Compensation for Midwinter Patch Fail

[iamthedave]

Firstly, the game is of course CDPR's property. They can abandon it without a warning, make all cards 0,47 point just for fun, remove all golds just because someone in design team had a bad lunch, close the beta again just to include 39 people, make it possible to buy 50 points bonus every match, put monthly subscription, make Options button DLC or any ridiculous thing you can imagine and they don't have to explain why. But they chose not to do for a reason. We are not the guests here, they are the guests in our lives and they know it. We voluntarily invited these guests because we love hanging around with these fun and smart dudes. Their former actions proved them to be trustworthy and caring so no need to worry about leaving your pets, credit cards and house keys behind.

Have you ever heard the phrase 'if you build it, they will come'?

That's videogames in a nutshell. They built a thing, we've come to play. Not to mention your metaphor completely collapses because we are playing on servers they pay for and maintain. We are quite literally guests on their turf, and they could probably IP ban people if they wanted to. You can choose not to attend the GWENT house party, but the house party will go on without you, and the house will stand even if you leave. In fact, if we all left, the house would still be there, until the GWENT team decided to shut it down and go build another house and try to start another party.

So let's leave that metaphor behind, shall we?

They also know that mutual satisfaction is the best way to succeed. They are working hard and sweating over how to make things better not only for their personal satisfaction but for receiving end's (us) satisfaction. No sexual innuendo here.

I think you need to have a chat with EA, as they've definitely not got this memo. CDPR have a company ethic that emphasises the player experience over the traditional mental manipulations that a lot of developers have begun to use. They make - as a consequence - far less money than they probably could. Many people pointed out that the free content given away during Witcher 3's life cycle could easily have been sold as mini DLC and would, even as mini DLC, have been superior to a lot of the competition's comparable offerings, since they attached quests to a lot of the extra items and things they added. It was likewise pointed out that not one but both of the paid DLCs were sold at a ridiculously low price for the amount of content they contained, and that they could both have been sold as entirely separate games and still had more content than a lot of full price releases on the market.

Consequently gamers like CDPR but CDPR makes a lot less money than other companies that gamers hate, but whose games they can't stop playing. Any economics-minded person is going to point out that CDPR are factually less successful, and using less successful business practices. Accordingly, they choose to take the route of mutual satisfaction, not for success, as you claim, but because they just want to.

At its most cynical you could say they're trying to build a brand based on this, in the hope of attracting more disillusioned gamers down the road, but good PR is a long-term investment and not a reliable indicator of monetary reward.

Considering this one a valid and proper season is as cringy as explaining why it's not. It's a disaster season/patch that needed a rollback (yes that's impossible because it's way easier to fix apparent problems than reverting it back and dealing with a whole new number of unknown problems.) Player ranks and MMR in this season are far from their deserved values thanks to tons of faulty mechanics.

Which mechanics are actually faulty? As far as I can tell almost everything works correctly. I can't think of many bugs I've run into this season, or cards not doing what I think they're going to, or wolves spawning on the opponent's side of the board based on the order of playing moonlight.

-When worse players (misplaying countless times, oblivious to what a cards does, just playing same cards with the exact same order because the guide said so etc.) overcome better players (planning, predicting, customizing etc) by abusing a faulty deck thus preventing non-abusing players reach where they belong (may belong to R10 or 20. It's irrelevant)

How do you know they're a) worse b) misplaying 'countless' times as opposed to maybe one or two that you witnessed and c) are following a guide?

How do you know that they're beating better players, given most of those better players are either on pro ladder or using dorfs themselves?

What exactly is 'faulty' about dorfs? It's OP, yes, but it's entire strength comes from it being a near-faultless engine of point creation that leaves very few exploitable holes and is incredibly consistent, reliable, and not at all prone to bad hands (the achilles' heel of most good decks). The one true problem with dorfs is that it's the only such deck in the format. If the entire format had decks as powerful and consistent dorfs would be just another good deck, and you can easily argue that the best 'fix' to the dorfs situation is buffing every other faction to the same level; but buffs are very hard and nerfs are comparitively easy, so that's the safer route to take.

-When this abuse is rewarded with extra commodities and cosmetic stuff that's only obtainable by reaching a certain rank

it annoys me to the bits. This seasons ranking (neither high or low) is not an indicator for deserving the proposed awards. Premium weekend was a nice gesture yet what good is it when it's pointless to play that card?

Everyone uses the best thing in every game ever. Should players using the best gun in a Call of Duty game be banned because they're not as good as players using other guns? What about the ever-derided 'noob tube'?


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What good is a mundane avatar in a beta game that I probably won't even use? Rank avatars are, subjectively valuable, symbols for success. They should be indicating that person played well, bested many players and reached some higher level of play. Can you say that a regular dwarf player have it because he/she played well? Was it him/her or the "broken mechanic" itself that should have the avatar? For this once, its non-deserved value should be nullified by giving it away to every player.

Well... it doesn't. Sorry. It indicates you grinded a lot. And that's really about it. GWENT's rank up system actually favours less skilled players because you lose relatively few points for a loss, so luck of the draw means you'll hit enough weaker decks - or at least decks your deck of choice can beat - to maintain and slowly rise in rank. There's no real value anyway, and they gave away all the most iconic characters as the base avatars, save maybe Vilgefortz? He is the series' main villain after all.


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You are saying everyone and I'm saying a number of people. Way too many people are ABUSING it and that's punishing those who don't chose to ABUSE. You understand the difference between an "abuse" and "playing what they want" right? They don't want it. People who want to reach higher ranks are abusing this guaranteed way. I can find an exploit in game and abuse it to rank my way to the top and it would still be "using whatever means are available in the game." It wouldn't be my fault to discover an existing problem yet it's not normal to abuse it. Would you say "Oh sorry it's not your fault it was the programmer who made the mistake. Here, join Masters anyway"?

'playing' is not 'abusing'. You clearly are struggling with this difference. Emhyr returning opposing units to his hand is a bug. Any deck that used this bug to climb was abusing an exploit the game designers didn't intent or want in the game, and explicitly chimed in on a thread about it saying that they'd ban anyone who said how it could be accomplished, and anyone they actually caught using it.

It is not abuse to play the best deck in a format. That's what people who like to win at things do. It is unfortunate that the developers messed up the last patch enough that one deck in particular is pretty much the best.

Nobody is hacking your game. Nobody is hijacking the netcode to forcibly disconnect you and claim wins for free. They're just playing a really powerful deck.


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Of course I can craft a deck just to counter dwarves in most matchups but that can ONLY win against dwarves and occasionaly some others. Meanwhile dwarves don't even need to tech against any particular deck while having a higher WR of ANY other metadeck. No deck is Holy Grail but this is close to being one for now and that's no thanks of the player who steers it. That's why a number of people above some certain MMR level normally couldn't even imagine anchoring where they are let alone reaching there.

Christ on a bike, just run nekkers! They have a favourable matchup against dorfs and beat most of the rest of the field reliably as well. To the point some people are projecting them as the next doom on a stick when the dorfs finally fall. Look not at the trees, for the forest looms all around, and it is full of darkness and terrors. And nekkers eating things.


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As a retail worker, ever heard of something named "defective good"? I probably heard a lot more than I cursed when I was too in retail for years. Providers are owed a compensation when something isn't the exact experience they proposed. We are customers and of course I know that it never makes us owners or shareholders to the company just because we may have voluntarily paid them a small amount for some service or goods but If it wasn't for the money many people "sinked" in TW2, TW3 and Gwent, we wouldn't be talking here. Judging by the amount handed out in tournaments, I guess people sinked a nice amount of money.

As a retail worker who works in the games industry, I hear about it all the time, and a lot of the time my answer to the customer is 'no, you aren't entitled to a refund because you don't like the game you bought that works perfectly fine'.

And does it need to be said that you paid nothing to play GWENT anyway? Unless you bought kegs - and I know there's people who haven't, I've ONLY bought them to support CDPR and when I really wanted more scraps for something - you could have had about a year and a half of gameplay - of admittedly variable quality - completely free.

The one and only thing I'd consider a fair ask of CDPR over this is not to drop people's rank points as much at the end of the season, since points will be artificially lower for a lot of players. But hey, if I wanted to I could run dorfs and get to 4k. I just choose not to because I play this game for fun, not for arbitrary rewards that don't actually mean anything, and the dorfs deck makes me want to claw my own eyes out. I'm happy bobbing around at 3.5 with decks I enjoy playing instead.

 

[devivre]

I've been playing the game since day one if closed beta (and even played it before that a bit). Gwent has had several ups and downs, which isn't surprising considering the long time of development. I think you have to expect that a game like that will not always be great and sometimes require a lot of patience. I'm okay with that.

When it annoys me too much, I just take a short break and wait for the next balance patch. CDPR releasing a decent balance patch is usually more than enough "compensation" for me. So far that attitude has worked quite well for me

 

[SkippyHole]

As a retail worker, ever heard of something named "defective good"? I probably heard a lot more than I cursed when I was too in retail for years. Providers are owed a compensation when something isn't the exact experience they proposed. We are customers and of course I know that it never makes us owners or shareholders to the company just because we may have voluntarily paid them a small amount for some service or goods but If it wasn't for the money many people "sinked" in TW2, TW3 and Gwent, we wouldn't be talking here. Judging by the amount handed out in tournaments, I guess people sinked a nice amount of money.

What part of this game isn't the "exact experience they proposed"? The only thing you might have a point with is the bugs...if it wasn't for the fact that there is a big screen as you load in saying there are probably bugs as its a beta. Not to mention the fact that you haven't had to buy anything.

The sad thing is CDPR probably will give us something, because they want to maintain that "nice company" image. They definitely don't have to though.

 

[TheEpicWhale]

What i dont get is, if they agree that they made a mistake with dwarfs.

Why don't they just block certain cards from deckbuilding.

That is a very normal thing to do in CCG's

Just say: "Sorry guys, this card isn't working at the moment, so it goes on the bench until we have fixed it"

That seems like the way to go for me.

Now you have a great part of the playerbase (like me) facepalming when they go up against another brouver clone deck.

If, as a compagny you agree you did something wrong and you apologize for it, but then let it go on as it was. You basically allow people to "abuse" a mistake?

 

[Khreygond]

Because the problem are not the cards themselves, but the combos they allow access to, obviously.

Ithlinne is a pretty alright card when used without tremors. Dwarven agitators used to work fine before the update, no complaints. Dwarf decks might be very popular these days but you can't just ban the cards they use, which are used in other decks just fine.

 

[balKilen]

You do realize that by giving everyone the reward, the reward itself becomes moot precisely because everyone has it? That's why it's a terrible idea, regardless of whether compensation should be given at all, in the first place.

but the strategy of giving exclusive rewards for certain ranks is not a good option either. it pushes people to use op decks to climb up. but that should not be the purpose of a ranked ladder.

 

[Lisandre]

"Right to ask for compensation" Legally? No. Reasonably? Could be, but not in this case and not using these arguments. The game is in beta and is delivered "as is". Now, that might not be an excuse to leave the game in a messy state, but at the same time there is no grounds to ask for compensation as this stage .

I don't agree with this "compensation" stuff, but while the game still has this "beta" tag, it's fully monetarized , with even championships with large sums of money. CDPR needes to decide what game they are creating and stick to a direction, instead of trying dozens of new things each patch. Unless they act quickly, a really vast amount of players will simply go away before even they do the "official launch"

 

[TheNotoriousThree]

And no, sorry, salty is when people are complaining because they feel wronged, not people calmly pointing out why the reasons for asking for said compensation are absurd. Salty is saying you won't buy or open kegs again

You missunderstood me: I didn't say that because I'm salty or anything, I said it because it's just not worth buying or opening kegs right now in my opinion.

I call posts salty when you can sense that the person is angry or feels insulted. Which seems to be the case with all your posts when I read them.

 

[iamthedave]

You missunderstood me: I didn't say that because I'm salty or anything, I said it because it's just not worth buying or opening kegs right now in my opinion.

I call posts salty when you can sense that the person is angry or feels insulted. Which seems to be the case with all your posts when I read them.

Prime passive aggression there. Well done. I'm neither angry nor insulted, and am baffled by the amount of pure emotional posts on these forums that are made with seemingly little knowledge of the game itself and even less of the history of development of these games in general.

 

[m0bius8]

Yes absolutely. In addition, I'd like a new car, a better job and a new toaster. Mine doesn't toast bread the way it used to..

 

[Guest 4226291]

Compensation, really?



That statement you've made insults everyone that has reached rank 21, regardless of how they got there. Players can use whatever means are available in the game. If a deck is "broken", then it's not the user's fault for playing it, but rather a misstep by CDPR for introducing such a meta in the first place. Furthermore, you're talking about the Dwarfs like it's some Holy Grail. Yes, their popularity is so great, it has become unhealthy for the meta. But still, it's odd, though, because a lot of strong archetypes exist that can win from Dwarfs, which you've completely ignored, just because Dwarfs are so prevalent. Also, CDPR isn't punishing anyone. Players are free to choose whatever they want. It's just a shame that most of them picked the easiest option available in the form of Dwarfs.



You do realize that by giving everyone the reward, the reward itself becomes moot precisely because everyone has it? That's why it's a terrible idea, regardless of whether compensation should be given at all, in the first place.

Agreed. I mean of course it’s unfortunate that most people are netdecking a completely overpowered deck. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get rewarded for their grind

 

[TheShift]

​​​​​THIS THREAD​

 

[Philologus]

This makes zero sense; literally none whatsoever.

First of all, better players are not defined by what kind of deck they play, but by how well they can play it given the circumstances. Those players either have another deck that can beat Dwarfs (which I've already mentioned) or are actually just playing Dwarfs themselves. Better players will win most matches, except for a few that have bad RNG or have an Achilles Heel (e.g. Nekkers vs Sweers). Regardless, "non-abusive" players are not deserving of anything just because they do not play net-decks.

No.. it makes a lot of sense. You're just purposely avoiding the issue that altaybek illustrated concerning novices easily being able to pilot an OP dwarf deck, against more skillful players who refuse to netdeck that particular archetype. Are there other archetypes that would work against dwarf decks (e.g. consume) on a consistent basis? Sure. But, there isn't even close to enough diversity right now, to build original decks that do so, and will be competitive in ranked. As a result, one is left with the choice of "joining the crowd" of less skillful players who play such decks, or lose-out.

In this case, it's not a contest of skill, 4RM3D.

You seem to be very confused. You keep going on and on about abuse where there is none. Playing a Dwarf deck is not abuse. Playing whatever net-deck is not abuse. Before the hotfix, Emhyr could steal the opponent's unit. That is actually a case of being abusive by exploiting the game.

Defective goods do not apply to digital media. Are you going to ask the theater for a refund because you didn't like the new Star Wars movie?

Very cute, 4RM3D. You know what he meant by, "abuse".

 

[TheNotoriousThree]

Prime passive aggression there. Well done. I'm neither angry nor insulted, and am baffled by the amount of pure emotional posts on these forums that are made with seemingly little knowledge of the game itself and even less of the history of development of these games in general.

Passive aggression? I just pointed out that your posts seem salty to me. Nothing passive or aggressive about that. If you say you're not salty or angry I do believe you. And it's also not meant to be a personal attack or something like that, I have no hard feelings towards you or anyone else here whatsoever. Just wanted to make that clear since the discussion is taking a wrong direction, my apologies for that.

If the second part of your post was directed towards me, I don't know what role my knowledge about the game plays. Though I do know enough I think.

 

[iamthedave]

Passive aggression? I just pointed out that your posts seem salty to me. Nothing passive or aggressive about that. If you say you're not salty or angry I do believe you. And it's also not meant to be a personal attack or something like that, I have no hard feelings towards you or anyone else here whatsoever. Just wanted to make that clear since the discussion is taking a wrong direction, my apologies for that.

If the second part of your post was directed towards me, I don't know what role my knowledge about the game plays. Though I do know enough I think.

Fair enough. I accept your apology, and offer one in return.

 

[ZenaRose]

Game is broken AF. Why cdpr runs gwent open when game is broken for >1 month?
Today I just wanted to get 3 wins for 100 ore, 1st game Shupe knight who must kill 4- units just dont kill 3 MAHAKAM VOLUNTEERS with 4 str, just let them stay on board
Next game i banish Jan Calveit and my opponent just casually resurrects banished leader with Cahir
Dont mention 50% ranked is playing dorfs with 18 str bronzes
THX for bugs for 1 month! its great time to run tourneys when your game is broken down to hearthstone level

 

[OG.laloquaint]

Game is broken AF. Why cdpr runs gwent open when game is broken for >1 month?
Today I just wanted to get 3 wins for 100 ore, 1st game Shupe knight who must kill 4- units just dont kill 3 MAHAKAM VOLUNTEERS with 4 str, just let them stay on board
Next game i banish Jan Calveit with Letho and my opponent just casually resurrects banished leader with Cahir
Dont mention 50% ranked is playing dorfs with 18 str bronzes
THX for bugs for 1 month! its great time to run tourneys when your game is broken down to hearthstone level

Letho hasn't banished cards for quite some time lol. It'd be nice if you actually pointed out some ACTUAL bugs, because it doesn't seem like your experienced any in those matches. Everybody knows that Dwarves are overpowered at the moment. That's no bug.

 

[McBrou]

I don't have any problems with dwarfs decks in particular nor any deck that looks OP right now. But I truly miss the feeling I had when I first play Gwent (it was during last summer). I was a Hearthstone player tired of knowing my opponent entire deck after 2 turns and building my decks to beat what was trendy at any given time, and sometime forfeiting right away knowing my deck was not build to beat my opponent's deck.

Maybe it was the honeymoon effect of my new card game but Gwent offered something really refreshing, a game where any deck can beat any deck (with a minimum effort, of course) and where in-game decisions were making the difference. After the midwinter update, the game became more and more hearthstony. People were more complaining about OP decks. These decks are mostly easy to beat but you have to build your own decks with that in mind because they are overplayed. In this kind of game, I can't find the feeling I had at first.

I disagree with the original poster for the compensation thing. Don't give kegs when you make mistakes, just correct them. But I agree that there's something wrong with the core of this game as it is right now and CDPR should make it's priority to fix it. But even if the general feeling of the game is restored, we will always need some small balance changes every month, that's ok. I trust the develpment team for these small changes. I'm just not sure for the more complex, global change that need to be done.

 

[adorablepuppy]

I don't have any problems with dwarfs decks in particular nor any deck that looks OP right now. But I truly miss the feeling I had when I first play Gwent (it was during last summer). I was a Hearthstone player tired of knowing my opponent entire deck after 2 turns and building my decks to beat what was trendy at any given time, and sometime forfeiting right away knowing my deck was not build to beat my opponent's deck.

I think you just gave a compelling argument for why you should have a problem with the dwarf netdeck and other super popular meta decks. It's largely because they are run so much that you know your opponent's entire decklist after a couple of turns. Playing against same handful of zero creativity netdecks is about as boring as playing against AI, and being boring is the worst thing for a game to be.

Balancing is hard and will never be perfect, so I agree players shouldn't need compensation every time there's an imbalance. To their credit, CDPR clearly is trying to listen to players and I think they understand that something needs to be done with the meta. The question is how effective their changes will be.

 

[coralzombie]

You missunderstood me: I didn't say that because I'm salty or anything, I said it because it's just not worth buying or opening kegs right now in my opinion.

I call posts salty when you can sense that the person is angry or feels insulted. Which seems to be the case with all your posts when I read them.

I agree it's not worth buying kegs but I open the 4 or so I get everyday and today I got a total of 7 and I opened them all. I am just not using any of my scraps. I will hold onto those for the day they release more cards or fix the dwarf / consume idiocy that plagues the game. Today I stomped a Dwarf deck that did a 22? Point power play off of one card on the first play of round 1. It felt nice. It just shows you that ~67% of the player base here have no knack for strategy and they rely on the interwebs and players like Swim to tell them what and how to play.

Once the game gets balanced, if ever, those people will go the way of the dodo purely due to the fact that they are sheep wearing human flesh sacks and do not have the ability to think freely or creatively.

Hopefully, the game survives the population bubble burst once that happens but right now, these are the majority of players I come across.

Heck look at the decks that the players in the Gwent Open used to climb the ladder. That's not skill and showcasing the open as some sort of achievement is like ... Being proud of your kid because he is the best rodeo clown around.

I mean at the end of the day the kid is still just a rodeo clown. =/