Hey guys, I know you put a lot of effort into HC and it shows, there's a lit of good still but overall I feel like HC stripped the identity of Gwent away but more importantly, I think a lot of the changes were not thought through and are ruining the game. I'll go into detail with potential fixes, this isn't a "waaaaaah I don't like this game, make it easier" thread.
1st issue is the who goes 1st system, not in terms of the coin flip but in terms of round 2 and 3. The issue is that the losing player is usually at a significant disadvantage and not going 1st after a loss makes this issue even more silly as it helps snowball the match.
Luckily the fix is simple, losing player goes 1st after the initial coin flip.
2nd issue is the mulligan system. With the massively decreased consistency due to tutors basically not being a thing mulligans are extremely important. Locking the amount of mulligans to the leader creates massive imbalance as it directly affects consistency.
Solution is also easy, make leaders cost points and increase the max points per deck slightly to compensate.
As for the mulligans, give each player 3 mulligans round 1, 2 mulligans round 2 and 1 mulligan round 1. Also remove mulligan saving. That is a broken concept which rewards RNG.
3rd issue, hand limit and cards drawn per turn. Hand limit quite literally strips the strategic depth out of Gwent. You can't make a decent swing on your turn and pass to press card advantage in rounds 2 and 3, for example. In conjunction with drawing 3 cards per turn, this means people are forced to commit until they have 7 or less cards in their hand, bare minimum.
Solution is to reduce draws in rounds 2 and 3, probably to 2. And remove the hand limit.
4th problem is Artifacts. These cards are obnoxious, uninteractive nonsense...I'm sorry but whoever thought it was a good idea to but special cards that can only be removed through very special card effects that are often bricks outside of artifact removal did not do a good job. This is like old weather cards but worse due to a slower meta and not enough artifact removal at a reasonable point cost or with dual purpose to justify the high point cost.
Artifacts need armor, once the armor is depleted, they are destroyed in addition to keeping the current anti artifact cards as they are.
5th is less to do with TCG and more to do with the game itself...it stutters and freezes all the time and is extremely frustrating on a PS4. It seems to happen when all the premium cards shimmer at the same time.
The solution would be to disable the shimmer in deck builder,if that's actually the cause.
6th, the game looks muddled with the new UI, animated leaders and board. It's a cool concept but there needs to be QoL changes.
For example, turns need to auto end if no action can be taken.
Cards you tutor from the deck/graveyard shoukd have readable text as you place them considering row placement matters now.
Different stages of a turn need to be more clearly announced.
Effects from a card need to be more evident so the opponent knows what happened.
And the final point, I personally hate how the new premium cards are done. They should be animated on the board without hovering on them and every player should have an option to disable card animations or uae the new HC system where only highlighted cards will animate.
Sorry if this seems harsh, totally not my intent, I just want to be direct and clear.
1st issue is the who goes 1st system, not in terms of the coin flip but in terms of round 2 and 3. The issue is that the losing player is usually at a significant disadvantage and not going 1st after a loss makes this issue even more silly as it helps snowball the match.
Luckily the fix is simple, losing player goes 1st after the initial coin flip.
2nd issue is the mulligan system. With the massively decreased consistency due to tutors basically not being a thing mulligans are extremely important. Locking the amount of mulligans to the leader creates massive imbalance as it directly affects consistency.
Solution is also easy, make leaders cost points and increase the max points per deck slightly to compensate.
As for the mulligans, give each player 3 mulligans round 1, 2 mulligans round 2 and 1 mulligan round 1. Also remove mulligan saving. That is a broken concept which rewards RNG.
3rd issue, hand limit and cards drawn per turn. Hand limit quite literally strips the strategic depth out of Gwent. You can't make a decent swing on your turn and pass to press card advantage in rounds 2 and 3, for example. In conjunction with drawing 3 cards per turn, this means people are forced to commit until they have 7 or less cards in their hand, bare minimum.
Solution is to reduce draws in rounds 2 and 3, probably to 2. And remove the hand limit.
4th problem is Artifacts. These cards are obnoxious, uninteractive nonsense...I'm sorry but whoever thought it was a good idea to but special cards that can only be removed through very special card effects that are often bricks outside of artifact removal did not do a good job. This is like old weather cards but worse due to a slower meta and not enough artifact removal at a reasonable point cost or with dual purpose to justify the high point cost.
Artifacts need armor, once the armor is depleted, they are destroyed in addition to keeping the current anti artifact cards as they are.
5th is less to do with TCG and more to do with the game itself...it stutters and freezes all the time and is extremely frustrating on a PS4. It seems to happen when all the premium cards shimmer at the same time.
The solution would be to disable the shimmer in deck builder,if that's actually the cause.
6th, the game looks muddled with the new UI, animated leaders and board. It's a cool concept but there needs to be QoL changes.
For example, turns need to auto end if no action can be taken.
Cards you tutor from the deck/graveyard shoukd have readable text as you place them considering row placement matters now.
Different stages of a turn need to be more clearly announced.
Effects from a card need to be more evident so the opponent knows what happened.
And the final point, I personally hate how the new premium cards are done. They should be animated on the board without hovering on them and every player should have an option to disable card animations or uae the new HC system where only highlighted cards will animate.
Sorry if this seems harsh, totally not my intent, I just want to be direct and clear.