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In all stories, the unfailing truth about being a mercenary was that life was hard. If you were the best mercenary you had it all but if you were just average – you could expect a life of scarcity where you just barely earn a living or, more likely, spiral down into nothingness. Mercenaries recognized and accepted it as a gamble that they made in exchange for the freedom to make their own way. Making it as a mercenary was a demonstration of how exceptional you were and failing at being a mercenary was the norm.
Secondly, as Russ pointed out, Mercenary units can really sway the balance of the game based on where they want to play. As it stands now, there is minimal incentive to be a loyalist and much disincentive to be one. Likewise there is only incentive to be a mercenary. In that way the game rewards players for playing the mercenary as they can move around and play the tides of population. We have seen, time and time again, how mercenaries have shown the strength of numbers as they have moved from one side to the other. It would be silly to get rid of all mercenaries, as they do provide challenge to the game and some level of immersion but it should be that only the strong units are able to survive.
Lastly, being a mercenary is a thankless job – so no mercenary should earn a planet tag – after all they are winning for their employer not themselves (aside from the buckets of money). If a mercenary wants an MC reward they should have to earn it by winning consistently.
Basis of Change to the game:
The only reason someone wants to have a mercenary fight for them is to get results. You are paying for results, you expect results and if you don’t get results you don’t pay them. More often than not, you pay the mercenary when the job is done and you expect them to have what they need to do the job. How does that equate in MWO? You pay mercenaries to win and that's it.
Actual Changes to the game:
Buy-in. Mercenaries would have to front their initial costs of dropping in a FW match. The amount can be adjusted based on the population differences and the in-game economy but for a mercenary to drop in a game they must pay a set amount of cbills from their personal wallet (maybe unit pays a little too?). One can call this the payment fixed costs of running your own mechs, dropships etc. You have to consider, with a mercenary unit, you don’t have the resources or tax-base of a system of planets to support your warmongering ways.
For example: (This is ONLY an example.) To drop in scouting a mercenary would need to pay $50,000 cbills. To drop in FW, a Mercenary would need to pay $200,000 cbills.
Pay-out. The last people you want to piss off are the mercenaries you hire, lest they turn on you and fight for your enemies. As a consequence, when mercenaries “do the job” they must be compensated to the point where they believe that sticking with their current employer is going to be more profitable than fighting for your enemy. In this case, when a mercenary fights in a match they should get:
For a win:
Their cbill buy-in refunded.
Win payout in the amount of their buy-in
Match performance payout in the amount of 2x normal. (stuff you do in the match that earns cbills)
Experience pay-out in the amount of 2x gxp, 2x mech exp.
Payout of 1 MC. (value can be adjusted/ Invasion only?/not scouting? (This compensates for not being able to have planet tags)
For a loss:
No refund of buy-in
No payout of cbills for loss
No match performance pay-out
Normal experience payout.
No MC payout
Bidding war. Allow IS and CLAN players to contribute to a bidding war to try to entice mercenaries over to their side by letting IS and CLAN loyalists pay money into a fund that would increase the win payout for mercenaries. A specific amount of cbills would be required to raise the multiplier by 1 point. For example, if 50,000,000 cbills is raised the win multiplier would go from 2x for a win to 3x – and so on (maybe an MC bonus and/or gxp bonus?). This would give players, on the loyalist side, some control over swinging balance back in their favor. If a bid is lost, the cbills contributed are lost as well (so there is a risk associated with making a bid).
How would this look , in game? You would still have the high-caliber mercenary units doing exceptionally well, better than they are currently doing in regards to money and exp, however, there would be far more pressure for members of mercenary units and the unit itself to do well. Players who can’t make it would need to be dumped. Likewise, mediocre mercenary units would quickly find that being a mercenary is a very unprofitable way to operate. Either they would need to play more QP matches to build up their finances and skills or switch to an easier and much safer loyalist life.
The Results desired:
Were this to work properly, you would have a few, smaller, very skilled mercenary units in the game who, would still provide a massive boost to the side they are fighting for. You would find that mercenary size would decrease but their skill would have to increase. In essence, the mercenary life would become the domain of only the most skilled and/or crazy of MWO players. Gamble big/win big. Likewise mercenaries are going to have far more incentive to group up since their pay-out is going to be very dependent of the quality of people they are dropping with.
The goal to of this being to have far more people on the loyalist track providing a little more stability vis-à-vis population change while making the mercenary life the true hard-core, end-game component of FW. With this setup, if you are maintaining a 1 to 1 win/loss ratio you are not going to get anywhere as a mercenary.
Things to consider:
There would also need to be some cost to the unit itself as well as a reward to the unit – this might be a smaller fee payed out by the unit for each drop in FW as well as a refund to the unit itself for a win or something that causes a mercenary unit to continuously lose money and earn money based on the performance of its members -- but I haven't worked that out yet. Mediocre players and units would hate this with a passion as it would basically force them to choose to live broke or join a loyalist side. There would be much anguish over ‘not being able to use all my mechs’. They loyalist side ranking system would need to be improved – it is pretty easy to max out at rank 20 and once you hit that you get squat. It might also be necessary to set fixed contract duration for mercenary units, like 2 or 4 weeks to prevent exploiting the bidding system and to allow for enough time for loyalist players to contribute significantly to the bidding coffer. One of the arguments are that you are paying for the pilots and that the house should pay the costs of fighting the war (providing guns and ammo) however, you are actually paying for the pilot, the mechs and their ability to fight with them which includes ammo/dropships etc which this would account for. I am sure there are other things I have failed to consider.
But its not like PGI is going to read this and if they do not consider it.
EDIT
The reason I chose this was I thought that it would be something that PGI could easily implement.
Edited by nehebkau, 28 December 2016 - 12:09 PM.
