Mercenaries renown IS TRASH!

If you are referencing the famous McDonald’s case, you should know that the media did not accurately report what happened in that case. While everyone noted MD’s was at primary fault, the jury found the lady that was burned partially responsible.

The coffee in question was hotter than anything ever needs to be, stored at more than 180F degrees. That causes third degree burns in a couple seconds, which was why McD’s lost the suit big time. The lady that sued actually offered to settle for exactly her medical bills and her lost wages, but McD’s wouldn’t budge. That was a bad call for them.

Is that not the point? That you are not aware of them?

The fact that buying packs for the mode has diminishing returns and coins continue to drop for maxed out characters is predatory.

I tried the mode and really wanted to like it. I spent a little money at first, even. Clearly the entire thing is designed to bilk people of their cash in impulse buys, preying on the vulnerable and those susceptible to the most contemptuous marketing practices.

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and there you go again: you literally can’t make an unqualified criticism of the company, can you?

Let’s try an easy one: is the workplace harassment 100% on actiblizz?

Someone doesn’t know about lootbox laws, and how predatory monetization is a way to skirt the edge of those.

Because people burning themselves is hilarious. Tell you everything you need to know about the pro company posters!

Maybe increase your awareness.

But some people find it hilarious, and the customer’s fault…and the company can never be at fault for doing things wrong.

This guy gets it!

Famous for some, obscure for others — it’s all very relative. I wasn’t even aware of the case and such particulars, and it’s not the point, either.

Yes, it’s a known fact. However, pack behaviour is actually well documented — yes, it’s a bit complicated and hard to grasp for a number of people (why am I not surprised… nowadays even the notion of the multiplication table being too hard to grasp for university students would probably go ‘mainstream’ very well), with questions frequently raised, including this forum, however, it generally does behave consistently and exactly as written (I know of one recent case on the forum where further details would be needed to state conclusively whether there has been a problem — no response from the author yet) — in other words, you get exactly what you pay for. What’s the matter with that?

One more thing (discussed many times, but still): this issue of diminishing returns actually discourages so-called ‘whaling’, which can be likened to problematic gambling of a kind, if anything — but that’s gotta be some company’s fault too, apparently? :joy:

This one is a game-design flaw, perhaps, and also a well-known issue, however, what’s that got to do with marketing, let alone predatory one?

That’s the thing — I suspect all those angry people mentioned above might be dissapointed (as if the hint wasn’t clear enough), because their investment has not yielded them what they hoped for or somehow expected. Clearly, that’s gotta be someone else’s fault, hasn’t it?

For example, Alice goes to a shopping mall and buys a pair of shoes, but then she remembers she’s got another similar one, so it doesn’t see much use. Having realised this, A. goes into the angry-crybaby mode and starts blaming the boutique for having fleeced her, all but making her buy their product which has not satisfied her (how dare they!) with their predatory ways (of opening their establishment and putting a product up for sale, apparently). Surely, thinks Alice, she doesn’t ever have to use her head (what nonsense, who does that? Besides, the very notion is ***-ist — insert your negative label here) and plan in advance or reconsider her buying strategy, does she, because the world revolves around her, she has ‘rights’, and everyone else is responsible for her satisfaction? Sadly, this appears to be the logic promoted here by some.

It’s ‘clear’ to you, less so to me and another guy in this thread, by the way. I’d say — once again — that the monetisation model is actually designed somewhat sloppily and could offer better value, instead of all but discouraging people to spend. If it were better thought-out, such blunders could have been avoided.

Well, this world is a cruel place, not very favourable to the survival of those too dumb to live — what of it? Let’s go all the way towards unnatural selection?

I beg your pardon, which ones? There’s an unsavoury salesman knocking on your door and scaremongering you into buying their ‘snake oil’? Maybe they’re abusing market monopoly, lobbying some illegal ‘sanctions’ against their competitors, providing misleding information about the product, withholding important facts and so on? Here you are, having all the time in the world — no pressure — to read what you’re buying, do your research and make a rational, informed choice, what’s stopping you?

I know of cases on the forum where some bundles were bugged… I don’t remember the details, but I think someone has reported how the customer service refunded them — in that case, there might be technical problems, but hardly a scam.

If anyone could provide actual evidence of such wrongdoings, it would be good to know. So far, though, I’ve seen mostly angry unsubstantiated rants and personal attacks — it just won’t do.

See this is the you don’t get it moment. To make your analogy correct, Alice buys a box. It has some shoe parts in it, but there is no guarantee what color, style, size, or brand of shoe is in the box. If Alice wants a pair of matching shoes that fit, well then she needs to open boxes for years until she lucks into all the parts of a shoe and then find the other ones.

There’s not limit to how many boxes she must buy to get the shoes, though, it’s just random forever shoe parts. Good luck!

Seriously, though, I get upset when people call others pro-company posters or “shills” but your post above seems like the most pro company, head in the sand thing I have yet read on these forums.

I get that you like the mode. Please continue to enjoy it.

But the mode is the epitome of evil gaming monetization and predatory in the extreme in the gambling nature of the packs even beyond the duplicate protection/dust system of standard, which is already pretty sus tbh.

Sure. And for anyone who actually believes that, especially after that very specific and disgusting mockery

of someone who was injured severely…

I have a bridge to sell them.

deliberately not including dupe protection so people have to waste more time/money was an oversight…YEARS after it was a thing in real hearthstone.

“But seriously guise, I’m not defending the company. REALLY!”

strawman would be a better way of putting it. But remember, he’s not defending the company!

From the author of:

And course, the big lie that most of the bug report forum posts are:

And so on. But the pro company crowd forgets when they pontificate about their corporate overlords, that we can see their previous posts and their hypocrisy.

And what’s written on it? If it explicitly states something that matches your description, what’s the problem with it?

It’s actually not that bad: you’re essentially guaranteed at least a rare merc in each pack, until you’ve got them all. As for legendary ones — yep, that’s more like winning in a lottery.

Surely, someone who isn’t an avid critic or an ardent hater is a ‘shill’ and a corporate slave — there’s no such thing as objectivity. :rofl: Even that is a repetition of what’s been said above, though.

If you don’t like packs (which is understandable, since all kinds of loot boxes have drawn much criticism — and who does, anyway?), I’ve got good news for you: this game mode, unlike e.g. Standard, is very much playable without opening any packs at all besides those you get for free from story and mercenary tasks. I’ve personally bought a number of them with gold to blow off some excess of it, which I would have nothing to spend on anyway, but that would only serve the purpose of getting a couple of legendary mercs from the latest batch faster (I can’t say that they are dealbreakers for PvE either — maybe for PvP, though; on the other hand, I could have crafted them with coins from just doing the new bounties anyway) — the bulk of my collection has been built up as described above, including crafting legendaries (I started fishing for them in packs only when the latter started to accumulate from tasks). There has been, however, a negative trend in this regard (or increasing greed, if you will), which I’ve written about (and others have noticed this obvious fact as well, see, for instance, another video by OG [1] on the subject, apart from the one I referenced earlier) — so it’s hard to say whether the game mode’ll stay that way, i.e. as F2P-friendly as it is. Currently there hasn’t been any cause for optimism in this regard, but we don’t know yet how the acquisition of Blizzard will impact things.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NMRrVBfVkg

“I mean, they literally put the warnings on labels decades later…so that excuses them marketing to kids and everything they put in the products in the first place!”
-if there had been tobacco forums back in the day, with pro company posters like this

Let’s try for “never makes an unqualified criticism of the company.”

literally had laws passed outlawing their form of aiming gambling at children is what you were probably trying to post, if you were being honest.

double talk increases!

At some point, these posts just become outright ads for mercstone, and false advertising at that.

i look at it this way they gave you some thing for nothing only problem i do not know or see these coins can some one help me locate them…

… You can go next door and buy a pair of matching shoes that fit for less money guaranteed.

This is you making excuses, though. It really is awful. It’s terrible that one can have thousands of excess coins for a merc and still get thousands more from packs at the expense of coins for mercs that are not already maxed.

It’s awful monetization and horrible game design in that it is 100% predatory.

This, for sure.

“Well it says it causes death, you should have been immune to our intentional manipulation of the most addictive substance known to humans!”

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It is so ‘predatory’! :smirk: Repent, lest Humpty Dumpty gets you! :rofl:

If your mercenary is maxed, which is how it’s listed in the collection, you can select it and see the number of coins at the lower left corner, beneath the equipment (on PC). Or you could just go to the campfire, see the total amount of excess coins and convert them all to renown — according to the developers, it’s safe to do it. You can also refer to the following video [1] for an illustration, if you need to.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zBCJc9fAH4

Uh, why do I need to do that? Also… I mean that wasn’t a criticism of Blizzard, I was explaining why I think people hate mercenaries and how I think that’s mostly (especially at this point) unfounded.

It’s really a typical online game, even in terms of pricing, online gaming just has garbage economics and that, frankly, is partly because people are willing to spend oodles of their disposable income on something pointless in a game because they play it a lot.

And yes, obviously work place harassment is the fault of the people in positions of power at the company who did it, and those who enabled it by turning a blind eye to it, and frankly a lot of it comes down to American corporate culture and what behaviour is acceptable.

But… that’s not what this topic is about.

I’m not really sure why you’re constantly on the attack, Blizzard’s pricing model sucks, I’m just saying it’s pretty easy for people to stop buying stuff that’s overpriced. And if people aren’t buying it… well knowing Activision they’ll probably just cancel it, but maybe they’ll lower the price to something more reasonable.

This is where I’m sort of lost, because Mercenaries is a far more F2P friendly mode than standard Hearthstone is. You can literally grind anything you want, at what I think is a pretty reasonable rate. Standard Hearthstone gives you a certain amount of gold every day from dailies, and a certain amount of dust from that gold. From that you can craft what you want at a really quite poor rate.

In Mercenaries? If I want a specific merc, I just grind the bounty that gives me the merc I want, and within… I dunno, at most a week of off and on play? I have it. And once I have that merc, I just do their task chain and get a significant amount of coins for them to make them perfectly playable in PvE. PvP is a little different, but PvP also gives you more bonus coins from playing (and is at least supposed to pair you against players who have comparable merc levels).

Yes packs generally suck, yes getting excess coins is part of the problem, but packs are honestly just like… a bonus. The best, most efficient way to earn coins is from bounty rewards and once you’ve done that – from tasks.

The game mode also gives you way more free packs than standard Hearthstone does. This is sort of unintentional because of how they changed the task system, but it’s a lot of free packs if you do tasks.

Mercenaries also has no annual rotation where your expensive collection is rotated into a mode you maybe don’t play.

At this point, the main change I want to still see is random sources not giving you excess coins unless you have all the coins of whatever rarity you’ve earned. And probably take away the extra stats from maxing a merc. We should get a random portrait or something instead.

You are what is wrong with the world.

Exploitation is Exploitation. Intentionally taking advantage of anyone is morally wrong.

We can agree to disagree. Until you stop getting coins for maxed mercs out of packs, it really isn’t even close that standard economy with duplicate protection and dust economy is MASSIVELY better than mercs.

You’ve massively understated how packs work, though, mate.

If beating your head on a wall makes you turgid, then you do you, brocephus, you do you.

Most people find that maddening.

Correct, they just add and add and add and the packs still have all the same already maxed out coins to add to your already maxed out coins and MAYBE you might get something useful at somepoint or you can make yourself fully engorged by banging your head into bricks repeatedly because that’s the heady, lofty heights of game nirvana for most players…

This would be a massive step in the correct direction. Duplicate protection and not allowing coins to drop for capped units would be excellent.

They won’t do it because this is gambling, not gaming… except for the rubes that enjoy repetitive farming tasks and call it leisure, they love this.

If that’s you, then you do you.

Look, it’s clear this is your sacred cow, so I will bow out here and let you worship as you see fit.

Dream big, dragon, dream big!

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This is the nonsense.

The main gameplay is bounties. If you don’t like playing bounties then… what?

No I haven’t. You get a 25% return on cards. (Worse for rares and even worse for commons) That’s not even remotely a good rate of return.

Why is everyone in this forum such a massive jackass?

You said GRINDING the SPECIFIC bounty that drops the coins. That’s not fun. Grinding the same bounty over and over and over to max a unit is specifically why you are offered packs to buy… to NOT have to grind.

It doesn’t work in this game, so this is a terrible game.

You get free cards, free packs, gold to buy more packs, duplicate protection, rarity guarantee with pity timer, nerfs that reward full dust if you’ve been saving duplicates, and it’s pretty easy to have a nearly exhaustive collection as F2P, but the major difference is when I need a specific card to do a specific task, I can just make it and I have it. Done.

Mercs works NOTHING like that. When you need a specific merc to finish an heroic bounty, well, hope in one hand…

You should stop looking in the mirror and pay more attention to how the mode is taking your time away from you in useless repetitive grind.

But as I said, you do you.

I honestly will let you have whatever else you need to say and I am out of this thread.

One can lead a horse to water… but one can’t stop the horse from wasting all it’s time on a bad game.

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An important addition: you probably mean North American, don’t you? There’s more than one America, you know, and the other one has got little to do with what you probably refer to (or maybe not even the whole North one either).

Haven’t I said that already? :grinning:

And this, too.

They haven’t changed the amount of packs you get from the tasks — only how the tasks are acquired.

Some people don’t like it, but I see it as an incentive to max a merc. On the other hand, if that stat buff was incorporated by default, not just removed — that would also be nice, too.

I would ask you to not overgeneralise. Even one nice person disproves this statement, logically speaking.

Promise?

Look what we’ve got here… A savior trying to preach salvation and telling us all how we should live our lives. :rofl:

I mean yes, and again, this is how most F2P online games work. Avoid the waiting by paying money. That’s how Marvel Snap works, League of Legends works that way, Standard Hearthstone definitely does (though increasingly the actual cards are easier to get). Battlegrounds doesn’t and I actualy think Battlegrounds monetization is way more unfair than mercenaries or standard hearthstone’s is.

It’s a rogue-like, every bounty run is a bit different. But even so, this is what tactical RPGs are as gameplay experiences, you do similar-ish content and it changes a little bit every time.

Beyond that, most mercenaries have multiple bounties which give you coins for said mercenary with new releases.

I’d say it takes like… maybe 10 runs to craft a legendary merc? Something like that? But realistically you can just do other content and pick up coins and eventually you get enough for the mercs you want. At least that’s how it works for me.

The worst thing was, and I don’t think this is as true anymore, is that the most efficient way to earn rewards generally, was to do the easiest content over and over and over again, and that was certainly just grinding.

And that’s really another thing they need to fix. The “do 6 heroic bounties” steps on tasks are horrible.

Specific taks? What? Like dailies? I’m pretty sure Mercs doesn’t give you dailies for mercs you don’t own, and I don’t think hearthstone does either. I don’t think I’m understanding what you’re saying, though.

But ultimately, this is really the point. You like hearthstone, you don’t mind playing similar-ish content over and over again because you find it fun.

You don’t like Mercenaries, so it feels repetitive and boring and not fun. Some of the criticisms people have are certainly fair, and slowly but surely I think the game mode is getting better.

That’s literally all this is. And that’s fine. You don’t have to like a game, and I don’t generally think your criticisms of it are unfounded generally speaking. In Europe you could get a refund I think.

I really don’t play the mode that often actually. But dude, you’re being incredibly rude. You can’t imagine someone enjoying something you don’t so they must be awful.

Well, completing all 18 tasks for mercs before would have taken months of trying to get mysterious strangers or waiting for daily resets. Now it takes like… a day.

American refers to the United States of America. There’s really no other way to refer to “American” like that. Corporate Culture in the U.S. I guess is what I should have said?

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A bit more. Assuming it’s about 20 guaranteed Legendary coins on average (although I’m not certain about that figure nowadays… I think you get 15-25 in that slot, but I’m nost sure about the distribution) from a Heroic level-30 bounty, that would be more like 25 runs (plus-minus).

You mean the infamous quil-boaring again? Well, the biggest thing about it, in my opinion, has been new zones being assigned coins for new mercs exclusively, so doing these on either difficulty would be better — but we’ve already discussed that, including this topic.

I think I’ve said it somewhere already, but I’ll repeat myself: I believe they’ve unified the tasks for newer mercs (starting from the Sunken City batch), probably to avoid further embarrasment with bugs, which these tasks have been infamous for, however, they’ve made them more grindy and repetitive.

Probably not… There is a law about distance purchases giving a right to ‘regret’ an online purchase, but a think there might be some clause in gaming EULAs that, since the product can be used immediately, you forfeit that right or something like that — I’m not sure, though.

I dunno… People have done it — completing all the tasks by farming the Mysterious stranger — during the ‘Banehollow era’, I believe.

I believe that’d be considered offensive and inappropriate in South America in particular, so we probably don’t want that — that’s why I pointed it out in the first place.

Yes, that sounds accurate and correct. Or ‘US corporate culture’, that’d be shorter.

The only alternatives I can find for “American” are like… nationalistic slurs.

I’m sure it’s been done, but it’s way more grinding than I’m comfortable with certainly. The mysterious stranger chance alone isn’t good enough.

No, we don’t want anything like that.
‘American’ colloquially refers to anyone from the two continents in South America, I believe, and the use of the word meaning US persons exclusively would be either confusing or even imperialistic, as far as I know.

These are international forums, and I’d prefer to be as sensitive as I can with this kind of language. I think we’ve found a goold alternative in this particular example.

A small correction: was. :grinning: The MS has been removed for good.

Maybe because you claimed:

but you can never offer an unqualified criticism of it, and the mere thought of doing so seems to puzzle you to a high degree.

Even your denouncement of the workplace harassment situation has a massive deflection:

Holy Light, I lobbed you an easy one, and you STILL couldn’t just say without waffling it was 100% on the company without shifting blame. This is 100% the sign of someone who can’t denounce their corporate overlords.

you try shifting this back on me, since I didn’t create the illegal lootbox situation that required multiple countries to pass laws banning the practice (well, I do know why, and that’s because the thought of holding the company responsible is somehow difficult for you). Because, like tobacco, companies like actiblizz were marketing this to kids and people with gambling addictions to circumvent the whole gambling license and related laws.

Not so lost that you couldn’t write a blog post in defense of the company and mercstone, as usual.

From the author of:

the scummy laughing about someone burning themselves and requiring medical treatment:

Some of course spammed, and almost always with the emjoi for extra trolling.