I have been playing Mercenaries since it came out. Or more correctly, I was playing Mercenaries, but not so much now. It is a kind-of-sort -of fun game that occasionally has good moments but is also “meh”. I actually like gacha games, and I like that Blizzard released one with the Warcraft theme. However, the novelty wears off pretty quickly and the game simply becomes boring with too much grind. Blizzard could improve the game by making tasks easier to get to earn coins, simplifying the currency so that you could improve the Mercenaries that you actually want to play (instead of having a different currency for each one), and remove the Spud Me from the game. Also, I’m surprised that the game art isn’t more elaborate, considering that that’s usually one of Blizzard strengths.
I have held off giving my impressions on the mode, but I think you sum up some very good points.
I don’t think you should earn coins for maxed mercs. It’s a bind when you can’t use your best mercs to farm because you just keep getting coins for maxed heroes. It’s really disappointing to try to get diablo coins and you are awarded five of them but 45 for your maxed samuro. That’s just wrong.
Hot potato sucks, but my solution is that you should always have an option not to take the prize once you discover it. Many times I don’t want to warp or take the potato, but you don’t know it isn’t a stranger until you get there. I have had situations where certain bosses the potato is a giant board wiping liability and being forced to take it sucks.
This is also the case when the boons are infront of the mystery and you either skip the mystery or make the boss have more speed, health, etc. Not cool.
The maps should have some additional rules to prevent these instances.
And I agree strangers should be more common.
I have plenty of other gripes, but I have played my daily tasks and walked recently, playing much more BG than I did in the weeks after merc’s first released.
Mercs need some QoL update:
1/ Auto-battle in PvE: a feature that let your Merc deploy the exact skill, in the exact order of the last battle.
2/ Mercs need normal task after they done all their 18 specific tasks: those don’t need to reward pack, just coin is good enough.
Blizzard gacha
20 chars
I, like many, spent a LOT of time in Mercenaries since launch, was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it (I really was expecting to hate it); and as such, I have a LOT of opinions on the game.
So these two quotes to me really go hand in hand, and I think think they really address the number one glaring flaw I see with Mercenaries as a long-term, successful game: purchase incentives. The game is built on a progression system that is so awkward due to how decentralized it is. Essentially it’s 50+ progression systems that compete with one another–which is good at driving up short term engagement but bad at sustaining it.
The problem really crops up the longer you spend playing mercenaries. If you’re like me and have roughly half (and could be much more if I got task 7 equipments for many mercenaries) your mercenaries maxed, purchasing a pack quickly turns from a progression into a gamble. The fact that there isn’t a universal currency means that buying a pack for me is now more likely to reward me something I cannot use than something I can. So I’m now in a situation where I don’t want to spend money for a game that needs money to continue improving because me spending money is me actively gambling it.
Having heard through various mediums Blizzard reps touch on the currency capping problem, I’m pretty nervous that it’s either NOT going to be addressed, or it’s going to be addressed improperly and will only delay the issue rather than remove it altogether. I understand the amount of work required to develop a solution, but hopefully Blizzard remains cognizant of the fact that purchases as they’ve been presented through Mercenaries are HIGHLY unappealing.
Given how much they hyped up mercenaries, and they’ve basically all but abandoned promoting it post-launch likely confers that the playerbase largely ignored it after about a week or so.
They definitely haven’t abandoned promoting it, and iirc they had some metric saying there were billions of minutes of Mercs played in the first two weeks. That said, IF players are dipping on Mercs, Blizzard is likely to try to acquiesce to some of player demands in an effort to capitalize on what clearly was a very popular game.
had been novel for a day, then just became too grindy and that´s that.
really don´t know why they´d expect people to pay a fortune to spare the grind instead of just abandoning the mode altogether.
It´s not like there´s a shortage of other videogames at this day and age, even less so for things to do in general.
They need to make it so there is more to do in PVE. Some kind of ‘endless’ mode or further development to make the rogue like experience more like a rogue like experience. I was sooooo excited for a new rogue like mode after book of heroes and book of mercenaries, and I’m still hopeful that they have more development planned.
Mercenaries completely mystifies me, why would anyone want to play this game?! Hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of grinding (or pay literally $1000s) to eventually reach a not particularly interesting endgame with a competent team.
Then repeat that process if you want any sort of variety in the heroes you can field and every time new content is released. I mean maybe I would consider a one time grind if the game was amazing, but it’s nowhere near that.
Maybe folks just have nothing better to do than repeating the exact same PvE encounters over and over, but it boggles my mind that people will waste their time voluntarily doing something so menially tedious, I can’t believe that there are may still playinng this minimum effort cash grab.
This is sorta the point of the mystery spot. It’s supposed to be a gamble on whether or not it helps you and you have to decide if risking the potato is worth going for the mystery spot or not. If there was only ever upside it just becomes a free space
The problem that creates is packs. What happens when someone maxes out every rare merc and has all their portraits? What are you opening in packs at that point? They’d never allow a situation where you’re opening nothing but epics and legends. Even if they did you quickly then max out every merc and get literally nothing from packs.
What they need is some sort of generic currency either across all mercs, by rarity, or by role and have players able to convert coins of a given merc into the more generic one.
I think there should be a better way for players to grind out coins if they want. Having to grind through the same bounty over and over again to farm mysterious stranger is not fun for anyone. I’d rather see them replace the mysterious stranger mechanic altogether for something that gives better rewards and encourages more varied and interesting gameplay loops.
Mercs is definitely a skinner box. I admit, not as bad as i expected, but i certainly haven’t met a game i thought would have been more direct about it if it was one of those mobile ad farms that just wanted F2p to watch a ad every minute to continue battling.
Still, as far as the mode goes, it’s been ridicolous amounts of grinding. I have managed to (after several weeks and weeks), grind the base 500 coins for jaina and Vancleef for my last 0/2500 legendaries if i wish.
But just the feeling of knowing you can grind, but not quickly seems to give existential dread for like hundreds to thousands of hours in a unanimated clicker box. I completely ten thousand percent would not be surprised if any singular players took longer to farm it then time might have been spent recoding the hearthstone attack ai to let you select targets to attack… Possibly like 1000s of hrs grind… to maybe a hopeful 7 hr recode? (maybe 20 minutes, depends on how it’s coded or longer. idk)
I won’t say i regret the time (it gives hearthstone main mode xp, and it’s let me stockpile a little extra here and there at study leisure for miniset and next xpac)
The xp isn’t bad for the time waste at least, i always just play it for the easily afkable exp. But it is a huge time grind ball, But i guess i finally got 3 moves on diablo to 4 / 5 / 3… No gear on him yet… But hey, at least i crafted him.
I was trying to find ways to target coins doing manual bounties and i guess im less afraid now of just refarming easy heroic bounties for tasks and the 10-20 coins for a hero in party on completion…
But it seems heroic barrens only gives 10 relevant party coins per 5 minute completion instead of 10-20 like other maps… and all the rare coins are dupes now for me after the legendary farming, idk.
My diablo farming efforts has like 100 hrs spent on him and he’s got fire stomp maxed but it’s really misleading since you can’t target much at all. I’m split if i want the claws or soul stone.
My budget can only afford like one… (Or maybe half…), since despite the insane grind, 500-800 legendary coins for seed crafts between my irl is done. and i still focus on irl first, but it’s enough to make like a 0 coin legend merc, be happy i got them, and then realize it takes 20 moves doing 6 damage at a time to do those like “get 2 kills in a single turn, with a 6 dmg earth stomp, 45 times” kinda tasks that eat time.
For what it’s worth, cookie clicker is a faster game, But yeah, it’s a okay time waster. I don’t feel angry i spent time on it. i always play it for the exp, but the more you afk it, the more you want to collect and +1/5 it, before being reminded that all pvp builds want to either farm bots… or want so much grinding that even the top 10k players don’t get much more than 2 more untargeted merc packs that just give mostly 80% dupe rare coins… And by the time i can max diablo on unfocused, random fire, no dupe protection f2p coins…
Every merc likely won’t need any coins at all to begin with… I’m looking at like… 8000 excess brukan coins to 1000/2500 diablo coins with 1500 more to just get the guy’s gear… Or maybe mercs needed 2800 coins to max… and plus 500 coins for crafting cost… idk… I don’t know how expensive it is to max a merc… But The ratio im seeing farming the general style is like… 3000 rare coins farmed to every 1000 epic coins farmed to 500 legendary coins farmed… I think if you can do like Felwood bounties in 5-10 minutes… that’s 5-10 minutes for 5x 10-20 coins for 75 average coins… So lets say, if you do 12 felwoods a hour, you probably could see 800 raw coins… Spread across 50 mercs… For like… 16 untargeted completely random coins a hour… And with the coin spread… it’s probably like 11/16 coins go to a rare merc. 3 coins a hour go to each average epic… and maybe 1-2 coins a hour for each average legendary… Probably crap math, but im tired after the farm, and after like 20 hours of farming to go 74 alexstraza coins to 84 coins and 8000 to 8400 brukan coins with the random concede, i think im good…
The grind is definitely doable if one has lots of time to spare, but i think the complete lack of targeting is killing the mode too… All those coins a hour sounds great until you realize none of it is even targetable. I think pvp coins feel better on rarity and packs feel (slightly) better in 50 pack lumps, but 100 g to open up maybe 200 random coins, 66% will be worthless rare coins, and maybe getting 4 random coins per 50 mercs (of which, like only 1/3rd will go towards a not already saturated rare merc), feels bad.
It seems like if you open a pack you might average like 4 coins a epic if you open up like 200 coins, 66% of it is wasted on dupe rares (200 → 40-70 relevant coins, maybe), then split by like 15 epic mercs or so. and that’s like… 3-5 relevant coins?
It’s all crude, but you get the idea. You can’t target it at all, so both f2p and pack buying kinda feels bad.
they should implement a way for us to see which treasures have we picked along the bounty
Also, they should either stop us from gaining coins for maxed mercs OR let us use the coins for our maxed mercs in some other way
Lastly, implement a better system for us to target coins for a merc we want, repeating avalanchan 10 times to get 15 coins for ragnaros is frustrating
I would love to see one thing changed - move the mercenaries from HS client into battlenet client, so we dont need to see it. Never cared for the mode, never will, so it is kinda useless there.
Well right now they have a bigger problem - buyings packs is a terrible waste of money because you don’t get anything useful.
We can agree to disagree, but having an extra 10k coins for a merc you don’t use and no coins for the one you need is enough to make people quit. I am just about done with it all over that kind of crap.
I get they want to grab cash, but they are not fleecing here they are skinning.
I have mixed feelings about it. I think they wanted to make something like “The Darkest Dungeon” but at the end I preffer the game more to merc, which is still too random and not tactical enough.
So is it ok or is it meh? Because those are not the same things. If you say it’s meh I’d agree but it’s not ok. It’s painfully mediocre half-assed attempt by Activision-Blizzard to part the mobile gacha crowd with their money.
I agree that’s a problem they need to fix but I think the solution is to let people turn those coins into coins they have a use for instead of just not giving any of them anymore
It needs the option to spend coins on the portraits there currently zero use for coin for merc that are maxed.
I think there are ways to change the system for sure.
I think you shouldn’t get more coins for maxed characters from bounties. There’s nothing worse than grinding your way past Emperor Thaurissan and getting zero diablo coins and 45 more for blademaster. You want me to answer your little bell, you need to make sure there is food there. I just walk when this happens. I am just done for the day everytime. I am likely atypical in that regard.
I have a bounty to finish a bounty at level thirty with a character that isn’t level thirty. I will dump the bounty and play more tomorrow rather than grinding it out for useless coins.
On top of that, they need a neutral coin system or an exchange.
Golf Clash… which this hearthstone game resembles more every year, for the worse, I might add… offers exchange on max clubs where you can trade 300 common, 30 rare, or 3 epic cards for a different, not maxed club. Most often you trade 300 common into rare or epic from a random choice of three clubs you haven’t finished. Something like this would be better than nothing, but still less than desirable imo because it’s still rng on what you get to trade for. I see this as actually being the choice they take.
Sidenote: I started playing Golf Clash years ago when it was relatively unknown and playdemic was a small mobile game sort of place. EA Sports bought the whole outfit for more than a billion pounds this year. Many of the changes in HS mimic what happened to Golf Clash, and I stopped playing because of how unfun they made it for F2P gamers.
I look for Mercs to get spun off to a standalone ap.