Bleh they sounded like a good idea especially for underpopulated factions, in reality they are getting out of hand.
I would limit them to one merc per player deployable every X minutes.

Nitratas wrote: »

at least give some AP for killing them if you intend to keep them

No by all means this is just another open door for exploiters.
If anything, just remove them from the game, guards are enough.

There should be no 'bots' in multiplayer. Remove the mercs from vendors.

Versed a team today that had a rotation of players spawning an endless wave of merc's in a keep defense. By the end they had used approx 200-250 merc's on top of having the emperor, it's a pathetic tactic.

(edit)
The mage merc also uses the sorc ultimate anti magic zone which can single handedly wipe teams, as well as 2 types of lightning aoe, unstable core (the templar reflect spell), crystal shards and they can teleport.

Censorious wrote: »

These things really have no place in PvP. They are far too many and too powerful. They give the defenders an undeserved advantage and prevent tactical play.

If an Alliance is able to bring a larger army to the field, this gives a small garrison time to hold off even a large attacking force. The zerg then has plenty of time travel to the besieged keep and wipe the attack even if the attackers have a force of similar size.
(The attack will fail because you can't fight an equal force AND the mercs.)

It becomes simply a matter of the larger army dominating the entire field. No clever plan or sequence of raids will make any difference.
The only time keeps can change hands is when one army vastly outnumbers the other for an extended period.

TLDR - it's boring as hell.

I'm not sure I entirely agree - after all, the point of the mercs' existence was tactical - it was so a smaller force had a chance at defending against greater numbers. Without that, a smaller force has zero chance at holding out over a zerg - and let's face it, that's pretty much what we're seeing these days. Big zergs, often with entire guilds guesting into a campaign. When the defending side has 20, and the attacking side has 60-80, it's pretty much over before it even starts. Because of the physical limitations in terms of where siege engines can be placed on any given wall, a smaller force simply cannot keep a larger force from breaking through the wall - especially since the newest tactic involves the larger force attacking two walls/wall and keep door simultaneously.

However, I do agree that their use has gotten out of hand - but until the invincible bug is fixed, we can't honestly determine whether the overuse is solely due to that exploit, or whether people would still be spending thousands of AP on mercs.

Before they are eliminated entirely, it might be better to look at ways of tweaking their use. One thing I can think of is to make them so they can only be placed inside a keep's territory, and code them so that they will reset if they cross the boundary of a keep's outer walls. This would prevent at least some of the current exploiting, which has people dropping mercs way outside a keep's walls. It's not a perfect solution, but at least allows them to continue to be used for defense.

To be honest, the giant zergs are a primary cause of a loss of strategy and tactics in Cyrodiil, because they can simply run through whatever defenses the other side might be using (including flaming oil, mercs, meatbags, etc.). I honestly am not sure how to fix that. It's really gotten to the point where attempting to hold a keep is nigh-pointless much of the time. There is, quite simply, nothing a smaller force can do against them.

I'm not sure how the "outnumbered buff" is currently slated to work, but what I'm hearing (which may not be accurate) has me worried. If it looks at a campaign's current home population, and determines that Alliance A is outnumbered and gives them a buff - that's not going to work. There's simply too much guesting going on. So if this is accurate, what's going to happen is that a faction that isn't really outnumbered (because of guesting guilds) is going to get more bonuses, often on top of an Emperor bonus. It's not going to be pretty. When I heard about the buff, my hope was that it would be dynamically applied - meaning it would look at the current situation at any given campaign, and note who had greater/lesser numbers, and apply a buff/remove a buff accordingly.

You are all wrong. I jsut saw 2 Dk's kill 15 of my mercenaries using talons+ standard.

They took the vendors down, THANK YOU!

I totally agree with the idea that mercenaries should be completely removed from PVP. There's guards and defenders can use oils that give them advantage already.

A dozen oil pots + Mage mercs = untakeable keep.

Adding PvE mobs for the supposed "underdog" realm is a cop-out mechanic. If anything is needed then maybe siege needs to be reworked (maybe add an "upgrade" or something for underdogs). At least if I get hit by siege I know an actual player actively attacked me, and I'm fine with that.