Hearthpwn

 

Quote from Strongpoint >>

2) And who said there will be no significant ways to earn gold in Mercs? Earn XP in Mercs, get gold, spend it in Mercs. It is that simple. Oh, you want to play Mercs, get enough gold for everything in there AND get more gold for regular Hearthstone while playing less Hearthstone... Nah, Blizzard won't do this.

3) Don't mix up "I want this product to be that or this" which is reasonable and "I want you to earn less and sell the same product cheaper for no reason but my wishes" which is not. And OP wasn't talking to Blizzard as a customer, he is teaching them how to sell games

 First of all, If Blizz wants people to buy 100+ Merc packs at the same cash/gold price as Hearthstone packs and the only source of gold for Mercs is that it awards pass XP at the same rate as Battlegrounds, that's going to be unacceptable to a large chunk of the community.  I don't even understand why you would defend that practice.

Second, Blizzard ought to know what the community expects from them, and maybe they do need some advice on how to sell their games.  They aren't exactly on a hot streak right now.  Mercenaries looks like fun to me, and I am excited about it, but Blizzard did an awful job announcing it, and people are really angry about how it might be monetized.  If Blizzard goes full gacha, they're not really Blizzard anymore.

Quote from Banur >>

Quote from Crawford881 >>

There is no balance concern about the amount of gold available through Mercs, because gold is cash, so it’s never unfair to give people more gold, because it just makes the game less expensive.

Making the game less expensive IS a concern because it affects Blizzard's bottom line.

The goal of Blizzard is to make X amount of dollars and the game is balanced around that.

Introducing another mode that increases gold income, will result in changes to keep it equal but it will also set the expectation that you need to complete these new gold resources or you are missing out. Thus creating pressure on players that don't want to play Mercs.

 If they burn the game down and piss off the community that hurts the bottom line.  Charging as much as possible doesn’t necessarily earn the most money because a lot of players will bounce if the game tries to soak them too much.  Hearthstone earns more than Raid: Shadow Legends even though Raid: Shadow Legends pretty much asks you to spend $10,000 on it.

1Quote from FortyDust >>

I don't think "salvage" is the right word for a game mode that hasn't even been released yet. There are plenty of people who are excited for it, and plenty of people who will cautiously give it a try and judge it for what it is, not what a bunch of naysayers claim it's going to be.

Now for the point-by-point:

1. We already know that the Campfire quests will include mercenaries coins and packs, so it doesn't make sense to expect gold on top of that. You don't need a separate currency when you get actual packs as a reward.

2. We don't know the XP reward per hour, but there's no reason to believe it will be out of line with other modes.

3. I agree that the bundles lack value, but that's no reason to hate the game, and it shouldn't keep anyone from buying packs if they want to. It's just a reason not to buy the bundles. (Or move to Korea, where you at least get a free Illidan with purchase of any bundle.)

4. The Reward Track is in a weird spot where other modes are concerned. At the moment, I hate getting quests for Battlegrounds, etc., but if I start playing more Mercenaries than traditional Hearthstone (a distinct possibility), I will welcome a few Mercenaries quests there. In a perfect world, there would be checkboxes so you can pick which modes you want quests for, but I don't see that happening.

I actually think it would be best if they took out all the Battlegrounds quests and made that section just about traditional Hearthstone. (Duels and Arena are included there because regular quests can be completed in those modes.) Battleground quests should happen in the Battlegrounds part of the client, just as Mercenaries quests are handled at the Campfire.

I absolutely think talking about "salvaging" Mercenaries is reasonable right now.  I have been watching YouTubers talk about Mercs and Regis Killbin said that he felt like he was wasting time putting effort into Mercs videos because nobody was watching them.  Maybe the pre-orders are rolling in and Blizzard is happy -- Iksar did say something about the response to Diablo in Mercs being successful.  But online communites would have to be incredibly nonrepresentative for that to be true, because the sentiment has been incredibly negative, and I do think the people on Hearthpwn and Reddit probably represent the people who spend several hundred bucks a year on Hearthstone, and they were massively annoyed with Blizz asking them to drop $130 on Mercs.  If Blizz were getting the response they expected, I don't think they would have gone totally silent about it after the announcement.  It really seems like they're on a back foot and regrouping in response to the negative community reaction to the announcement.

Now, on a couple of your points:

1. Merc packs and coins aren't as good as gold, which is the same as cash.  Gold can be used on future releases, and current-set packs and currencies cannot.  If the packs cost gold and the camp upgrades cost gold, then the mode needs to pay out gold.  Playing this mode shouldn't leave you with fewer free resources to allocate to regular Hearthstone.  

4.  We currently get one daily quest and three weekly quests for Hearthstone.  A couple of the weeklies are Battlegrounds exclusive, and one of the Weeklies is can be completed in any mode except main Hearthstone.  Adding Mercs quests to this pool means that people who don't play Mercs will have to spend more rerolls, a scarce resource, rerolling their Mercs quests to get quests for other modes.  I will say again that if Blizzard is asking us to significantly increase our spend on the Hearthstone platform for Mercenaries, then it needs to come with a similarly significant increase in the free cash-equivalent gold rewards for participating in this expensive new mode. 

Quote from Strongpoint >>

Quote from Pherosizm >>

 If people had some extra gold to spend on packs I really doubt that they would consider that "losses". People can buy both preorder bundles and have 3 months worth of legend rank free cards and packs from ladder and still not collect the whole set each expansion. They'll be fine.

 You don't understand what I am talking about....

Imagine there is an additional 4th weekly quest that grants 2000XP for playing Mercs. You can't reroll this quest into a Hearthstone\Battlegrounds one, you must play mercs to get this 2000XP. To complete this quest you need.... let's say 3 hours of Merc gameplay. Now imagine that you find Mercs BORING. Now your choice is two 1) Feel bad by playing the mode you actively dislike or 2)feel bad because you aren't getting this 'free' XP for your Hearthstone collection. It is a lose-lose for a huge number of players. It will be like the current brawl situation but WAY worse. Some brawls are just boring. For me it means 1 less pack in a week (feel bad), for other it means grinding till the win (feel bad). But not all brawls are boring and victories don't take that long.

Playing 100 hours of constructed Hearthstone should give you more resources for constructed Hearthstone than playing 80 hours of constructed Hearthstone and 20 hours of another game masquerading as a game mode.

Do you want more gold in Hearthstone? There are better ways to do it. (But keep in mind that Blizzard isn't a charity)
Do you want more gold in Mercs? Well, make them do something like in game merc tasks that give -1% to the cost of some town upgrade (up to zero) or something like this but don't make people play a game they don't want to get Hearthstone cards. I don't mind occasional special Merc events or rare 1500 XP daily quests but making it mandatory for every week if not every day? No thanks.

 

There is no balance concern about the amount of gold available through Mercs, because gold is cash, so it’s never unfair to give people more gold, because it just makes the game less expensive.  If Mercs is going to cost $130 for the base set preorders and get expansions that Blizz hopes people buy big bundles of, then it should generate free currency that is equivalent to a game of that cost, which means we should double the total gold/pass exp available with mercenaries or at least come close.  If HS players don’t want to play Mercs, they’ll still get as much HS gold, and they won’t be pouring any of their resources (cash, gold, time) into an alternate mode.  

Quote from x0chipilli >>

Lastly as much as I agree with the argument about price point, I think that will only happen if the whole thing flops. 
I mean they stealth-nerfed arena rewards and haven’t even made an attempt at making the mode better (arena specific cards, in-game menu to explain what cards or sets are in, etc.) Instead they are thinking of adding ranks to arena, likely causing arena to be even less profitable. 

I know businesses need to be profitable, but sometimes it really seems like straight greed :/

 It is amazing to me how many people went all-in on Genshin, considering how harsh its monetization is.  If the market rewards monetization practices like that, we get more of them.  I am absolutely floored at how much people are paying into Raid Shadow Legends.

There was a faction that was always going to be pissed if Mercenaries was a monetized game with collectible characters rather than a free or inexpensive mode like Battlegrounds.  But a lot of the takes on it are hyperbolic.  The total spend to get all the mercenaries available day 1 at release is a couple hundred bucks, and a moderate spend looks like it will put players in position to earn the rest.  The rarest, most expensive items look to be the diamond cosmetics for legendary minions, rather than having a super-rare tier of super-powered characters.  By contrast, gacha games like Raid Shadow Legends and Genshin Impact are designed to suck thousands of dollars out of their whale players.  However, Blizzard is launching this with $130 worth of preorders and many players will potentially spend an additional $100 on top of that, and that ain’t nothing.  

There are several things Blizzard can do to make this mode more appealing:  

1. First of all, if upgrades and packs are going to cost gold, then Mercenaries needs to generate gold above and on top of what players earn from other modes.  That doesn’t mean adding Mercenaries quests to the regular daily Hearthstone quest pool, it means separate quests with distinct rewards for playing mercenaries.  If Mercenaries runs on Mercenaries-exclusive currency, then Mercenaries quests can award those currencies, but if Mercs is going to run on gold, and its pack-system looks like it will, then it needs to pay out gold.  If Blizzard is hoping players will substantially increase their spending into what it now apparently views as a card-game platform, then it needs to substantially increase free rewards.

2.  The per-hour pass experience needs to be brought in line at least with Battlegrounds.  It’s understandable if Ranked Hearthstone has reward incentives to get casuals to play ranked, but this mode can’t trail others in value for time spent if it is going to be successful. 

3.  Frankly, if Blizzard wants to extend goodwill, it should straight up cut the price for the preorders and give extra rewards to anyone who preordered before the price cut.  Legends of Runeterra is coming from Blizzard’s most direct competitor, and it’s a lot less expensive to play, with regular players getting access to effectively all cards for free.  Hearthstone doesn’t necessarily need to be as cheap as Runeterra, but it’s a bad look to come in with new ways to spend a lot of money when the base product is being undercut by a competitor.  Hearthstone is not Raid Shadow Legends, but it would still be nice if it was more like Runeterra in its monetization strategies.  This is a very expensive game to keep up with, and prohibitive to return to after a break, and Blizzard should be thinking about how to relieve that, rather than trying to get hundreds more dollars per year from players.

4.  Mercenaries rewards should be added to the Tavern Pass, but they should be in addition to, rather than replacing, all the stuff we’re getting for standard Hearthstone and other modes.  Players of other modes should not feel that they’re losing any value because of Mercenaries.  Taking this up should mean more stuff rather than draining your resources from other modes.

Blizzard has been silent on Mercs since the poorly-received announcement, and they’ve got a lot of work to do to salvage this with the players. Hopefully their silence over the last couple of weeks means they’ve heard community dissatisfaction and are going to come back on Tuesday and say something we’ll like.