At launch, most Daily and Weekly Quests will not be compatible with Mercenaries. The only Quests that will be able to be completed in Mercenaries will be those that require you to win games in any mode, and those that require you to take a certain number of turns. In future patches, we will be fixing the Quests that are not working properly, as well as possibly making new Daily and Weekly Quests or adjusting the language of certain existing Quests to include Mercenaries.
Hm, yet another reasonable assumption that quests will be completable in Mercenaries seems to be true... I am quite amazed that Blizzard fails to do so at launch but... Small Indie Company
In my opinion the current quest system and 'rewards track' is allready a problem. And if Mercenary stuff are added it becomes worse for everyone who only plays 1 mode in this game. I think only a small part of players want to play all 3 modes. 1)So a more NEUTRAL quest and ''rewards track'' is needed. In addition Mercenaries seems to become on the same level as normal Hearthstone in terms of gold investment for packs. So I dont think players really can afford to play booth on the same competive level. Mercenaries is pretty much a game on it's own with it's own economy, the fact that it has it's own upgradeable town and coin system just proves that. And even if no Mercenary quests get added in the main game. We will still end up with a group of players who only play Mercenaries. Just like we now have a group who only plays Battlegrounds. So in my opinion it needs a rework. And "seducing" players to play a game for quests rewards while they dont want to play it, will only make them hate that game more I think. Atleast that's how I experience it.
1) I can agree that quests may be rather annoying to reroll if you don't play X mode but hard disagree on the rewards track. Rewards track should give more stuff for other game modes. Will, it hurt you if the rewards track will give exactly the same amount as the current track + some stuff for mercs? What we don't want is "This new reward track gives +10 merc packs and only -800 less gold, meaning you get more value!" and I am a bit worried that this may happen. I will be among the ones who raise a pitchfork should Blizzard 'improve' the track this way.
2) Some people manage to play Runterra and Hearthstone or MTG Arena and Hearthstone or any other "F2P" game plus Hearthstone. Yes, those people may have too much free time on their hands but it can be done. Let's be honest, Mercenaries and Battlegrounds aren't game modes. Mercenaries and Battlegrounds are different games. Also, who said about playing games on same competetive level? I am not a big fan of Battlegrounds, too APMy and tilt-inducing for my tastes. But I do enjoy playing few matches of it sometimes and getting few pieces of gold for this is a good thing. Mercs will be the same for many players. Game to enjoy casually sometimes while still getting some free resources for their favorite game.
Q: How long will it take to max my Mercenary’s level?
A: It depends on how you play. At launch, each Mercenary will be capped at level 30. Whenever you get a new Mercenary Card, that Mercenary will start at level 1. If you just stick with your starting team and play through Bounties as they unlock, we expect it to take less than 10 hours of gameplay to max level your starting Mercenaries. The Fighting Pit is also a pretty good source of experience, and can fully level a Party slightly quicker than playing through those first Bounties.
Later on, you’ll be able to stick new Mercenaries on the Bench and have them watch your more powerful Mercenaries take on tougher Bounties. Remember, all members of a Party get the same experience from fights, even if they don’t participate. Power-levelling like that could cut the leveling time drastically. Heroic Bounties offer 50% more experience than the normal versions, so things can get even quicker in late-game Mercenaries!
If you need only 10 hours of gameplay to max out a mercenary you want it will be quite easy to level up PVP "meta heroes" to the max, meaning a rather F2P environment. Now we need to learn how hard it is to craft a merc without opening it in packs
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.
1) I keep seeing this assumption that it will be impossible to progress in Mercenaries without playing regular Hearthstone. We don't know prices for town upgrades but it will be the most stupid if it won't be possible to afford those+some packs (if you want them) from gold earned within Mercenaries.
2) Yes. Blizzard wants to have some players that want to buy packs, hundreds of them. They need to make money, you know?. If you have two games and you want to play both you have to pay two times more. Either in cash or in F2P grind. Many people here want a new game that takes time to develop to be free (or better - give free resources for Hearthstone) only because it is inside Hearthstone client. I suspect that the playerbase is spoiled by Battlegrounds monetization which is beyond generous.
3) I see no full gacha. Packs are absolutely unnecessary to enjoy PVE part of the game, as long as you have one team, you can progress with it and they give you this team and only thing that may reasonably stall you Is gold for tavern buildings. For me, and, I am sure, for many other players buying packs for Mercs is like paying $10 backs to DnD GM for equipment or XP. PVP may be a different story, but being competitive in Hearthstone isn't cheap either.
If mercenaries rewards are being included in the reward track, then they are defacto reducing the reward track for HS only players
By requiring gold for mercenaries and not offering a significant way to generate the gold necessary to play mercenaries, they are reducing the available gold for HS and thus trying to pressure people to spend more to keep up their collection.
And your little rant about not telling a corporation what to do is hilarious. Of course customers tell the company what they want from the company, to think any other way is insanity.
1) False. Including mercenaries rewards in the reward track doesn't mean that anything needs to be removed from it. This is actually just a stupid assumption
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
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.
There will be Mercenaries weekly quests, I am 99.9% sure. It just makes sense. Blizzard uses quests to motivate players to try specific types of cards or gamemodes.
I also think that we may get XP granting Mercenary achievements for one season just like Duels had
I think I kind of see it both ways - if they give you a task to get stuff for a bit of time investment, you would personally need to weigh if its worthwhile to you. And maybe if you deem its not worth your time and don't do it, you would feel bad for missing out... but should you feel bad? You've chosen not to do it, because your time is more valuable than the reward, so what have you actually lost? You've spent your time in better ways to get more enjoyment out of the game (or life, doing something else).
So if they added a new, 4th weekly quest, totally in addition to the 3 we normally get, then it doesn't seem to me like I'm missing out if I don't do it. And we're also assuming how difficult and time consuming a weekly Mercs quest might be, too. A lot of current weekly quests can be done in a handful of games, if you choose your modes/decks properly.
But ultimately, we'll need to see how they actually roll it out and the rewards to resources ratio before we call this one a mistake or in need of being salvaged.
Personally, I hope they do separate the game modes completely, but given the speculation that all Mercs games will give exp on the same rewards track for regular Hearthstone... I guess it will end up being some combination. :\
You may not see it as feel bad, many will. And I absolutely don't think that a united economy is bad and here is why.
Let's assume someone is tired of Hearthstone, perhaps meta is soooo bad that they don't want to play at all and they skip few months and use their free time to play some other game. Then they decide to come back and... boom, they missed a whole reward track and will need to catch up.
Now, lets assume that the very same someone is tired of Hearthstone and moves to playing Battlegrounds rerolling all quests to ones that can be completed in Battegrounds. They will lose a chunk of rewards but will still get a reasonable amount of resources but thanks to the nature of the rewards track they will still get some packs\tickets\cards and won't fall behind that much. It is a good thing. And if they don't go to an extreme and instead spend their playing time to 10% regular Hearthstone 90% Battlegrounds, they will be fine.
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.
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.
The majority of Blizzard customers and Hearthstone players don't write on Reddit or HearthPwn, the need to "save" the mode is imaginative. It may very well be that Blizzard got all expenses covered by the first wave of preorders, we simply don't know.
1. You are offering to disbalance the whole Hearthstone economy, by creating additional gold quests within Mercenaries you are soft-FORCING every F2P\budget Hearthstone player to grind those even if they dislike the mode and Blizzard will have to make constructed more expensive to compensate their losses. Awful, awful, awful idea.
2. If, and only if, Mercenaries take an unreasonable amount of gold to upgrade the camp. Otherwise, this amount of XP may be enough to upgrade the camp at a reasonable pace
3. Don't teach professionals how to do marketing, especially when you have no idea how many preorders are already sold. Also, don't tell a corporation "please, make less money to make me happier."
4. I will be amazed if this won't be the case for the next reward tracks. I expect roughly the same amount of gold, roughly the same amount of Hearthstone packs and arena\duels tickes, etc. Plus few mercenary packs here and there, a mercenary hero or two, mercenary coins, etc.
At launch, most Daily and Weekly Quests will not be compatible with Mercenaries. The only Quests that will be able to be completed in Mercenaries will be those that require you to win games in any mode, and those that require you to take a certain number of turns. In future patches, we will be fixing the Quests that are not working properly, as well as possibly making new Daily and Weekly Quests or adjusting the language of certain existing Quests to include Mercenaries.
Hm, yet another reasonable assumption that quests will be completable in Mercenaries seems to be true... I am quite amazed that Blizzard fails to do so at launch but... Small Indie Company
1) I can agree that quests may be rather annoying to reroll if you don't play X mode but hard disagree on the rewards track. Rewards track should give more stuff for other game modes. Will, it hurt you if the rewards track will give exactly the same amount as the current track + some stuff for mercs? What we don't want is "This new reward track gives +10 merc packs and only -800 less gold, meaning you get more value!" and I am a bit worried that this may happen. I will be among the ones who raise a pitchfork should Blizzard 'improve' the track this way.
2) Some people manage to play Runterra and Hearthstone or MTG Arena and Hearthstone or any other "F2P" game plus Hearthstone. Yes, those people may have too much free time on their hands but it can be done. Let's be honest, Mercenaries and Battlegrounds aren't game modes. Mercenaries and Battlegrounds are different games. Also, who said about playing games on same competetive level? I am not a big fan of Battlegrounds, too APMy and tilt-inducing for my tastes. But I do enjoy playing few matches of it sometimes and getting few pieces of gold for this is a good thing. Mercs will be the same for many players. Game to enjoy casually sometimes while still getting some free resources for their favorite game.
Q: How long will it take to max my Mercenary’s level?
A: It depends on how you play. At launch, each Mercenary will be capped at level 30. Whenever you get a new Mercenary Card, that Mercenary will start at level 1. If you just stick with your starting team and play through Bounties as they unlock, we expect it to take less than 10 hours of gameplay to max level your starting Mercenaries. The Fighting Pit is also a pretty good source of experience, and can fully level a Party slightly quicker than playing through those first Bounties.
Later on, you’ll be able to stick new Mercenaries on the Bench and have them watch your more powerful Mercenaries take on tougher Bounties. Remember, all members of a Party get the same experience from fights, even if they don’t participate. Power-levelling like that could cut the leveling time drastically. Heroic Bounties offer 50% more experience than the normal versions, so things can get even quicker in late-game Mercenaries!
If you need only 10 hours of gameplay to max out a mercenary you want it will be quite easy to level up PVP "meta heroes" to the max, meaning a rather F2P environment. Now we need to learn how hard it is to craft a merc without opening it in packs
1) I keep seeing this assumption that it will be impossible to progress in Mercenaries without playing regular Hearthstone. We don't know prices for town upgrades but it will be the most stupid if it won't be possible to afford those+some packs (if you want them) from gold earned within Mercenaries.
2) Yes. Blizzard wants to have some players that want to buy packs, hundreds of them. They need to make money, you know?. If you have two games and you want to play both you have to pay two times more. Either in cash or in F2P grind. Many people here want a new game that takes time to develop to be free (or better - give free resources for Hearthstone) only because it is inside Hearthstone client. I suspect that the playerbase is spoiled by Battlegrounds monetization which is beyond generous.
3) I see no full gacha. Packs are absolutely unnecessary to enjoy PVE part of the game, as long as you have one team, you can progress with it and they give you this team and only thing that may reasonably stall you Is gold for tavern buildings. For me, and, I am sure, for many other players buying packs for Mercs is like paying $10 backs to DnD GM for equipment or XP. PVP may be a different story, but being competitive in Hearthstone isn't cheap either.
1) False. Including mercenaries rewards in the reward track doesn't mean that anything needs to be removed from it. This is actually just a stupid assumption
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
There will be Mercenaries weekly quests, I am 99.9% sure. It just makes sense. Blizzard uses quests to motivate players to try specific types of cards or gamemodes.
I also think that we may get XP granting Mercenary achievements for one season just like Duels had
You may not see it as feel bad, many will. And I absolutely don't think that a united economy is bad and here is why.
Let's assume someone is tired of Hearthstone, perhaps meta is soooo bad that they don't want to play at all and they skip few months and use their free time to play some other game. Then they decide to come back and... boom, they missed a whole reward track and will need to catch up.
Now, lets assume that the very same someone is tired of Hearthstone and moves to playing Battlegrounds rerolling all quests to ones that can be completed in Battegrounds. They will lose a chunk of rewards but will still get a reasonable amount of resources but thanks to the nature of the rewards track they will still get some packs\tickets\cards and won't fall behind that much. It is a good thing. And if they don't go to an extreme and instead spend their playing time to 10% regular Hearthstone 90% Battlegrounds, they will 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.
The majority of Blizzard customers and Hearthstone players don't write on Reddit or HearthPwn, the need to "save" the mode is imaginative. It may very well be that Blizzard got all expenses covered by the first wave of preorders, we simply don't know.
1. You are offering to disbalance the whole Hearthstone economy, by creating additional gold quests within Mercenaries you are soft-FORCING every F2P\budget Hearthstone player to grind those even if they dislike the mode and Blizzard will have to make constructed more expensive to compensate their losses. Awful, awful, awful idea.
2. If, and only if, Mercenaries take an unreasonable amount of gold to upgrade the camp. Otherwise, this amount of XP may be enough to upgrade the camp at a reasonable pace
3. Don't teach professionals how to do marketing, especially when you have no idea how many preorders are already sold. Also, don't tell a corporation "please, make less money to make me happier."
4. I will be amazed if this won't be the case for the next reward tracks. I expect roughly the same amount of gold, roughly the same amount of Hearthstone packs and arena\duels tickes, etc. Plus few mercenary packs here and there, a mercenary hero or two, mercenary coins, etc.