A small change is making Hearthstone players angry. Because the Mercenary Mode has been nerfed and is now more challenging.
The discontent among Hearthstone players is significant. A glance at the subreddit for the game or the official forum reveals many threads and comments from players who are furious. To them, the hotfix is clearly an attempt to take the fun out of the new Mercenary Mode.
What is going on with the Mercenary Mode? To equip the various mercenaries in Mercenary Mode and collect their coins, players must complete certain tasks. These are available only once daily. However, further missions could be obtained by stepping on the “question mark” field during a bounty hunt. There, players encounter one of several different events. This could be, for example, a teleport directly to the final boss, an “Explosive Potato” as an additional creature on the board – or indeed a strange stranger.
The strange stranger granted an additional quest for one of the mercenaries currently in the team. This allowed players to effectively receive “infinite” quests per day.
What has changed? Blizzard has lowered the chances of the strange stranger appearing when a mercenary in the group has a much higher level than would be appropriate for the current bounty.
For example, someone with their level-30 Arthas consistently farming the low-level elemental could quickly unlock several quests. Now, the chances of this happening have been drastically reduced by the hotfix.
Blizzard itself justifies it by saying that they want to “encourage players to choose more exciting gameplay instead of repeatedly completing low-level heroic bounties with over-leveled characters.”
What are the consequences? Players are receiving quests for their mercenaries significantly slower. If they want to reliably obtain quests now, they must take on high-level tasks.
These not only have many more battles and thus take significantly more time, but in many cases also come with the “disadvantage” that weaker mercenaries cannot be brought along to level up alongside them – especially in the tougher bounties, all 6 slots must be filled with well-equipped and trained mercenaries if players want a realistic chance.
The YouTuber “Zeddy” explains this in a bit more detail in his video:
Players vent their frustration: Players wished that Blizzard would go the opposite route – not nerf the easiest method of leveling and collecting coins, but buff the harder methods so that they are rewarding on their own.
For some players, it is clear that Blizzard wants to limit the gain of coins so that players would prefer to spend their money on mercenary packs, which in turn generate real money. In the eyes of some complainers, this was a clear decision based on greed.
The developers want to “rethink the changes,” which at least holds the hope that something will improve again in the near future.
An incident that can only be described as “unfortunate,” as the Mercenary Mode was well received by many players who now – at least for the time being – have no desire to continue.
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