Idea for Extra Merc Coins

Ok, so Iksar himself said on his last Q&A recap that they know extra coins on Mercenaries are a porblem and that they are "actively looking at solutions". So, here's my idea: converting them to regular gold (you know, the one you buy packs with).

Now, here's the biggest issue with the idea: what's the right conversion so that HS's economy doesn't completely break down? Well, that's not an easy answer, considering a lot of the resources for the game mode are either through packs, tasks or bounties. 

• Tasks give a total of 1640 coins (for himself + randoms) + 3 packs (when task 7 = equipment, the new mercs give let's say 100 extra coins, rounding up);
• Packs give mercs, skins and coins. Now, it's not easy to round up an exact number without opening a butload of packs (and I'm not gonna spend money just to know that number), but by looking at the image from the HS wiki and my own experience, you can conclude that no pack gives out more than 5*50 (so 250) coins, unless you have all the skins and open a "duplicate skin", which will be converted to 50/75/100 coins (depending on merc rarity);
• Bounties give an assortment of coins, depending on the dungeon, but they give out at most... honestly, I couldn't find how much they give and I'm not in the mood to do a Heroic run on Alterac Valley just to check how many coins we get (especially since I don't have that many maxed mercs). So, for the sake of rounding up, I'll say they also give out up to 250 coins.

So, how much gold should we get for the extra coins? I'd say, not that much, just some extra change so your time isn't completely wasted while not being so much you'd run a bot on early game bounties for insane amounts of gold. Which brings me to my proposition: For every 200 extra coins you have of a certain merc, you can redeem X gold, depending on rarity. More specifically, 5G for rare mercs, 10G for epic ones and 20G for legendary mercs.

This way, even if you were to get 250 coins of a certain legendary merc on a Merc Pack, that would be worth the equivalent of 25G: 25% the base cost of a Merc pack, i. e., the same disenchanting to enchanting rate dust has. And also, this change helps with another small inconvenience: ever since the change to the reward track, we've always received gold in multiples of 50, which means you'll always be left with up to 45 "useless" gold leftovers if you don't play arena or duels.

Its probably never going to happen. Allowing an option to covert coin to gold simply worsen an existing problem, of which mercs is fairly notorious Im sure; bot-ting

Despite what anyone may say about mercs, its hard to see past the obvious fact, and that is that the game is shallow, in a manner that makes pokemon look like dark souls by comparison. I can literally finish an entire pve bounty doing nothing but the same moves over and over - its so mind numbing that I simply dont even count the damage or see what the opponent is doing anymore, just queue attacks because why not? The consequence of this is that the game is incredibly easy to bot. I can imagine running the same heroic barrens no. 1 over and over with a bot and gain somewhere around 3000 rokara coins per day if not more.

Besides which, we have to acknowledge the fact that this - the excess coin issue - is a non-factor, in that its a benign growth on the body that only occasionally itches. Solving it is a matter of choice, it'll hardly ever affect the fun (or unfun) of mercs or its engagement value. So it seems a bit excessive to ask that they allow us to convert a fairly worthless number to something immensely more valuable.

I appreciate the sentiment that many in the community are fairly frustrated with the excess coin around, and much as I would benefit from your suggestion, it's simply unrealistic to believe that team5 would allow us to convert the coins to anything outside of mercs itself. Its sort of like why so many companies insist on doing business with their own made-up currency: Because in the event of excess, or refunds, they can avoid giving you back your duly earned cold hard cash.

The way I see it, the excess coin will likely end up allowing us to purchase cosmetics for mercs (in effect, portraits) or allow some kind of coin exchange (like how dust currently works for hearthstone hearthstone). But I figure its more likely mercs get a completely overhaul - gameplay and all - before any such exchanges are made possible in the future.

I completely understand your point. Botting is an issue and it was with it in mind that my rates were so unfavourable. 3000 Rokara coins would get you 75 gold which is virtually nothing if it means grinding a bot for a full day. The idea was more focused towards rounding up you gold to multiples of 50 rather than making excess coins a full blown resource farming option. In fact, that pack I used as an example is the mother of all highrolls: max number of merc coins of the highest rarity multiplied by 5.

And as far as especially the last paragraph, I do hope for a gameplay overhaul as well. Mercenaries, imo, is still in Alpha. The idea of converting Merc specific coins into "blank" coins for every Merc is also an interesting proposition, but that would also be an interesting proposal, except the exchange rates would also have to be insanely small as to not encourage more botting. My idea would just allow Mercs to be a bit more interesting for a non Mercs player due to the chance of getting gold.

My solution would be something like the following: Merc coins could converted to general coins of the same rarity. Make it a bad exchange rate like 10 to 1. This could be even limited to the same color (eg. epic caster, gives you general epic caster coins). You could upgrade the rarity by the rate 4 to 1 (like dust) so for 400 rare coins you get 100 epic coins. And using general coins for skill or equipment upgrade has twice the cost. So if you have 10k Xyrella Coins this will the worth 500 special Merc for your rares coins (~ 2.5 upgrades)

Lots of great suggestions here. 

I think the multi-pronged approach is going to be needed, specifically: they need to turn off the tap of coins for maxxed Mercs. After maxxing Kurtrus, the odds of receiving Kurtrus coins needs to be near zero. 

Then, give us something to buy with the excess. I agree that portraits seems very likely, and village upgrades could work too. 

An exchange rate would have to be terrible, but would still feel better than sitting on a pile of useless coins. 

I'm F2P, but I do play Mercs daily (no more Battlegrounds for me), and I have piles of coins for most of the Rares. I maxxed out Blink Fox before I had even completed all the Blink Fox tasks, which led to several Feels Bad moments. 

Rerolling those piles into packs or gold might invite too much abuse, but letting them sit there effectively transforms them from currency into a achievement-style score, so I was very glad when Dean told us this was paining the leads. 

Have the excess coins become a general "Mercenary Coins" currency. This currency can then be used to buy exclusively Mercenary packs. 

A major issue right now is that all newly released Mercenaries go into the same old pool of Mercs as far as packs are concerned. I feel like I need to sit on packs until the next wave of new heroes is released to make sure I can get them all and to feel like the packs are being wasted by using them on only coins. This 'excess coin' proposal slightly alleviates the issue by creating an additional source of packs.

There would of course need to be a terrible exchange rate. 10:1 would feel terrible, but 5:1 might work okay.

Quote From Pezman

Has anyone else noticed that AI characters NEVER make attacks that will kill them unless they have no other option, UNLESS you are working on a task where you need to kill them with a specific ability, then they gleefully commit suicide at every opportunity to deny you your task progress?

I suspect that there are different levels of enemy AI in the game. In barrens 1, the enemies dont tend to be smart, they will always attack where their damage will do the most, and the boss AI is pathetic, the third move is always to attack into the highest damage merc.

But at higher levels, the enemy AI is enhanced seemingly, moving in manners I would not expect them to, almost like they're making moves according to my merc composition. Like how in holy teams, the usual strat from the AI is to target anduin. But sometimes whenever I have the ring equipped they'd go for another merc instead. Its weirdly inconsistent.

I've stopped relying on the AI ages ago. In some cases I would farm at higher levels just so they cant suicide into my mercs.

Quote From dapperdog

Quote From Pezman

Has anyone else noticed that AI characters NEVER make attacks that will kill them unless they have no other option, UNLESS you are working on a task where you need to kill them with a specific ability, then they gleefully commit suicide at every opportunity to deny you your task progress?

I suspect that there are different levels of enemy AI in the game. In barrens 1, the enemies dont tend to be smart, they will always attack where their damage will do the most, and the boss AI is pathetic, the third move is always to attack into the highest damage merc.

But at higher levels, the enemy AI is enhanced seemingly, moving in manners I would not expect them to, almost like they're making moves according to my merc composition. Like how in holy teams, the usual strat from the AI is to target anduin. But sometimes whenever I have the ring equipped they'd go for another merc instead. Its weirdly inconsistent.

I've stopped relying on the AI ages ago. In some cases I would farm at higher levels just so they cant suicide into my mercs.

Maiev's equipment to reduce damage from attacks to your left- and right-most characters has taught me the AI does take equipment into account. With that equipped they'll usually attack my middle merc if they aren't blocked by taunt, even if they would be much better off attacking one of the outer mercs normally.

From my experience, the higher level AI is actually pretty clever all things considered, taking account of all effects active at the start of the turn when assessing how quickly they can bring mercs down. I doubt they know enough to counter potential actions by the player though. Tbh, I don't think they should be that clever in PvE since it is good game design to let players actually enact their plans there. So it's better to increase difficulty in 'dumb' ways (like more health and/or damage) than with super-smart AI.

Quote From Pezman

Guys, I'm so salty right now. I am only missing 3 Mercenaries (all legendaries, of course), so I decided to open up my 53 saved packs. Want to know what I got? TWO portraits for legendaries I already had (I do NOT care about cosmetics), a bunch of portraits for rares and epics, TONS of coins I cannot use for maxxed out Mercs, and yes, quite a few coins for Mercs I am still upgrading. I was hoping to net at LEAST one of the missing Mercs, hopefully two. I've clearly reached the point where my collection is so complete that packs are nearly worthless. This feels SO bad, man. I am eagerly awaiting news on what I will be able to use excess coins for. It better be good!

I know the feeling although my personal experience was less intense. After opening all 39 of my previously saved up free packs from doing old tasks, I only missed Reno Jackson as my last mercenary, so I opened another 18 free packs from doing new tasks and I only got a Leeroy Jenkins portrait instead. I just assumed there has to be some kind of duplicate protection built into Mercenaries pack openings, but that did not happen for us. Not sure if we both encountered a bug or the Mercenaries economy is actually much worse than I expected. Was my assumption wrong, does anyone know?

EDIT: Though not official, this is what RidiculousHat figured out by opening a lot of packs:

There is no duplicate protection.

Quote From Avalon

There is no duplicate protection.

There is - as is apparent by how quickly you'll open all the new rares when they come out - but it doesn't apply when coins luckily(?) get replaced by portraits. When this happens for a legendary that you already own it can look like duplicate protection isn't present, but that's a bit misrepresentative since it is using the wrong information. In the (admittedly unofficial) flowchart @NebuchadnezzarHS shared, duplicate protection applies only to the left column, but it is present.

I think the bigger problem in @Pezman's case is that there is no pity timer. So you can go 50+ packs without seeing any legendaries that obey duplicate protection (or any legendaries at all!). And that feels pretty damn awful. Honestly, their removal of the pity timer in Mercs is probably the most concerning aspect of the game's design because there was absolutely no reason to do it other than to make the packs less valuable. And unlike the other concerning aspects of the game, this one was actively made worse than the existing precedent.

Quote From Pezman

Guys, I'm so salty right now. I am only missing 3 Mercenaries (all legendaries, of course), so I decided to open up my 53 saved packs. Want to know what I got? TWO portraits for legendaries I already had (I do NOT care about cosmetics), a bunch of portraits for rares and epics, TONS of coins I cannot use for maxxed out Mercs, and yes, quite a few coins for Mercs I am still upgrading. I was hoping to net at LEAST one of the missing Mercs, hopefully two. I've clearly reached the point where my collection is so complete that packs are nearly worthless. This feels SO bad, man. I am eagerly awaiting news on what I will be able to use excess coins for. It better be good!

While I can sympathize, the unfortunate reality of mercs is that packs tend to devalue the more mercs you have in your collection. In fact opening a pack now I can easily get 0 value (and frequently do), because Ive all mercs with at least 60% maxed out. The best way to get mercs is grinding it out, waiting for the next big release so you can open more packs for a little more value than usual. I have 60 packs currently sitting in my collection, waiting for the eventual darkmoon (where we'll likely get Yogg) content to come out.

Ive actually considered slowing down on quest completion, because it almost always result in getting coins I dont need.

Pity timers are the best thing team5 can do to alleviate most of the concerns, but the big picture is that merc packs are nearly always worthless. Once you have at least 70% of all the mercs, opening further packs just infuriates, not alleviate.

The news is in: looks like excess coins will re-roll into coins for a random Merc in your collection.