Pets & Horses Improvement To Mercenary System

The reason I chose to tag this "Pets & Horses" is because I plan to make Mercenaries have a similar system to how players spawn horses. Please read through the entire suggestion before making comments and voting as I spent a lot of time and thought into this. I may make a summary for this if this suggestion gets popular enough. This is my first suggestion in Wynncraft so I hope you guys like it :D

Currently Mercenaries can be very derpy from beating up the cats at Almuj to stopping to smell the roses while you're already 100 blocks away. I understand that it is different to make an AI that can follow a player perfectly and have a complex algorithm that chooses what to prioritize between killing enemies and sticking by the player, which is why I propose a way to allow players to have better control over their Mercenaries that will be easy to use while replicating already existing mechanics which means less coding for the GMs as they can reuse some stuff.

How to Obtain a Mercenary
Obtaining Mercenaries will be just like buying a horse. I recommend that barracks be placed in all major cities (just like the one in Detlas) and a Contractor NPC will be placed in each one to sell a Mercenary. There you will be able to purchase spawn eggs labeled Warrior Mercenary Lv 10, Archer Mercenary Lv 10, Assassin Mercenary Lv 10, etc. The level of the available Mercenaries will vary from town to town just like potions.

How to use a Mercenary
Once you have purchased a Mercenary spawn egg simply right click the ground with it and the Mercenary will appear just like a horse saddle. While the Mercenary is spawned the egg will still remain in the inventory. To despawn the Mercenary simply right click the ground with the egg and it will disappear. There must be no aggressive mobs within a 5-10 block radius (just like a teleport scroll) for the Mercenary to successfully despawn.

Mercenary Death Mechanics
If you Mercenary dies in combat it will disappear there will be a cooldown before you can respawn it again that gets progressively longer if it dies repeatedly (60 seconds ->120 seconds -> 180 seconds etc.); however, you can spend 1 SP to revive it by right clicking on the ground twice:
1st right click: Your Warrior Mercenary still has 100 seconds left before you can respawn. (Right Click again to spend 1 SP to revive it)
2nd right click: Your Warrior Mercenary has been revived! (You have lost 1 SP)

The progression of the cooldown will reset after 1 Minecraft day (20 minutes).

Other Mercenary Mechanics
Mercenary Contracts
True to how Mercenaries work in reality, they are only with you for a limited amount of time. You can pay for a 24 hr contract or a Week-long contract. Once the contract expires, the spawn egg will be removed from the player's inventory. The amount of time left will be shown in the egg's description.

Mercenary Quests
Just like with horses there will be a quest requirement before Mercenaries can be bought from a town. Each town will have a requirement as you must gain the trust and respect of the town before you can purchase a mercenary. Here are some examples:
Ragni - "King's Recruit"
Detlas - A level 10-20 quest similar to "Sister City"
Nemract - "The Mercenary"
Troms - "The Passage"
Temple of Legends - "Temple of Legends"

Trading Mercenaries
You can't. This is to prevent Lv 70 players buying Lv 70 Mercenaries from Cinfras and giving them to Lv 10 players and scamming players with Mercenaries that have contracts that are about to expire.

Mercenary Requirements
Each Mercenary will have a Level requirement and Quest requirement. You must be at least the same level of greater and have done the required Mercenary quest.

Optional Mechanics
Spawn item - The item to spawn the Mercenary could also be a weapon to represent the type of Mercenary or a piece of paper that represents the actual contract.
Cloning - For a high price and after a hard quest players could purchase Mercenaries that mimic the stats of the player.
Riding - Players could ride a Mercenary and Mobs would prioritize the Mercenary over the player. The Mercenary's speed would depend on the class.

Thank you for reading this suggestion! :D If you liked this suggestion give a like and vote to show your support! <3 If you have any questions, concerns, or any sort of input feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to get to you :)

 

Anything in general that improves Mercenary helps. YAYYY

 

I think soul points is a bit much for spawning a mob that won't help as much as your soul points. Why not add a resting time in which the mercenary must take a break and regenerate its health before going back into action once more? Also, a spawn egg would be a bit awkward for spawning a villager. It would be cool if a texture could be added to make up for it. Maybe a villager's face or something.

 

Well that's why the cost is only 1 SP. Also, the cooldown already acts as a resting time. You'd only pay 1 SP if you somehow got a 5 minute cooldown and you really need to spawn the Mercenary.

For the texture check out Spawn Item under Optional Mechanics.

 

I still think 1 sp is still too much. It costs as much as a tp scroll and is more useful imo.

 

Well again you don't NEED to use 1 SP to revive the Mercenary. As I mentioned you could just wait one minute and your Mercenary will be fully rested. To me it makes sense as a player revival requires 2 SP so a Mercenary forced revival would be 1 SP. Soul Points would make sense with the feel of the too as it's like the player gives a portion of their soul to revive a team member rather than stuffing Emeralds into a death body and hoping that does something. The only other thing that has the same feel would be 1 LE because LE is a "medicine" in Jungle Fever, but obviously that's a bit expensive. If you can think of something else that fits into the feel of the game and is a fair cost that is always available feel free to suggest.

 

yes pls i want em

 

Can you better explain mercenaries to me? This is the first I've really heard about Mercs.

 

So this is like a microtransaction on games. You either pay your premium currency to get something done instantly or wait.

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Ally mobs that follow you around

 

In a way, yes. Scrolls work the same way too. You could either walk from Ragni to Almuj (roughly 5-20 minutes depending on horse, walk speed, etc.) or use a scroll and a soul point. If you think about it, it seems strange that teleporting would be related to a person's soul at all, but it is a good balancing mechanic.

 

You throw your soul in the direction of the town and hope it works

 

The mercs would have to be pretty powerful then. Possibly customizable. Ill give a half vote.

 

The main focus of this is only the general system than the actual Mercenaries themselves. I'll make a follow-up thread focusing on Mercenaries if this receives enough attention from Mods and GMs as I would talk about how they would work with my suggested system.

 

10/10 would bang buy

 

@0Patrick0 please elaborate why you felt this is a bad idea. I appreciate all input and if anything isn't to your liking I want to fix that so I can make a final suggestion that appeals to as many Wynncraftians as possible :)

EDIT: Yay you changed your vote c:

 

Anyone else wish to give any input? Any sort of comment helps! :)

 

Bumping. It would be great if more people responded so that this idea could get more attention and grow :D

 

I don't think the AI will be too much of a problem since wynncraft staff should still have the AI of old pets somewhere.
(For those who don't know, wynncraft used to have pets that attacked enemies.) If this is still in game I look stupid now but oh-well, you should get what I mean than.
And otherwise they could perhaps take the AI from enemies and chance what they're attacking.
(Which'd make it a whole bunch more interesting because archers would have an AI that's different from warriors, if there should be class-typed mercenaries at all.)
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Constructive criticism:
I personally think the contract itself would be the best spawning item.
I also think that the barracks should be placed a little outside of each major town, not inside of them. Since most people aren't quite fond of mercenaries and therefor wouldn't like it in their town.
I also feel like such a contract should act like a quest item. (You can't drop it.) You already said it should be untradeable and I definitely agree with that.
To me it also seems a bit odd that the cooldown stacks and I'd make it so that you can only spawn the mercenary whenever you're not near any mobs, with perhaps always a 5 minute cooldown after the mercenary died. (Still with the SPs to make him come back immediately, this actually makes sense to me since you're basically giving him a life.)
Talking about the soul points: Wouldn't it make more sense if it took 2 SP to revive them early? since you lose two when you die and you're basically making them come back from the dead.
And last on the criticism list: I believe that the riding ability would be quite op IF people would be able to attack whilst riding, if it's just like riding a horse (A horse that'd attack enemies that is.) I wouldn't think it'd be unbalanced.
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extra ideas:
Perhaps change the type of mercenary by the town that they come from.
(human towns would have human mercenaries, villager towns villager mercenaries. Etc.(In this case I'd say each villager class has a different profession to make them stand out as the class that they are.)
Since you brought horses into this, I came up with a 'great' idea, mercenary breeding.
With only like 10% success chance and if the breed fails, both mercenaries used will be gone.
Yet if it succeeds you end up with a 'slave'
This slave should have the same stats as the worst of the two mercenaries used would have and perhaps a little less health, but would not go away after X amount of time.

Since I said that these items should be acting like quest items I think we should also include a 'slaver' that'd buy those slaves from us if we ever grew tired of 'em and didn't want them in our inventory/bankspace. (I know you can get quest items away by putting them in the daily rewards screen or looting chests but still.)


But even without anything I just said, I still think this idea is absolutely and utterly amazing, even though slaves most probably won't be included. ;p



Yeah, slaves just came into my mind, might work. Doubt it

 

First off thanks for taking the time to give so much feedback! :)

"I personally think the contract itself would be the best spawning item."
Yea that's why I included it in the Optional Mechanics. I decided to have the main thing as a spawn egg as it may be easier to use a spawn egg, and since it's it own unique item players wouldn't confused them with other items, such as trying to spawn mercenary and ending up teleporting to Detlas.

"I also think that the barracks should be placed a little outside of each major town, not inside of them. Since most people aren't quite fond of mercenaries and therefor wouldn't like it in their town."
Are you speaking from a lore perspective? I just based off the Barrack location from the current one in Detlas. Mercenaries are simply soldiers for hire, but it does carry a somewhat negative connotation. The location of the Contractor NPC will reflect the views of the town. With Deltas, it's a major trading city full or a variety of people so it's more open to Mercenaries and places the Barracks within the central area. With Troms, it is a very rigid and conservative place with strict codes so the Mercenary life is shunned by public officials and Mercenaries are found outside of Town rather than within it's walls.

"I also feel like such a contract should act like a quest item. (You can't drop it.) You already said it should be untradeable and I definitely agree with that."
Well you can drop horses, so I felt that there was no reason to force people to hold onto their Mercenaries. In reality, Mercenaries can be let go at any point if the buyer chooses so and in game players may get rid of mercenaries contracts that are about to expire or if they are unhappy with Mercenary they bought.

"To me it also seems a bit odd that the cooldown stacks and I'd make it so that you can only spawn the mercenary whenever you're not near any mobs, with perhaps always a 5 minute cooldown after the mercenary died. (Still with the SPs to make him come back immediately, this actually makes sense to me since you're basically giving him a life.)
Talking about the soul points: Wouldn't it make more sense if it took 2 SP to revive them early? since you lose two when you die and you're basically making them come back from the dead."
Well the cooldown is representing the mercenary recovering. So at first it takes a minute, but he just healed so if he dies again then it'll take longer. Perhaps it will be similar to Pokemon where your partners don't actually die when at 0 hp, but rather faint. This way the 1 SP makes sense as the Mercenary didn't die, but instead is completely out of energy and at the brink of death. 1 SP would be enough to instantly fully restore him. I'll change it from dying to fainting in my original post to incorporate this when I have a moment.

"I believe that the riding ability would be quite op IF people would be able to attack whilst riding, if it's just like riding a horse (A horse that'd attack enemies that is.) I wouldn't think it'd be unbalanced."
Yea I was thinking towards the latter, but didn't want to get into too much detail about it as it wasn't really a main focus of mine plus my main ideas are already a lot to incorporate into the game already.

"Perhaps change the type of mercenary by the town that they come from.
(human towns would have human mercenaries, villager towns villager mercenaries. Etc.(In this case I'd say each villager class has a different profession to make them stand out as the class that they are.)"
Well each town sort of has their own mercenaries but nothing too unique yet, It'd be similar to potion merchants and how different levels of potions are available at different towns.

"Slave stuff"
Ehh... I'm not too sure about that one. It honestly sounds like a downgrade to go from Mercenary to slave and the morals behind it are awful. You "breed" people and if they have a child you capture it to be your slave? So, not entirely open to this idea.

Again thanks for taking the time to give a ton of feedback! It means a lot :D

 

First off thanks for taking the time to give so much feedback! :)

"I personally think the contract itself would be the best spawning item."
Yea that's why I included it in the Optional Mechanics. I decided to have the main thing as a spawn egg as it may be easier to use a spawn egg, and since it's it own unique item players wouldn't confused them with other items, such as trying to spawn mercenary and ending up teleporting to Detlas.


yeah, that would be a problem I guess. Perhaps the contract could be a retextured thing that looks like a map with ~s on it. (those ~ things)


"I also think that the barracks should be placed a little outside of each major town, not inside of them. Since most people aren't quite fond of mercenaries and therefor wouldn't like it in their town."
Are you speaking from a lore perspective? I just based off the Barrack location from the current one in Detlas. Mercenaries are simply soldiers for hire, but it does carry a somewhat negative connotation. The location of the Contractor NPC will reflect the views of the town. With Deltas, it's a major trading city full or a variety of people so it's more open to Mercenaries and places the Barracks within the central area. With Troms, it is a very rigid and conservative place with strict codes so the Mercenary life is shunned by public officials and Mercenaries are found outside of Town rather than within it's walls.

Yup, exactly what I was talking about.

"I also feel like such a contract should act like a quest item. (You can't drop it.) You already said it should be untradeable and I definitely agree with that."
Well you can drop horses, so I felt that there was no reason to force people to hold onto their Mercenaries. In reality, Mercenaries can be let go at any point if the buyer chooses so and in game players may get rid of mercenaries contracts that are about to expire or if they are unhappy with Mercenary they bought.



"To me it also seems a bit odd that the cooldown stacks and I'd make it so that you can only spawn the mercenary whenever you're not near any mobs, with perhaps always a 5 minute cooldown after the mercenary died. (Still with the SPs to make him come back immediately, this actually makes sense to me since you're basically giving him a life.)
Talking about the soul points: Wouldn't it make more sense if it took 2 SP to revive them early? since you lose two when you die and you're basically making them come back from the dead."
Well the cooldown is representing the mercenary recovering. So at first it takes a minute, but he just healed so if he dies again then it'll take longer. Perhaps it will be similar to Pokemon where your partners don't actually die when at 0 hp, but rather faint. This way the 1 SP makes sense as the Mercenary didn't die, but instead is completely out of energy and at the brink of death. 1 SP would be enough to instantly fully restore him. I'll change it from dying to fainting in my original post to incorporate this when I have a moment.

Yes, fainting would make more sense. Seems like a good change.

I just thought of the slave stuff 'cuz I'm one of those people that want everything all the time. And slaves make the most sense as people that work for you 24/7 ;p (Could've said 'volunteer', but I kinda like the idea of an army of slaves doing my dirty work. (In games that is))