I went as far as maxing the basic aoe cores of Fire comp and grinding up to +1/5 on Alexstraza and then seeing new mercs released weekly, realizing that any current grind would never help grind future coins, and that with the carpet bombing methods, it’d take almost literal 100s-1000s of hours to regrind every new merc for every weekly release, that it was almost unsustainable to play the mode over just not caring about it, and knowing that future mercs could never be grinded retroactively.
When the xp halving and task attempts came, it was a clear message that the mode already on loose legs could have it’s future taken every time, you see this even with players who continue to stick to the mode.
The irony of the “P2W [Or spend 1000$s on stuff that won’t matter in a week, with no pack targeting]”, is the game seems almost designed as if to maximize the amount of money you can spend, but not designed to make it worthwhile, targeted, and a horrible value.
There are single bounties, but even with max fire comp and Xyrella Blademaster and all max rare mercs and diablo, i just couldn’t find myself caring about the mode.
Even high ranked players say that even if you do somehow P2W or grind to win. it’s a empty experience because the win rank chests will only reward you coins you have no use for, and the ques can be massively long.
Only for you to repeatably match into the same person over and over again. Who might even just concede right as soon as they see your name, knowing your comp beats theres, giving you no win credit.
Mercenaries is really a shallow experience past maybe a knockoff pokemon with wallet problems. If you play it casually or f2p you’ll be fine and you can enjoy the pve, but it’s not a game worth caring about the 2 people coinflipping in the competitive grindathon scene.
I wondered if it was just the game holding back or not, but i went back to some old 25 year old games and n64 and gb roms that fit on literal 100 kb for 5-20 hrs of gameplay 2d adventures like the Oracle of Seasons Link games, As well as some n64 and man.
It’s not unironic that someone from 20 years ago figured out how to fit 10x more gaming diversity into a file 1/10th the size of a card art jpeg and gameplay still had standards then, unless you compare it to a old pokemon game.
I just don’t feel like Mercs has done any meaningful gameplay development to a almost 20 year old concept, if anything, it has devolved and stagnated user accessibility under the name of making monetization increase. But it does that by offering a horrible value to both consumer and player.
You think Blizzard, liking it’s paid portion, would at least do something as simple as other gacha games and maybe just add in targeted pack seasons, or maybe like hourly targeted rotating banner systems like other gacha games where maybe for instance,
All legendary coins could be 1 of 2 options {Say, Rotating Diablo+Carine, Anduin + Vol’jin, etc}, and epic coins could be targeted. Rare coins could probably be left the same.
Or at least something like season packs, such as our main mode. Maybe something like Mercs Classic Packs for the whole pool, Mercs Deadmines Packs for the deadmine units, etc and so on to target the pool better.
The mode just has lots of problems that doesn’t reward you for playing it, and also is a money drain that can’t complete daily quests while still wanting more money…
You might ask… Who is this rat race game with minimal gameplay and ridicolous grinds or $ asked investments for…
But there are people who love to be milked with their wallet, or others who just like to grindalot constantly while having their progress obsoleted weekly i guess…
I just don’t get what they were planning on with this mode really. It’s a huge flop. Denying otherwise is a Emperor’s new cloth’s story, telling the Emperor his robes are magnificent, 17 different colors, and the most incredible thing they’ve ever seen while they’re out there in a bathrobe turning red on the job.