So after reading all 25 pages of this thread i feel compelled to respond myself.
Because i`m lazy, i´m going to quote myself:
Ok i guess this thread is as good as any to add my thoughts about Homecoming.
I would especially like to address all those people saying HC gwent has so much more potential.
Here goes:
The Provision Deckbuilding
I have to say i do like the provions idea and it should be really nice for fine tuning cards but i dont see how the provisions system couldnt have been added to pre HC gwent.
The New Mechanics
Its beside the point if i like those or not, the argument is that they give more design space.
To this i would like to say: no, they ARE the design space. There wouldnt have been any problem in adding order to cards in pre HC gwent. (To iterate my point: look at MTG they add several new keyword abilities per set and noone would get the idea saying those abilities increase design space because creating the abilities themselves is the design space.)
Less Rows
Ok so this just takes away from the design space, nothing else to add.
The Coinflip Fix
This does actually seem like quite a good solution to me. Not perfect and i would probably still prefer to play last most of the time its at least way better than it was before.
The New Drawing System
This to seems like its just forcing how the game plays out. Round one will always go on until a player has at most 5 cards left because that is when card advantage kicks in, what it takes from you is the option to pass for a card quality advantage in exchange for the gameplay disadvantage of playing first in round 3.
The New Mulligans
While interesting on first sight i have to say they too seem lackluster to me.
Besides mulliganing cards you absolutely dont want to draw, there doesnt seem to be a point in using the mulligans before round 3. No blacklisting further adds to this. Also even if he might not be heavily played i do think Letho of Gulet is pretty bad card design.
Artifacts And New Weather
These seem really binary as there are too few ways to interact with those. Again because of the forced long first round you cant just pass if you dont have an appropiate answer to handle them. Before there was at least 1 weather clear in each deck and you had more space to play around weather with another row, granted now there is pretty much only one weather (Ragh Nar Roog) but that only adds to the problem. Its not really feasible to have weather clear when there is so few good weather. Artifacts just seem like a bad card type for gwent as interaction with them is destroy it with a specific destroy artifact card or just have them there the whole round. Not to mention the advantage of not dropping a unit.
The New Board
So i dont know, maybe i got this wrong? As far as i understood in gwent story wise i would enter a pub in the witcher world
and play a round of gwent the famous card game. Please correct me if im mistaken. If so then please why is there an animated 3d leader on my board? Whats he supposed to be? Is he like a harry potter magical chess figur? Are gwent cards 2 meters big? Honestly those are all rhetorical questions as i already know the answer: yea well sorry but in thronebreaker you do play the leader and the cards represent you very real armies, we couldnt care less about the immersion in gwent as thronebreaker is really all that counts. Sure this is just a minor issue and nothing one couldnt get used to but still it does leave a bad taste.
The Card Overhaul
When i started playing gwent i was amazed how complex this game was for just having the very simple goal of having more points than your opponent. I also really liked the consistency of the game (imo comparable to VS-System an old tcg from upperdeck entertainment which i liked a lot).
Now it kinda feels more like what i would have first expected after reading the rules.
You just put out points pretty much there doesnt seem to be the big plays you can make yourself and/or try to prevent your opponent from making because of your play. There is almost no more thinning (and i dont know what problem people have with drawing your whole deck or at least close to it, its not like it was really easy and there was no interaction there.). Draws are more game defining than before. Granted this is kinda a first impression as i didnt play much constructed after HC, i tried for 2 or 3 days and then rather played arena because i didnt really like it. Faction identity seems gone. It just feels way more random (missing tutors, 2 copies limit, no blacklisting in mulligans). Also the game flow really feels slower now a days .
All in all i do feel quite disappointed by homecoming, it doesnt really feel like an improvement at this point.
It could get better but i had my hopes up for HC and after that its really hard to get them up again for future patches.
It still has potential but imo not more or less but the same amount of potential pre hc gwent had with just a worse game to start.
And not to brag but to maybe add some weight to my post i would like to mention i have been playing tcgs for 20 years now, including multiple pro tours in mtg, pro circuits in vs-system, was legend in HS and tes Legends, played pro ladder in gwent and could list at least 10 more tcg/ccg i have played.
... That doesn't mean that it's objectively bad.
I also would like to respond to this, as this seems to be an argument Archpriest really likes and i have read it countless times in this thread.
Yes sir, the game is not objectively bad same as any movie or book or what have you. The one missing the point though is you. Nothing is objectively good or bad as those are just not objective attributes. Usually though people can agree on a consensus about what is good or bad, at least in their social circles. Looking at the Gwent forum as its social circle the consensus here seems to be that is indeed bad (at least from what i have read). Obviously that`s no prove for its objective badness, but yea well asking for prove for something being good or bad is just a strawman as neither good nor bad is ever objective.
I also read a few times that hc Gwent doesn`t really have more rng than ob or cb Gwent.
Whenever i read this i`m left wondering are you trying to kid me or yourself?
2 bronze limit alone adds so much more variance not to mention the loss of blacklisting.
About the more or less skill question, i can`t really say i have played much after hc (even though i planned to and was really looking forward to hc) but just from my first impression its seems like i have less decisions to make.
The lost row alone makes it kinda moot to consider in which row you want to play something.
Knowing the possible big plays in the game seems less important as there isn`t really that much you can do to play around the situations to make said big play possible, now it seems more like you either have a fitting answer like a removal to disrupt the big play or you don`t.
Personally by now i lost almost all interest in Gwent and it makes me a little sad. Will still look if the next patch brings any substantial improvements but after being hyped for hc my expectations are pretty low.
On the plus side, reading most of the after hc threads here made me look forward to Artifact and i guess i`m just gonna try that till the next Gwent patch, which is the last hope i have for Gwent.
