Mercenaries Grind, Grind & more Grind

Community Discussion
1

Mercenaries is way way too grindy. The devs absolutely do not have the amount grind to progress ratio tuned correctly, which is going to doom mercenaries to a much lower player base than it might otherwise enjoy. This is bound to be reflected in PvP queue times as time passes—as players begin abandoning this mode.

My opinion comes from a player who tends not to be put off by a lot of grinding to achieve goals which make a game a lot more fun to play in the end. The proof of this is that I am still here trying to build a couple strong PvP comps, despite how off putting the grind is— this response is from someone who has bought over 90 packs with gold.

I saw Rarran say (without much conviction in his voice) that he thought Mercenaries had the right amount of grind to it, but that opinion comes from someone who started with a 150 pack opening, and who probably later bought the Welcome bundle, along with some of the other bundles and deals that have been offered since the release.

The amount of grind when coupled with how lame the PvE content is (I have experienced better fantasy-based, dungeon-crawl content from games 20 years older than Mercenaries) are two huge negatives for Mercenaries. So much more could have been added to bring more of the WoW dungeon run experience to Mercenaries, along with other improvements to provide better entertainment from the PvE content.

The poor pack value combined with a serious diminishing returns issue as one opens more packs, since the packs lack duplicate protection or pity timers is really big deal too.

Nothing has been done to address these problems so far, and the hotfix did the opposite by increasing the time it takes to progress.

Personally, I had several days with a good ratio of MS encounters, followed with one bad day of around a 20% encounter rate, but despite my luck, the grind is way too f¥€#ing slow. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

As far as making do with the way things are, the last two Felwood dungeons have given me the best returns for my time so far.

I accidentally started today with a normal Lord Banehollow run, and then I just kept running that dungeon on normal and heroic (depending if I needed heroic bounties) with the following results:

8 Mysterious Stranger
3 Blue Portal
1 Sabotage
5 Spud ME

I got the MS about 47 percent of the time.

4 Likes
2

here my progress atm for 34 of my merc

34/34 have cleared task 7
26/34 task 8 cleared
5/34 have cleared task 9-10
1/34 has cleared up to task no 13(King Krush)…or maybe was he on 14 cleared ?..the last task of his i completed was collect 4 heroic bounty
which i just finish

but yes its awful…i bought welcome bundle…2 legendary that were up for 5$ Cad approx…1 set of epic coins…didn’t buy anything else for Mercs
its like 10 hours for a month and half to get all of them done

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I think your progress is impressive under the circumstances.

I started Mercenaries a day or two after its release and I have worked at it daily like it was a job with the following accomplishments:

  1. 32 heroes at level 30

  2. 12 have completed task 7

  3. Around 6 have completed all 18 tasks.

  4. 5 heroes are maxed out.

  5. Only missing 4 legendaries, but I have enough coins to craft all of them.

1 Like
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I haven’t played PvP much in Mercenaries but I have to assume there are only a few elite end game compositions and that there isn’t much diversity at such stages in the game considering the best group of heroes has been discovered and played out countless times.

Seems like battling any real life opponents would become redundant with a similar outcome each match. But hey, at least we’re getting +3 new Blackrock bounties come Tuesday…

-Valas

1 Like
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i got 8 maxed atm(rokara is from today)
cariel,cornelius,kurtrus
rokara,tyrande
guff,millhouse,Xyrella

edit: once i get mass of them on task 13-14 the coins flow gonna max out a ton of them

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Try Arcanium.

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It was clearly rushed out before it was finished. With the “bonus” of expensive pre-release packs as a cash grab before everyone discovered how terrible the mode is.

The PvP isn’t even interesting, Battlegrounds has more comp variety and you can play that for free without any grind.

They need to make tasks available to buy with coins, and make coins non-merc specific.

I’ve got all the important Mercs past task 7, but that was before the change to the MS. When you could just run low level heroics and repeat it fast. They screwed everyone coming in after that, which will just reduce new players. More bot matchups in PvP.

It’s a dead game mode, just look at the lack of content on Twitch and YouTube.

4 Likes
9

I don’t think the grinding system is lack of testing at all. The design team is just being more disgusting after the good devs left, and FYI, Iksar is going for vacation till Next January. So probably nothing big is gonna happen.

Nothing has been done to address these problems so far, and the hotfix did the opposite by increasing the time it takes to progress.

Exactly, the hotfix is not to fix bugs or prevent players from exploiting the bugs. They just don’t want players to take shortcuts. Since when refreshing for MS bothers other players or you Blizzard? Look at the patch notes:

This move is to encourage people towards more engaging gameplay instead of repeatedly taking on low-level Heroic Bounties with highly over-leveled Parties.

What a BS! Players did all sorts of tricks and hard work to progress the game, either for pvp or simply trying for a better collection, and Blizzard is literally saying make your life easier and buy packs until you got Lich King maxed out.

3 Likes
10

There is way to much grind in this game. I bought 60 packs with game gold, spent some actual money on packs, and then had to waste time on the boring and monotonous task of leveling. I have 21 level 30 mercs, and the leveling was a time drain that has diminished my interest in the game. Also, the Spud Me is an annoying factor that makes the game less fun.

3 Likes
11

As I predicted, the grind has already resulted in me becoming very casual with my attitude towards this mode. I do not see myself spending money or even very much gold on Mercenaries going forward. I mostly just get a few tasks done each day without clearing all of them, and I do not even take the time to get one PvP win every day.

I gave good early feedback about Mercenaries, and the improvements are rolling out too slowly, and they can just accept the obvious consequences for that.

I will not be surprised if I have walked away completely from Mercenaries before 2022.

Yes, Spud Me is just a nuisance, and it should be removed as a possible outcome.

3 Likes
12

As a F2P player, I wouldn’t say there is that much grind. I have played other gacha games, and mercenaries seems at least 40-50 times faster to complete than most. There is a direct way of obtaining heroes other than buying packs/loot boxes, which is unprecedented, and there is no “energy” or other resource that limits how much you can farm each day.

And that is Hearthstone to begin with. Just consider the amount of time it will take you to get all the cards in Standard, and then people are mad because Mercenaries requires a few weeks of farm before you max everything. It is a good game mode for F2P, while Standard and Wild are almost unplayable for me without paying.

2 Likes
13

Yeah, theres not much grind as a f2p if you just play samuro, xyrella, cariel :clown_face:

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I have every single merc in the game, and half are them are maxed both skills and equipment. Made it to top 200 EU last week.

Never happened to me in other gachas.

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Level up Bru’kan and Guff if you haven’t already. With Millhouse and/or Xyrella farming for legendaries like Anduin is very attainable.

I’ve got nowhere near as much progress as some others (220 tasks), but at this point I have 500+ coins to craft all legendaries but 5 of them. Stlll lacking Sylvanas and Jaina coins. (also kinda stopped playing these past 2 weeks)

Upgrading them is another story, but having Level 2/3 abilities is more than enough to use them in PvE. And just doing their tasks gives you lots of coins to get them to that point.

Ask yourself, how grindy is playing Pokemon for you? And you’ll get a good answer for how much progress you’ll make in Mercenaries.

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If there are games that require more grinding as F2P than Mercenaries, I certainly will not be playing them.

As Mercenaries now stands, it has a significant list of flaws that I have covered in various posts. Mercenaries problems go beyond just my simple opinions as content steamers, who have delved deeper into the mode than I have, are beginning to echo my earlier points.

What the devs do with such valuable feedback remains to be seen, but if the mode suddenly ceased to exist, I would not be overly bothered by its disappearance, and I think that is very telling.

During the last week, I started spending a much more casual amount of time playing the mode. Today, I failed to play a single PvP match.

My progress so far includes getting the following heroes maxed out:

Xyrella (maxed)
Samuro (maxed)
Varden Dawngrasp (maxed)
Cairne (maxed)
Lady Anaconda (maxed)
Tavish Stormpike (maxed)
Blink Fox (maxed)
Bru’Kan (maxed)
Guff (maxed)
Jaina (maxed)
Tamsin (maxed)

I will probably have Diablo and Vol’jin maxed out in a few days.

I have enough coins to craft all missing heroes except for Edwin.