Questions/Concerns re: Card Packs

[RickMelethron]

The rest of these arguments are but one fanatical fallacy after another. You might want to examine your own commentary for bits of sensational brine pickles.

"someone showed everything i said it's wrong... quick, let's pretend i never read it and make some snarky comment about them being ridiculous."

 

[RickMelethron]

Of course, simply because you enjoy the taste does not mean you are not getting drunk. You are, just not really drunk (hence, your premise is flawed

"you're getting drunk, but you're not drunk. therefore, you're drunk."
???

1 glass of wine is enough to affect your mood.

so is chocolate. ever heard of dopamine?

You know exactly why you buy it, despite what your motives are

yeah... and he also said why he buys it... because he enjoys tasting a glass of wine with dinner. (sorry if assumed your gender)

The purpose of sipping wine is to look important.

Didn't mean to interrupt you sipping wine, sir.

so you're one of those people, huh... no wonder you hate the principle of capitalism so much.

 

[nhk3]

Am I the only one confused by the purpose of this thread ?
Post #1: OP asks how much it costs to buy a full set of cards.
Post #6(OP's #2): OP complains about the game being P2W.
Me: What.

If someone is interested in the whole TCG/CCG genre be it real-life or digital the first thing they should be aware is that these types of games are created to make money - pure and simple. That was the general idea back when Magic: The Gathering was first printed, starting the whole genre. In my opinion a player implicitly accepts this when choosing to play a CCG game. Any P2W discussion can at most be concerned with the implementation of this element and in this regard - I've said it before and I'll say it again - Gwent is the least pay-to-win CCG in existence.

With all that being said, the OP did raise some legitimate concerns, but obviously without having all the information available:
- Are picks selected from cards not yet owned, or are infinite duplicates possible?
Yes as with every TCG/CCG duplicates from packs are indeed possible, however there's a mitigating factor for high rarity cards. That is - you get 4 random cards but for the fifth which is a guaranteed rare-or-better, you have a 1 of 3 choice so you can get the card you need or simply avoid ones you don't.
- Thus increasing the price of the product incrementally. - in comment to new cards every 2 months
As far as I understand the intention is to release about 20 new cards per 2 months, not 100+ like Hearthstone. Considering the rate of content acquisition, a player spending 1-2 hours a day in the game, will be able to get these new cards without spending a dime, long before the next ones are released.
- Furthermore, more than $100/200 is beyond reasonable (minus the cards you can earn for free in less than 3-6 months).
If we're considering the cards achievable within 3-6 months the price for complete collection acquisition is 0$. If you want to speed up the process you can spend 50-100$, however as previously mentioned this better done at the start rather than later.
- Allow me to paraphrase one of my forum tag lines: "Disregard skill, acquire items" - that is the P2W formula.
Gwent is unlike certain other games where decks basically play themselves. Without skill in Gwent even the most pimped-out deck will have no success against a skilled player with a mediocre deck.
- 90 days x how many hours, is the real question. - in comment to getting most cards within 90 days
This would be about 1-2 hours each day. In fact if the only goal is card acquisition, it's inefficient to spend more time in the game daily as the subsequent tiers are harder to achieve and provide less rewards.

The discussion of what you're actually paying for in a CCG economy is ultimately futile, since the blind card pack economy is inherent to the genre. If the goal is to purchase non-randomized sets of cards then there's a sister-genre called "Living Card Game" where you can buy all cards for a set price.

 

[4RM3D]

If someone is interested in the whole TCG/CCG genre be it real-life or digital the first thing they should be aware is that these types of games are created to make money - pure and simple. That was the general idea back when Magic: The Gathering was first printed, starting the whole genre. In my opinion a player implicitly accepts this when choosing to play a CCG game. Any P2W discussion can at most be concerned with the implementation of this element and in this regard - I've said it before and I'll say it again - Gwent is the least pay-to-win CCG in existence.

There are some players who are new to the CCG genre and don't realise this. They are quick to complain because they have nothing to compare Gwent with and "Gwent is the least pay-to-win CCG in existence" is a moot argument to them. That's why I always explain that it's an issue with the CCG genre and not with Gwent. Unless the F2P implementation is actually P2W in disguise. But that's not the case here.

One final small thing. "these types of games are created to make money" Actually, most games are created to make money. Just saying.

 

[nhk3]

One final small thing. "these types of games are created to make money" Actually, most games are created to make money. Just saying.

You're right of course, but what I meant is that games in this genre strive to generate as much repeat purchases as possible. They're basically the IRL originator of the micro-transaction model - you purchase cheap card packs, which over time amount to a large sum.

 

[Treamayne]

What confuses me about this thread is the lack of concern for the real product of "Gwent: CCG." That product being an enjoyable playing experience. If you buy card kegs, you do so to play the game. If you do not want to spend money on card kegs, you play the game to earn new cards. Even if you bought kegs, you will still play the game to earn more cards. I can't see anybody that would pay <monetary amount> to have <number of cards that creates a full collection> just to open the collection screen and read the card names and abilities; but never build a deck or play a game.

Any amount of money, 0 to ++ can lead to enjoyable games (given that the player in question enjoys this type of game, genre and setting). Granted, there can be some growing pains for new players starting out (not nearly as bad as it was a few months ago, I believe). But, after a week or so even players that invested no money at all will have the cards and game experience to enjoy Gwent.

For those that want solo-play, campaigns are coming. If it hasn't changed, those will be a pay-one-price (unsure if for all campaigns or each campaign) and get everything up-front and just play. A normal game in every sense, that also happens to give cards for the CCG side (not that playing the solo campaign will obligate you to play the CCG; IIUC).

The discussion of what you're actually paying for in a CCG economy is ultimately futile, since the blind card pack economy is inherent to the genre. If the goal is to purchase non-randomized sets of cards then there's a sister-genre called "Living Card Game" where you can buy all cards for a set price.

For example: Munchkin. Great game. Non-randomized sets and packs, so you buy what interests you and enjoy the game. I customized multiple types of decks out of the collection rather than play one unwieldy collection of everything

 

[el_Bosco]

You can definitely get close to all the cards without spending money in 3-6 months doing two daily levels a day. Lets say 90 days.

I back this data. Been playing since early november, made so far 1713 matches, havent bought a SINGLE keg with rl money and i'm only missing a dozen cards (not counting the premiums). I've opened 296 kegs bought exclusively with rewarded ore.

 

[RafaMontagner]

The real point in these discussions is as simple as players complaining that they should get tournament competitive decks from week 1 of play without wasting a dime and playing nothing but a couple of games a day. They don't want to spend neither money or time with the game, and expect the game to give all its content in return. It's almost like demanding a fight with Bowser in Super Mario World right away without grinding throughout all the 100+ levels and refusing to use the "cheat" shortcuts (which would be analogous to spending money).

Gwent gives you scraps for duplicates, which you can use to craft the cards you're missing (for half the price of other card games as Hearthstone, where epics and legendaries cost 800 and 1600 dust, respectively, against 200 and 800 respectively). Even better, the last card you get to choose (always rare or better), so you pick the one you want/still have no dupes of. Add to that the fact that Gwent gives you 2 or, with luck, 3 kegs a day if you complete just 2 tiers and in a few months you can open/craft all the key high-rarity cards for the decks you want.

But then again, you don't want to play the game for 3 months, and you don't want to spend any money at all to speed the process up a little bit.

Always reminding that in the mean time, while you still don't have a competitive deck, you'll play (most of the time) vs people who also don't own one yet, since whoever buys a lot of kegs will skyrocket through ranks and MMR so you won't stumble on many of them.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

Am I the only one confused by the purpose of this thread ?

The purpose of this thread is to be as anti-Aristocratic as possible, like all great classical literature, incidentally. Wealthy people cannot be expected to understand, because they don't read it.

After filling half the decks, you'll be receiving mainly scraps. Not sure what the conversion rate is, which is another aspect of the price of the product not being made known. ie: If you obtain 4/5 duplicates and grind/mill them to dust (aka scraps), how many cards of each rarity can you 'craft' with them? Zero (just a funny guess, but probably correct)?

I don't feel like calculating all the probabilities for all of these cases to come up with the cost of the product. Either it should be made public, or it should simply be avoided. It's also concerning how buying a 'product' in this case nets you 'scraps', arguably not a product, but a fraction of a product; diminishing returns.

Spending money at the beginning is another F2P gimmick. Often, game mechanics/grind in subsequent levels are increased as 'incentive' to get you to part with more money, and are subsequent to change from beta on release. 3-6 months down the road, you realize that you're being 'incentivized' (to put it mildly) to spend more. It's a never-ending cycle of recurring revenue. I've never once played a F2P game, where the people who spent the most, didn't end up at the top of the ladder (aka aristocracy).

As to the comment about 'skill'; it's dubious. All these new card abilities will simply lead to meta gimmick builds pretty quickly, as they can be abused. That's exactly what is happening according to every forum post I could find on the matter. Most often, games will over-complicate mechanics by adding unnecessary gimmicks in an attempt to diversify the game, or in the shallow attempt to make it seem more diverse. However, without careful deliberation, for which there is no time in the capitalist world, they end up being abused. The same applies to RPG skills.

I back this data. Been playing since early november, made so far 1713 matches, havent bought a SINGLE keg with rl money and i'm only missing a dozen cards (not counting the premiums). I've opened 296 kegs bought exclusively with rewarded ore.

How many cards? Your data seems to suggest 6 months (avg 10 games per day, 0-20), and owning 50% of the decks. Just roughly from previous estimates, 296 kegs is approx $200, which is 40% of $500 cited. However, with diminishing returns, you should own slightly more than 40% of the cards. This seems to indicate a year or more of such play to obtain nearly the full decks, and more when subsequent cards are added to the game.

Anyways, this is all speculation and total cost, acquisition time, and conversion rates should be provided. Of course, they never are, so are they really 'fair'? The psychology of game marketing seems to also be lost on some of the other respondents in this thread.

In brief: If I spend $50-100 on this game, can I acquire the full decks in 3 months, average 10 games per day (<1000 games)? Doubtful.

You can't even call such games 'competitive' as they're based on your ability to grind or pay. They're just PvE loot-grind games, with the facade of PvP. ie: We put some PvE in yo PvP, so you can PvE while you PvP.

 

[nhk3]

The purpose of this thread is to be as anti-Aristocratic as possible, like all great classical literature, incidentally. Wealthy people cannot be expected to understand, because they don't read it.

With lines like these I'm just going to assume the purpose is trolling. Coincidentally the rest of your post supports this conclusion as the things you mention are untrue or you're just predicting some impending p2w apocalypse that will never come. Not surprising when you've yet to experience the game as I understand.

Now just in case you're really wondering - the quoted number of cards by el_Bosco is actually 96% of the card pool, he achieved in 6 months for an average 10 games per day. There's 0 speculation about it.

In brief: this doesn't seem to be the type of game you're looking for, as if you start playing you'll find very little to actually complain about.
Incidentally this also isn't the right forum to preach pseudo-revolutionary ideas for the sake of entertainment.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

With lines like these I'm just going to assume the purpose is trolling

Then you don't understand the Witcher series. Also, el_Bosco did not cite the number of cards, but games he played.

 

[el_Bosco]

How many cards? Your data seems to suggest 6 months (avg 10 games per day, 0-20), and owning 50% of the decks. Just roughly from previous estimates, 296 kegs is approx $200, which is 40% of $500 cited. However, with diminishing returns, you should own slightly more than 40% of the cards. This seems to indicate a year or more of such play to obtain nearly the full decks, and more when subsequent cards are added to the game.

I'm averaging 12 games per day - which is most of the times enough to reach the 2nd tier reward. You have to consider that i had to craft the vast majority of the legendary cards i have. I've only had a few dropping on kegs. In fact, i've only had 22 legendaries (i do not have stats of repeated cards.. must have had sheldon skags like 20x) dropped in those 296 kegs (in the last 49 kegs, i've only had 3).

It is also worth mentioning that i'm rank 13 and rank rewards provide a substantial amount of scraps, ore and kegs.

Tbh, and having such experience in the matter, i'd say that this system is balanced as it is. It does take a long time to get all the cards, but it is not as much as it would lead me to buy kegs (something i dont ever intent of doing). In the likely scenario of a huge addition of new cards, maybe this balance could be affected. I mean, i dont think anyone would be willing to play 1h to 1:30h everyday for a whole year in order to reach the full card collection. Its just ludicrous.

 

[nhk3]

Then you don't understand the Witcher series. Also, el_Bosco did not cite the number of cards, but games he played.

Did you even read the passage you quoted him on ? It specifically states "havent bought a SINGLE keg with rl money and I'm only missing a dozen cards (not counting the premiums)."
12 cards away from a full collection is 96% of cards. The premium cards, which are pimped out versions of regular cards are irrelevant in this case.

 

[RafaMontagner]

Often, game mechanics/grind in subsequent levels are increased as 'incentive' to get you to part with more money

I'll start assuming you have never played the game yourself, so I'll explain things in detail to you since all your pretty rethoric is telling us you don't know nothing about it.

First of all, you start with a basic deck for every faction in the game, so you don't start with 0 cards. As of now, you're also granted a premium golden legendary card as a gift. Premiums are the same as the regular cards, but the art is animated. No better effects, just prettier and way more expensive to craft with scraps. If you want to craft all premium cards, your investment must be greatly higher (I assume that 500$ calculation for a full collection includes premiums). But, as I said, it would be just for aesthetics. You gain nothing for it.

You gain rewards in-game in 3 different ways: leveling up, ranking up and daily rewards (divided into 3 tiers).

Leveling up is indeed exponential. The higher your level, more time you'll take to achieve the next. But level-up rewards are usually crappy. Apart from some very key levels where the reward is really, really good, you just get a random crappy rare card or a few scraps or golds. Levelling up is far from being your main income mechanic in-game.

Ranking up is what you get for progressing in the game ladder. Rank-up rewards are actually great. As you go higher, you might get rewards worth 3 to 5 kegs. There are currently 15 ranks in the game. The higher you go, the better the reward gets.

But the main income, and what really makes Gwent a much more generous game than most of the games of the genre, are daily rewards. They work in 3 different tiers.

The first tier takes 6 won rounds to complete (3 wins) and rewards you 100 ore (1 keg). Every 2 rounds you win, meanwhile, you get a "mini-reward", usually 15 scraps or 15 ore (not sure if it's 15, can't remember exactly, but something like that) or, in some cases, a common card.

The second tier takes 12 won rounds (6 wins) and reward you with 75 ore. You also get a mini-reward every 2 rounds.

The third tier takes 24 wins to complete (12 wins) and rewards you 50 ore. You get the mini-reward every 4 rounds then. If you complete the third tier, you get the third tier to complete again if you want.

With this system, if you complete tiers 1 and 2, you pretty much get 2,5 kegs per day (counting the mini-rewards and GG rewards from those games). That's 5 kegs every 2 days with something around 15 games a day (assuming you're a newcomer).


Another thing, you seem to believe that, in order to have "all the decks", you need to have all the cards. You could have 2 meta decks for every faction with roughly 50% of the full collection (if you even need all that much). All you have to do is to craft the cards you need, instead of crafting them in alphabetical order.

 

[RickMelethron]

The purpose of this thread is to be as anti-Aristocratic as possible, like all great classical literature, incidentally. Wealthy people cannot be expected to understand, because they don't read it.

the irony in this line points out how little OP knows about the world...

up to a couple centuries ago, the only people who had access to education (and therefore were able to read) were the very "aristocrats" you so vehemently loathe.

 

[Rawls]

Before we go too far down the rabbit hole, please remember that the Forum Rules & Regulations say that users should not

...write about political and world-view topics...

If we want to discuss OPs original questions, f2p, pay to win, various ccg models, etc that's fine. However, let's keep this from turning into a discussion about capitalism/aristocracy/oligarchies/socialism etc etc. If it goes that way we'll have to lock the thread.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

Did you even read the passage you quoted him on ? It specifically states "havent bought a SINGLE keg with rl money and I'm only missing a dozen cards (not counting the premiums)."
12 cards away from a full collection is 96% of cards.

Missed that part, or slipped my mind. In any case, it does not correspond to other estimates of $500, since that's the equivalent of $200. Unless he got exceedingly good RNG rolls, which makes sense, since a $500 product can vary between $100 and $2500 realistically, based on probabilities. It's less pronounced though if you actually get scraps, but a variance of $250-$1000 is completely within acceptable reality for such calculations.

The final verdict is: No official data from CDPR, no sale.

up to a couple centuries ago, the only people who had access to education (and therefore were able to read) were the very "aristocrats" you so vehemently loathe.

And they're still the ones with exclusive educations, and virtually guaranteed positions, such are the effects of nepotism, cronyism, and plutocracy.

However, let's keep this from turning into a discussion about capitalism/aristocracy/oligarchies/socialism etc etc. If it goes that way we'll have to lock the thread.

Might as well ban all discussion of the Witcher series then, classic literature, history, etc... The amount of commentary on religion in the series is also pretty deep. First rule of Witcher series: Don't discuss the themes of Witcher series? Hmph...

I think that rule is specifically meant to prevent discussion of current political topics, not the discussion of themes, history, or relevant subject matter.