Cory had already talked about it, but now it's confirmed they're already doing it at their first event (Gen Con).

Personally I'm totally fine with most of it. Sleeves and alternate art cards are purely aesthetic (and you can trade the AA cards in-game); free starter decks or booster packs aren't a problem. The rub lies in mercenaries.

Mercenaries actually affect gameplay. Unless the exclusive ones are simply re-skins that function the same way as another mercenary (which is not likely to be the case, given Cory's comments about using the promo mercenaries to do crazy/fun things), I really don't agree with them being exclusive to physical events. HEX is touting its digital-only aspect and accessibility, and forcing people to go to something in-person runs counter to that.

There was already big concessions made over Hexcon so it's amazing that they would be surprised by the buthurt backlash. But OTOH, con exclusives are a super-standard marketing method for games, including digital only games (LoL has a bunch of con exclusive skins). Certainly picking up freebies and exclusives has always been a standard way for attendees to subsidize cons. And CZE still needs to promote the game and a healthy game is good for all of us.

I'm not a completest and don't plan on being a Hex "collector" so I don't care if it's purely cosmetic. But they should really avoid anything that's actually useful. AFAIK with Gencon it's just sleeves and alternative art cards so purely cosmetic. If they keep it that way, I'm fine with it. Anyone who really wants them will be able to get them on the secondary market (auction house).

Sadly, that's not the case. They specifically stated there will be mercenaries.

Yeah, unique gameplay items that can only be gotten at conventions is a bad move. The should only be reserved for alternate art and single use "helper" cards like "double xp for this dungeon run". I might even be ok if it was a pre release of a net snarky that was going to released later; so long as it wasn't gameplay exclusive.

I think what's significant there is "Mercenary" not "Gencon exclusive Mercenary". But I dunno, I haven't been keeping up with the forums this week-end - Have CZE clarified?

Cory referred to them as "promo mercenaries", and I kind of doubt they're going to give away the ones you get through the storyline.

I can't find it now, but he or someone else also said they were going to use these mercenaries to do crazy/fun stuff or something like that, implying they'll be unique.

I agree that it's kind of disappointing, but I understand the marketing side of it especially if the things they're giving out aren't came breaking.

I feel real noobish right now but what are mercenaries in the game?

No problem with them doing this. As long as they never mess up and make one of these cards turny worthy.

While this certainly isn't something that would make me change my mind about playing HEX, it does seem to me like something that just goes against (what I thought anyway) is one of the big selling points of the game: that isnt restricted by all of the same things that a physical card game is.

Really though, they never used the word exclusive in the article/. People could very well be getting all bent out of shape over nothing. I guess now's the time to speak up about it though.

The thing is, there's always going to be oversights. Even if they think they're mediocre or something, odds are at least one is going to end up being really good in practice.

Mercenaries are specific characters that can be used in place of your created champions in PvE. If you look at the Kickstarter rewards page on the website, you can see the nine given in it.

No complaints on exclusive aesthetic stuff. Skins/sleeves, WoW pets, whatever. But the unique Mercenaries is a very bad move. You can almost guarantee there's going to be some mechanic that has a crazy synergy with a card many sets down the road and all of a sudden some crazy hard raid is trivial for the attendees of a con from a few years back, they farm the crap out of it, and get rich while everyone else gnashes their teeth and ragequits.

I'm all for marketing the game and getting attendees exclusive stuff that they can sell/trade/keep, but there shouldn't be any game mechanic exclusives. Ever. The KS Mercs (that I got!) were a bad idea too, but that ship has sailed. No reason to make it worse by increasing the number of one-off mechanics that will never be available to future players (even through trade), and will never be as thoroughly playtested as the standard mechanics.

Exactly.

And this is way worse than the Kickstarter. The KS was to fund the game, so of course they had to give real incentive to get people to pledge. Everyone had easy access to it; you just click a few buttons online. Plus you got a lot of value out of it, not just the mercenaries.

Got it - thanks I totally forgot about these and probably thought they were other champions for you to level tbh - appreciate the clarification.

I agree with you that someone will find a way to abuse one of them probably and then you're right, it really is a bad idea. Merc's are untradeable right?

Although I suppose they're doing it mainly because it won't really affect hardcore pvp...

Right, Mercs are untradeable, and have charge powers like your champion would... so they're perhaps not *quite* as broken as an exclusive game mechanic (depends on how future cards interact with charge powers beyond just granting +charge). And it won't affect hardcore pvp. But if they make PvE as good as they want to, there's going to be a really passionate player base focused mostly on PvE, and spending $/plat to get very chase PvE cards, and/or using the secondary market to buy them. If they break some PvE content with a super-limited Merc people are going to be pissed. I don't know of any other game that would give out non-cosmetic exclusives for promotional items.