Sorry folks, no Ditto fun here!
We've datamined a new building for Hearthstone Mercenaries called the "Training Hall", or Training Grounds as it is referred to sometimes internally. This building was absent on the original Mercenaries Village and has not yet been seen by Blizzard in any other communications. With the mode less than two weeks away from launch now, and it not being implemented fully in the game, we're assuming this is likely an update that we'll see in the future.
Please remember that datamined information is subject to change as the content is not yet released and is based on our best attempt to interpret the client.
How Does the Training Hall Work?
When one Mercenary loves another Mercenary very much, th- The Training Hall allows you to place two of your Mercenary heroes into a "daycare" setting which will allow them to accumulate experience while you aren't playing.
The Old Man always reminded me of Master Roshi...
Initially, only one training slot will be open so you can train one Mercenary at a time. Your first upgrade to Tier 2 will increase the amount of experience Mercenaries inside of the Training Hall receive, with a final and third tier of the building finally opening up the second slot. More details on those costs in a moment.
How Much Experience (XP) Do Mercenaries Earn in the Training Hall
We were unable to find any client-side values that would let us know how much experience you can earn, though it does appear to be an hourly amount.
What Does the Training Hall Look Like?
We've datamined the interface you will see for the Training Hall. On the left you can see your Mercenary characters and on the right you can see who is currently taking part in a special time.
How Expensive is the Training Hall
Unlike other buildings in Mercenaries which are mostly free, the Training Hall is going to be responsible for over a third of your gold costs for construction inside of the village.
The Training Hall costs a total of 600 Gold to fully upgrade. Here is the breakdown per tier:
The Training Grounds - Tier 0
- Cost: Free (0 Gold)
- Unlocks: An empty plot of land.
The Training Grounds - Tier 1
- Cost: Free (0 Gold)
- Unlocks: A place to train your Mercenaries.
The Training Grounds - Tier 2
- Cost: 200 Gold
- Unlocks: Improve the training experience
The Training Grounds - Tier 3
- Cost: 400 Gold
- Unlocks: An additional training slot
How Long Until My Mercenaries Egg Hatches?
No.
What sort of messed up crossover fan fiction is this?
That's everything we know about the Training Hall. Are you excited to make Mercenary babies experience gains?
Comments
For a mostly pve game, its really a weird inclusion. The pokemon comparison is apt, but in reality the daycare center is mostly for breeding because most people grind their pokemon games by actually playing them. The only time I remember actually even using daycare other than breeding is for pokemon that have absolutely 0 ability to fight like magikarp.
I'd imagine this being the case for mercs too. If there's a hero you really wanted to play, will you subject them to a daycare center or actually just play them like anyone else would? So unless there's literal magikarps in mercs, why would anyone allow for skipping what amounts to grind when grind is usually the whole point because that's usually where the meat of the gameplay would be?
Not quite Magikarp level, but if you have no way to create fire combos, Baron Geddon is pretty bad.
The Pokemon Daycare doesn't even offer XP anymore.
But I think in *theory* this serves the same purpose. You stick a merc you don't care about, but really need (like a healer or something) to level it up, so that it can be used in your PvE runs.
If I was playing Mercs and then went to bed or was logging off for the day, I'd 100% have Mercenaries hanging out in the Training Hall. No reason to not gain free progress on them!
*Guff ignores you and uses SPLASH because he doesn't want to hurt anyone!*
FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!
Expected, they have something like this in Raid: Shadow Legends and games like it, since HS Mercenaries is a RSL inside Hearthstone, I was expecting this.
Could've used some examples from games close to Mercenaries like Raid, but I guess we want to compare it to "positive" games like Pokémon, that's fine.
I've never given Raid SL any attention, so that's not a comparison I was able to make.
I like to believe Pokemon Daycare is something more people would identify with, and it makes for a hell of a headline to boot!
Just spit-balling here:
There are many ways to play HS. What if the Daycare uses the amount of XP you earn playing other HS modes to level your Mercs. (Not keep you from earning the XP, but use it as a base to set the amount the Merc's earn.)
You could still train some Mercs and play other parts of HS. It may not be as effective as playing Mercs and power leveling, but it is something to encourage you to also play other parts of HS.
This would actually encourage engagement in all aspects of HS.
Edited for typo
Seems pointless. We know mercenaries receive XP if they're in a party even if they aren't used. You should be able to add a few low level mercs to a high level party and run high level missions to power level them very quickly.
Its the coins that are important. It takes a lot of coins to fully upgrade a hero and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to cheese them. Just a ton of grinding or money for packs.
A lot of psychologically manipulative games will give you a resource relatively easily (gold or XP) so you feel invested, but will withhold a paid resource (dust or coins) to try to compel you to spend cash. They want you to look at your high level merc and think about how much better they'd be if you only had the coins to unlock better abilities. It'd be a shame to stop investing in the merc when they're already so close to being awesome...
Rare coins are extremely easy to get, and you can farm them in a targeted manner, so I can't imagine that feeling like a grindy experience.
Epics are less easy, and legendaries are harder still, but that's as it should be. Better units should require more effort to improve, and there has to be some incentive to spend money, or the mode is dead on arrival.
You're correct that a free to play game likely needs to incentivize some spending, and the mercenary coins certainly aren't as bad as some of the other mobile stuff. I'm personally happy that there's no "energy" requirement to play the game.
Really it'll be a personal opinion whether the rate of coin acquisition is fast enough. I watched some of Kripparian's videos of playing the mode. He was intentionally grinding for Cariel Roame and Milhouse Manastorm and nearly had them at max level. But he was only about half-way, maybe less for leveling abilities and equipment. Most of the abilities don't improve based on the Merc's level, only the ability's level. We don't know yet exactly how this will go, but I think grinding for Merc coins is going to take longer than we may think.
And at the time he'd had his hands on the game for what, a couple of days?
I don't think it's outrageous for a primarily PvE game to require you to do PvE for more than a couple of days to max out your dudes. If you think it's a grind, that just means you don't actually enjoy the game, and that's fine. There are other modes like BGs for people who are allergic to progression-based play.
"What sort of messed up crossover fan fiction is this?"
If this wasn't already a thing, then it certainly is one now.
I don't know, to me it's always a red flag when games offer you the option NOT to play them.
I don’t see this as a way to skip playing so much as a way to help your lower-level characters catch up to the rest. I like that - if I reach the point where I’m using high-level characters in PVP or PVE, I’m not going to want to play low-level games to get my new characters up to speed.
There are 51 mercs in the game. You can have six in your party. Assuming a full collection, that leaves 45 mercs not gaining XP at any given moment even while you are actively playing the game.
The Training Hall may not be useful to everyone, but people with large collections will be happy to have it -- not because it lets them "skip the game," but because there is a legitimate need to get untrained mercs up to speed quickly when you want to test out different comps.
Really? Having a means of passive leveling in a game with a grinding element sounds like a simple quality of life option to me. Where exactly does the red flag come in?
The game could have been designed to be less grindy in the first place. By adding an ability to skip playing, they acknowledge that the game is to slow to be fun, but haven't fixed it. The implication is that the game is deliberately too slow so that some kind of booster can be sold for additional money. Its a red flag indicating that you should guard your wallet.
I mean, there are people who like grind. And those are certainly part of the main target audience.
That's the cynical interpretation, sure, and cynicism has it's place in the world. But it sounds like you're just intent on viewing it negatively. If the first tier of the Training Grounds is completely free, and you can improve it for gold (so available to F2P players), then they are offering ways to compensate for slow grinding without asking for any money.
Besides, the most important part is that, like Pokemon, there will be 2 types of players that treat grinding very differently: First, there will be the players who are playing primarily for the solo experience, and want the game to maintain a sense of progression for a long time. Those players will be fine with fairly slow leveling, because the way they are playing the game doesn't require them to reach high levels quickly.
Second, there are the competitive players, who care most of all about preparing a powerful team to battle other players with. Those players will want to be able to level as quickly as possible so they can put their plans into action while they're still excited about them. To them, the grind is merely an obstruction to their destination.
How do you simultaneously satisfy both types of player when what they want is fundamentally opposed? You can come up with your own answers, but having baseline slow(-ish) leveling with options to speed it up is a perfectly valid approach with nothing fundamentally nefarious about it.