I will say that reveal was better in beta. I don't know why they completely scrapped the stuff that was working only to make worse versions for homecoming.
Small confession: I hadn't actually played since before dryads became a thing, so I decided to align my energy with my words and actually get back in and try a thing.
So I installed the game again, built a dryad and treant deck (with Eithne as a leader obvsly) and started ranking up. I'm not going to say where I've reached just now, but so far I'm facing some pretty poor decks. So I have no idea whether my deck is actually decent or whether I'm just cutting through newer players.
Anyway, still feels pretty meh, but at least I'm playing a bit.
So I installed the game again, built a dryad and treant deck (with Eithne as a leader obvsly) and started ranking up. I'm not going to say where I've reached just now, but so far I'm facing some pretty poor decks. So I have no idea whether my deck is actually decent or whether I'm just cutting through newer players.
Anyway, still feels pretty meh, but at least I'm playing a bit.
Because Gwent is not Gwent anymore... Sadly!
I have joined gwent on closed beta enjoyed a lot even though NR Gold Spam as after all it's a game & game with no fun is waste.
3 rows, spy cards, silver cards, fun card abilities.. damn i miss those days
I have joined gwent on closed beta enjoyed a lot even though NR Gold Spam as after all it's a game & game with no fun is waste.
3 rows, spy cards, silver cards, fun card abilities.. damn i miss those days
Lol you're still in these forums? I also used to play years ago too, but I decided to check forums now and first thing I see is comment by you, respect.
I bet guys like @Karolis.petrikas and @idomyownstunts are also around hehe
yehh man just hoping & wating for some good news that cdpr decided to go back to the old gwent, The Gwent We Loved All
There's a core playerbase of longterm players who got a zillion scraps with HC and have every card in the game and will be able to craft every card from future expansions. These players can instantly make any deck that seems interesting or is on top of the current meta.
These players also don't understand how miserable the play experience can be for new players or returning players with small collections. Players like this can craft a couple of low tier decks or they can craft one pretty good deck that then turns to shit when the next round of balance changes hit. For these players it can take a really long time and a huge amount of game play to get the scraps needed to craft the gold cards to make a new deck.
Meanwhile they trudge along getting slaughtered. I'm a very low rank player and lately I just get demolished by highly tuned decks taking advantage of the newest changes. It's totally miserable to get hit for 1 damage 40 or 50 times a round. You just sit there and feel like shit putting the next card on the board that will be a target for the next bunch of 1 damage pings. Or your opponent plays some crazy-ass combo where he suddenly gains a massive amount of points you can't possibly overcome.
Gwent has no future because it's just not fun to play unless you are a long-term player who already has most all the cards. The new player experience is painful. There's never been a game that I wanted to like as much as I want to like Gwent. I've probably re-started a dozen times. But it's just not fun to play and I'm not willing to slog through hundreds of hours of no-fun in order to catch up to the guys who are having a good time.
These players also don't understand how miserable the play experience can be for new players or returning players with small collections. Players like this can craft a couple of low tier decks or they can craft one pretty good deck that then turns to shit when the next round of balance changes hit. For these players it can take a really long time and a huge amount of game play to get the scraps needed to craft the gold cards to make a new deck.
Meanwhile they trudge along getting slaughtered. I'm a very low rank player and lately I just get demolished by highly tuned decks taking advantage of the newest changes. It's totally miserable to get hit for 1 damage 40 or 50 times a round. You just sit there and feel like shit putting the next card on the board that will be a target for the next bunch of 1 damage pings. Or your opponent plays some crazy-ass combo where he suddenly gains a massive amount of points you can't possibly overcome.
Gwent has no future because it's just not fun to play unless you are a long-term player who already has most all the cards. The new player experience is painful. There's never been a game that I wanted to like as much as I want to like Gwent. I've probably re-started a dozen times. But it's just not fun to play and I'm not willing to slog through hundreds of hours of no-fun in order to catch up to the guys who are having a good time.
Have you ever tried any other CCG?
I just focused on one deck in the beginning (NG Ardal) and no matter what they did buff or nerf or when CC hit, I just adjusted it a bit and voila, I got a viable deck for under rank 7 to play with. If you need to netdeck every time they do buffs and nerfs then it's really not a game's problem.
But new player experience is awful, a lot of stuff isn't explained and I bet some players just drop the game after tutorial.
I just focused on one deck in the beginning (NG Ardal) and no matter what they did buff or nerf or when CC hit, I just adjusted it a bit and voila, I got a viable deck for under rank 7 to play with. If you need to netdeck every time they do buffs and nerfs then it's really not a game's problem.
But new player experience is awful, a lot of stuff isn't explained and I bet some players just drop the game after tutorial.
I never played beta. I started playing at the end of november. What I did do I spent 75 EUR on the game (55 on Gwent + 20 on Thronebreaker). This and playing around 120 - 150 matches a month (pretty small number, I would argue) gave me around 90 % of the cards. I can craft whatever deck I want. That's for a cost of one pizza a month in my part of Europe. I'll guess you can afford that. If you want to grow your collection faster, consider spending some money to support the game you play.
Maybe it would be fair of CDPR to offer goodies at different prices depending on where a player lives. There's a huge difference in purchasing power of citizens between United States and Bulgaria for example. Maybe with lower local prices, the volume of purchases would increase, resulting in higher overall revenue. Something to consider.
I agree with those who say the game is too unstable. What I mean is, it's one thing to make balance changes every month to shake the meta (which are mostly +/- one point in power and/or provision cost), but something completely different when CDPR decides to reduce the amount of damage in the game. I like the change, but it's a huge strategic move in an overall gameplay. It goes to the core of the identity of the game, which should be figured out a long time ago (in beta stage to be exact, but I heard how that went).
It seems what they're doing now is throwing ad hoc reworks and expansions to the wall and hoping something will stick. It's like they lack a vision of what they want the game to be. Or they have a vision, but don't know how to get there.
Just an opinion of an outsider.
Gwent is unpopular, because HC shocked most of the playerbase back then. SOme for the content-change, some other for the very poor communications. Honestly, i never was in a game forum with so less and poor communications. They onl addressed some negativ feedback, if they have a change in mind; only happy-telling.
They wanted to recover from this shock, but failed. Why? Becaue the New-Game wanted to be a bit more casual, with reduced cardpool, row and archetypes as well as mechanics in general. They slowed it down further by adding charges and orders. Gwent was a relativ fast TCG, compared to others. This was a unique selling point (for all those, who stayed). It was fast, but not without depth.
The new game was far less deep but slower, the most time is taken not by thinking but by clicking. It wasnt simpel any more, nothing you couldplay in a 10 min break.
For all players who love slow gameplay it lacked in depth. If you want to think about something there should be a point beside just math.
For me, gwent was dead with the new 2 row system. They threw all relations to original gwent away. It was a logical step at this time, i admit, because they "smoothed" the rows for a long time now, till they lost all meaning. It would have been easy to get some depth back with a 3 row-system +reach+hard placement (=/= agility to all cards).
For Background: I never played really competitive, reached rank 2100 once i guess. But i had fun at the lower tiers with my own themed-decks, and thats teh different: I hadn't fun in HC with it. All i tried was helpess staleness for me. I had no chance against a standard deck (= just just standard 2-3 cardcombos which generate much point) only against brothers in mind theme-decks or try-out decks it was fun. And at top, i was matched against counter-decks 90% of time. (For example, i was crushed by artifacts the last 10 games, so i wanted to try some minorartifacts i had to. The next game i was facing the first deck with anti-artifact cards, i ever met...)
In my opinion you cant say, why Gwent isnt popular without seeing it's history. Maybe it need changes, but the ones it got, were the wrong ones
They wanted to recover from this shock, but failed. Why? Becaue the New-Game wanted to be a bit more casual, with reduced cardpool, row and archetypes as well as mechanics in general. They slowed it down further by adding charges and orders. Gwent was a relativ fast TCG, compared to others. This was a unique selling point (for all those, who stayed). It was fast, but not without depth.
The new game was far less deep but slower, the most time is taken not by thinking but by clicking. It wasnt simpel any more, nothing you couldplay in a 10 min break.
For all players who love slow gameplay it lacked in depth. If you want to think about something there should be a point beside just math.
For me, gwent was dead with the new 2 row system. They threw all relations to original gwent away. It was a logical step at this time, i admit, because they "smoothed" the rows for a long time now, till they lost all meaning. It would have been easy to get some depth back with a 3 row-system +reach+hard placement (=/= agility to all cards).
For Background: I never played really competitive, reached rank 2100 once i guess. But i had fun at the lower tiers with my own themed-decks, and thats teh different: I hadn't fun in HC with it. All i tried was helpess staleness for me. I had no chance against a standard deck (= just just standard 2-3 cardcombos which generate much point) only against brothers in mind theme-decks or try-out decks it was fun. And at top, i was matched against counter-decks 90% of time. (For example, i was crushed by artifacts the last 10 games, so i wanted to try some minorartifacts i had to. The next game i was facing the first deck with anti-artifact cards, i ever met...)
In my opinion you cant say, why Gwent isnt popular without seeing it's history. Maybe it need changes, but the ones it got, were the wrong ones
I don't understand, why two rows are bad. Two rows is not a problem. Problem is - they still mean nothing. 3 rows make cards too small and it'll be impossible to play Gwent on mobiles. Even two rows are too lot for it. I like two rows, but I don't like that they mean nothing and I don't like card clicking because of charges and orders and other primitive predictable mechanics. Almost all the game is about buff and damage. It's so stupid. Orders are so predictable. It's not a card game anymore with such a stupid mechanics. They must rename it to "Gwent: a Witcher chess game."
Yea completely agree with you, CDPR needs to make more synergistic and interesting ways to play the game if something BETA was better than HC: it is that! For example, the hyper thin Calveith deck that Redrame made is something I want MORE of, it's something niche, interesting and it demands more than just board interaction
Please no. That deck is disgusting although it was fun at first. Even Redrame who I enjoy watching, hates it now, lol.
The scary part is if you scoured all the various platforms for player feedback all the way back to the CB days you'd likely find similar view points. CB, OB, now... The devs lacking a vision or knowing how to get there... Yep, sounds incredibly familiar.
Not sure I'd fully agree. The game should be evaluated on it's merits in the here and now. If it's not popular it says a thing or two about those merits. The transition from beta to HC has been over for a while now. It's not relevant anymore. Granted, the fact beta references always find their way into these type of threads says a thing or two as well.
I think you answered your own question. To clarify, consider the rationale given for the reduction to two rows. Now consider what you just said here. There is the problem with it. Rows don't have meaning = cut out a row to give them more meaning. Rows... still don't have much meaning.
How does this tie into Gwent popularity, you ask? Well, if you want to drive your players away make these type of decisions for these type of reasons and deliver these type of results.
I think the bigger issues with orders are pacing and multiple ability usage within the same turn. They slow the game play down. Depending on the type of orders ability they can slow it down a lot. Likewise, there are a lot of potential issues you can get when multiple effects are deployed on the same turn (many of which are probably difficult to foresee). More importantly, it could be argued you don't get a lot of depth out of the mechanic.
This fits the same statement above. If you want to send people packing implement mechanics responsible for slowing down game play and potentially creating routine issues without adding many benefits.
I mean... it's still a card game. It's just not a very good one (disclaimer: my opinion). If someone were to ask me how I'd describe the "good old days" in beta I'd say Gwent was a competitive, elegant, generous CCG with a lot of depth using simple mechanics and rules based on the Witcher universe. In both the game play and deck construction. As it evolved, culminating in the existing version in the here and now, it's hardly any of those things. Those were the elements responsible for making it appealing. It slowly veered off the tracks, over the cliff and into the great beyond over an extended period of time.
I'd describe HC as a generous, frustrating CCG with a lot of unnecessary, complicated mechanics and rules with very little depth. Unsurprisingly, that description doesn't sound like a fun game. It sheds a lot of light on why I'd say it's not popular. Assuming it's actually not very popular. I'll freely admit, it's possible it's more popular now and it's simply not my cup of tea anymore.
History is always relevant, and i think Gwent would have a much better stand, if HC were the version all players had started with. Many players don't like HC-Gwent not because it is a miserable game (mediocre in my case) but they lost a much better game for it. And if there is a Anti-Fraction in the community, it es hard for e.g. streamers and developer, because they face always against them.
Just to be clear, i dont blame these Anti-Fraction people for Gwent being unpopular, they are on the right site for my view.
Guys what are those DEPTH features you meain in Beta? Lots of people talk about them, but never mention specifics?
I agree HC lacks depth, just merely board interaction. Though there exist some difficult and non-conventional decks, i.e.
-- full mill deck (where it mills enough cards to have card advantage, but has very bad values because of it), and
-- Hyperthin Calveit <=!
-- Woodland Spirit reveal deck. <=!
-- meme decks
-- ?Traps deck is sometimes ok, if you play Pitfail sooner, predicting opponent will play finishers sooner. It's more difficult for it's opponent tbh, to predict which trap is played.
-- ?Spider Queen deck
Aside of that,
-- usage of this Nilfgardian guy who sets a power of an enemy to 1 requires some thinking. And perhaps
-- NR Foltest has a thing with when to play Skeletons (if too soon, they get killed but remaining summon more, if too late, they summon a few) and Lacerate.
btw. regarding rows meaning, Battle Ram (NR) uses 2 rows, is cool!
I agree HC lacks depth, just merely board interaction. Though there exist some difficult and non-conventional decks, i.e.
-- full mill deck (where it mills enough cards to have card advantage, but has very bad values because of it), and
-- Hyperthin Calveit <=!
-- Woodland Spirit reveal deck. <=!
-- meme decks
-- ?Traps deck is sometimes ok, if you play Pitfail sooner, predicting opponent will play finishers sooner. It's more difficult for it's opponent tbh, to predict which trap is played.
-- ?Spider Queen deck
Aside of that,
-- usage of this Nilfgardian guy who sets a power of an enemy to 1 requires some thinking. And perhaps
-- NR Foltest has a thing with when to play Skeletons (if too soon, they get killed but remaining summon more, if too late, they summon a few) and Lacerate.
btw. regarding rows meaning, Battle Ram (NR) uses 2 rows, is cool!
To make a reasonable assessment whether Gwent can be considered "Popular" or "Unpopular" is quite challenging whithout knowing active blayer base and it`s development. Furthermore from a companies perspective revenue has to be considered as well. At least I haven`t seen any statistics regarding these factors.
Nevertheless, for me personally it moves in the direction of beeing more and more "Unpopular". From my perspective the reasons are:
1. Playing in Pro-Rank doesn`t feel competitive
I play in Pro-Rank since January. In the beginning it was intresting to face players I know out of streams or have watched in tournaments. Additionally it was challenging to stay in Pro-Rank.
Currently it feels like no one really cares about placements, which makes Pro-Ranks obsolete.
2. To many interactions after playing a card
I assume "orders", "charges", "coins", … are meant to increase complexity of the game and shall increase possibilities. Partly this is definetely achieved as you are able to "spare" abilities for later use. For example Ocvist is from my perspective designed quite well. On the contrary cards like "Fire Scorpian" or "Executioner" are overkill. I am not intrested in watching how my oppenent utilizes several charges. It slows down the game to much. After all I want to play a (fast) card and not a board game.
To identify the right balance for this point might be quite difficult. Nevertheless, I figured out, I mostly enjoy the current seasonal mode because the time restriction naturally limits amount of interactions and speeds up the game a lot.
If this mode were competitive I wouldn`t bother with regular one anymore.
3. Streams (and community tournaments)
I got aware of the game due to Streamers. Sadly the amount of Streamers decreases (today temporary only two people were streaming). For me a lack of Streamers is a reason to switch games as I like to watch how others approach the game.
Furthermore I enjoy watching tournaments, sadly it seems possibilities to stream them are restricted. Why does no "spectator mode" exist?
4. Game to unstable
The game doesn`t feel like a "released" one. It feels like beeing in "Beta Phase". Simply to many changes at once and additionally no clear direction (or at least insufficient communicated).
I was completely suprised by the early release of "Syndicate". From my perspective it was to early. The rework of existing factions should have been the first step. Furthermore I miss a clear road map where the game moves to. If the changes are considered obligatory at least communication should improve… a lot. I am aware of the "Streams" and "Ask a Developer Thread". Nevertheless, both channels miss a lot of Information.
Hopefully with upcoming changes the game move into an intresting direction.
At the time beeing it has, from my perspective, the possibility to move into oblivion during the year or to become on long-term an intresting niche game.
Nevertheless, for me personally it moves in the direction of beeing more and more "Unpopular". From my perspective the reasons are:
1. Playing in Pro-Rank doesn`t feel competitive
I play in Pro-Rank since January. In the beginning it was intresting to face players I know out of streams or have watched in tournaments. Additionally it was challenging to stay in Pro-Rank.
Currently it feels like no one really cares about placements, which makes Pro-Ranks obsolete.
2. To many interactions after playing a card
I assume "orders", "charges", "coins", … are meant to increase complexity of the game and shall increase possibilities. Partly this is definetely achieved as you are able to "spare" abilities for later use. For example Ocvist is from my perspective designed quite well. On the contrary cards like "Fire Scorpian" or "Executioner" are overkill. I am not intrested in watching how my oppenent utilizes several charges. It slows down the game to much. After all I want to play a (fast) card and not a board game.
To identify the right balance for this point might be quite difficult. Nevertheless, I figured out, I mostly enjoy the current seasonal mode because the time restriction naturally limits amount of interactions and speeds up the game a lot.
If this mode were competitive I wouldn`t bother with regular one anymore.
3. Streams (and community tournaments)
I got aware of the game due to Streamers. Sadly the amount of Streamers decreases (today temporary only two people were streaming). For me a lack of Streamers is a reason to switch games as I like to watch how others approach the game.
Furthermore I enjoy watching tournaments, sadly it seems possibilities to stream them are restricted. Why does no "spectator mode" exist?
4. Game to unstable
The game doesn`t feel like a "released" one. It feels like beeing in "Beta Phase". Simply to many changes at once and additionally no clear direction (or at least insufficient communicated).
I was completely suprised by the early release of "Syndicate". From my perspective it was to early. The rework of existing factions should have been the first step. Furthermore I miss a clear road map where the game moves to. If the changes are considered obligatory at least communication should improve… a lot. I am aware of the "Streams" and "Ask a Developer Thread". Nevertheless, both channels miss a lot of Information.
Hopefully with upcoming changes the game move into an intresting direction.
At the time beeing it has, from my perspective, the possibility to move into oblivion during the year or to become on long-term an intresting niche game.
For example this archetype had some nice bluff cards in earlier stage, whih means, the enemies have to guess, if the risk to play a card, after you placed a face-down card. Well and you have to anticipate that. Another example would be movement-deck before HC. Your opponent could prevent mcuh damage if he had a good positioning of his cards and you got the possiblity to mess with that. So even without hardcopunter, there was a thinking game happing at the board.
other examples:
Early graveyard
Queensguard (protect rthem or die)
Early deathwish (actual deathwish is fine too)
Some weather decks (while it effected both rows especially)
Normally ha had much more possibilities to play a 6 row-map with different outcome.
Now, whats the drawback for many cards with 2 effects, if i play them at a certain row? These Cards just have the effect, you choose from, thats not depth in my opinion. That's a problem of the game right after midwinter and it got worse.
Make some experiment in your mind: cut down rows again to 1 row each, and give all units with a row-choose-option-effect the same choose-option-effect. Will there be any big issues how you play gwent? If no, than the rows now are useless.
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yep exactly, I agree
Well you gotta expect Lacerate, so people often go 5 on one row, 5 on another row.
I played Beta only 1 week so I know nothing. But how exactly 3 rows used to affect how you play? Is it the same as now player expect Lacerate, with the difference that 3 rows, so it would be reasonable to play 1st row, 2nd, 3rd, then go back to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, so that there would be 3 3 3 body on each row? I remember there was a trap that applied Boon effect, that when enemy is moved to the row, receives 2 damage - how the opponent could prevent being impaled by careful row cards placement? He was moved here anyways by the opponent
We're in agreement there. I just meant the constant comparisons to beta always seem to find their way into these threads. Those comparisons never seem to go anywhere. I realize certain people dislike HC exclusively because it's a different game. They won't play it because beta was X and HC is Y. I don't see how this improves the situation any. It says nothing about what exactly they don't like about HC. It's much more productive for people to point out exactly what they do not like about HC, why and, ideally, how it could be different. Those critiques should be made in reference to HC. They should not be in reference to beta.
One immediate example that comes to mind is beta style consume, in it's earlier incarnations. The version involving Nekker Warriors, Nekkers and Vran Warriors. This particular concept involved multiple cards consistently working together to generate points. Nekkers would be dropped on the board, Nekker Warriors would create more copies, Vrans would eat the Nekkers on the board and those copies would land on the board in place of any consumed by the Vran. It had a hell of a lot more depth compared to putting a card on the board then playing another card or leader for your super, duper combo.
Likewise, the opposing player had a lot of ways to deal with it. Of equal importance, shutting all of it down for the entire game was damn near impossible. It wasn't, "Kill this card and win.". You had to pick and choose which element of the concept you were going to shut down, how you were going to do it and when it was best to do so (and, mistakes or successes at any step of the process could and would determine the game result).
Another example would be the CA meta-game (ignoring spies for now... which is a topic in itself). In beta you were constantly considering CA on every single card play, in every single round, all of the time (well, good players did). Hand-limit removed a great deal of the thought process there. Yeah, the CA meta-game is still important. It's a shell of it's former self, however. It wasn't a resource system by any stretch of the word. It did function to add much of the decision making you would have from such a system.
Ambush is another great example. The ambush units actually felt like ambush and some of them were even used as a way to bluff. Those cards were by no means perfect. At certain points they were arguably overpowered. It was still a hell of a lot more interesting compared to the trap concept. The concept could have been greatly improved and expanded. Instead... artifacts....
Regardless, when I say depth I mean the overall decision making process throughout a game. Beta had a lot more give and take across a game. It felt like an actual... battle. HC feels more like a game of hard counters, simplified combos, match-ups and click spamming.