"Swingy cards" aren't actually fun.

[Fargothwave]

I'll try to be as concise as possible.

Dear Santa mr. Slama or whoever it might concern -
The direction the game took recently (to be precise, around WotW) is actively ruining it. Getting repeatedly boardwiped by a Tunnel Drill or totally smorced by avalanche of stupid blue orbs or pointslammed into 16 planes of Oblivion isn't actually fun at all. In fact, stuff like this actively drives away loyal fans of the game.

What the community really needs - and I'm saying all of this after thoroughly perusing this forum/reddit/most popular streams - is a big rollback to "normal" powerlevel, not another batch of broken cards. Cards like Foltest, Eist, Mammuna, Tunnel Drill and even Gezras ultimately deprive players of any semblance of agency, and de-evolve Gwent to a binary game of draws where random rules supreme and actual thinking becomes less and less important, because most of the time win/loss is decided by factors you can't actually do anything about (matchup/draws).

 

[Moors-]

*Swingy cards without a setup or with an easy setup are not fun.

 

[Fargothwave]

*Swingy cards without a setup or with an easy setup are not fun.

Fair correction. Meve and Rience may stay.

 

[enoch_80]

I think it's easier to attract players with easy-to-play cards. programmers are probably following this path. in recent times it is very easy to generate an avalanche of points or damage without thinking too much about the cards to play. unfortunately this leads to matches that are all the same, boring and monotonous

 

[Mr_Mugglez]

iT'S DIFFICULT FOR ANY CARD GAME DEV to balance anything. The youtube guys with no actuial jobs will share their deck and everyone will use that. It's never going to work. but this is the world we live in. Other people play other games that require them to input their skill. But GWENT...people just cop another persons deck.

 

[Riven-Twain]

Moderator: One post deleted. Back on topic, please, and keep it respectful. Thank you.

 

[enoch_80]

Problem is not balancing the cards.
there are too many cards that can be played without planning, without thinking about a strategy. some decks are played without even caring about what the opponent is doing.
but I think it will be even worse in the coming months.
will they be aiming for a lower age group? (will it be related to "witcher monster slayer" ?!)

 

[Fargothwave]

Problem is not balancing the cards.
there are too many cards that can be played without planning, without thinking about a strategy. some decks are played without even caring about what the opponent is doing.
but I think it will be even worse in the coming months.
will they be aiming for a lower age group? (will it be related to "witcher monster slayer" ?!)

While you're right about the lack of planning I, for one, tend to think that yes, card balance is the key issue here. After all, there's nothing wrong with a couple of brainless archetypes like Thrive or Warriors. They just can't ever be allowed to be the best thing around!

But...this new stuff just has higher value floor and ceiling than older cards, they just bring too much power to the board on their own, which at least partially can and should be fixed with some heavy-handed provision/value nerfs. Something got to give, right?

Another big issue of these new cards, though, is their "answer or lose" quality. There has always been stuff like that, of course, but largely as part of some wacky, vulnerable strategy. Losing to Damien or Cahir wasn't much fun, but then again, there weren't too many of them around, exactly because using them entailed as much risk for the user as well.
But these new crazy cards just come with no strings attached whatsoever, they're just straight pointslam (even engines, which is ridiculous).

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of pointslam - midrangy strats have a right to exist. It's just way, way too good. As in, good enough to play a hypercontrol deck, deny everything your opp plays without any way to play around it and then slam 35+ generally uninteractive points your opp has no chance of beating on your side of the board. Various unitless SC decks are the main offender here, but SK Madoc/Warrior strats are close second. They aren't the best thing around RN, but are just waiting for their hour, I tell you.

Or more recently with hyperthin, you can keep up with engine decks in a long round 3, which is just absurd. Midrange is called that for a reason, it can't have same/higher value ceiling as dedicated combo/engine decks.

 

[nedders]

There's countless posts on this site talking about problems and offering solutions, things just never seem to change.

As was mentioned above, high risk/high reward then got countered with things like Heatwave or Invocation. So in came Defenders, but that just means everybody has to tech 3+ counters for these cards. Then came echos which meant it was easier to access game-changers, then came more game changers than you can remove. Then came NG's ability to produce a lot of points in each turn, plus reliability of draw.

After this there's just more and more errors. How much is a condition-free, 10 point card? Old Speartip is 9 provs for 9 points. Greatsword + Megascope is 10 provs for 1 condition and 1 condition-free 10 point card, so 10 provs gets you a relatively simple 20 points. It's honestly like the devs come up with an idea (megascope) to support one archetype (NR mages) then just forget about the other bronzes that can benefit.

The worst thing for me is the linearity you're almost forced to use, which reduces variety in the decks. An archetype that should work is dwarves - yet it's utterly un-competitive. A linearity is Snowflake/Movran plus three summon units. It's not an archetype, it's a broken combo. And not the worst broken combo. But it's still 7 + 2 + 4 boost + 6 boost + 2 + 2 DMG + 2 + 2 DMG + 5. 32 points, thinning and deck reliability for 8 provs (snowflake) + leader.

 

[radesign]

For several seasons there were just several really powerful swings with no, or barely any setup - Cerys+maidens (repeated) and then Eist+discard, or duels+shields+viraxas

Now, the general powercreep even dwindled the Skellige.

I can blame myself for not keeping enough control cards, to counter the setup for power-swings.
I can blame myself, for not playing enough engines, to outperform the swings.

But the cards, that can do large swings in one turn, without any setup, are truly a problem - usually there were one turn,no-setup,leader+powerful card combos, usually the Skellige ones.

Now the Syndicate got the OP treatment, that was exclusive to Skellige - control+points easy sets.

Balance between putting points on board (or boosting) and controlling the board (damaging - most efficient, as it also removes points) was always a delicate thing.
There is also deck manipulation, but it`s irrelevant, when there are enough super-bronzes that do both control and points.

I think, all these should be separated, having 2 things like control and deck manipulation or high points - only for good golds.
But it is perhaps too late for this, and there will be constant power race.