We've got an update on Mysterious Stranger farming in Mercenaries - it's being nerfed in a hotfix! Blizzard is also addressing some tasks that were bugged. Read on for details.
Quote From GnomeSayin We are currently in the process of rolling out a hotfix that makes the following adjustments to Mercenaries:
• We are adjusting the appearance rate of Mysterious Stangers to be based on the relative level of the strongest Mercenary in your party compared to the suggested level of the Bounty. This move is to encourage people towards more engaging gameplay instead of repeatedly taking on low-level Heroic Bounties with highly over-leveled Parties.
• We are fixing issues that prevented the following Tasks from being completed as written: Sylvanas’s Task 17, Scabbs’s Task 14, War Master Voone’s Task 14, Grommash’s Task 12, Baron Geddon’s Task 14, and Mutanus’s Task 9.We will continue to monitor, investigate, and heal-up the remaining issues. We will continue to share updates in this post.
Comments
Has anyone considered just... not actively maxing everything? If you have to have perfectly maxed teams to get even a scrap of enjoyment out of the mode, then maybe the mode just isn't fun for you, and thus isn't worth it.
Put another way: if it's impossible to be competitive at your MMR in PVP with a less-than-fully leveled team with less-than-fully leveled equipment, isn't that an indication that skill doesn't make enough of a difference to make the mode worthwhile? If the meta is truly that boring, then how is it worth the time investment to grind out your team in the first place?
Mercenaries (only talking about pve) was fun for like 5 hrs. Until than it gets dull and repetetiv grind. Its like a hearthstone-esque minigame for pre-school teens without any skill required. The roguelite-modes in the earlier expansions were much better in every aspect. I hope that dev ressources will used better soon...
What's a "pre-school teen"?
If Blizzard felt that "over-leveled" parties were hitting Air Elemental too frequently, why change the appearance rate of the Stranger? Why not tweak what the Stranger offers to be a task from a larger pool of Mercs?
This is an absolutely horrible change for every single person playing Mercenaries. Yes, more so for F2Ps, but you have to realize that even ppl buying deals and packs with money have to complete at least 7 Tasks for each merc to get all their equipment. Now it is going to take way more time and it will be even harder to do so.
I mean I understand that farming low level Bounties for Tasks was definitely not what they intended, but they introduced it as mainly PVE mode ffs, and what do you do in PVE? You farm and you grind. And you find the easiest cheesiest way to do it, and that is ok! Have they never played their own games?
I have already spent substantially more time in Mercenaries and in HS in general ever since the game mode came out, but it was only fun for me because there was a sense of proggression for my time spent playing. Now forcing me to play specific bounties to maybe continue progressing is not something I want to do.
There cannot be a 100% or a high chance to get Mysterious Stranger because there are three outcomes from the mystery tile, doubt they will just eliminate the other two at lvl30 bounties, so even with 50/25/25 split, which I think is more than we will get, it will take a lot more time than run through a low level bounty bunch of times.
In the end, I hope they can come up with an alternative way to offer more tasks more often, or the game mode will lose the appeal to a lot of players already playing it, and to ones who would consider starting from scartch at this point.
…Am I the only one who had no idea how this worked?
it wasnt exactly explained very well in the game. But if you watched any streamers or ytbers you would know.
It's going to take forever just to get the tasks now. I really dislike this change. They should've added an alternative instead of just making it worse across the board.
I think the hotfix is up Im afraid. Tried out air elemental heroic for 10 games, 0 strangers but lots of potatos. Then tried out snowclaw, 3 so far with 2 strangers
If anyone else have bigger sample sizes, please share. Because Im certain the percentages for higher difficulties have not been tweaked.
i m farming for Mutanos coins (just to get 300 coins to craft him).
I did Xaravan on normal 15 times with a party of 4 lv30 and 2 lv25 (raising up) and i got 0 strangers..... suggested level is 25 btw...
this is far worse than expected. feels like you just cant get the stranger if you have lv30 in party and you are not doing a lv30 bounty.
So... Out of all the criticism and problems mercercenaries has, they decide to "fix" the easiest way F2P people had of getting resources...
How Blizzard of them.
Damnit, I was hoping they wouldn't change this. Welp, better finish my grind for the 1 PvP team (haven't PvP'd yet) I want to be able to play at max before they "fix" the Stranger. For the F2P grinder like me, this change absolutely blows. The grind already took forever spamming Heroic Air Elemental, it's probably only going to get way longer from here.
i hope you grinded it already. cause they fixed it like they were running from the plague. god forbid f2p have a slight benefit
Ah well, I guess I won't be playing the mode until someone figures out some other optimal strategy to grind or the team does something to make tasks/coins more readily available, because I certainly didn't max my team before the fix went live.
You can try snowclaw. Its three battles to one mystery wheel, minimum of 2 battles if you get lucky. Since regular snowclaw is earliest for the recommended level 30, the stranger still works there. Its just that winterspring's enemies aren't very conducive to completing the tasks, so you still have to waste some time at some lower level run to finish them up.
Iksar already twitted explaining this: "Intention of the change was to stop players from feeling like they have to farm the same low-level content over and over again to play optimally. Paul (lead design) and Ben (game director) will be mulling the feedback of the recent change over the weekend."
this is a blatant lie, because the option players have now is to farm higher lvl longer duration bounties in order to play optimally.
i mean the devs can be straight dumb but since thats not the case i think, then they are straight up lying. sad
"Intention of the change was to stop players from feeling like they have to farm the same low-level content over and over again to play optimally."
I find this quote interesting because, in my experience, a lot of the conversation around farming air elemental from those who were grinding it was, "I've got to get this grind in before Blizzard nerfs Mysterious Stranger." Thus it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: Blizzard nerfs the thing people felt that they "had" to grind because they wanted to get their grind in before Blizzard nerfed it. If there was no threat of Blizzard nerfing Mysterious Stranger, I think there would have been fewer people feeling like they "had" to grind air elemental to "play optimally." Most people probably would have just "grinded" the specific mercs they wanted, then moved on to the fun parts that they are grinding those mercs for.
(Not to mention that the people who abused the grind are actually being "rewarded" by the nerf: they've already got the grind in, so their teams are stronger than people who didn't abuse air elemental and who can no longer grind as efficiently as they did--which I believe a lot of people [I've seen at least Regis on Twitter] are pointing out)
I absolutely agree, I don't like the way they phrased the change here nor in the tweet. The whole point of the "grind" is that you're working towards something; it's not inherently enjoyable or "engaging", the most "engaging" part is the speed at which you grind, and the faster it is, the faster you're going to be able to play the actually "engaging" content at an optimal level (i.e. PvP, more challenging Heroic PvEs). In essence, then, you're not making the experience anymore "engaging" when you slow down the grind, so there is no benefit to the change whatsoever, just more costs. The way they've framed the change is what leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
could not have said better myself, completely agree.
Ah, it's funny because the community found a way to be relatively competitive while being f2p and they've immediately went to the trouble of removing it rather than addressing many of the complaints regarding frustration with coin colecting or the release of what is clearly an unfinished product.
They better make tasks more available or a lot of players will just start ignoring Mercenaries altogether. I know I will if something better isn't introduced.