Hi there,
I started to play Gwent five days ago and I am having an absolutely great time. I was playing a lot of Hearthstone (since Open Beta) but I am fed up with the game and Team5s decisions that I finally decided to try Gwent (due to a reddit-post about Lifecoach, which got me to watch Gwentslam and I totally wanted to understand what these guys were doing). What I am trying to say is that my initial impression of Gwent might be biased, as I currently would favour anything over Hearthstone, and my pov might change in the long run. Anyways, back to Gwent...
I love the concept, the cards, the mechanics, the artwork, the presentation... its just great. Also, the reward structure is just incredible. The next keg(s) always seems right behind that next opponent and I am totally hyped to see what´s in it. The chances to get silvers and golds seems absolutely fair. I already got four or even five golds from kegs and idk how many silvers... a bunch. I mean, I got lots of free kegs on the first day and I have probably opened 20 to 30 so far. Compare that to Hearthsone, where you can open 5 packs on your first day if you try really REALLY hard. But not only the amount of kegs is great, also the quality of the individual cards is awesome and really makes me want to keep playing. Everytime I get a new card that looks even slightly interesting (which nearly all cards do btw, good job on that!) I immediately start thinking about the possible combos and interactions I could use for a deck.
Atm I play a homebrew Skellige selfdamage-resurrect-buff deck which got me to rank 14 already (didn´t expect to rank that fast or to even reach anything above 10... mind you, I am comparing to Hearthstone after all). Idk if the deck is good or if the faction is simply very strong atm so even total crap can work out, but it´s just a blast. Even against appearant netdecks (probably, as they always look the same) I still feel like I have a decent chance to win. The balance just seems good (again, I might be biased or too inexperienced to really gauge it), especially the powerlevel of silvers and golds compared to bronze cards. Yes, I felt a little salty the first few times I got Hailstormed and Ignied, but I quickly learned to try to play around that stuff. And after milling the patched cards (learned to do that from Hearthstone - at least one positive thing I can attribute to that game) I am now running Igni and Hailstorm myself. Screw you, netdeckers!
So, over all my impressions are extremely positive, especially regarding the liberal reward structure and the smooth start for a new (f2p) player.
And here comes my small suggestion: yesterday I hit the cap for daily rewards and got the message "No more rewards. Come back tomorrow." That felt really offputting. And somehow the game didn´t feel as rewarding as before, simply because that golden bar didn´t keep on filling up. And after two more games (one to get another rank, one more to get a level up) I decided to stop playing for the day. So why don´t you give an insignificant reward for winning maybe, idk, 100 rounds or even higher. Just 1 keg or another 75 Ore or even a random rare card. Just enough to suggest, that the player is still working on another reward, that him playing the game is still paying off. And this is not about "me want moar stuffz *babyrage*", it´s about rationalizing the decision to keep on playing. If there are still available rewards, I can always tell myself that I am not wasting my time because I get something more than just fun out of it. But if I get the message "No more rewards. Come back tomorrow." I think to myself "well, playing the game is fun. But playing tomorrow will be more fun because I also get free stuff". So as I said, give a pretty insignificant reward for a high amount of wins (but not too ridicilously high, like 1000 wins would probably be too much).
Anyways, so far it´s a great game and I am sure I will play it for some time at least.
edit: sorry, didn´t want to write a novel. But one thing I forgot is the voice acting. It´s fantastic. The tutorial generates a great atmosphere and brought me back to the nights I spent playing Witcher.
:threaten:
