We've got some great updates to share with you today for Hearthstone Mercenaries thanks to a developer post from Paul "Kaizor" Nguyen over on the Mercenaries Discord server.
Kaizor has given us a rough outline of what we can expect from the next couple of content patches before Hearthstone's next expansion comes out (which would be the 23.0 update) and that includes some content we previously datamined - The Training Grounds.
What is the Mercenaries Training Grounds?
The Training Grounds is a new building that is coming in Hearthstone Patch 22.2 (release date unknown) which helps your Mercenary characters earn experience while you aren't playing. Although this may not be a feature that everyone needs as the most hardcore players level their characters quite fast, the more casual audience will certainly appreciate earning experience while offline.
We previously datamined the Training Grounds and everything we know about it so far can be found in that dedicated article.
Hearthstone Mercenaries Gets a Dedicated Team
The Hearthstone team underwent an internal reorganization this year which divided the team members into more concrete groups that work on different features. Mercenaries is now one of these main groups and gets dedicated support which in the words of Kaizor, "should make the things we want to accomplish this year easier to do".
This is undoubtedly a huge win for the game mode which made its debut last October in Hearthstone Patch 21.4.
What is Coming Next to Hearthstone Mercenaries?
With not too many content updates so far for Mercenaries, just the addition of a few more Mercenaries and Bounties, it looks like the first updates of the new year are going to be much larger. Here is what we can expect so far:
Hearthstone Patch 22.2
- New Mercenary Characters
- New Zones
- New Bounties
- Training Grounds v1*
- New Mercenaries Equipment Change
- 3rd Equipment no longer comes from Task 7, instead, clear the appropriate Heroic Bounty with them on your team.
Hearthstone Patch 22.4
- Possible New Feature
After 22.4
- End Game System for PVE
Source
Quote From Paul Nguyen Happy new year all. Trying to get back into the swing of things.
We had some restructuring of the team - Mercs is now one of the main pods with fully dedicated support from other disciplines so that should make the things we want to accomplish this year easier to do. Not sure what I can announce/talk about yet. But I'll throw in a few things I feel comfortable sharing now.
22.2 - New Mercs + New Zone/Bounties. Training Grounds V1 should be out as well. 3rd Equipment no longer unlocks from Task#7 for the new Mercs. You now get them from clearing the appropriate Heroic Bounty with them on your team.
22.4 - Trying to see if we can deliver on a new feature that I'm actively working on right now. Hopefully we can make this in time. After that, the focus will be on an End Game system for PvE.
Comments
this is just for the new mercs that will be introduced tho, right? the old ones wont be affected by this change? I hope it is like that. I would really prefer the old way of unlocking that.
Ok, probably i'm mad, but i'm sitting on 50 mercs boosters, collected from the beginning as f2p, and i don't want to open them until extra coins (and maybe portraits system) are no longer a problem.
I think portraits should be a think only after one have unlock all mercs from boosters,
I've completed all normal routes of the pve, i have coins to craft all mercenaries (except valeera, sylvanas, garrosh) but i would like to find them with the boosters
I've completed also first 2 zones on heroic, but i think for going on with the others i need the better mercenaries, 'cause for now i've only ragnaros and grommash (not maxed)
Edit: i can't even win a single battle on pvp since the beginning of december... probably 'cause the only mercenaries i have maxed are rare...
Still garbage. No RPG element to it at all. Zero. And it was billed as being at least partly RPG. Give me my money back.
what I’m expecting is
add Mercs to every tribes specially dragons.
Coins transfers to another Merc of equal rarity for maxed mercs
ban System in PVP with team of 9 giving acces to more elaborate strategies
buff on attacking abilities in term of damage or cancellation of retaliation damage
special tribe mode in pvp
mercs with caster counter abilities or equipment like Gruul
What you are expecting or what you are hoping for? They did already tease Dragon mercs btw.
I so want Malygos to be one of those new Mercenaries.
They could put "mutators" in for bounties, as they did for Saviors of Uldum adventure. That could be interesting, tho there is still the problem of replayability, what is the point after you leveled everything up.
This is just further proof that level-based game design is stupid, unnecessary, and detrimental to the long-term health of a game. They made leveling up so trivial that hardcore players can do it in no time at all, but enough of a chore for casuals that Blizzard felt the need to add this ridiculous gizmo to the game to help them get around it. Either way, LEVELING UP IS SOMETHING NO ONE WANTS TO DO.
Don't get me wrong -- I like progression, but I want it to be horizontal, not vertical. I want to slowly broaden the scope of my abilities, not just get bigger numbers that eventually trivialize content.
Mercenaries would have been a lot more fun as a more "open-world" experience, with no levels. Each area would still have a different flavor and different enemies, but you could tackle them in whatever order you choose, and no area would become obsolete because it had been outleveled.
This would still leave room for equipment and coins and such for horizontal progression. In fact, the various challenges would be a lot more interesting if each piece of equipment could really shine in certain encounters. You get a tiny taste of that now, but in many cases it's clear that one item is just strictly better than the other two.
"Although this may not be a feature that everyone needs as the most hardcore players level their characters quite fast, the more casual audience will certainly appreciate earning experience while offline."
this is one of the more disingenuous statements ive read online in awhile, anyone playing mercenaries has their guys at lvl 30 by now, anyone
if blizzard tracked the usage of this feature and released the data (which they wont obv) it would be the single most useless game feature blizzard has designed in some time
I struggle to believe that this new zone and bounties will be any different from what already exists - a long tree of boring (and relatively easy) battles followed by one boss fight that (at least in Heroic) requires a specific comp to win.
I think the biggest problem with the PvE is that most of your game plan is locked in at the start of a run when you pick your comp. There are some bosses where maybe you add in someone that can get Hunting Party (e.g. King Krush), adding a tiny bit of variety to your game plan for the last battle, but mostly you just do the same moves over and over again until you win. Playing a fire comp? Do a bunch of fire AoE. Playing a holy comp? Do a bunch of holy AoE. Your gear and comp are locked in at the start, so there's very little wiggle room to change what you're going to do throughout the run.
Fixing that probably certainly requires more varied battles that reward you for choosing more mixed or interesting comps at the start, but they also need to add more interesting power-ups along the way so that your choices feel more like they matter. Most of the buffs are just "here's a few extra stats or some bonus spell damage," and they don't push you to think differently about your comp or each run individually. What about a power-up that turns all fire damage into holy damage? Or a power-up that grants abilities some kind of combo effect (e.g. adding Arcane Combo: Summon a 0/1 copy of this merc to an ability or something wild like that)? Or something that lets you change the role or your merc for the duration of a run? Those are things that might actually make you think about changing which mercs get deployed and how you order your abilities to capture the value of those power-ups.
On the whole I agree, though there are actually quite a few power-ups that are interesting and can change how you approach things. To name a few: Valeera's immune+heal while stealthed (especially when also using Scabbs); both VanCleefs get a power-up that let's you change their role; Cariel and Cornelius get some Roame family insurance with divine shield shenanigans; Cookie can pre-summon 2 fish.
I have used most characters fairly equally in PvE, and I'd estimate at least half the characters don't get offered anything particularly interesting, or it's only offered after an elite encounter so you'd rarely see them. Thrall getting Hex that way saved my bacon against heroic Snowclaw, for example, but I've only ever seen Thrall offered it once so I have no idea how many mercs have something interesting hidden there that I've just never seen. The more interesting characters thus end up being those who see the cool things after normal encounters, e.g. Valeera and the VanCleefs.
So yeah, there's definitely room for improvement there and I hope they revisit what everyone is offered and replace useless/boring options (like casting a random ability twice at speed 8, which is a complete liability on all the mercs who have targeted, non-attacking abilities) with something that changes how you approach the gameplay.
It is worth pointing out though that there is a lot of variety embedded in the comp and equipment choice, and unless you're doing a high-level heroic bounty it probably won't cripple you to use something sub-optimal. Even if you are doing a high-level heroic bounty, you can sometimes cheese them with things like Valeera's Assassinate treasure or Mukla only taking 1 damage at a time (with which you can easily eat lots of bananas to make yourself unkillable), so most of the comp can be whatever you want to try out. You sometimes don't need to cheese it, but you have that as a back-up plan.
PS: can you not change equipment mid-bounty? It has certainly been letting me do that. I haven't been trying to exploit it, I just sometimes forgot to change before starting the bounty.
What could an "end game" be? I imagine that the designers want to craft an experience that gives players of all levels something to work towards. And that they don't want to create an experience that feels like "well, I did xyz thing, now Mercenaries is over ".
What does that leave? My imagination is blank here.
Maybe something like Ascension levels in other games. Something Like:
Tier 1: Enemies have more health
Tier 2: Enemies have more health and attack
Tier 3: Enemies have more health and attack and elite encounters are more common
Tier 4: Enemies have more health and attack and elite encounters are more common and Bosses have new moves
etc.
I can see how that would add replayability, but it also just sounds like Heroic mode.
We will see what unfolds, I guess!
The task 7 change is very good. I haven't played Mercenaries in a few weeks as I'm sure a lot of people also hasn't. Happy to see some updates.
Not sure if I like locking equipment under heroic bounties. Some of those are really hard to complete without a dedicated team...this just further lowers the accesability of mercs for casual players.
After I thought about it, you are right. And I am in such situation at the moment.
I was slowly but surely completing bounties... until I came to 4th zone (Blackrock Mountain), where it got really hard and I am stuck on Highlord Omokk... (Normal difficulty)
I found Old_Guardian guide on reddit, "How to complete every Heroic Bounty" and realized, I need Malfurion to complete the Nature comp, which helps in many bounties. So I was farming Fallen Guardians on Heroic (2nd Zone - Felwood) for Malfurion coins. Just unlocked him few days ago.
On Heroic mode, I completed Felwood (2nd Zone), but I already see, Winterspring Heroic (3rd Zone) will be too hard.
I'm leveling Malfurion now, slowly upgrading him. Apart from that, I can say I am just stuck, until I max Malfurion now.
It also depends. Malfurion was available to grind coins in 2nd zone. Other Mercs can be locked ONLY in 4th zone... so what then? Casual player will not get there in any reasonable time or at all. This way he won't be competitive in PvP either (If he ever had some hope to be competitive at all).
Yes, I was going to say the same thing. Imagine being gatekept from a merc's 3rd equipment (and max stats) because you haven't got the necessary mercs to complete the relevant heroic bounty. Good luck if one of those mercs is a legendary.
YES! end game PvE, what I was waiting for.
There needs to be something to grind towards, not just PvP.
Its kinda scary every time they add more mercs, because its getting progressively harder and harder to keep up as a ftp. I haven't even gotten valeera yet, and since there is a finite amount of strangers you can grind, its possible to make it unrealistic to get these new mercs via crafting as time passes.
Let's hope that the new features make mercs more accessible and give me better reasons to actually want to play the game. Its been a while since I last even cared to do more than the dailies for mercs.