Treamayne;n6877070 said:
Well, maybe it's because I come from a 20+ yr Magic background, but I would put Gwent as simpler than, say, Munchkin. Also, there are really three categories of inexperienced new players, to me, that would need to be considered. Those that have never played Gwent and:
- Have CCG experience.
- Have played a CCG before, even if not experienced.
- Have never played any other CCG before.
I would say that only the first of those three will really gain any value from watching videos about Gwent. There is too little displayed on screen, things moving too quickly (1) in the videos for people without quite a bit of CCG experience to get much value out of a video, even if it has commentary. The Tutorial is huge. I think everybody should play it. (2) And actually go slowly and absorb the material
After the tutorial, you have access to 4 pre-built decks (one for each faction) and you also have access to the Practice room where you can play any of those decks against a computer AI. This step is also very important. It gives the player as many chances as they need to read cards, see them in action and discover how they interact with each other. Personally, I started with 2 games for each faction in the Practice room (interspersed with trips to the Collection screen so I could take my time reading the cards that did not make sense in the last practice game). I ended up going back for a third Skellige and Scoiatel practice game because I wasn't quite sure on a couple cards. This may sound like a lot of "work" to play a game, but I thought it was fun. A no-pressure way to learn the basics and understand the new cards. Only then did I start playing casual games, and it wasn't until I was level two and earned my first Keg (after the Keg received for completing the Tutorial) that I started trying to edit the four "Starter" decks and personalize my build.
Sorry for the long explanation, but the reason I did was to add context to say this: There are already four Starter decks, and we can already play them for practice. I think it's a great idea to add to the practice room as screen asking if you want to practice vs the AI or in a paired match. That would seem to be the most logical place to implement your idea and I think it would be a good addition to helping new players without CCG experience really get the fundamentals down.
Note 1: A card flashed for a second, too quick to see, and a lightning bolt strikes my unit and the dude dies - I asked myself "What happened?"... that was my first experience with Alzur's Thunder and it took me a few minutes to find out how to display the graveyard so I could read the card text since it does not display on the Left where the opponent's "last card played" is displayed.
Note 2: I've seen a number of thread asking "How to X" and stating "I played the tutorial, but it did not mention X." I really want to answer "Yes it did, you didn't pay attention" but instead I just give step-by-step instructions because that's what being a good neighbor is.
Despite existing other games with more complexity, Gwent is not an easy game to learn and especially to compete at high level, when you are totally new to the concepts and mechanics.
As a person who never played a CCG match in my life and have all the knowledge acquired through videos and forum discussion, I have to strongly disagree with you in one point. People can learn a lot of the BASIC game from tutorials outside the game, BUT, as I said, it takes hours and hours of not playing and just studying the game, which a lot of people (probably most) would not get behind this idea.
I believe most people don't have the time or don't want to spend so much time just to START playing the game with a reasonable level of satisfaction.
The 4 pre-built decks currently are not optimized at all and they are a part of your Card Collection, therefore they CAN be edited, which we don't want in this simpler room.
I didn't say it explicitly (my bad), but, in my suggestion, the 10 or 15 predefined decks are not supposed to be a part of your Card Collection. They are supposed to be part of the "Quick Match" room itself and the player only have access to those decks, when they enter that room. And those decks should even have a few epic and legendary cards, that are NOT part of your Starter Card Collection.
About including this idea inside the Practice Room, I can't agree with it.
Let's face it! 99% of the players skip through tutorials and practice mechanics in every single game. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit the number, but it's definitely the majority.
And you could argue that, if people skip the tutorial, they can't blame the game for being difficult. But it doesn't matter who's fault it is. If the players are having a bad experience and abandoning the game for good, the only ultimate loser here is CD Projekt Red, since they need players to keep their business running.
No matter how you look at this, the developer will always have to "babysit" the new players until they are hooked. It's a part of the job.
So, based on that, I think this new room should be very noticeable, in the main menu, along with the Casual Match and the Friendly Match rooms, as just a different type of match. And this new room also should NOT be labeled or associated to PRACTICE or TUTORIAL, since these names have the "power" of being ignored. Casual players don't want to play tutorial or practice, they wanna jump straight to the game itself.
Choosing the proper name for the room and making it evident like the most important ones, it's a way to massage the new player's EGO. They will feel like playing the full game, even though they really are not. They will try their luck on the Casual Match room, see amazing combos, get their asses kicked and go back to the Quick Match room. They will learn more, collect more and better cards and, later, they will try the Casual Match room again. Once the player starts to have a nice time in the Casual Match room, they normally won't want to go back to the Quick Match room and receive only HALF the rewards and play with a inflexible deck.
My suggestion is to create a natural progression for the new players, without blatantly calling them "noobs that need to practice or play a tutorial", but actually giving them the option to practice, without them noticing it.
Before you know, lots of casual players will become hardcore players, without being forced to do it. While today, with this configuration of the Beta, the new player have to go hardcore since the start and he doesn't even know if he likes the game.
I believe that, with this new room, Gwent would start simpler and become more complex at the players pace, since they can choose when they will migrate to the harder and more complex room.