Why are we forced to play with 25 cards? + NR needs some love

[Saphirro]

Why are we forced to play with 25 cards? + NR needs some love

Literary i hate that im forced to play with minimum of 25 cards in deck. It should be our option to choose how many cards we wanna to have in deck. I have several fillers in NR henselt deck (guess which one). 15-18 should be enough to play the match.

+NR need really some love. Just one competitive build thats joke. Guess whats the NR guy with 3k+ MMR have for deck?
By metadata till we get to the 2nd highest W/R NR deck every other faction have already 3. https://gwentup.com/report/18/10

And if i see one more skellige self inflicting dmg deck i literary throw up, its so freaking everywhere, sometimes even 3-4 opponents with same deck in row..

 

[thirdeye50]

As a NR player myself I have to agree with every aspect of what you said, most of all I @#$%^&*&^%$#@#$%^ SK not just self inflicting but the whole faction.
I had to make a SK deck to finish a quest and afterwards I felt dirty (like get a wire brush out of the garage and a bottle of bleach and jump in the shower dirty).

 

[4RM3D]

Why are we forced to play with 25 cards?

Seriously? Actually, many players have suggested the complete opposite: increasing the minimum amount to 30 cards. First of all, having less cards breaks the bronze/silver/gold ratio, which creates imbalanced situations. Secondly, while it's possible to thin your whole deck, that's not suppose to be the de facto. Finally, it will create an even more stale meta. So, no thanks.

 

[Saphirro]

Seriously? Actually, many players have suggested the complete opposite: increasing the minimum amount to 30 cards. First of all, having less cards breaks the bronze/silver/gold ratio, which creates imbalanced situations. Secondly, while it's possible to thin your whole deck, that's not suppose to be the de facto. Finally, it will create an even more stale meta. So, no thanks.

Care to elaborate coz it doesnt make much sense with imbalanced G-S-B decks, coz if u thin your deck there is better chance of getting gold cards. So less cards means higher chance to draw gold or silver card so that means its more balanced. The more cards you have the more unstable your deck is. Except maybe SK builds and some elf builds. All other factions depends on certain cards to get and variety of those decks decrease coz they have to add filler cards into deck. Personally i did remove a lot of gold and silver cards to maintain 25 card deck coz most of gold cards are not even that good.

 

[4RM3D]

Care to elaborate coz it doesnt make much sense with imbalanced G-S-B decks, coz if u thin your deck there is better chance of getting gold cards. So less cards means higher chance to draw gold or silver card so that means its more balanced.

When the minimum of 25 cards is reduced, it means most players will use less cards, which leads to silver and gold cards being more prevalent and deck building becoming more limited (and also certain archetypes dying out).

Personally i did remove a lot of gold and silver cards to maintain 25 card deck coz most of gold cards are not even that good.

Every faction has silver and gold cards that you would want to have for their respective archetypes. The fact that you think otherwise gives me the impression you are just starting out without having enough ore/scraps to make a decent deck. While it's possible to use less silver or gold cards in a competitive deck in rare cases, with the other 99% you really want to fill all your silver and gold slots.

 

[Hellsmoke77]

One of my best wild hunt decks ran on two golds lol I named that deck "lucky charms" because I always won coinflip with that deck which gave me the impression that coinflip isn't just 50/50, there's something else going on. I'm pretty good at modding and would love to snoop around in the game files to see what's really going on. Haven't cared enough to do so yet though.

Other factions all have decent golds though so yeah in most cases you want 4.

 

[Lyserus]

When you mention NR and card limit I thought you are complaining about 40card henselt getting crappy draw....oh well

 

[TheEpicWhale]

Care to elaborate coz it doesnt make much sense with imbalanced G-S-B decks, coz if u thin your deck there is better chance of getting gold cards. So less cards means higher chance to draw gold or silver card so that means its more balanced. The more cards you have the more unstable your deck is. Except maybe SK builds and some elf builds. All other factions depends on certain cards to get and variety of those decks decrease coz they have to add filler cards into deck. Personally i did remove a lot of gold and silver cards to maintain 25 card deck coz most of gold cards are not even that good.

It is less balanced, not more balanced. Gold cards should not be a guarantuee.
Witht his logic you could also say, why not play 0 deck cards and let the coinflip do all the work.
The whole idea with the minimum of 25 cards is that your skill makes sure you get what you want from it.
So no, no no no no. This will never happen.
Ever. You can always play Saesenthessis: Blaze.
Other than that, bad idea.

 

[iamthedave]

Care to elaborate coz it doesnt make much sense with imbalanced G-S-B decks, coz if u thin your deck there is better chance of getting gold cards. So less cards means higher chance to draw gold or silver card so that means its more balanced. The more cards you have the more unstable your deck is. Except maybe SK builds and some elf builds. All other factions depends on certain cards to get and variety of those decks decrease coz they have to add filler cards into deck. Personally i did remove a lot of gold and silver cards to maintain 25 card deck coz most of gold cards are not even that good.

TCGs are literally based around deck sizes. Most of the actual gameplay isn't playing the decks, its designing them to work within that card limit. By definition smaller decks are more consistent, and consistency trumps almost everything else; so setting a deck size creates a base level of 'consistency' to which deckbuilders can aspire. The limit is not an actual restriction, rather it's a series of rules to guide creativity. You don't get to play everything you want every game; you need to build your deck in such a way that you can get most of what you want most games. Add to that card balancing design so that you get the most benefit by having cards affect one another in some form, and the challenge becomes consistently more complex and rewarding. GWENT's comparatively simplistic on that front, but it's attempting to move the gameplay to somewhere else, make it more about timing and counterplay than straight up card-to-card efficiency. Doesn't always do it well, of course, but that's the idea. If an opponent's deck starts off at 20, another at 25, another at 23, you increasingly lose the ability to predict or even particularly guess what the opponent is up to, or even how to evaluate whether they're keeping big cards in hand to lure you into misplays or not.

Deck size also affects hand size, alongside other things like card draw.

What you're proposing would be a game redesign so radical they'd have to go back to day 1 of open beta.

 

[NomanPeopled]

Literary i hate that im forced to play with minimum of 25 cards in deck. It should be our option to choose how many cards we wanna to have in deck. I have several fillers in NR henselt deck (guess which one). 15-18 should be enough to play the match.

With the abundance of tutors and thinning, 15-18 quite often are enough to play the match already. Such a change would heavily favor combo decks too, whose main consistency issue is bricked setup pieces.

I would like to see more redundancies in the card pool, but CDPR seems quite commited to keeping the pool very small.

+NR need really some love. Just one competitive build thats joke. Guess whats the NR guy with 3k+ MMR have for deck?
By metadata till we get to the 2nd highest W/R NR deck every other faction have already 3.

It's not like I disagree, but balancing a metagame is no trifle, and every change might make matters worse.
Of course balance issues should be adressed, but CDPR can't exactly rebalance the meta every time a faction is getting the short end of the stick.

 

[Saphirro]

TCGs are literally based around deck sizes. Most of the actual gameplay isn't playing the decks, its designing them to work within that card limit. By definition smaller decks are more consistent, and consistency trumps almost everything else; so setting a deck size creates a base level of 'consistency' to which deckbuilders can aspire. The limit is not an actual restriction, rather it's a series of rules to guide creativity. You don't get to play everything you want every game; you need to build your deck in such a way that you can get most of what you want most games. Add to that card balancing design so that you get the most benefit by having cards affect one another in some form, and the challenge becomes consistently more complex and rewarding. GWENT's comparatively simplistic on that front, but it's attempting to move the gameplay to somewhere else, make it more about timing and counterplay than straight up card-to-card efficiency. Doesn't always do it well, of course, but that's the idea. If an opponent's deck starts off at 20, another at 25, another at 23, you increasingly lose the ability to predict or even particularly guess what the opponent is up to, or even how to evaluate whether they're keeping big cards in hand to lure you into misplays or not.

Deck size also affects hand size, alongside other things like card draw.

What you're proposing would be a game redesign so radical they'd have to go back to day 1 of open beta.

Dont see a why they would need to redesign the game. Meta chances every update, it wouldnt affect game mechanics. Its literary so hard to predict the deck? Guess which deck is SK or NR using above 3k MMR. I dont need to play the game to even tell u that, its all in metadata. Consistent decks allow players to create more strong decks. Most of decks are build around 10 cards and rest of the cards either buff them or help u get them.

When the minimum of 25 cards is reduced, it means most players will use less cards, which leads to silver and gold cards being more prevalent and deck building becoming more limited (and also certain archetypes dying out).

The less card option will increase your chance to get stronger unit but it doesnt limit you to use only this amount of cards. There are literary 3 Tier 1 arcetypes and 3 Tier 2 archetypes. So i dont see much variety anyway. And im not sure if SK have any variety in high mmr games.

all guys learn how statistic works. If there is girl u like and u are one of 17 guys in the world there is higher chance she likes u considering 24 guys. Ergo less luck in draw = more consistent deck = better chance of getting strong card, so 4 gold cards vs 4 gold cards is more balanced than 4 gold cards vs 1 gold card.

 

[Bondonkadonk]

You honestly want less than 25 cards in a deck? Just... no. The less cards in a deck, the more decks become incredibly linear and played the same every single time. We already have that to some extent with the current minimum of 25. Most decks with 25 still thin down very well, in fact both decks I currently play usually ends up with 0 to 2 cards left by r3. There's SO MANY tutor cards that there's really no reason to have less than we currently have. If you're struggling to fill up bronze spaces, but in 3 recons, problem solved. Every faction also has a "play all from deck" muster bronze, so if you need to, just put that in and play it early to thin your deck by 3. in one card your deck has gone from 25 to 22. Put in a roach as a silver slot, another one pulled from hand. Put in 3 witchers in silver slots. There's so many options.

 

[4RM3D]

Saphirro Your arguments do not make any sense.

The less card option will increase your chance to get stronger unit but it doesnt limit you to use only this amount of cards. There are literary 3 Tier 1 arcetypes and 3 Tier 2 archetypes. So i dont see much variety anyway. And im not sure if SK have any variety in high mmr games.

We might not have much variety in the top ranks now, but what do you think will happen when the minimum number of cards gets reduced? We'll get even less variety.

guys learn how statistic works. If there is girl u like and u are one of 17 guys in the world there is higher chance she likes u considering 24 guys. Ergo less luck in draw = more consistent deck = better chance of getting strong card, so 4 gold cards vs 4 gold cards is more balanced than 4 gold cards vs 1 gold card.

This has nothing to do with statistics nor with balancing the game. E.g. having a minimum of 30 cards will still be balanced because everyone is in the same boat. The only difference is that it creates a higher variance*. Gwent is now designed around 25 cards, which means that reducing this number does require an overhaul of a lot of cards, like iamthedave already pointed out. You are underestimating the impact of your suggestion. Have you actually played any other CCG before? Because it feels like this is your first encounter with a CCG. Anyhow, everyone in this thread already tried to point out the issues with your suggestion. I do hope you can come to understand the explanation the users have given and the reasoning behind it.

* PS. Creating a higher variance in card games can be a means to make the meta less stale (among other things). The way how this works and the implications behind it are quite interesting, but also go way beyond the scope of this thread.

 

[NomanPeopled]

Just to illustrate: I draw 10 cards at the beginning of the match. Let's say I only have 13 in my deck. My swaps get blacklisted.
So ... I now have exactly the 10 cards in my opening hand that I want for that matchup. In every single match.
So do all of my opponents.

How does this lead to more variety?
More importantly, how is this dfferent from rock-paper-scissors?

 

[Saphirro]

Saphirro Your arguments do not make any sense.



We might not have much variety in the top ranks now, but what do you think will happen when the minimum number of cards gets reduced? We'll get even less variety.



This has nothing to do with statistics nor with balancing the game. E.g. having a minimum of 30 cards will still be balanced because everyone is in the same boat. The only difference is that it creates a higher variance*. Gwent is now designed around 25 cards, which means that reducing this number does require an overhaul of a lot of cards, like iamthedave already pointed out. You are underestimating the impact of your suggestion. Have you actually played any other CCG before? Because it feels like this is your first encounter with a CCG. Anyhow, everyone in this thread already tried to point out the issues with your suggestion. I do hope you can come to understand the explanation the users have given and the reasoning behind it.

* PS. Creating a higher variance in card games can be a means to make the meta less stale (among other things). The way how this works and the implications behind it are quite interesting, but also go way beyond the scope of this thread.

So why not 80 cards decks than ? They already oversimplified the rules e.g. you can use any row for any type of card, if you are here from start of gwent u surely remember those rules. Yu gi oh smallest deck is 40 cards. In this game is literary not enough worth cards to do a big decks. You play 3 core units top(thats 9 cards) rest of the cards either boost them, copy them, help u get them, or ressurect them. And if u would check my acc u would see im here from beta.

And as i said learn how statistic work. Coz u literary said its more balanced when there is more luck included ergo more cards means less chance to draw what u need. And lottery is not about skill.

Just to illustrate: I draw 12 cards at the beginning of the match. Let's say I only have 15 in my deck. My swaps get blacklisted.
So ... I now have exactly the 12 cards in my opening hand that I want for that matchup. In every single match.
So do all of my opponents.

How does this lead to more variety?
More importantly, how is this dfferent from rock-paper-scissors?

well your hand start with 10 cards and u have 5 in deck. So if u swap 3 (not sure tho why u would do that with such small deck i barely swap 3 times with 25cards) u still have 2 cards in deck. You choose to play this amount of cards so your deck is build around core of these cards, it could mean u took several combo cards that needs to be played in certain order which is not available in bigger decks since more cards. So tl;dr it add variety of brand new decks that can compete with bigger decks e.g. self inflicting SK build simply by giving you means to early prevent this deck from beckoning OP. Ofc there are drawback like if you play high dmg cards NH can simply steal your powers.

 

[4RM3D]

So why not 80 cards decks than ? They already oversimplified the rules e.g. you can use any row for any type of card, if you are here from start of gwent u surely remember those rules. Yu gi oh smallest deck is 40 cards. In this game is literary not enough worth cards to do a big decks. You play 3 core units top(thats 9 cards) rest of the cards either boost them, copy them, help u get them, or ressurect them. And if u would check my acc u would see im here from beta.

And as i said learn how statistic work. Coz u literary said its more balanced when there is more luck included ergo more cards means less chance to draw what u need. And lottery is not about skill

Simply put, increasing the minimum amount of cards has less of an impact than decreasing it by said amount. But, there is more going on. Gwent has a max limit on silver and gold cards, unlike some CCG where you can fill your whole deck with legendary cards. That's why it's important to look at the ratio of bronze/silver/gold. Having too little bronze cards (ratio) is bad, while having too many isn't as bad. There still is, however, an upper limit where the variance gets too high. At 40 cards the consistency is already wavering (though mostly due to bricked muster/tutor cards). Gwent is already at the far end of the lower limit and pushing further will break the game like mentioned before.

You can go for an 80 cards deck, if you design the game around it. For example, Magic the Gathering has a 60 card deck because it also uses about 20 Lands (resources), meaning the game is inherently designed to have bigger decks. Gwent isn't like the lottery where you just hope for the best. You can navigate your deck to increase the odds of drawing the cards you want. Still, in the end, there is always some luck involved and decreasing the lower limit is not the way to solve that.

 

[Void_Singer]

you can already make decks that can draw into every single card in R1 and you want even less cards? shall I describe to you the results? it ain't pretty. it'd be gwent paint by numbers. even moreso than now you start the match, and immediately know if you won or lost based on the opponents leader... you absolutely need the variability that larger decks bring otherwise it's just play by mail R/P/S with pretty pictures. reliability of decks does not increase balance, it magnifies slight differences in balance. too much or too little and you either get R/P/S, or Trash Heap Lottery and never mind the power imbalance of card type vs percentage.

 

[NomanPeopled]

(I'm gonna edit my post to correct the brainfart numbers.)

The reason I would swap cards is so I can get exactly the cards I want, if not the case already. Or get rid of cards I want to tutor with Joachim or Bran or whatnot.
Yes, it would make some weak decks stronger. It would also make some strong decks stronger. I don't see a reason why it would help weak decks more than strong decks, and I also don't see a reason why new tier 1 decks couldn't emerge to run amok.

My biggest issue is that I think the matchups would become more clearly lopsided. Every matchup would become a solved game, assuming both players know each other's cards.
A situation would quickly develop where deck A always beats deck B - unless B has card X, at which point B always beats A.
The game would become about whether your opponent happens to include a single card. Hence my reference to rock-paper-scissors, a game as balanced as it is dull.

Also, players are already complaining that matches tend to consist of the same sequence of cards over and over. They want less consistency, not more.
Like I said, I would much prefer consistency by redundancy. I.e. better and more "filler" cards rather than tutors and rezes.

 

[Saphirro]

Simply put, increasing the minimum amount of cards has less of an impact than decreasing it by said amount. But, there is more going on. Gwent has a max limit on silver and gold cards, unlike some CCG where you can fill your whole deck with legendary cards. That's why it's important to look at the ratio of bronze/silver/gold. Having too little bronze cards (ratio) is bad, while having too many isn't as bad. There still is, however, an upper limit where the variance gets too high. At 40 cards the consistency is already wavering (though mostly due to bricked muster/tutor cards). Gwent is already at the far end of the lower limit and pushing further will break the game like mentioned before.

You can go for an 80 cards deck, if you design the game around it. For example, Magic the Gathering has a 60 card deck because it also uses about 20 Lands (resources), meaning the game is inherently designed to have bigger decks. Gwent isn't like the lottery where you just hope for the best. You can navigate your deck to increase the odds of drawing the cards you want. Still, in the end, there is always some luck involved and decreasing the lower limit is not the way to solve that.

U are aware the game was made to force use 3 rows for certain unit types? they removed it. Thats why it was designed around 25 cards. Hell they literary took hazzards cards out of the game.
And if u have lets say 30 cards basic deck and opponent will draw 4 gold cards and u for 3 turns 0 the game is way more imbalanced since u have restriction of how many G/S cads u can have.

 

[Saphirro]

you can already make decks that can draw into every single card in R1 and you want even less cards? shall I describe to you the results? it ain't pretty. it'd be gwent paint by numbers. even moreso than now you start the match, and immediately know if you won or lost based on the opponents leader... you absolutely need the variability that larger decks bring otherwise it's just play by mail R/P/S with pretty pictures. reliability of decks does not increase balance, it magnifies slight differences in balance. too much or too little and you either get R/P/S, or Trash Heap Lottery and never mind the power imbalance of card type vs percentage.

U are aware that there are literary 3 top tier decks? that can compete with each other? And literart 3 2nd tier decks that can compete with T1 only with lucky draws? Sorry for 5 faction only 6 builds isnt variety at all. U already know what the enemy is playing. (and im talking about high MMR)