[Suggestion Thread] Weather Rework.

[isnadtochiev]

I myself had the full intention (and now have all the cards) of running a hunt only deck, I found out; only after investing 2k+ scraps on Avallac'h (he kind of counts as a huntsmen right?), Imlerith, Nithral, and last but not least - Caranthir, that I'd have a very inconsistent deck loaded with specials. I could make the deck work with more thinning in the form of those spiders and bugs but it was not the reason I was drawn toward the WH cards and as such they see very little play.

Well, there is simply not enough WH cards in game) On thinning - well, you cant really run 3 types of muster units. 2 types are allready hard to manage on mulligan, but manageable (also you spend pretty much all you mulligans on simply not having duplicates). With ADC and Avalac'h i end up with -8 cards. Its decent, but its about as far as you can go. Dont really enjoy consume that much, i find them boring. On adding more cards - well, any CCG has to do it in order to remain interesting, so its safe to say we just have to wait. Expanding on existing tags is a logical way to go, and if the direction CD project took with NG is even slightly telling, we might not see any 8 power swing bronzes anymore)
Overall, im quite optimisitic about changes to come. But we went astray from original topic. Ill occasionally link the topic to people, perhaps if its kept alive long enough - someone will notice.

 

[Redcoat2012]

Well, there is simply not enough WH cards in game) On thinning - well, you cant really run 3 types of muster units. 2 types are allready hard to manage on mulligan, but manageable (also you spend pretty much all you mulligans on simply not having duplicates). With ADC and Avalac'h i end up with -8 cards. Its decent, but its about as far as you can go. Dont really enjoy consume that much, i find them boring. On adding more cards - well, any CCG has to do it in order to remain interesting, so its safe to say we just have to wait. Expanding on existing tags is a logical way to go, and if the direction CD project took with NG is even slightly telling, we might not see any 8 power swing bronzes anymore)
Overall, im quite optimisitic about changes to come. But we went astray from original topic. Ill occasionally link the topic to people, perhaps if its kept alive long enough - someone will notice.

I actually run a deck with all 3 muster cards and whilst maybe one in ten mulligans go dreadfully, clever use of the mulligan focusing on black listing works pretty well, as for ADC I'm not a fan of trading a silver slot to double the chance of playing one silver/high bronze, If you run a natures gift to really double down on the +base strength and thinning aspect, perhaps even Aeglais it can become quite a powerful combo. I do agree that WH needs more cards, perhaps those hounds, navigators, and the ship made of bones and finger nails could be added as bronze/silver additions as it has all the gold cards.

Back on the topic of weather, hopefully those that feel the same way will take notice and start to re-suggest what I have, it could be a fun system intuitive and powerful system. With the upcoming changes to what they are calling "positioning" it will likely become one of very few row wide effects, possibly alone with d.bombs and C-horn. If that was the case weather should have a powerful impact but not so overbearing that completely countering it is the only viable option, such as was the case during the weather spamming NG patch release week.

 

[romvay83]

Easy.. implement 1 or 2 or 3 of these:
1) Limit 3 total weather effects per deck (includes bronze vanillas, silver "choose a weather" cards, and gold Ragnarog). Also, any 2 weather-producing units equate to 1 of the 3 weather slots. So you can fill in all those weather producing monsters but not over-stack it with additional weather effects.
2) If you have units that produce weather, have units that cancel weather effects.
3) Neutral equipment cards that can weatherproof units in-hand before playing it (think torches, paddle boats, fur coats etc etc). I know monsters have a lot of weatherproof units already and NR has a good "goldify" tactic. But Nilf and Scoi could use some help... they often struggle against weather unless they're loaded with FirstLights, Potions, and include all available existing weatherproofs for that faction. But if they include these, their strategies suffer IMMENSELY because their decks have high counts and they can't implement their strategies with any sort of regularity. This is the main reason why people are so frustrated playing against them.

 

[isnadtochiev]

Easy.. implement 1 or 2 or 3 of these:

Well, limit to amount of effects is the most sensible way to stop the "spam"at a glance. But... how will you play foglets, if you have, lets say, Caranthir, Leshen and Water hag... thats that, you cant take any more souces of fog. And drawing a 2-power bronze unit is not what you want. Your second suggestion sounds reasonable, and apparently CD project took that approach too (Denis Cranmer, new SK smith). Third one also sounds sensible, if you can quen to protect unit in hand, why not blizzard? Trouble is, quen sees basicly no play, and i dont quite believe blizzard, even accordingly changed, would see much more.
Trouble with weather is not exactly how many sources of it can be played, by how game changing, polarizing the effect is: Aeromancy the melle row queensguard - 40 power swing, weasponsmith +40 power, Caranthir - 40 e.t.c. It is an outrageously powerfull mechanic with no middle ground. Its either countered - and then it does absolutely nothing, Or it isnt - and then its OP, basicly leaving high tier games against weather at mercy of card advantage. Therefore i do believe that weather cannnot really be balanced in its current form, and thus core mechanic must change. OP suggestion #2 sounds reasonable, and while i do understand why people would love to see weather stay as it is today, its TW3 legacy mechanic, it that case it will stay an ultimate CA weapon, and "weather is OP" threads will never disappear.

 

[romvay83]

Well, limit to amount of effects is the most sensible way to stop the "spam"at a glance. But... how will you play foglets, if you have, lets say, Caranthir, Leshen and Water hag... thats that, you cant take any more souces of fog. And drawing a 2-power bronze unit is not what you want. Your second suggestion sounds reasonable, and apparently CD project took that approach too (Denis Cranmer, new SK smith). Third one also sounds sensible, if you can quen to protect unit in hand, why not blizzard? Trouble is, quen sees basicly no play, and i dont quite believe blizzard, even accordingly changed, would see much more.
Trouble with weather is not exactly how many sources of it can be played, by how game changing, polarizing the effect is: Aeromancy the melle row queensguard - 40 power swing, weasponsmith +40 power, Caranthir - 40 e.t.c. It is an outrageously powerfull mechanic with no middle ground. Its either countered - and then it does absolutely nothing, Or it isnt - and then its OP, basicly leaving high tier games against weather at mercy of card advantage. Therefore i do believe that weather cannnot really be balanced in its current form, and thus core mechanic must change. OP suggestion #2 sounds reasonable, and while i do understand why people would love to see weather stay as it is today, its TW3 legacy mechanic, it that case it will stay an ultimate CA weapon, and "weather is OP" threads will never disappear.

What do you think about getting rid of bronze froze/fog/rain all together? If you want to play a weather deck... you have to invest in getting the silver/gold weathers and weather producing units. Its a radical thought but honestly between the units and silver/gold weathers there would be more than enough weather playablity available. I know because my weather monster deck has no bronze weathers. It has the ragnarog, the 3 silver weathers, woodland spirit, hag, and the wild hunt wizard guy (forget the name). I dont have aeromancy but obviously Dagon is leader. I always have way more than enough weather cards in hand. If you want to weather it up with skellige then just substitute aeromancy for not having Dagon. Seems reasonable to me. What do you think?

 

[Redcoat2012]

What do you think about getting rid of bronze froze/fog/rain all together? If you want to play a weather deck... you have to invest in getting the silver/gold weathers and weather producing units. Its a radical thought but honestly between the units and silver/gold weathers there would be more than enough weather playablity available. I know because my weather monster deck has no bronze weathers. It has the ragnarog, the 3 silver weathers, woodland spirit, hag, and the wild hunt wizard guy (forget the name). I dont have aeromancy but obviously Dagon is leader. I always have way more than enough weather cards in hand. If you want to weather it up with skellige then just substitute aeromancy for not having Dagon. Seems reasonable to me. What do you think?

Caranthir is the WildHunt Head Navigator (portal mage).

As for limiting weather effects - It doesn't work for various reasons nor do anything to change the mechanic, its not the spamming of the mechanic that is the problem it is the mechanic itself. Dagon would become pretty poor if weather was limited deck wide, Monsters would get shafted for various reasons, foglets would become the worst cards in the game (ancient would never snowball and the regular ones would actually pollute your deck), on top of that highest tiers of play will still revolve around getting a card advantage and using your aeromancy card last, this is a pretty core combo at high elo and cannot be countered with blizzard pots, weather immune units or first light, the only counter is not losing card advantage.

Weather spamming is actually an incredibly weak tactic, the results are always predetermined, either your opponent will have a few weather immune units/blizzard pots and 3 First lights, or they will be NR and you will lose ue to lacking much board value, alternatively you'll win but there will be nothing the opponent could do about it meaning you can play cards in practically any order and get more or less the same outcome. All a weather spamming deck will be able to do is climb the leader board on auto pilot but only when meta builds exclude the aforementioned cards if this starts to be successful the predominant deck builders on Gwentdb will start re-including them to meet this threat and shutweather spammers down.

As for removing bronze weather cards, it will never happen, to much time was invested into the art + premium cards to just throw them away, it doesn't make much sense to me either. I think you really need to realise that the term "weather deck" in itself is a flawed concept. Weather should be an effect open to all decks, not something that decks themselves are built around. If my original idea of turning weather effects into a row wide Yencon per turn the effect is left unchecked weather would become more powerful in smaller doses (less cards) but less instantaneously rewarding. It would force weather to be used proactively rather as a trump card when you have CA knowing people will not be able to do anything about it even if they possess the first lights to do so.

 

[Ugralitan]

The below is my stance against weather spamming;

Since the deployment of the patch, the game remembers the buffs your units had before it was hit by weather, I have been pondering upon this. Perhaps it should remember affected cards as well? The suggested mechanic aims to provide more strategy and variance to weather decks while giving opposing decks a fighting chance without overly relying on weather immunity/First Lights.

Affected Status

This status occurs whenever a non-gold unit is reduced to 1 strength from their current strength and they are portrayed as "Affected: (Weather Type)". Basically the game remembers with what type of weather the card is affected. Significance of this situation is that the reapplication of the same weather type will not affect the affected units.

So basically I had 8 strength Redanian Knight, it was hit by frost and reduced to 1, he will get the "Affected: Frost" status where the reapplication of frost will no longer bring it down to 1. This prevents weather spam on same row over and over while providing the opponents an opportunity to buff their weakened units.

Status Removal and Reapplication

- Cards such as Dimeritium Bomb, Dimeritium Shackles or cards resetting other cards to base strength will reset the "Affected" status so reapplication of the weather will be effective again.
- Quen will not trigger "Affected" status. For example; playing a protected Guardian into weather row will not reward Guardian "Affected" status.
- If the "Affected" status changes from one weather type to another, the weather effect will be reapplied. For example; my Redanian Knight was reduced to 1 strength and has "Affected: Frost" and I have buffed it up to 4, and the enemy Drowner threw my Redanian Knight to rain row. This will change the status to "Affected: Rain" and it will reduce its strength to 1 again.

Conclusion

Current weather tactics can be too spam oriented which practically chokes the life out of your opponents who has limited First Light and Blizzard Potion options (which are relatively bad cards against non-weather) to counter it directly. This change would direct attention from weather spamming to destroying weakened units and changing the rows of the units while giving a solid fighting chance against weather without entirely relying on few key cards.

 

[Redcoat2012]

I'm not quite sure what your solution does to stop weather spamming, are you suggesting that First light would provide a weather immune status to those affected by it, or that weather cards can only effect a unit once as it does currently when play consecutively, I'm assuming that FL would also remove the "affected" frost status?

At current weather spam works because if you don't immediately remove the weather effect the epidemic/lacerates etc will remove your units regardless of their buffed value, so it turns into a back and forth where when you run out of anti weather they just wipe your board, with perhaps only a woodland spirit, Caranthir, Sarah of water hag, foglets on the board providing more than enough value to beat your now wiped board.

Am I perhaps missing something?

I still think that this would do nothing to stop the last card played Aeromancy BS that Scoia abused so heavily pre NG and can ultimately swing games as does my suggestion, of course I would advocate my own ideas and likely you would do the same.

 

[isnadtochiev]

The below is my stance against weather spamming;

Would work to reduce frustration among newer players encountering weather, sure. However it takes an implementation of a new mechanic and doesnt solve the problem of weather effects being an ultimate CA weapon. Therefore, id still go for weather being a "ticking"damage effect.

 

[Ugralitan]

I'm not quite sure what your solution does to stop weather spamming, are you suggesting that First light would provide a weather immune status to those affected by it, or that weather cards can only effect a unit once as it does currently when play consecutively, I'm assuming that FL would also remove the "affected" frost status?

Indeed a First Light on a row brings back buffs so logically would remove "Affected" status also.

What my solution prevents is that, let us say I played a card which was reduced to 1 strength by weather. Then somehow I provided a buff to the card and then the person simply reapplied the effect to reduce it back to 1. So unless I directly counter weather no amount of buffing will be considered as a good play. "Affected" status provides you a chance to "fight within weather" instead "fight against weather"

Of course what I suggest does not prevent last minute Aeromancy trick. But this change would make a total wipe harder. Consider I played two Impera Enforcers which were hit by fog and reduced to 1. I play leader to buff them back to 5 and in this system further fog applications would not affect Impera Enforcers at all. Then I could introduce a counterplay by using Cahir and resetting leaders to buff Enforcers even further without worrying about Fog. The weather player now has to: "Clear Weather and then reapply" or "Move Impera Enforcers to rain" in order to reapply a weather effect.

 

[Redcoat2012]

Indeed a First Light on a row brings back buffs so logically would remove "Affected" status also.

What my solution prevents is that, let us say I played a card which was reduced to 1 strength by weather. Then somehow I provided a buff to the card and then the person simply reapplied the effect to reduce it back to 1. So unless I directly counter weather no amount of buffing will be considered as a good play. "Affected" status provides you a chance to "fight within weather" instead "fight against weather"

Of course what I suggest does not prevent last minute Aeromancy trick. But this change would make a total wipe harder. Consider I played two Impera Enforcers which were hit by fog and reduced to 1. I play leader to buff them back to 5 and in this system further fog applications would not affect Impera Enforcers at all. Then I could introduce a counterplay by using Cahir and resetting leaders to buff Enforcers even further without worrying about Fog. The weather player now has to: "Clear Weather and then reapply" or "Move Impera Enforcers to rain" in order to reapply a weather effect.

Ah I see your stance more clearly, I'm sorry but I don't agree that it would fix things in the way I personally feel they need to be.

My opinions were founded upon the belief was that the power swing/tempo that weather provides is the core problem with weather, anything that does not tackle this ultimately falls short as a remedy in my eye. Not only that a lot of row buffing units apply 2 strength meaning weather + lacerate will still wipe a row and on top of that epidemic will still wipe entire boards in a 2 card combo with ragh.

 

[Ugralitan]

My opinions were founded upon the belief was that the power swing/tempo that weather provides is the core problem with weather, anything that does not tackle this ultimately falls short as a remedy in my eye. Not only that a lot of row buffing units apply 2 strength meaning weather + lacerate will still wipe a row and on top of that epidemic will still wipe entire boards in a 2 card combo with ragh.

Ragh Nar Roog is supposed to be a board changing card after all. And fixing weather will happen step by step. As I said I did not offer a solution for power swing on "non-weathered" rows but rather offering a solution towards spamming the same weather on row.

Also, you should not think that as "row buffing only" there are enough cards which provides singular buffs like Kaedweni Siege Support providing 3 strength to two units. An Ambassador can provide 12 strength to a unit. I find that their effects can be erased by reapplication of same weather as unfair.

Besides if the game remembers buffed units, logically it should remember affected units.

Perhaps when positioning is added weather will take positions into consideration while reducing strength. Still even under that scenario, I would like the game to remember affected units and do not further punish those units with same weather type.

 

[Qajfa]

I think OP has already solved the problem. Weather effects should remove one strength each turn. This fits thematically, makes sense gameplay wise and offers a lot of opportunities to play around it. It would weaken weather just enough to make it less frustrating but weather monsters would still be a reasonably good deck i think. Good job on thinking of this i hope cdpr test this mechanic

 

[Joneleth]

Wow weather removing 1 strength per turn is a really elegant solution. I never thought of that. One Thing to think of though: This Change basically flips the properties of weather. Right now weather is strong against fewer ( <-not neccessary but likely) highly buffed Units and weaker against a wide board of relatively low strength Units. After the Change it would be the opposite.
So that might affect the place of weather in the game a lot. But it is a really cool idea regardless. Definitely worth a try.

 

[ibilibertas]

unleashing weathers full potential has made the game far less enjoyable.

This is the single, most objective thing to measure something imo. "Enjoyable". Enjoyable for everyone, not just for one who plays this or that, Monsters in this case.

Objectively, i think the avg. intelligent person does not mind losing. A defeat can teach more than a win. Do "I" lose fairly? At this point weather, with everything that has mentioned about it, seems to favor one or two Decks and mostly one Faction. Here, i am curious (with extreme prejudice) to learn about the official stats and data about the Weather cards, which Faction and decks are using it constantly, win ratios etc. etc. etc.

It is a matter if counters. Rock, Paper and not Shotgun, right? Here we have a shotgun as it stands and i wait for changes to apply to weather before, or as OBT arrives. Thought i do think more testing is needed before that even.

The whole point and purpose, should be for any game to feel and be enjoyable to everyone. I hope to see that sooner but not later here. GL to the ppl. working hard on this task and much appreciation for the ppl having ideas and suggestions regarding balancing and more.

 

[isnadtochiev]

Ill just come by to keep the topic alive. With recent changes on PTR its obvious CD project RED still arent happy with weather mechanic, but its unclear what is the purpose of going back and forth with the same old (and not working) solutions. Core trouble is simple - last card weather can be a 100+ points swing. Adding more counters wont fix it. Buffing first light to be omnipresent wont fix it. Its simplty a polarising mechanic, ultimate CA weapon. And unless core mechanic is changed, this trouble isnt going away. I had fairly high hopes seeing a constructive discussion and what looks like a working solution in this thread, but as time passes i start to question if devs even read this forums, and therefore, is there even a reason to use it over reddit. At least there Red guys occasionally bother to reply.

 

[Redcoat2012]

Reddit has one passive aggressive moderator but at least its something. I'm starting to wonder if instead of true balance CDPR just want to turn balance into a revolving door where they spotlight specific deck types and then kill them off a month or two later to increase demand for new cards.

Any printed TCG would be balanced on a knifes edge because adjusting cards can't really be done once they are sold, in theory card rebalances should practically never take place on any online TCG but it feels that meta shifting game balance is going to be a theme for Gwent. Shame really.

By all means feel free to post these ideas to Reddit, I have no intention of ever creating an account on that site but it seems apparent noadays that game devs care more about their reddit image than anything else.

Speaking of Rethaz, he spoke in some detail about weather on the sub reddit (I don't read it myself however my GF informs me on it like an unpaid intern secretary). He stated that internal testing was taking place regarding a solution which didn't sound all too promising. They mentioned how they didn't feel that doing 1-2 damage per use was underwhelming, which isn't what I was suggesting as I suggest 1 or 2 damage to a row per turn but its similar.

I've got a feeling weather will receive a turn timer and that will be it.

 

[Electric_Sigh]

First of all thanks to isnadtochiev to bring me to the existence of this thread because I was unable to find it via the search feature of the forum!

Stupidly I opened up a similar thread actually suggesting more or less the same ideas of Redcoat2012 but with shorter and not so deep argumentations! XD

1. Have weather remove a set amount of base strength to all units on the row lacking weather immunity/gold status. This would have the positive effect of lowering the instant swing a weather card produces but at the cost of reducing the system down into a glorified lacerate, on top of that first light would become redundant.

2. Have weather remove a set amount of strength each turn to all applicable units on the row until the effect is removed. Similar to how Yennefer: the conjurer functions, all units on a row affected by weather would be dealt damage (for example 2 damage) each turn for as long as the weather effect remains. The benefit of this change is that players with significant point leads could pass knowing that if a weather effect is applied the hypothetical trio of Blue stripe commandos buffed up to 15 strength a piece with a thunderbolt pot won't be reduced to 3 measly points in a single biting frost card should said hypothetical NR player pass. Weather effects themselves would still remain very powerful and enjoyable to use, first light would remove the weather effect but not restore the damage dealt. Ice Giant and Sarah may need to be tweaked. A 1:1 card exchange becomes an even exchange, the silver and gold weather cards would not be completely countered by a single bronze. This is what I believe to be the best direction.

3. Introduce a limit to the number of weather effects that can be played per game/round. This would only inhibit the weather spam decks. I've seen this suggested but felt that it didn't really tackle the real problem that weather has caused.

I definetly agree with Redcoat2012 and I find 1. and 2. to be a fairly good solution to the weather "problem".

What I want to add is another possible ideas that came to my mind, which take in consideration future buffs on an affected row instead of constant debuff.
If one wants to see it in a roleplay concept, when you are in very bad weather condition helps from others are difficult to get so why not make weathers give a small AoE debuff, -1 or -2 strength at most as a sort of Lacerate, and then give a penalty to future buffs given to the affected unit, like again -1 or -2?
A modification of this version could be no initial AoE effect but then no possibility for the affected units to get buffed meanwhile, but maybe this is too way annoying in some sense.
In these scenarios First Light could actually remove the weather in one row AND rally, and one could have back the two weather silver spawn and the three weather Ragh Nar Roog which I found very fitting in the idea of the game of Gwent

What do you think?

 

[pixLx]

2. Have weather remove a set amount of strength each turn to all applicable units on the row until the effect is removed.

That was kind of on my mind too. I don't have anything against the concept of weather or it being a full row effect, only against the instant power swing it can give even in bronze form.

And they could separate this effect from wounding, call it maybe weakening or something to avoid warcry/axemen abuse and maybe implement new cards to utilise or interact with this mechaninc. Of course they would stack with each other but but only one of them would trigger abilities witch require wounding.

 

[Anen]

I think this thread is out of date.
but adding axeman STR from debuffing weather is something you need to fix. temporary weaken is differend with sniped card