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It has very much to do with game balance.

Just post what you used for Spy/Merc

Spy

-Smoke grenade-
-Chaff grenade/Alarm snare-
-Sticky camera-
-Heartbeat sensor-

Merc

-Frag grenade-
-Mines-
-Spy trap-
-Gas mask-

Oh, and if you could post your skill level from Beginner/Medium/Pro, that'd help too.

I think I invented Dev-bait.

One thing that always annoyed me in CT was how shitty the balance was.

Gas mask is necessary out of an imbalanced relationship, taser is useless unless you're fighting two aggro spies, and only then is it mildly useful, camnet is simply bad because it relies on the map for balance rather than being inherently balanced, backpack is just a boost for good gadgets, spy trap is pretty much the only balanced option, with mines and grenades being overpowered.

On the other side we have spies, with flashbangs being useless (only working on one vision for 3 seconds), heartbeat and spy bullet sharing the same ability, the only difference being spy bullet is usable during hacking, and heart beat goes through walls. Smoke grenade blocks 2/3 vision modes and slows down mercs, and stickies can instantly knockout a merc. Chaff are only useful for mines placed in a fashion which makes them too hard to target, and they will be useless when they cannot go through walls. Camo acts as an ambush tool, but is really obvious unless the merc is in a hurry, or you're in a spot where the merc doesn't look too hard, hence making it a very niche tool and therefore weak.

Merc loadouts:

Frag grenades
Mines
-Gadget-
Gas mask

Spy loadout:

-Gadget-
-Gadget-
Sticky Camera
-Spy bullet/Heartbeat-

Now, how has project stealth planned to avoid these imbalances?

2 posts I made a while back, reposted for your viewing pleasure.

Gadget Design Theory

Spy vs. Merc gameplay is based on 2 different teams.

The attacking team is the Spies, who lack the direct firepower required to overpower the Mercs, so instead must use their acrobatics and their indirect combat abilities to secure objectives, or kill the Mercs

The Mercs are the defending team, who have direct firepower, but the mobility of the Spies.

The Spies job is to evade and escape the Mercs, and complete the objectives, while the Mercs have 2 possibilities, either kill the Spies, or prevent them from capturing the objectives for the allotted time period.

This makes thinking up gadgets much easier. It means the Spy gadgets must do one of the following:

Assist in detection (Heartbeat sensor, Spy bullet, Spy camera)
Assist in evasion (Camouflage, Alarm snare, Spy camera)
Assist in escape (Smoke, Flash and Chaff grenades)
Assist in capturing of objectives (None)

While for the Merc gadgets, they must:

Assist in detection (Flare, Spy trap, Camnet)
Preform area denial (Mines, Spy trap)
Assist in combat (Frag grenade, Taser)
Assist in survival (Backpack, Gas mask)

Gas mask is a special one, as it is purely a counter for 2 spy gadgets, both of which are overpowering without gas mask. Meaning that the Merc must always take it, regardless of if the spy takes one of the 2 gadgets.

All gadgets must fall into one of these categories, and must be able to compete with, but not beat them, in their abilities.

The following is simply my idea on how to fix the gas mask.

I propose that as a gadget choice, Gas mask be removed, and be added as a permanent ability of the Merc, preventing this slot from being wasted.

Gadget ideas

Merc:

The EMP mine disables the spy's visions for x seconds, disables the spy's gadgets for y seconds, and depletes his energy bar. It has a larger explosive radius than proximity mines, and is triggered by laser or proximity, depending on what the devs choose. This does not affect passive security, but does affect Mercs.

The C4 mine can be thrown a short distance and sticks to any wall. It is manually detonated by Mercs, and has a delay of x seconds. Its blast radius is larger than a proximity mine's. It is visible under thermal.

With the addition of these two mines, I recommend that Mercs be limited to using 3/5 mines.

Spy:

The EMI suit disables all nearby equipment including mines, and tracking devices (even attached ones), for as long as they are within the radius of the suit. The suit constantly drains energy while active, able to remain active for x seconds. As soon as objects leave the radius of the suit, they reactivate instantly. This also has the side effect of making a massive EMF field. Might be deactivated if hacking objectives if devs choose to make it so.

Active Countermeasure is a device that negates the detection abilities of the Merc. When equipped and selected it increases its effectiveness when there is more lighting, forcing the Merc to use his regular vision. Under near total darkness, this device blocks detection from x meters away. In the light, it stops detection from y meters away. When activated it constantly drains energy, lasting the spy z seconds and renders the spy completely invisible to motion tracking, EMF vision, laser, and spy tracker. However, the spy cannot pull out his sticky shocker.

Announcer broke the rules. Penalty was DEATH.

Ha I tricked the devs into coming out! Now, master ball!

"You do not have enough Magic Power to summon the developers." - Announcer

Damn it, I should have wandered around outside and leveled up. Oh well, at least the announcer got here.

I understand where you are coming from but strategies become obsolete as people get to know the maps. If the developers attempt to create too much room for strategies it will be very hard to counter. If the dev's make too few, the game will be very straight forward.

Just like Rambo said, Go is easy to learn, hard to master. It's hard to master because of all of the strategies. When you allow more strategies, you allow the game to live longer, because there's more things to master. A game ceases to be fun when your options become limiting.

I'm not saying your ideas for gadgets are wrong but they are not needed as it makes things too complicated and most of the gadgets won't be used after a while as X gadget and Y gadget are required etc..

If there are 4 specific gadgets that every spy will use, the devs failed. It means that the devs were unsuccessful in balancing all of the gadgets. I have faith that they will be capable of balancing the gadgets they make. Again, looking at Team Fortress 2, they have 9 balanced classes, each with balanced alternate weapons, and even noobs aren't confused, even with the lack of tutorials.

Devs, I summon you from the depths of your basement! Read this thread!

the more gadgets you have in a game, the more facts a new player has to learn, the harder it is to balance it all out and the more guessing games (which replaces reasoning in same part as you don't have a stable starting ground for your assumptions) you get. at least to me, a game like Go with incredibly easy rules (but still incredible depth and more strategic possibilities than atoms in our galaxy!) is the ideal for a beautiful game: easy to get into, hard to master. besides, too many gadget choices distract from the core gameplay, just like minigames for hacking door panels and other crap ideas would do.
don't get me wrong, i like lot's of your ideas a lot. but it's really time to start thinking about a second game mode, maybe even more like scda. you just can't pack every single idea into one game mode and expect it to work.

Looking at any FPS, the most basic of games, you'll see way more weapons then you will gadgets. And really, look at Team Fortress 2. The game has 9 completely different classes, but you can play every single one decently within the first hour. Gadgets are a method of making the core gameplay more involving. For example, Merc is tired of spies running in, hacking and escaping when he leaves. So he puts down a mine. Spy uses his chaff grenade to disable it allowing him to pass. Then you can get into combinations of gadgets, like smoke and chaff to blind a merc and trap him, or using alarm snare and sticky cam to gas him. More gadgets creates more combinations, which creates more strategy, making more gameplay.

EMI suit is similar to a chaff grenade, and Active countermeasures is the opposite of camouflage, it allows you to be seen with normal vision, but prevents special visions from seeing you.

Pulse mines create a more accurate, less effective alternative to proximity mines, and C4s allow an alternative to frag grenades, difficult to predict and dodge, but must be pre-placed.

Really, there's no point to removing gadgets, as if these act as replacements, I've made no changes to the game.

It doesn't matter how many gadgets are available in-game. Because in the end people will outweight gadgets over another and end up with 4 required ones. If you don't have those 4 you'll be called a "noob" and needs to "L2P", also, switching one of the 4 gadgets for a random one to try to be unique will end up gimping yourself in every possible way you can think of.

Chaos Theory, Merc: Frag, Mine, Mask, Backpack, Camnet.
All used gadgets.
Spy: Smoke, Flash, Chaff, Cam, Heartbeat, Spy bullet
All used gadgets.

You can have more than 4 gadgets if they promote different strategies.

My vote would be to just make 4 gadgets for each side, to avoid unneccesary time waste of outweighting gadgets and also to make it easier for new people to get into the game while avoiding them being called "noob" for picking the wrong gadgets.

That means that each side is limited to the few strategies that that set of gadgets allows. Trying to simplify the game so noobs can play is good, making the game easier to play without removing strategies is better.

Now it's just not very useful. Nobody's gonna waste an gadget slot on the ability to crouch walk and not get picked up by MT. The beating EMF is pretty useless, and the laser's never going to come up. Not sure what you mean by spy tracker though.

Spy tracker is the spy trap tracking thing. Also, changed again.

And what do you think of the other gadgets?

Active Countermeasure is a device that negates the detection abilities of the Merc. When equipped and selected it increases it's effectiveness when there is more lighting, forcing the Merc to use his regular vision. Under near total darkness, this device blocks detection from x meters away. In the light, it stops detection from y meters away. When activated it constantly drains energy, lasting the spy z seconds and renders the spy completely invisible to motion tracking, EMF vision, laser, and spy tracker.

Holy shit aggro spy paradise.

Ok, how about now?

I accept your logic, but reject your premise. In a strategy based game, opening up more tools for strategy is good. This isn't rock-paper-scissors, where 8 way would lead to an obvious advantage based off of luck.
A base of standardized weaponry and equipment ensures that the minor advantage created by a gadget can be overwhelmed by skill and strategy. Also, you've failed to comment on the gadgets at all, and explain why there can only be a certain amount of gadgets.

Merc:

The EMP mine disables the spy's visions for x seconds, disables the spy's gadgets for y seconds, and depletes his energy bar. It has a larger radius than proximity mines, and is triggered by laser or proximity, depending on what the devs choose. This does not affect passive security, but does affect Mercs.

The C4 mine can be thrown a short distance and sticks to any wall. It is manually detonated by Mercs, and has a delay of x seconds. It's blast radius is larger than a proximity mine's. It emits a red light, and is visible under thermal.

With the addition of these two mines, I recommend that Mercs be limited to using 3/5 mines.

Spy:

The EMI suit disables all nearby equipment including mines, and tracking devices (even attached ones), for as long as they are within the radius of the suit. The suit constantly drains energy while active, able to remain active for x seconds. As soon as objects leave the radius of the suit, they reactivate instantly. This also has the side effect of making a massive EMF field.

Active Countermeasure is a device that negates the detection abilities of the Merc. When equipped and selected it increases it's effectiveness when there is more lighting, forcing the Merc to use his regular vision. Under near total darkness, this device blocks detection from x meters away. In the light, it stops detection from y meters away. When activated it constantly drains energy, lasting the spy z seconds and renders the spy completely invisible to motion tracking, EMF vision, laser, and spy tracker. However, the spy cannot pull out his sticky shocker.

If you intend to post, post intelligently. If you disagree, disagree with reason, and try to fix the problem.

This is bad. (Wrong)

This is bad because of x reason. (Good)

There are two ways that a spy ends up in front of a merc. Either the spy made a mistake, and ended up in front of the merc, or the merc manage to find and close the distance to the spy. Both scenarios should punish the spy for his inadequacy. The spy should not be able to avoid punishment by quick-time event. To remove the consequence means you can replace a strategic aspect of Spy v Merc with reflexes, similar to CS, or Halo.

Why would anyone care about the visuals? The only thing that matters is the moment it's actually being used, and to indicate this we already have the breathing sound.

He means will there be a method of detecting whether the merc is wearing the gas mask or not.