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
It’s not another auto-battler, but just like Battlegrounds it IS a big departure from traditional Hearthstone gameplay. We’re still waiting for an explanation of what this gameplay will be.
They are constantly repeating this vague gameplay description since they announced the mode.
"Deal damage with a twist as you and your opponent queue abilities and select targets, then sit back and watch the right unfold"
I'm REALLY looking forward to this. I love single-player content (no roping, BM'ing, Net Decks, etc.) I replay a lot of the single-player content that's already in the game but hopefully this will be a nice change of pace. I'm excited to hear more. Thanks for the info!
The thing I’ve been waiting for all this time is a quick pitch telling us what makes the game FUN. We know it exists, but why are we going to want to play it over one of the 50 other roguelikes getting released each month? Especially since this design team is stepping away from their comfort zone of “lots of cards that interact in interesting ways.” Even Battlegrounds is fundamentally a lot of cards that become stronger or weaker depending on what cards they see.
My impression right now is that this is in the Clash of Clans/Clash Royale vein: You don’t buy a card collection, but you do work to keep leveling up your units, and your success depends as much on your units’ level as on your skill. Those games don’t have to be bad - I think Clash Royale is pretty fun, actually - but the few good ones are worthwhile DESPITE that monetization model, not because of it.
I’ll check out any new mode they stick into the Hearthstone client, so in the end, maybe it doesn’t matter how well they market it to me in advance. But for what it’s worth, they still haven’t given me a reason to be excited.
I'm definitely expecting Blizz to monetize this to hell and back. Mercenaries, treasures, expanding your village, etc. I bet all of those will have micro transactions galore.
Why? They've never embraced micro-transactions before, and we have zero reason to think they will here, either. Expect something more like the Battlegrounds Perks, which will also be included with set preorders to incentivize their purchase.
No way they will make it as cheap as BGs! They probably hate themselves for not making that more monetized from the beginning. But with this new mode they clearly learned their lesson, you can tell just by reading their description, with "collecting" or mercenaries "dropping monthly". Although I'll be glad to be wrong.
I'm glad we won't need collection for this
There are so many more new things here than you might think from first looking at it!
1. "Expand Your Village:" Seems like a big part of the mode they havn't talked about it. I wonder how it will impact the gameplay
2. Seems like you could share your seed, otherwise the wouldn't show it to you. I can already see how people fight over what code is the hardest
3. It looks like every level will either upgrade your health or attack.
4. Also did you notice the different Icons for the left stat? Seem like there will be atleast two different attack types (I'd guess physical and magical, possibly more) EDIT: Those Icons can be found at the bottom middle of the merc Keyart. I'm 99% sure that there will be 3 attack types
5. The Image on the top left also reveals some new art including Eudora and an WIP Shadow Orc (?). I don't know who he is,I'm not deep into the WoW lore
6. The HP like Icons in the middle seem to be the attacks of a single character of which two are on cooldown. But now I do wonder where you can see the qued up attacks
7. I'm not sure what the numbers above the attacks mean. Like really, no Idea
8. The gameplay background is the same as the one for the map from the looks of it. Maybe there will be a fluid transition between those two, similar to how "Trials of Fire" (a different game, not "Trials by Felfire") handled it.
9. There also seems to be some attacks that can shuffle something into your deck. I wonder how you make this work in a non-deckbuilding gameplay. Maybe an "charge up" attack?
10. Each level seems to impact atleast one stat. Also notice how there will be merc exclusive types like "Dreanai", "Orc" and "Human"
11. One thing that confused me for a while was the "Encounter" bar on the right because that image was nowhere to be seen on the map. Now I'm certain that you can pre-view already won fights and the dev then just scrolled up the map to show how the boss looks like.
All in all this makes me super exited to learn more about the details of the mode. Though I do have to say that I'm a bit dissapointed on the mercs ingame frame. They seem so tiny compared to how important they are. The fact that there will never be more than 3 on the same board size should leave enough room for improvement.
4 - I think it is merc types: tank, dd(Eudora on second pic) and caster (very like strenght , agility, intellect types in WC3).
The questions also provide a lot of context that the screenshots do not, the big one for me being if it being called a gacha game would impact your decision to play the mode. That plus the new description makes it seem like everyone's favorite mobile game ad, Raid: Shadow Legends. Now, without the gacha portion it could be an interesting mode, but I am definitely a bit less excited now.
Next year: Hearthstone Battle Royale, 100 cards drop into Warsong Gulch...
Man, Warsong Gulch as a stand-alone game would be awesome actually. That’s practically all I did back in Vanilla.
Am I the only one who thinks this looks pretty unimpressive as of now? Like, don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of something new and different but so far the battlefield looks pretty stale and doesn't leave much room for all the polish the other modes have. So much of HS' charm is animations and FX and so far this appears like a glorified puzzle mode that may not live up to the hype. Maybe I am just wary considering this is the only mode in HS that doesn't use cards.
I hope my impression is wrong, though. I really want this to be good.
Huh? What "polish" does Battlegrounds have? It's just a bare background that your board fights against.
The board does look very empty, probably because it is lacking the heroes and clickable corner things we are used to. I notice those corners are present in the background of the image of Gromm, Xyrella and Cariel, so I expect the empty look is just because it was an incomplete build. Certainly if there is anything we can trust the HS devs to do well, it is to make the game look good.
As for the 'glorified puzzle mode' thought, I would ask where you draw the line? The AI/opposing players will surely respond to what has happened before and/or the current state of the game. You could definitely still call that a puzzle as you are working out a route to victory, but in that sense almost every game that has ever existed is a puzzle. (For the record, being considered a puzzle is not a bad thing, and would certainly appeal to a lot of players.)
The million dollar questions would be, is it free like BG?
Can people just jump to it without the need to collect cards?
Is there any level restriction to it like, you need DemonHunter lv.10 etc?
No collections in the mode, just like Battlegrounds. There is also no deckbuilding, this is a new type of gameplay.
We don't know a whole lot about the mode yet, here's everything we know so far:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/guides/92-everything-you-need-to-know-about-hearthstones-mercenaries-game-mode/
I can't imagine this being a pay to play mode though. Blizzard wants more people in the Hearthstone ecosystem, especially as it becomes more of a platform to play different games and not just the core Hearthstone. After getting people on board for free, then they can start monetizing stuff.
I'm fully expecting animated heroes in Battlegrounds, just as example of why it makes sense to have Battlegrounds free. Maybe Mercenaries will see some sort of pass that will allow you easier access to some new content kinda like BGs as well.
Things can change
And I do not believe it will be exactly the same as Battlegrounds
blizzard Are sure not going to repeat the mistake of battlegrounds to Limit what they can earn...