Ladder Rewards and Value for Money
So, I'm writing this topic right after opening a pack of 40 kegs. Before this point I though that maybe I was getting really unlucky, but having opened about 100 kegs in total by this point, I think I have a solid enough statistical base for the following complaint.
I don't have much time to play the game and grind out wins, so I decided to buy a lot of pack and it turned out to be an uter disappointment. After opening so many packs and dropping something around 80 bucks on the game, I expect to get myself a collection solid enough to complete 2 or even 3 decks. This assumption was based on my experience with other card games - mostly Hearthstone and Duelyst. In Gwent I can't even complete one deck.
In my honest opinion, this is ridiculous. The value for money is so low, I wonder why did I even bother buying the last bunch of kegs - previous 15 barrel purchuases gave me almost nothing. Maybe I was hoping that it was just my bad luck. However, now that I've analysed my expirience, I can name a few factors which contributed to it being so poor.
Firstly, low disenchant rate. You get so little scraps for each card, it feels like you've just got nothing when you recieve a duplicate in a pack. It's especially frustrating with duplicate legendaries and epics - you can't even craft a rare by DEing an epic, and a legendary gets demoted to a single epic (which is more or less fine, but with all the issues combined still leaves a sour taste in the mouth).
Secondly - misdistributed rarities. If I counted correctly, the game has 51 Legendary cards. With the total cardpool of 252 cards it's outlandish to have SO many legendaries. Fifth of the overall cardpool are legendaires. The issue is compounded by the fact that legendaries are agonizigly difficult to craft - you need 16 epics, 80 rares or 160 (sic!) commons to craft one. With the current droprate each pack nets you about 40 scraps on average if you DE everything inside. That means 20 packs to craft a legendary you want. And any decks absolutely, 100% needs those legendaries, without them it is not going to work. With the way Gwent is set up, there is no ability to build a budget deck. In Hearthstone or Duelyst (especially Duelyst) you can sort of compensate the lack of legendaries with good curve or specific strats which do not require legendaries. In Gwent a deck without legendaries is trash and is going to be crushed by a deck with legendaries on a similar skill level. Considering all of that, it is hard to see the current number of legendaries as anything but a greedy move by CPR which is really uncharacteristic of them.
Finally I wanted to note another thing unrelated to the keg opening - Level up rewards. The issue complements the same problem, I discussed above. I got First Light for level 12. How am I supposed to feel about that? Because I feel the game disrespects me, giving me a common card that I had IN EVERY FREAKING STARTER DECK. Considering that it takes quite a bit of time to level up, getting 5 scraps for it just made me super salty.
All in all, I feel that the current business model is abusive and just in general disappointing and unpleasant to use. Having paid about 40 bucks to not get enough scraps for a deck is an awful expirience, not to mention I got to open zero interesting or exciting cards thanks to the droprate giving me commons and rares which I all have, since they are very easy to get.
I sincerely hope, CPR rewises their pricing and rarity distribution policies before launch. Currently it feels like every keg is worth 30 cents tops. I am not a marketing expert, but IMHO if people feel like they get consustently screwed after paying money, they will stop doing so and will discourage others from doing it.
Now, I understand that the game is pretty generous with packs and scraps if you play a lot. But my plight is a plight of a man who does not have a lot of time to grind. The issue I am complaining about here is that there is no good alternative to grinding out the cards you need. Currently packs offer horrendous value for the money spend and buying them makes you feel like you've been ripped off.
All of this issues combined I can't believe I'm playing a CPR game - and I hope that these are just beta problems which will be resolved by the time the game is released.
So, I'm writing this topic right after opening a pack of 40 kegs. Before this point I though that maybe I was getting really unlucky, but having opened about 100 kegs in total by this point, I think I have a solid enough statistical base for the following complaint.
I don't have much time to play the game and grind out wins, so I decided to buy a lot of pack and it turned out to be an uter disappointment. After opening so many packs and dropping something around 80 bucks on the game, I expect to get myself a collection solid enough to complete 2 or even 3 decks. This assumption was based on my experience with other card games - mostly Hearthstone and Duelyst. In Gwent I can't even complete one deck.
In my honest opinion, this is ridiculous. The value for money is so low, I wonder why did I even bother buying the last bunch of kegs - previous 15 barrel purchuases gave me almost nothing. Maybe I was hoping that it was just my bad luck. However, now that I've analysed my expirience, I can name a few factors which contributed to it being so poor.
Firstly, low disenchant rate. You get so little scraps for each card, it feels like you've just got nothing when you recieve a duplicate in a pack. It's especially frustrating with duplicate legendaries and epics - you can't even craft a rare by DEing an epic, and a legendary gets demoted to a single epic (which is more or less fine, but with all the issues combined still leaves a sour taste in the mouth).
Secondly - misdistributed rarities. If I counted correctly, the game has 51 Legendary cards. With the total cardpool of 252 cards it's outlandish to have SO many legendaries. Fifth of the overall cardpool are legendaires. The issue is compounded by the fact that legendaries are agonizigly difficult to craft - you need 16 epics, 80 rares or 160 (sic!) commons to craft one. With the current droprate each pack nets you about 40 scraps on average if you DE everything inside. That means 20 packs to craft a legendary you want. And any decks absolutely, 100% needs those legendaries, without them it is not going to work. With the way Gwent is set up, there is no ability to build a budget deck. In Hearthstone or Duelyst (especially Duelyst) you can sort of compensate the lack of legendaries with good curve or specific strats which do not require legendaries. In Gwent a deck without legendaries is trash and is going to be crushed by a deck with legendaries on a similar skill level. Considering all of that, it is hard to see the current number of legendaries as anything but a greedy move by CPR which is really uncharacteristic of them.
Finally I wanted to note another thing unrelated to the keg opening - Level up rewards. The issue complements the same problem, I discussed above. I got First Light for level 12. How am I supposed to feel about that? Because I feel the game disrespects me, giving me a common card that I had IN EVERY FREAKING STARTER DECK. Considering that it takes quite a bit of time to level up, getting 5 scraps for it just made me super salty.
All in all, I feel that the current business model is abusive and just in general disappointing and unpleasant to use. Having paid about 40 bucks to not get enough scraps for a deck is an awful expirience, not to mention I got to open zero interesting or exciting cards thanks to the droprate giving me commons and rares which I all have, since they are very easy to get.
I sincerely hope, CPR rewises their pricing and rarity distribution policies before launch. Currently it feels like every keg is worth 30 cents tops. I am not a marketing expert, but IMHO if people feel like they get consustently screwed after paying money, they will stop doing so and will discourage others from doing it.
Now, I understand that the game is pretty generous with packs and scraps if you play a lot. But my plight is a plight of a man who does not have a lot of time to grind. The issue I am complaining about here is that there is no good alternative to grinding out the cards you need. Currently packs offer horrendous value for the money spend and buying them makes you feel like you've been ripped off.
All of this issues combined I can't believe I'm playing a CPR game - and I hope that these are just beta problems which will be resolved by the time the game is released.