We've had a handful of hotfixes today for Hearthstone and its time to see what's been going on with them!
- These are the last planned hotfixes for this patch cycle.
- We are getting patch notes for next week's 12.6 patch this week.
- Next week we will be receiving communications surrounding Mercenaries.
- A hack that allowed players to cheat more than 6 Mercenaries into their party has been fixed.
- MMR problems with the Fighting Pit have been resolved.
- Win Trading in the Mercenaries Fighting Pit isn't going to be as efficient as wins now only count toward your daily rewards if you defeat three or more enemy Mercenaries.
You can find the full post from Blizzard down below.
Quote From Blizzard 10/26 Update: We deployed a small server-side hotfix today to address an issue preventing Mercenaries MMR from properly adjusting after players lose a game at 0 MMR (such as players who lost their first-ever Fighting Pit game). The patch also prevents a hack that allowed players to cheat more than 6 Mercenaries into their Party. This is our last planned hotfix for the 21.4 patch cycle. Look out for future updates in the 21.6 Patch Notes, coming later this week, ahead of next week’s patch!
10/26 Update 2: We have temporarily disabled Toki from Battlegrounds due to a bug with some of her skins. We are preparing a fix and will reenable her once we are able to get the hotfix in to correct the bug.
10/26 Update 3: We’ve rolled out a server-side hotfix that addresses exploits in the Fighting Pit rewards system that players were abusing through wintrading. Going forward, wins will only count towards Fighting Pit daily rewards if you defeat three or more enemy Mercenaries. This change will not affect how MMR is calculated after a win, regardless of how many enemies were defeated.
Separately, we see that many players are excited about Mercenaries. We wanted to let you know that we are working on a bigger Mercenaries communication update that we have planned for next week.
Comments
Mercenaries could have been such a fun game mode, but after my (random) opponoent conceded on turn 1, after I killed one of his mercs and I didn't get a win for my chest, I felt pretty bad. I won this game. It's already hard enough to enjoy this mode f2p and now it's even harder to grind for wins without a great comp. I kinda feel betrayed and want my 4k gold back that I spent on this game mode that they're now hotfixing to death.
And basically, they achieved the opposite of what they wanted to do. Now only the wintraders are getting rewards, by letting their opponents snipe 3 mercs. All the "normal" players are getting f*cked by this...
Is it bad that the #1 thing I want fixed right now is the Shop?! Every time I log in it has the little red ! as if there is something new and it's the same stuff I've clicked on multiple times to get rid of the "New" notification. Even UiS packs keep showing up as "New"! This is of course a minor issue and by no means impacting the playability of the game, but it's just how I am. These small things drive me nuts!
Conspiracy theory: It's not a bug, they are just trying to trick me into buying stuff! Not going to work on me, Blizzard! I am smurt!
just call it an open beta lol. the game is CLEARLY unfinished and this further damages the blizzard brand.
So was this actual win trading occurring or were players just recognizing they are beat and conceding early in a match? Based on what the comments in this article are saying it's the latter.
Reddit posts like this. Seem to suggest there was a lot of win trading, especially on CN servers.
I guess with the uniqueness of the Mercs matchmaking system it would make it easier to do something like that too. You each form a similar team that is not a power range you'd typically see and then hope to queue into each other.
I love the hotfix. Just the fact I can troll any Cairne/Xyrella/Samuro farming coins is fun enough for me (I don't care for MMR; PVP vs. AI for speedleveling is my Jam).
This will eventually bite back because this isn't really a fix as much as it is a hassle for pvp players, especially to casuals.
The problem with mercs pvp is that most builds are centered around a few core units. Like Malfurion on nature builds, or Barongeddon in fire builds. And unlike pokemon, mercs don't really have sweepers (except perhaps a few cheeky sylvanas strats) so you cant really rely on one unit to do all the heavy lifting, and you cant just switch out units to prevent a snipe. So its absolutely valid to just concede on losing one or two mercs because if you've lost a core unit and your opponent doesn't, is there any reason to not just concede and save both time and sanity?
Either way, why even bother with this fix? Win trading can only go so far in the MMR and its not like the fix prevented it, it just slows the process down. Its better to adjust it to a minimum of one or two units lost, if at all, certainly not three.
It's not about the MMR; it's about the reward chests.
If people are actually trading wins, both players can get HUGE numbers of coins in a very short time.
Yeah, killing 3 enemies is A LOT. I can understand trying to recover when you lose one of your key units, or two, after you unleash your second part of tactic from the bench-replacement that comes in, but there will be a lot of times, where ppl concede before you can kill 3rd enemy.
I understand where are they coming from, but this looks like an absolute shit way to go about it. And yet another way ppl found how to farm coins and they r nipping it in the bud. Although this one is way more questionable than Mysterious Stranger farming, we can see the pattern here, right?
If you're implying the whole "greed" argument, think about what this actually does. A huge chunk of the Mercenaries revenue stream is supposed to be from coin sales. If people have an extremely easy way to generate coins through PvP reward chests, Mercenaries makes no money. Why would they leave an exploit like that in the game?
If you don't believe Blizz should make money by selling coins (and protecting those sales from exploits), I wonder how you'd monetize the game mode? Selling individual mercs won't do it because you can use coins to craft mercs.
Now, FWIW, I do believe this particular fix is utter garbage, but I also firmly believe they need to come up with some kind of fix.
Sinti, there's always a great reply I have for discussion topics such as these...
Is it gating coins? Yea regardless of other factors, we can see that they are toning down the farming. I said it before and I'll say it again: A well designed game will make you not even realize you're wasting time, no matter what you do in that game and thus you have fun in the way of your choosing. A poorly designed game will make you realize you're wasting time not playing something "optimally" and the facade of fun melts away into "I must play this game perfectly else my time is wasted".
Time is something we irrevocably never get back, it's the penultimate "currency" we as humans spend every day and later on in life, it's the most precious thing to us (as we realize our time is running out.)
Playing games is meant to be fun, when players find ways to "wintrade" or "optimize coin farming" it sets the game's presence in the world.
Am I saying people aren't allowed to be effecient? No, of course not. But perhaps Blizzard is tired of trying to cater to all types of gamers. They are known for being fairly "casual" these days in all of their IP's and they way they've progressed them, and honestly I feel like maybe this is a direction that they are leaning into. If it scares off the streamers, hardcore players to other games, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world because the one thing that I find a worse problem than players optimizing the fun out of games is people who believe that every game should cater to every person's whim.
Games are designed with target audiences in mind. I don't play sports games (Madden, NBA, etc) because I find them dull, reptitive, and not really into sports. I also like shooter games, but not Call of Duty type games. Does this mean I need to go bitch on reddit/forums about how those games to cater to me or try to include me? No. I realize what I like and I dislike.
Anyhow point is: Gamers can (and have) twisted the market place of games into a different space. It's up to developers to make sure that their own vision for the game doesn't get swept under the bed by the clamoring of mass players demanding games cater to their every specific need.
I just want to touch upon this point in your comment.
If the devs want to market this to specific groups of people, they can just go clean with another IP, or just use the WoW brand as hearthstone has done. Instead, they plastered this into hearthstone so its clear that they expect a sizeable amount of hearthstone players as part of its regular audience. So the 'bitching' will obviously come from an audience of hearthstone players in the hearthstone reddit.
In any case, you make a compelling point that people shouldnt expect games to fit sizes where it suits them, but this isn't (mostly) really about the game being shit, its criticism directed at specific actions taken by devs which the playerbase aren't impressed by. I don't need to play fifa or madden to know that lootboxes aimed at kids comes with large, looming ethical issues, and I certainly dont need to play it to criticise it.
I give them a week before they backpedal hard because ranked dies due to people conceding after losing turn 1. 3 mercs dead is ridiculous. The average game is already decided 3 turns in.
I think 'hotfix' is their new fave word!
The 3 or more mercenaries rule kinda sucks for those facing folks who just concede after getting walloped in the first turn.
I agree that it does open up a way to easily grief your opponent by denying them rewards. I hope they come up with a better plan.
Yeah 3 seems way too insane. Very often I've seen people concede after getting two mercs murked turn 1. Not getting chests for that is gonna feel like garbage.
Havent heard anyone talk about that hack, pretty crazy. Also I get fixing wintrading but now people can troll concede if they lost 2 mercs and take away your win...
If you lose 2 mercs very early you already lost so conceding is basically not wasting time. This fix will not sit well with a lot of people and result in legitimate players unfairly losing out on rewards.