Anniversary level 100 Feedback and Suggestions
Three days ago I finally reached 100th level, I guess it’s fair to say that I’ve seen if not everything but most of the things that were released in this game. I didn’t spend any real life money on kegs. I have been playing plenty with all sorts of decks and all sorts of strategies and have been playing quite successfully (gaining on average a level per 1h 40 min). Gwent delivers tons of fun overall and I has been enjoying it a lot. What I like the most is creating a new deck to try out new synergies with a new leader and seeing it finally work and becomes a winning deck. For me it’s has much more fun than playing a near optimal deck and winning most of the time. Lately though matchmaking pitted me pretty much against people with very similar to each other decks that exploits optimal strategies for each faction, which made it boring due to lack of variety of those strategies (I hope things improved after the patch, I haven’t played after a patch yet, I need a break).
The best part of the process was when very few people had an access to all the cards and decks were made of whatever they had trying some simple synergies. Every time I had access to new cards I tried to think how and whether they can make my decks better. That was exciting experience and I’ve been glad that I was on the very first wave of people with beta access, meaning that the evolution of decks was gradual and I’ve rarely been in situations where my deck was outclassed purely by relatively better cards and not by the pick of strategy.
There are several things that I personally think could have been better. Gwent is way too random. Randomness can be strategic and tactical.
For example, strategic randomness is when you build a strategy against/for a certain mechanics it fails the moment you don't have the cards you need in your hand. Like if you play weather strategy and have no weather in your hand despite having a lot in your deck it sort of pointless to play, you're going to loose unless your opponent has no clue how to play. Or if you play a strategy that requires a Savage Bear present and you have no single bear in your initial hand you’ll likely loose. And if with bronze cards strategies are more or less reliable, for silver cards they are sketchy. To get the right combo you need to have a silver card in your hand, which in the best case probability is only about 50%. It can be affected by some leaders abilities but not all of them.
Tactical randomness is the famous monster ability, which decides whether you will have a foglet (aka nothing) in the beginning of the last round or you will have Eredin with strength 10. It can be a decisive factor who wins the game, especially in monster vs monster matches. Another randomness is elven mercenaries which cast random spells. D-bomb is almost a must in against certain opponents but elven mercenaries may cast it randomly at the time you don’t need it or cast a commander horn at the time when nothing is on the board to boost. It can also be a decisive factor. Another tactical randomness is the drawing a last card before the last round. I had many games where that last card decided if you won or lost. One gets a unit card another gets an adrenaline rush with no other cards present, due to this random event someone wins and it has nothing to do with players’ skills.
I won’t say that everybody like less random but a significant amount are. Therefore it would be great if we had several or even custom playing formats. For example, I think it would be better if instead of totally random hand the player would have to choose either 3 bronze cards he wants for sure in hand, or 1 bronze + 1 silver, or 1 gold card. Other cards are picked randomly without possibility to change. This will give us several improvements. We'll be able to prepare to certain opponents, i.e. if you face Dagon, get clear sky in hand, if you play against scoia'tael or northern kingdoms then d-bomb is handy. The probability of initial bad hand will be greatly reduced. The last draw can be solved in my opinion by either not drawing any cards before the last round (draw 3 cards before round 2) or by choosing the last card from the rest of the deck (whatever you want, pick your best, or 1 out of last 2 or 3). So, if there will be a separate mode of playing, less random or more random then people will be able to choose what they like and play by those rules. If there will be custom mode then even better. Someone creates a ‘channel’ with specific rules, which are visible before entering (how many initial cards to draw/how much to discard/how much to substitute, how many cards between rounds and in what form to pick, how many rounds to play, the min/max size of the deck, etc.). Such channels should show how many people are there and going to play this style. Some formats will be unpopular, some popular, and the ‘community’ will converge to certain most interesting options. Obviously, such format will require a lot of players to be viable, work from the CDPR programmers and a different interface.
Another mode I would like to see is the deck designer competition. It goes like this. Players are given random amount of cards of various kind and amount (equal sets for both opponents). They are given 5 minutes max to create a viable deck out of those cards. After that in the set of 3 matches you play your opponent to determine who’s created a better deck and saw better combos. After a match both players are given 30 seconds to modify/improve their decks. If someone wins 2 matches it’s overall victory. Since you’re not guaranteed that the random set will have any existing exploits and both players will be have an equal opportunity, I think it might be pretty interesting game mode.
Three days ago I finally reached 100th level, I guess it’s fair to say that I’ve seen if not everything but most of the things that were released in this game. I didn’t spend any real life money on kegs. I have been playing plenty with all sorts of decks and all sorts of strategies and have been playing quite successfully (gaining on average a level per 1h 40 min). Gwent delivers tons of fun overall and I has been enjoying it a lot. What I like the most is creating a new deck to try out new synergies with a new leader and seeing it finally work and becomes a winning deck. For me it’s has much more fun than playing a near optimal deck and winning most of the time. Lately though matchmaking pitted me pretty much against people with very similar to each other decks that exploits optimal strategies for each faction, which made it boring due to lack of variety of those strategies (I hope things improved after the patch, I haven’t played after a patch yet, I need a break).
The best part of the process was when very few people had an access to all the cards and decks were made of whatever they had trying some simple synergies. Every time I had access to new cards I tried to think how and whether they can make my decks better. That was exciting experience and I’ve been glad that I was on the very first wave of people with beta access, meaning that the evolution of decks was gradual and I’ve rarely been in situations where my deck was outclassed purely by relatively better cards and not by the pick of strategy.
There are several things that I personally think could have been better. Gwent is way too random. Randomness can be strategic and tactical.
For example, strategic randomness is when you build a strategy against/for a certain mechanics it fails the moment you don't have the cards you need in your hand. Like if you play weather strategy and have no weather in your hand despite having a lot in your deck it sort of pointless to play, you're going to loose unless your opponent has no clue how to play. Or if you play a strategy that requires a Savage Bear present and you have no single bear in your initial hand you’ll likely loose. And if with bronze cards strategies are more or less reliable, for silver cards they are sketchy. To get the right combo you need to have a silver card in your hand, which in the best case probability is only about 50%. It can be affected by some leaders abilities but not all of them.
Tactical randomness is the famous monster ability, which decides whether you will have a foglet (aka nothing) in the beginning of the last round or you will have Eredin with strength 10. It can be a decisive factor who wins the game, especially in monster vs monster matches. Another randomness is elven mercenaries which cast random spells. D-bomb is almost a must in against certain opponents but elven mercenaries may cast it randomly at the time you don’t need it or cast a commander horn at the time when nothing is on the board to boost. It can also be a decisive factor. Another tactical randomness is the drawing a last card before the last round. I had many games where that last card decided if you won or lost. One gets a unit card another gets an adrenaline rush with no other cards present, due to this random event someone wins and it has nothing to do with players’ skills.
I won’t say that everybody like less random but a significant amount are. Therefore it would be great if we had several or even custom playing formats. For example, I think it would be better if instead of totally random hand the player would have to choose either 3 bronze cards he wants for sure in hand, or 1 bronze + 1 silver, or 1 gold card. Other cards are picked randomly without possibility to change. This will give us several improvements. We'll be able to prepare to certain opponents, i.e. if you face Dagon, get clear sky in hand, if you play against scoia'tael or northern kingdoms then d-bomb is handy. The probability of initial bad hand will be greatly reduced. The last draw can be solved in my opinion by either not drawing any cards before the last round (draw 3 cards before round 2) or by choosing the last card from the rest of the deck (whatever you want, pick your best, or 1 out of last 2 or 3). So, if there will be a separate mode of playing, less random or more random then people will be able to choose what they like and play by those rules. If there will be custom mode then even better. Someone creates a ‘channel’ with specific rules, which are visible before entering (how many initial cards to draw/how much to discard/how much to substitute, how many cards between rounds and in what form to pick, how many rounds to play, the min/max size of the deck, etc.). Such channels should show how many people are there and going to play this style. Some formats will be unpopular, some popular, and the ‘community’ will converge to certain most interesting options. Obviously, such format will require a lot of players to be viable, work from the CDPR programmers and a different interface.
Another mode I would like to see is the deck designer competition. It goes like this. Players are given random amount of cards of various kind and amount (equal sets for both opponents). They are given 5 minutes max to create a viable deck out of those cards. After that in the set of 3 matches you play your opponent to determine who’s created a better deck and saw better combos. After a match both players are given 30 seconds to modify/improve their decks. If someone wins 2 matches it’s overall victory. Since you’re not guaranteed that the random set will have any existing exploits and both players will be have an equal opportunity, I think it might be pretty interesting game mode.