anonrerising

The most hilarious part to me is that often the people who "hate mercs" directly profit from them during battles. Not saying you're doing that, nonnie, but I just. Do not understand the sentiment anyway?
Money is money; mercs aren't really all that different than a PB except that they're a little more efficient and thus a little more expensive. IME they're still cheaper than AH purchases, which also happen.
If someone can enlighten me why mercs are the "bane of battles" or why they are so terrible, please feel free to do so. I am just constantly baffled.

I remember the days before organized mercs were an -official- thing. However, I don't doubt that people selling leveled fodder on the AH has been around since the birth of the site. But rather the popularization and expectancy of mercs suck to me. Mercs "force" the battling flights to jump out of their ass and accommodate to the prices they set because, as someone already mentioned, if YOU dont buy it, the OTHER flight will. When mercs became a more recognized thing that's when I -personally- realized that dom fights became less about just two flights beating the shit out of each other for pride and fun, and more just about how much other people can profit off of it. Whether there's an actual correlation in the timeline or not, I dont give a fuck, thats just the moment that dom was killed to me. It was the number 1 reason I was on the site to begin with. It put the wind out of my sails. Mercing forces a weird, unfun shift that the battling flights can not control.

And before anyone bitches at me: I know that not everyone is into dom, some people just want profit to fuel their aesthetics, others want to see how far up the fodder floor goes up for funsies, etc etc. All of these play styles are super valid! Hell, power to the dom people now who dont mind mercs at all! Especially to the people who were around before organized mercs were a thing. You are a stronger person than I and I respect that. But the overwhelming expectancy of people wanting to profit off of dom has made dom in general not fun anymore and I bunch that up with the rise of population of mercs. Also disclaimer: NO, theyre not the sole reason why dom is in a weird place now.

I'd like to point out though that I dont entirely blame this behavior especially if the battling flights don't match up with the fodder floor since not every user on the site agreed to there being a dom battle to begin with and battles tend to suck up the cheap fodder. Some people were perfectly fine with their 6.5k fodder floors before the battle bumped it up to 9kT and making it more of a pain in the ass to upkeep profit goals for that week. I don't expect everyone to play along just because two flights are battling, they want money and they're going to get it.

I hope this post provides some perspective onto why some people don't like mercs. For the record, no, I was never a merc and I never sold leveled fodder onto the AH either.

TL;DR: I understand why mercs are a thing and understand that people have different play styles but I hate how dom culture is now adays and wish we'd go back to just flights punching each other for the sake of winning the battle and not just a competition of how much oofers can profit off of them. I know they will never go away, but sometimes i wish there was a way that battling flights could just ignore them and leveled fodder on the AH and see what happens.

I remember those days too. You aren't alone.

Dom battles now are too big on profit for the masses. After everyone profited off my flight, I'm looking forward to the upcoming battle to profit off someone else

GL nonny! I hope you at least break even!

I'm a droplet. We gave folks their money. I just made a very hard limit on how much I'd spend if my own cash. Bank money and time, I spent though.

I profited using my own funds early on. I just don't have enough money to be able to throw around without a care.

yeah... honestly, i wonder how a battle with limited prizes and set payouts would go? would it disincentivise the "profit off another flight" mindset by limiting the profit to be made?

people just wouldn't contribute as much, unfortunately. hibden means people can save hundreds of (levelled) fodder indefinitely, until a profitable moment comes up. the money is what gets people to actually contribute to OOF dom things. things like the concept of "supporting" a flight and badges can help but imo the big exalters wont care otherwise.

it would come down to the power of the exalters in each flight, so a bigger/less dom-heavy flight would be at a huge disadvantage if they cant buy OOF. mercs would still privately happen, though.

Chances are Earth would take at least the top two spots...

Same Nonnie: I failed. I meant "Earth would take at least one of the top two spots", but "Post Comment"-fingers were faster than typing-brain xD

earth has grown too strong, their flight is multiplying. you will never see a marketplace bonus again

In my experience as a person who has ordered mercs for their flight in the past - The battling flights do not accomodate ridiculous prices. I've turned down a lot of offers of bad prices from mercs companies.

Not trying to devalue your perspective or anything, Anon, but as someone involved I've never once felt pressured into paying a price I didn't agree with for leveled dragons during a push.

it's all good, neither of our experiences are universal.

Back when Mercs were revving up and becoming more popular I remember turning down a lot of offers at first too and even shaking my head at the prices thinking that NO ONE of either flight would be crazy ass enough to cave into it. My paranoia told me to keep a close eye on the spreadsheets and lo and behold I saw multiple members of the other flight taking up the orders and snatching up leveled dragons and I felt that I no choice but to compete with them. I can't really blame the other flight too much as they only flipped with my flight a few times and they MIGHT have been desperate for more "oof support" or something and were willing to put up with the prices. They ended up losing anyway though.

At that point in time I was hoping that mercs wouldn't catch on because they were annoying to deal with but they did anyway. It left a bitter taste in my mouth as I saw them pop up more and more often until every flight had their own organized merc group. Oh well, that era of dom was fun while it lasted. :)

ayrt

Haha you do whatever you need to to flip, you know? I was around but not quite involved with mercs at that time. Now that every flight is in the game, it's usually easy to take your business elsewhere if a particular flight won't negotiate to a level you're okay with.

I think with dom we're just at that place that is reached in games that haven't been changed for a long time where we're too efficient. Staff should shake things, up not because their original algorithm was bad, but because we've been given too many years to optimize it.

DA

this, exactly -- we've optimized the system, which is partially why earth is ridiculously powerful now, there's a feedback loop where the heavy exalters cluster there. i'm partially dreading the dom revamp whenever it comes but mostly i'll be thrilled to figure out new strategies, it'll be a much needed breath of fresh air

People have been whining and crying about how dom is expensive since the dawn of the site. They used to complain that raffles were bad because they made the other flights feel entitled to profit off of dom. And hoo boy, you should have seen the fit people threw when public buys/fast lanes were invented.

That's why the hateboner for mercs is stupid: because they've never been some kind of aberration from how dom works. They simply happen to have developed later than most other dom strategies, and are thus the most popular one to shit on. If mercing had somehow never happened, I guarantee something else would have come along and disillusioned you instead.

The irony here is that mercs developed as a direct response to flights who agreed not to raise buy prices during dom battles. Spoiler alert: the fodder floor went up, anyway.

So the proposed solution (i.e. dom battles with fixed limits or buying agreements) is what started that whole train in the first place... because train-exalters who liked dom and normally would have sold to a buy thread couldn't find an efficient market for their leveled dragons.

Yeah! Now that you say this I bet one of the reasons merc prices were so close to PB prices in WvE is because Water and Earth actually kept their payouts proportional to the floor for most of the week.

Mercs ARE a price control strategy too. It's saying "I'm willing to pay this price for 500 dragons now without increasing our buy/raffle prices and committing to 1000s of dragons at this price."

> Mercs ARE a price control strategy too.

this is v true, allows flights to budget and plan more easily during a battle

I actually founded one of the Merc companies back then before I burned out on the site. This is why they exist. The floors were rising too high for reasonable profitability. So they sold to flights like that. And if you were reasonable, someone would buy. Whether it was the flight or someone set on a raffle prize.

Came back later to find the person I handed it off to sort of rolled it into the flight's Dom organization. Which actually works far better than what I had.

AYRT:
I see you, but I am reasonably sure that the shift in dom culture happened way after Mercs became a thing. As in: my flight's Merc group was created in '15 according to the forum thread. I joined in '17. Dom culture shifted (from what I can tell) radically after hibden was released. That was in 18?

So that makes it at least three years after Mercs became a thing. Granted, I didn't experience the ~before times~ but honestly? Dom rn is a far cry from what Dom was when I joined. And tbh Mercs usually are not the ones who empty out their hibden. Hibdens get emptied into PBs and Raffles. Mercs train during the week and are thus, just like back then, limited by how many levels they can pump out during the battle.

BINGO

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

ayrt

AYRT

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie

Re: Not gonna lie