Ahead of tomorrow's 21.4 patch which brings us Hearthstone Mercenaries, Blizzard has published a list of known issues. They state that these will be addressed in future updates.
Quote From GnomeSayin Hello all, we wanted to make you aware that there will be some known issues shipping with 21.4, which we intend to address in future updates. This post will house the known issues prior to launch, in all languages, and another post will be made if any unexpected live issues pop up.
The following are known issues that will be shipping with Patch 21.4, to be fixed in future updates:
- Most Daily and Weekly Quests cannot be completed in Mercenaries. Only quests that require you to win a certain number of games in any mode, or take a number of turns, can be completed at this time. Quests can still be completed normally in the other game modes.
- In Mercenaries, the general rule is that Taunt blocks an Attack, unless the Ability designates a specific target for the Attack (such as “Attack the lowest Health enemy” or “Attack the left-most enemy”). That said, at launch there are a few Treasure Abilities that will incorrectly ignore Taunt when they shouldn’t: Ogre Warmaul, Hysteria, Mass Hysteria, To the Death!, Blinding Rage 3, and The Beast Within 1-5.
- Visual bug with the Diablo Mercenary’s Ability, Apocalypse level 3, combined with the Magma Horn Equipment, showing the wrong damage. The move applies the correct damage.
- Visual bug with the Survival of the Fittest Ability, level 1, not showing the Ability’s Speed. The correct Speed is 9.
- Rexxar’s “Mama Bear’s Claws” Equipment does not buff Mercenaries that are played before Rexxar, or to Rexxar’s left, during the placement phase. This is caused by the effects being read in play order, and from left-to-right. The workaround at this time is to play Rexxar before, and to the left of, any Beast Mercenaries you want him to buff.
- Visual bug where the “upgrade available” indicator will sometimes continue to show after a Mercenary’s Ability or Equipment have been upgraded, even if there are not enough remaining Coins to upgrade that Mercenary any more.
- Performance bug where playing Mercenaries for longer periods (around 1.5-2 hours) will cause lag and performance slowdowns, especially in devices with less RAM. The workaround at this time is to restart the client if that begins.
- Visual bug where some tooltips and pop-ups are clipped off the edge of the screen on mobile devices.
Thanks for your patience, and good luck out there, Mercenaries!
Comments
I can't open Mercernaries at all, not even just to get to the tutorial. I've updated, reloaded game, restarted my netbook, etc. Really frustrating.
I seem to have hit a much worse bug: it won’t let me build the merchant cart that Valera wants to progress the tutorial (not available in the workshop). As a result I’m stuck with only the campfire, the tavern, and the travel point. I don’t have the last two mercenaries, don’t have ability to open packs, and now after playing a while with the 6 mercenaries I have Valera wants me to build a fight pit, which of course I also can’t build due to the middle part of the tutorial having disappeared :(
And the tooltip bug on mobilemaking it impossible to see what ability the center enemy is going to use makes battles significantly harder until you learn what they tend to do.
On the one hand I appreciate their transparency. On the other hand this confirms my fears that Mercenaries will be unfinished and rushed. But I'll still play it. Have a six-pack prepared in the fridge and I hope the bucks won't be game breaking/ fun breaking.
"lag and performance slowdowns, especially in devices with less RAM. " = memory leak. could cause issues for mobile players
Exactly my 'translation' of that point...
It's not new, at least for mobile. I experienced lags after prolonged play for last few years.
In this case I rather take these mostly light bugs, than another delay.
Launching with bugs? Oh well, at least they're being honest with it. Not a good look though.
Kind of an odd take to be honest. Almost All software launches with bugs. They are either known (and not announced) or unknown, and later backlogged to fix.
Even if its true, the question would be whether its acceptable for developers to knowingly release something in such a state. There's plenty of instances where games are released filled with bugs, game breaking or not, but its very rare for them to release it with a list of known bugs and proceed to let the public deal with it.
This is not specifically a criticism of this situation, its just odd so I mentioned it.
This isn't the first time Blizzard has published known issues before patch day, see: https://outof.cards/hearthstone/2888-hearthstone-patch-200-known-issues-if-youre-having-issues-with-tomorrows-patch-this-is-why
And the reason they let us know about these issues now is coz they couldn't add the fixes into this patch or they are still busy fixing the issues but couldn't delay mercs again. I'm happy they announce the known issues to the public but it's also to help their support teams so they not overrun with support tickets due to these bugs.
Has any videogame in history ever launched without any bugs? I can't imagine that, especially these days with massive multi-platform releases. It would be quite the improvement if everyone published their known bugs from the start - I think this is a GREAT look. Being open is way better than saying nothing.
Yeah but not the memory leak, that is just bizarre.
I guess releasing a game when it's ready is really oldfashioned now. Just release the known issues in front so you can point at them when people complain.
so they're launching mercenaries with a memory leak. that's just super.
To be fair, most applications have some form of a memory leak in some fashion. (The longer they run, the memory they use up due to logging, caching, etc) There's very few that can "indefinitely" run without the device/server being taken down for maintenance. Even "always on" applications/web services usually do a load balance from a primary site to a failover periodically without any end-users being none the wiser.
Is it great that the memory leak is enough of a problem for them to announce it ahead of time? No of course not. But at least they are acknowledging it. Feels like your comment is the quintessential response to the mindset "damned if you do, damned if you don't".
If they didn't announce it, people would be up in arms. They announced it, people (i.e. you) are still upset. I'm so glad I'm not in game development 'cause all developers have to deal with entitled customers but I'll tell ya, gamers are the next level of entitled most of the time. I wouldn't wish angry entitled gamers on my worst enemy.
Not by that much, though. A noticeable decline in performance within the first 1.5-2 hours is a major fucking leak. Even the worst, ad-ridden, China-made mobile apps don't have that kind of problem. Blizzard is among the largest Video Game companies in the world, we, as customers pay them millions of dollars every year. Is it so wrong to ask for a quality product?
I pay them nothing so am fine with a few bugs.
Yeah, I guess if you are F2P, you don't really need to care but there are people who bought and paid for the Mercenaries Bundle. Do they deserve this kind of service?
Yeah. Alas, if the release were put off again due to these bugs, they'd be getting the same amount of criticism.