Open PTR feedback

[sfruzz]

For those claiming that there are no more than archetypes 5 and no faction flavor, McBeard has recently twitted the different mechanics around the factions:

Skellige: Discard, Resurrection, Bloodthirst, Pirates, and Self-Wound

Errr....

Well, than I challenge you and McBeard (awesome caster btw) to play for the first season of Homecoming any archetype of my chosing. Let's start with "Pirates". That's an archetype that lacks a big finisher, some value bronze and has a single gold engine, namely Holger Blackhand. "Pirate" is just a tag for now, not an archetype. Else with that criteria you could also have SK Bears, or SK Ships or again SK Resurrection, which also has not enough cards to work on its own.

My feedback is: too few SK archetypes.

- Bloodthirst, which is similar to other control decks other faction have
- Discard, which Xavier Lemmens can kill single-handed
- Self-Wound, which again sadly has few engine cards

 

[Gibwin]

Questions about the different resolutions of the game.
The current gwent supports the resolution of the screen i am using (1680x1050) however the current ptr build does not. This means that the screen is not looking as sharp as it should. This issue was also somthing i had to deal with in the old version of gwent, this forced me to play in windowed mode for a number of months. Its nothing to major but i do hope that many types of resolutions will be supported once the game releases.

 

[forest_sparrow]

Enemy Arachas Queen triggers from the weather cards like frost, it's natural counter :v

 

[WafflesHS]

Hey guys,

I just cancelled deployment on a hand-boosted Sheldon Skaggs and the boosts got removed :/

As I've just played for a bit, I'd love to expand on this some more;

- It might be me (I'm an easily distracted player), but at the moment it's very hard to know whose turn it is in a glance. The 'glow' in the original client was really nice, why not keep something like that?
- I find the visual elements really very cool and polished, but I feel they're incoperated in ways that could be improved:
-- The leaders are awesome, but they don't really have their 'place'... maybe give them an elevated position on the board?
-- The numbers bars on the right is not only quite hard to grasp but also, honestly, kind of ugly? Just darkened background with white elements on top? These things could have been placed on/in the game board in really cool ways. Missed opportunity!
-- The division between the sides/lanes on the board is a bit unclear, which is definitely in line with the board being too dark, as others people on this forum have said
- I definitely feel like there are more of these opportunities for you and your art team to incorperate awesome looking visual feedback into your game!

Aside from these very minor things the new client looks and plays very very well!
Although with all the new mechanics and things to take into account during your turns and plays a basic tutorial is sorely missed..

 

[_北斗_]

Though many criticize PTR and complain a lot about whatever, I personally really love the new game!
I think some new mechanisms are really cool. Card abilities make more sense now and fit in the witcher world better. Not to mention the graphics, it is amazing!

Well, I got some tips on balancing:

① the bronze locks! Bronze locks shouldn't lock gold units, or the value it denies is so huge while the recruit cost ( cost in short) is extremely low, even when locking bronze units they are not losing much value.
Make them lock bronze units only and the cost reduces to 4 as well, or make them lock bronze cards ( including artifacts) and the cost remains. I think that would be better for gold units, otherwise NG decks with 4 or 5 locks will be too OP ( and they are OP now).

② Nerf all artifacts! Compared to bronze weather: they all deal damage per turn. Bronze weathers will be cleared after 4 turns, but artifacts can get value constantly. Bronze weather costs 8 and spears and shields cost 5. They can all be denied, we got weather clear and artifact destruction. Weather deals damage on fixed targets but artifacts can deal damage on whatever units you like without immune. So who uses weathers??
Therefore, I believe duration is needed, like a spear deal 3 damage on deploy, then deal 1 damage per turn with a duration of 5 turns at most, after which it is destroyed automatically. In that way we can get some values from artifacts instantly and if not destroyed they are getting more and more points, the enemy can destroy it anytime, blocking it to get more value. And the sihil... god you must have noticed how OP it is in a long round, please set a duration for it. And reduce the cost of bronze weathers plz, nobody is using them. 8 costs for a fixed 8 damage while taking the risk to be cleared at the very beginning. As for frost, it might kill 1-point unit, making it even worse.

③ The leader usurper! He is so annoying and game-play breaking. It is so frustrating when my leader is banned. Besides, Arachas Queen is totally denied by him, making consumes stand nearly no chance to win. Gwent shouldn't have battles that the end is likely to be predicted on the very beginning.
The ability is denied, but mulligan is not. Some leaders can mulligan 1 or 2 times, while other leaders like Eredin have 5 mulligans when facing usurper. That's not fair! Change his ability!

④The great emperor Emhyr! What?? His ability is reset a unit?? Are you kidding me? That's not the Emhyr I know.

⑤Ah Eithne!! She deals 1 damage four times every round with 3 mulligans, meaning with the assistance of some damage cards, she can deny so many engines, with little loss in the whole game. There are too many Eithne in PTR, please nerf her, like deal 1 damage 3 times with 3 muliigan. Or keep the ability and reduce the mulligan to 2.

⑥The justice goddess ( I guess, forgot the name), the artifact that blue coin player has in round 1. You might change the ability to: boost an ally by 1, charge 4 ( or 5). In that way we might use it separately or on different units, Of course, players can choose to boost only one unit 4 or 5 times. It would be more flexible.

Thanks for reading them all! I really hope gwent can attract more players and be better and better. I really appreciate if you consider my opinions seriously.

 

[Sablin]

Errr....

Well, than I challenge you and McBeard (awesome caster btw) to play for the first season of Homecoming any archetype of my chosing. Let's start with "Pirates". That's an archetype that lacks a big finisher, some value bronze and has a single gold engine, namely Holger Blackhand. "Pirate" is just a tag for now, not an archetype. Else with that criteria you could also have SK Bears, or SK Ships or again SK Resurrection, which also has not enough cards to work on its own.

My feedback is: too few SK archetypes.

- Bloodthirst, which is similar to other control decks other faction have
- Discard, which Xavier Lemmens can kill single-handed
- Self-Wound, which again sadly has few engine cards

As I say below, one has to build a deck around 2 or 3 archetypes (in my case, an Arachas Queen deck with swarm+consume+a little bit of deathwish), which, in my opinion, is cool.
You are most likely right about pirates not being an archetype (I didn't play Skellige so far in HC). Ok, but apart from bloodthirst, discard, and self-wound, you've also a damage archetype around GS (old axemans), longships (one self-damage+one damage to an enemy unit), and two-sword whatever (the old Derran).

By the way, I think that Xavier Lemmens has to be removed from the game. True, it's a card with a new mechanics, but it's nonsense.

 

[fearless1289]

Not happy with the PTR don't like the slow gamplay and way to easy to knock cards of the bored where the chains and combos majority of the cards description is vague and dosnt make sense an example being toad comsume 1 card with 3 power or less and draw card nothing happend the only thing i liked is the bored and your leaders feel more alive. if this dosnt get fixed after the PTR and changes are bad i will walk away from this game.

 

[emkoEMKO]

Things that made ma sad:
1. I have to learn all cards again
2. Manual turn end - maybe when user cannot do anything more (no orders/leader action available) the turn might autocomplete?
3. I like new graphics and design but it's way too dark.
4. Some tooltips are not clear - I.E Lock says that it's able to lock facedown units. I don't know what my opponent played if it's unit or trap

Things that made me happy:
1. No Dry Pass
2. So many new possibilities - new mechanics, archetypes and space for improvement
3. Card advantage is not that important as previously

 

[slayn]

Played the PTR a bit. Here are my thoughts:

1. I like the more zoomed in board and emphasis on the artwork. It does seem a little dark but not a big deal to me. I also like how leaders are done now. I think they feel much more integral to the battle than just being a card in your deck and I like that a lot.

2. I like hand size limit, but drawing 3 + 3 seems a bit much. I think hand size limit is important to allowing low tempo plays to be viable (such as artifacts) and I like that immediate high tempo plays aren't so abusable. At the same time, after a pass a player can go all the way down to 4 cards, win, dry pass, and have no card disadvantage. This contributes to a feeling of the first ~5-6 cards or so played each game not really mattering. But I don't think the hand limit is the problem. I think if you kept the 10 card hand limit but made the later rounds draws 2 + 2 that would mitigate much of the problem. Because now after 4 plays in round 1, card advantage is a concern allowing for tempo plays while still giving that 4 round cushion to set up synergies without being just immediately punished.

3. I'm generally cool with going down to 2 rows. There's aspect of it that feel really weird though. They're labeled 'melee' and 'ranged' but there is a disconnect there because playing northern realms, I'm incentivised to play my siege machines and siege masters into melee (reach 2, foltest's pride forced melee). This is something where the rules of the game don't feel like they match the story of the cards.

4. I think provisions are an interesting way to limit deckbuilding.

5. I'm sorry to say that a lot of the card design right now isn't very exciting. I like much of what homecoming is doing but I just am not excited by the cards. The reason is that everything feels too homogenized into boosts and damage. I want to cover a few examples below. I mostly have played Northern Realms so that is where I draw my examples.

Some of my favorite cards through gwent's various patches were the northern realms ballista pre-normalized nerf. Reaver Hunters before they were nerfed a long time ago. Operator before homecoming. And effects like Nenneke/Assire pre homecoming.

The reason I liked these cards so much is that rather than being an obvious amount of points, they led to situations where you feel like you got away with something. Where you feel like you've 'cheated' the rules by doing something more powerful than you are 'supposed' to be able to do.

Ballista on its surface looked like a middling power unit that hit one or a few things and was maybe like an 8 point bronze at a cursory glance. But then decks that really worked to take advantage of it suddenly found themselves capable of shooting like 10 things all at once. Rocketing up its value. And then you discover cards like siege master could take an effect like this and make it multiplicative. Escalating multiplicative effects like this after a core part of what make a card game so exciting. Then the card got nerfed to have a cap of targets. Perhaps the card was too strong and needed to be nerfed, I'm not interested in arguing was too powerful in past patches. But this style of nerf was the one that sucked the most fun out of the card possible because it normalized its behavior. You could no longer, "get away with something."

Reaver Hunters (long ago) were a very interesting because they attacked from multiple angles. If played in the same round they were worth a huge amount of points. They could be worth even more points if placed on the same row together but that made them vulnerable and so you had to have a really interesting read on your opponent to decide if you needed the points or if you needed to play conservatively. And again, once you combo'd them with cards like Operator or Nenneke you felt like you were not only getting away with something but approaching the very foundation of the game from a different angle than just playing efficient points.

In homecoming, I just don't feel that excitement of combos and synergies. It just feels like a game of trying to be efficient in terms of points/provisions and hitting the right targets with your removal. And as I scroll through the cards the vast majority of what I see are variations of:
damage x
boost x
conditional: damage x
conditional: boost x

What I really want to see out of gwent are cards that have individual ideas unique to themselves with flavorful mechanics that connect them to their lore, name, and art. I also want cards that do more than one thing. I like the cards that do something different depending on melee/ranged but feel that idea is very under utilized right now.

I'll pluck a random example of battering ram. Its just 4 points, if melee destroy an artifact. What if instead it were something like:
Melee: order, move battering ram to the ranged row and gain 1 charge at turn end
Ranged: order, 1 charge: move battering ram to the melee row and deal 2 damage from the unit opposite to it and knock that unit back to the enemy ranged row. If battering ram hits an artifact, destroy it.

That is a card that gives me things to think about and figure out how I can utilize/abuse it. It also "feels" like a battering ram. Whereas the existing card is just, "Oh, seems like people are playing artifacts? I think NR has an artifact hate card but which one was it..."

The truly wonderful thing about card games is that the actual ruleset of the game can be quite simple to pick up and learn and yet you can have individual cards that are delightfully complex that let the imagination run wild as you ponder the possibilities. But right now the cards in gwent homecoming are not inspiring me because almost all of them just feel so straight forward.

 

[xuux]

Pls optimize the game before release, enjoying the game but it is considerable harder to enjoy playing with low fps

 

[Totalimus]

I most certainly do enjoy the new dark, gore atmosphere that the new Gwent has. However, I find it to be a bit too dark for my taste and the yellowish filter that the card arts seem to have, are a bit unsatisfactory to look at. I imagine I'm not the only one, since even popular streamers are using some sort of reshading software while playing PTR build.
That being said, it would be nice if you implement shadow adjustment setting or simply address the current visuals a bit.

 

[Sidddd]

Hello, my game is blocked at "searching for a worthy rival" since yesterday. An idea?

 

[sirdevin89]

Greetings.

I have never been an active member on the boards but have been playing gwent since it first became available on the ps4. I play for several hours a day both just to wind down after work as an easy game with simple flow and also for competitive reasons, and sometimes stream on twitch. Homecoming has brought me here after trying the PTR on PC.

It's awful. I'm very sad I may lose a game I spend so much time with. Homecoming has ruined the game. Some changes and heavy tweaks that are tested properly I could begrudgingly get used to but this is awful.

There's no connection between units and powers.. units and factions don't feel as unique.. it's become utterly boring.

The biggest thing that's hard to explain, which I think has been exemplified by some people reviewing this as too simple or now too complex is that it's both -

There is much more going on than just a card game with far too many nuances.. artifacts.. costs of cards.. powers of cards.. etc. etc. but when it comes down to gameplay it's all adds up as a complex way to get to something simple.. that lack of uniqueness.. buff this.. attack that.

Sincerely,
Disappointed.

 

[Assassin21BEKA]

I love almost everything. I only dislike that solution for the coin flip which gives +5 buff for the unit, this works very good with order cards, you just can't kill them without wasting gold like scorch. I think that should become just +5 points bonus in the first round.

 

[mitko17]

As others have said there are some performance issues for low-end PCs. I have low fps in the start menu, during game (especially in transitions like the start "XXX VS XXX"), actually everywhere...

G2030
4 GB Ram
GT 630
Win 10 64bit

 

[Jesting-Jack]

Hello, my game is blocked at "searching for a worthy rival" since yesterday. An idea?

I guess no one is worthy enough to face you, eh?

 

[LeeUK12]

Not been able to play it long enough to give feedback the only thing I have got is connection to server issue. A match I was in did not respond to a move i could look at my cards highlight them read graveyards but did nothing for several mins, so I tried to conceed even that did not respond so the quit the game via program manager and reloaded it back up. I can build decks but every time i go into a game que it just seraches and searches can not back out of que as that also card spinning round telling me it is attempting to but never does. Re-downloaded it from GOG and still no chance so idk lol

I trust in you CD-PROJEKT RED Keep up your amazing creations and values.

 

[camperino]

Feedback on Nilfgaard.
Played for 30h mostly just NG i know papa Burza gets tired of reading all day so ill try to keep it brief.

The bad things:
1. You seem to have pushed primarily for reveal and soldiers. That would be fine but the problem is that reveal is 100% RNG based and soldiers just seem boring. I dislike the fact that my favorite faction is being reduced to a slot machine.
2. The only non RNG deck i could make that properly functions is witcher NG which is needles to say is going to get nerfed anyways because silver witchers are broken.
3. Emhyr var Emreis. one of the coolest characters getting the WORST leader ability. Not even a completely new player would pick that him up.
4. Leo Bonhart. The EXACT same card as vanilla Geralt but it has an added useless effect. Another one of my favorite characters getting reduced to useless and unplayable.
5. Speaking of RNG again NG seems to be the only faction to have so much of it. Isn't this faction supposed to be the control king like you said in one of your streams? How can you control ANYTHING with this amount of RNG.
6. You seem to have tried to make spies a thing but didnt add enough support same with the lock memes.
7. Usurper is not healthy for the game.

The good things:
1. Morvran is sassy af and i love him for it.
2. The whole boost your opponent and gain from it is a very interesting meme TOO BAD you didnt utilize that idea more. It can still be a thing in future expansions sure but for now only Cahir makes it sort of decent but the man is too fragile to keep alive. (ill talk about that a bit later).
3. Destroy you opponent before he makes a move is a GREAT idea the problem is that its often RNG based which is understandable because otherwise it would be broken you could however reduce the RNG in those effects somehow.
4. Tibor is kind of playable so i can shout ALBAAAAAAAAA as i play him so atleast i got that going for me.
5. Overall the faction STILL feels like Nilfgaard but it needs to be worked on some more.

Overall gameplay issues:
1. Removal is too efficient.
2. Because removal is too efficient engines become weak VERY weak. Look at NR i barely saw that faction just because its hopeless right now. Cool engines like Stefan become garbage tier because you cant keep them alive without sacrificing half of your provisions on boosting artifacts.
3. Hand limit needs to be looked at. It eliminates the coin flip issue kind of but the first 2 rounds lose depth they become garbage card dumping rounds.
4. Sound bugs, visual bugs i'm sure you know by now that there's a ton of them.
5. Just like above mentioned Bonhart there are A LOT of copy pasted cards. Leo-Geralt, 50 shades of wolf pack, Dragoon- Stays, Chironex-Milaen-Striga-Ifrit ( 4 of them? what the fuck ), D'ao-Ele'yas. And im probbaly missing some. YES some of them are SLIGHTLY different but does that justify them doing basically the same thing for the same cost?

I do really like homecoming but the game needs to be worked on. The way it is right its not ready at all but hey thats why we are testing it right?.. Right?

 

[Patsthlm]

The handsize limit is terrible for gameplay. It has made round 1 less valuable you basically just throw out your worst cards. And if for some reason your opponent decides he wants to keep the rest of his cards and passes, you still throw out 2-3 cards for no reason except for the fact your hand is limited.

Additionally, tactical advantage, isn't useful in current gwent as once again, handsize (and spy removal) solved the coinflip by removing the aspect of cardadvantage. And if it stays in the game 5 points is way too much.

 

[knightfallIV]

So after playing for a few hours, I have to say that I love the changes so far. Really enjoying deck building and the Orders mechanic is a breath of fresh air for Gwent. My biggest gripe is how un-fun traps seem to be in combination with Eithne's ability. It just seems broken. I can never seem to do anything against it if I'm doing any kind of engine. Most of the units are either destroyed by the traps or pinged down by Eithne, I get control needs to be a thing, but when everything I play just dies instantly on board it feels very one sided and helpless, I'm sure there are counters that I'm not seeing, but at first glance all of that removal seems like a lot.