Slysssa was invited by Blizzard to take part in an early access round of gameplay to Hearthstone Mercenaries. She uploaded almost an entire hour of footage so lets dive in!
Inside the video you'll find:
- The first tutorial completed.
- Upgrading Mercenaries UI.
- The second tutorial.
- Looking at a leveled account (with more progression).
- Building a Mercenaries Party.
- PVP in the Fighting Pit (vs Alliestrasza)
Watch the video down below to get some insight into gameplay of the new mode.
Comments
Big oof from me. I just watched Kripp play PvP in a different video, and if the game launches like this, it will be fundamentally broken. You can't view your opponents' mercenaries' skills or ability trees during combat, and you can't view them before crafting. It'd be like trying to guess if you want to craft a card without being able to read its text, or not being able to know what your opponent's cards do unless you also own them. The key to a good PvP game is players having access to the same pool of cards/skills/abilities. Matchmaking against an opponent with even a couple levels difference on one Mercenary in their party could easily render matches unfair. I understand there's other games like this out there (seems like a big Final Fantasy combat simulator to me), but all the actual Mercenaries gameplay preview I'm watching looks like an extremely unfinished product.
Do we know yet if merc packs can be purchased with gold?
Yes: they will cost 100 gold, same as traditional Hearthstone packs. In fact, most of the monetization seems to line up with Hearthstone-proper.
I don't know, I was thinking something more exciting, I need to play to be shure
Same here. Knowing that we don't have many Mercs or any items to choose at the start (grind needed for everything) - it can get boring pretty quickly. So the only differences at the start will be different encountered enemies, that's it.
Although I have to admit - we don't know, how fast we can grind other Mercs and stuff. If grind is fast - then my concern isn't worth much.
If the grind is painfully slow, well... I can only say for myself there - I will get bored before I grind enough stuff to have fun.
So far I am disappointed, I expected more, especially gameplay-wise. For example - more tactical choices (positioning matters?), different game board (maybe with hex fields?) - so that moving, positioning and other gameplay choices matter even more.
There are Mercs where positioning matters: Tirion, for example, can provide Divine Shield to adjacent allies. Bru'kan zaps adjacent enemies with chain lightning, so positioning can matter defensively, as well, if you're playing PvP. We even saw it in Trump's video, when the Caster Air-Elemental boss blasted both of his Protectors and killed them simultaneously because they were adjacent to each other.
You also should consider that, in Heroic, strategy will matter even more as the stakes go up. It's just like Pokemon or any PvE strategy game, really: starting out there won't be many choices for characters or movesets, but with time and energy you can expand your roster and really dive into the meat of the game.
Haven't seen the Trump video, so thanks for all the info. Sure, positioning matters to some degree, but there's not THAT many moves available, if everything there is 3 vs 3 battles. I can't see how much more depth there can be, being only 3 vs 3.
Oh, I forgot Heroic. Sure, I can see that being challenging (we have to see when it comes out).
I am just worried, will I have enough willingness to play through the early unlocking stages. I have nothing against grind, I like grinding and unlocking things. Everything comes down to a gameplay for me.
If gameplay isn't fun-challenging soon enough, I for sure won't force myself to grind god knows how many hours until maaaybe it will get more fun and interesting.
I think it's most healthy to everyone, don't force yourself to play something you don't like.
Board is so empty. I hope they place more things to the board. Like avatars, hero portraits, emotes, or i dont know something. Also I dont like the gameplay too. Give us a 2v2 mode or other different things. They always doing the same things. Like duels is same style with dungeon runs. I dont like that mode too. You already give us dungeon run for a single content. That was nice. But like why do you giving that again with reskin and saying it is a new game mode. It is not new it is just a reskin. Those game modes are good if they are side content.
Looks rather boring
Trump and Kripp also uploaded early acces videos btw.
Thanks!