I'll discussed across several posts, because it's pretty lengthy, the points I dislike the most about Homecoming, and I think should change to make the Gwent experience better, I'll also propose some suggestions.
Mulligans Tied to Leaders, Mulligan Carry-Over, and Blacklisting.
The mulligan system being tied to the leader balance is probably the decision I agree the least in Homecoming.
It means perceived stronger leaders are more dependent on their draws than perceived weaker ones, which is completely the opposite of what Gwent used to be. Draw dependency was never really a thing, of course you could have bad draws like any card games, but you also had ways to control it thanks to the same mulligans across the three rounds. The current system is quite discouraging and not particularly fun for leaders with low mulligan, it also means the game can quite easily be unbalanced if a perceived weak leader, such as Eithné, gets more mulligans, but even if the right balance is found, we’d still have the draw dependency issue which is a huge limitation. It’s very telling that the meta is shaping around the leaders with the highest mulligans, it’s also due to the fact that the Trio Witchers is very much unbalanced, more on that later, and low mulligan leaders cannot take the risk to run them, but even without them, higher mulligan will always mean better consistency, and consistency is always better than whatever your leader ability is.
Moreover, the carry-over nature of mulligans means if you have a bad opening hand, you either keep it to save your mulligans for the last rounds, where they matter the most, but then you’ll have a disadvantage in the first round, which means you might lose it and open yourself to bleeding, or you use (some of) them to improve your opening hand, but then you might not have enough mulligans to fix your hand in the later rounds. Therefore, the mulligans carrying-over throughout the rounds has a huge impact on the game, because a bad opening hand can have dire repercussions until the last round, it’s even more striking for leaders with low mulligans. It’s make the players once again more vulnerable to the randomness of draws, and Gwent used to offer control over that aspect of the game, this is what a lot of players loved about it, and might be why a lot of players are disheartened about Homecoming.
At last, the lack of blacklisting is just the cherry on top of the cake, it just piles up with the issues mentioned above, and I don’t need to tell you how hilarious it is to use your one mulligan with Arachas Queen to get the same card back.
You created a very solid system to balance the game with provisions, the question is why wouldn’t you use it to balance the leaders rather than using another resource like the mulligans, which just brings more issues than it supports interesting gameplay. I’d rather have leaders costing provision than having them balanced around mulligans, because everybody should have the same opportunities to improve their hand, and therefore consistency, no matter how strong their deck might be.
I’m going to give a quick example, I haven’t done the maths so I’ll just use random number, but if we take the current 165 provision limit for the deck, increase it to 180 provision, and add a provision cost for leaders where the stronger ones have a provision cost of 20, and the weaker ones a provision cost of 15, therefore stronger leaders will have to sacrifice 5 provision from their current decks, which balances leaders during the deck building as stronger leaders will have to sacrifice stronger cards. Of course those numbers are certainly not right, and we’d need to find the right balance, but this way of balancing is goes perfectly with the deck building philosophy of Homecoming and doesn’t create in game issues, none that I see at least.
If leaders were balanced around provision, then we could go back to the classic three mulligans round one, with a fourth for the blue coin player, one for the second round, and another one for the third, with none of them carrying-over.
Binary Cards
It already was an issue in the beta of Gwent with the early days of weather, and here again we have the same issues of cards designed to counter one thing, being row effects of artefacts, but become totally unusable if those type of cards are not played. It's quite simple those hard counters are never worth being played, outside maybe of a Bran Discard deck, because you always run into the risk of having them brick hard in most games, and it’s why you’ll always run something like Frenzied D’Ao which guarantee value. Therefore, cards like White Frost, Clear Skies (…) should get secondary weaker abilities which would make them somewhat useful outside of their hard counter situation, this is why Clear Skies got Rally in the closed beta.
Furthermore, not only the hard counters are binary but so are their targets, being artefact and to a lesser extent row effects. In the case of artefacts, you simply cannot interact with them if you don’t have dedicated removal, as discussed above, when artefacts used to be cheaper it created particularly unfun decks which lacked any sort of interactions. It also makes order units much weaker, because they’re much easier to control with damage removals or locks, and of course if you play those order units or any sort of damage removals/locks you won’t be able to interact with the opponent’s board filled with artefacts, in that sense you don't commit a lot playing artefacts. It’s not so much an issue after the increase in the provision cost for most artefacts, but I’m not sure this increase in cost really fixed the issue of the lack of interactivity, as artefacts remain very binary, you either have an answer or not, and it remains a huge issue in Arena. Therefore, having some artefacts needing a unit adjacent to them in order to work would make them more interactive, as you could remove said unit or move it, it’ll also promote good positioning.
As for row effects, you can more easily play around them so they aren’t too binary, that being said, the removal of the third row exposes players a lot more to row effects particularly combined with movement, the Dragon’s Dream plus Nivellen combo cannot be played around at all, though it’s more of a balance issue as Nivellen should move a set number of units instead of all of them.
At last, I’d like to talk about cards that hard counter some archetypes without much counter play, the worst offender here is Xavier Lemmens, which just completely annihilates Beast Discard, Ghouls, and any cards interacting with the graveyard. It’s not an issue of provision cost, but design, the card has to change because as long as such cards exist, some archetype are doomed to fail in the ladder, and while graveyard hate should exist, it shouldn't exist to that extent.
Similarly, Usurper is another example of a rather binary counter which is also impossible to play around, and because of his ability Usurper gets no mulligan, and as we discussed above it doesn't make him a very fun leader to play, or to play against. In the PTR feedback thread I saw the following suggestion from someone whose name I don't remember:
Usurper
It keeps the same disable effect, but because it's charge base it means Usurper has to be more mindful about how to use his ability, it's more tactical and should promote good reads, or strategies. In any cases, Usurper has to be reworked one way or another, otherwise he'll always be a nightmare to balance and not a very fun leader.
Setups and Finishers in the Same Turn
We already talked about the infamous artefacts decks, but another reason why they were so strong, and why control decks are still insanely strong, is because they can line-up to setup their finishers right before using them in the same turn. It leads to combos that are almost impossible to counter, unless you play very proactively every turn before that, and leaves little to no room to reactive counter plays. If we look at beta Gwent and control decks such as Scorch’tael, they always needed one turn to line-up for a good Scorch setup, and then the next turn they could use their Scorch, which left one turn for the opponent to potentially disrupt the line-up, it was good for the gameplay as it promoted careful use of resources to disrupt those line-ups, and miles away from the infuriating and barely interactive board/row wipes we currently suffer in Homecoming.
It’s clearly not an issue regarding the provision cost of Epidemic, Scorch, Igni (…), even though some of those finishers such as Regis or Schirrú are clearly too strong because of their ability, "infinite" waves of damage for Regis and Zeal for Schirrú, so increasing their provision cost like artefacts is not going to fix anything. The issue comes from the ability to use orders before playing cards. Orders from units, artefacts, and leaders shouldn’t be able to be used before playing any cards, but they should be enabled after playing a card. I’ve seen the suggestion of having a Deployment Phase where orders cannot be used and only cards can be played, followed by an Order Phase once a card has been played and its ability resolved, where orders can but used.
[Part 2 in the fourth post, I was struggling with the character limit]
Mulligans Tied to Leaders, Mulligan Carry-Over, and Blacklisting.
The mulligan system being tied to the leader balance is probably the decision I agree the least in Homecoming.
It means perceived stronger leaders are more dependent on their draws than perceived weaker ones, which is completely the opposite of what Gwent used to be. Draw dependency was never really a thing, of course you could have bad draws like any card games, but you also had ways to control it thanks to the same mulligans across the three rounds. The current system is quite discouraging and not particularly fun for leaders with low mulligan, it also means the game can quite easily be unbalanced if a perceived weak leader, such as Eithné, gets more mulligans, but even if the right balance is found, we’d still have the draw dependency issue which is a huge limitation. It’s very telling that the meta is shaping around the leaders with the highest mulligans, it’s also due to the fact that the Trio Witchers is very much unbalanced, more on that later, and low mulligan leaders cannot take the risk to run them, but even without them, higher mulligan will always mean better consistency, and consistency is always better than whatever your leader ability is.
Moreover, the carry-over nature of mulligans means if you have a bad opening hand, you either keep it to save your mulligans for the last rounds, where they matter the most, but then you’ll have a disadvantage in the first round, which means you might lose it and open yourself to bleeding, or you use (some of) them to improve your opening hand, but then you might not have enough mulligans to fix your hand in the later rounds. Therefore, the mulligans carrying-over throughout the rounds has a huge impact on the game, because a bad opening hand can have dire repercussions until the last round, it’s even more striking for leaders with low mulligans. It’s make the players once again more vulnerable to the randomness of draws, and Gwent used to offer control over that aspect of the game, this is what a lot of players loved about it, and might be why a lot of players are disheartened about Homecoming.
At last, the lack of blacklisting is just the cherry on top of the cake, it just piles up with the issues mentioned above, and I don’t need to tell you how hilarious it is to use your one mulligan with Arachas Queen to get the same card back.
You created a very solid system to balance the game with provisions, the question is why wouldn’t you use it to balance the leaders rather than using another resource like the mulligans, which just brings more issues than it supports interesting gameplay. I’d rather have leaders costing provision than having them balanced around mulligans, because everybody should have the same opportunities to improve their hand, and therefore consistency, no matter how strong their deck might be.
I’m going to give a quick example, I haven’t done the maths so I’ll just use random number, but if we take the current 165 provision limit for the deck, increase it to 180 provision, and add a provision cost for leaders where the stronger ones have a provision cost of 20, and the weaker ones a provision cost of 15, therefore stronger leaders will have to sacrifice 5 provision from their current decks, which balances leaders during the deck building as stronger leaders will have to sacrifice stronger cards. Of course those numbers are certainly not right, and we’d need to find the right balance, but this way of balancing is goes perfectly with the deck building philosophy of Homecoming and doesn’t create in game issues, none that I see at least.
If leaders were balanced around provision, then we could go back to the classic three mulligans round one, with a fourth for the blue coin player, one for the second round, and another one for the third, with none of them carrying-over.
Binary Cards
It already was an issue in the beta of Gwent with the early days of weather, and here again we have the same issues of cards designed to counter one thing, being row effects of artefacts, but become totally unusable if those type of cards are not played. It's quite simple those hard counters are never worth being played, outside maybe of a Bran Discard deck, because you always run into the risk of having them brick hard in most games, and it’s why you’ll always run something like Frenzied D’Ao which guarantee value. Therefore, cards like White Frost, Clear Skies (…) should get secondary weaker abilities which would make them somewhat useful outside of their hard counter situation, this is why Clear Skies got Rally in the closed beta.
Furthermore, not only the hard counters are binary but so are their targets, being artefact and to a lesser extent row effects. In the case of artefacts, you simply cannot interact with them if you don’t have dedicated removal, as discussed above, when artefacts used to be cheaper it created particularly unfun decks which lacked any sort of interactions. It also makes order units much weaker, because they’re much easier to control with damage removals or locks, and of course if you play those order units or any sort of damage removals/locks you won’t be able to interact with the opponent’s board filled with artefacts, in that sense you don't commit a lot playing artefacts. It’s not so much an issue after the increase in the provision cost for most artefacts, but I’m not sure this increase in cost really fixed the issue of the lack of interactivity, as artefacts remain very binary, you either have an answer or not, and it remains a huge issue in Arena. Therefore, having some artefacts needing a unit adjacent to them in order to work would make them more interactive, as you could remove said unit or move it, it’ll also promote good positioning.
As for row effects, you can more easily play around them so they aren’t too binary, that being said, the removal of the third row exposes players a lot more to row effects particularly combined with movement, the Dragon’s Dream plus Nivellen combo cannot be played around at all, though it’s more of a balance issue as Nivellen should move a set number of units instead of all of them.
At last, I’d like to talk about cards that hard counter some archetypes without much counter play, the worst offender here is Xavier Lemmens, which just completely annihilates Beast Discard, Ghouls, and any cards interacting with the graveyard. It’s not an issue of provision cost, but design, the card has to change because as long as such cards exist, some archetype are doomed to fail in the ladder, and while graveyard hate should exist, it shouldn't exist to that extent.
Similarly, Usurper is another example of a rather binary counter which is also impossible to play around, and because of his ability Usurper gets no mulligan, and as we discussed above it doesn't make him a very fun leader to play, or to play against. In the PTR feedback thread I saw the following suggestion from someone whose name I don't remember:
Usurper
Order: Disable the enemy Leader until your next turn, Charge: 7.
It keeps the same disable effect, but because it's charge base it means Usurper has to be more mindful about how to use his ability, it's more tactical and should promote good reads, or strategies. In any cases, Usurper has to be reworked one way or another, otherwise he'll always be a nightmare to balance and not a very fun leader.
Post automatically merged:
Setups and Finishers in the Same Turn
We already talked about the infamous artefacts decks, but another reason why they were so strong, and why control decks are still insanely strong, is because they can line-up to setup their finishers right before using them in the same turn. It leads to combos that are almost impossible to counter, unless you play very proactively every turn before that, and leaves little to no room to reactive counter plays. If we look at beta Gwent and control decks such as Scorch’tael, they always needed one turn to line-up for a good Scorch setup, and then the next turn they could use their Scorch, which left one turn for the opponent to potentially disrupt the line-up, it was good for the gameplay as it promoted careful use of resources to disrupt those line-ups, and miles away from the infuriating and barely interactive board/row wipes we currently suffer in Homecoming.
It’s clearly not an issue regarding the provision cost of Epidemic, Scorch, Igni (…), even though some of those finishers such as Regis or Schirrú are clearly too strong because of their ability, "infinite" waves of damage for Regis and Zeal for Schirrú, so increasing their provision cost like artefacts is not going to fix anything. The issue comes from the ability to use orders before playing cards. Orders from units, artefacts, and leaders shouldn’t be able to be used before playing any cards, but they should be enabled after playing a card. I’ve seen the suggestion of having a Deployment Phase where orders cannot be used and only cards can be played, followed by an Order Phase once a card has been played and its ability resolved, where orders can but used.
[Part 2 in the fourth post, I was struggling with the character limit]
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