Blizzard has sent out a survey about Hearthstone Mercenaries and we've got some screenshots and descriptions of the mode from it! Thanks to LeadingmoreH on Twitter for sharing these.
With details being so easily available, we suspect that we'll be hearing something about the mode very soon, with a launch coming either alongside the next expansion or slightly before or after.
First up we've got a few images that showcase the new mode including:
- Battlefield
- Game Map
- Mercenary / Character Levels
We've also got descriptions of the new mode! We've transcribed the images for easier reading.
Quote From Mercenaries Survey Description
Master an all-new challenge in Hearthstone's single-player, competitive roguelike game mode: Mercenaries. Build and customize your dream team of iconic Warcraft characters to take into battle, vanquish foes, and collect bounties. Use your earnings to customize, upgrade, and equip your team with the abilities and treasures needed to jump back into battle and storm through ever-changing maps… or other players! As your Mercenaries progress, so too will their opponents, so keep your strategies at the forefront as you tackle this all-new combat system. Which of your Mercenaries will earn their glory?
Additional Details
- Deck-free Battles: Say goodbye to building and balancing 30-card decks. Instead, choose which 6 Mercenaries you think have what it takes to team up and take home the bounty.
- Collect, Experiment, and Conquer: Put countless squad combinations and strategies to the test with more than 50 Mercenaries to collect at launch, each with unique abilities to bring to battle. Continue to grow your roster with new game-changing mercenaries dropping monthly.
- Innovative Combat: Deal damage with a twist as you and your opponent queue abilities and select targets, then sit back and watch the right unfold. Pay close attention to the order of your abilities to get the most damage out of each move.
- Align and your team will shine: Battles only get more heated with the introduction of alignments, giving on-the-spot bonus damage based on which Mercenaries take to the board.
- Play Your Way: Fight through evolving maps and bosses at your own pace or go head-to-head with other players. How you play and progress is entirely up to you!
- Replay All Day: Randomized maps and seemingly endless team treasure, and ability combinations make for a unique experience with every battle.
- Expand Your Village: Put down roots in your Mercenaries' gathering grounds. Your Village will start small, but as your squadron grows, so too will your Village!
Comments
Another garbage just like Battlegrounds and Duels.
I want a REAL roguelike! Where's my ASCII UI and sink-kicking mechanics?
Realistically, I think that this might be an auto-battler. Not a massive fan of the idea, but I'll probably at least take a look when it goes live.
Just noticed the cover picture... RIP Valeera decollete T_T
I am so pumped for this! While I am very familiar with the basic concepts of character upgrades and such from DnD, I don't think I've ever played a game in the "roguelike" category. It looks super fun!
If you have ever played a dungeon run, then you did. You are probably refearing to rogue-lites because of the perma-progression.
Stupendously Stellar Star Student Stelina States:
"We'll just have a little peek! Hehe, hehe!"
Will there be any reward for this game mode or it's perhaps another battleground-thing? Are they going to somehow incentivise us to play this game mode? Or on the contrary, are they going to push us to play it?
I mean, for me, Hearthstone is exclusively a collectible card game: all these new game modes not related with playing cards have no sense for me...
These new modes should be independent games, alien to Hearthstone completely, because you know: who grabs too much loses all. Blizzard should not bite off more than they can chew.
As long as the other game modes aren't taking designers away from the main/OG game mode, then the 'he who grabs too much loses all' adage doesn't apply. Given how much the HS team has grown in the last few years, I doubt we should be worrying too much there.
As for whether they should be entirely independent, I think that comes down to how you and the developers view HS. Is it 1 game with a few different sets of rules (i.e. constructed + Arena + Tavern Brawl + most solo stuff + Duels), or is it a hub for games connected by their themes, characters and game engine (all the previous variants + Battlegrounds + Mercenaries + any future modes)?
I don't personally see why it is harmful to take the latter approach, especially when the different modes are close enough to each other that they'd have a shared audience.
I have to agree. I feel as though T5 is spending a lot of their focus making a lot of content for casual PVE players which would be better invested in making the main game more interesting and accessible to the audience that they are trying to capture with this game mode. It also feels strange saying my favorite card game is an auto battler and a adventure game.
Probably like duels some achievements will grant XP in the beginning
What are the chances of this mode coming out in approximately a month? Because on the roadmap it says that it will be released before set 2 of this year hits. I'm excited about it and it seems that it'll be the game mode that I'll play the most.
Zeddy claims to have inside info that it's not coming out until November at the earliest. He could be wrong, but consider the survey about the "battlepass" (Rewards Track and Tavern Pass) was leaked in August 2020. I think we're at least a full quarter from initial release, and November, in advance of the third expansion (beta access with purchase of a pre-order???), seems very realistic.
Mercenaries was suppose to come out sometime this expansion, according to the road map. Unless they have came out and said that they're pushing it back for the third expansion, don't believe what Zeddy has said.
considering that the mode has been delayed once, is in the works for over a year now, has it's own team that focused on shipping it and that the survey includes an potential store description? I'd say that the odds are looking good. They are also releasing 3 book updates this month which indicates an big update for july.
This looks great, really great. However, it brings me back to ideas (not complaints) I had during the outrage around the launch of the Rewards Track. 1) How do different game modes get supported and incentivized. 2) Is the business model of a pack-opening simulator, modeled after IRL MtG, even relevant anymore? If not, what replaces it? 3) What self-imposed limitations is Blizzard putting on the game?
1) I used to be an avid Arena player, but I find it frustrating because it feels like the player-base has progressively shrunk since Battlegrounds came out. Duels is even worse, with the player-base split between Casual and Heroic. I'm a near-daily player, and I find myself mostly tinkering in Standard (hitting Legend about every other month) because a) it has the best XP rewards; b) I'm saving 2000 gold after each release for the mini-set - the gold spent on the mini-set is enormously more valuable than gold spent on packs which distorts the Arena/Duels rewards into being even less valuable. This isn't a straight complaint. To Blizzard's credit the Rewards Track is giving me more gold each cycle and the mini-set is a great deal. The issue is that the other game modes don't have the same incentives (why is identical gameplay worth less XP in Arena and Duels???). It's definitely a concern going forward with Mercenaries as well. I'm not complaining about more free content, but I'm already a casual whale (near-daily player). I want these modes to be rewarding, and the modes I already play to be properly supported.
2) Which maybe gets at the business model as a whole. I'm so tired of opening packs. It's not a particularly fun or exciting experience. More and more I don't understand the need for collecting to be part of the game, and Battlegrounds and Mercenaries (and Arena) all demonstrate that Blizzard understands this as well. More importantly, why is gatekeeping cards healthy for player engagement and the game? I'm already at Level 130 on the Rewards track without the Tavern Pass, I hit Level 180 last cycle, and I'm missing 7 Forged in the Barrens legendaries and 6 Darkmoon Faire legendaries. They're not the particularly great Legendaries so I'll probably never get them. The XP rewards on their achievements certainly don't justify crafting them or buying additional packs, but I WOULD experiment and play with them if I had them. I don't have a great solution to propose here, but again, Blizzard is putting enormous resources into Mercenaries, a game mode that doesn't depend on your collection. It begs the question of whether constructed modes should depend on your collection or not either. I haven't played Runeterra since Beta, but my understanding is that it's relatively straightforward to earn an entire expansion through free-to-play before the next one comes out. That seems like the minimum, and I'd like to see more creative ways to monetize games without gatekeeping core gameplay for millions of players.
3) How many limits are self-imposed on Hearthstone by Blizzard because it's a mobile game? The UX, historically one of Blizzard's strengths, is a mess. Every design decision has to work for PC and mobile. It's already a multi-gigabyte app, and adding game modes and features, let alone even simple patches and updates, is an excruciating process. But most importantly, WHERE ARE THE MODS? Here you have a community that has been making custom cards for nearly a decade. You have single-player content, Dungeon Runs, Battlegrounds, Duels, and now Mercenaries that show that this CCG engine is actually versatile enough to simulate other genres of games that it wasn't originally built for, just like WCII, SC, WCIII, and SC2. I'm showing my age, but creating a baseball diamond/game mod in WCII(2!) with my older brother was a formative video game experience that probably made me a lifelong Blizzard fan. Don't want to put the dedicated resources into a tournament mode? Let the community create their own! Now, I have a huge bias here as I'm a PC player and not a mobile player. But the PC client should simply have more features. PC and mobile can have very different UX without hurting continuity. Want to create a match where players are limited to 5 very specific expansions? Create a custom game in a lobby like StarCraft, and wait for a player to join. That's not feasible on mobile, but could be on PC. With the release of Forged in the Barrens and announcement of Mercenaries they've talked about Hearthstone as a platform. That platform will continually be hobbled if it's limited by what's only possibly on a mobile touchscreen.
Adding on to your last point, I'm starting to feel that at some point Blizzard should pull the trigger and turn Battlegrounds and/or Mercenary mode or whatever future game mode nto their own apps. Keep the interconnectivity with levels and gold and what not, but honestly why aren't these separate games?
Separating the game modes into their own apps would have it's own set of problems anyways. And it may even deter people from playing those game modes coz it'll be another app you have to install, sign in and update separately from the HS client. Blizzard would also need to add it to their Battle.net client and it would also split the player base which would lead to longer queue times like how Duels currently is. I personally prefer having all these game modes in the HS client itself but I did agree on the general consensus that the UI of HS needs to be re-designed coz clicking the back button 5 times to get to the main menu is a bit much
Because A: they see hearthstone as an platform for card games now and B: because battlegrounds has more similarities with constructed than some people make it out to be. Mainly the Heroes with hero powers, the characters, the UI, the Keywords, the Mana system and how the attacks works. Also, why make it into a seperate game in the first place? It already has it's own dedicated team, benefits from Hearthstones QoL changes and allows the player to quickly switch between modes.
It also doesn't have enough content for it to be it's own game. Like, how would the main menue look like? "Play" , "buy the perks", and "Quests"?
I can't disagree with a thing you've said. I hope someone on the team sees your comment (and I hope they stop taking on huge responsibilities like Mercenaries for a period of time, so that they have the manpower to focus on these essential QoL upgrades).
so this is another auto-battle system like battlegrounds ?