What Gwent Wrong Part 1: Adapting the Game to Become a CCG

[4RM3D]

The part i dont understand from your post, is what exactly are these shackles that are holding Gwent back? The new format that makes it harder to expand, if that's what, i dont see how.

The old format makes it easier to balance, but more difficult to expand, while the new format is the exact opposite. The balancing aspect is something I want to delve into some more in another thread because there is a lot to discuss. I'll just give two quick examples here.

First of all, the bronze/silver/gold tier made it difficult to create more cards because they all need to have the same power level as the other cards in their respective tier (minus a power creep here and there). Another example is that gold immunity minimized the effects gold cards can have because they couldn't be interacted with.

Homecoming opened up more possibilities, but at the same time, introduced new balancing issues, like the double action turn (card + leader). These shackles are everything that makes it more difficult to balance Gwent. And I am aware that a lot of what has made Gwent -well- Gwent are precisely these mechanics that are a nightmare to balance. This leads back to the root of the problem in the OP: adapting a game into an online CCG, while it wasn't made to be one.

 

[CreepyRedOwl]

Its just the unbalanced nature of certain mechanics like poison and replay cards notibly Nifgaard who rely on them which is the biggest faction problem of gwent, forcing a "if you cant beat them join them" mentality. This creates a toxic gameplay for those that want diverse and fun gameplay.

I agree, however having said that I also believe there are ways of countering these annoying easy-winnig decks. If you look here:

, a guy beats NG double scenario with a mid-range NR deck, despite making some errors in the final round. As you surely know, there are neutral cards that banish other cards, either directly from the board or from the graveyard, so they counter any attempts to reuse them - why not have them in your deck and use them against NG? It is part of a meta challenge to find ways of dealing with this kind of opponents and I like it.

I played Gwent since closed beta (casually, with a longer break last year) and my impression is that the game has evolved into something else, true, however I still find it engaging and satisfying. The problem is most things get boring if you are doing them a lot over a long period of time, no matter how exciting they are at the beginning... The developers try to keep us engaged, so they have to change the game and the biggest problems are still ahead. How long can you add new cards? Are we going to have 3 or 5 thousands of them in a couple of years? Adding cards is also a way of making money (pre-order kegs etc.), which is OK for me - I do not mind paying for the stuff I like (how long would Gwent exist if nobody bought nothing?) however it may finally destroy the whole thing. Interesting to see how they play it out in future.

 

[BornBoring]

The solution was to remove all mechanics that held the game back. Let's take a quick look at some of the most prominent discarded mechanics:
- ....
- Gold immunity
-...

Interesting that the main reason mentioned for removing gold immunity was a lack of interaction. The first meta after HC was then mainly dominated by unitless artifact decks and was therefore probably one of the most uninteractive metas ever. So you replace an original Gwent mechanic by a MTG concept, but don't solve any issues. In my opinion a perfect example how you shouldn't do it.

The main benefit of gold immunity was that it could force you to play around certain effects instead of going the easy path and just destroy it. While decoupling power level and immunity was indeed necessary, removing it as a mechanic still looks like a wrong decision. As also seen with artifacts, the problem of interactivity (or the lack thereof) arises when too many of the cards, which are played, can't be interacted with. As I see it, the best way to balance gold immunity would have been to grant only the last gold card played immunity or to be more precise: a gold card loses its immunity when you play another one. Promoting ongoing effects, while also keeping the game interactive.

 

[CreepyRedOwl]

These shackles are everything that makes it more difficult to balance Gwent. And I am aware that a lot of what has made Gwent -well- Gwent are precisely these mechanics that are a nightmare to balance.

I do not believe you can just balance it once and for good. It's like the dream of patching each and every whole in any given software or hardware - you patch one and people would find another exploit, sometimes years after the original thing was developed (like the x86 Spectre recently). Even if it was possible, you'd have to freeze the game and stop developing it. It's a kind of arm race: some things get balanced, than it turns out a knew way of playing a particular deck or building it pays off, people share it and copy it with all the meta snapshots, so it spreads. You balance it again, so it closes some possibilities, but others (re)open etc. With many fractions (+ neutral cards), several different abilities per fraction, 1K cards that you can combine in different ways it is just impossible to plan ahead for all possible combinations. But it's OK, it is part of the challenge to figure out how to navigate the game after every new patch.

What I do not like are recurrent bugs at the beginning of every season - some extremely basic things stop working or get screwed (like bleeding or vitality or even the cards becoming invisible). This should not be happening. I assume it's some organizational problem in the team or lack of resources. I do not get it - with CDPR's market capitalization that company is loaded with $$$. Not investing in development team to satisfy the stockholders with yearly reports should not be more important than keeping players happy. But well, that is capitalism .

 

[4RM3D]

Interesting that the main reason mentioned for removing gold immunity was a lack of interaction. The first meta after HC was then mainly dominated by unitless artifact decks and was therefore probably one of the most uninteractive metas ever. [...]

That's indeed kinda ironic. I do remember the artifact meta, but I didn't think about comparing it with gold immunity. That's indeed a very good point, which shows that not every aspect of Homecoming was -uhm- given enough thought. That brings me to another point I might discuss later; about how Homecoming was basically another beta, but it was showcased as the final evolution of Gwent, so to speak.

I do not believe you can just balance it once and for good. It's like the dream of patching each and every whole in any given software or hardware - you patch one and people would find another exploit, [...]

Gwent is not a singleplayer game you eventually wrap up, after all the bugfixes. No, it's an ever-evolving entity. As such, there is no point in trying to find a perfect balance because it doesn't exist. However, keeping the meta varied should be a driving force behind the decisions made and herein I think the devs have been a bit too passive.

From a business perspective, it's a bad idea to keep rebalancing the game because it doesn't generate money. That's why expansions exist, to shake up the meta. What you want is to start with a small card pool and keep expanding it with -well- expansions. However, in Homecoming the card pool had already grown (out of control) and reworking everything (again and again) took too much time. This left the game in a bit of an awkward position because certain mechanics, like artifacts, did had to be balanced and eventually were (*cough* until the introduction of Scenarios).

 

[Anciluart]

There is a very important point that I think you have not mentioned: TRUST.

1- The change from Gwent beta to HC should not be something celebrated, since it was not a "risk to improve", I don't know what to call it, I just think that some guy with delusions of greatness shot a ridiculous idea and for some strange reason they validated it.

From a user point of view, I saw how all the things I liked went to waste and were replaced by totally different ones. We know that this happened to many people since the community ended up decreasing to less than 50%.
They gave us the resources to create new cards, the numerical value is still there, but it was as if they removed the Witcher 3 from your collection and returned the money in the form of fallout 76.

After that we saw a year of expansions that added "new" content that was just the same as what we already had and had been taken from us.

The beta had its problems, even so it had more interest from people, just imagine all this time of HC dedicated to the beta and adding the mobile platforms and Steam ........

2- Collection: We have the incident of the repeated cards, I will not put details, we already know what I mean. They simply did not treat the matter with the respect it deserved.

3- Stolen content: It is difficult to have high expectations when new content that is not from the beta comes out of HS or MtG mechanics. There is a lot of "design space" with the spaces in the rows, the 3 row may have been reduced to a 5 row shared between both players and as a shock point where they fight for that space. They just don't look for solutions, it's easier to steal from someone else.

4- About what they call "design space": We have had some occasions where they changed things that were interesting to players due to their version of design space. Do they really understand what they mean when they refer to it? NG can play their leader ability 2 times thanks to Damien, so all the new abilities they create must revolve around Damien. SY was presented as a faction of advanced users given its nature of currency management, there we have Luiza throwing away that concept and not to mention HCh.

Again and like all last year we are close to a new expansion, although I always hope for the best at the same time there is a whole year of excuses that are a sad reality for the game.

The beta was an ingenious combination between one of the best art teams we have in the CCGs and a game with interesting mechanics. Now the only thing that has made me play more often is the journey.

What Gwent Wrong Part 1: Adapting the Game to Become a CCG

To summarize, the time invested must have value, they showed that our time has no value when they threw the beta in the trash and offered us, ironically, another beta.
I have my Ciri Nova the same as before, it looks the same, it's called the same, but it's just part of another game where I'm not interested in using it.

 

[BornBoring]

One aspect, which wasn't mentioned yet is Thronebreaker. Released on the same day as HC and having a noticeable influence on the design of HC since they share the same UI. Based on marketing effort, Thronebreaker looked like the main release and HC just like a side project.

I haven't played Beta, so I can't comment, but played a lot of Gwent in Witcher, comparing current Gwent to other Card games aswell as the Original Gwent, another Problem I see, is that it doesn't feel like a Card Game, the Menus, the Boards,

You're right, visually it's not even a real card game anymore, but a battlefield simulator. For thronebreaker this decision makes sense.

 

[4RM3D]

Based on marketing effort, Thronebreaker looked like the main release and HC just like a side project.

Because TB was the next big thing. We already had two years of beta, back then. In the long run, it has always been about Gwent.

 

[CreepyRedOwl]

the 3 row may have been reduced to a 5 row shared between both players

That is a very interesting concept, however it would be a change to the game's mechanics far more important than anything that has happened so far (the number of rows, weather, cards' colors, orders etc.). Many people in this thread complained that the game has changed too much since beta and/or Witcher's minigame, however quite clearly some people would like to see it changing even more. It shows that the idea of "community's voice" that is often evoked is purely phantasmatic. As a rule, people who are not satisfied with what they get share their opinions almost twice as often as those who are satisfied, so I'd say the thing is that those of us who were attached to some particular mechanics and/or card express their opinions much more when it is changed not according to their wishes than those who find the change OK.

I believe the real conundrum in MMO's development is the fact that they are both a fandom/community and a merchandise, so there's a constant need to balance these two things. As much as I hate the changes made only for marketing reasons, there seems to be no viable way to maintain an MMO within the capitalist economy than to make it earn money somehow. My experience with MMOs is not huge, however I feel than Gwent is much better in this respect than ESO as there's literally nothing essential in the game that can only be bought with $$$. I spent probably far too much on cosmetics in Gwent, but it has been my choice - I could be playing as well without them, which is not the case with ESO, where paying or not changes the game in the fundamental way (if you want to play beyond casual, you absolutely have to pay for + and/or buy DLCs to have access to some skills). Grinding in Gwent is also much more pleasant than in GTA Online, where if you do not want to buy the Sharks Cards you end up having a regular job in the game (taking care of your businesses). So for the time being I would rather say that CDPR's way of approaching Gwent has been quite OK. What annoys me is not what they do, but the fact that they do not do it well - all the QA problems. It is unacceptable for a company that wants to be a major player in AAA games and has got all the material resources to have a decent QA.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

Just here for the pun. Bravo

 

[Philychstk]

I like current Gwent new player. The old game didn't appeal to me and new design is working. More exposure more people playing the game. Youtube vids and streams while not huge are going up as well. So they doing something right.

Anyway, we all know prior to all these changes the point of GWENT was to get people onto GOG.

 

[miniliQuid]

As a new player to this version of gwent, and very old player of the old gwent (back when Witcher 3 was only recently released) I really like gwent in general. My problem mainly lies with the time investment. Playing an AI imo is more fun, simply cause it is faster. This is probably because 9 out of 10 times I play for quick relaxation after work before starting on dinner.

This means if there are players taking an age before making their move, I am inclined to forfeit after a few rounds. Normally I would at least be able to finish 1 game, or even 2, but the timer is CRAZY long for every card move. I have never even needed close to the whole timer for making my move. I already have my pick ready, and only adjust if what the enemy does interfers with my plan. That would at most take 10 seconds of thinking and taking a different pick.

Aside from that, my other main problem is, it is getting way too large and I don't see any proper casual or AI mode for less invested players. This often means I end up playing people with way better cards and decks. This may have something to do with how the progression works, IDK honestly, but the quests for extra loot are even more annoying. I have to switch out tons of them because I simply cannot use certain faction decks and "win 3 matches" as that faction. This gets really annoying really fast as it hampers progress for new (free to play) players that just want a casual go at the game.

So basically they are cutting down a part of their player pool by making the game f2p (rather than 10 bucks for example) and put a small paywall into it that nets you cards a lot faster that are otherwise so slow to obtain. Which makes playing those decks hard, but also playing against the decks hard since you don't know the strategies and the cards.

In that way the W3 gwent was a great game cause of the ease to get into and how casual and simple it was. Great for a bit of fun and relaxing. Probably not so much as an esports game for serious tournaments but.... That's not my cup of tea so I don't know enough about esports card scene anyway

 

[Melysan]

I haven't read all the posts so probably some of my points may be mentioned somewhere.

The whole Board development and all the engines doing something + the phenomenal thinning of the decks was something that doesn't exist in the current GWENT.
Once i've felt the same , and that was while playing Hyper-Thin NG.

No matter how many new cards CDPR release and how many new Tags , the game continues the same way - you just slam something and damage something without any grand setup.
It feels like there is no archetype in the Decks and you can see it in NG after the MM patch - basically people threw 2-3 of the new cards just to improve the already existing Ball Formation deck from the months ago.
NR is again the same , the order mechanic is a joke and yes , even if few order cards are used - it's not because of some special innovative deck composition - but as a low provision cannon fodder (the idea is the same - put bodies and Draug them).
Speaking about archetypes , why would they even release Scenarios and Defenders if each faction has only one and not even showing a sign of adding more (same will happen with the Evo Cards btw).
Artifacts overall are made un-professional and i just don't know what to suggest about them anymore.

Biggest mistake in balancing a game in our ''Modern'' era is the ''not nerfing , but buffing all else'' - the powercreep is real and even the blind can see that there is a big portion of cards which are un-usable and some even feel like placeholders.

One of the ''cliche'' comments towards what i've said would be ''you don't know how hard is to balance a game or be a developer'' etc , but that still won't be an excuse of what's happening with the game.

 

[BAT0MAN]

I've been playing for 3 months now and what's wrong with it?
They nerf something to oblivion only for something else to take its place, even something worse at times.

It has been getting more and more draw dependent and it punishes you hard if you dont draw the specific card you need to win against that specific match up. I shifted to Gwent because I liked how it was more "skill over luck". OR so I thought.

I invited my friends to play it sadly, they started after MM. And they just hate how grindy it is right now. It's just like every CCG out there in terms of how to obtain resources.

 

[Laveley]

Funny how you are still in denial after all those years @4RM3D

You want to say it by your thread tittle.

You want to say it by your OP words.

Yet you dont.

Just say it bro: CDPR skrewed it.

Midwinter was a big mistake. And it only happened because they changed the Original Gwent dev, who went to work for rockstar. Than someone new got the project and it was a person who has a different vision; a vision for results (financial). And they slowly went away.

Everything from that point on was downhill.

Eventually even that person was changed because of clearly dont having what it takes for the task but not before creating this "scarecrow fallacy" that beta gwent couldnt be a sucessfull game because "bollocks, its good, its different, its fleshed out, has a lot of creative mechanics and we dont know what to do with it"?


And than it comes out a community influencer to reinforce this absolute bs of "original gwent wont work in multiplayer" and the fanboyism wandbagon just came along to justify the inevitable downfall caused by the strip-out of mechanics.

Yet again, fact just proves it wrong; beta gwent (closed and open BEFORE midwinter and leader dev change) is probably the best multiplayer CCG that i, and a lot of that era players, ever played and i bet that 99% agrees that it was a great and better game than whats left.

And yes, that with all those "problematics not for multiplayer mechanics" that the game supposedly have.

 

[4RM3D]

Funny how you are still in denial after all those years @4RM3D

Look who's back.

Anyhow, good games aren't necessarily successful and successful games aren't necessarily good. So, when you ask me if CDPR screwed up, I don't know. You can have an opinion about the direction CDPR has taken with Gwent. However, it says nothing about the number of players, nor the amount of money they have spent. Maybe the game is (far) more successful now. So, it depends on who you ask and what they find important.

Yet again, fact just proves it wrong; beta gwent (closed and open BEFORE midwinter and leader dev change) is probably the best multiplayer CCG that i, and a lot of that era players, ever played and i bet that 99% agrees that it was a great and better game than whats left.

Personally speaking, I might have enjoyed beta more and I guess a lot of the original players have left because they felt the same. Regardless, my point still stands that Gwent was never meant to be a CCG and that has brought a lot of challenges to shape the game into, not just a CCG, but one that is sustainable. I believe that was the biggest problem with Gwent Beta, there was no room to grow. Even if everyone agrees that back then, Gwent was at its best, it would all have been moot, when CDPR could not sustain it. It's like lifting weights; the heavier the load, the more difficult it is to carry (for longer periods of time).

 

[Laveley]

Anyhow, good games aren't necessarily successful and successful games aren't necessarily good. So, when you ask me if CDPR screwed up, I don't know. You can have an opinion about the direction CDPR has taken with Gwent. However, it says nothing about the number of players, nor the amount of money they have spent. Maybe the game is (far) more successful now. So, it depends on who you ask and what they find important.

Yeah, i'm not business prospector genius, but i can say what i see; in beta we had gwent tournaments in freaking abandoned salt mines, now its just sad to open steam client and see gwent in the left hand corner along with others "whatever money-grab minigame ccg's". Do they make tournaments on freaking abandoned salt mines still?

When something is good people will want more of it, money will eventually flow in.

my point still stands that Gwent was never meant to be a CCG and that has brought a lot of challenges to shape the game into, not just a CCG, but one that is sustainable.

This is not YOUR point though, its just a lie that a fat nerd told you and you sucked it up because the truth its just too ugly to accept?

Original gwent didnt had design issues and didnt have "problems to grow". I refuse to accept that and to this day i had not been presented by a single well funded argument of this theory. And in this topic you also fails to present at least one. You just repeat it as a mantra and a universal truth without anything to back it up.

Seriously, take a step back and contemplate what you are saying!

Did they even tried?

This guy @Anciluart is trying to say you that, i dont even know him, but he is absolutely point on.

Again; fact just proves this wrong. If the game had design flaws, limitating growing factors, how could it be the most successful phase when those supposedly "design flaws" and "limitating growing factors" were still around?


The truth is much more simple, yet gruesome; they had something great and original and put it at the hands of people too scared to take it ahead (or at least try it) and where more content to dish-it all out and try to mimic the next best thing (hearthstone and magic).

We dont have possibly the greatest CCG of all times because of just plain wrong corporatism decisions. That happens all the time in corporate world.

 

[Hegemonkey]

I fell in love with Gwent when I played Witcher 3. I'm pretty sure my Geralt is still level 4 after 12 hours of playtime cause all I did was ride Roach at breakneck speed to anyone down to play a hand.

So I was shocked to see how different Gwent is now since I started playing the standalone version a few months ago.

I get that they had to change things around for the sake of competitive play. I will always prefer the way the original version felt more about resource management without all the crazy combos.

I agree it felt more tactical only taking 1 action a turn.

Wombo combos in ccgs are notorious for only being fun for the player executing them. They certainly draw attention and make excellent YouTube highlights... I came to Gwent because it was different though.
I still enjoy it and there are still unique aspects to the game. I will always prefer the Gwent I first found on TW3. I'm a little bummed I wasn't around to see what the beta felt like so I had more to compare post homecoming multi-player Gwent to.

Another difference that still sets gwent apart from most other games is that there is no health bar. It's about the size of your army not killing your opponent.

 

[4RM3D]

Again; fact just proves this wrong. If the game had design flaws, limitating growing factors, how could it be the most successful phase when those supposedly "design flaws" and "limitating growing factors" were still around?
[...]
The truth is much more simple, yet gruesome; they had something great and original and put it at the hands of people too scared to take it ahead (or at least try it) and where more content to dish-it all out and try to mimic the next best thing (hearthstone and magic).

You're accusing me of presenting no facts, yet you are even worse. I never stated anything as a fact, rather I just stated my vision on why Gwent has changed. However, you just throw down opinions like it's the one and only truth. But you don't know either, yet you refuse to change yours. I've actually tried to explain things, according to how I see it. You just say: "they fucked up". That's your opinion and not a very helpful one.

The same applies to "the most successful phase". According to whom? We don't have the numbers. Gwent may have very well been in decline and, because of that, CDPR changed the formula. We don't know, we can only speculate. So, until you actually provide facts, stop presenting your opinion as such.

On a closing note, let's talk about success. Everyone has a different opinion on what success means. Customer satisfaction could be one part of it, but that's difficult to measure and irrelevant to the stakeholders, unless that directly translate to revenue which is always a part of it and when that goes up, the stakeholders are happy.

So I was shocked to see how different Gwent is now since I started playing the standalone version a few months ago.

That wasn't always the case, as you probably already know.

 

[Laveley]

You're accusing me of presenting no facts, yet you are even worse. I never stated anything as a fact, rather I just stated my vision on why Gwent has changed. However, you just throw down opinions like it's the one and only truth. But you don't know either, yet you refuse to change yours. I've actually tried to explain things, according to how I see it. You just say: "they fucked up". That's your opinion and not a very helpful one.

The same applies to "the most successful phase". According to whom? We don't have the numbers. Gwent may have very well been in decline and, because of that, CDPR changed the formula. We don't know, we can only speculate. So, until you actually provide facts, stop presenting your opinion as such.

On a closing note, let's talk about success. Everyone has a different opinion on what success means. Customer satisfaction could be one part of it, but that's difficult to measure and irrelevant to the stakeholders, unless that directly translate to revenue which is always a part of it and when that goes up, the stakeholders are happy.

Buddy, i'm tired and i'm not gonna keep repeating myself; your very own title of the thread already acknowledge the fact that gwent went wrong.

So you edit that tittle right now or you are just agreeing with me that it is a fact that gwent was good in the past and somewhere something went wrong... stop the denial, for Christ sake; going mobile, featuring their game at the competition virtual shop, its screaming desperation!

At least Valve's maintained some self-respect and didnt featured Artifact at GOG.

The only opinion here is the one that original gwent had "limitating growing factor" or "game design flaws". Opinion that was feed to the community so CDPR could justify the butchering they did to the game, which had an enormous potential because they didnt know what to do with it once they lost their creative mind so "lets just copy hearthstone and hope for the best".

The game had so much potential that people still comes up to this very day after playing TW3, like the above poster.

Even the person that posted the "design flaws" lie in youtube later removed that video once it got debunked and the arguments of "inherent game design flaws, limiting factors, blablabla bs" where all ditched away.

I know i may sound rude, i'm not the best to express my words and feelings in english, i'm sorry, but you know i'm right, you already admitted you feel the same about that beta was a solid game.

So yeah, thats it in the end; you can keep up the denial and hold up to the "if they have stayed with the things the way they where it wouldnt come up right because i think so, since theres nothing to back it up, not even a failed attempt" or you can just admit the sad truth. I'm with the second group.