A few thoughts on the upcoming patch, balance concerns and card design in general
Hi guys,
Having seen a lot of the upcoming changes I've gotten slightly concerned about the future balance and card design of the game. You guys have come very far in terms of balancing and designing Gwent, it would be a shame to squander these efforts by a few odd decisions.
Locking
I think the locking mechanic as it's planned is going to be a dead end. A lot of rounds will come down to whoever has more locking effects at his disposal, which will incentivize the players to cram as many lock cards as possible into their decks. Similar to Mardroeme in the past, Cleaver and Dimeritium Shackles will end up becoming a necessity, not an option.
Making the lock final (no option of unlocking and having the lock persist even in the graveyard), but understatting the minion enough to not make him an autoinclude option seems a better way of balancing this. The old iteration of Cleaver was good, there was no need to change him besides being able to lock down Morkvarg, or nerfing Morkvarg in another way (making him lose 3 strength upon death for example).
All that glitters is not gold.
Another concern of mine is the reduction of interactivity with gold cards. The simplest examples of this would be the upcoming Triss, Roche and Iorveth changes. If these are not able to target any gold cards, there's almost no reason to pick them over Geralt, which will net you more stats in a 1 vs 1 scenario. Hurting Skellige would maybe make use of Triss, but that's about it.
Narrowing down the amount of cards that are able to interact with golden cards will also cause players to autoinclude Dimeritium Shackles and Kaedweni Sergeant into their decks just to be able to deal with them.
While I understand that you want gold cards to be very impactful, you could atleast allow other gold cards to interact with them.
Complexity
I also wanted to point out, that a lot of players appreciate some level of complexity. There are a lot of interesting and smart cards in the game already: Rot Tosser, which allows for a lot of interactive and intriguing plays on both sides. Clan Brokvar Archer - which punishes you for playing him when there aren't enough enemy creatures on the board, it's also nice that he has weather immunity and isn't just a vanilla minion like a lot of the other weather immune ones. Black Infantry Arbalest - allowing you to net 10 strength (soon to be 9) in total when the opponent has a buffed minion. Kaedweni Siege Support - which is weak by himself, but powerful in company of two other minions. Drowner, Ocvist, Blueboy Lugos - the list goes on and on.
What I'm trying to say here is that I can't imagine many scenarios where people would like to play vanilla minions. I can see a place for them in an arena mode or the tutorial, but apart from that they'll always remain boring and unpopular. The only way they'll see an increase in popularity is either giving them some minor abilities (which I would advocate for) or straight up buffing their strength (which would be terrible in terms of balance).
Risk vs Reward
I think you nailed down the risk vs reward aspect of the game fairly well. Since there's a baseline of stats for each colour and the net advantage of some cards exceeding that base amount is conditional. Examples would be the aforementioned Black Infantry Arbalest or Kaeweni Siege Support - they net you 9 strength, but only under certain conditions. They are also much weaker on an empty board, which balances them out even more.
There are a few shortcomings, though. The new version of John Natalis gives a total of 12 stats on paper - just like Geralt, but John has to add that strength to a non-gold minion, which will be vulnerable to all kinds of effects. It would make more sense for him to give more stats in total, 13 or 14 maybe - because there's a certain risk involved.
There are some other cards which seem to have some interesting ideas going, but their current PTR iterations seem lackluster on paper. I mean Djikstra and Keira Metz in particular. Djikstra would be only worth if if your deck relies heavily on one card and you just need to dig for it at any cost. As for Keira, buffing cards and copying them requires quite a setup - not sure if its worth the hassle, because this tactic will always be very vulnerable to shackles, d-bomb and scorch. Having her apply a quen shield made more sense to me, but I'm nitpicking at this point.
Weather
Weather is a very swingy mechanic and most of the time it boils down to card advantage whether the effect overpowers one row on the board or not. I think it would be better if weather effects would half the strength of the affected units instead. The silver weather cards would have to be reverted to their original form (causing weather effects on 2 rows, not choosing one) and some other cards like Water Hag would need buffing if that were the case.
Northern Realms Faction Ability
The theme of turning bronze units into golds seems a bit flawed for me, since by design the NR bronzes will always have to be a lil bit weaker just to make sure, that they won't be overpowering when turned into golds. The setup to get your value out of Henselt/Promote takes some time and leaves little room for interactivity once the units have been promoted. If you guys don't decide to redesign or replace that mechanic, I was thinking of a change to the faction ability to smoothen things out a little bit.
I would suggest the strength of silver and gold cards to increase by 1 when playing Northern Realms, instead of the golden ones gaining 2.
That way, some of the bronzes could get buffed slightly and the NR players that don't rely on the "promote" mechanic would get more out of the passive as well, since otherwise it just boils down to how many golds you've drawn in your game. A set of 4 golds and 6 silvers would give those NR players a more streamlined strength gain from the passive.
Epilogue
These would be most of my concerns regarding the game. Please remember that these are just opinions of mine and I could be wrong across all points - I'm just a mere mortal and I don't have access to your data, which might have clarified a lot of things (or confused me even more). I love your work so far, be sure to hug your programmers, animators and artists, the premium cards make me squeal like a little schoolgirl.
Love,
Matthew, aka Eulogy
Hi guys,
Having seen a lot of the upcoming changes I've gotten slightly concerned about the future balance and card design of the game. You guys have come very far in terms of balancing and designing Gwent, it would be a shame to squander these efforts by a few odd decisions.
Locking
I think the locking mechanic as it's planned is going to be a dead end. A lot of rounds will come down to whoever has more locking effects at his disposal, which will incentivize the players to cram as many lock cards as possible into their decks. Similar to Mardroeme in the past, Cleaver and Dimeritium Shackles will end up becoming a necessity, not an option.
Making the lock final (no option of unlocking and having the lock persist even in the graveyard), but understatting the minion enough to not make him an autoinclude option seems a better way of balancing this. The old iteration of Cleaver was good, there was no need to change him besides being able to lock down Morkvarg, or nerfing Morkvarg in another way (making him lose 3 strength upon death for example).
All that glitters is not gold.
Another concern of mine is the reduction of interactivity with gold cards. The simplest examples of this would be the upcoming Triss, Roche and Iorveth changes. If these are not able to target any gold cards, there's almost no reason to pick them over Geralt, which will net you more stats in a 1 vs 1 scenario. Hurting Skellige would maybe make use of Triss, but that's about it.
Narrowing down the amount of cards that are able to interact with golden cards will also cause players to autoinclude Dimeritium Shackles and Kaedweni Sergeant into their decks just to be able to deal with them.
While I understand that you want gold cards to be very impactful, you could atleast allow other gold cards to interact with them.
Complexity
I also wanted to point out, that a lot of players appreciate some level of complexity. There are a lot of interesting and smart cards in the game already: Rot Tosser, which allows for a lot of interactive and intriguing plays on both sides. Clan Brokvar Archer - which punishes you for playing him when there aren't enough enemy creatures on the board, it's also nice that he has weather immunity and isn't just a vanilla minion like a lot of the other weather immune ones. Black Infantry Arbalest - allowing you to net 10 strength (soon to be 9) in total when the opponent has a buffed minion. Kaedweni Siege Support - which is weak by himself, but powerful in company of two other minions. Drowner, Ocvist, Blueboy Lugos - the list goes on and on.
What I'm trying to say here is that I can't imagine many scenarios where people would like to play vanilla minions. I can see a place for them in an arena mode or the tutorial, but apart from that they'll always remain boring and unpopular. The only way they'll see an increase in popularity is either giving them some minor abilities (which I would advocate for) or straight up buffing their strength (which would be terrible in terms of balance).
Risk vs Reward
I think you nailed down the risk vs reward aspect of the game fairly well. Since there's a baseline of stats for each colour and the net advantage of some cards exceeding that base amount is conditional. Examples would be the aforementioned Black Infantry Arbalest or Kaeweni Siege Support - they net you 9 strength, but only under certain conditions. They are also much weaker on an empty board, which balances them out even more.
There are a few shortcomings, though. The new version of John Natalis gives a total of 12 stats on paper - just like Geralt, but John has to add that strength to a non-gold minion, which will be vulnerable to all kinds of effects. It would make more sense for him to give more stats in total, 13 or 14 maybe - because there's a certain risk involved.
There are some other cards which seem to have some interesting ideas going, but their current PTR iterations seem lackluster on paper. I mean Djikstra and Keira Metz in particular. Djikstra would be only worth if if your deck relies heavily on one card and you just need to dig for it at any cost. As for Keira, buffing cards and copying them requires quite a setup - not sure if its worth the hassle, because this tactic will always be very vulnerable to shackles, d-bomb and scorch. Having her apply a quen shield made more sense to me, but I'm nitpicking at this point.
Weather
Weather is a very swingy mechanic and most of the time it boils down to card advantage whether the effect overpowers one row on the board or not. I think it would be better if weather effects would half the strength of the affected units instead. The silver weather cards would have to be reverted to their original form (causing weather effects on 2 rows, not choosing one) and some other cards like Water Hag would need buffing if that were the case.
Northern Realms Faction Ability
The theme of turning bronze units into golds seems a bit flawed for me, since by design the NR bronzes will always have to be a lil bit weaker just to make sure, that they won't be overpowering when turned into golds. The setup to get your value out of Henselt/Promote takes some time and leaves little room for interactivity once the units have been promoted. If you guys don't decide to redesign or replace that mechanic, I was thinking of a change to the faction ability to smoothen things out a little bit.
I would suggest the strength of silver and gold cards to increase by 1 when playing Northern Realms, instead of the golden ones gaining 2.
That way, some of the bronzes could get buffed slightly and the NR players that don't rely on the "promote" mechanic would get more out of the passive as well, since otherwise it just boils down to how many golds you've drawn in your game. A set of 4 golds and 6 silvers would give those NR players a more streamlined strength gain from the passive.
Epilogue
These would be most of my concerns regarding the game. Please remember that these are just opinions of mine and I could be wrong across all points - I'm just a mere mortal and I don't have access to your data, which might have clarified a lot of things (or confused me even more). I love your work so far, be sure to hug your programmers, animators and artists, the premium cards make me squeal like a little schoolgirl.
Love,
Matthew, aka Eulogy
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