense of roleplay, but rather in terms of the game mechanics about it.

Perhaps I am biased as well as you've set up a trap (that I'm also pissed about even though I did not run into it) that leads up to the Asral Keep, and I know of other similar instances, but I really think mercenaries should be used more appropriately. Or if you are going to do something like that, then dont put it with fucking undead. I'm not sure how much experience you've had on being on the receiving end of undead, but it's bloody annoying.

Aenima has only fought a revenant once and even with how old he is, that thing could have ripped me apart if I was alone/it was in a room that could trap me - not to say I should be able to solo it, but just pointing out they are extremely difficult and you need a well prepared team to take a revenant + undead out where as you set up a trap all on your own, regardless of how long it took. Putting mercenaries there on top of that is overkill. (though I do see what you said earlier, about them leaving after some time - well same can be said about the undead, but for rp reasons the idea is to get rid of the stuff blocking our keep asap)
Last edited by Aenima on Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#19 Post by ganandorf » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:34 pm

Phelan wrote:
Allurana wrote:The difference is whether the player behind it is actually actively participating in the ambush, or offline/doing something else while their NPC trap does their dirty work for them.
That's what mercenaries are for, doing the dirty work for money, no questions asked.

Another thing is, if for example Taniel mercenaries make sense.
IC everything you do makes sense, i think whats being questioned here is whether or not its fair OOC for you to be able to set up such great great deadly traps.

For example, its the difference between you being present. If a room has, two undeads. a revenant, a merc blocking one exit and you blocking another, and 5 crusaders die, thats fine, because you were involved. But if you a room has two undeads, a revenant, one merc blocking one exit, and a second merc blocking another, and 5 crusaders end up dead, is that fair?
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Re: Use of Mercenaries

#20 Post by Zehren » Thu Feb 21, 2013 7:11 pm

Phelan wrote:
Allurana wrote:The difference is whether the player behind it is actually actively participating in the ambush, or offline/doing something else while their NPC trap does their dirty work for them.
That's what mercenaries are for, doing the dirty work for money, no questions asked.

Another thing is, if for example Taniel mercenaries make sense.
Want to kill evil creatures? Check.
Not a superb person capable of learning multiple things, ie. a craft *and* combat? Check.
Become a mercenary and get paid to pay the good fight today!

Being a Tanielite mercenary is obviously a step down on the list of holiness than a crusader.

And, I point out - mercenaries, if they are to be treated as proper to RP - as thinking people - would not mindlessly follow orders. Something not worth the measly monetary/material gain = scamper scamper scamper.
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