Hearthpwn

Kripp is also a very good player.  He was one of the top Arena players and now he has shifted to Battlegrounds.

What I am hoping for in this mode is something like the appealing aspects of Dungeon Run or some of the other single player modes, without relying on random deck drafts, and with persistent rewards.  I hope the harder PvE challenges and the Heroic bounties are like puzzles rather than pure stat checks based on how much you’ve spent/grinded.  These early missions look really simplistic, but, of course, these are the tutorial missions.  If the challenges are well designed and the PvP has the strategic depth of something like Pokemon Battles, this could be really interesting.  

I think Battlegrounds is more fun than Teamfight Tactics and other auto chess games, despite having a lot less animation, so I’m not bothered by the look of it, and I have a fair amount of hope that the Hearthstone team has grafted the collection drive of Pokemon or Genshin to the gameplay of something like Slay the Spire for the bounties.

It’s really expensive, though and they haven’t given us a whole lot of information on what the higher-end gameplay looks like, so they have a lot of convincing to do if they want to sell those pre-order bundles.

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 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.

I think it would be good if the card required you to take all the damage for each step in a single turn, like the Demon Hunter questline does.  That would help slow it down on turns 2 and 3.  

And Darkglare needs to just be changed so that it’s not the same card anymore.  Being able to draw and play half your deck on turn 4 isn’t much better than being able to draw and play half your deck on turn 3.  The ability is just too powerful.  

Also, I think animated Broomstick is too strong in decks that can produce a big board in a single turn.  Being able to give a bunch of giants rush is  too powerful for a 1 cost card.

Quote from Anarchy1 >>

All the quests are worse than the same decks without them. You don’t lose to the warlock quest, you lose to darkglare doing darkglare things and carying a subpar card. Hunter is only good because of the amount of warlock in the meta, pirate quest is fine and the deck is worse with it 

 Number one, the quest deals 6 damage to the opponent and heals you 6 while you‘re doing darkglare things.  Number 2, the quest bonuses reduce the cost of flesh giant twice for free, bringing it out faster.  Number 3, once Tamsin comes out, all your cards kill your opponent.

The version of the deck that is best now has dropped the molten giants and the Barrens Tamsin+Power Overwhelming for Crystalizers and Unlicensed Apothecaries.  With darkglare, it can often complete the quest on turn 4. Even without, Tamsin comes out on turn 6 and ends the game on turn 7. It is definitely a stronger deck than the old darkglare deck, which lost to taunt walls and board clears.  Hand lock could beat old darkglare, but cannot beat Demon Seed.  Control Warrior could beat old Darkglare, but cannot beat Demon Seed.

When they move to reshape the company’s whole culture, they throw out the good with the bad.  With the departure of Metzen, Morhaime, and now Brack, along with Jeff Kaplan and Ben Brode a while back, it’s not at all clear that any of the top-line people still at Blizzard have any responsibility for the great games that the company has built its reputation on, or have a track record suggesting they’ll deliver games of that caliber in the future.  Bringing in recent hires to run the studio also probably signals the end of any remaining vestiges of Blizzard’s independence from Activision.  This is how BioWare went from being BioWare to just being another mediocre EA studio.

Mana cheats are one of the most powerful effects in Hearthstone.  It’s hard to tell how good any of these quests are until we see how the decks built around them work, but this has a lot of potential.