Deep analysis of Journey performed by Game Director himself

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Well, good math. But in your calculations how much RP can be obtained by increasing the weekly limit, you do not take into account one fact. Or consciously manipulate it. And this is where the root of the problem lies. By increasing the weekly limit to 350 CP, you say - "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. "
Yes, everything is getting good. But only if you received 350 CP per week. What does 350 mean per week? To be precise, its 192 rounds per week (350 minus 60 from quests and minus 98 from the bonus). That is 27 rounds per day. At the same time, you give statistics that say that 88.75% of players play no more than 6 rounds per day. So, ACTUALLY for this overwhelming majority, there will be no changes from increasing the weekly limit to 350. The system will not be more generous to them. Because these 88.75% of the players will receive 148 RP in 84 days against the 168 RP of the old system by playing 6 rounds a day. So your statement is wrong - "However, for roughly 88% of players, it will now feel more generous (provided everything is working as intended)." The same applies to players who played 6 and 12 rounds per day - they will receive 299 RPs against 336 RPs of the old system in 84 days. My math: (18x7) + (14x7) + 60 = 284 CP per week. All you need 2376. 2376: 284 = 8 weeks and 3 days to get level 100. That means the old system returns for 25 days - 25x4 = 100 RP + 199 from travel = 299 RP.
All these calculations are in the range of 84 days. But there are 365 days in a year. If all subsequent journeys will give the same RP. That means player who played 6 rounds a day will receive 86 RP less per year. And those who played 6 and 12 rounds a day will receive 160 RP less per year. And this is essential.

Conclusions: This means that positive changes from increasing the weekly limit to 350 will only be felt by players who earn these 350 CP per week. According to your statistics, this is about 1.5% of the players (27 rounds are in old system 4 RP from 6 and 12 rounds a day + 9 rounds, suppose that during this time 1 more RP is obtained. In the sum of 5 RP, which in your statistics is indicated as 1.5% players). So for the remaining 98.5% of the players, including those who play quite a bit, the new system is still more greedy.

P.S. It is also worth paying attention to this interesting idea - do not you think that the players are not opposed to the fact that they will receive less ore, scraps, meteorite dust due to less RP. It worries everyone that they will not be able to complete seasonal trees. And that means they will not be able to receive cosmetics, and especially cardbacks. Perhaps it is worth reducing the cost of seasonal trees? Because of this, they will provide fewer resources, but players will be able to complete seasonal trees and get all the ornamets from there. For example, unlocking seasonal trees, with the aim of to geting cardbacks, that what drives me.
 
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You are saints, you really deserve all the money we spend for how transparent you are, hopefully you will continue to support the game for years, for my part I will gladly spend the money to support you
 
Congratulations Jason, this is the type of response expected from a leader: as fast as possible, neat, and backed with data.

The analysis is very good with all the variables taken into account. You did reply with the analysis for the highest population getting, the ones getting 2 RP through CP, and those going for the maximum available. I would like to add the calculation for those of the 2nd highest population getting RP, those aiming for 4 such as myself. By replacing the the values of "Max RP from crown rewards", in the 2 tables before the conclusion, by 84 and 140 (that is # of days * 4 RP), the F2P player will get 3.5 RP/day in the new system though all the journey, and the player that bought the extended pass will get 4.59 RP/day.
 
Why not play with raising both RP rewards and weekly cap? Wouldn't this help both grinders and semi casual players that feel their RP economy took a nerf?

Right now I feel like I should play around 2 hours a day, and my reward will be that I achieve the old system, since that yields me more RP. If you only raise the cap, I'll feel like I have to play 4+ hours a day to reach that as soon as possible (which I might not even achieve until the last weeks), and the new system would feel more like a grind towards the old system.

I guess what I'm saying is that I would like to be excited to play the journey and get the journey rewards during the whole time it lasts, and not feel like I have to get it out of the way as soon as possible.

With that said, all games makes mistakes on updates, but sometimes I feel that this is the only development community that actually cares about the players.

This post made me realize that I should buy this journey instead of investing in another ccg, where I feel that they only do calculations about how to get my money.

Thank you.
 
Slama. This is a level of communication to be applauded for.

Whether we Agree with you or not (or whether the news is good or bad), please keep up this level of detail in the future when large changes are implemented.

Good luck solving the glitches, though as a console veteran I will say this release never would have passed console QA. Still, this is a good way to bring a Geralt Avatar into Gwent. Good luck.
 
thanks for the post jason. god knows that i didnt like your first streams a year ago, and i still find some of them vage, but this is proof of accurate explanation, and shows why youre the manager up there.

i dont post on forums, but if you did the effort to this out of your office work the least i can do is login here and say thank you

at last, a word of advice. please, try to move in advance over a possible negative community feedbacks and have this kind of things ready. if you take this post and convert it into a stream the day before publishing you would have saved a lot of the s#itty ranting in reddit.
 
Kudos for this effort to explain the thoughts and calculations behind the new system. If only you would do this before implementing stuff, thereby potentially avoiding some sh*tstorms. Some advise: Create a communication plan.

Reading this post I was thinking: All these calculations for vanity stuff, but where are the detailed explanations and discussions about balancing cards and mechanics? That's the core where the game is truly lacking in many players' opinion. Some decisions in the recent patch show this once more. I'm sure if players enjoy a game a lot they would be happy to work for vanity stuff and even pay for it, but not when having to grind with unbalanced, frustratingly broken mechanics. Get the priorities right: improve balancing and mechanics to create a really good card game, then monetize the sh*t out of it.

Edit, add: All those bugs are not acceptable. This is not a beta. Give us the good old CDPR quality.
 
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After reading OP last night, i think that most of the player base that "pick up the pitchforks" aren't mad at devs for changing the system from daily to weekly and the changes that we saw of prestige lvls but it's because those changes weren't communicated good enough with the player base. And I think that new system weren't tested (was poorly/not enough tested) by enough content creators/players so Gwent dev team to see and check different opinions and to try to make it better balanced or to not feel less rewarding than previous system (because i am sure lots of players thinks that the current weekly system is less rewarding than previous daily one). I think dev team tries to pander to those that think that there weren't enough ways to bring enough reward points for every node in rewards trees. Also, a lot of players are back/ came up with Android release, the new leader abilities and 1 thing that many of us wanted is to be able to use favorite heroes from The Witcher ( Geralt as the main character is auto win for lots of fans of The Witcher) as leaders so they are back and they are playing and grinding those rewards/lvls. That will lead to burnout at some point for one part of the player base. We'll see how that system will pay off in the future for CDPR and us. Again, that's my personal opinion/view of the changes from patch 6.1.
N.b. Hearthstone allowed some of it's biggest content creators to see/tried/test new changes that are coming with the newest patch and it allowed them to show soem of the stuff. I think Gwent can do same thing or something of that sort- invite some of CC's to a ptr to test that system and then collect their opinions.
P.s. thank you, Slama for that analysis and post.
 
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Lastly, since I’m posting this Friday before going to sleep, please be patient with replies.

This is great. What a relief to get this concrete information about the new system. It was not so easy to understand how it works just by looking at it and using it.

Thanks!

A question that stuck in the back of my head a bit is how this system will work out for people who play irregularly, say 3-5 days a week, and perhaps many hours on those days. Or alot 1 week, and nothing the next week. From what I gather, it should still not be a problem to complete the journey in time.

From what I understand, the system is best/worst in the following order:
- Best for players who play only some games, but every single day.
- Good for irregulars/casuals
- Hardcore/pro players will take a loss in reward points
 
I must say I'm very satisfied with your quick response and new 350 cap. Honestly originally I didn't want to buy the battle pass since you guys Decided not to add any GRIFFIN armor set variation for Geralt but now I will definitely purchase it.

just communicate more with us and Most importantly do TRISS MERIGOLD battle pass next thanks.
 
Hey Slama! I notice your posts get the most praise while Bruza's get some flak, every now and then! Do you and he have a "Good dev, Bad dev" arrangement? Where he posts the "inflammatory" posts, while you post the "positive changes" posts?:p

Edit: Also.........I appreciate you guys responding to our queries and cutting us some slack regarding the weekly cap! You're the best!:cool:
 
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Hi Slama,

Thank you for the detailed analysis. I am in the category of 2 RP per day so this system is actually more rewarding for me in general. If I hadn't purchased extended Journey, I'd still make more RP than previously.
One way to help with this might be to have minor rewards as part of the journey system, maybe 1 for every 6 crowns.
so 6 crown = ore, 12 crown = RP, 18 crown = scrap, 24 crown = level reward.
That way you can push out an extra 99 RP as rewards to help bridge the ratio gap, especially for players in the 3-6 RP per dat category who're probably losing out the most here. Journey's great, but once the weekly quests run out, it'll probably feel more grindy for many of us who'd usually play for the 6 crown points and now will need double of that every day after the quests are complete. If it lands on a level where the reward is a cosmetic, it becomes a bit worse there. That is why I feel that having minor rewards here would help with some of that.
 
@SlamaTwoFlags thank You for Your post and hard work. I like new system.

I just wondering. The cap limit will be increase. Player who play a lot, get Journey faster. But than what? What do You get for CP if You finish Your Journey? Cap limit and Journey isn't it a system of interconnected vessels?
 
Thanks to the OP for the detailed communication, this is most welcome. The analysis presented appears to extrapolate the current playing data and represent it upon the new system with a view to making it acceptable to the majority of users. My observation on this is that when you change the system, there could be a change in the player usage of that system, therefore it could be useful to re-examine the data after a period of time.

I will use my own situation as an example. I've been playing Gwent for about a year and play most days. I'm not one of the better players, I probably only win around 30% of the games I play. Nevertheless I enjoy pitting my ageing wits against others and also enjoy collecting the cards. So in order to facilitate increasing my collection I would normally play daily until I had won six rounds, however many matches that was. Under the new system that is likely to change; firstly winning 24 rounds is a lot to achieve for me so I won't see a daily achievement (although I applaud the fact that I can retain progress). The overall goals I also perceive as well beyond my reach so that's a disincentive. So I think that I'll be playing less Gwent as a result. Analysis of future usage by all players should reveal if I'm an anomoly or represent a reasonable proportion of the Gwent playing community.
 
THANK YOU, @SlamaTwoFlags. May I say it is especially good to see this posted on the official forum from CDPR rather than elsewhere. I wish you and the entire Gwent team nothing but the best; you are all working hard and doing the best you can do under difficult circumstances. Mistakes will be made, but the last time I saw you on a developer stream you did indeed appear to be human! Especially during these difficult times, please stay healthy and continue to be the good father that it sounds like you are! :)

I have said before that I cannot imagine anyone other than you in charge of our favorite game, and will continue to say that. You are indeed an asset to CDPR and your strong passion shows. As others have said more communication in advance or with a release would help, but you also have another job to do....namely, heading the developing of our favorite game!

Now, please give me the email of your immediate supervisor so we can recommend a bit of a pay raise for you.
 
It doesn't help that progression is so bugged right now. For example after the latest patch to the journey system the first free track weekly quest line completed but no CP were awarded, and completely unable to complete anymore of them on this path.

Will these be awarded retrospectively after the fix? All for trying a new system before assessing it, but that system should at least work.
 
Gwent keeps getting better and better ! Yes, there are some minor bugs to be fixed, but HOLY MOLY this is <3 .

I just have a question.

Can I buy the premium pass now and later the 25 lvl jump if I decide for a smaller price?

Thanks
 
Thank You for the detailed analysis. It’s much appreciated.

My thoughts about it:

  • The Increase in the weekly limit is a welcome change but it should be completely removed. There is no reason to cap it since you guys sell Fast path.
  • The Small Rewards removal will hurt resources income pretty hard, especially for new players. It should be compensated somehow. For example, by making Daily quest rewards RP Only or Journey RP rewards a bit higher.
  • The premium Journey is fine, I have no problem paying money for it if it doesn’t hinder F2P players.
  • New RP Bonuses from Prestige 6-8 doesn't work. Is it a bug ?
  • Last but no least, it’s too bad you don’t address the MP changes concerns as the new MP Economy is clearly more grindy than the old one.
 
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