Deep analysis of Journey performed by Game Director himself

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Introduction
There’s a lot of misunderstanding or misconceptions about what replacing crown rewards with the Journey system means for players that I wanted to take some time to clarify. It’s a long post, but hopefully, by the end of this we can have meaningful discussions on how to tweak and evolve this system in the future, so bear (roar…) with me. If nothing else, I hope this level of thought is at least interesting for some of you out there and reveals that we do spend time thinking about such things before releasing them.

Let’s start with some details we will base our math on. Some of this is probably not even realized or properly revealed yet. Now since you guys aren’t used to seeing how I prepare my data. Blue cells are static data. It’s values that I plugged in either from design or from a separate data analysis value. Green cells represent data that is calculated (often based on blue data).

TL;DR - Use sections to help you find the sections that interest you, and you can focus on conclusions if you don’t want the nitty-gritty.



Basic Stats regarding Journey’s leveling system
The table below represents base values for how progression in journey works. Note that since you technically start at level 1, your need to only level up 99 times to get all the rewards (not 100).
1585947530647.png
Conclusions:
2376 crown points is a lot, even over a period of 3 months. This also implies a heft CP per day requirement of over 28 which is also quite daunting. That is why further below we will discuss some of the systems that offset these requirements.



How many crown points do we get from a match on average?
In order to do calculations, we need this figure as statistically over time this will be the best estimation we can do as winning and losing streaks will still eventually resemble this calculation. It makes for a good basis for knowing how it works out on average and this is what it looks like:

1585947677848.png

Again, if you are good and win more than average, progress will be faster (and vice versa for losing streaks), but for the sake of this discussion let’s ignore how that feels in terms of progression for the player.

Conclusion:
On average you gain 1.18 CP per match naturally. This has not changed from the previous system.



How much CP from matches per hour can we get on average?

This calculation will give a rough indication of time commitment moving forward. Ignoring all bonuses, this can be calculated as follows and again this is an average. Matches can be faster or longer.

Also, this is likely not discussed yet, but there is a weekly limit to the # of CP a player can gain on a weekly basis of 100. It’s meant to prevent completing a journey too fast. Note that progression caps existed in the old system, however, we went away from daily caps, instead preferring to cap on a weekly basis to punish fewer players that can’t grind every day while still having a system that prevents infinite farming.

1585947874634.png

Conclusions:
Ignoring all other systems to supplement progression, this implies that it takes on average 403 hours spread over 12 weeks to reach max level, with a weekly average of almost 17 hours to reach max potential.

Also note, that with this alone, you can at max gain 50 of the 99 levels required to reach max, meaning that short of supplemental ways to get CP, you would fall short 49 levels from reaching max (eek).


How the well-rested bonus works

Every day, every player gets a well-rested bonus that gives players and additional CP for each round won regardless of whether they reached a cap (currently bugged, fix should come early next week at the latest). However, there is a daily limit of 14 that resets at the start of each day.

Ok, so this is a trickier one as mileage will vary depending on whether you are a casual player or a more aggressive player. It’s also subjective to your win rate, but we will go off Average per match for now.

1585948113403.png

Conclusions:
So if you are on a hot streak, you can consume the rested bonus in a little under an hour and a half which isn’t too bad. However, on average, it will take well over 2 hours to fully use up this system on a daily basis.

One cool aspect is it takes 2.4 hours daily on average to complete so this 14 bonus matches our previous section regarding CP gain 1:1

Another is at this point, though it requires daily dedication, it's already possible to reach level 100 without paying a cent (yay! Much better already!)



Diving into Journey Quests

But wait! There are more ways to progress. In order to help people joining later into a journey a chance to catch up, and to make it a bit less hardcore (2,4 hours, every day for 12 weeks sounds exhausting no?), we added in journey quests.

How do quests work exactly?
Players will have access to 2 quest chains, where quests will need to be completed in sequence relative to their chain. One chain of quests will be free, the other is tied to the purchase of an extended journey. Here are a few helpful facts to help understand how they behave.
  • Regardless of any purchase, both quest chains are active to ALL players. This means the quests actually progress and complete. (bugs to be fixed)
  • All players get rewards for the free quest chain as the quests are completed
  • Quest rewards for extended quests are only granted to those that purchased extended journey
  • Purchasing an extended journey after having completed extended quests will give rewards retroactively.
  • Each quest chain will receive 3 new quests per week.
  • Quests are not lost or removed until the end of the journey. This means if you join in the last week, you will have access free quest chain of 36 quests and an extended quest chain of 36 quests to progress but you will begin with the first quest. (total of 72 quests).

All quests give 20 CP upon completion and generally we aim to:
  • Keep them easily completable (avoiding grindy quests). Our general aim is for them to be completable with 2-3 matches.
  • If a quest requires you to play a specific mechanic like vitality, or assimilate, the goalpost of the quest should be relatively easy to reach.

If you have maxed out your journey, you can still complete the quests, but their rewards will have no effect moving forward.

Alright with that clarified, let's crunch some numbers!

1585948442296.png

Conclusions:
The average time to complete a week's chain is rather low at 1.5 hours a week. This means that relative to other ways to get CP, this is the least grindy way to gain CP by a rather large margin. Thus moving forward, especially considering the rather small requirement of 18 hours over 3 the course of 3 months, any calculations will assume you always get all the weekly quests CP as they become available.

For free players, completing quests can lower the amount of CP required to grind in other ways by up to 30%. This, however, assumes you don’t otherwise reach level 100 before the last week in a Journey in which case the quests will speed it up less. We are ok with this as this is meant as a catchup mechanic that also provides a burst every week for more casual players.

For players, this reduces the amount of CP required to get from a non-quest source by more than 60%!



How late can I join Journey without missing out?
Since quests grow the amount of RP you can reasonably get quickly, it's rather easy to find out how late you can join a journey and still be possible to grind for level 100. From earlier sections, we calculated that those with extended journey would only need to grind 936 CP from outside quests and that those without the extended journey would need to grind 1656 CP.

1585948516687.png

Conclusion:
It is impossible to reach level 100 when playing F2P after one month has elapsed in a journey
It is impossible to reach level 100 by only purchasing the extended journey after 2 months have passed.
The range at which players joining into an ongoing journey can still complete it is rather large, especially for F2P players.



How much RP is available in Journey?

There are some assumptions here on how RP is valued. Let’s take a look at what we currently have so there is no confusion:

1585948642924.png

Conclusions:
Both the total RP and Avg RP per level values will be useful in future calculations. We will also play with the idea of what increasing small RP to 3 would mean for the system.


END of Part 1 of hopefully 2 due to character and image restrictions
 
Part 2/2 continued from main post

How active were players in our old crown system?
In order to properly answer this question, we have to look at how our players actually behave. On an average day, where we haven’t just launched a new platform, the number of returning players eclipses statistically the existing player base. These values are taken as averages over several months and are thus representative of our actual active player base with an arguably negligible margin or error.


It is important to note that this DOES factor in getting an RP as a small reward directly but does NOT factor in the value of the other small rewards relative to RP. therefore the average value players are getting might be slightly higher than this table shows, but again, the value is rather low.

1585949613243.png

Conclusion:

This table shows that the average player really only gets about 2 RP a day which is really really far from the max 9 that is often discussed. This tells us that our old system failed (even taking small rewards into consideration) to provide meaningful progress to a significant % of our player base. We believe this is tied to the fact that progress is reset every day which results in players who only play a handful of games a day were not able to reach impactful milestones. This is the main motivator for why we changed from a daily system to a weekly system.



How much RP can a player get in 3 months?

In order to properly answer this question, we must discuss what happens when users reach level 100 on their Journey. The old crown system kicks in minus the small rewards previously available (they are gone). Considering all auxiliary systems that give rewards added to the game since the crown system was released, we decided to remove small rewards from the crown system that is available upon completing Journey. This means that the max RP obtainable once a Journey has ended is 6 RP a day. If we factor in small rewards with RP equivalent values, small rewards could be worth roughly 4 RP a day resulting in a max RP per day in the old system of 10 RP!


Let’s look at our old system in pure ways

1585949661625.png

Now let's look at the max a F2P player can achieve in the new system

1585949692718.png

And finally, let's look at those that are F2P after only purchasing extended journey (no fast travel)

1585949723136.png

Conclusions:

Both Free 2 play players and extended players are actually gaining less RP per day when a Journey is active than when it's not. This actually reveals itself to be rather troubling. One of the reasons for this was the swapping of RP rewards in Journey for cosmetics at the last second without verifying their economic impact.



What about increasing the weekly cap?

Considering what we just discovered above, we played with increasing the RP gained in Journey but ultimately weren’t very satisfied with the results. It required a significant increase in RP given in Journey and we would rather tackle it from a progression speed angle since that is causing greater concern for players.

Let’s say we doubled the weekly limit to 200, what would that look like?

1585949806745.png

That certainly made the extended journey players experience seem more impactful, however free 2 play players are still not quite hitting a nice ratio. Playing with it more, we decided we liked a much higher limit of 350 CP a week.

What does this look like?

1585949858721.png

At this threshold, players will get more RP per day on average than those who have completed the Journey regardless of whether they purchased the extended journey and this feels much better. Looking at all the other data it has some nice knock-on effects as well.

Factoring other sources of RP, F2P players will be able to grind over 200 RP a month, making things like seasonal trees more accessible if that’s what drives you.

1585949888023.png

The thresholds for how late you can join a Journey without missing outlook much healthier.



Closing Statements

Yup, this system is indeed less generous for those that play an average of 11 hours or more a day. By a rather large margin actually. However, for roughly 88% of players, it will now feel more generous (provided everything is working as intended). This is related to the way quests work which reduces the CP grind required by 30% for free players and 60% for those that purchased extended Journey. They do this despite only requiring an average of 7,5 hours a week (or a bit over an hour a day) AND being completable at any time before the journey ends. Considering that you will progress with the rested bonus and regular CP progression while completing them, if you play semi actively over the duration of a Journey, reaching level 100 is much less daunting and averages roughly the same CP as someone who completed 2 CP milestone every month (more if you purchased extended).


That being said, this analysis doesn’t factor in our other sources of RP generation available to players such as rank season transitions or daily login or daily quests or contracts or prestige level bonuses. Despite the loss of small rewards in the old crown reward system (which kicks in once a journey is completed), we feel that players have ample tools to progress at their rhythm. This comes with a side note. We need to do a few things and ask your patience:

  1. The weekly cap should be increased to 350.
  2. Several bugs need to be ironed out including how the daily bonuses work.

However, I have one ask here. You have demanded from us that we communicate more, and as some of you have rightly pointed out, what is best is a discourse, not us just telling you how it is. This entire thread is part of our commitment to transparency and to show we are listening. By showing you how we think, we are opening the lines of discussion. However, I would ask some of you to be more open-minded and to show some restraint regarding the use of pointy pitchforks so soon after a change is enacted. I believe we have shown that while we are capable of mistakes, we are vigilant in regards to listening, reacting and adapting our solutions to try and make Gwent the best game possible.


Lastly, since I’m posting this Friday before going to sleep, please be patient with replies.
 
Thank you for this incredibly detailed breakdown Jason!

The insane overtime on a Friday evening (more like night) is very much appreciated.
 
What happens when someone completes Journey? Is it possible to win more reward points using the old system or you can't do anything more for the rest of the duration of Journey? I think that's the only question that I can't figure out entirely with this post.

By the way, awesome job, this is the best update since Homecoming.
 
I never thought i'd optionally be reading detailed info breakdown on a Friday night by choice.
Thanks for the transparency, detail and continual dedication to the game we all love.



(Also for making me have to re-write about 50% of the article I was about to publish ;) )
 
Thanks for the detailed analysis, a place where everything was ordered was needed. :beer:

When you personally showed the new system I preferred to analyze it in the simplest way, playing a few games.

This was my result (Ignoring the quests after the first and without buying the Geralt path)

Svalbloodisapotato.png



Quests.png


One hour daily is the average required by the MtG season pass, the only difference I see is that you can stack the missions and do them every 3 days if you don't want to always play.
That reduces the generic time required by the levels and it is quite important to keep that in mind.

Apart from that, the times are reasonable and the price / profit ratio is highly favorable to the player without a doubt.


When it comes to rewards, I think this is a very good topic.
Giving the chance to choose between various cosmetics in the pass is necessary, additionally increases the value of the pass.
https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...-the-battle-pass-journey-experience.11028488/

Suppose that Geralt's designs are on a tree and the pass gives us points for that tree, we could access the one we like quickly if we are from the beginning or secure it if we arrive very late. It is the same as with the premium versions in the MtG season pass, we unlock points and then redeem them in a tree where we choose where to start.
Of course there should be something unique for reaching the highest level, but with choices in between in other ways.

I like this new system, I keep waiting for Ciri :sleep:
 
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Mardak

Forum regular
Wow. So many details. It's really interesting to read through all of it. Thank you very much and continue with your great work!
 
Thank you sooo much for giving us a peak into your data, Jason! I really appreciate it, as a small part of the community I'd like to assure you that we can see how much hard work you put into all this and we couldn't pray for a better or more dedicated director. Don't bother with unique messages on Reddit, maybe just brush through the general response but most importantly: keep up on the good work and don't care about the pitchforks, you the best! :D
 
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation of the mechanics and the reasoning behind it and commitment to changing the weekly cap and fixing bugs.
Wish a bit that this sort of analyses came with the patch notes that way we would prevent a lot of the hysteria that took place in certain Gwent places.

Also please look into fixing the transmute card mill bug that has impacted several players and come up with a solution that would compensate the huge loss as a result of it.
 
WOW. I have played Gwent since the closed beta, I've spent 2800 hours in this game and I enjoy Gwent as never before, but communication is still being the Achilles heel of yours. Nevertheless, I do think that the last but one paragraph of Your post is probably the most powerful message from game director I've ever read.

And that is why I really believe that You are the best person in charge that we could have possibly got. Since you've taken over the project, every patch brings something fresh, every month the game environment is getting better and better.

I even started to publish some videos on YouTube, in hope that I will encourage new players to try what the best game I've ever played has to offer.



I do see all your hard work and I feel so grateful for all the changes that you constantly pull up, that I started to spend money on skins, cardbacks and boards. What I would really like you to understand, is that we all LOVE YOU! We would support You even if changes were bad. But we are not really keen on being treated as people of low intelligence. Trust in our abilities, and we will all be grateful, supportive and understanding as never before.

To finish my lengthy comment, I will say this: You should hear a solid portion of our gratitude and voices of excitement on a daily basis, but the problem is that as a rule, the most vocal, are those players, who are not only (from various reasons) dissapointed with the game, but most importantly, indeed aware of how much more communication you should provide (and because of how little they know before every change, they feel not trusted).

I would like to personally thank you for the changes in MP economy, for all the expansions, for sticking to your rewarding policy, for your nerves of steel and for this specific post that I am reffering to. The post that shows how much responsible you feel for this game. Thank you, sir. I wish you all the best, and I hope that you will share with us more of your concepts, because knowing Your point of view is critical when it comes to the attitude of most persistent players.

I gues this sums all this situation up brilliantly:
sumsd.PNG


Once again, thank you for explaining this math and I wish you all the best. THANK YOU, WE LOVE YOU JASON!
19680000 - Walter Veritas.png
(I am sorry for my bad english but I am not a native speaker of this language and it's really late, that's why I found it diffcult to both express what I was thinking and manage to write it in some fashionable way - I only hope I didn't make it too hard to understand :D)
 
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It was a pleasure to read, thanks. I love going through this type of data-backed reasoning, felt almost like reading a research paper ;) I was so tired of seeing all the entitled nonsense people on Reddit been coming up with... so, I guess, next time maybe make a post like that first to shut them down before they start doing their own "math".

Honestly, Gwent never felt better (minus some critical bugs... for example - and I reported it already - on PC I can't use the new ST ability at all - decks won't save if I switch to it, the game basically freezes during the "saving" state and I have to ALT+F4, so I'm looking forward to a fix).

Keep up the good work and stay healthy!
 
Thank you for this very detailed and interesting breakdown of the relevant data. I love the new progression system very much. It is much more flexible and the premium path is full of great flavourful cosmetics for people who like that. Also the option to spend money to progress to a certain point is a very thoughtful feature for people who do not have the time to unlock everything.

My only quarrel with the Journey system was that the weekly crown limit of 100 seemed rather low. Especially for players like myself who play a lot in one week followed by very little in the next one. It just feels really disheartening that if I play a lot for 3 days the rest of the week is not worth it anymore in terms of progress.

Therefore I am very happy that in your analysis you come to the same conclusion that the weekly limit should be raised.

In general the new progression system feels much nire flexible and smooth compared to the old one. Grinding these extra few games just to get to the 18 crown threshold was really annoying sometimes. I much prefer the continuous approach in Journey where every game counts. The quests and daily bonus crowns are very generous and give a nice speed up every week / day, so that I as a player realize the progress I make.

TLDR: Good job on the new progression system and great analysis. Thanks for sharing.
 
Jason that was amazing work. I have played this game since Beta on XBOX, the changes (including end of console) have been many, but you are always fair, and Jason you have been a real “game changer”😆

So many jump to negativity so fast the ink has not dried on the paper yet.

The one thing not calculated in your tables is the true gravy....this system is way way way way way way way way more fun than the old one, and that is what really counts in a game. Moreover, the awesome prizes in this system are just fantastic. Just loving my Geralt, my new coinflip, and so much more.....

Thank you for all you have done 🍷🍹🍷
 
We asked for more communication and transparency and I'm struggling to see how much more transparent you can communicate this. I also note you're posting this late, late, late on a Friday night and well outside office hours so thanks for that but don't make it the norm - I'd rather you stick around than burn out.
As for the maths involved, I'll leave that to people better able than me to follow and dissect it than me. What I will say is that on the face of it the changes you've made seem reasonable and I'm more comfortable with them now after reading this post.
My last comment is that the changes implemented are quite confusing; it was only after reading a Reddit FAQ post that I really understand how everything now works. I'd suggest taking that FAQ and including it on the official website.
 
Introduction
There’s a lot of misunderstanding or misconceptions about what replacing crown rewards with the Journey system means for players that I wanted to take some time to clarify. It’s a long post, but hopefully, by the end of this we can have meaningful discussions on how to tweak and evolve this system in the future, so bear (roar…) with me. If nothing else, I hope this level of thought is at least interesting for some of you out there and reveals that we do spend time thinking about such things before releasing them.

Let’s start with some details we will base our math on. Some of this is probably not even realized or properly revealed yet. Now since you guys aren’t used to seeing how I prepare my data. Blue cells are static data. It’s values that I plugged in either from design or from a separate data analysis value. Green cells represent data that is calculated (often based on blue data).

TL;DR - Use sections to help you find the sections that interest you, and you can focus on conclusions if you don’t want the nitty-gritty.



Basic Stats regarding Journey’s leveling system
The table below represents base values for how progression in journey works. Note that since you technically start at level 1, your need to only level up 99 times to get all the rewards (not 100).
Conclusions:
2376 crown points is a lot, even over a period of 3 months. This also implies a heft CP per day requirement of over 28 which is also quite daunting. That is why further below we will discuss some of the systems that offset these requirements.



How many crown points do we get from a match on average?
In order to do calculations, we need this figure as statistically over time this will be the best estimation we can do as winning and losing streaks will still eventually resemble this calculation. It makes for a good basis for knowing how it works out on average and this is what it looks like:


Again, if you are good and win more than average, progress will be faster (and vice versa for losing streaks), but for the sake of this discussion let’s ignore how that feels in terms of progression for the player.

Conclusion:
On average you gain 1.18 CP per match naturally. This has not changed from the previous system.



How much CP from matches per hour can we get on average?

This calculation will give a rough indication of time commitment moving forward. Ignoring all bonuses, this can be calculated as follows and again this is an average. Matches can be faster or longer.

Also, this is likely not discussed yet, but there is a weekly limit to the # of CP a player can gain on a weekly basis of 100. It’s meant to prevent completing a journey too fast. Note that progression caps existed in the old system, however, we went away from daily caps, instead preferring to cap on a weekly basis to punish fewer players that can’t grind every day while still having a system that prevents infinite farming.


Conclusions:
Ignoring all other systems to supplement progression, this implies that it takes on average 403 hours spread over 12 weeks to reach max level, with a weekly average of almost 17 hours to reach max potential.

Also note, that with this alone, you can at max gain 50 of the 99 levels required to reach max, meaning that short of supplemental ways to get CP, you would fall short 49 levels from reaching max (eek).


How the well-rested bonus works

Every day, every player gets a well-rested bonus that gives players and additional CP for each round won regardless of whether they reached a cap (currently bugged, fix should come early next week at the latest). However, there is a daily limit of 14 that resets at the start of each day.

Ok, so this is a trickier one as mileage will vary depending on whether you are a casual player or a more aggressive player. It’s also subjective to your win rate, but we will go off Average per match for now.


Conclusions:
So if you are on a hot streak, you can consume the rested bonus in a little under an hour and a half which isn’t too bad. However, on average, it will take well over 2 hours to fully use up this system on a daily basis.

One cool aspect is it takes 2.4 hours daily on average to complete so this 14 bonus matches our previous section regarding CP gain 1:1

Another is at this point, though it requires daily dedication, it's already possible to reach level 100 without paying a cent (yay! Much better already!)



Diving into Journey Quests

But wait! There are more ways to progress. In order to help people joining later into a journey a chance to catch up, and to make it a bit less hardcore (2,4 hours, every day for 12 weeks sounds exhausting no?), we added in journey quests.

How do quests work exactly?
Players will have access to 2 quest chains, where quests will need to be completed in sequence relative to their chain. One chain of quests will be free, the other is tied to the purchase of an extended journey. Here are a few helpful facts to help understand how they behave.
  • Regardless of any purchase, both quest chains are active to ALL players. This means the quests actually progress and complete. (bugs to be fixed)
  • All players get rewards for the free quest chain as the quests are completed
  • Quest rewards for extended quests are only granted to those that purchased extended journey
  • Purchasing an extended journey after having completed extended quests will give rewards retroactively.
  • Each quest chain will receive 3 new quests per week.
  • Quests are not lost or removed until the end of the journey. This means if you join in the last week, you will have access free quest chain of 36 quests and an extended quest chain of 36 quests to progress but you will begin with the first quest. (total of 72 quests).

All quests give 20 CP upon completion and generally we aim to:
  • Keep them easily completable (avoiding grindy quests). Our general aim is for them to be completable with 2-3 matches.
  • If a quest requires you to play a specific mechanic like vitality, or assimilate, the goalpost of the quest should be relatively easy to reach.

If you have maxed out your journey, you can still complete the quests, but their rewards will have no effect moving forward.

Alright with that clarified, let's crunch some numbers!


Conclusions:
The average time to complete a week's chain is rather low at 1.5 hours a week. This means that relative to other ways to get CP, this is the least grindy way to gain CP by a rather large margin. Thus moving forward, especially considering the rather small requirement of 18 hours over 3 the course of 3 months, any calculations will assume you always get all the weekly quests CP as they become available.

For free players, completing quests can lower the amount of CP required to grind in other ways by up to 30%. This, however, assumes you don’t otherwise reach level 100 before the last week in a Journey in which case the quests will speed it up less. We are ok with this as this is meant as a catchup mechanic that also provides a burst every week for more casual players.

For players, this reduces the amount of CP required to get from a non-quest source by more than 60%!



How late can I join Journey without missing out?
Since quests grow the amount of RP you can reasonably get quickly, it's rather easy to find out how late you can join a journey and still be possible to grind for level 100. From earlier sections, we calculated that those with extended journey would only need to grind 936 CP from outside quests and that those without the extended journey would need to grind 1656 CP.

Conclusion:
It is impossible to reach level 100 when playing F2P after one month has elapsed in a journey
It is impossible to reach level 100 by only purchasing the extended journey after 2 months have passed.
The range at which players joining into an ongoing journey can still complete it is rather large, especially for F2P players.



How much RP is available in Journey?

There are some assumptions here on how RP is valued. Let’s take a look at what we currently have so there is no confusion:


Conclusions:
Both the total RP and Avg RP per level values will be useful in future calculations. We will also play with the idea of what increasing small RP to 3 would mean for the system.


END of Part 1 of hopefully 2 due to character and image restrictions
When update without bug's?
p.s
sry fo my bad english
 
Thank you for your work and your time !
I"m aware we need to wait till next week but atm for me it's far from clear to understand what I need to do on daily/weekly basis.
Also drop in some card transformation discount before MP changes. Or even better - dont do this.
 
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