I played seasonal mode ONCE! It's an utter abomination - do CDPR even test this stuff? Rhetorical question which makes the existence of seasonal even more laughable - effectively, time, money and code has been spent on creating it.
They don't. But neither does Wizards of the Coast when they run jank weekend events for Arena. The difference between the two games is that Arena has a small pool of recurring jank modes, so Wizards can and does restrict some format warping cards from being used the next time around. Though, in the case of this season, it should have been obvious that things like assimilate engines would be just a little format breaking. After all, we saw the same thing unfold in season of magic. I would hope that CDPR does collect and assess data for this seasonal though. It's been very good at revealing mechanics and interactions that need reigning in (e.g. assimilate, create, clone, return from the grave at turn end/round start, defender creating invalid targets for non-damaging effects, etc...).
I think CDPR's initial idea might have been for seasonal to replace casual mode. Unfortunately for them, players are accustomed to having a non-ranked version of the regular game. New players especially probably don't want to learn the ropes in either rank or janky ruleset mode.
There's so much else could be done with mechanics; you could have things like Ifrits doing fire damage (same as bleed but actually hits armour), weather needs to be improved, and another stack of cards need reworking after the introduction of armour (everywhere). I mean, what's the point in Eithne's ability (seriously, 4 pings?). In addition, that effectively renders Scorch obsolete in favour of Korathi, what little play Schirru had is now completely dead.
Scorch and igni have been struggling for a while to do symetrical tall removal. I think it's part of CDPR's plan to limit the effectiveness of big removal cards. You can see this in the design of cards like Curse of Corruption. Of course the flipside of this is that they shouldn't be pumping out more tall base strength units, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If anything, the brakes have come off that train. I guess big numbers along with RNG high rolls translate to a better experience for content creators and their viewers. And at the point where the long-term community has finally gotten used to Gwent being a small numbers game again.
That said, a lot of their card design is reducing the size of the played pool and homogenising the factions. To pick on assimilate again, it's viirtually joined at the hip with tactics. The only thing that changes it is the leader ability. Otherwise the deck plays the same cards. Same thing with the monsters decks I faced today. Couldn't really tell if they were greedy consume, thrive/swarm or big monsters, since the only change was the leader ability. It's almost like the designers were given a list of keywords to describe the faction then told to go make cards based on that. Outside the cards specifically designed for armor, the rest was just a more of the same. Which is a shame, since it shows nobody is thinking outside the box and coming up with interesting cards to support the archetypes.
And while it's nice to see the Redanians back and not too different from their beta forms, I find armor and shield tend to duplicate each other. Mostly this is due to the low ping damage in the game, but losing a shield is no different to losing a point or two of armor. Shield really needs to change to something like a one-shot, limited hexproof ability that blocks damage and status effects, but alllows locks and purification. That would make it more like the Quen ability it replaced.
I think it's a huge problem that they're needing to do so much balancing every, single month. If I was project management at CDPR, I'd focus on:
- Remove seasonal and re-introduce quick-game time-limited mode, but remove leader figures to stop the animation delay. That way it's not all about having to build/use the META, it's about speed of thought which in turn helps weed out the netdeckets.
That was a seasonal mode. Personally, I'm all for having a jank event mode. However, running it for a whole month makes it get stale very fast. Ideally, I'd like to see it have a few fun variations throughout the month. Maybe even move the faction challenge into it.
As for ranked and casual, I'd like CDPR to bring back extra rewards for grinding ranked. Offering better rewards for grinding up the ladder is going to bring down the amount of meta deck play in casual, as long as the time investment to reward factor is enough that it makes sense to also grind out daily and reward book quests on the ladder while aiming for those ranked rewards. They had a good system in open beta.
- Focus purely on balancing all existing cards in the game, particularly to take into account armor; improving the cardpool to more like 75%+ viable cards would dramatically improve the variety of the game
I think removing abilities from some bronze cards and lowering the provisions for them to 1-3 cost might help with this more than trying to make every card functionally viable. There might be more, but the only just a body with no ability cards I can think of at the moment is both Old Speartips and the 6 strength bear. All of them are too big to make cheap, yet Gwent does have a lack of small no ability units that could slot into the unused 1-3 provisions bracket. Doing this is also going to improve the potential to have more bricks in the pool of create targets.
- Seriously rework some of the broken combinations involving defenders; getting a free pass on a card with orders defeats the object and you might as well remove orders, change to deploy and reduce the impact
Personally, I think defenders should be row locked to the row their faction favours the most. Along with that, rework some cards to be row dependent. That way the game becomes more strategic. Of course, a change like this might mean giving a defender an alternate once off ability, like target an ally and redirect the next instance of damage to self. Otherwise we may see cards cut from play.
- Seriously rework the RNG aspects of create. Bribery is broken, currently, as too many cards aren't faction specific and can be applied to any hand. Suggested rework - Bribery only creates a Gold from the opponents faction, rather than being able to create any Gold neutral.
CDPR hasn't been able to find a sweet spot for create since it was introduced. When silver runestones offered a choice of only 2 cards (and some bronzes only one), nobody was happy, since it either offered absolute rubbish and lost the game, or just highrolled and won the game. The current version now offers almost no risk of losing due to getting a bad draw, especially when we have pseudo cloning cards like bribery.
Part of this is more to do with the fact that Gwent forces you to include only good cards in your 25 card deck. And given the higher range of provision costs for most golds, the odds narrow even further for for your opponent to be offered a game changing card. I'd argue perhaps the problem lies with neutral golds being too strong in their effects that people favour them over other faction-specific cards. The problem still remains in same faction matches, even if you restrict neutrals from the pool. That, and NG has Letho: Kingslayer. Just another example of thinking fation identity = more of the same
- Focus on broadening the archetypes that are currently rubbish; traps, elves, spies, specters, beasts, witchers, Redania, bandits
- Temper back the out of control meta's; mystic dwarves, seize, deathwish. Dwarves is easy, just don't let Novigrad Justice be a ST card. DW needs to reduce the value on its' cards (all the 5 prov cards are 8 points).
Traps is fairly limited, but what it does have is quite powerful. There is some fixing that needs to be done, particularly where SY cards have their effect totally bypass the trap's ability and resolve. Fire trap with 5 points of damage is very effective in forcing your opponent to play big or small nonessential cards. Where traps get clunky is the units that benefit from them tend not to see play since they project your next move, making it better to place the traps first. Also the paint by numbers approach a lot of meta decks tend to have means deploying traps earlier than you'd like to to interupt their strategy for the round. Maybe traps could have row dependent ability where on one row it triggers per its text and gains a command detonated delay (Order: at the end of the turn, arm the trap. Trap then activates its ability as per text description).
I don't get why Novigrad Justice is a SY/ST card. Lorewise, ST did have some dealings with smugglers and other criminals in the Witcher games, but for the most part, none of what CDPR is calling the Syndicate expressed any real sympathy for them. I can think of only one quest that kind of fits in with the whole theme of non-humans out for some rough justice, but that one had 3 elves looking to kill a human they thought had sold them some poisoned drugs. As for the card in the game, this was another one that should have been anticipated as another problem interaction where strong dwarf cards and replayability exist. I think it largely got ignored since there wasn't really a dwarf meta when the Novigrad expansion launched. But we've been through this cycle before with a card or leader limiting ST's design space, particularly where solid dwarf archetypes are involved.
