GWENT Homecoming — see what's next for GWENT

[Raifin]

Card abilities will change totally, if you have a card which you don't like you can mill it and craft a card of the same rarity for free.
<snip>
No wipes are planned.

Thank you for the clarification Lilayah-

This game certainly has a unique game-play, and the darker world of the Witcher is a perfect setting, so I am glad to hear there will be more of a return to that direction.

While 6 months does seem like a while between updates, I believe that as long as the developers keep communicating on the path they are traveling, most players will stay informed and either keep playing, or at least dialed in to the news to jump back and test the re-launch.
Spending time to encourage community events during that 6 month time will certainly be helpful to keep things moving.


I'm curious if there are plans for iPad or tablet support during the 6 month period. (There are certainly times my friends and I would love to play Gwent, but are not home to do so-)

Appreciate the roadmap-

Raifin

 

[Urith32]

In the online TCG, 6 months without any add is a death sentence. There is no need to arg, it's a simply fact.

 

[Draconifors]

Keep it civil, please. One post deleted.

 

[MatsudaM]

This was so important that even i felt the need to reply and i play since closed beta. This is the best possible decision for the future of Gwent IMO. If CDPR just kept adding cards and doing small tweaks players would leave at some point. Since open beta some bad things were introduced to game and i hope homecoming's gonna fix that. Not mentioned in the letter but one of the important aspects is power creep. In closed beta we had an average value of a bronze card at 9, don't know why it was increased to 12 and in some cases outperforming golds. Some would argue it's not an important thing, but golds should really be the trump cards that outperform bronze and silvers. Mentioned in the letter, RNG, added in midwinter is the most important thing to go. Leave that to clown fiesta HS. Rows coming back as an important thing in decision making helps as well. I just hope the other big changes will get tested thoroughly and turn out good. I'm sure people will flock in great numbers on release, I will be checking it out
tl;dr
Make Gwent great again :cheers: #burza #pawel #strongest

 

[Bluegrass79]

I'll be contacting CD projekt Red to get back every single dollar I've spent on gwent. That's my response to your little change to the game. You won't have 6 months to refund my money you'll have about 6 minutes.
CD projekt Red has ruined their good name they earned from The Witcher 3 with this game called Gwent. I know I no longer consider you the best developer in the world.

 

[Saber-Scorpion]

Cutting one of the rows sounds like a great idea! Need some more room for card art to shine. Might even be able to squeeze the game onto Mobile that way. Weather effects will need a rebalance though.

However...

"Bringing back the Witcher" .. "Changing the Shop" ... NO! Don't dare get rid of SHUPE!

 

[G4merY]

This sounds way too sincere (not complaining) and refreshing coming from a developer. I like it.

I also like the fact that you're focusing on making the rows matter again, and even adding board themes. I always imagined Gwent to be based on a battlefield the way it was designed in the Wild Hunt, so it's great to see that you're re-building your focus back to it. I also appreciate that you're trying to make the cards bigger (which they deserve). Try to give them a realistic feel, both in size (like it was for a while in early open-beta), and the interactions with them. At the same time, also try to make sure that you don't end up increasing the system requirements for the game in doing so. As a lot of current players (including myself) will be frustrated if that happens. Besides, lower requirements technically mean a bigger player-base. Gwent is a card-game, after all. So, if it could be played without a dedicated graphics card, that'd be the best.

I would also like to believe that you're taking my much-criticised advice when you admit that the UI is very uneven, and requires an overhaul. I'd a couple of other suggestions that I postponed writing about, but maybe I'll do it again now.

I joined Gwent during its open-beta stage, and it always felt like it was still in its alpha, with new events and game modes being added, and consistently changed. Gwent was hardly a finished game in anyway even during its open beta, and I'm glad that you as a developer have the **** to acknowledge that and work on it.

Good luck with making Gwent a fair, challenging, interesting and fun card-game.

:cheers:

 

[partci]

Cutting one of the rows sounds like a great idea! Need some more room for card art to shine...

Is this the most important thing? Like ahead of gameplay?

You have an easy feature to see enlarged hovered over card right now and I am pretty fine with it. I also absolutely despise the idea of the game going mobile - this will absolutely kill it in so many ways, as it is way to complicated, time and attention consuming to play it on your phone, in the bus or the subway, for example. I can see Gwent only dumbed down because of this and we've experienced dumbed down Gwent for the past 6 months now. See for yourself where it got it.

 

[rickralsten]

As someone who currently has over 100 kegs and no incentive to open them, I assume I can just hold onto them till the update and use them to get new cards?

 

[Raukoainur]

I like the idea of an evolution of the game to finally leave the beta ... but be careful! ... I like this Gwent!!, what is said here is a very radical change of the whole system, eliminate 1 bar change the whole system, it seems to me that you have to be careful not to lose the current essence with which we have been playing for over a year ... what I want to say is that I would not like to find a totally new and different game .. That case you are going to lose me as a consumer, that's for sure.

On the other hand the visual improvements, they are very welcome and very necessary ... but keep the sobriety and darkness of Witcher, do not turn this into a Hearthstone more focused on children than anything else: P

Good luck and keep the good work!

I said this a few minutes ago, but this is the real thing... I'm feeling very sad about this.. I don't want to play anymore.. it doesn't make sense if the whole game system is going to change in 6 month... 6 months guys?.. I'm very dissapointed right now

I wrote a few weeks ago an article for a Spanish website about the Gwent, praising all its benefits, updates and others, and now I feel like a complete idiot, everything I said was in vain? ... Yes, of course, Nobody expected this, one thing is to "evolve Gwent" and another very different to take a completely different path, that's what I fear...

so I need to ask you something guys...is it worth continuing to play a "beta" that will no longer be the same in 6 months?... because my answer is not worth it

I do not want to blame you guys... I just want to understand what is going to happen in 6 months, my time is gold (for me it is) and I do not intend to lose it in a game that will no longer be, sorry

anyway good luck...

 

[bojerbela]

As someone who currently has over 100 kegs and no incentive to open them, I assume I can just hold onto them till the update and use them to get new cards?

Same situation...I have enough scraps to make my collection full, so I don't want to open my 120 Kegs. Can we keep them 'til "Homecoming"?

 

[G4merY]

Don't listen to Emhyr. Patience is a virtue.

Emhyr var Emreis, Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd, i.e., the White Flame Dancing on the Graves of his Foes, also known to a few under his alias as Duny, the Urcheon of Erlenwald, the Imperator of the Nilfgaardian Empire, Lord of Metinna, Ebbing, Gemmera, Sovereign of Nazair, Vicovaro and King of Cintra never said that patience is not a virtue. He said that patience is not a virtue he's known to have. So, by the power vested in me by the Empire of the Sun, I command you to surrender every last REDpoint in your possession.

Been playing Nilfgaard lately...for far too long, I'm afraid.

 

[Dontezz]

This IS the CDPR we have been looking for! If it isnt the best trash that sh-t and make some greatness! I will be looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077 and the New Gwent both hopefully later this year!

 

[Clxmj]

No wipes are planned.

Fanks for the reassurance!

 

[OG.laloquaint]

It seems that Gwent will go under some major changes yet again. For the fourth time is it? I'm looking forward to seeing how the game will be once it actually releases. It gets me excited but I'm somewhat disappointed by this announcement because at the beginning of the year CDPR said they really wanted to release more updates. Now we have to wait a long time for a big update. I'm glad CDPR is taking their time to do this though. The players shouldn't be mad, it's a free game after all. I'm also looking forward to the smaller updates for these two months, hopefully they change the game up a bit.

 

[Gabriele_Lovera]

I play gwent since the closed beta, ok six months are so long, but I think this choise is the better that CD project can do, to offer us something expecial and absolutely authentic, no imitation, no the same game, we need and we want our game. So, I wait, and I believe in CD project progress, I know that the team can't delude the community.

 

[Ruthless95]

it's great but all i'm wondering about is what has been done behind the scenes until now? what have you been doing for the past 4 months?
WHERE IS THE CONTENT? this was all about changing the already existing content. how is the development of new cards going?

 

[Khreygond]

That lacks the aesthetics which help build immersion, it lacks the music, the ease of play and means I'd need to step on a plane to multiple other countries for a game.

The last point I can't argue with Music, I usually open TW3 OST up on youtube and leave it on a loop when playing with the physical cards As for aesthetics, the cards themselves are of a very high quality.


Recently I've adopted CDPR's Tournament format without the banning for playing TW3 Gwent with my friends and it works perfectly. NG is imbalanced sure, but if you predict your opponent is going to use it and pick ST, you can cause a lot of damage by having him win with his strongest faction against the weakest. And then, he can't use it anymore

Back on topic, I am glad the majority of players seem to be taking this bold move warmly. I do suspect that the "playerbase dwindling" is mostly an assumption, but even if it's true, the fact there's 1.7 million matchups every week AT LEAST (from GwentUP stats, meta reports are made based on about that amount of matchups. Which means that's just the matches between players having GwentUP itself I believe, which excludes all those that don't, namely, console players.), means we do still enjoy a community of hundreds of thousands (another indication is the rankings, where I've seen relatively inactive accounts sit at #83,000 or so). That means there's still hundreds of thousands of players who, despite the shortcomings, enjoy, at least somewhat, this game. And the changes, if good, will deliver even more players.

So, weighing the pros and cons, I think it's a great move and as stated above, 6 months isn't that long

 

[iamthedave]

Oh, and reminding to those who feel 6 months is an untenable length of time, remember Final Fantasy XIV.

That game opened up a HELL of a lot worse than GWENT did. And they did the exact same thing, more or less; they went back to brass tacks, rebuilt and relaunched and the game's still going fairly strong today.

 

[Ruthless95]

"Bringing back the Witcher" .. "Changing the Shop" ... NO! Don't dare get rid of SHUPE!

shupe stays but they will most likely tone down his goofiness to sync it with witcher's dark universe.

instead of "ahaha yea yea" and "wooohooo we make smash smash" it's "shupe rock drop you" and "shupe wants to make soup of you"