Balance Progress: My Perceptions on Gwentfinity
As we approach the final six months of significant developer support for Gwent, I, like many other players, am concerned about the state in which the game will be left. In this article, I would like to discuss what I perceive as top balance priorities for this period, I would like to discuss the approach I believe developers are used to select card changes, and finally to consider how the developer’s approach to patches might be modified to better achieve important goals.
Balance Goals:
Because balance can mean many different things, I will not state balance as a goal. Each of the goals I have listed is “balance” by some interpretation. I will also state that these are the goals I would offer for the game; I believe they reflect the concerns of many in the community, but they are subjective. I have also ordered them from highest to lowest as I see them.
Perceived Developer Approach to Balance:
I am not a developer; I have no channel to the developers that makes me more informed than the typical player. The following are my perceptions based upon developer comments, observed changes (and failure to make changes), comments by others who might be in positions to know, and common sense. I believe the following to be true of developer patch decisions.
Successes and Failures of Current Balance Approach:
Although I try to be as unbiased as possible, this will obviously be a subjective analysis.
I think the big success of the last year of patches has been successfully avoiding/addressing overpowered cards, archetypes, and factions. Certainly not everything is equal and there are several decks I hate to encounter. But I do note that every faction has something that is playable (able to occasionally compete with meta decks), most factions are brought by at least some pros to tournaments, no faction seems to dominate wins on either ladder or in tournaments. Decks that evidence shows are too dominant are generally addressed, although not always aggressively enough. This is less true of overpowered cards – sometimes it seems developers nerf around problematic cards rather than dealing directly with the problems. Or they ignore problematic cards if they only play in decks that perform poorly. Even so, I can think of no card that is so strong as to be included even in decks where it doesn’t fit. There is no card from any faction included in virtually every deck of that faction.
I think the variety of playable cards and decks has been improving – but at a rate that is far too slow. Most factions have multiple playable archetypes (not necessarily good, but usable alternatives). The one exception is Syndicate which seems to be highly dependent upon bounty packages if not the bounty archetype. Excluding Syndicate, we are still talking about having a viable choice of maybe three deck ideas per faction, and not all of these are nearly equal. I would argue that a (significantly unique) viable deck corresponding to each leader is the minimum that should be accepted – and ideally, there should be multiple viable substantive variants within each archetype. I think we also have more cards that are possible, but many card swaps do not seem impactful on deck play or feel.
On the other hand, variety of creative play is being crushed. Formerly strategic decisions become irrelevant considering tremendous point spam and binary, remove-or-lose cards. Some strategically interesting abilities have been replaced by mundane, almost inert cards that might be interesting in deckbuilding, but not in play. Every viable deck must generate huge points, have massive removal, or both. And so many cards have such incredible tempo that strategic options are generally very limited.
And that takes us to what I perceive as the major failure of the last 2 years of patches. Good play has become almost irrelevant to success in the game. Good decks have become too much better than bad decks. Good draws have become too much better than bad draws. Matchup luck is decisive: huge engine value demands massive removal; massive removal demands playing for immediate pay-off. Immediate payoff must be outpointed, e.g., by massive engines. Reacting to opponent’s cards is boring because it is either obvious or impossible. Try to imagine the game without its 30 most insane cards – no Fucusya, Simlas, Saskia, Reavers, Autaud, Skellen, Compass, Mutagenerator, Nekker, Dana, Renfri, Koshchey, Sigvald, etc., etc. If there are utterly dominating cards, nothing else will matter. Play is about playing good cards, not about playing wisely. Variety is nonexistent. Who cares about a Wolf Pack? The problem is that there aren’t just 30 problem cards – there are well in the hundreds. Nerf one and another crops up but nerfing them all is an impossible undertaking.
What can feasibly be done? I will address that next.
Suggestions:
As we approach the final six months of significant developer support for Gwent, I, like many other players, am concerned about the state in which the game will be left. In this article, I would like to discuss what I perceive as top balance priorities for this period, I would like to discuss the approach I believe developers are used to select card changes, and finally to consider how the developer’s approach to patches might be modified to better achieve important goals.
Balance Goals:
Because balance can mean many different things, I will not state balance as a goal. Each of the goals I have listed is “balance” by some interpretation. I will also state that these are the goals I would offer for the game; I believe they reflect the concerns of many in the community, but they are subjective. I have also ordered them from highest to lowest as I see them.
- Avoid overpowered cards/combos/archetypes/factions. By overpowered, I simply mean play dominating (able to defeat almost any opposition or outperform almost any alternative in almost any situation).
- Increase the importance of playing well in determining match outcome. This has two primary components. A large percentage of games are basically decided before a single card is played based upon the matchup or the coin flip. Often problems arise because of how decks balance incredible tempo, overwhelming point generation, dominating removal, and uninteractivity which result in insurmountable rock-paper-scissors effects. The second major issue arises through draw order when a player either doesn’t hold key cards when needed or a player fails to draw a significant proportion of the deck potential.
- Improve variety in both viable decks (and deck components) and in how decks are played. For the game to survive, it must remain fresh. If there are no new cards, it stays fresh by encountering more of the old cards in previously unseen ways. Players must be able to create new ideas and experience new creations of others; this creativity can occur in how cards are combined or how they are used. But it begins with us not seeing the same cards played in the same contexts over and over and over.
- Better promote strategic play. Some types of cards are extremely predictable – they have basically one way of being played. Some cards present interesting tactical and strategic options. The latter are highly preferable. And there is a difference between being interesting in deck design and in play. But deck design challenges, once solved, remain solved while play challenges change with every circumstance; the latter are most important in sustaining an interesting game.
Perceived Developer Approach to Balance:
I am not a developer; I have no channel to the developers that makes me more informed than the typical player. The following are my perceptions based upon developer comments, observed changes (and failure to make changes), comments by others who might be in positions to know, and common sense. I believe the following to be true of developer patch decisions.
- Patch decisions are evidence based – but that evidence may not be the evidence I would wish them to consider. Developers clearly use win-rates of decks (although the “deck” might be assumed by the leader ability chosen) and use frequency (of both cards and decks). Cards core to poorly performing decks are almost never nerfed no matter how vehement the complaints or convincing the theoretical argument for changing them. To be fair, I think there are lot of invalid complaints, and I think that nerfing cards should not be taken lightly as it is unfair to those who commit valued resources to crafting the card and building around it.
- Balance seems focused on the deck/archetype level – not faction level, not card level. Sometimes fairly balanced cards have been nerfed to address an overperforming deck and sometimes problematic cards are buffed because the deck where they appear is underperforming.
- Balance is generally handled conservatively; underkill is far more common than overkill and most overkill only occurs after previous failed attempts at balance.
- Balancing sems to be based primarily upon wins and loses and occasionally upon where a card is used (archetype fit). It is almost never based upon how cards impact play (such as being binary, encouraging generally poor strategies, etc.).
- Balances rarely use suggestions (even good suggestions) from the community. My perception is that the development team has been very possessive regarding creative control.
- Balance focus has significantly changed in the past year or so. Power creep has been significantly reduced. Changes between card drops have become more game altering and almost always give a new (or revitalized) archetype to try. Even with this change in focus, the meta is very narrow and meaningful variety within meta decks is minimal.
Successes and Failures of Current Balance Approach:
Although I try to be as unbiased as possible, this will obviously be a subjective analysis.
I think the big success of the last year of patches has been successfully avoiding/addressing overpowered cards, archetypes, and factions. Certainly not everything is equal and there are several decks I hate to encounter. But I do note that every faction has something that is playable (able to occasionally compete with meta decks), most factions are brought by at least some pros to tournaments, no faction seems to dominate wins on either ladder or in tournaments. Decks that evidence shows are too dominant are generally addressed, although not always aggressively enough. This is less true of overpowered cards – sometimes it seems developers nerf around problematic cards rather than dealing directly with the problems. Or they ignore problematic cards if they only play in decks that perform poorly. Even so, I can think of no card that is so strong as to be included even in decks where it doesn’t fit. There is no card from any faction included in virtually every deck of that faction.
I think the variety of playable cards and decks has been improving – but at a rate that is far too slow. Most factions have multiple playable archetypes (not necessarily good, but usable alternatives). The one exception is Syndicate which seems to be highly dependent upon bounty packages if not the bounty archetype. Excluding Syndicate, we are still talking about having a viable choice of maybe three deck ideas per faction, and not all of these are nearly equal. I would argue that a (significantly unique) viable deck corresponding to each leader is the minimum that should be accepted – and ideally, there should be multiple viable substantive variants within each archetype. I think we also have more cards that are possible, but many card swaps do not seem impactful on deck play or feel.
On the other hand, variety of creative play is being crushed. Formerly strategic decisions become irrelevant considering tremendous point spam and binary, remove-or-lose cards. Some strategically interesting abilities have been replaced by mundane, almost inert cards that might be interesting in deckbuilding, but not in play. Every viable deck must generate huge points, have massive removal, or both. And so many cards have such incredible tempo that strategic options are generally very limited.
And that takes us to what I perceive as the major failure of the last 2 years of patches. Good play has become almost irrelevant to success in the game. Good decks have become too much better than bad decks. Good draws have become too much better than bad draws. Matchup luck is decisive: huge engine value demands massive removal; massive removal demands playing for immediate pay-off. Immediate payoff must be outpointed, e.g., by massive engines. Reacting to opponent’s cards is boring because it is either obvious or impossible. Try to imagine the game without its 30 most insane cards – no Fucusya, Simlas, Saskia, Reavers, Autaud, Skellen, Compass, Mutagenerator, Nekker, Dana, Renfri, Koshchey, Sigvald, etc., etc. If there are utterly dominating cards, nothing else will matter. Play is about playing good cards, not about playing wisely. Variety is nonexistent. Who cares about a Wolf Pack? The problem is that there aren’t just 30 problem cards – there are well in the hundreds. Nerf one and another crops up but nerfing them all is an impossible undertaking.
What can feasibly be done? I will address that next.
Suggestions:
- Avoid, and, as possible, fix binary dynamics. I recall developer comments about why Drakenborg was not immediately nerfed – that playtesting had revealed it could be defeated, not just with Heatwave, but also with all-in engine or all-in removal decks – that it was mainly mid-range decks that struggled. The point here is that such observations should have been an immediate flag to nerf the card for being binary, not as evidence the card did not need a nerf! Evidence of binary dynamics is not hard to spot: cards/combos so powerful that matches are won or lost solely based upon the dynamic being drawn or counterable, decks that always win against certain opponents and always lose against another, dynamics that are “balanced” by their difficulty rather than general play, etc.
- Continue to use evidence-based models to make buff/nerf decisions but broaden that evidence. Use card ceilings, floors, and likely values to assess card power. Consider not just the win-rate of decks, but the variability of that win-rate across different opposition. Do not assume all complaints about cards are based upon them winning too much; and even when the complaints are about a card being OP, before discounting them entirely, ask whether they are OP in certain situations that cannot be controlled by all opponents.
- When cards are re-designed, focus on challenges in play. While there were on-going card drops, considerable excitement would arise as players tried new deck ideas using the new cards – challenges in deck building were valuable as well. But as support concludes, deck building challenges are not nearly as persistent as play challenges.
- Interesting play requires meaningful back and forth between players. Avoid powerful, essentially inert cards (e.g. Simlas, whose value is usually distributed over a variety of cards and cannot usually be significantly impacted by any actions of typical opponents). Interesting play usually centers around cards that have interesting effects based upon interesting and mutually impactable games states. Things like Heatwave (which effectively immediately deletes a card), no matter how important to game balance, are inimical to interesting game play. Powerful engines that always must be removed are not interesting. Removal engines that eliminate interactive elements from the board are not fun. The best cards are cards that allow in-game decisions, whether short-term tactical or long-term strategic. The best cards rely on interactivity – they don’t remove it. Archetypes based on several mid-powered cards are far more interesting than those that rely on one high-powered card; they require adaptation depending upon draw order, and they are less binary when a key card is undrawn. Rather than just criticizing, let me examine a couple of cards I really like. Casimir is a potential 3-point-per-turn removal engine. On paper he, has two elements I am very wary of: excessive engine value and removal engine value. He is still a fine card because that engine value is worth fighting over, is easily disrupted in multiple ways (tall removal, purify and lock, not having opportunity to spend to zero, not having opportunity to earn coins, not having meaningful targets for explosives, or being forced into short rounds where engine value is less significant). Vanilla Ciri is also very fun. She can be countered by lock or removal; timing her play is tricky, but she can dramatically change the strategic completion of the game.
- Ask, as I have here, what the most significant remaining issues in Gwent are – why they arise, and how they can be addressed. Don’t be locked into a preset agenda. I hope this article gives a start – but I am one person with one person’s unique perspective and biases.