Ranked Limitation on Merc Selection


(alphabeta) #1

We really need to put this back into play. Today I encountered a preformed group of 4 Thunders and an Aura on Underground. Guess how that went? They blind you repeatedly in succession, have the highest HP in the game, stand on the healing station like they are attached by their umbilical cords, and we didn’t even get the first objective. Make everyone play a different merc please.


(Bestfinlandball) #2

I was thinking that for season 3 they should change the ranked participation requirement to owning at least 10 mercs, and at the same time add the 1 merc limit.


(DarkangelUK) #3

What if you join and all 3 mercs in your roster have been chosen by other team mates?


(ostmustis) #4

then you end up in the limbo menu!


(DarkangelUK) #5

I think we need to be honest in that one merc limit isn’t in place due to how the three merc selection works currently. It’s not a choice to not include it, it’s a limitation of the current system and will require a lot of work to make one merc limit a reality.


(montheponies) #6

Aye i dont think the 3 merc setup lends itself to the single merc selection and I thought there was some limitation on enabling folk to bring all mercs/cards into a game that means it can’t readily be stripped out.

To avoid the unlikely scenario of everyone on the team picking the same merc, the lobby would just be suspended until the team had a composition that would allow everyone to spawn in with one specific merc. Could also make the game grey out any mercs you have that others are currently playing so you cant choose them.

All of which sounds like a bit of work…


(Cgz27) #7

What if, upon being a third instance of a mercenary in play, you had to give up a portion of your exp to continue?


(ZGToRRent) #8

3 merc setup shouldn’t exists in ranked or even competititve play, we should have full control of mercs to play during matches which will reduce the number of spawntraps due to bad merc setups by newbies.


(Runeforce) #9

To get rid of the three merc selection rule and one loadout pr. merc rule would be the dream. Imagine free merc selection and the ability to switch weapons on a merc.Then you would not even need a drafting system, just have a one merc active rule (i.e no dublicate merc on the same team.)


(AssortedStuff) #10

I could be wrong but I think I’ve read here in the forums (a looooong time ago) that the 3 merc squad was because of a technical limitation, and not a decision to do with gameplay.


(NeroKirbus) #11

I’m not sure about that. In closed alpha you had the choice of 5 different mercs, one for each role a lot like W:ET and ET:QW.


(DarkangelUK) #12

That was possible because the game was only loading the same 5 mercs with single loadouts for every person on the server, now you’ve got a whole load of mercs with a ton of different loadouts and skins to potentially load in. The one merc limit would either need to be able to let you swap to another available merc, again this is where the technical limitation comes in because that merc and card combination has to be loaded for everyone on the server, or leave you with the same merc for the entire match like Paladins does. Neither seem like good options at the moment.

I like how Overwatch does it where you select a loadout/skin for every merc (hero) you have in the barracks and when you load a match you’re stuck with your choices, you can’t change it in lobby. I’m not sure how feasible that would be as Unreal engine just doesn’t seem to work well with this type of option.


(Glottis-3D) #13

Then, lets switch the engine! That sound like something, that can be done pretty easily, right?


(CaRe) #14

[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;563045]That was possible because the game was only loading the same 5 mercs with single loadouts for every person on the server, now you’ve got a whole load of mercs with a ton of different loadouts and skins to potentially load in. The one merc limit would either need to be able to let you swap to another available merc, again this is where the technical limitation comes in because that merc and card combination has to be loaded for everyone on the server, or leave you with the same merc for the entire match like Paladins does. Neither seem like good options at the moment.

I like how Overwatch does it where you select a loadout/skin for every merc (hero) you have in the barracks and when you load a match you’re stuck with your choices, you can’t change it in lobby. I’m not sure how feasible that would be as Unreal engine just doesn’t seem to work well with this type of option.[/QUOTE]
Players can join mid-game on the server and it loads its model and textures. In theory, this can already make the game load every model/texture of all characters during the same match.

So, the only impactful additional data transfered would be the different loadout cards the player posesses when he connects. Well, this is small amount of data comparable to a really long sentence send via chat (e.g. you could encode it as 1 char for merc, followed by a series of 2 char pairs identifying the loadout card). When a player switches the loadout, then it should be able to just send the index of that card around at spawn, so a single integer (e.g. loadout number 42).
The real problem might be that you would load many more textures at the same time, e.g. 16 players change loadouts during the same spawn wave in stopwatch. But I guess the engine may handle that case just fine already as it is able to show placeholders for the model (I guess… that blue man model should be that.) and skins (players that spawn the first time might appear without textures for a brief moment until the texture finished loading).


(NeroKirbus) #15

[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;563045]That was possible because the game was only loading the same 5 mercs with single loadouts for every person on the server, now you’ve got a whole load of mercs with a ton of different loadouts and skins to potentially load in. The one merc limit would either need to be able to let you swap to another available merc, again this is where the technical limitation comes in because that merc and card combination has to be loaded for everyone on the server, or leave you with the same merc for the entire match like Paladins does. Neither seem like good options at the moment.

I like how Overwatch does it where you select a loadout/skin for every merc (hero) you have in the barracks and when you load a match you’re stuck with your choices, you can’t change it in lobby. I’m not sure how feasible that would be as Unreal engine just doesn’t seem to work well with this type of option.[/QUOTE]

That makes more sense. I’m not a huge fan of the TF2/Over Watch system since it totally negates the team composition planning stage; it isn’t all that much fun when someone can easily counter pick your character mid game. While that isn’t a major issue with Dirty Bomb since mercs don’t necessarily hard counter one another unlike OW or TF2, they merely fair better against one another. A draft system would help enforce the single merc rule, since there would be a considerable planning time for team mates to coordinate.


(Runeforce) #16

Seperate skins from loadouts, problem solved. Players would define their skin before the match starts, and not be able to change it midways, but be able to change loadouts.


(AssortedStuff) #17

When you join mid game you’ll notice you’ll have to wait 15 seconds(?) in lobby before deployment. That happens to allow other players computers to load the loadouts you chose for your mercs, or they would get the “blue man” bug (just google “Dirty Bomb blue man”).
In theory it sounds it would be possible to keep changing Mercs throughout the match BUT every new choice would mean waiting extra time, affecting the pacing of the match.
And then there might be technical issues, since not every one has state of the art computers, and also limitations of the 3D engine (…but I’m not a Dev so I’m not going to speculate on this matter.)


(Szakalot) #18

while no easy solutions seem apparent, its sad to see that ranked meta is pretty stale with fragger/thunder, double aura or aura/sawbonez and one obj class.

SD mentioned drafting at one point which could also work, but without being able to switch mercs between objectives the meta would become even more stale