Looking at the abilities of those two, I'm convinced there's something not quite right with the data that was mined. Same with Guff.
I guess it's possible that they wanted to open up fire synergies to other roles so you could have a more balanced fire team, but if that's the case, I'd expect them also to rework their abilities to be more in line with what a protector is supposed to do.
Yeah, its really strange at how some of the mercenaries are situated. I think this is purely an "unreleased oddities" thing, if not large changes that happened later down the line, and we'll see correct data once the data goes live. What we got to see through datamining, without a doubt, is not final.
I can say for certain though that I manually confirmed a lot of the weird stuff we were seeing and they are indeed flagged the way they are.
Hearthstone really needs a music box. I've thought about this exact thing for years.
Let people complete an achievement to unlock the ability to play different music in the box. It could be as simple as go and complete the ONIK adventure and you could play its theme in the box. It would take very little development time to make this a reality (compared to other features) - I could easily hack this into the game in an afternoon - and it would be an amazing thing for players.
I do think that Mercenaries is going to be good for F2P folks. I really don't see why Blizzard would go completely south of where Hearthstone is at. Yeah, at the end of the day you're going to always have an even better experience if you buy into a game, but Hearthstone's core as a F2P player still remains solid.
I'd love to be proven wrong though. If Mercenaries is as bad as people seem to think its going to be from a monetization point of view, I'll have no issues not playing it and even discussing how poor of a job they did. We'll ultimately have to wait and see, and I may be foolish for trusting Blizzard knows what they're doing with Mercenaries, but I don't have a reason to believe it'll be drastically different from Hearthstone.
There's only so much I am willing to say right now, but as far as I'm aware, there is no early access period that we should expect. Might talk more about it in the coming days, but I'm not ready yet.
Yeah, I don't understand why Blizzard didn't publish pricing information on normal packs alongside the pre-orders. They really dropped the ball on the announcement for this.
I do not understand why they are so bad at doing announcements. You would think one could learn from past mistakes. I really hope Mercenaries opened their eyes.
I pretty clearly stated I think that Blizzard still needs to release more information before you can realistically be expected to pre-order. I also believe they should let these bundles exist for a week or two after its release. It is unbelievably stupid to put up unrefundable pre-orders for content you can't play.
Regardless, I do still stand by my statement that the bundles are good value if you compare them to what is available in the shop.
Just to be sure , this site dont manage different regions , so to check decks i can create on EU and deck i can create in NA i have to overwrite my data?
Yeah you need to think about how Hearthstone Chess works with the directly in front or Left/Right positioning. I was going to further elaborate on how it worked but I got a few folks to go through it before this was released to everyone and they didn't ask any questions about the nature of steps (I told them to be brutally honest, some stuff was rewritten because of it) so I figured we were in the clear.
I had considered making the rules more foolproof, like "attack the only minion you can", but it would have increased the complexity of the one time tool and I think folks can get the hang of it pretty quickly.
My best advice, for other folks reading, is to look at what move to take, make it in game, click the next button. Take it slow and you shouldn't have a problem.
The game itself, as a literal, is only ever going to be ruined by Blizzard and they will never get a pass on it if they really mess up.
However, the game when you involve the community, because lets face it, community and the game itself make up the overall game, that's when we start to run into problems. When folks get discouraged because of the people that are being toxic in replies or they drop an N-slur to them via in-game message, that's ruining "the game" too. Its 100% clickbait to say players are ruining the game itself, that was my intention and it clearly worked and got people interested which then blew up a discussion here so I'm happy about it. Perhaps we could have had a slightly different discussion if that overall topic was a bit different.
I can't agree with you that the base of Hearthstone, a card game, is a cash grab. A cash grab is something that is garbage and is created purely to make money. There are many games out there that are like this, like many of the mobile games from Asia where the only way you can realistically play the game at all is to just keep injecting money and hoping you get a good sword, but Hearthstone is a legitimately good product. If Hearthstone's wasn't, this game would have been abandoned a long time ago. We get pretty damn good value in Hearthstone though, more so when you consider its a card game and how card games traditionally work.
Mercenaries could definitely be garbage and if it is, then the pre-order bundles are any other monetization is indeed a cash grab. We can't label it as such though because we still don't have a full picture of the game, which is a mega fail on the part of Blizzard.
Finally, there are plenty of folks who for literal years have been crying about Hearthstone. These are the people that really need to just cut their losses and leave. If you have zero fun in the game, and the only fun you have is complaining, you need to find something else to do with your time. Context is important. Notice how I said beforehand devs don't deserve to be harassed? People that are doing that clearly have had enough and it would be better for everyone if they did leave.
I think it worked out pretty well, it got a discussion going! Sure, some folks don't agree, others are doing exactly what I'm saying is a problem, but then we also have some that do agree. Its made for a great read so far!
Yeah, some of the little details like headings and flavor are a bit out there and we could have easily gone without them, but I think it adds a bit to the piece and I have no regrets for adding them. There are plenty of folks out there being incredibly childish about Wild. Anyone that isn't should know that they aren't being included in that group.
Games are an incredibly passionate bunch and I'd hate to see it any other way. Everything we do is out of love for the games and communities we hang out in - there are just several people who need to get better at communicating their thoughts and I feel that many of us can do a better job and telling people when they walk over that line.
The rewards track is an interesting one because although there were tons of people that were being really dumb about it, we also had lots of voices that were being very smart and being constructive about it. We had folks doing the deep math, providing their own previous stats to match up with the new one. Blizzard really screwed that one up by not including the full picture when they first talked about the track, which, surprise, is the same problem we have with Mercenaries (as you've said).
Most of the Mercenaries negativity could have been avoided if Blizzard god better at painting the full picture.
Definitely don't intend to blame all the players, I even called out Blizzard's poor management of Mercenaries so far. Players do need to grow up a bit though.
Hearthstone itself is not a cash grab, nor do I have any reason to believe at this time that Mercenaries is. Hearthstone is a good product and its worth buying into. Hell, you can be successful as a free to play player too!
Cash Grabs, as Caro said before me, are bad products that are produced to take advantage of the market. Hearthstone built this damn market and the reason it is a powerhouse is because of how good the game itself is. The big card games are not cash grabs.
Every company is out there to make money. Some of them are going to monetize the entire game, some are going to monetize the contents (which has been a thing forever in card games, thats always been the way they work), and others will just monetize cosmetics over the core gameplay loop (see Legends of Runeterra).
If you release a game and you want to make the most money possible, doesn't it have to be a good game? If Mercenaries is trash tier, people are going to play it and then move back on to whatever they were playing before within Hearthstone. Maybe they suck some money in from folks during pre-orders, but that is not going to last and it isn't going to create loyal customers.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
They have one opportunity with this mode to make it standout. If they screw everything up, mark my words, they won't get a second chance.
Yup! Thanks for the correction, I've updated the article.
Its been datamined as being Deadmines.
Thanks!
Yeah, its really strange at how some of the mercenaries are situated. I think this is purely an "unreleased oddities" thing, if not large changes that happened later down the line, and we'll see correct data once the data goes live. What we got to see through datamining, without a doubt, is not final.
I can say for certain though that I manually confirmed a lot of the weird stuff we were seeing and they are indeed flagged the way they are.
Hearthstone really needs a music box. I've thought about this exact thing for years.
Let people complete an achievement to unlock the ability to play different music in the box. It could be as simple as go and complete the ONIK adventure and you could play its theme in the box. It would take very little development time to make this a reality (compared to other features) - I could easily hack this into the game in an afternoon - and it would be an amazing thing for players.
I do think that Mercenaries is going to be good for F2P folks. I really don't see why Blizzard would go completely south of where Hearthstone is at. Yeah, at the end of the day you're going to always have an even better experience if you buy into a game, but Hearthstone's core as a F2P player still remains solid.
I'd love to be proven wrong though. If Mercenaries is as bad as people seem to think its going to be from a monetization point of view, I'll have no issues not playing it and even discussing how poor of a job they did. We'll ultimately have to wait and see, and I may be foolish for trusting Blizzard knows what they're doing with Mercenaries, but I don't have a reason to believe it'll be drastically different from Hearthstone.
There's only so much I am willing to say right now, but as far as I'm aware, there is no early access period that we should expect. Might talk more about it in the coming days, but I'm not ready yet.
Yeah, I don't understand why Blizzard didn't publish pricing information on normal packs alongside the pre-orders. They really dropped the ball on the announcement for this.
I do not understand why they are so bad at doing announcements. You would think one could learn from past mistakes. I really hope Mercenaries opened their eyes.
I pretty clearly stated I think that Blizzard still needs to release more information before you can realistically be expected to pre-order. I also believe they should let these bundles exist for a week or two after its release. It is unbelievably stupid to put up unrefundable pre-orders for content you can't play.
Regardless, I do still stand by my statement that the bundles are good value if you compare them to what is available in the shop.
We can only show you what the client tells us!
That's great to hear! Welcome to Out of Cards =)
If you had an issue with the first part, you must have entered it wrong. Several folks commenting here and on Discord had no problems with it.
At this time we do not, that is correct
Fun fact, if you go through the tour with the Next button, the list under it in the spoiler will have its boxes automatically checked too!
Yeah you need to think about how Hearthstone Chess works with the directly in front or Left/Right positioning. I was going to further elaborate on how it worked but I got a few folks to go through it before this was released to everyone and they didn't ask any questions about the nature of steps (I told them to be brutally honest, some stuff was rewritten because of it) so I figured we were in the clear.
I had considered making the rules more foolproof, like "attack the only minion you can", but it would have increased the complexity of the one time tool and I think folks can get the hang of it pretty quickly.
My best advice, for other folks reading, is to look at what move to take, make it in game, click the next button. Take it slow and you shouldn't have a problem.
The game itself, as a literal, is only ever going to be ruined by Blizzard and they will never get a pass on it if they really mess up.
However, the game when you involve the community, because lets face it, community and the game itself make up the overall game, that's when we start to run into problems. When folks get discouraged because of the people that are being toxic in replies or they drop an N-slur to them via in-game message, that's ruining "the game" too. Its 100% clickbait to say players are ruining the game itself, that was my intention and it clearly worked and got people interested which then blew up a discussion here so I'm happy about it. Perhaps we could have had a slightly different discussion if that overall topic was a bit different.
I can't agree with you that the base of Hearthstone, a card game, is a cash grab. A cash grab is something that is garbage and is created purely to make money. There are many games out there that are like this, like many of the mobile games from Asia where the only way you can realistically play the game at all is to just keep injecting money and hoping you get a good sword, but Hearthstone is a legitimately good product. If Hearthstone's wasn't, this game would have been abandoned a long time ago. We get pretty damn good value in Hearthstone though, more so when you consider its a card game and how card games traditionally work.
Mercenaries could definitely be garbage and if it is, then the pre-order bundles are any other monetization is indeed a cash grab. We can't label it as such though because we still don't have a full picture of the game, which is a mega fail on the part of Blizzard.
Finally, there are plenty of folks who for literal years have been crying about Hearthstone. These are the people that really need to just cut their losses and leave. If you have zero fun in the game, and the only fun you have is complaining, you need to find something else to do with your time. Context is important. Notice how I said beforehand devs don't deserve to be harassed? People that are doing that clearly have had enough and it would be better for everyone if they did leave.
I think it worked out pretty well, it got a discussion going! Sure, some folks don't agree, others are doing exactly what I'm saying is a problem, but then we also have some that do agree. Its made for a great read so far!
Yeah, some of the little details like headings and flavor are a bit out there and we could have easily gone without them, but I think it adds a bit to the piece and I have no regrets for adding them. There are plenty of folks out there being incredibly childish about Wild. Anyone that isn't should know that they aren't being included in that group.
Games are an incredibly passionate bunch and I'd hate to see it any other way. Everything we do is out of love for the games and communities we hang out in - there are just several people who need to get better at communicating their thoughts and I feel that many of us can do a better job and telling people when they walk over that line.
The rewards track is an interesting one because although there were tons of people that were being really dumb about it, we also had lots of voices that were being very smart and being constructive about it. We had folks doing the deep math, providing their own previous stats to match up with the new one. Blizzard really screwed that one up by not including the full picture when they first talked about the track, which, surprise, is the same problem we have with Mercenaries (as you've said).
Most of the Mercenaries negativity could have been avoided if Blizzard god better at painting the full picture.
Definitely don't intend to blame all the players, I even called out Blizzard's poor management of Mercenaries so far. Players do need to grow up a bit though.
Hearthstone itself is not a cash grab, nor do I have any reason to believe at this time that Mercenaries is. Hearthstone is a good product and its worth buying into. Hell, you can be successful as a free to play player too!
Cash Grabs, as Caro said before me, are bad products that are produced to take advantage of the market. Hearthstone built this damn market and the reason it is a powerhouse is because of how good the game itself is. The big card games are not cash grabs.
Every company is out there to make money. Some of them are going to monetize the entire game, some are going to monetize the contents (which has been a thing forever in card games, thats always been the way they work), and others will just monetize cosmetics over the core gameplay loop (see Legends of Runeterra).
Here's my problem with that train of thought.
If you release a game and you want to make the most money possible, doesn't it have to be a good game? If Mercenaries is trash tier, people are going to play it and then move back on to whatever they were playing before within Hearthstone. Maybe they suck some money in from folks during pre-orders, but that is not going to last and it isn't going to create loyal customers.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
They have one opportunity with this mode to make it standout. If they screw everything up, mark my words, they won't get a second chance.