Gaunter's Ultimate Challenge explained!

[akhorahill]

The worst part is being tunneled into a specific faction and archetype if one wants to get any rewards, not to mention the quests that demand crafting legendary cards.

To add insult to injury, the quests are more time consuming than usual (play a given legendary card 10 times), meaning if you do not draw it or the game ends before you have the chance to play it, you do not progress.

The journey suffered from this problem as well, forcing specific play styles instead of the previous open ended reward system. It's several steps in the wrong direction.

 

[Utsy]

Hey everyone!

With the new expansion dropping there’s a lot of new content to play around with, that is why we have decided to have a one month break between Geralt's Journey and the next one (whose could it be? Is it the pellar's goat, named Princess? Who knows!).

But to give everyone something to complete and earn rewards with, we (I mean Gaunter of course) created Gaunter's Ultimate Challenge! What does it entail? Glad that you asked:

In total it is a 6 stage challenge series. Each challenge takes 6 days and will contain three factions. Each next stage will phase out one faction and introduce another. The full schedule can be seen below:

Besides the factions rotating in and out, there is also a sale on faction kegs every week. The schedule can be found above.

During each stage, you get to choose one of the three factions to support and complete quests for. The first three quests always reward you with 30 CP and the fourth one grants you the following titles:

• Skellige = WarmongerMonsters = InvaderScoia’tael = MotherSyndicate = De AldersbergNilfgaard = GeneralNorthern Realms = Outcast

After completing the first four quests, you unlock a fifth quest which is repeatable every day and grants 1 RP.

For those wondering about the Challenge in combination with the old/new reward system, we have prepared a FAQ below.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Daily Crown change and Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge FAQ

Where is the old system with crown points being granted for 6/12/24/24 round wins?

A: When we introduced Journey, the old system was retired. Now there was one exception - for players who reached level 100 before Journey ended, this old system (minus “small rewards”) kicked in temporarily until a new Journey will start. It’s worth mentioning that the next Journeys won’t have this old system anymore.

Why change the system for July? Why fix something, which isn’t broken?

Once we knew that there would be no Journey in July, we’ve decided to introduce something cool and flavorful, considering the release of the newest expansion. The old system alone wasn’t interesting enough, hence Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge became a thing. While it’s not a 1 to 1 substitute for Journey, it’s designed to ensure a comparable output of resources for players and provide reasons to try different factions and archetypes introduced in Master Mirror. The nerf of basic progression (Daily Crown) was needed to balance the Challenge.

So is the new system worse than Journey in terms of resource output or not?

A: Let’s see:

1. Daily Crown progression is consistent with Journey progression -> 24CP = 2RP
2. Weekly Bonuses from 3 Journey Weekly Quests (20CP each) are replaced by 3 Weekly Challenge quests (30CP* each). Each Challenge is a day shorter than Journey Weekly quests which makes it a little bit better for players.
3. Daily Bonus from Journey “Well Rested” (max 14 CP daily) is replaced by a repeatable Challenge quest that gives 1RP for each time it’s completed. This repeatable Challenge quest becomes available after players complete first all 4 base Challenge quests.

To sum it up, for players actively participating in Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge, combined with Daily Crowns progression, it will generate the same amount (or even slightly more) of resources each week vs active f2p Journey.


*Due to configuration error - for the first few hours since the update this quest was giving 20 CP instead of 30. This was already fixed and all affected players will be compensated retroactively.

Why wasn't this properly communicated?

A: In hindsight, we should have spent more time talking about this topic. As you may have noticed, we had some technical issues with 7.0 update and all communication about the update got seriously delayed. However, it’s not a good excuse for not communicating all nuances of the Daily Crown change and its connection to Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge prior to the update. I’m sorry for the confusion caused by the lack of a proper heads-up.

I am a regular player with a job and i grinded 4 RP from 18 crowns daily. Now to get 4 RP we need 48 crowns and there is no journey for the next 4-5 weeks. How is this not a nerf for new f2p players who are looking to build decks?

 

[Eravian_Kutor]

So please consider changing your mathematician that came up with this "brilliant" system and give us back the old system. If you care for your playerbase at all.

There is nothing wrong with mathematician because this system works just as intended - to make us spend more money or more time playing this game.

 

[Guest 4368268]

Don't know why CDPR chooses to shoot itself in the foot like this. Granted, I'm no marketing expert. But doing this stuff in the middle of expansion hype just seems weird and like a buzz kill to me. I don't care much about RP/resources on a personal level, but I imagine for those trying to get a collection together etc. It's frustrating. The game is good, I want to play it, I don't need to be coerced with mobile game market nonsense.

 

[Jotar0]

I've been playing for a couple months and love this game, I loved it in the witcher and this one has grown on me.... however I cant download the new patch for three days now and I tried reinstalling the game itself on my galaxy but to no avail. Anyone else have this issue?

 

[PunkHooligan]

Stop implementing changes nobody asking for. Instead of next journey right away, we got this. Make reward system fair for everybody and stop these 'maths', ninjanerfs etc. You don't want to be in the position, where you think how to return players to the game. Just avoid this possible situation now and think what you're doing. Check the reddit for gods sake.
For now I'll keep my money for smth else than Gwent.

 

[BAT0MAN]

Okay so I get it now...but...

The new contracts still aren't working. @_@

 

[wonderboy870]

Depending on your prestige rank a daily quest is worth anywhere between 0-4 points. In theory if you rush to complete quests 1-4 (no comment on how long that takes,) you get 1 extra point per quest. In theory this is worth 30 points over 30 days. Add to that the 90 crown bonus is worth almost 8 RP per week (96 crowns = 4 RP.)

Under the old system you could get 9 wins per day you could get 4 RP. 4 x 7 is 28. For those who really wanted to go the extra mile you could earn 1 RP for 12 wins or 2 RP for 24 wins. This means the max was 6 RP for 33 wins Or 42 RP per week.

Comparison time.

6 RP per cycle for daily quest bonus reward point.
8 RP per 6 days for the bonus crowns.

For 3 wins and all the quests you get 14 per week. If you get 12 extra wins you get 2 points. Divide the bonus 8 among each day and you get 4 points for 12 wins. This takes more effort for less rewards. For casual players this is bad. For more hardcore players this could be good.

Also consider we used to get a minimum of 15 bonus RP from the monthly challenge and up to 9 bonus quest RP for the 6th quests. So we lost 23 or 24 points per month on top of partial rewards. Also we lost the week of bonus exp which can easily be worth another 7-14 levels depending on how much you play and if you embrace the bonus. Overall this is an awful system for the game.

Edit to include summary: I realized I forgot to include the summary. Using the formula 8 RP per week (90 crowns plus an extra 3 wins,) you get 8RP x 6 weeks which equals 48 points. Divide 48 by the number of days in the system (6 days per cycle 6 cycles 36 days.) 48/36 = 1.33. Add one point for your daily reward bonus. 2.33 then assume 12 wins. That is 4.33 per day for 12 wins. 4.33 times 36 days =155.88 but take away the remainder because you cannot round up with partial points. For 12 wins per day you get 155 (assume the bonus 3 wins come out in single round victories in matches you lost.) This is the daily plus the faction challenge. Under the old system after journey level 100 you got 4 RP for 9 wins. 4x36 = 144. Add to that the 15 RP for faction challenge and the bonus 7-9 (we will call it 8) for the 6th faction mission and you get 23. 144 + 23 = 167. 167 -155 is 12 less for 3 more wins per day. Bad for Gwent and offensive to the player base given the way it is presented. The devs are lying to us.

 

[avengeultron2014]

Im a consistent f2p grinder in this game for 10 months or so now, I used to do 6/12 a day day after day. Got tired after 6-7 months in, started taking a break every so often but I still manage to do a 6 wins regularly. & I geninuely enjoyed it 6/12 was a if Im feeling up to it on my choice kind of vibe.

So here is my new 7.0 patch progresion today, at Prestige 5 with every meta cards in every factions, this is how my progression is like right now.

I did it you guys, I made it to 2x 24 wins in a day. It only took me 3 hrs 55 minutes on a Gwetnesday, so why not 25% exp!
I got the faction quests completed, I missed a day yesterday not knowing what's going on. But I made it today, & Im now in the complete a daily quest get a reward point zone.

Make sure to save up every daily quests & finish the factions challenges for the week as soon as possible. shouldn't be too hard I managed to avoid completing mine & I had a stack of 3 quests stored up.

Eithne quest line which I was on required me to spawn 20 Young Dryads which actually is more tedious then most of the Journey quests, but it's new expansion day, I haven't tried any of the decks yet so I had fun.

One don't have to complete games to complete the quests, I did it to get the crown rewards so took me longer.

I did not get the Season Pass for Journey, so I was on a F2P model there to here, it didnt slow me down too much.

Now I think something is wrong, this is a straight up pay to progress model, I must be in the card collection range of the top 15% at least. Even if I could cruise this month quest lines comfortably, if new players can't keep up what's the point of this game?

New players can't even begin to enter the event to it's fullest, & this the basic progression system? Who would do 24 wins in a day, let alone twice. This is bad, this is just plain wrong. What about Journey's daily bonus? That's not in this month challenge, it's getting nutty.

 

[wonderboy870]

Hey everyone!

With the new expansion dropping there’s a lot of new content to play around with, that is why we have decided to have a one month break between Geralt's Journey and the next one (whose could it be? Is it the pellar's goat, named Princess? Who knows!).

But to give everyone something to complete and earn rewards with, we (I mean Gaunter of course) created Gaunter's Ultimate Challenge! What does it entail? Glad that you asked:

In total it is a 6 stage challenge series. Each challenge takes 6 days and will contain three factions. Each next stage will phase out one faction and introduce another. The full schedule can be seen below:

Besides the factions rotating in and out, there is also a sale on faction kegs every week. The schedule can be found above.

During each stage, you get to choose one of the three factions to support and complete quests for. The first three quests always reward you with 30 CP and the fourth one grants you the following titles:

• Skellige = WarmongerMonsters = InvaderScoia’tael = MotherSyndicate = De AldersbergNilfgaard = GeneralNorthern Realms = Outcast

After completing the first four quests, you unlock a fifth quest which is repeatable every day and grants 1 RP.

For those wondering about the Challenge in combination with the old/new reward system, we have prepared a FAQ below.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Daily Crown change and Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge FAQ

Where is the old system with crown points being granted for 6/12/24/24 round wins?

A: When we introduced Journey, the old system was retired. Now there was one exception - for players who reached level 100 before Journey ended, this old system (minus “small rewards”) kicked in temporarily until a new Journey will start. It’s worth mentioning that the next Journeys won’t have this old system anymore.

Why change the system for July? Why fix something, which isn’t broken?

Once we knew that there would be no Journey in July, we’ve decided to introduce something cool and flavorful, considering the release of the newest expansion. The old system alone wasn’t interesting enough, hence Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge became a thing. While it’s not a 1 to 1 substitute for Journey, it’s designed to ensure a comparable output of resources for players and provide reasons to try different factions and archetypes introduced in Master Mirror. The nerf of basic progression (Daily Crown) was needed to balance the Challenge.

So is the new system worse than Journey in terms of resource output or not?

A: Let’s see:

1. Daily Crown progression is consistent with Journey progression -> 24CP = 2RP
2. Weekly Bonuses from 3 Journey Weekly Quests (20CP each) are replaced by 3 Weekly Challenge quests (30CP* each). Each Challenge is a day shorter than Journey Weekly quests which makes it a little bit better for players.
3. Daily Bonus from Journey “Well Rested” (max 14 CP daily) is replaced by a repeatable Challenge quest that gives 1RP for each time it’s completed. This repeatable Challenge quest becomes available after players complete first all 4 base Challenge quests.

To sum it up, for players actively participating in Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge, combined with Daily Crowns progression, it will generate the same amount (or even slightly more) of resources each week vs active f2p Journey.


*Due to configuration error - for the first few hours since the update this quest was giving 20 CP instead of 30. This was already fixed and all affected players will be compensated retroactively.

Why wasn't this properly communicated?

A: In hindsight, we should have spent more time talking about this topic. As you may have noticed, we had some technical issues with 7.0 update and all communication about the update got seriously delayed. However, it’s not a good excuse for not communicating all nuances of the Daily Crown change and its connection to Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge prior to the update. I’m sorry for the confusion caused by the lack of a proper heads-up.

Hi Ryan, I have a quick question. Given that GUC functions like a faction challenge it seems only fair to assume there will not be an independent faction challenge this month. Given that, I am wondering if at any point we will receive the bonus exp that usually accompanies faction challenges? I ask because that bonus exp helps players transition more quickly to higher prestiges and provides tangible RP that would not exist otherwise. To make matters worse we had no bonus exp last month and no faction challenge at all in April. That means only 1 period of bonus exp in four months if GUC does not include it. Can you shed any light on the situation?

 

[迪胖胖]

It's all bullshit. If it's all the same, why change it.

 

[DeusExArcana]

Because it's not the same. It's designed to "encourage" people to buy things like the new pack with all 6 evolving cards. Why else lock quest progression behind playing exactly those 6 cards?

Even if the RPs are the same, the gameplay experience is strictly worse.

 

[Smith_X]

Because it's not the same. It's designed to "encourage" people to buy things like the new pack with all 6 evolving cards. Why else lock quest progression behind playing exactly those 6 cards?

Even if the RPs are the same, the gameplay experience is strictly worse.

I like to add the last sentence. The RPs are not the same. If you want to collect 4 RP / day, current system is worst because:
- no small reward compare to old daily reward, not the journey
- no well rest bonus if compare to the journey
- need specific cards to complete the challenge quest
- need more time to complete the challenge quest
- new player who have small collection will not be able to earn RP from the challenge quest.
- need to spend more time to earn the same amount of RP

Old reward system allow f2p players can enjoy the game and collect 4rp / day. This current system need to complete the challenge quest and earns up to 2.75 - 3.75 rp / day depend on the extra 1 rp daily quest they can perform. The maximum number of RP / month will be less and lead to less resource to acquire cards. Finally f2p players will either buy kegs or go to other more f2p friendly game.

 

[KamranR]

I don't like this.

 

[PaleRick]

New cards are fun, but this reward nerf is a huge letdown, am really disappointed. I think it's time for you to stop speculating about nerfing player ingame income in new and "fun" ways before too many people get fed up with this. Revert these changes back please.

 

[Azuma-II]

I am but a humble newbie to Gwent. (I have had an account since beta, but haven't actually played till the Android release.)
I am a huge CDPR fan. I have the Witcher Games on multiple consoles. I have pre-purchased Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG specifically because I like and want to support the company. I even own stock in the company because I believe in it.

I LOVED (note the past tense) the generosity of the game, and the fact that with some reasonable daily effort and playtime you could get enough reward points to clear the 3 Seasonal Reward Book Trees in the reward book and save up a little to advance some of the other trees. The game offered a good amount of rewards in combination with contracts, and in particular the OLD Daily Crown system with its various rewards. This was my motivation for daily play. I had a clear goal, and felt rewarded for it.

When Journey came, I gladly bought the Premium Journey because I will gladly support a developer that is so generous.

Now however, I notice that the Contract rewards have become quite rare (which is understandable,) and on top of that, with this change, the daily motivation I had is completely gone. I doubt I will even be able to finish the Seasonal Reward Book Trees that I've started.

I am not a streamer. (And CDPR shouldn't even be looking at those players as an example. Yes, they have more resources than they know what to do with, but that is far from representative of the vast majority of Gwent players.) I don't have unlimited time to play the game.

This is just greedy.
I was fine with supporting generous developers, but with this change, I will not be paying for the next journey. In fact, I won't be paying for anything in Gwent. I can live without cosmetics. And if I managed to play horribly greedy games like Hearthstone as a 100% free to play player, this won't be a challenge. And in time, I'll just quit, like I did with Hearthstone. As long as this change is in the game, my money stays on my account.

Till now I have been playing about 12-20 games per day, and felt rewarded for it. From now on, it will maybe be a game or two every other day just to do the 3 daily quests that have accumulated. Today will be the first day I won't even bother playing a single match since I started on the day of the Android release.

Some people might say "Whats the big deal? It's only a few reward points fewer."
In terms of motivation, it is a huge deal. It is analogues to a change from, running 9 kilometers every day and losing half a kilogram, to having to run 12 kilometers every day and barely losing 0.2 kilogram.
But more than that, it is the belief and trust in the developers that is being trampled with every change.

Honestly, I can't express the level of disappointment and frustration... I thought you were better than this.

 

[AHTOH_OCOKuH]

have you forgotten about 14 bonus rounds per day?

 

[EduFerraz]

have you forgotten about 14 bonus rounds per day?

No, they didnt forgotten that, they took it out

 

[Y_A_M_A]

Don't know why CDPR chooses to shoot itself in the foot like this. Granted, I'm no marketing expert. But doing this stuff in the middle of expansion hype just seems weird and like a buzz kill to me. I don't care much about RP/resources on a personal level, but I imagine for those trying to get a collection together etc. It's frustrating. The game is good, I want to play it, I don't need to be coerced with mobile game market nonsense.

In my eyes this looks like this. They knew there will be backlash so they decided to make stealth nerf and release expansion in the same time counting that hype will overshadow backlash. And most important before people will figure out what just happened they will sell as much kegs/cosmetic items in the shop as possible. I think new cosmetic things in shop you can buy for powder are part of this mitigation strategy, and in the same time way to make more money. If people can't get keys for reward trees that means they will buy meteorite powder for money to get cosmetics. All that said this sucks big time for new players and option f2p is disappearing very quickly ( looks like CDPR want to sell starter decks to new players and that is perfectly understandable I think that's fine ) From other point of view I'm starting to think that game is on life support - somehow development is somewhat slow, 7 months waiting for expansion ( MoO was released 9th December last year? ) and not big expansion. We got new leader abilities, and visual improvements in 7 months ( and a lot of visual bugs!!!! ) Visual card bugs are like whatever for me, but someone please explain to me why anyone should bother with avatars and borders if they are buged and most of the time are almost all out of screen??? ( Why should I buy in shop for money something that is broken?? - how long is it now like 2-3 months like that? ) Balancing cards? what balancing? Sure most broken OP cards are overnerfed as was always the case, what about almost hundred cards that are borderline unplayable? ( yes mostly old cards )
This looks like hype train, quickly quickly lets get new powerful cards. Who cares about old collection? This reminds me of MTG tactic. Now when I have all that out of my system - yes I think in beta game was way to generous in regard of rewards but now is going completely opposite direction. I was supporting gwent from very beginning and I've spend fair amount of real money ( still doing that by buying cosmetics that I'm not even using ) and now I'm starting to question that. To be honest not because of rewards changes but because of the way development of gwent looks like this days. ( Did we really exit beta? ) I hope Dev. team will solve those problems and I genuinely wish them good luck.

 

[Frya]

I think the recent change is actually discouraging people to play the game more than it is encouraging them to spend money on it.

Old players/Beta players - They are discouraged to play, because they are forced to do quests that are chores rather than fun. They have resources and usually at least a decent deck for each faction, so they can slap the needed cards into them and do the chores, without the need to spend money.

New players - They don't have decent decks for each faction, so they won't be able to participate in all of the faction challenges. Does buying 60 kegs for $60 guarantee that they will be able to participate during every week? Does buying evolving card pack guarantees it? They should slap those cards into starter decks? How fun is this? If you can't participate and you've already finished the easiest contracts, then you are stuck on 2 RP for 24 crowns. No "6/12/24", no "well rested".

Because of this, is your new system even a "pay to play"? What is it? Pay for a chore?

I started out playing 3 weeks ago, I've nearly completed MO Arachas deck, but I'm already bored with it. At the same time I don't feel like playing bare bones starter decks as they just suck without 800 cards in them.

RP's from easy contracts already stopped for me. Even with "well rested", those 2 RP from Journey seemed rather scarce.

I will complete quests for Gaunter's challenge for MO, but when the factions change in future weeks, playing one deck to death while getting 2 RP for 24 crowns doesn't seem like fun at all.

Before the patch, I thought to solve boredom with Arachas, instead of going for another faction like NG, it's better to branch out in other MO decks like Vampires. After the patch it seems that it will cut me off form participating in Gaunter's quests => 2 RP for 24 crowns wile grinding already a deck I'm bored with.

Your changes are not fun or engaging, they are discouraging chores for new players.