I've been playing a lot of Pokemon Hearth Gold...uh, sorry, I mean Mercenaries, this week, and I've got to say that I'm enjoying it A LOT more than I thought I would. (Granted, that bar was set very, very low, but nonetheless I am having fun.) That being said, there's some really low-hanging fruit in terms of improvement/QoL:
1. Make enemy actions fit into the screen on mobile. I said this in another post, but I truly cannot believe the mode shipped this way. I generally play HS 50/50 mobile vs on the computer because it's a pretty similar experience for me either way, but Mercenaries is totally different when you have no idea what the enemy is going to do (which I guess is how PvP works? Haven't tried it yet).
2. Make it so that you can see the abilities of the Mercenaries you are considering crafting. Also very surprised it shipped this way. Can you imagine the card text being blurred out if you were looking at crafting a card in constructed?
3. Some sort of esthetic addition to the cards to designate Alliance vs Horde. Again, I mentioned this in another post, but this is super confusing for people who aren't coming from the WoW environment. I would say 85% of the time, I can guess/intuit which faction a card belongs to, but sometimes I have no idea or am genuinely surprised. (Ex: Kurtrus looks much more Horde-y to me.)
4. Explain what in the world does Rexxar's "Half-Orc" mean? And what's the other half? Does he potentially get buffs for two tribes?
5. Make the equipment a little more interesting/diverse. "Add 1 attack to X ability" is a kind of a snooze fest.
6. Add some more enemy diversity in PvE. I'm mostly thinking of Winterspring right now. It feels like every single battle is against 3 owl guys that attack randomly at the end of the turn. It feels like they spent the most time on Barrens, then progressively spent less time on each subsequent area.
7. Add Jigglypuff as a Merc.
Again, I'm enjoying the mode. These are not meant to be complaints, just suggestions. Curious to hear what other QoL improvement ideas y'all have.
4. Explain what in the world does Rexxar's "Half-Orc" mean? And what's the other half? Does he potentially get buffs for two tribes?
He's half orc half ogre in the lore.
My guess is it's functionally like the orc tribe, but they didn't want to call him an orc because that's heresy.
The one thing I want most is not getting maxed out merc coins in rewards and packs, that's really unfair, and I think the rewards are pretty well balanced if not for that little oversight. In just a few days I've been able to collect a lot of coins and craft multiple epics, and get most of my merc abilities to rank 3 or higher, it feels really good, but once you start maxing out mercs the rewards will get worse and worse over time, and that's not good.
When you have 1 merc left to upgrade the rewards are going to be 99% useless trash and that makes no sense.
I think a good solution is switching the rewards from coins to gold. For example I get 20 Xyrella coins but my Xyrella is max level, they turn into 2 gold.
also the duplicate protection works in a fishy way, always in detriment of the players, as usual with blizzard
for example, i dont have all the epic mercs but i keep receiving stupid epic costumes of mercs that already have instead of a mercs that i dont have, luckily didnt happen to me with legendaries but if i collect coin by coin to purchase a f*****ing pack and i receive a cosmetic legendary instead of a legendary mercs i think i abandon the mode
also the duplicate protection works in a fishy way, always in detriment of the players, as usual with blizzard
for example, i dont have all the epic mercs but i keep receiving stupid epic costumes of mercs that already have instead of a mercs that i dont have, luckily didnt happen to me with legendaries but if i collect coin by coin to purchase a f*****ing pack and i receive a cosmetic legendary instead of a legendary mercs i think i abandon the mode
Yeah I saw an interesting write-up on this phenomenon over on Out of Cards.
Time for a balance patch. Speed is what this gamemode currently is all about. Chance abilitys that either buff or slow ability speed from ''ALL ALLIES'' or ''ALL ENEMIES'' into single target. Slowing or speeding an entire team is just too much vallue and is currently impacting who wins or loses way too much. On top of that there's no thinking required if something target's everything. It would be way more interesting if a speed slow would target highest or lowest health ally or enemy for excample. That way you have tot think and play around your abilities rather then just spamming then.
I want more stuff to do for low\mid level heroes. It is just isn't fun to redo barrens\fellwood. Currently, my <30 level merc either sit on a bench when I farm legendary coins with an optimal 3 or serve as bot bait in PvE... It is a boring way to level up.
I'd like a tweak to the N/HC coin split. It feels very shady that not only does normal give about 60%ish of the coins per reward, it also has a massively lowered legendary coin rate. Makes it very hard to farm later legendaries, and contributes to the annoyance when blizz stop people doing stupid behaviour like farming the second-easiest HC. One or the other feels valid - and I'd lean towards a bigger coin disparity but similar breakdown in rarities.
I'd also like a bit of a rebalance to the HCs - Felwood is not very hard, then winterspring is harder than BRM! IMO notch down Winterspring HC difficulty and notch up BRM if needed, though those feel tough in a good way, with mistakes leading to deaths or wipes. Winterspring trash is just big enough to burn through any tank in one turn, meaning you have to rely on RNG and have no taunts.
1 : Make it so u r guaranteed a task from 1 of the 3 mercs of the bounty which should encourage farming the proprer bounty. If u dont have the merc, than 50 coin to allow u from crafting Said merc.
2 : At reset, instead of random mercs task. Have a choice of 3 task bundle (similar to card Choice in duels). This could allow PPL to focus merc task they want (i got Murk eye 4 Days In a row, plz no more).
1 : Make it so u r guaranteed a task from 1 of the 3 mercs of the bounty which should encourage farming the proprer bounty. If u dont have the merc, than 50 coin to allow u from crafting Said merc.
Quite honestly, you're getting a fair amount of coins for a merc by grinding the bounty for them *on heroic*. Approx 21 coins per run for a legendary. You're not as reliant on tasks as people think - if you can survive the HC bounty.
Now, normal is a pile of dung for legendary coins. This leads to problems with how brutal HC winterspring seems to be - I've heard no real suggestions on what mercs can tank that trash.
More mercenaries. Especially the synergy ones like a protector murloc and a fighter dragon + at least one more merc for shadow, fire (ie. deathwing) and frost (ie. sindragosa). Packs should offer more coins to compensate for more mercs and just be more "buyable" that way.
I would like to have some properly random bounties where the power is adjusted to your teams so that you won't have to think too much about finding the right power level for your team.
The task grinding doesn't feel like an RPG. It's bumpy and inconsistent. I miss just going through PVE and progress as I play. Not having to farm certain levels or handicap my team when it out scales the enemy. There has to be some guarantee to get a task. Maybe when you defeat a boss or something
Oh, more mercs, yes - specifically more mercs for synergies. One minor-ish change I'd make would also be to make the retire button actually on the main screen - I've come close to quitting HS instead multiple times because, seriously, put your retire button in plain sight or in that main menu. UI could do with a lot of improvements.
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I've been playing a lot of Pokemon Hearth Gold...uh, sorry, I mean Mercenaries, this week, and I've got to say that I'm enjoying it A LOT more than I thought I would. (Granted, that bar was set very, very low, but nonetheless I am having fun.) That being said, there's some really low-hanging fruit in terms of improvement/QoL:
1. Make enemy actions fit into the screen on mobile. I said this in another post, but I truly cannot believe the mode shipped this way. I generally play HS 50/50 mobile vs on the computer because it's a pretty similar experience for me either way, but Mercenaries is totally different when you have no idea what the enemy is going to do (which I guess is how PvP works? Haven't tried it yet).
2. Make it so that you can see the abilities of the Mercenaries you are considering crafting. Also very surprised it shipped this way. Can you imagine the card text being blurred out if you were looking at crafting a card in constructed?
3. Some sort of esthetic addition to the cards to designate Alliance vs Horde. Again, I mentioned this in another post, but this is super confusing for people who aren't coming from the WoW environment. I would say 85% of the time, I can guess/intuit which faction a card belongs to, but sometimes I have no idea or am genuinely surprised. (Ex: Kurtrus looks much more Horde-y to me.)
4. Explain what in the world does Rexxar's "Half-Orc" mean? And what's the other half? Does he potentially get buffs for two tribes?
5. Make the equipment a little more interesting/diverse. "Add 1 attack to X ability" is a kind of a snooze fest.
6. Add some more enemy diversity in PvE. I'm mostly thinking of Winterspring right now. It feels like every single battle is against 3 owl guys that attack randomly at the end of the turn. It feels like they spent the most time on Barrens, then progressively spent less time on each subsequent area.
7. Add Jigglypuff as a Merc.
Again, I'm enjoying the mode. These are not meant to be complaints, just suggestions. Curious to hear what other QoL improvement ideas y'all have.
He's half orc half ogre in the lore.
My guess is it's functionally like the orc tribe, but they didn't want to call him an orc because that's heresy.
The one thing I want most is not getting maxed out merc coins in rewards and packs, that's really unfair, and I think the rewards are pretty well balanced if not for that little oversight. In just a few days I've been able to collect a lot of coins and craft multiple epics, and get most of my merc abilities to rank 3 or higher, it feels really good, but once you start maxing out mercs the rewards will get worse and worse over time, and that's not good.
When you have 1 merc left to upgrade the rewards are going to be 99% useless trash and that makes no sense.
I think a good solution is switching the rewards from coins to gold. For example I get 20 Xyrella coins but my Xyrella is max level, they turn into 2 gold.
Interesting. That makes sense, and it adds to the idea that they're assuming WoW background for this mode.
also the duplicate protection works in a fishy way, always in detriment of the players, as usual with blizzard
for example, i dont have all the epic mercs but i keep receiving stupid epic costumes of mercs that already have instead of a mercs that i dont have, luckily didnt happen to me with legendaries but if i collect coin by coin to purchase a f*****ing pack and i receive a cosmetic legendary instead of a legendary mercs i think i abandon the mode
Yeah I saw an interesting write-up on this phenomenon over on Out of Cards.
Time for a balance patch.
Speed is what this gamemode currently is all about. Chance abilitys that either buff or slow ability speed from ''ALL ALLIES'' or ''ALL ENEMIES'' into single target. Slowing or speeding an entire team is just too much vallue and is currently impacting who wins or loses way too much.
On top of that there's no thinking required if something target's everything. It would be way more interesting if a speed slow would target highest or lowest health ally or enemy for excample. That way you have tot think and play around your abilities rather then just spamming then.
I want more stuff to do for low\mid level heroes. It is just isn't fun to redo barrens\fellwood. Currently, my <30 level merc either sit on a bench when I farm legendary coins with an optimal 3 or serve as bot bait in PvE... It is a boring way to level up.
I'd like a tweak to the N/HC coin split. It feels very shady that not only does normal give about 60%ish of the coins per reward, it also has a massively lowered legendary coin rate. Makes it very hard to farm later legendaries, and contributes to the annoyance when blizz stop people doing stupid behaviour like farming the second-easiest HC. One or the other feels valid - and I'd lean towards a bigger coin disparity but similar breakdown in rarities.
I'd also like a bit of a rebalance to the HCs - Felwood is not very hard, then winterspring is harder than BRM! IMO notch down Winterspring HC difficulty and notch up BRM if needed, though those feel tough in a good way, with mistakes leading to deaths or wipes. Winterspring trash is just big enough to burn through any tank in one turn, meaning you have to rely on RNG and have no taunts.
1 : Make it so u r guaranteed a task from 1 of the 3 mercs of the bounty which should encourage farming the proprer bounty. If u dont have the merc, than 50 coin to allow u from crafting Said merc.
2 : At reset, instead of random mercs task. Have a choice of 3 task bundle (similar to card Choice in duels). This could allow PPL to focus merc task they want (i got Murk eye 4 Days In a row, plz no more).
Quite honestly, you're getting a fair amount of coins for a merc by grinding the bounty for them *on heroic*. Approx 21 coins per run for a legendary. You're not as reliant on tasks as people think - if you can survive the HC bounty.
Now, normal is a pile of dung for legendary coins. This leads to problems with how brutal HC winterspring seems to be - I've heard no real suggestions on what mercs can tank that trash.
More mercenaries. Especially the synergy ones like a protector murloc and a fighter dragon + at least one more merc for shadow, fire (ie. deathwing) and frost (ie. sindragosa). Packs should offer more coins to compensate for more mercs and just be more "buyable" that way.
I would like to have some properly random bounties where the power is adjusted to your teams so that you won't have to think too much about finding the right power level for your team.
The task grinding doesn't feel like an RPG. It's bumpy and inconsistent. I miss just going through PVE and progress as I play. Not having to farm certain levels or handicap my team when it out scales the enemy. There has to be some guarantee to get a task. Maybe when you defeat a boss or something
Oh, more mercs, yes - specifically more mercs for synergies. One minor-ish change I'd make would also be to make the retire button actually on the main screen - I've come close to quitting HS instead multiple times because, seriously, put your retire button in plain sight or in that main menu. UI could do with a lot of improvements.