2018 the end of Gwent?

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2018 the end of Gwent?

I haven't played ranked at all last season so my rank was twice halved, down to rank 7. There my place on the global leaderboard was 100k+ but just a few games later I was already under 100k. That means that between ranks 8 and 21 there are less than 100k people.
We all know how easy it is to climb up until around 3k mmr. I can only imagine that at rank 1 you get around 60-70 points per win and lose 2-3 points every loss.
There can't be that many active people between ranks 1 and 7 so the population of Gwent is basically 100k, give or take a few thousand.
That's extremely small and with Valve's own card game coming out this year it will shrink even further.
They tried to change it in order to attract more people but it didn't seem to work. Why play something like HS when you can just play HS. Not to mention the many who stopped playing because of the changes.
We all know that the Witcher is the bread winner for this company. They don't have to make Gwent work. They can let it die if they want to. Do you think they will?
 
I don't know if they'll "let it die" as they did put a lot of resources there, but the fact is that in the last couple of days I see top streamers getting really grim about the state of the game (Swim, SuperJJ, Mithranor, Mogwai, Merchant, etc.). They were critical before that, now they've become grim. Add to that the fact that Lifecoach has stopped playing the game and to host any tournaments... things are not looking good.
 
It'll get better for sure. They just need to open their eyes and realize what a mess create and bad form of removal is and remove it from the game. Removing a point here and there doesn't fix unhealthy mechanics.
 
CDPR is a great company that realizes its mistakes and is working hard to correct them. We have arena coming out, vampire and dryad cards coming out, toussant cards coming out with bunch of new leaders and possibly a new faction and thronebreaker on top of all this - I can't see the game dying so soon. The problem till now has been that gwent has been really slow in releasing new content. Even Hearthstone releases 150+ new cards every 4 months and its not even in beta - where you are much more free to make mistakes. With so many new cards every few months, they manage to circumvent balance issues by consistently releasing new and interesting cards.
 
I doubt there is anything they can do to bring people back or draw in any longlasting newcomers.
Games usually have this licecycle:
Hype->Lauch->Large Initial Population->Departure of Tourists->Consolidation of Playerbase->Development of Pro Scene->Steady Long Term Growth->Eventual Decline
Gwent instead went like this:
Hype->Lauch->Large Initial Population->Departure of Tourists->Consolidation of Playerbase->Alienation of Playerbase with Misguided Changes->Rapid Decline

They never properly developed the pro scene. Without a healthy pro scene any online game dies. Every casual scrub out there has a slight hope in their heart that they could make it to the pros if they just tried hard enough and got lucky enough. Every player likes to watch the best compete.
Gwent offered people this season long qualifier which is ridiculous. People who have time to grind are favored over people who are skilled. Obviously you have to be skilled to make it to the top 8 but without spending many hours each day grinding on the ladder you have no chance. it's basically a full time job just to get to the Gwent Open.
And what is the reward? If you lose in round one you get nothing. Two months of basically working full time for absolutely no pay.
Instead of investing in their professional players, offering them decent prizes and increasing their visibility so they can draw the attention of teams and sponsors, Gwent staff decided to hire clowns to dance around and host their tournament in a castle. Why? There is no audience. Who gets to enjoy that castle? People don't see it on stream. They only see the games being played. When there are no games, they run commercials. Why are they in a castle?
It's like every decision is made by some antisocial dude that has no idea how to connect with people or how to develop a brand and he's just doing things that he thinks are 'cool'.
Then when they saw their numbers drop they thought the best way to get new players is to copy what's successful. Unfortunately, they copied the mechanics of HS not the business model of Blizzard. Mechanics are irrelevant as long as play is balanced. Honestly, who was the genius that thought 'Hey guys, let's add some HS mechanics, then the people who play HS will come and play our game instead'.
You can't attract new people after the hype is gone. Right there, after launch, that's your playerbase. That's what you have to work with. Those are the people you have to keep happy and engaged by developing the competitive aspect of the game. Instead all they did was mess around with the mechanics.
Because they only had experience developing single player games they completely messed up their multiplayer one.
If you want to have a successful game in single player you focus on game play and in multiplayer you focus on the community.
They didn't understand this and when things went bad they assumed it was because they messed up the gameplay. That's what they tried to fix. But what they had messed up in fact was the community. No pro scene, no game.
 
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"the game will die" "top streamers crying" realy do we have to see this post every patch now?

maybe CDPR should make a great "what does beta mean" note as start screen.
 
funny part is, every game has its players who do some math and exactly know when a game is dying or dead already .... and after 20 years the game still exists. how often did WOW die?
 
For Casual players it's very tough, unless you net-deck cause you have no imagination of your own and want to climb the ladder. The only factions I have seen in the last 3 days Are St and SK. That's it.
 
gards;n10515032 said:
For Casual players it's very tough, unless you net-deck cause you have no imagination of your own and want to climb the ladder. The only factions I have seen in the last 3 days Are St and SK. That's it.

The fact that you see so much ST and SK is a logical consequence of the ongoing challenge. When the challenge is over (soon) I expect to see less of that.

However, you don't have to netdeck anything to climb up these days because none of the meta defining decks are that OP.
In fact, climbing is probably a lot easier this season than during the last ones. You don't have to play ST or SK for that (it can be easier if you play Monsters for example).
 
TheNotoriousThree;n10513822 said:
It'll get better for sure. They just need to open their eyes and realize what a mess create and bad form of removal is and remove it from the game. Removing a point here and there doesn't fix unhealthy mechanics.

This, minus the create bit, has been being said for over a year now and the game has got WORSE. CDPR havent learnt a single thing from their mistakes and keep doing the exact same mistakes.. CDPR has ran out of goodwill in the community. Constant incompetence tends to do that.

Theres no plan,
No long term vision,
The game changes direction every couple of months,
The same bugs keep reappearing,
Balance is consistantly atrocious,
The game is in a worse state now than it was in CBT.

Unless something drastically changes at CDPR (ie replacing half the design and balance team at this point) then no, Gwent wont get better. Gwent at this rate wont make december. Remember theres 2 far bigger backed card games coming out soon.

If Gwent was actually still a good game and had some semblence of direction, Maybe just maybe it could of survived Artifact and MTG coming out but as it stands unless something drastic happens pretty damn sharpish, Gwent is a dead game walking.
 
oOxhaosOo;n10514862 said:
"the game will die" "top streamers crying" realy do we have to see this post every patch now?

maybe CDPR should make a great "what does beta mean" note as start screen.

Beta doesnt mean alot after 14 months, the game having a fully backed tournament scene and a fully working, fleshed out cash shop with offers.

This game is a beta in absoloutely no way other than the "its a beta" excuse being thrown around for why the game is in such a horrendous state.
 
4RM3D;n10514392 said:
You know, if you make this topic every year, then eventually you are right. That's how doomsayers usually work.

Thronebreaker hasn't even been released yet. Never mind the arena, the new expansion and the new faction.

I don't want to go too offtopic.. but just quickly, there's a new faction coming out? Is there any info on this somewhere?
 
The game being in Beta does have one important thing to it. CDPR has not fully advertised the game. They will probably do an advertising blitz at full launch. How successful they are at bringing in new players then will determine the long term health of the game. We can expect that the Gwent will have Arena mode and Thronebreaker by then.

And for all those complaining about CDPR copying HS, thats a stupid argument. Every CCG has taken things from that came before it. At the same time, CDPR has many unique aspects. And Thronebreaker will be unlike anything ever attempted by any other CCG dev, period. It will set a benchmark for what the genre can do
 
Mnorojo;n10516752 said:
The game being in Beta does have one important thing to it. CDPR has not fully advertised the game. They will probably do an advertising blitz at full launch. How successful they are at bringing in new players then will determine the long term health of the game. We can expect that the Gwent will have Arena mode and Thronebreaker by then.

And for all those complaining about CDPR copying HS, thats a stupid argument. Every CCG has taken things from that came before it. At the same time, CDPR has many unique aspects. And Thronebreaker will be unlike anything ever attempted by any other CCG dev, period. It will set a benchmark for what the genre can do

Yeah, I'm one of those scrubs who didn't know about the game 'till late last year, a dark Souls PvPer watching Vatti's vids. This was his "Souls-Like" winner and he sold the game like crazy. Wasn't 'till I searched for the game and began to get targeted ads related to that search that I saw the great cinematic wth Ciri, and Geralt, playing in the saloon.

I can't speak on the overall state of the game, as I've only been around for 2 metas, though Brouver was a lot more fun to play against than reveal/removal.

I also don't play any other esport games, but I do play a lot of build-heavy PvP games, which this is. And generally speaking every single one has people on their forum saying "if you don't change the game to appeal more to me, the game is going to die".

What's that saying, "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is tryna please everybody."
All they can do is have a vision and try to get close to it, all we can do is make suggestions, and chose to play or not.
 
Zjiin;n10515792 said:
If Gwent was actually still a good game and had some semblence of direction, Maybe just maybe it could of survived Artifact and MTG coming out but as it stands unless something drastic happens pretty damn sharpish, Gwent is a dead game walking.

I love how games are being compared to games that's have not been released yet.

If you don't think Gwent is a good game, don't play it. It's that simple. But don't bury the game many people enjoy.
 
partci;n10513802 said:
I don't know if they'll "let it die" as they did put a lot of resources there, but the fact is that in the last couple of days I see top streamers getting really grim about the state of the game (Swim, SuperJJ, Mithranor, Mogwai, Merchant, etc.). They were critical before that, now they've become grim. Add to that the fact that Lifecoach has stopped playing the game and to host any tournaments... things are not looking good.

Do you know how many streamers, including Lifecoach and Merchant, stopped playing HS? Is it dead yet?
 
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