[Heretic Idea] Faction Mixing

[milosh69]

[Heretic Idea] Faction Mixing

"ST dominates...", "NR is OP...", "Monster suck..." and now "Nilfgaard is destroying the meta...". Not a day goes by where such statements are made and I am pretty certain this will go on for e.v.e.r, the only thing that will change in those sentences with each patch is the name of the faction.

This got me thinking and please do think about it too for a minute before you discard the idea: How about removing completely the boundary between factions, you compose a deck of cards from all factions without any limitations other than the maximum handsize and number of silver/gold cards? Add some medics to your monster deck, Promote some Foglets or let the Shieldsmith add 2 base to your PFI.

Factions would still keep their specialties, NR focusing on gold, Monsters on Weather/Breeding, SK on discard and graveyard play, ST on annoying everyone but you could diversify much more and mix things up to get the optimum from your deck.

I know it goes completely against the "original" idea of Gwent as it's played in the Witcher games but the Gwent we play is already so much different from the Witcher 3 Gwent that I don't think this matters, on the contrary just imagine the possibilities and many many more different decks that we could play. Gone are the times where one Faction dominates, deck building skills will actually mean something and longtime motivation would increase by a huge amount. All the problems due to lack of variance that are posted day after day would be fixed immediately. Sure balancing would be a bit harder and some adjustments will have to be made but ultimately we would end up with much more interesting games. In the long term I think this is the only solution for Gwent to stay interesting.

Waddaya think?

 

[InvisibleArrow]

Sure balancing would be a bit harder

This is an understatement. It will become almost impossible to balance because of the sheer number of variations if factions are mixed.
There will be completely broken decks and a very unstable meta IMHO.

 

[milosh69]

This is an understatement. It will become almost impossible to balance because of the sheer number of variations if factions are mixed.
There will be completely broken decks and a very unstable meta IMHO.

I believe in the theory of order by chaos. Because this will change for every one it will balance itself out. There might be some unfair combos hidden which will have to be nerfed but I don't think it will be that hard to balance. I mentioned already in another thread that Magic has 16'000 cards you can mix (and each and every card can and many do change the base rules in their abilities) and only a mere 50 cards are banned or restricted. So no, balancing a few hundred Gwent cards is not impossible.

But deck building will be a bigger challenge but also more fun

 

[Filousik]

I think that something similar can be achieved by adding much more neutral cards.

There will be completely broken decks and a very unstable meta IMHO

Why is it bad?

 

[4RM3D]

Gone are the times where one Faction dominates, deck building skills will actually mean something and longtime motivation would increase by a huge amount. All the problems due to lack of variance that are posted day after day would be fixed immediately. Sure balancing would be a bit harder and some adjustments will have to be made but ultimately we would end up with much more interesting games. In the long term I think this is the only solution for Gwent to stay interesting.

Nevermind the balancing. Having all cards available will only make the game more stale. In theory you could have more variety, but in practice everything will move towards one super deck, which has no limitations. The more cards that are introduced, the less dominating the super deck becomes, but this also applies to when you have 5 factions. In the end your suggestion doesn't work for Gwent.

 

[InvisibleArrow]

So no, balancing a few hundred Gwent cards is not impossible.

I haven't played Magic, so can't comment on that. I'll be interested what the devs think about this.
It seems an incredibly daunting task, especially when new cards are added and cards undergo balance changes in each patch.
Anyway, it's just my opinion.

 

[Rawls]

Nevermind the balancing. Having all cards available will only make the game more stale. In theory you could have more variety, but in practice everything will move towards one super deck, which has no limitations. The more cards that are introduced, the less dominating the super deck becomes, but this also applies to when you have 5 factions. In the end your suggestion doesn't work for Gwent.

This.

 

[el_Bosco]

Ahaha i've also thought about this a couple of times. If we were able to pick a couple of cards from other decks and incorporated them in our decks.

It would be HILARIOUS. The amount of synergies between just a couple of cards would be mind-blowing. I have no idea if more than 1000 points have been reached in a single round but with this it would be fairly easy.

 

[Riven-Twain]

I've also considered this idea once or twice, however, ultimately, I'm inclined to agree with 4RM3D's logic. While I personally somewhat like the idea of sharing certain card abilities between decks, it would most likely cause the game's concept of distinct factions to dissolve.

 

[milosh69]

Don't just look on the problems this "might" cause - they can be figured out - but on the opportunities it would provide. The concept of factions would still be intact but shifted. Hate to bring it again but I don't know any other CCG so I have to mention Magic again. Factions there are colors, Blue being mainly control, Red direct damage, Green huge creatures, Black life stealing, White protection (very rudementary). There are similar tendencies with Factions in Gwent, the fun begins when you use White to protect your Green creatures or add control to your red deck - or build a deck with all colors and have cards that leverage this.

You are all reading this forum and it can not be ignored that alot of the "whining" is due to the very limited Factions concept, in particular because given a certain Patchlevel, one Faction seems to dominate. It worked well enough against AI in the witcher game but with real human beings it's a different topic. Unless they tripple the cards of every faction (which might impose it's own problems) we will be stuck with a very limited set of competitiv decks per Faction. I'd like Gwent to stick around for years, heck one could even dream of turning it into a TCG with real cards. But this won't happen if it's well known which deck works the best in every Faction.

4RM3D you yourself made a thread about Gwent dying and most of the posts there state "dullness" as the main reason (plus whipe ). I am not certain this will ever change, with the current system people will play when a new patch arrives for a few weeks and then leave. But I am certain that by unlimiting the possibilities this could be prevented, people would stick around, scratch their heads for the one combo no one has found and keep things interesting, for good

 

[Dejma93]

A heretic idea indeed. I am quite conservative and changes like this one are too drastic to my taste. 4RM3D has a good point as well, the only thing that would change is name... instead of Scoia'tael is op you would read >insert nickname of most powerful cookie-cutter deck< is op every day. However I think it may be an interresting concept for separate non-competitive game mode I would deffinitely try that out.

 

[el_Bosco]

I'm surprised... :S everyone here is discussing the idea seriously. I only thought about it as a joke because its a ludicrous concept.

 

[milosh69]

Nothing wrong with getting 1000 points on the board if your opponent can do the same

 

[Riven-Twain]

I'm surprised... :S everyone here is discussing the idea seriously.

That's the funny thing about ideas. . . you never know precisely where they may lead.

 

[Occursus]

I believe in the theory of order by chaos. Because this will change for every one it will balance itself out. There might be some unfair combos hidden which will have to be nerfed but I don't think it will be that hard to balance. I mentioned already in another thread that Magic has 16'000 cards you can mix (and each and every card can and many do change the base rules in their abilities) and only a mere 50 cards are banned or restricted. So no, balancing a few hundred Gwent cards is not impossible.

But deck building will be a bigger challenge but also more fun

Well, sure, they have wider array of cards you can potentially pick from to build your cards, but the game has other limitations helping in controlling the power combos you can possibly do, chief among them in my opinion being the lands.

Indeed, each color in Magic : The Gathering is an archetype in and of itself. By that, you have only a subset of the abilities available to you in the game if you only deal with one color in your deck. Most decks will eventually try to at least combine two colors, but the more colors you add to your deck, the more difficult it becomes to be on curve, meaning to have enough lands of the right colors and hence mana to cast your creatures and spells in your hand. By adding more colors, you are adding complexities and risks in your build.

Sure, your tool’s box is larger in scope in the sense you have access to more diverse abilities and crazy combo, but there are trade-offs for this.

In Gwent however, you do not have any secondary resources, or just, you know, resources at all besides the cards themselves. So, if you could mingle all cards from all factions together right now, there would be no way to stop you from creating really powerful combos, that might become so powerful it might not even be fair any longer.

If they should ever consider doing this, it is imperative they start from scratch and rethink the way the game is played from the ground up, so it can be enjoyable and balance at a mechanical level.

Besides everything I said previously, I have to specify this : You repeat time and time again there are 16000 cards in Magic : The Gathering the player can choose from and it is somewhat fair.

It is not exactly all the truth, is it ?

You cannot choose from all cards all the time. Depending on the format, you can only choose from a very limited number of cards. In and of itself, it is an admission to have fail to balance all the cards among themselves. In particular, the older formats are the biggest culprits by virtue to being way out of the line in term of power level. You can reasonably, if you have just a few cards, win in the first round because of the way cards can interact with each other...

The game is still fun, mind you, but I think the newer formats are way more balance and well thought out. It seems the designers have more or less abandon the idea to balance the older formats, especially Vintage, which is the most appareant in the general power creep the game suffers from in its newer sets.

 

[arz0]

Nothing wrong with getting 1000 points on the board if your opponent can do the same

That's kinda the problem though, if your deck can get up to 1000 points reliably every time, and cannot be countered, (Which I don't believe to be impossible if you mix all factions), so you force every other deck out there to either run those same cards, or they lose.

 

[milosh69]

Besides everything I said previously, I have to specify this : You repeat time and time again there are 16000 cards in Magic : The Gathering the player can choose from and it is somewhat fair.

It is not exactly all the truth, is it ?

I play almost solely Vintage, all my Friends play Vintage and do you know Magic Workstation? It's way older than Magic Online, you play for free, can build your deck from all cards available and play against players worldwide. It's awesome to try out new decks or play Vintage online. Yes there is a deck which can potentially win in first round - the cost for it in real life is way above 100'000$, chances you will ever encounter it are rare - outside of Magic Workstation that is. And even there, this deck only works if you have the optimal 7 out of 60 cards as a starting hand. I played against this deck a few times and mostly won, because every card that makes this deck possible is restricted (only 1 copy allowed) and therefor not many players use it (other than to try it out).

So I am very confident when I say, all 16'000 cards are well balanced otherwise I wouldn't play Vintage. I don't like the limited formats, for one it renders half of my collection useless. And my friends and I (and probably most players in MWS) know pretty much every card, at least up to the edition when I was still actively playing. Combo oriented decks are like playing self-mutilating Skellige decks, when they work it's awesome but they are far too unreliable and are not a sure winner, on the contrary.

Coming back to Gwent... yes it would need a redesign. Someone suggested to have an alternate mode available, "original" Gwent and mixed-Faction Gwent which I would find awesome. I'd would wager though that after a few months, "original" will be regarded as the mode for new players and "mixed" for experienced ones.

That's kinda the problem though, if your deck can get up to 1000 points reliably every time

I don't want to see such plays, the point I was trying to make is that both players have such possibilities. But I am not even sure this would really be possible, after all we still would have only 25 cards to play with and if there is such a combo it would be discovered during "redesign" of Gwent and nerfed.

Lastly, all I've seen from Nilfgaard screems "uber-faction", putting out 22 points with the first card as shown in the YT videos from the pre-patch event, cmon... I think it will dominate for a long time until other cards are added to the older factions. With faction-mixing no one would have to abbandon his decks, we could just cherry-pick from new factions what would help in our decks. In it's current state a new faction is only available for players willing to play this faction. All other players will only see it on the other side of the board. I think it would be awesome if new factions would be available for all players