A few GWENT STATISTICS and thoughts after 5000h of playtime

[Gemueseknolle]

Hello Fellow Gwent-Sisters and Brothers,
i reached a certain point now in the life of gwent: 5000 hours of playtime

and i thought it would be a good time for some various toughs and statistics....

Environmental Facts
* I play since most early beta on PC, this was in may 2017
* officially game was released on 23 October 2018, so since today is the 23. October 2020, it means it took me exactly two years since official start
* this means i played in average 4.5h per day (i dont think this is a good thing... looks i am kinda addicted - actually after seeing this number i want to imminently remove that game, but it is so much damned fun)

General Statistics
* During this time i made it many times into pro rank (lost count how often)
* I got all 100% gog achievements as you can see above

Playstyle
* i always play ranked, never casual
* i dont like arena and therefore also have little playtime there
* i only play decks noone else plays, so i created all my decks myself and never looked at someone else
** usually my decks are not very powerful in meta, but always some kind of surprise for the other player. they are for sure not the average deck you meet.
*** i love to use cards noone else uses and to show that you can reach the highest ranks even with them (generally i end up at least rank 2 or 3, but many times also higher).
*** this building of "special decks" takes very very long time. especially since i try to show that you can still be powerful with them. but it often takes very very long to finetune them and find the right combination. that's also why i got so much playtime. So yeah generally I loose. But winning with a creative deck feels so much more rewarding that it is absolutely with it!
*** after playing so long, i absolutely not have any interest in the standard meta decks, which are mostly uncreative and playing them is boring to me. that makes me also a very bad pro rank player.
*** Very seldom it happened that I created well working decks that became powerful and easy to understand for meta and therefore were copied by other players. As soon as I noticed that they became too common I stopped using them and looked for a new deck
*** so to sum it up: my goal is not to make funny meme decks, but decks that are not common, but still should be / could be competitive. or maybe: i try to create a new meta deck, that doesnt exist yet
* i always played the faction which least people played / are playing.
** in the beginning that was NR... nowadays i dislike NR. the current decks do not require any creative thinking (maybe with exception of the undead deck), so i switched to SY mostly for now.

Cards

* i got all cards with that i play in epic style and basically do have so much scrap (over 300k) and iron (over 200k) that i could forge any i need in case some would be still missing
** i could make 2143 kegs out of it, if i wanted. Also it would be easy to make the full collection but what would be the point?
* i never bought with money anything (not because i dont think the game would deserve it, but cause i got so much scraps that i dont know what to do with it, so every expansion is at least an opportunity to get rid of it a little)

Contracts

* I finished 508/671 contracts
* my contract score is 9315
** actually i would have much more, but some contracts are bugged
* the ones i am missing are generally related to either where you have to pay for with money in order to get them or related to arena which i do not like
* one of the longest taking ones was the "good game" one. i think, i finished it after 4400 hours of playing.
** however in the last months i only gave GG in case someone was really playing a creative deck (in the beginning i gave everyone GG, but now seeing the same decks all the time i got more picky

Trinkets
* i got 159 Avatars
* 102 Borders
* 93 Titles

What makes me most sad is that the contract "Reach level 60th the 11th" time, is currently buged and i didnt get the title "Elder".
I think that really, really sucked, after achieving this (i guess it was about after 4200h of playtime) and then not getting this title.
* i guess there are not many people like me, so i think CD-RED has not much interest to fix this, since i already reported the bug months ago

Also i think the trinkets section was better in BETA:
* you could see all existing titles / avatars / borders, but those that you dont have were greyed out. it was written what is needed to get every title / border on mouse over
** currently you dont see for what you got a certain title and you also dont see which you are still missing.
* also i think the colors dont match the coolness of the contracts. for example why has the very easy TYRANT the most coolest red? CD Red: if you ever fix the bug, being "Elder" should be in some kind of blinking cool gold... - but thats maybe only me, cause i got so much playtime.
* so currently i am sticking to the very very old pioneer title

Reward Books
Even after so long playtime i wasnt able to finish all books.
* I got year of the wererat complete
* I got year of the wild boar complete
* i got almost every season complete
* but i still lack 3 skellige leaders on the main book
* i finished the siri journey complete
** but since i paid nothing, i only got the normal journey done

General thoughts
* the cards i miss most where those super fun NR cards that existed in the beginning. especially reavers had such a fun mechanic. it is sad that they disappeared.
* in contrast to most old beta-players, i didn't think it was such a bad thing to switch to 2 rows. however i dont like the row limits, but ok, meantime i can live with them.
* i think the game should encourage more "positive" playing. currently all is focused on destroying the opponents units. imo units that buff should be more powerful than units that destroy (e.g. if you pay 5 provision for a unit, you should be able to chose either one that destroys 2 points, or one that buffs 3 points). currently they are handled the same, but this makes less aggressive decks mostly minor to the aggressive ones.
* what i really would love would be an in-game chat with your opponent. i think it would add so much more fun to the game to talk also other things but those fixed emotes
** also i think currently friend system is bugged. whenever i get an friend invite, i see it days later... at that time i already have forgotten about the game, when the person send the invite
* What I really love on gwent is that even after playing so many thousands of games and long time I still see some creative people who come up with new ideas were I never would have thought of and never seen before... They are very rare - but that makes it all worth it!

Final words
I wonder how many other people are out there having played that long... are there any? am i the only one? Please respond
Maybe i update this topic later with some other facts.
So then... it has been a fun road and i hope future of gwent will be as glorious as its past!

In case you have any specific questions ask me anything.

 

[OuterSpaceDoggo]

I'm currently on a hiatus ( sort of ) but i'm gonna ask some questions.
- How long did it take to have a complete collection? I've been playing for almost 500 hours and i'm nowhere near capable of crafting most of the decks. I've made a couple of mistakes in the past ( milling entire factions, *sigh* ) but now I feel like i'm stuck with my collection which brings to the next question...
-What do you think is the best way to manage resources? ( scraps, ore, RP )
- Any advice on how to build decks which you can climb with but without following the meta?
- What faction do you think is the most fun to play? And the most creative?

 

[Gemueseknolle]

- How long did it take to have a complete collection?

as you see, even i am missing a few cards still. the only thing was, that i never had a problem making the onces i lacked.

i was generally not missing many cards from the begin with, only those which were added with every expansion. and for this purpose it was enough to invest the ore i earned. the reason why i never had this problem was since i played from very early beta:

in the beta CD-Red was very, very generous with casks, cause of course they needed people to playtest the cards. therefore you got so many kegs that it was easy to get an almost complete collection very quickly. cd-red never removed those cards even when beta was over, so basically i had a full deck from the beginning and only had to update it a little here and then.

also in the early years epic cards were more common and also didnt cost that much to convert. so thats why i also got almost everything as epic. (they made meteorite rewards about a third less compared to what it was before)

this doesnt help you much, i know, but it explains why it is like that for me.

-What do you think is the best way to manage resources? ( scraps, ore, RP )

i think you should try to achieve all easy to get contracts. with the keys you get, you can complete the reward books and get needed ressources. this means: build decks just for completing a contract, then delete the deck again when done.

- Any advice on how to build decks which you can climb with but without following the meta?
- What faction do you think is the most fun to play? And the most creative?

as general advice for making creative decks: chose an idea of a standard deck (e.g. the skellige discard deck) and then combine it with neutral cards noone expects. all factions can be used for this

for example: use neutral syanna (double next deploy) and combine her with kambi (each player drops most right cards). i guarantee you: if you think of the faces of your opponents, when they experience their last two cards removed is priceless

 

[ReaperTek]

Final words
I wonder how many other people are out there having played that long... are there any? am i the only one? Please respond

I guess you're not alone, although i don't really know how much hours i played Gwent because on PS4 it doesn't show you how much time you spend with a Game and it also didn't carry-over when i migrated to GOG, but since they dropped Console Support last Year i already reached 1.300 Hours in that Year on GOG and Steam and considering that my Match history isn't that much different from yours and I even played a hell of lot more during open Beta (I didn't play that much in the first year of Homecoming) , i think I'm around that 4000 - 5000 range too.

Guess I'm a bit behind on Reward Trees

Contracts

* i only play decks noone else plays, so i created all my decks myself and never looked at someone else

I think i played a few times against you and if i remember correctly it were always interesting Decks that i haven't encountered like that before, so i guess i can totally confirm that. Kudos for that.

 

[DRK3]

@Gemueseknolle First of all, congratulations for your landmark and this post.
Second, i will request that you send me a friend invite, as we have a lot in common.

Third, i cant miss this chance to brag about myself and compare some of my stats to yours:

-I got around half of your playtime (mine is 2740h), although im playing for longer than you (since the very beginning, 4 years next week)
-I got more wins than you with my 3 favourite factions, which i guess are your 3 least favourite (SK, NG and MO)
-we have almost the same number of contracts, you got 508, i got 505, i didnt bought the 1st journey but i bought the Ciri one, if you dont watch out i will pass you when they fix my bugged journey contracts!
-the GG contract im almost done with it, less than 50 wins away. I dont understand why they GG me so much, i forfeit against netdeckers all the time (i play mostly casual) and i rarely GG back unless i see at least one unusual card or it's a beginner
- a few weeks ago i completed my collection - every single card in both standard and premium, including 2x each bronze; without also not spending money on resources (my journey pass recently was my 1st purchase)
-my reward books are where im way behind you, im about halfway done on the permanent trees, a little less on the seasonal ones

About the trinket section, if they did greyed out all the ones we didnt have it would be even more cluttered, there is already way too many cosmetics, like 50x the amount there was on beta.

And finally, i particularly liked this post because just yesterday i got thinking about the players with the highest playtimes in Gwent of all time, i would like to know if im in the top 1% (or even in the top 100, you most likely are), and even considered requesting this to the dev team somehow, i dont see any harm it could cause from releasing this data, what do you think?

(EDIT) i forgot, on my friend list i got the #2 spot on playtime, there's another guy who used to be a forum user here that has around 4700h, maybe he's also on your friend list?

 

[Payus]

Congratulations! I saw it live on my Gog friends feed:

I just reached 3K hours a while ago

 

[croloris]

Well, I am an original beta console player, sitting on a load of resources including 700+ RP. Since I was forced to take a pair of 4 month breaks by CDPR I have become a player who mostly plays every day to win the 16 bonus shards / 18 rounds for 4 RP previously. I try to stay below 2 hours a day and on days I can achieve this goal in an hour I am relieved.

I am a paying customer and enjoy my cosmetics, bundled costumes, and boards. I have no problem paying an average of $10/month for a game I play every day. I also have a fully complete collection and most cosmetics outside of those only obtainable when console Gwent was shut down for Homecoming and later the migration to GOG and finally Android.

That said, I mostly play to achieve daily goals, especially for RP, which I reroll for daily. I will play ranked to get my 25 matches with each faction over the course of the season, but will not stick with it if the meta is stale (ie default state). Usually I enjoy playing Arena and seasonal modes, mostly Arena though, where I feel like data just gets lost outside of Arena specific contracts, which also seem to not quite track matches correctly.

Finally @OuterSpaceDoggo

- How long did it take to have a complete collection? I've been playing for almost 500 hours and i'm nowhere near capable of crafting most of the decks. I've made a couple of mistakes in the past ( milling entire factions, *sigh* ) but now I feel like i'm stuck with my collection which brings to the next question...

At a normal play rate I estimate it takes 2 years at 90 minutes a day under the old system when legendaries were 400 MP to transmute. You will be crafting a majority of those legendaries, so make sure to craft a regular card then transmute so you get credit towards both contracts. Save kegs until you are guaranteed a premium for opening them (Prestige 5 I believe.)

-What do you think is the best way to manage resources? ( scraps, ore, RP )

I never miss a renewal of a daily quest and always reroll for RP quests (Prestige 4 I think.) Arena is the most cost efficient way to turn ore into more resources though it is time intensive. But you break even if you win just 1 match and earn a legendary at 9 wins (for a while it was guaranteed premium) + kegs, ore, and scraps.


- Any advice on how to build decks which you can climb with but without following the meta?

Not really, the meta is the meta because it is easy to play and can crush other decks consistently. Plus the Gwent matchmaker just loves pairing you with meta decks when you go off meta. I enjoy playing Stockpile, but every time I do there comes a point when all I see is Imposter or OH Monsters.

- What faction do you think is the most fun to play? And the most creative?

Assimilate NG is the most fun to play, especially if RNG goes your way. Most creative will go to the army of Shupe decks out there...you just have no clue what the actual theme of a Shupe deck is until half the cards are played. Even then, you can successfully hide the fact you are a Shupe deck until round 3 usually.

 

[Rammyp]

I played about 1890 hours myself + about 350 on betas but someone on my freinds list played much more

 

[jack9c]

I found the post very interesting. It seems a little ignorant surrounding the "chat feature" topic. It's important to note the history of online game chat. It is what makes competitive games toxic and is effectively impossible to moderate...and it will have to be moderated (just as the forums are) when the chat starts getting used to trade media, doxing or whatever maliciousness occurs. I have a feeling CPR knows this, even if the OP hasn't learned yet.

 

[Gemueseknolle]

thank you all for the nice comments.

Second, i will request that you send me a friend invite, as we have a lot in common.

of course, it would be an honor to have such a gwent legend in my friend list... i sent the invite, i hope it worked... ( i dont trust this friend system)

About the trinket section, if they did greyed out all the ones we didnt have it would be even more cluttered, there is already way too many cosmetics, like 50x the amount there was on beta.

i dont think it would be technically so complicated. they could make a filter, like "owned" "not owned"

And finally, i particularly liked this post because just yesterday i got thinking about the players with the highest playtimes in Gwent of all time, i would like to know if im in the top 1% (or even in the top 100, you most likely are), and even considered requesting this to the dev team somehow, i dont see any harm it could cause from releasing this data, what do you think?

it would be absolutely great if they would show average playtime / top playtime players and so on. but i am not sure if they want to release it, since from that competitors could calculate how successful the game is. but even some simple statistics would be really interesting....

i forgot, on my friend list i got the #2 spot on playtime, there's another guy who used to be a forum user here that has around 4700h, maybe he's also on your friend list?

no, the next player below me in my friendlist has 4021 currently

I just reached 3K hours a while ago

Grats @Payus !!!

I am a paying customer and enjoy my cosmetics, bundled costumes, and boards. I have no problem paying an average of $10/month for a game I play every day.

for me it is also absolutely no issue of money... the problem is i would never use all those cosmetics, cause i think i would rather stick to any trinket that was hard-earned by gaming, instead of being bought it by mere money.

i think the solution would be to make it like in some other roleplaying games (e.g. ultima online, warcraft,...).
they could sell rewards, that are only useable after reaching certain criteria, e.g.
* a trinket that you can only use, if you have at least prestige 5
* a border that is only useable, if you played at least 1000 games with faction X
* an avatar that can be only used after ....

for those i would also pay, cause i think they show at the same time, what i really have achieved.

but someone on my friends list played much more

wow. 6600h!!!! that's incredible.

seems i am really not alown...

and it will have to be moderated (just as the forums are) when the chat starts getting used to trade media, doxing or whatever maliciousness occurs. I have a feeling CPR knows this, even if the OP hasn't learned yet.

i dont think this is necessary to be permanently moderated. they could just log all of it and if a player would be reported because of abusing the chat, they could ban him then and his gog account based on evidence in log.
also from that point of few it is not so much different than the friend chat that is provided anyhow already in the friend list in gog. i could say bad things there too, so i guess they already have some kind of monitoring....

 

[Aegis301]

Just wanted to add my Congratulations!!

 

[DRK3]

for me it is also absolutely no issue of money... the problem is i would never use all those cosmetics, cause i think i would rather stick to any trinket that was hard-earned by gaming, instead of being bought it by mere money.

i think the solution would be to make it like in some other roleplaying games (e.g. ultima online, warcraft,...).
they could sell rewards, that are only useable after reaching certain criteria, e.g.
* a trinket that you can only use, if you have at least prestige 5
* a border that is only useable, if you played at least 1000 games with faction X
* an avatar that can be only used after ....

for those i would also pay, cause i think they show at the same time, what i really have achieved.

I also prefer to use trinkets that are hard-earned - i bought Journey recently and got a ton of cool trinkets but prefer to show off the trinkets you could only get in beta or that cant be achieved without hundreds/thousands of hours ingame.

I dont think its a good idea to sell things that at the same time have some conditions to be used.

-you already have an avatar for getting 1000 wins with each faction.
-i think what we need is a trinket to show we have a full collection, and also one for having Mastery of all 42 leader abilities. I dont know if there's anyone who has done it, but it should definitely be rewarded such an amazing feat (im close, at 38/42)

 

[croloris]

I prefer shiny things, so the animated borders and avatars released as of late are what I most commonly used along with the latest seasonal / pre release card backs.

Though I respect the hard earned trinkets and wish that the dev team would take some time to animate some of the more difficult to obtain items from the Contracts or even add Contract exclusive boards / cardbacks / other premium vanities...

Hmm, maybe I should start a thread.

 

[Gemueseknolle]

-you already have an avatar for getting 1000 wins with each faction.

this would be cool (and by the way, i would not have this yet even)....

Mastery of all 42 leader abilities

that is what i am currently doing.... my nightmare that i have to play skellige became true

 

[DRK3]

@Gemueseknolle Im not sure you understood. The avatars for winning 1000 times witch each faction are already on the game (i think they only count wins since HC though, because i got more than 1000 with 4 factions but only with SK i have this avatar). They are these:

You hate playing SK, i love it so much i had to promise myself i wouldnt touch them until the next expansion, just so i give the other factions some attention

 

[Gemueseknolle]

i meant an own avatar for winning with ALL factions 1000 times. something like jack of trades - only bigger

 

[NxZsolt]

You really love this game
I've been playing with it a lot too nowadays. But I want to reduce the play time. Just the journey takes a lot of time. (14 win/day)