What The Next RE Mercenaries Should Have

[@zomaskingdom]

Hey man. I'm typing this up as I watch. I'm in each Mercs community, and keep up with their metas. 2:53 Tribal Sheva is actually considered the worst character in OG RE5 Mercs. She's bottom two in United. She doesn't have a primary weapon to gets melees with, meaning she is completely ineffective to getting scores in the long run. I recommend watching Dadadamoon for optimal Wesker play, or NoTxPrince if you want to see effective HM Chris gameplay for Reunion/United. Both are the best characters for their versions. 3:23 This isn't accurate either. Just like RE5 Reunion/United, this game cut down on how much time gave you compared to 3D and RE5. The meta is literally counter everything, or in the case of No Mercy, you grenade glitch everything for massive time gain. No player in any meta I know of considers this good game design. Even actual RE6 players. There is never a situation you don't want to counter, leading it to being far more one dimensional than you give it credit for. 6:14 That is a very contentious statement to say the least. All of the top RE4R Mercs players Apexu, JBthePro1, and nade all hate various aspects of it despite sinking hundreds or thousands of hours into it. The main issues being how the meta is parry everything, then just headshot all enemies. Or the unfair phantom range and lack of i-frames leading to being easily stunlocked. Other players, like R0Death or NoTxPrince, will tell you it's completely inferior to other games. OG RE4 veteran, Sarcosuchas, also hates this mode. He's gone on record saying he is glad he hasn't sunk a ton of time into learning it because of how awful it is. I have to agree with him. 9:00 I don't agree with removing a meta. No matter what you are going to have one because naturally people will figure out how to do so. And by doing so you screw over a separate part of the player base. And to make such a meta, you will have to normalize gameplay to such a degree that will likely lead to repetitive gameplay, thus killing the game off and defeating the point of the video. 9:40 Suggesting Capcom normalize melees has already been done in RE6. Even then characters would still be separated in terms of efficiency by virtue of having fast and/or wider melees for multi kills, which has always been a staple of Mercs games where melees give time. 10:25 Suggesting we keep a wide AoE melee for multi kills would inherently create a divide no matter what. Characters with wider multi kills would inherently lead to a meta using that character. That defeats the point of removing a meta. 11:00 Strongly agree with this statement here even in a hypothetical situation. CDGs and counters never should have been +7 and +10. They should have been other options for the characters that gave +5 rather than being the meta. 16:50 Yeah. Those should remain unchanged. I do make RE5 mods myself. I don't like how the crystals were changed in Reunion. 30:45 Been playing 3D since launch day back in 2011. The different loadouts definitely help change things up and make different strats for characters viable.

[@randohawkins]

@zomaskingdom appreciate your feedback. I haven't kept up to date with much of mercs since before the plandemic. I should have specified in duos sheeva and wesker were meta for the longest, as sheeva would save combos while wesker would run. Having played again more she is useless for high score solo, 100%. RE6 did devolve to counters only for sure, I was simply saying that the mode had versatility to be the best Mercenaries but failed due to the one dimensional meta. The same is basically stated for 4R. I love the responsiveness and utility characters have, but that also means enemies have more unpredictable and frustrating actions as well, which I allude to by saying the game mode cheats. Again, it had the potential to be the best Mercenaries but was handicapped by one dimensional metas. Which all lead to me making the video in general. That being said, what I outline is a way to minimize the potential for a meta at all. Yeah it may be impossible, but if all characters have one sweep move and one individual attack, who all get the same time bonus, that's 75% of the problem solved. Weapons of course can skew that percentage, but the core scoring components are there for everyone so whether you play for fun or competitive, you should be able to play as anyone and be successful. And if that does lead to repetitive boring gameplay, that's why we have the incentive of new outfits with different loadouts, and customizable loadouts after spending enough time playing. This game is forcing to become better and efficient, so play everyone and get a baseline knowledge, and then you are rewarded to play in any capacity you choose to sustain your own engagement, ya know?

[@zomaskingdom]

The meta has always been dual Wesker as far as I'm aware of. I was told once by sixpockets that Sheva has had no more than four mains throughout RE5's lifespan. Definitely agree both RE4R and RE6 have one dimensional metas. They're both on my list of the worst Mercs ever made. I don't agree with minimizing everything because that takes away gameplay diversity. There will always be an inherent divide between characters in a game, whether it's something like kit or the way a stage is designed. Like within the last few months we found that HUNK completely dominates on island in RE4R due to the way his kit works, but also because how tight the stage is when going for scores. It's the perfect mix for him. If we did that, then it would not only take away potential depth, but even for players who aren't score nerds like I am, it can remove potential stuff they might find fun to do on occasion. I get where you're coming from, but this will still always lead to a divide no matter what. As an example, in 3D, the three best loadouts belong to Krauser, HUNK, and Barry. Most of the cast can use these three to varying degrees of success. HUNK and Krauser loadouts give Barry viability in the game as one of the best flash spam characters, and one of the two best knife characters due to his deathblow. Claire can't make use of either of them because of how badly her melees are implemented. Rebecca also has more knife reach than Claire does, meaning Claire struggles more than the shortest character in the game for something so fundamental for the meta. These customizable loadouts will have much more impact as a result assuming we normalize character kits, which means there will be a still be a meta there, but with more emphasis on the weapons like how RE4R handles.

[@BlueJayWaters]

@zomaskingdom that last point is actually why I didn't talk much about Mercs 3D. Despite a decent roster, customizable loadouts lead to only 3 characters ever being played, which were already the three main characters being played because of their kit. But removing issues like melee range, damage output, and then making melee damage flat and giving both a wave and individual attack enables versatility and removes most of the issues having custom loadouts in mercs 3d had, but still provides the entertainment aspect

[@zomaskingdom]

@@BlueJayWaters You'd be pleasantly surprised to know 6/8 of the roster was viable for scores. They still are. The only characters who aren't viable are Jill and Claire. Claire is legitimately bad (one of the worst Mercs characters ever), but Jill isn't bad in the game. It's because she has no niche. With how much the skill and loadout system offers the characters, Jill unfortunately doesn't have anything to stand out. Nothing to really offer I guess is the more apt term. She is usable in the non-L7 format though. We have individual leaderboards for characters. In fact we have the highest non-Wesker WR on 4-4 with her and Chris at 998K atm. We're going for the "Jillion" this year. I don't agree with the removal of options. What makes a game more fun is the ability to tune it how you want, rather than taking away. This affects everyone regardless of how their intent to play the game is. More options is always a good thing, provided it's handled properly. Plus there are always ways to make it so a meta doesn't stagnate. Character leaderboards being one good example. It would promote people to play the cast rather than just stick to one or a handful of options. I think this was one of the few good things RE4R did imho. We know how characters stack up against one another, but there's always an incentive to even use Krauser on stages to improve your score with him.

[@randohawkins]

@zomaskingdom I feel there is either a lack of understanding or a lack of communication, because I'm not taking away any mechanics. We're adding versatility and narrowing the skill gap in the process. The only thing being taken away is RE5s abundance of melee moves, mayhem, and the possibility of a meta that forces one play style such as counter bonus time and parry/mayhem usage.

[@zomaskingdom]

@@randohawkins That's what I'm trying to get at. By taking away the melees, everything becomes stripped down and simplified. Whereas if we kept them, it could add actual depth to the gameplay. Plus I like seeing characters with more to their personality in how they fight. We're on the same page about the one dimensional gameplay. It shouldn't come out like RE6 or RE4R, but I don't like removing tools that gives a character more ways to approach situations like RE5 allows.