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Mercenary System

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  • I believe it's being looked into from what's been discussed here, so some of this might all be irrelevant, but I thought it's worth asking.

    It's definitely weird to see skills requested that aren't even listed as rewards for later tiers of adventures.  My question is are some skills just discovered at some point or do skills evolve or something akin to Final Fantasy's Fire->Fira->Firaga? 

    For example, Arson does not seem to be attainable (as it's not listed as a reward for any of the three adventures) at all but it has come up in a lot of my adventures.  Can Sear become Arson maybe I'm missing that?


    I haven't gone up to any of the later tiers because I've had such trouble completing Goblin Fort so far and when I did try Free the Slaves, I didn't have ANY of the skills for the first adventure both times, but does anyone know if the rewards improve much?  100 gold (albeit the adventure is of course repeatable) seemed like a pittance when each rank of a skill takes 500 gold to learn and a guidebook is part of the prize, thereby something of a -400 gold income for managing to complete 6 events until all skillpoints are achieved?  I also received 0.02% experience at level 89, which is ~a third or so of what I receive from killing a single nagiri which takes about 5 attacks, less with criticals.
  • Abilities do not evolve. If anybody's wondering how this mess came about, the mechanics were created by me, the adventures were all written by entities, and somewhere in the middle I wasn't paying attention to everything that was going on. That's why adventures have nonsensical ability requirements; it's completely my fault and I should have it fixed soon.

    Later adventures will give more more gold and experience.
  • As yet I have not completed a whole adventure. I have had a tonne of help from Ifreann. I have however completed quite a few partial adventures. I now find  I am rushing home to log in again.


    Thanks :)

  • I was stupid excited to see my derps actually go 6/6 twice.
  • MathiausMathiaus Pennsylvania
    I would like to see a simple command for MADV like:

    MADV RECENT

    so it would simply show the most recent quest taken and allow you select your options from there with:

    MADV RECENT SELECT <option>

    Also, I would like to see something like:

    MERCSHOW <group>

    and list all the mercs stats instead of having to do merc 1 show/merc 2 show/merc 3 show in a single string.

    If they are taken into consideration it would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
    image
  • Is there any chance we could have an option to cancel or retreat if we accidently choose the wrong option?


    Naturally you'd have to start the adventure over, but picking the 8 hour one instead of the 10 minute on accident is a pain(which I did :P)
  • Ahaha. Yeah. The mercenary system could totally use a "I've made a huge mistake" button.
  • @Mathiaus

    MADV RECENT could be problematic if you have multiple merc groups running multiple adventures at the same time. I have changed it so that the adventure list only shows you your active adventures and adventures that you've completed but haven't yet received the rewards.

    I also have plans (but not yet begun implementation) on different ways to display merc stats. I'm toying with the idea of allowing you to customise the tables of information in some way to show what you want, using a configuring like we have for custom prompts.

    @Mercer

    Yes, a retreat command is in the works.
  • edited June 2014
    We can't see which stat is good for (some skills) guidebooks which we have got from quests.MERC ABILITY (Ability) SHOW command is not working on them.  I got a few guidebooks (Sear, Sneak Attack, Poison, etc.) from quests but I didn't teach them to my mercs at all since I don't know about skills. Actually I can guess Sneak Attack and Poison could be good with Dexterity stat but I don't wanna risk it all. We will able to see these skills on MERC ABILITY LIST in the future?

    Edit: I figured something , ignore this please :)
  • Could we please get an explanation of precisely how skill ranks and stats correspond to difficulty challenges?  I would like to know if I really need to be learning to Search 5 to pass tests at this level, etc, etc. 

    I want to know this because I've spent several hundred lessons training my mercenaries, and the initial rewards feel pretty lackluster for that kind of investment. Each max-level skill costs 3+6+9+12+15 = 45 lessons with a 50% return rate. At 7.5 credits per skill, this represents a pretty huge investment into the mercenaries. My average L1 basic mercenary has an investment in it that's worth more than more than 200,000 gold. My entire team is worth more than a million gold, easy. 

    These rewards are absolutely NOT worth that kind of an investment, and so I'm wondering if this is bad design on the part of the system or if I've just excessively overtrained my mercenaries. Could I get a 100% on a Difficulty 4 search check with 14 int and 2 levels of search, or do I need to max out my skill?

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • @Ifreann
    Looks like you've already figured this out, but I'd thought I'd put this answer out there for everybody: When you have a mercenary guidebook in your inventory, the LIST and SHOW commands will work on the ability that the guidebook is for. HELP MERCENARY ABILITIES has the information about this feature under the explanation for the LIST command.

    @Khizan
    One of the changes that I've already coded is that each option in an adventure that requires an ability check will show you the percentage chance you have to succeed at that option. This should hopefully allow you to determine what ability ranks you'll need to pass certain challenges, with experimentation. It's unlikely that I'll release a precise explanation of the formula.

    I'll also be changing some of the numbers for the difficulties. Most of the current challenges for which people have the proper abilities are undertuned, so most difficulties will be going up.
  • edited June 2014
    Here is an example of a combat log:

    Defenders: Plagued Abomination
    Plagued abomination (262/262)

    Attackers: Lions

        Bairell Shroudhammer     Garillrayll Firerage      Urchmond Galewaster
              (129/129)                (93/129)                 (116/125)
          Ulaich Thornsword      Gorowyn Demonsplicer      Balalle Snakeslayer
              (127/127)                (129/129)                (129/129)

    Round 1: Ulaich Thornsword places his hand on Bairell Shroudhammer's back, concentrating as he attempts to soothe her wounds.
       Bairell Shroudhammer is healed of 19 damage! (129/129)

    Since Ulaich Thornsword (skill priority in combat: shoot, heal ) is a bowman and Bairell Shroudhammer has full health , doesn't he supposed to attack Plagued abomination instead of healing Bairell Shroudhammer?

    I don't want to give all fight log here cause it will look a little bit spammy. The other problem is Urchmond Galewaster (skill priority in combat: slash) didn't even hit to Plagued Abomination in entire log.
  • You can't tell from the way that you pasted that, but the plagued abomination is in the front center position. The Shoot ability requires a target that is two spaces in front of the user, which would be the front left position of the defending team. There's nothing there, so that mercenary can't use Shoot and it keeps going down the priority list until it finds something it can use.

     Urchmond Galewaster's only attack ability is Slash, which requires a target directly in front. Therefore, it would require a target in the front right position of the defending team.
  • Jesse said:
    You can't tell from the way that you pasted that, but the plagued abomination is in the front center position. The Shoot ability requires a target that is two spaces in front of the user, which would be the front left position of the defending team. There's nothing there, so that mercenary can't use Shoot and it keeps going down the priority list until it finds something it can use.

     Urchmond Galewaster's only attack ability is Slash, which requires a target directly in front. Therefore, it would require a target in the front right position of the defending team.
    Sorry, the game is very complicated. So I just forgot about abilities of skills. 
  • GabrielGabriel Fort Valley, Georgia US
    My mercs don't seem to be gaining experience from successful missions anymore...  :-/
    image
  • Had your mercenaries recently been involved in a fight in which some/all of them had been incapacitated (brought down to 0 health)? Mercenaries with 0 health don't get experience.
  • GabrielGabriel Fort Valley, Georgia US
    edited June 2014
    Just tooling 'round the Goblin Fort adventure. Have yet to complete the entire adventure, but my mercs had been gaining experience whenever they succeeded at a mission for it. They're getting zilch lately.

    Edit: Ok, weird, got xp on the last completed mission. Seems to be fine now...
    image
  • The setup investment in terms of gold and lessons is pretty...massive. Will the returns be worth it at some point? I'm starting to realize the hundreds of lessons I have put in, and who knows how much gold, and so far I've gotten like, maybe two thousand gold back total. 
  • edited June 2014

    I am really pretty unenthused with this system at this point.

    It's been more than 10 days since the release of this system, yet development has been slow to non-existent. We still have Tier 3 skill challenges popping up in the Tier 1 adventures. I get Arson challenges all the time with no possible way to get an arson skillbook. My MADV LIST is still clogged up with all my failed runs. MERC GROUP SHOW still doesn't give me reference numbers. The only problem that's actually been addressed is the lesson refund, and even that is crazy.

    I've spent 100 credits worth of lessons just outfitting my mercenaries with the basic crap from the store. So far, this has been a hilariously awful waste of 600 odd lessons. And when I get better skills, I get to throw half of those lessons away so that I can spend more!  I regret every single minute, every lesson, and every bit of gold that I spent on this system.

    1/10 would not do again.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • I certainly hope that the returns will be worth it to you at some point. We have lots of exciting plans for mercenaries.

    Thanks for your patience while I work through the adventure stuff. It involves completely rewriting all of the messages from the three existing adventures (since the messages won't make any sense when the old abilities are taken out), and then writing the events for the three brand new adventures.

    Basically, it's a lot of words.
  • This is why I've been waiting to get involved in this. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, but yah. Paying lessons is hard to justify at this point. All the same, glad to hear it's being worked on!
    ‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’

    ‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
  • Its why I've just been rolling out my guys without putting more lessons into them.  I can succeed enough right now while I wait for stuff to get fleshed out
  • When this first came out, I thought that you had finally come up with a good gold sink and was pretty enthused...until I realized it fed more on lessons than gold.  
    • People having too many lessons in Imperian is not a problem, people having mountains of gold is.
    • The system completely excludes any sort of newbie or even mid-level participation due to the high lesson/credit cost attached.
    • Long term plans/rewards have not been disclosed so there is seemingly no hope of regaining an investment.  The way this is going, I just expect to hear 'give it time, invest more in the system, eventually you will get a return *wink* *wink*', until there is no one left to ask the question.
    • Lesson refunds is a good start towards making this somewhat pallatable, but why would the return on this be comparable to character skillsets.  There is a big difference here: I will never need to forget any of my profession/general skills to advance my character (unless I want to opt-in to changing circle/class).  I need to forget merc skills to advance.  I should not take a huge penalty for something that is essentially a requirement to advance my mercs.  I would be happier with no lesson refund to my character but have a 1:1 lesson credit on the individual merc itself for forgetting/learning skills.  However, this still leaves a really high lesson/credit buy-in, but at least it's something.
    I know that all sounded pessimistic and whiny which I hate because I really do appreciate the effort put into to doing something unique and feel it could be a large win for Imperian but those are just some things I can't really get over with the system upon rollout.  Overall, I think it's an interesting concept and could be a nice feature, but the initial price is too high with seemingly no end in sight.


  • completing the Free the Slaves adventure, awesome

    getting a passive skill book, more awesome
  • I have to agree with Cassius and Khizan on a few points.

    -Why are lessons involved at all? It makes the entire thing EXTREMELY expensive, and utterly out reach for new players. I mean, really really far out of reach.
    -If its only supposed to be a system for extremely high end, wealthy people, why are the rewards set up for basically newbies?
    -I set up two full squads of mercs, I was really excited and still love the IDEA of it. But....I spent a truck load and if I'm lucky I earn 200 gold a day off it. And that really is, if I'm lucky.


    Can we please get a look into the future of the system, more specifically what you have planned as rewards? Because at this point, I honestly regret investing so heavily, but I'd love to think that regret is misplaced and my investment will pay off.
  • Jesse said:
    I certainly hope that the returns will be worth it to you at some point. 

    Rewards appropriate to the expense are going to have to be fairly huge because this is just the beginning and I have spent a third of a trans skill on it. At 10k/credit, I have spent well over a million gold skilling up my mercenaries, and this is just the basic entry level crap. Playing Choose Your Own Adventure with mercenaries isn't enough fun to justify this kind of expense.

    The other reason the costs need to be lowered is because you built this awesome mercenary system that new players won't get to see because using it will cripple their characters. That is TERRIBLE design.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • edited June 2014
    It isn't designed for new players, though. The system was largely advertised as something for veteran players to do with all the lessons they had sitting around. Ergo, it's not TERRIBLE design, it's just not designed for lower income players. You can say that's not an intuitive decision, but it certainly doesn't make it TERRIBLE design.

    Moreover, I'm not sure what people expected here. This had all the makings of being a neat diversion if you had a lot of spare capital sitting around. It obviously still needs a fair amount of work, but the idea that people went into this just expecting it to be something they'd make a bunch of money off of is kind of silly. If that sentiment was ever expressed by the administration, feel free to correct me.
    ‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’

    ‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
  • Bathan said:
    It isn't designed for new players, though. The system was largely advertised as something for veteran players to do with all the lessons they had sitting around. Ergo, it's not TERRIBLE design, it's just not designed for lower income players. You can say that's not an intuitive decision, but it certainly doesn't make it TERRIBLE design.

    Moreover, I'm not sure what people expected here. This had all the makings of being neat diversion if you had a lot of spare capital sitting around. It obviously still needs a fair amount of work, but the idea that people went into this just expecting it to be something they'd make a bunch of money off of is kind of silly. If that sentiment was ever expressed by the administration, feel free to correct me.
    Nothing they ever said stood out as "Throw money at us for basically nothing in return." That isn't what I think the system is aimed at being, or advertised as being. I hope its a work in progress and if its going to be such a huge investment, it is in fact an INVESTMENT.
  • edited June 2014
    So, in review, you made some assumptions and they didn't pan out. It's probably someone else's fault, because it can't possibly be yours.

    I'm sure there will be more to this in the future, but right now, when it's very much bare bones (and essentially barely functional) I would definitely look into asking questions before throwing resources into it and then complaining about the lack of return.
    ‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’

    ‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
  • It isn't designed for new players, but I think it's terrible design to make a big complex minigame like this and have the initial buy-in so that it will cripple your character.

    They'd be much better off with the initial costs being primarily in gold, with lesson costs reserved for the high-end items, or something similar. Make it cheap to try the system out and you're more likely to get people invested enough to buy into it. Make just getting into it so hugely expensive and you get a bunch of people who won't even try it.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

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