Mercs?

There's a big discussion on the diii.net forums about mercs in D3 and it got me wondering, are there gonna be mercs in PoE? I know they've said there will be pets, but those are bought at the game store so I assume they don't affect gameplay.

Personally, I don't like mercs. I like the idea of being a one man army. In D2 you could get away without using mercs in normal and nightmare, but hell is so difficult that you can use all the help you can get. In torchlight you have to choose a pet and in some areas on the hardest difficulty I would constantly be told your pet is fleeing. Unfortunately he always returned. I would just rather do all of the killing myself.

I guess since you can always play with other people then there isn't really a need to have a merc.

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and the fact that you can really beef up your attack skills .

you can always raise some zombie buddies :)

I voted "yes".
But I have to say that I wouldnt like to see each player with his mercenary.
If mercenary are part of the game, I would prefer if they were temporaly allies.
You pay them to fallow you up for one instance and after that one, they leave.
Moreover, the number of mercenaries in cities would be limited, so not every player could hire some.
For example, in on city, there would be a pool of ~15 mercenaries.

In fact I wouldn't want mercs in the game but it won't be bad if they get into the game. I think I should choose "don't care" option.

But it would be bad if the mercs limit the player-cap for parties.

No. As Oasis said, I like the idea of being a one man army. Beside, if you at GGG don't mind increasing traffic, do it with something else, like customized sounds.

Don't fight competition with almost the same content as theirs, you'll LOSE!

EDIT:

Poll looks nice! I really like animated bars.

I kinda like having a merc (although I never used them in D2, because they die in PvP and I couldn't be bothered to resurrect them). If he isn't too much of a bother to keep alive, I like it if he assisted me in some ways that my character isn't made for. I kinda hate buffing altogether, so maybe I could let my merc do that instead.
Or maybe some people have fun in making a pure fire witch and want their merc to kill the fire immunes or whatever.

I voted no, lore-wise you have been exiled to the island alone and it's inhabitants aren't exactly a friendly bunch that will accompany and assist you as you fight monsters.

More importantly for me is gameplay-wise would the game be balanced around having the mercenary or not? If it's balanced on not having one, hiring one will make the game easy, if you balance it around having one, people who don't enjoy using mercenaries will struggle.

I'm sure if they were in the ai would be decent, maybe even work with items and skills you equip them with (if you can equip them like other games).

Let's see how the poll turns out anyway

I say forget about it for now. Leave the possibility for future expansions. After all expansions need new feautures also. Here are some points what mercs would bring to PoE.

1. Pathfinding needs lots of work. Additional of mercs will definetely delay the release date.

2. Player-cap for parties should probably be lowered.

3. The game should be balanced with mercs factor in mind. I mean game economy, itemization, skills and combat. More time-consuming.

4. Mercs wouldn't fit into the lore perfectly with the current story.

5. They shouldn't die quickly and they shouldn't be overpowered at both pve and pvp. Hard to balance in the current schedule.

6. Horror-aspect of the game would take a hit.

Edit: All of these points become more important considering only 6/11 voted "Yes". It's hard for players to not vote "Yes" to an additional feature (especially if it's an opitonal). It only shows us mercs aren't that important.