Ideas for weather

[Joneleth]

Ideas for weather

Hi everyone,

i'm just going through the forums now and then and i see a lot of feedback about balancing and less about how cards and mechanics feel and interact on other levels. So i just thougth i talk about some aspects of weather that crossed my mind using a concept i came up with as the basis.

Note that my reasoning puts gameplay and accessibility over balancing. Meaning those to areas have to be good and make sense and after that balancing is applied to them. If you value balancing as the most important aspect of the game and everything else is applied afterwards that is totally fine. It just means that the following is likely gonna be rather useless to you and probably seems just stupid. In that case: please don't kill me.

Ah also i just realized my browser want's to turn every word into something german. So please excuse some of the spelling mistakes (capital letters most of all). It's hard to find them after the fact.


Concept

So i'm gonna tell you my concept and than go through some aspects of weather that for me seem to be important:

• a non-weather-immune non-gold unit affected by weather has it's current strength displayed in blue
• blue strength does not contribute to the total strength of the row at all (it's value is 0 instead of 1 as it is the case now)
• a unit's strength stays blue until weather is removed, immunity is toggled, unit is promoted or some new kind of effect is applied (that does not exist at the moment)
• the strength of that unit is blue even if its current strength is above or below its current base strength
• when the weather is removed (or immunity toggled etc.) the blue strength of the Card Comes into effect again (and is colored depending on its value compared to its current base strength)
• if you zoom/Detail view a Card that Cards current base strength is displayed in White (i just think the Detail view should alway's give you current base strength, thats why i put that here)

Evaluation

Just a little bit of balancing

I assume that you are now probably going crazy about this completely breaking Balance (it is!). So i'm just gonna address a view balancing concerns here at the beginning to get that out of the way and talk about gameplay, Quality of life and accessebility later.

Aspects that buff weather are red, aspects that nerf weather are green.

• weather is now exactly 1 Point of strength per unit more effective than before
• weather now negates buffs that are applied after the weather was played (they add to the Cards blue strength as well)
• weather cannot be "cleared" by damage removing effects as d-bomb or the skellige armorsmith
• weather does not Setup boardclears (like frost into Harald or rain into geralt aard)
• weather is not considered wounding (Axeman or Harald don't profitas much)
• now obviously these changes require rebalancing of existing conten and/or even addition of new content (that makes them also an opportunity by the way)
• both CDPR and the gwent community are really good at balancing though
• to be honest: if the Goal for weather was to be as omnipresent as it was say a couple of months ago the whole concept would be impossible
• but with the direction the game is going anyways (changes to areomancy, double weather, remembering the buffs/damages before weather) it seems possible

Weather has a stronger identity

• i consider weather to be one of gwents core mechanics that set it apart from other card games
• it has its own animation that permanently affects entire rows and there is a different weather with a different name for each row
• despite that weather is right now technically a subtype of wounding/damaging
  it follows all the rules for damage and sets its own set of rules ontop of those
  • damage done by weather cannot stack (if you lacerate a row as Long as Units remain on it the next lacerate will still have an effect, not the case for weather)
  • damage done by weather can be "healed" by removing the weather (ontop of buffing out of it as it works for both damage and weather)
  • etc.
• if weather is considered a core mechanic of the game it should not blur that stongly with other core mechanics (that is not to say that they should not interact!)
• weather beeing its own thing not only strengthens the weather identity but the identity of damage as well
  
  as a side note: weather was also considered as wounding in the witcher 3 form of gwent
  but there it was the only form of wounding so that does not really get us anywhere

Weather is more accessible

• if we Keep assuming that weather is a core mechanic of gwent it also means that this mechanic has to be tought to new Players and should be easy to understand
• now i realize that my concept above took quite some explaining (not exactly accessible) but that is because i was explaing it in relation to the complicated weather that exists now; it get's a lot easier if explained from scretch
• what you have to explain for current weather
  • weather is a permament effect on a row that reduces all non-immune non-Gold Units strength to 1
  • if a new unit appears on the row that buffs itself its strength is reduced to 1 including the buff
  • if a new unit appears on the row that buffs another unit on the row its strength is reduced to 1 while the buff persits
  • all damage done by weather can be removed and the lost strength restored (even if it came from buffs)
  • you therefore have to keep track of everything that happens to every minion (more on that under Quality of life)
    
    those rules make perfect sense once you think about it for a while
    i just think that core mechanics should not require you to do that
• what you have to explain for blue weather
  • weather is a permanent effect that takes the strength of all non-Gold non-immune units on a row out of play until removed
  • packed in a tutorial of say the same length as the above that Information is far easier processed because you can focus on general implications instead of specific interactions

Quality of life benefits (connected to the last point)

• as of now you have to memorize the strength of every single unit on both sides of the board at every given Moment of the game all the time
• that is because your opponent might at any point play a weather effect and there is no way for you to look up what the current actual strength of the units ist
• this becomes especially difficult once you apply buffs and weathers multiple times to a row/unit
• now by constantly displaying this virtual strength as blue strength the game obviously loses some of its complexity
  • i think complexity does not belong to the Basic application of core game mechanics, they should be realy fast to absorb
  • i think complexity belongs to advanced mechanics and interactions and individual effects etc.

Emotional stuff <3

• i think it feels better to have your 30 strength witcher be blue rather than him bein a red dwarf
  the "set to 1" feels more like "oh, all for nothing" whereas the blue strength is more like "i got to do somthing about that"
• showing the "virtual"/actual strength of a unit is also more in line with the vibe of the recent changes to weather (meaning that there is an actual strength)

Closing Thoughts

Now i do realize that not just bacause of balancing but for a Million other reasons this concept is not realistic and that it creates Problems of its own. I just wanted to get some of my thoughts out there concerning what weather is for me and used this concept as an example. Every conclusion i make is based on my understanding that gwent wants wo address a wide audience (hint for example the pg poor infantry). If the game is supposed to only address Card game enthusiasts and the like nothing i brought up applies (perhaps not even the QoL stuff). They are also based on my understanding that weather is intended to be a core mechanic of gwent. If it is supposed to be just an exotic machanic than also nothing i said really applies. So perhaps some small pieces in here prove to be useful to someone or perhaps i wrote this just for myself. I', fine with it either way.

So anyway if anyone actually reads this: have a great day!

 

[ibilibertas]

I am impressed by this draft. I am also, not qualified i feel to reply to it.

One thing i did noticed in Forums and especially with famous YouTubers is the total lack of feedback and especially suggestions. People who are intelligent should be able to provide feedback. Instead they keep playing OP decks or factions without mentioning what could change to balance things for a card, a core mechanic or a Faction. This is a comment not to offend ppl., i appreciate what they do, but there's just a lack of feedback.

In that regard, i can only appreciate someone who (finally) provides suggestions, especially in the depth we see here. As long as i have been playing this game i also notice that, Weather is mostly used by Monsters with few exceptions. Then, if it is such a core mechanic, it should be changed in a way to cater to other Factions too. I don't know the official stats and data but it feels like 90% of ?Weather is used by Monsters (ofc. correct me if i am wrong, i only assume here).

if you zoom/Detail view a Card that Cards current base strength is displayed in White

This is QoL. Base strength should be shown at least when you hover the mouse over a card, not in zoomed/detailed view only. Similar to what 3rd party mod Gwent Tracker does, but i do not like it because the game is already way too clunky for a simple CCG and with the tracker it feels like playing on a 20 year old PC for a reason i cannot fathom.

My concern with the weather, besides the fact that only one Faction uses it (one Deck even or two), is that while one can apply weather effects on ALL rows in ONE turn even, there's no counter for it. First Light removes it from one row. I thought, the whole point of making a balancing game was for every mechanic to have a counter, situational or not. In this case, there's none and i am baffled of ppl. not mentioning this.

If anything is going to change, i hope they keep that in mind. One deck or Faction should not be able to abuse a core mechanic without counters.

 

[ArianeGrosmont]

or... how 'bout this: when you play weather it simply removes all of your opponent's cards, and sends all the cards in their hand to the graveyard... wadda ya say?

 

[RickMelethron]

the biggest issue with weather is cheesing wins with your last card. if you're playing against dagon and you pass first, there's a 99% chance you're going to lose the round... same thing goes for skelliga decks with coral or even some NR decks which play frost.

getting a round from 30 points behind by playing one card is quite ridiculous of a mechanic... if weather had a delayed effect, that alone might make it much better to play. (of course, the weather monster units would need a significant redesign if that were to be the case.)

 

[Joneleth]

This is QoL. Base strength should be shown at least when you hover the mouse over a card, not in zoomed/detailed view only. Similar to what 3rd party mod Gwent Tracker does, but i do not like it because the game is already way too clunky for a simple CCG and with the tracker it feels like playing on a 20 year old PC for a reason i cannot fathom.

Hi,

yeah i roughly had a similar idea concerning the mouseover to Show base strength. I just wanted to keep my rather long post about weather. But now that you bring it up i feel pretty much the same about it. It would be very convenient but also highly confusiong for new players just trying to learn the basics. Same goes for like a hotkey to display base stats on the cards.

On that note: i only made the weather "freeze" a units strength completely to avoid confusion. My goal was to make the current virtual strength of a unit to be shown all the time during weather. And with the current system there was simply no way to do that AND visualize that during weather ist strength would count for 1. Now if you change the system in a way that 2 values would be displayed on a Card (1 for the virtual strength and 1 for the "temporary" strength [=1 right after weather got applied]) you could even preserve the mechanic of buffs affecting both temporary and virtual strength and the boardclear setup. But the 2 values might add more confusion than being able to see virtual strength is worth. That is why i kept my concept more simple. That way it demands more rebalancing. But like i stated in the beginning: in this "experiment" accessibility was meant to suppress balance. I did this becaus my post is not really about balancing or getting this exact concept of weather into the game. It was about showcasing aspects of the current design of weather i did not see being discussed somewhere else.

By the way: in my post i made 2 assumptions.

1. Weather IS a core mechanic of gwent and not an exotic effect (like say equality in hearthstone)
2. Gwent is meant to be easily understood because it aims at a wide audience (including casuals/young people etc. )

How do you think about these assumptions?
Because i am completely unsure about them.
Gwent might very well be meant for just veteran witcher players who enjoyed the implementation there and for card game nerds (meant in a very positive way, i consider myself to be one aswell).
I brought up the pg poor infantry as a hint towards one direction but there are hints for the opposite of course.
The way card effects are phrased for example makes mee feel like the devs want to go more in the way of yugioh.
There card texts are extremely long to make it very clear what a card does. The downside is that it is impossible to get a general idea of the card by just glancing over it or even after the first reading.
So in that case they put certainty over accessibility. And certainty in digital card games seems way less important than in physical card games because the computer is the perfect judge.
So it would make little sense for me to value accessibility as high as i did within my post.

I am also not saying that any one direction is inherently superior to the other. I am just trying to understand what the game is going for.
Not understanding it makes it very hard to give constructive feedback.
I wanted to do a post about keywords especially about relentless (my first one a while back was horiible and ill informed) and one on phrasing of effects.
But while writing this one i realized that the games premise might be totally different from what i thought it to be.

The "weather ratio" from ragnarok to clear weather is probably because ragnarok is a gold card and clear weather is a bronze. So it would feel quite underwhelming if your gold card is 100% countered by a bronze. From the top of my mind i can only think of one example where that is actually the case: playing a 1 strength minion against twisting mirror (more of an edge case).
But this goes more into balancing again and i was going more in the direction of how certain aspects of the game feel to play.

Oh my! This post got even messier than the last one. I'm sorry. Maybe you get something out of it or can even give me some feedback. Good night

 

[Fogever]

We need a card to clear heavens, opposed to ragh nar roog.

Nerf for DAGON leader of monsters, is a very powerful card to be a leader of 200 .. is the same as aeromancy (800)

 

[ibilibertas]

Weather IS a core mechanic of gwent and not an exotic effect (like say equality in hearthstone)
Gwent is meant to be easily understood because it aims at a wide audience (including casuals/young people etc. )

Weather would be a core mechanic, if it's functionality would apply to any deck, to any Faction. At this moment (from my experience) 90 to 95% is used by Monster Deck variations. So no, i do not consider it a core mechanic at this point.

Gwent is...what the Devs want it to be. Any CCG is pretty easy imo, well, i am of avg. intelligence, so i am guessing most of them are easy to the avg. gamer. Playing Gwent inside the Witcher game actually shows that it is pretty basic. So it is not meant to be for Veteran CCG or Witcher players only, i can say that at least.

Having said these things, i expect from CDPR to refine every aspect of the game as time goes by. Obvious priorities apply to any early access or Beta state game (balancing etc.)

There card texts are extremely long to make it very clear what a card does

Things like, the base strength as mentioned, the History (which is practically non existent at this point) and other things need to be implemented at least when the game goes to OBT.

​​​​​​​Cheers m8.

 

[arz0]

Joneleth First of all its great to see somebody come with a really constructive well thought out suggestion for a weather change. and not just complain.
This is by far one of the best suggestion i have seen.
Have a redpoint

:cheers:

Things i like about your suggestion:

• It protects units you invested in from 'post weather removal' such as one lacerate.
• It means you don't need to immediately clear the weather, or do a reactionary play, for fear of instant removal.
• It very much improves quality of life, by clearly displaying the strength of the unit. (no need to keep track)
• promotion is now post weather protection/immunity. and pre-weather protection. (huge buff to NR faction identity)
• investments in buffing have more protection
• you cant weather multiple times, over and over.

Things i didn't like about your sujjestion.

It still means that last turn play weather, or clear skies is still just a swing-y, or even more so. Now that your units are somewhat safe from easy removal you can just hold on to one clear skies until its your last play, and your opponent cant do much about that.
maybe there could be a new way to threaten blue units, more susceptible to certain types of damage for instance?

I think its a little bit harsh to say that the blue units contribute 0 to the score.

What if a blue strength units only contribute its score up to base value?
So for example you have a unit a 5 base strength, wounded to 2 strength. when blue, it contributes 2 strength to score. (and the limit is 5)
if a unit at 5 base strength +3 buff, is blue, it contributes 5 strength to the score.
That would in some way solve the very much polar aspect of weather.
and if you do lack a clear skies or blizzard potion, at least any units you have to play into weather still contribute to the score in some way.

Or maybe blue units each contribute 1 strength?, not 0. That is more source material friendly and in-keeping with original qwent.

The other thing i don't quite like, is that you can end up in a situation that you are able to buff your units, but have no way to get their score to contribute.
but i think such a problem is probably best solved with weather immunity, and weather protection.

How do you propose to fit all that in the description of the card?
Could be something like.

Spawn a Frost effect on both Melee rows that changes the type of strength of all non-immune units on or appearing there to blue. Units revert to their appropriate type of strength (red, green or white) when Frost is removed or they move out of it. A unit at blue strength contributes it's strength up to its base strength as a maximum.

-----------

How do you propose the interaction with cards that rely on determining whether a unit is wounded or buffed? Such as black infantry arbalest. or war cry? beserker marauders?
these cards rely on if a card is buffed or wounded. green or red, not blue.

How do propose cards such as wild hunt warriors work? because they are designed to pick off units at 1 strength, because of weather.

Last thing. how will cards such as igni work?
Lets say on the opposite row a unit is at 20 blue strength, but its contributing less than that. does igni target it? if not not should it? or is that how you see it working.
and lets say you have 2 20 strength units, one is weather immune the other is not. are they both scorched? because that would be inconsistent, as a card that is considered to be contributing 0 strength, is treated as a unit at 20 by igni.

 

[Joneleth]

Wow thank for the great Feedback.
You go a lot into balancing though so i am gonna keep my answers short. (edit: well that worked out as planned -,-)

Last-Turn-Player Advantage
So this is just in the DNA of Gwent. The last Card played will allways have the potential to be blowout because there is no way to react to it. And some card is always gonna be the most unfair when played last (in the past Milva, Isengrim, Weather, Elyas? the growing elf). There is no way around that Problem. Right now this gets addressed by those swingy 1-turn-play cards getting nefed a lot while snowball cards (generally stuff that grows/pings on board like YenCon) get more focus. They can be quite unfun at times aswell (but way better since easier to address in deckbuilding). The Problem remains though that some Cards are alway gonna be more powerful than others when played last. This can only be addressed by decreasing the overall powerlevel of ALL 1-turn-play-cards a lot. By the way i feel like decks that play like old Special-Isengrim-Scoia are like the combo/otk decks of gwent, they force you to play differently. They make the game more diverse. But i agree that they should probably not dominate. And there should be a way to actually PLAY differently. With old Isengrim you could often just wait and die. A better example of a Card that is in theory like old Isengrim is the dwarf that gets stronger for each dwarf. Even if that dude would get 4 strength for each dwarf on the board (likely being a Gold Card then) it would not be as bad as isengrim. That is because Even though his strength Comes into Play in 1 turn aswell he can be interacted with by all decks and archetypes. That is because he Needs the board for his strength compared to the grave (or all Special Cards played in that game as another example). So that is a way to design swingy one-turn-Play-Cards that can still be interacted with while forcing a different playstyle.

Blue Units contribute 0
Yeah i just made it like that to make it easier to read the board. If Units contribute 1 or their base value it is harder to communicate that. The Player would see the row with just his 20 str unit and on the side the number would be like 5. On a bigger board you would than have to look up base strength for all Units to understand the row value. Or base strength would have to be constantly displayed on the card in addition to blue total strength. I just found "not at all" to be easier understood. It is of Course less balanced though. And maybe i am now trying to be too simple and too accessible. So yeah maybe base strength is a good way of going about it. Makes every Skellige unit sort of weather immune though

The buff Problem
Yes this is the biggest problem within the balance of my idea. You lose your entire buff (played after weather) if you cannot clear the weather. I made the Thing with weather as a core mechanic in mind. In that world you would expect to see weather in a lot of decks. There would be anti weather Cards (that don't exist at the monent) that don't loose a lot of their value against non-weather decks. Cards like the one that toggles weather immunitie (maybe of adjacent Units with the Placement patch in mind) would have more competetive stats and be generally more playable when u expect more weather. So yes in the current game the mechanic would be horrendously unfair. A game with this mechanic therefore had to be slightly different.

Tooltip
The Card would just say something like "spawn frost on both meelee rows." I can't quite remember how it is worded exactly at the moment. And than u could have the weather basics explained in a tooltip like they plan for Keywords. If weather is a basic game mechanic you don't expain it on every card. You make a tutorial and the mechanic by being accessible manages the rest on ist own. I mean the fiend Card does not read: "Play on your meelee row. Contribute 8 strength to the total score of that row", or another example for the thunderbolt potion: "Add 4 strength to all instances of a non-Gold unit on it's side and convert their strength to green if it's strength exceeds it's base strength." The whole concept is based upon the idea that weather is as core as for example buffing or damaging. That might be a false assumption as Pink Floyd pointed out though.

Arbalest interaction
It would be determined the same way it is determinde now. If blue strength is bigger than base -> buffed. The Arbalest does never mentions green strength. It just mentions strength in relation to base strength.

Wild Hunt Warrior
Yeah that's another Card that would not work the way it is right now. I just thin in closed beta if you Limit your discussion of a Card or mechanic by making every other Card and mechanic in the game virtually untouchable u might waste some ideas. After release that would be different but looking how they changed weather already during closed beta i think the game can still Change a lot. Wild Hunt Warrior is designed with weather as the boardclear Setup in mind that it is right now. There are other ideas for weather out their (like weather doing 1 damege per turn) that cause the same Problem for the Wild Hunt Warrior. If weather does not Setup boradclears he has to be a completely different Card. Same goes for like Geralt Aard. But there are not that many of those exact weather profiters out there.

Igni
Yes in the example igni would clear the blue 20 and clear both 20s in the second example. I don't neccessarily think that it is inconsistent. The strength is still 20. It just does not contribute. Also it can Play out like this. You buff a unit to 30. It gets weathered. You got surprised. Now you buff another weather-immune unit to 20. No right now your strength on the board would be 21 in my System it qould be 20. If your Opponent plays igni right now u lose 20 strength and are left with 1. In my System you lose your blue 30 strength but are left with 20. So it can also be good for you. Also generally i think it is better for you if your Opponent Needs to use igni on you weathered 30 str than if he can just kill it with 1 damage.

 

[RickMelethron]

And some card is always gonna be the most unfair when played last (in the past Milva, Isengrim, Weather, Elyas? the growing elf). There is no way around that Problem

the problem is not with the card being powerful when played last, the problem is when a card can swing ~20 points without your opponent being able to play around it.
weather can completely neutralize one of their rows, and there's no way in the game to prevent weather from being applied. that is what makes it such a broken swing card; regardless of how much power your opponent has, a simple bronze card can always take the round.

in the case of milva, the problem was pretty simple to get around... "if your opponent passed, only your card is bounced"
same thing applies for the NG gold card which burns an opponent units and lets them draw... "if your opponent passes, can only burn your own cards"

cahir currently faces a similar problem, and i presume it won't take long to be adjusted. same goes for weather... all they have to do is give weather some sort of delayed effect; either takes a couple of turns to reduce the units strength or reduces the strength periodically.

 

[ibilibertas]

I

if weather had a delayed effect

Actually i think this is a brilliant idea. Similar to other cards (Lubberkin, Rot Tosser, etc.)

I hope they consider this for Weather. Or, like a Weather report, first does a minimum dmg, and a turn after "settles" in and does what it does.

 

[Joneleth]

Yes delayed weather would be a solution but i cannot come up with a good placer to put the timer. Also it had to be at least to rounds or weather played as the last card would still behave exactly the same.

Well if we stick to the example of old Isengrim you would be able to interact with it if it was not the last Card. You could for example use Tremors and remove most of it's strength. You could in theory even interact with Isengrim before he is played by removing your opponents specials from their grave. It was just practically impossible. But basically i think we are on the same page and talk about the same Thing. You called it "swing ~20 points" and i called it "one-turn-play-cards". Your name is better

I still pretty sure that their biggest strength comes from being the last card played. The best example for this is meta decks playing the 1 copy of aeromancy. If weather was broken at any time during a game/round decks with a lot of weather would dominate. But the value of weather decreases with every copy you draw. If a unit is already at 1 there is no benefit in Setting it's strength to 1 again. Hence the weakness of pure weeather decks being the low amount of strength they can actually play themselves. So weather is the strongest at fewer or just the one copy. And the best time to pay that one copy is when your opponent cannot do anything about it. The frustration with the balancing of weather is not that you need a clear card for it. That could be achieved by either making clears super widely available of just weakening weather a ton. It is that you may actually have a clear card and it would never matter if your opponent gets to play the last card. And there is no real way of changing that without radically changing the way the game works (rounds are like the "chains" of other card games).

What i am getting at is that it is not the fault of any specific card that you cannot interact with it after you already passed the turn. It is the result of how the game works. Maybe that tells us that some designs just don't work in gwent. Or at least that their not possible while being elegant. The text on the new Milva (and on Vilgefortz) is twice as long as it could be because they have to inculde these exceptions for balancing reasons.

But here i am talking about balance again. If weather could work any way you wanted how would you visualize it to be most simple/accessible/elegant/informative?

 

[roundert]

I am impressed by this draft. I am also, not qualified i feel to reply to it.

One thing i did noticed in Forums and especially with famous YouTubers is the total lack of feedback and especially suggestions. People who are intelligent should be able to provide feedback. Instead they keep playing OP decks or factions without mentioning what could change to balance things for a card, a core mechanic or a Faction. This is a comment not to offend ppl., i appreciate what they do, but there's just a lack of feedback.

In that regard, i can only appreciate someone who (finally) provides suggestions, especially in the depth we see here. As long as i have been playing this game i also notice that, Weather is mostly used by Monsters with few exceptions. Then, if it is such a core mechanic, it should be changed in a way to cater to other Factions too. I don't know the official stats and data but it feels like 90% of ?Weather is used by Monsters (ofc. correct me if i am wrong, i only assume here).

This is QoL. Base strength should be shown at least when you hover the mouse over a card, not in zoomed/detailed view only. Similar to what 3rd party mod Gwent Tracker does, but i do not like it because the game is already way too clunky for a simple CCG and with the tracker it feels like playing on a 20 year old PC for a reason i cannot fathom.

My concern with the weather, besides the fact that only one Faction uses it (one Deck even or two), is that while one can apply weather effects on ALL rows in ONE turn even, there's no counter for it. First Light removes it from one row. I thought, the whole point of making a balancing game was for every mechanic to have a counter, situational or not. In this case, there's none and i am baffled of ppl. not mentioning this.

If anything is going to change, i hope they keep that in mind. One deck or Faction should not be able to abuse a core mechanic without counters.

allow me to reply for you then, weather is op, and the op's suggestion would make it even more op. Literally sounds like a guy who loves weather and would love for them to give it a buff. dbomb shouldn't reset it? So literally only clear skies which is only three per deck to deal tons of weather inducing options? How about NO.