Critical analysis about current patch, and serious thoughts about Gwent`s future
Apologizes for my poor English to begin with. But a Chinese player as I am, I have been playing Gwent the Witcher Card Game(GTWCG in short) for months since the days of the launch of close beta version and had been an all-along witness of the always-tremendously changes of the game as the versions going onward: Indeed, in the patches past，the GTWCG production team has done a good job almost all along the versions. However, here with the advent of the winter “great” update, what I see is something disastrous: the game experience was ruined with quantities of problems from the UI designation to some unforgivable server matters and the least of compare among them, the new balance system, but there were not only the in-game problems above, the Production team shall be also guilty as charged this time. When I take glances in all kinds of BBSes from Reddit to even Baidu posts (I`m in China after all), there are all kinds of complainants speaking about almost everything in every ways about the new patch, that`s the last thing I would call “positive” for any game. And here in the article, I do not think we`ve got the necessity to show any more instances (I believe you`ve got someone who take salary by looking at them). So enough side talks, let`s get to something juicy: Indeed, this update is LARGE, and CDPR wanted it to be a LARGE present for players, for both veterans and amateurs. But quality-based speaking, the patch brought nothing as good as those who came before, it was not a present, it is a total DIASASTER.
Possible underestimation about the workload made by Project managers
First things first, let`s talk about something about the production team. Before that, let me tell my story to prove myself qualified for comments: I'm a mobile game tester working for a Chinese game company (contact me for further details). Last month, our producer said, ” Here comes Christmas. Do you want a bonus? Then just be ready to break your back: if our game granted itself with a recommendation on Google play or some other app store that counts(like Apple`s), then there would be a bonus.” Later, we were told that a big-scale update shall be brought about before Christmas. Sounds like a Mission Impossible, right? Desperation was wandering like a spectre when the deadline was delivered to us, but no one dared to come up with any objection. One thing more to mention is that, no one in our project is specifically responsible for project management, it shall be producer`s work. But the producer just dived himself into playing PUBG and we are left all on our own.
Before the update, our game is a Chinese-only on both matters of servers and localization. After the winter update, it`s now granted with a ridiculous localization support for extra 9 languages, 4 new patterns and even a global server available(All is ridiculous enough for any kind of one-month work). You can't imagine how stressed our work was in the last month: We`ve got a month of endurance filled with overtimes till at least 9 o 'clock P. M., and not a day was off on weekends. If you find someone didn't come to work today, he must have stayed up all last night. Thankfully, our game was eventually recommended by Google play and was selected for the best update of apple store China.
Still, there were quantities of bugs in the even latest patches. We have to fix them in the next and next and next hot fixes because there is no Christmas break for us. To be honest, I really hope that someone in our project will take the responsibility for the project schedule so that we won't have to work overtime in the days before next Christmas.
Let's move on to the winter update of GTWCG. In my opinion, the matter our team suffered from shall just be the same the GTWCG project is suffering. Half a year ago, I was looking forward to the Thronebreaker, new model and new cards. Later, I was told that the new campaign would be postponed. I comforted myself: that's ok, and there would be LOTS of new cards released with the winter update. But when the winter update really came along, I realized that this update was also a shortcut production. Usually, the game testers would be able to pick out most of the system problems and identify the priority and severity of them. Then they could send the programmers to do their debug magic on the basis of priority. Sometimes those not-so-serious bugs will be spared from instant solution and being mended at the following hot-fixes if the deadline is approaching fast and working overtime won’t help. According to my own experience, never shall the production team lower their requirements for product quality UNLESS such things happens in such a absurd time. It seems that the development team is tired of dealing with the multi-line works. And this time, I hope the team can learn from it. After all, Mahakam was not built in a day, so won`t a good and ACCOMPLISHED game.
Changes of GTWCG in the years past
One thing to admit is that the GTWCG team is very “dynamic”. Every time when the meta environment seems to be petrified, then a large-scale patch would nuke it away, and make all the things anew. This would cause many cards and even basic game mechanism to change, or even renewed. I can say that not much production teams in the world would dare to make so much decisive changes when a game is still in the phase of public beta. Everyone has noticed that the base model of card has gradually expanded, some of the most distinctive combos and some OP abilities are all gone. The Depth of the game system designation shrinks, but somewhat worthy for the game’s balance and competitiveness to improve.(But still, I miss the faction specialties, it`s Witcher world game after all.) I really miss those crazy combos in close beta, but I know for a better Gwent, we need some serious sacrifices.
So much innovation has gone through, but the imbalance between the offensive-defensive players is still a serious problem as it always used to be. The community has given so many solutions and I highly recommend this one: one of the players make the compensation points of offensive, another one choose to be the offensive or defensive side. This method is permanent because meta would be a nice field to find out the fair compensation points.
It’s quite strange that Gwent winter update is now making RNG a main part of the version. Indeed, balancing fun and competition is scale hard enough to balance with. One simple solution is set up a new model where you can use some crazy cards full of randomness. And of course, I believe CDPR would be creative enough to found a better way.
Another thing I have to point out is that those cards which can create certain spies like “HYM” really destructive to other players’ game experiences, unless the opponent also add “HYM” to his/her decks or remove spy from their decks which make it worse. You need to be very careful when designing cards related to something that is able to shift the offensive/defensive relation or more directly, cards in hand. Maybe I'm just over-worried, but the the offensive/defensive shifting spies are just good designs, and I don`t want to see them disappear in the future.
I know GTWCG would keep itself updating, maybe we could see more tremulous changes, what I only hope is that, the CDPR could still keep acknowledged about what they want in mind.
Will mobile Gwent make Gwent better?
We often hear people say: we need mobile Gwent. In the past, I would laugh at them and say: there are so many units in six rows that no smart-phone can run it lag-free, not to mention those florid premium cards. However, this update limits the number of units in a single row. It seems that mobile Gwent has been on the agenda. I don’t exclude mobile Gwent because the main stream players(most of them prefer games on mobiles) really need it. My only concern is whether the mobile version will impede the designs in the PC game itself from UI to cards. I’m afraid we can no longer watch exquisite animation effects of cards or any complex card ability just for fitting in a new runtime platform. Mobility requires a lot of sacrifice, but do not lose the soul of Gwent.
I know this is an imposition that can we keep designing complex special effects for PC but simplifying them for mobile devices? That is what Hearthstone is doing, and whatever is PROVED itself to be a good idea.
Gwent in China
GAEAMOBILE CO., LTD is the current operator of Gwent in China. But not only in my opinion, GAEA is now regarded as an operator of no qualification for such a good game. Text errors occur in almost all versions, including the absence of character library and the unforgivable errs in the description of the card abilities. In this winter update they made mistakes AS USUAL. Another thing to mention is that I am also running tests about game`s word localization for my company. Different from localization, this is a simple and boring progress, all you need is patience and time. But I have never seen anyone or any company making mistakes so ridiculous, and so often. I guess there should be very few localization testers in GAEA and the time given is quite short. What’s more, GAEA's broadcasting is also far below any kind of satisfactory, this even make the players and streamers in China losing their faith toward the game, some of the streaming platforms are even closing the Gwent section only for there is no enough propagand in the views to make the game popular in the future. Even during latest Gwent challenge, there were frequent lags took place in the streaming, which remained unresolved the next day. In Japanese streaming platforms, that`s what they call a streaming accident. That`s just way too much from any simple mistakes.They didn`t even think about the users who made themselves back to the Chinese server would be in demand of logging to the CDPR forum, I suggest they were just not wise enough to consider about customer needs and wants.The account I am using now is newly registered, and the original GOG account cannot be logged into the forum.
I’m glad to hear that CDPR had set up a Chinese branch. What I hope is that, in the future the localization work of Gwent could be rearranged by some way much more dependable localization groups like Indienova to ensure everything would be beautifully and accurately shown to the Chinese players, just like what was said in the former documentaries. And I would be of more than any greatest joy to have a chance of taking part into the works of Chinese branch if they needs someone good at field testing of GTWCG and knowing well about game testing, so big the world is, and so many game companies, one company for a nation exists only in some extremely-special conditions, so I hope they could find someone to help them do as Romans do in Rome .
“I forgive you. This time”
After a year of hard work, you guys really need a good rest. As a game tester, I can imagine how hard it is to make so many updates in a year with so few mistakes. If you could learn from the current disaster and I’m sure GTWCG would become one of the best Collectible card games, ever.
I wish you a merry Christmas.
P.S. Don’t forget giving kegs for the bugs of winter update when you come back.
Apologizes for my poor English to begin with. But a Chinese player as I am, I have been playing Gwent the Witcher Card Game(GTWCG in short) for months since the days of the launch of close beta version and had been an all-along witness of the always-tremendously changes of the game as the versions going onward: Indeed, in the patches past，the GTWCG production team has done a good job almost all along the versions. However, here with the advent of the winter “great” update, what I see is something disastrous: the game experience was ruined with quantities of problems from the UI designation to some unforgivable server matters and the least of compare among them, the new balance system, but there were not only the in-game problems above, the Production team shall be also guilty as charged this time. When I take glances in all kinds of BBSes from Reddit to even Baidu posts (I`m in China after all), there are all kinds of complainants speaking about almost everything in every ways about the new patch, that`s the last thing I would call “positive” for any game. And here in the article, I do not think we`ve got the necessity to show any more instances (I believe you`ve got someone who take salary by looking at them). So enough side talks, let`s get to something juicy: Indeed, this update is LARGE, and CDPR wanted it to be a LARGE present for players, for both veterans and amateurs. But quality-based speaking, the patch brought nothing as good as those who came before, it was not a present, it is a total DIASASTER.
Possible underestimation about the workload made by Project managers
First things first, let`s talk about something about the production team. Before that, let me tell my story to prove myself qualified for comments: I'm a mobile game tester working for a Chinese game company (contact me for further details). Last month, our producer said, ” Here comes Christmas. Do you want a bonus? Then just be ready to break your back: if our game granted itself with a recommendation on Google play or some other app store that counts(like Apple`s), then there would be a bonus.” Later, we were told that a big-scale update shall be brought about before Christmas. Sounds like a Mission Impossible, right? Desperation was wandering like a spectre when the deadline was delivered to us, but no one dared to come up with any objection. One thing more to mention is that, no one in our project is specifically responsible for project management, it shall be producer`s work. But the producer just dived himself into playing PUBG and we are left all on our own.
Before the update, our game is a Chinese-only on both matters of servers and localization. After the winter update, it`s now granted with a ridiculous localization support for extra 9 languages, 4 new patterns and even a global server available(All is ridiculous enough for any kind of one-month work). You can't imagine how stressed our work was in the last month: We`ve got a month of endurance filled with overtimes till at least 9 o 'clock P. M., and not a day was off on weekends. If you find someone didn't come to work today, he must have stayed up all last night. Thankfully, our game was eventually recommended by Google play and was selected for the best update of apple store China.
Still, there were quantities of bugs in the even latest patches. We have to fix them in the next and next and next hot fixes because there is no Christmas break for us. To be honest, I really hope that someone in our project will take the responsibility for the project schedule so that we won't have to work overtime in the days before next Christmas.
Let's move on to the winter update of GTWCG. In my opinion, the matter our team suffered from shall just be the same the GTWCG project is suffering. Half a year ago, I was looking forward to the Thronebreaker, new model and new cards. Later, I was told that the new campaign would be postponed. I comforted myself: that's ok, and there would be LOTS of new cards released with the winter update. But when the winter update really came along, I realized that this update was also a shortcut production. Usually, the game testers would be able to pick out most of the system problems and identify the priority and severity of them. Then they could send the programmers to do their debug magic on the basis of priority. Sometimes those not-so-serious bugs will be spared from instant solution and being mended at the following hot-fixes if the deadline is approaching fast and working overtime won’t help. According to my own experience, never shall the production team lower their requirements for product quality UNLESS such things happens in such a absurd time. It seems that the development team is tired of dealing with the multi-line works. And this time, I hope the team can learn from it. After all, Mahakam was not built in a day, so won`t a good and ACCOMPLISHED game.
Changes of GTWCG in the years past
One thing to admit is that the GTWCG team is very “dynamic”. Every time when the meta environment seems to be petrified, then a large-scale patch would nuke it away, and make all the things anew. This would cause many cards and even basic game mechanism to change, or even renewed. I can say that not much production teams in the world would dare to make so much decisive changes when a game is still in the phase of public beta. Everyone has noticed that the base model of card has gradually expanded, some of the most distinctive combos and some OP abilities are all gone. The Depth of the game system designation shrinks, but somewhat worthy for the game’s balance and competitiveness to improve.(But still, I miss the faction specialties, it`s Witcher world game after all.) I really miss those crazy combos in close beta, but I know for a better Gwent, we need some serious sacrifices.
So much innovation has gone through, but the imbalance between the offensive-defensive players is still a serious problem as it always used to be. The community has given so many solutions and I highly recommend this one: one of the players make the compensation points of offensive, another one choose to be the offensive or defensive side. This method is permanent because meta would be a nice field to find out the fair compensation points.
It’s quite strange that Gwent winter update is now making RNG a main part of the version. Indeed, balancing fun and competition is scale hard enough to balance with. One simple solution is set up a new model where you can use some crazy cards full of randomness. And of course, I believe CDPR would be creative enough to found a better way.
Another thing I have to point out is that those cards which can create certain spies like “HYM” really destructive to other players’ game experiences, unless the opponent also add “HYM” to his/her decks or remove spy from their decks which make it worse. You need to be very careful when designing cards related to something that is able to shift the offensive/defensive relation or more directly, cards in hand. Maybe I'm just over-worried, but the the offensive/defensive shifting spies are just good designs, and I don`t want to see them disappear in the future.
I know GTWCG would keep itself updating, maybe we could see more tremulous changes, what I only hope is that, the CDPR could still keep acknowledged about what they want in mind.
Will mobile Gwent make Gwent better?
We often hear people say: we need mobile Gwent. In the past, I would laugh at them and say: there are so many units in six rows that no smart-phone can run it lag-free, not to mention those florid premium cards. However, this update limits the number of units in a single row. It seems that mobile Gwent has been on the agenda. I don’t exclude mobile Gwent because the main stream players(most of them prefer games on mobiles) really need it. My only concern is whether the mobile version will impede the designs in the PC game itself from UI to cards. I’m afraid we can no longer watch exquisite animation effects of cards or any complex card ability just for fitting in a new runtime platform. Mobility requires a lot of sacrifice, but do not lose the soul of Gwent.
I know this is an imposition that can we keep designing complex special effects for PC but simplifying them for mobile devices? That is what Hearthstone is doing, and whatever is PROVED itself to be a good idea.
Gwent in China
GAEAMOBILE CO., LTD is the current operator of Gwent in China. But not only in my opinion, GAEA is now regarded as an operator of no qualification for such a good game. Text errors occur in almost all versions, including the absence of character library and the unforgivable errs in the description of the card abilities. In this winter update they made mistakes AS USUAL. Another thing to mention is that I am also running tests about game`s word localization for my company. Different from localization, this is a simple and boring progress, all you need is patience and time. But I have never seen anyone or any company making mistakes so ridiculous, and so often. I guess there should be very few localization testers in GAEA and the time given is quite short. What’s more, GAEA's broadcasting is also far below any kind of satisfactory, this even make the players and streamers in China losing their faith toward the game, some of the streaming platforms are even closing the Gwent section only for there is no enough propagand in the views to make the game popular in the future. Even during latest Gwent challenge, there were frequent lags took place in the streaming, which remained unresolved the next day. In Japanese streaming platforms, that`s what they call a streaming accident. That`s just way too much from any simple mistakes.They didn`t even think about the users who made themselves back to the Chinese server would be in demand of logging to the CDPR forum, I suggest they were just not wise enough to consider about customer needs and wants.The account I am using now is newly registered, and the original GOG account cannot be logged into the forum.
I’m glad to hear that CDPR had set up a Chinese branch. What I hope is that, in the future the localization work of Gwent could be rearranged by some way much more dependable localization groups like Indienova to ensure everything would be beautifully and accurately shown to the Chinese players, just like what was said in the former documentaries. And I would be of more than any greatest joy to have a chance of taking part into the works of Chinese branch if they needs someone good at field testing of GTWCG and knowing well about game testing, so big the world is, and so many game companies, one company for a nation exists only in some extremely-special conditions, so I hope they could find someone to help them do as Romans do in Rome .
“I forgive you. This time”
After a year of hard work, you guys really need a good rest. As a game tester, I can imagine how hard it is to make so many updates in a year with so few mistakes. If you could learn from the current disaster and I’m sure GTWCG would become one of the best Collectible card games, ever.
I wish you a merry Christmas.
P.S. Don’t forget giving kegs for the bugs of winter update when you come back.
.