The Issue of Spies

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ThuleD;n10172662 said:
For example - "Ambush: While face down, return to your hand if you are 25 or more points behind at the end of the turn. Flip when your opponent passes." - that would be a cool card for ST, which would create a really cool gameplay dynamic and mindgames with other ambush cards.

No, that would be horrible and we've already had a similar card.
 
BornBoring;n10173712 said:
No, that would be horrible and we've already had a similar card.

Care to elaborate? Also, keep in mind that I only suggest this design if spies are removed from the game.
 
Ciaran used to be an ambush card, which returned to his owner's hand if he had lost the round. I don't want see this type mechanic ever again, because it was pretty disgusting if you lost the first round. Your suggestion wouldn't be nearly as horrible as Ciaran used to be, but as I said, no. People would probably find ways to exploit it. Card advantage cards are always dangerous.
 
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BornBoring;n10179592 said:
Ciaran used to be an ambush card, which returned to his owner's hand if he had lost the round. I don't want see this type mechanic ever again, because it was pretty disgusting if you lost the first round. Your suggestion wouldn't be nearly as horrible as Ciaran used to be, but as I said, no. People would probably find ways to exploit it. Card advantage cards are always dangerous.

Yeah, I can see it being abusable - but that's just an idea from the top of my head, would love to test it, but no real way to do that. Plus it is easily counterable by just passing - that makes the card flip. My idea is to make it about 7 points, so it would still leave the one who played it behind. In any case, I am defending this stupid design too much, my real point is, there are many interesting CA designs to be discovered in Gwent, which will never work as long as spies are in the game.
 
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I think we need more ways to deal with spies, like killing them ourselves or cards that just nuke all the spies.
 
I heard someone suggested Silver Spies to become Resilient when dropped. It's an interesting idea, especially if they are Immune. But am not quite sure this will fix the problem with them.
 
partci;n10224262 said:
I'm so pissed about they can still be SCircled. This is beyond annoying.

Well, it's better than before... But still, the problem is nowhere near solved for now.
 
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Tir_na_Lia;n10167292 said:
I would add: "If" they actually fix it.

The coinflip is the father/mother of most problems in Gwent, exists since early Closed Beta, yet it's still alive and well.
Spy spam/abuse is but the nth coinflip-dependant problem.
Problems should be solved at the root, once you discover and acknowledge them.

Instead of addressing it properly, they wasted time tampering with Gold Immunity, Agility, Create etc., the result that the game looks like it just entered Open Beta phase and it's worse than 6 months ago.

So very much this. Right now few things are more frustrating than having to go first + opponent has drawn spy + you haven't drawn yours. Removing spies from the create pool helped, but didn't solve the problem.

1) Fix coin flip. Fix coin flip!! This is more urgent than adding new cards!!
2) Consider removing spies entirely.
 
I keep seeing 'fix coin flip'. I've yet to hear a single suggestion as to how.

What can Gwent, as a game, do to 'fix' the coin flip? Without starting from scratch and making an entirely different game I don't know what they can do. The coinflip is a problem because of the mechanics of Gwent itself. Without a life total or other win condition, he who gets the most points wins AKA he who plays last has the biggest chance to have the most points, due to having the longest time to mess with the other guy's points.
 
You really haven't seen a suggestion as to how to fix the coin flip? I put "how to fix the coin flip gwent" into Google and the first page was full of ideas.
 
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iamthedave;n10241822 said:
I keep seeing 'fix coin flip'. I've yet to hear a single suggestion as to how.

One suggestion is literally in the opening post... And one or two others are in this thread alone.

Coinflip can be fixed and should be fixed. Though I think the removal of spies will actually make the problem less severe by itself, additional measures are still necessary to ensure the game stays healthy in the future.
 
Okay, my bad, I mis-spoke, I haven't seen any really good suggestions on how to fix the coinflip.

The problem is less that the coinflip is bad, and more that whoever gets to play the last card has a massive advantage. Introducing extra mechanics to make people fight over who goes first/second doesn't change the in-built issue that whoever plays the last card has a massive advantage. THAT can only be fixed by a complete game overhaul and/or the introduction of secondary win conditions.

Yes, an interactive element to the coinflip part would add an extra layer of gameplay, which is good, but I haven't seen any suggestions that actually FIX the problem, because you're dealing with a back-end issue (who plays last has the edge) by approaching it from the front end.

Which is not to say that the coinflip shouldn't be overhauled, just that I don't think it would fix the issue like some people believe.

Apologies for the misleading/overly brief post.
 
iamthedave;n10250852 said:
Apologies for the misleading/overly brief post.
No need for apologies, just trying to share the suggestions I've seen.

iamthedave;n10250852 said:
but I haven't seen any suggestions that actually FIX the problem, because you're dealing with a back-end issue (who plays last has the edge) by approaching it from the front end.
It's is an interesting problem with the gameplay design, because going last has turned out to be such a large advantage. I toyed around with suggesting something with value instead (so the player who goes first gets "initiative" a +1 in the base value of every card ... but ultimately I thought that would mess with the balance of the game too much, and even at +1 would probably be too much of an advanage for decks like dwarves that end up with 15 cards on the board in round 3.

EDIT: Anyways ... we're probably swinging a bit too off topic. Be happy to discuss it more in one of the threads above.
 
iamthedave;n10250852 said:
The problem is less that the coinflip is bad, and more that whoever gets to play the last card has a massive advantage. Introducing extra mechanics to make people fight over who goes first/second doesn't change the in-built issue that whoever plays the last card has a massive advantage. THAT can only be fixed by a complete game overhaul and/or the introduction of secondary win conditions.

I don't agree. Going second means you know where to apply your weather. It turns on your control cards (e.g. Iorveth is now worth 14 points, up from 7). And most importantly, it means you can play to win on equal cards, which is something you cannot do if you go first unless you have an unanswered spy.

The last-play issue you describe is another way of saying that "whoever wins round 1 has a massive advantage", since the player who wins round 1 down a card (the most likely scenario) and drypasses round 2 is also the one that will have the last play of the game. But I don't find that to be really true - winning round 1 is certainly great since it lets me control the length of round 2 & go second in round 3, but it's not a big advantage most of the time.
 
iamthedave;n10250852 said:
The problem is less that the coinflip is bad, and more that whoever gets to play the last card has a massive advantage. Introducing extra mechanics to make people fight over who goes first/second doesn't change the in-built issue that whoever plays the last card has a massive advantage. THAT can only be fixed by a complete game overhaul and/or the introduction of secondary win conditions.

You can win your last play by getting card advantage in various ways - you can only reverse the coinflip if you have a spy and your opponent doesn't. And if you lose the coinflip and your opponent has a spy, you sometimes lose on the spot, and even if you don't the comeback is going to be really hard. That's the core of the coinflip issue, and how it is connected to the Spy problem.

Which again brings me to my initial idea - remove spies from the game and only give the first player a pseudo-spy. That will allow the first player to reverse the coin and it will prevent abuse of the coin, making the game a lot more fair.

As for the last play - it is advantageous, but overall it is not the be-all-end-all problem. If you win the last play, you get to play 1 card unanswered, which is really important for some Win-cons, like Ciri:Nova, which is actually pretty terrible if you don't have the last play since there are multiple answers to her. So playing Ciri: Nova requires you to execute a certain gameplan with suboptimal deck, making her balanced overall. Other similar win-cons like Xavier and Olaf function the same way - they just give less points since they don't require you to disrupt your deck. For most other win-cons, getting to go last... doesn't really matter. Jan Natalis+Horn? You can just play smart to avoid Scork hitting more than 1 unit. Paulie into Els into Dorf? - you likely have a unit larger than the dorf on board, if you don't you screwed up, and Scork doesn't even give that much value in this situation, anyway - 13 or so points is pretty weak. So yeah, the last play is not so much of an issue, it just allows you to play some wincons safely, and get maximum value out of Scork. Otherwise it's not very impactful, so I don't think it is the part of the problem we should be focusing on.
 
Save that it also allows you to REACT to other people's wincons. The last play is enormously impactful. In a game where 'most points wins' the one who has the last opportunity to influence that number has a huge advantage. Beating someone in this game if you don't have the last play usually means getting 40+ points ahead, split across numerous bodies, before then. If you can do that, your deck is simply more powerful and theirs probably couldn't beat yours on its best day (nekker consume left unmolested, for example, will usually pull this; that deck can win if it goes two cards down on turn 1 if you don't mess with it).
 
Make this cards 15points at least, because i lost coinflip and played ancient foglet, oponent cantarela,me pass, he Nova!!!
I hate gwent!!!
:mean:
 
iamthedave;n10260572 said:
Save that it also allows you to REACT to other people's wincons. The last play is enormously impactful. In a game where 'most points wins' the one who has the last opportunity to influence that number has a huge advantage. Beating someone in this game if you don't have the last play usually means getting 40+ points ahead, split across numerous bodies, before then. If you can do that, your deck is simply more powerful and theirs probably couldn't beat yours on its best day (nekker consume left unmolested, for example, will usually pull this; that deck can win if it goes two cards down on turn 1 if you don't mess with it).

No, the last play isn't enormously impactful. It's only enormously impactful if your defense against your opponent's win condition is to kill it (e.g. Scorch vs. Ciri: Nova). If your win condition is to play your own win condition, then whoever plays the win condition second barely matters.

It's not true that beating someone in this game if you don't have last play usually means [what you described]. If it were, losing round 1 would be a death sentence, except it usually isn't. Heck, I've won games after drypassing round 1.
 
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