I know it sounds crazy - but please hear me out. In the same way that we can hire Henchmen in a battle I want to be able to purchase a whole 4 Mercenary Team for final and very hard battles. Before you freak out:
The objective is that for a Crown price a player can skip the final or too-hard-to-be-worth-it battle and continue to play the game for the fun of engaging with the world and story. Which is WHY I play the game. I haven't enjoyed a final battle since Dragonspire. That was a LOT of headaches ago.
The balance is 1) that the player would forego any and all rewards that aren't set as some kind of minimum that every player always gets upon completion or some random value of items and gold that is the way that minimum is achieved in regular game-play. *thus, hardcore players shouldn't resent the presence of Mercenary Teams in the Crown Shop -- people who didn't care enough to grind the boss for the special gear don't get it, unless it's part of the random chance that any player might get it on their first run through a dungeon/battle.
2)when we hire a Mercenary Team, we don't see the battle - we can see the graphics and dialogue on YouTube. But we don't hire a team and then get to see the most efficient way to play it without putting in the blood, sweat and tears to actually do the job.
The point for the player is to save the time and headaches if they are ONLY doing those battles in order to progress through the world and stories. I love Wizard and Pirate101 but Wizard is really feeling less and less worth the trouble. I don't want to quit the game, but I really may.
The point for KI is that it's the best of both worlds - some players progressing using Crowns and others grinding through the normal way. Many of those who progress through for the story's sake and their own irl time constraints will and do come back later to farm the instances - some like me won't. The people taking up server space will actually want to be there and those who don't just get something in their quest book or gift box that's basically a report from the Mercenary Team telling what we missed in terms of story, clues, character change, etc. * the key for KI would be to balance the cost and demand for this service with any lost revenue from multiple purchases of henchmen. I almost never have used henchmen, my sister goes bonkers with them.
