Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode: All You Need To Know

Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode was officially released yesterday. But hold on, the developers didn’t limit the news to just that part. They also revealed details regarding the game’s PvP mode along with a handful of other details. As excited as us? Read on to find everything you need to know about Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode!

Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode

Hearthstone’s newest mode is the toast of the town for many reasons. Mercenaries are going to provide the ancient digital car game a much-needed boost especially if you are looking for a way to pass your time without playing against other humans.

Looking more like a card-based RPG and less like the other Hearthstone modes, with Mercenaries you will go into battle with just six hero cards. Only three of them will be active on the battlefield and you would have to choose someone from the remaining cards in case one of your active heroes die.

The heroes will also have a unique progression system. As you keep playing you will find out that the heroes can improve their abilities and learn new skills.

Most of these will be permanent buffs. You can play against other humans or take the solo road. In the solo campaign, you will play against computer opponents in a challenging experience that will help you gain a stream of rewards (including the potential to unlock new heroes or points to upgrade their abilities).

In the Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode, you can buy more opportunities to unlock goodies if you want although the free play is quite satisfactory. A legendary card will not make you win or better your gameplay, it will be just as ordinary as an epic or a common hero card.

The Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode will have a lot of deck-building strategies involved.

For example, you can use multiple heroes that will help you in empowering arcane spells or you can have different decks to combat and use in different expeditions. The Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode is a new game with a uniquely thrilling experience that can surely attract more players to it!

PvP Matchmaking In Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode

Lead Data Scientist Tian reveals that the new system has two fundamental things at its core. Firstly, the ratings are going to include a player’s skills over time instead of their team composition, mercenary level, or ability and equipment level.

Secondly, the matchmaking will take into include rating, ability and equipment levels, mercenary levels and party roles to ensure a fair game between all, whilst having a reasonable queue time.

Mercenary Levels

In terms of rating updates after a game and matchmaking updates before a game individual levels of mercenaries within a player’s part would have a very significant role. The PvP system pairs a player against an opponent with the same mercenary levels.

If you get paired against someone with a higher-level party your probability of winning will be more but your chances of receiving more rating points will be higher. A formula is used at the end of every game to determine (the level score) the strength of a party of mercenaries.

Ratings Overview

There are two types of ratings in the Hearthstone Mercenaries Mode PvP system: Internal and External. The internal rating shows a player’s current skill level. It doesn’t get a reset at the beginning of each season and stays hidden from the players.

The external rating, on the other hand, is visible and gets a reset at the beginning of each season. Matchmaking requires a player’s internal rating while the leaderboard features a player’s external rating.

“The discrepancy between your internal rating and your opponent’s is an important factor in predicting your win probability against the opponent before each match,” Tian explained. “The win probability is then compared to the actual result to calculate ratings changes.”
Lead Data Scientist Tian

Ability And Equipment Tiers

An ability score like the name suggests determines the strength of mercenary abilities. Each mercenary has tiers of abilities that are later taken into account. The ability score has a less important role when the player and their opponent’s mercenaries are at their highest levels.

“That ability score is then transformed, by a non-linear function, to help predict your win probability against your opponent and to calculate post-game rating updates.”
Developer Insights

Equipment tiers are calculated with different parameters. A player doesn’t need to have any equipment paired with their mercenaries. Mercenary minus equipment gets treated like it brought “tier zero” equipment into the fray.

Mercenary Roles

Although roles do not affect post-game rating updates they do affect the matchmaking phase. Mercenary roles are used to decrease the chances of extreme matches but their impact is when compared to party levels and tiers for abilities and equipment. The idea of higher entropy (more variety in the composition of mercenary roles) is used in the game.

Queue Time, AI And More

If your queue time is longer than 1-1.5 minutes while both your internal and external ratings are well below specific thresholds, then you would have to fight it out against an AI. The threshold for the external rating is 7,000. Your mercenary levels and internal rating will be taken into account while playing against AI. The ratings will obviously change after an AI game.