How the abundance of tutors in the game pushes away new players

[Esmer]

That should be fixable by restricting the drawn card to a bronze.

There's nothing broken about that. Sheala is usually played only in Radovid Nova decks (exactly for the purpose of thinning and trying to draw Nova or DJ), and even there her inclusion rate is about 60% (according to GwentUp meta report).

I personally think CDPR already introduced a lot of restrictions which don't solve balance issues but overcomplicate the game. Take Reinforcements, for instance. It used to let you play any silver or bronze unit from a deck. Yes, that was too strong, but on practice you played the same 1-2 units with it. Now it has a wall of text explaining what you can play with it, but you use it primarily to pull Stennis or Ronvid. And that wall of text is there probably to confuse people playing Aglais, lol.

 

[TrompeLaMort]

The abundance of tutors cards makes the game more boring. I don't really think it impacts new players as much to specifically focus your thread on that. Instead, it could be about tutor cards in general, which, like I've mentioned, is a pretty boring mechanic. What's worse is that it limits the design space because every tutor'able card needs to be balanced around their respective tutor(s). This can go haywire real fast like with Ithlinne.

My position is similar to this. I'm actually surprised OP complained about tutors in the context of new players; I don't think it affects them at all.

But I do believe (as I stated elsewhere) that filling the game with tutors was one of the biggest mistakes CDPR made in building the core set. (I don't think it is fixable, though. It would involve fundamentally changing every single faction and deck, and the game is too far along for that. But they can restrain this design from now on.) But why?

1. It makes the game too consistent. I know a lot of people think that consistency is always good, but it truly is not. I'll quote below a post on mine in Reddit a while ago explaining that, but in summary, too much consistency makes games feel too repetitive. And to fight that CDPR is adding RNG and create. It would have been better if the game had less deck consistency, so it wouldn't need card inconsistency.
2. It is boring. This is really the simplest reason, and probably the most important. "Play an item from your deck" is not an interesting card. It is boring, as vanilla as it can be. It does have some strategic complexity, since it introduces thinning, but the card itself is just not fun.
3. It makes impossible to balance spell decks . There is a reason why CDPR can't make playable specials anymore, and therefore we can't have decks with mostly spells. Because every special they make, they need to consider that (possibly) it will be cast by a tutor, and therefore it needs to be 1-3 points weaker than the average unit.

I like a lot the idea that people gave that bronze tutors should be conditional, like "if you have a wounded unit, play an item from your deck", or something like that. But anyway, I would already be satisfied if they said "enough is enough" and stopped (or severely restricted) making tutors altogether.

Here is the quote I promissed:

The more consistent the game, the more important the skill (which is good). Chess is an example: if I play 1000 games against, say, Anand, I will lose every single one. But Chess also gives the example why consistency is not good: if you look into, say Ruy Lopez Spassky Variation, it sets the best moves up to the 18th move (!), and if you want to play at high levels, you must have it all well memorized.

And chess is a much more complicated game than Gwent! Gwent is in fact quite simple (computationally): you have at most 10 cards in hand (plus pass), of 25 possible in the deck, and you make usually around 14 moves in a game. (I am actually surprised that no one has tried to analyze Gwent in a computer before; I assume they would do very well.) If the consistency of the game is high, people will soon be able to figure out that when playing Bear, the optimal outcome is always to start with Bearmaster -> Maiden -> Restore (if against deck X) or Raging bear (if against deck Y). And so the gameplay becomes stale.

Also, when games are more consistent, having better decks means you will win a huge percentage of the time. In the extreme case, if you only have 10 cards in deck and you draw them all, a better deck should win all the time. Which makes the meta stale. (To expand further: one thing is to play a tier 2 deck that I know well and opponents know little, if it has an average 45% win-rate. Another thing completely is if the average win-rate is 30%.)

I am not speaking in favor of Create here, there are obviously other ways of not making the game too consistent. (Nova and Shupe are another way they tried this.) But Gwent in design is already a very consistent game, since you often draw almost the entire deck each game, starting with 10/25 + mulligans, and drawing 3 more (plus mulligans). And CDPR introduced early on a lot of tutors and thinning and such. (Which I wonder if it was not a mistake, but it is already done.) (For comparison, in MTG you draw 7 cards of a 60 card deck.)

Again, I'm not arguing for RNG, I'm just saying that people that complain about RNG (be it create RNG, card draw RNG, etc.) and complain that the game is boring/stale should know that one often works against the other.

In fact, now we look back at pre-midwinter as a golden age of Gwent, but I remember when Midwinter was announced, a lot of people (streamers, etc.) were saying that they needed to do this, otherwise the game was dying. And if it is true that the player-base was shrinking, I wonder if it is not because although the game was very skill-based, each game didn't feel a lot like the next.

 

[TrompeLaMort]

Coming from years of MTG and Hearthstone, tutors are essential. Without tutors some archetypes would be dead. Gwent is still a card game, tutors should be a part of it, as mentioned already there needs to be more thought put into the tags. It took me ages to realize why my skellige priestesses are not in my graveyard, until I realised that is what the 'doomed tag means. More of explanation on that within the game would help to ease newbies into the game.

Yeah, but you forget that in MTG you start with 7 cards out of 60 (12% of the deck), in Hearthstone with 3 out of 30 (10%), while in Gwent, you start with 10/25 cards in hand (40% of the deck!).

 

[Ic3Purple]

What a BS topic, really!

Are tutors boring? Push away, new players? uh?

Again, ppl here want to talk about skill, when it is all about damn RNG! I welcome tutors! That gives a bit of thought to your moves and decrease the dumb RNG.

I can't believe the bunch of absurd things has been sais here.

Not to mentions the total crap in Arena RNG, decks that goes around with 8-9 golds and others with 4-5 ffs!

 

[Iuliandrei]

Again, ppl here want to talk about skill, when it is all about damn RNG! I welcome tutors! That gives a bit of thought to your moves and decrease the dumb RNG.

Are you kidding me right now? What thought does it give to your plays? Tutors basically double the amount of RNG in the game.

As they justified the nerf to Bone Talisman, special cards now are balanced around tutors, which means they are quite mandatory so you HAVE to run them. However the downside is that this screws with your hand big time, not only it often blocks you from using the mulligan but a dead tutor in last round basically means you lost the game.

Edit: I also don't really like this game of tags Gwent is going toward, it's a bit of a paradox but while tutors are meant to increase the playability of certain cards, in the same time they exclude even more cards. If a card is balanced around being played with a tutor NOBODY will ever touch that card if their faction doesn't have a tutor for it.
And if the solution to this is to give everyone tutors for everything, that would defeat the whole point.

 

[GenLiu]

I don't think tutors are that bad but I do agree that there is too many in certain factions (and for certain tags).
The example taken at the begining of this topic is perfect : Vicovaro medic and the new magne division....Like why?
At this point I even start to prefere the old Magne and while I like a lot of decision CDPR made throught the course of the game, I think others are really questionable.

It's kinda the same thing with Shield maiden (same thing, why? What was the reasoning behind making a pretty well designed card into an absolute trash, power wise and design wise).

But back on topic, as I said, Nilgaard is a pretty good example of a faction that has been too far with tutors. When you see a turn consisting of Cahir into Jan Calveit, into Vicovaro medic, into Ointment, resurrecting another medic, into a second Ointment, resing yet another medic, into another oitnement which pulls out the last medic and finish with a Mahakam hail, then you understand that something is going wrong and CDPR introduced way too many tutors...

Also, we're talking about tutors but I think the game as been to far into thining too...

 

[DannyGuy]

What a BS topic, really!
Are tutors boring? Push away, new players? uh?
Again, ppl here want to talk about skill, when it is all about damn RNG! I welcome tutors! That gives a bit of thought to your moves and decrease the dumb RNG.
I can't believe the bunch of absurd things has been sais here.
Not to mentions the total crap in Arena RNG, decks that goes around with 8-9 golds and others with 4-5 ffs!

Gwent has a long-term problem: It's too consistent, and it's getting more and more consistent as time passes. Many players have already discussed increasing the minimum deck size to 30 cards, in order to reduce consistency. Because after a while, you know all the decks, and there is no risk in guessing your opponent's hand. I love poker, and Gwent used to be comparable to it in many ways, but bluffing is so rare nowadays that that axpect is gone.
Tutors do disincentivize new players - I watched Kripp stream gwent a while ago and he was absolutely muddled by ta couple of tutors.

I don't see how tutors add any thought to your plays. They take it away. Mulliganing becomes less about improving your hand, and more about ditching cards only to tutor them from your deck.
Arena has little to do with this post, not sure why you're mentioning that here. Besides, the better player will still win 90% of the time.

 

[DannyGuy]

It's kinda the same thing with Shield maiden (same thing, why? What was the reasoning behind making a pretty well designed card into an absolute trash, power wise and design wise).

Also, we're talking about tutors but I think the game as been to far into thining too...

I guess I haven't been too clear what I meant by tutors. What I classify as a tutor is a card that plays a diffrent card from your deck without any other further requirements. Cards like Wild Hunt Hound, Vicovaro Novice, Tormented Mage, Heymaey Protector, etc...
Well designed tutors would be ones with requirements, like Slyzard, Reaver Scout, etc..
Then there are muster cards, which pull other copies of cards with the same name (CDPR also fucked up with these). Cards like Arachasae and Blue Mountain Commandos

I used to like the Elven Mercenary because it was unique to the Scoia'Tael faction, but now every faction has pretty much the same card, and that really takes away from the flavor.

 

[DannyGuy]

Coming from years of MTG and Hearthstone, tutors are essential. Without tutors some archetypes would be dead. Gwent is still a card game, tutors should be a part of it, as mentioned already there needs to be more thought put into the tags. It took me ages to realize why my skellige priestesses are not in my graveyard, until I realised that is what the 'doomed tag means. More of explanation on that within the game would help to ease newbies into the game.

Yeah, but you forget that in MTG you start with 7 cards out of 60 (12% of the deck), in Hearthstone with 3 out of 30 (10%), while in Gwent, you start with 10/25 cards in hand (40% of the deck!).

I don't think that every single archetype should have tutors. If an archetype is shit without tutors, it's probably not designed too well. Alchemy Nilfgaard for example doesn't actually need the Vicovaro Novices, but they make the deck more consistent and ad bodies for the Mahakam Ale. The tutors aren't a necessity, they are a luxury. Tutors should definitely be a part of gwent, just not ones that pull cards from your deck without any further requirements.

Well designed tutors are unique, and feel like unique cards that don't appear in other factions. Like Reaver Scouts and Slyzards.

 

[Ic3Purple]

Are you kidding me right now? What thought does it give to your plays? Tutors basically double the amount of RNG in the game.

Example. RNG First round. You draw all your four golds (no tutors), I draw ONE, only, gold tutor, Ge'els/Royal Decree and the last wish!. The dumb RNG already decided you are favoured of the match! While me... wow, thank god at least I got a damn tutor! you win R1, we go to second round, and I still don't draw ad damn additional gold! And that dumb "the last wish" did found another bronze! Wow! But thanks, god, I saved my Royal decree, hoping for the best. So, my tutors are tyring to change the bad fate generated for me by the RNG, but nothing. You are very lucky. Your RNG got all the best draws even without tutors, and me? Not even with lessening RNG factors card I still can't draw what I need. Yes, you are a very skillfull player my dear! a true master!

Now, excuses me, do read again the definition of RNG.

Last and none the less. I play a Foltest 40. Now tell me how could you play such a deck without tutors? Why I love Foltest 40? It is difficult to predict by the opponent what card I'm running, except a few well known. But is as well a double edge for me using so many cards and tutors. Easy to get bricked hands.

So, it is because of the bricked hands? Ppl happen to get a dead bronze or Royal Decree? It is still a dumb card game! I didn't ask the mulligan to give me back a dead card at R3 among 9 left! Lucky you, I will lose because of that after having outplayed you at R1.

How I wish I can choose the card to draw in R2 and R3 instead of unreliable statistics made by broken mulligans. Or Even better, on ranked play, a deck I already crafted, I come to choose like In arena the first 12 of my deck to play, rather the RNG factor. Would be still random, but less RNG for sure. At least I had a chance to pick 12 of my cards at the beginning, setting a fairer game play. The downside would be, longer time awaiting before to start R1, due to picking decisions. But a deck I prepared myself beforehand, sure doesn't take long to pick the cards I well know.

 

[Ammers]

Tutoring increases the skill ceiling IMO.Tutors are pretty staple in most card games and I really don't think they're too difficult to grasp. I agree that some of the tags are clunky and that descriptions should be more accurate. But Magic has just as many tags and it's still quite popular in the card game world and has been for over a decade.

 

[Piwus]

Tutor mechanics need serious adjust. The major problem of tutors is they are essential to deck and special cards are balanced according to tutors not true card strenght.

The changes I would suggest are:
1. Unit tutors can summon only lower-graded cards ie. silver barcley can summon only bronze dwarfs, gold Skellen/Vilge/DJ can summon only bronze or silver cards. Elven mercenaries or NG novices wouldnt summon special cards (bronze units tutors should be remade)
2. Special cards without point body can summon equal-grade cards ie. silver nature's gift summon silver specials, reconnaissance can summon only bronze cards, gold royal decree can summon gold units.

Existance of bronze tutor cards right now is some kind of mistake. First of all its completly unbalanced. Bronze card value is 11 point nowadays, but tutors are adding 1-3 points to their value, plus they are providing deck thinning. If anyone needs extra thinning and unit access, he just need to play reconnaissance, alzur's double cross or marching orders. Actual tutors should be remade in some useful archetype cards.

 

[GenLiu]

I guess I haven't been too clear what I meant by tutors. What I classify as a tutor is a card that plays a diffrent card from your deck without any other further requirements. Cards like Wild Hunt Hound, Vicovaro Novice, Tormented Mage, Heymaey Protector, etc...
Well designed tutors would be ones with requirements, like Slyzard, Reaver Scout, etc..
Then there are muster cards, which pull other copies of cards with the same name (CDPR also fucked up with these). Cards like Arachasae and Blue Mountain Commandos

I used to like the Elven Mercenary because it was unique to the Scoia'Tael faction, but now every faction has pretty much the same card, and that really takes away from the flavor.

That part was an off topic, only the rest of my post was talking about tutors.

How I wish I can choose the card to draw in R2 and R3 instead of unreliable statistics made by broken mulligans. Or Even better, on ranked play, a deck I already crafted, I come to choose like In arena the first 12 of my deck to play, rather the RNG factor. Would be still random, but less RNG for sure. At least I had a chance to pick 12 of my cards at the beginning, setting a fairer game play. The downside would be, longer time awaiting before to start R1, due to picking decisions. But a deck I prepared myself beforehand, sure doesn't take long to pick the cards I well know.

Except Luliandrei's question still stand.
The example you give is a pretty bad example since you're comparing a player with no tutors vs someone who's using some, which is just never happening in this game, there is so many tutors for so many things, it's litterally imposible to build a deck without tutor.

So, while you could argue that tutors in a card game reduces the amount of RNG, having too many of them in fact increases it because it quicly turns into "who drew his/her tutors and who didn't".

I also found it interesting you're mentioning 40 cards Foltest being one of your favorite deck when it's probably the most RNG dependant deck in the entire game...

 

[Beernchips]

I don t have problem with tutors because its the equivalent of "draw" in other CCG with th drawback it can become a bad card if you have nothing to tutor. During deck building you have to take in account the tutors + the card to be tutored. Some tutors should be nerfed (barclay is a +5 tutor (with 3 pts in reinforce to synergy with paulie) when all other are max +3
Create on the other hand is just too much beneficial. It is funny to see that a bronze create can give more pts than silver runes
Some changes in the most played ones could be so creating can t have more than 10 pts to compensate the create flexibility:
Slave driver : the created card takes 1 dmg at beginning of each turn (because well its a slave fighting for his enemy, no reason he do it at full power)
Elven mercenary : create a havekaar or vrihedd (because its the only ones that can be "recruited)
Dwarven agitator : banish him at beginning of next turn
Beast master : bear is 9pts instead of 11

 

[Ic3Purple]

That part was an off topic, only the rest of my post was talking about tutors.



Except Luliandrei's question still stand.
The example you give is a pretty bad example since you're comparing a player with no tutors vs someone who's using some, which is just never happening in this game, there is so many tutors for so many things, it's litterally imposible to build a deck without tutor.

So, while you could argue that tutors in a card game reduces the amount of RNG, having too many of them in fact increases it because it quicly turns into "who drew his/her tutors and who didn't".

I also found it interesting you're mentioning 40 cards Foltest being one of your favorite deck when it's probably the most RNG dependant deck in the entire game...

The topic says " "How the abundance of tutors in the game pushes away new players"

LOL, just the title makes me laugh!

But let's go by the logic of the title. The accuse of tutors. Of course, I make comparisons between who do run tutors and who doesn't. I show concrete, consistent, examples. While your argument is based on mere speculation.

If you have no valid argument to debate, so please just read, and leave the matter to the others.

Tutors do not increase RNG, but rather give you options to set combos and think carefully about your mulligan. Furthermore, it gives you the option to tune a deck, in particular to tutor those cards that are the counter/answer to the opponent ones. Which, in case you can't get them out of your deck because the RNG decided so, your game outcome is already set.

Again, tutors play against the RNG.

I don't really think tutors are an issue in this game. I do believe, this topic finds origin to the newest lame combo, once again, retarded ST decks, spy, brower, silver dwarf, wardancer.

If there is really an issue in this game, are the dumb spies and such cards, not the tutors.

 

[Draconifors]

Tutors are fine the way they are, IMO. They can be risky (end up being dead), but reward players with a few extra points to whatever it is they're tutoring.

Ithlinne is the only tutor that can easily become problematic, as we've seen happen many times. But that's not the topic of this thread, so I'll leave it at that.


When building a deck with tutors, you need to consider what the optimal number for them is, which I think is a good thing.

For example you probably wouldn't want to have three Bloody Flails but only one Tormented Mage to tutor them.
Or, you have let's say three Crushing Traps that you're going to tutor with Pavko Gale and Elven Mercenaries. What is the ideal number of Mercs to put in so that all traps can be tutored but you'll have no dead tutors?


On a related note, don't pick tutor cards in the Arena before having cards they can tutor. I've ended up with too many completely dead tutors.

 

[GenLiu]

But let's go by the logic of the title. The accuse of tutors. Of course, I make comparisons between who do run tutors and who doesn't. I show concrete, consistent, examples. While your argument is based on mere speculation.

If you have no valid argument to debate, so please just read, and leave the matter to the others.

Please highlight the part of my post that was speculation.
Thank you...

 

[Ic3Purple]

Please highlight the part of my post that was speculation.
Thank you...

That sentence was refered on how you replied on my post. And I stand to it. About the statements on the opening post, the only thing I can agree, are the so many tags, which I had to open Google and look on third pary sites to learn the meaning of such as Doomed, Crew and Crewed etc.

The rest are just pure BS.

If you want to push to nerf the required IQ level to play this game, sorry I won't be by your side. Too easy games become soon boring and that's usually addressed to 8 and below age children. But Gwent, comes from the Witcher lore, a pretty mature game.

Your crusade is out of place if that's your aim. Get over it.

 

[Iuliandrei]

Example. RNG First round. You draw all your four golds (no tutors), I draw ONE, only, gold tutor, Ge'els/Royal Decree and the last wish!. The dumb RNG already decided you are favoured of the match! While me... wow, thank god at least I got a damn tutor! you win R1, we go to second round, and I still don't draw ad damn additional gold! And that dumb "the last wish" did found another bronze! Wow! But thanks, god, I saved my Royal decree, hoping for the best. So, my tutors are tyring to change the bad fate generated for me by the RNG, but nothing. You are very lucky. Your RNG got all the best draws even without tutors, and me? Not even with lessening RNG factors card I still can't draw what I need. Yes, you are a very skillfull player my dear! a true master! Now, excuses me, do read again the definition of RNG.

i'm really really tired of seeing this and can't be kind about it anymore.
First of all your example doesn't doesn't address my statement, so you either have to take your own advice on learning how to read or you don't know what a counterargument is.

Secondly

Tutors do not increase RNG, but rather give you options to set combos and think carefully about your mulligan.
[...]
If you want to push to nerf the required IQ level to play this game, sorry I won't be by your side.

I've been thinking that create didn't ruin this game for me, players did with their insecurities and desperation to prove how good they are. People who think pulling a card from their deck with a tutor is some high level grandmaster genius play. Sorry but if you have a WH Hound and a Frost in your hand and you have to CAREFULLY THINK about which one you're going to mulligan, then ..this next part will most likely be edited out by a mod anyway.

 

[Draconifors]

Time to end this dispute.

If you have a problem with another user, please ignore them, take it to PM or respond civilly.
There is no need for insults or condescending comments.