How much should GWENT cost?

[BartonFink]

How much should GWENT cost?

Here's how I would do things:

You could play GWENT for free and you'd have the base set and starter set of cards to play with.

You like the game?

All right then, you can pay for the game. How much?

Since businesses love having a price just one cent less than a whole number, here's some ideas:

$9.99
$12.49
$14.99
$19.99

Maybe $9.99 is 'about right' for the game but for that price you'd get the maximum number of playable cards for all factions and neutrals. I'd like to say that you would get the entire set of cards released for this game so far, in standard version form. Now, I know that that might not be a popular move, so perhaps you could have the entire set of two expansion releases (standard cards). At least one, then.

How much to premiumise your cards? I'd say $4.99 but maybe more 'realistic' (according to me) would be $7.49 or $9.99.

Jumping the other price suggestions of mine, in a pinch I think that $14.99 would be a 'reasonable' price for the game, if it included all cards up to the present and having the maximum number of playable cards in your collection, i.e. two copies of any bronze unit card. Personally, I'd throw in premiums for this price but maybe you could just have only one card of each type being premium...and for $4.99 you could have the other playable card premiumised too.

For $19.99, I would expect the buyer to get the whole kit and kaboodle, no skimping. I.e. everything maxed out, premium cards and all expansion sets included. Worst case, it would be a $4.99 extra payment to get that premium collection.

Some people might think that it's crazy to include expansion sets in the price. As I see it, so long as GWENT is still a thing, CDPR will always keep adding expansions to the game. I don't think that buyers of the game should retrospectively get those new expansions for nothing.

So, how much is an expansion set worth?

$4.99 (premium, ideally)
$9.99 (definitely all premium)

The big problem that I can see CDPR having with this idea is that it ditches their business model, which is based on gambling. I.e. you spend the best part of $100 to buy dozens of premium kegs and...you don't get every card.

I've said it more than once on this forum: for that kind of money I would demand that I get every last card ever made for this game, multiple copies of it and all premium.

There's just no excuse to take so much money from people and not give them everything. Pokies aren't fun, if you're not CDPR.

 

[Philido]

Gwent is perfectly fine as it is, as of now it's completely free to play and you can easily craft every single card with the scraps and your favourite premiums with the powder you get (ESPECIALLY after the insane winter event). Prices for powder in the shop are of course way too high, but there's no need to buy this as you'll get a ton if you play regularly anyway.

 

[Messyr]

The big problem that I can see CDPR having with this idea is that it ditches their business model, which is based on gambling. I.e. you spend the best part of $100 to buy dozens of premium kegs and...you don't get every card.

I'll share this secret with you (for free): you absolutely don't need to pay a single cent to get every card available. Not a single cent. The only thing you "have to do" is to play the game, somewhat regularly, being efficient and talented also helps. As an unforseen result, you will get nearly everything approximately in 1 year of continous play.

I've said it more than once on this forum: for that kind of money I would demand that I get every last card ever made for this game, multiple copies of it and all premium.

I really don't believe you are in any position to "demand" anything for your money (other than what you pay for ofc). You on the other hand have the option to buy some of the services or loot for the predefined pricetags.
Yet, I also think your demand is more or less fulfilled, and more: you WILL get every last card made for this game, multiple copies of them, and quite some premiums.
(If you play the game as intended, that is.)

 

[Draconifors]

It's free-to-play, should stay that way.
And another rhyme: its "price" is time.

 

[Messyr]

It's free-to-play, should stay that way.
And another rhyme: its price is time.

You Sir, you are sparkling today.

 

[quintivarium]

The key to a CGG like Gwent being successful is having lots of players, holdings that expand over time, and enough support for developers to add new content to keep it fresh. I think the current pricing system better achieves those ends.

 

[NotGaunterODimm]

I have paid for every journey and every expansion.

 

[Jurus331]

How much should GWENT cost?

Here's how I would do things:

You could play GWENT for free and you'd have the base set and starter set of cards to play with.

You like the game?

All right then, you can pay for the game. How much?

Since businesses love having a price just one cent less than a whole number, here's some ideas:

$9.99
$12.49
$14.99
$19.99

Maybe $9.99 is 'about right' for the game but for that price you'd get the maximum number of playable cards for all factions and neutrals. I'd like to say that you would get the entire set of cards released for this game so far, in standard version form. Now, I know that that might not be a popular move, so perhaps you could have the entire set of two expansion releases (standard cards). At least one, then.

How much to premiumise your cards? I'd say $4.99 but maybe more 'realistic' (according to me) would be $7.49 or $9.99.

Jumping the other price suggestions of mine, in a pinch I think that $14.99 would be a 'reasonable' price for the game, if it included all cards up to the present and having the maximum number of playable cards in your collection, i.e. two copies of any bronze unit card. Personally, I'd throw in premiums for this price but maybe you could just have only one card of each type being premium...and for $4.99 you could have the other playable card premiumised too.

For $19.99, I would expect the buyer to get the whole kit and kaboodle, no skimping. I.e. everything maxed out, premium cards and all expansion sets included. Worst case, it would be a $4.99 extra payment to get that premium collection.

Some people might think that it's crazy to include expansion sets in the price. As I see it, so long as GWENT is still a thing, CDPR will always keep adding expansions to the game. I don't think that buyers of the game should retrospectively get those new expansions for nothing.

So, how much is an expansion set worth?

$4.99 (premium, ideally)
$9.99 (definitely all premium)

The big problem that I can see CDPR having with this idea is that it ditches their business model, which is based on gambling. I.e. you spend the best part of $100 to buy dozens of premium kegs and...you don't get every card.

I've said it more than once on this forum: for that kind of money I would demand that I get every last card ever made for this game, multiple copies of it and all premium.

There's just no excuse to take so much money from people and not give them everything. Pokies aren't fun, if you're not CDPR.

Dude, you really should get a hobby other than Gwent. Like, really.

 

[Sensimilius]

This is madness.

 

[croloris]

No, THIS IS SPARTA !!!

Seriously though, I think they handle the system fairly well with income from cosmetics. Aside from some major slip ups with Journey Grinding requirements and Cosmetics behind $50 - $65 expansion keg pack paywalls you can play the game and optionally pay real money for items you want.

 

[DRK3]

The OP's suggestions are absolutely ridiculous, and wrong on so many levels i wouldnt know where to start.

Paying 10-20 dollars to get everything makes no sense, and would kill the game very quickly, since:
A) the microtransaction system is way more lucrative, even if only a small percentage of players are paying customers. And compared to other F2P and MTX, Gwent is quite fair and generous

B) just having everything from the start defeats the purpose of collecting, of finding out things in small steps instead of being overwhelmed immediately by +1000 cards. Players wouldnt be engaged and would give up on the game much faster

Im probably one of the few that can boast having a full standard+premium collection without spending a cent. But it took me thousands of hours, over many years to get there. I know if players wanted to get there with money, they would have to spend thousands of dollars/euros on it, i would pretty pissed if now there was an option that only took 15 or 20 to get everything.

 

[Sensimilius]

Exactly as DRK3 said. This game needs some good form of a progression system and that's exactly what we have now. Cuz if we were to take out collecting new cards as a progression factor (by making it easy to just buy all of them instantly) then all we would be left with would be the Reward Book (which is still cool but would probs not be enough). And I don't count ranks as some form of a progression since it's mostly a glorified scoreboard lol, and that's okay too. Also getting cards at a somewhat randomized way forces you to improvise and think how to put those cards to work, which some people actually like.

 

[OuterSpaceDoggo]

I would leave journey price at it is but lower the price on cosmetics and random offers ( like almost 50 dollars for the way of the witcher pre order, excuse me? ).
I would lower the faction packs by 1-2 dollars and introduce a core pack for new players, like 15 dollars you get all the neutrals of the core set plus some bronzes card from all factions for example.
Progression as it is it's too slow, relying on random luck on kegs ( other CGS tried to mitigate this introducing Wild cards, so if you don't find the one you want you can basically burn it to get a card of the same rarity as the Wild one ) and way too many hours spent to get a reasonable collection unless you are extremely lucky with every keg opening.
Unless you only craft meta decks, but then what's the purpose of playing then?

EDIT: And I'm saying this with over 500 hours on Gwent and having bought all the faction packs, 2 journeys ( with some skips ), thronebreaker, starter pack.

 

[BartonFink]

Im probably one of the few that can boast having a full standard+premium collection without spending a cent. But it took me thousands of hours, over many years to get there. I know if players wanted to get there with money, they would have to spend thousands of dollars/euros on it, i would pretty pissed if now there was an option that only took 15 or 20 to get everything.

How's that for an ad for GWENT? > "Spend thousands of hours on GWENT to get all the cards in the game! If you don't have the time, spend thousands of dollars to catch 'em all!".

There's a mistake there, though...I think that it's quite likely that if you spent thousands of dollars on buying kegs you would not end up with all the cards that the game has. I've said it before, it's fake scarcity. There's probably a theoretical minimum spend that it will cost to get every card in the game but in practice, I think you would never get all the cards in the game by spending however multiple of this theoretical minimum spend to get all the cards in the game (actually, I think that I've got an old post or thread on the topic of that probability where someone replied with an answer. I can't vouch for their accuracy though).

Do you have a view of the morality of that business practice? I.e. the gambling mechanic of buying kegs to complete your collection but never being able to do so because of this artificial scarcity of cards? How moral is it to allow someone to spend thousands of dollars (in your words) to complete their set yet not achieve that?

Back to my original example, you don't think that it's reasonable for someone spending money to buy the largest set of premium kegs, say, to by default get every copy (plus one) of every card? That's my calculation: that spending that kind of money for a full set of cards is too expensive. Is GWENT really worth that much money? What price would you put on having two premium copies of every card?

Someone mentioned how GWENT is "meant to be played", which I will interpret as "grinding". My original post says that I would have a free version of GWENT.

I said nothing about ending the ability to grind to get expansion cards.

I'm just putting a price on what I think that the game is worth.

It's definitely not thousands of dollars for a near impossible feat of getting every card in the game.

Post automatically merged: Feb 3, 2021

I would leave journey price at it is but lower the price on cosmetics and random offers ( like almost 50 dollars for the way of the witcher pre order, excuse me? ).

GWENT triggers my "Excuse me!" response more than it does you, I'd say. E.g. I've previously posted how nasty it is of the game to offer me "fast travel" in Alzur's Journey when I've already paid for the Premium version of it. CDPR, it's called "Journey", not "Teleport to the next bit or the end".

CDPR really has some unscrupulous business practices when it comes to GWENT.

 

[OuterSpaceDoggo]

How's that for an ad for GWENT? > "Spend thousands of hours on GWENT to get all the cards in the game! If you don't have the time, spend thousands of dollars to catch 'em all!".

There's a mistake there, though...I think that it's quite likely that if you spent thousands of dollars on buying kegs you would not end up with all the cards that the game has. I've said it before, it's fake scarcity. There's probably a theoretical minimum spend that it will cost to get every card in the game but in practice, I think you would never get all the cards in the game by spending however multiple of this theoretical minimum spend to get all the cards in the game (actually, I think that I've got an old post or thread on the topic of that probability where someone replied with an answer. I can't vouch for their accuracy though).

Do you have a view of the morality of that business practice? I.e. the gambling mechanic of buying kegs to complete your collection but never being able to do so because of this artificial scarcity of cards? How moral is it to allow someone to spend thousands of dollars (in your words) to complete their set yet not achieve that?

Back to my original example, you don't think that it's reasonable for someone spending money to buy the largest set of premium kegs, say, to by default get every copy (plus one) of every card? That's my calculation: that spending that kind of money for a full set of cards is too expensive. Is GWENT really worth that much money? What price would you put on having two premium copies of every card?

Someone mentioned how GWENT is "meant to be played", which I will interpret as "grinding". My original post says that I would have a free version of GWENT.

I said nothing about ending the ability to grind to get expansion cards.

I'm just putting a price on what I think that the game is worth.

It's definitely not thousands of dollars for a near impossible feat of getting every card in the game.

Post automatically merged: Feb 3, 2021

GWENT triggers my "Excuse me!" response more than it does you, I'd say. E.g. I've previously posted how nasty it is of the game to offer me "fast travel" in Alzur's Journey when I've already paid for the Premium version of it. CDPR, it's called "Journey", not "Teleport to the next bit or the end".

CDPR really has some unscrupulous business practices when it comes to GWENT.

On that we agree, too much (money ) for too little.

 

[Boive]

if it included all content for 'free' so to speak, or if progression were super fast, then i could definitely see myself paying as much as 40 dollars. 50 is pushing it but i would expect it to be on sale occasionally.

for contrast artifact was 20 dollars but progression was slower than that of gwent, which made me feel it wasn't worth the price. despite the quality and experience justifying it.

 

[DRK3]

@BartonFink First of all, i wasnt clear on my post - i did spent thousands of hours on Gwent, but that was for the full collection, including premiums. Premiums are cosmetic, they do not affect gameplay, and are much harder to come by than standard cards.
So, you dont need nearly as much commitment to get a simple full standard collection, a few hundred hours should do it (without spending money, that is)

Then you mention gambling and scarcity... Its true that even opening thousands of kegs you wouldnt be assured to get all the cards... but that is what scraps are for.
You dont need to get all cards from keg, you can simply craft the remaining ones with scraps from all the dupes from milling, and that is why Gwent isnt forcing anyone to gamble, you have ore, scraps, powder and reward points, and these 4 resources give enough options for a player to expand its collection the way he/she wants.

 

[OuterSpaceDoggo]

@BartonFink First of all, i wasnt clear on my post - i did spent thousands of hours on Gwent, but that was for the full collection, including premiums. Premiums are cosmetic, they do not affect gameplay, and are much harder to come by than standard cards.
So, you dont need nearly as much commitment to get a simple full standard collection, a few hundred hours should do it (without spending money, that is)

Then you mention gambling and scarcity... Its true that even opening thousands of kegs you wouldnt be assured to get all the cards... but that is what scraps are for.
You dont need to get all cards from keg, you can simply craft the remaining ones with scraps from all the dupes from milling, and that is why Gwent isnt forcing anyone to gamble, you have ore, scraps, powder and reward points, and these 4 resources give enough options for a player to expand its collection the way he/she wants.

I'm sorry but a few hundred hours won't do. I used to play a lot and even with spending money I still don't have a full collection ( prestige 5 btw ). Also, posts made by beta players here don't matter much because homecoming literally scrapped everything from them giving lot of resources. But that was not really the OP focus. The problem is that if you spend money it doesn't give you much in return. And gwent is not even "the most generous f2p card game" as many claim anymore. My guess is that while the playerbase is declining they have so somehow push the price on journey and cosmetics to reap what they can.

 

[Messyr]

I'm sorry but a few hundred hours won't do. I used to play a lot and even with spending money I still don't have a full collection ( prestige 5 btw ). Also, posts made by beta players here don't matter much because homecoming literally scrapped everything from them giving lot of resources.

As I mentioned several times, my example is there for reference.
Being a relatively new player, I started playing Gwent in April 2020 on a daily basis.
I've reached 1.000 hours played and Prestige 5-6 in December, and a full standard collection at the end of January, 2021.

And gwent is not even "the most generous f2p card game" as many claim anymore.

Being overly generous at some point becomes an issue. Taking my example, I find it an actual problem that I managed to get mostly all the cards available - leaving me with only Premiums to collect in less than 1 years played. Anything more generous than this would be straight harmful for the game in my opinion.

 

[DRK3]

Also, posts made by beta players here don't matter much because homecoming literally scrapped everything from them giving lot of resources

That is true, and why i didnt base my comments on my own case, since when Gwent HC started i was already on 4 digits and got full standard collection day one. I was commenting based on several remarks i've seen from other players, stating how long it took them to complete or near complete their card collection.

We just had a user saying it took him 1000h... Im not questioning that, but that value still seems too high, i think 400-600h might be enough with correct management and taking advantage of events, although i may not be considering the added difficulty of latest expansions with more cards, and the new keg system with the ultimates and removal of expansion kegs.