This interview is missing one, very important for me, question:
27. What's the current state of game code? Why does every monthly update introduce so many never-existed-before bugs? I do not know how it was before HC (I did not play Gwent back then) but since HC release there was no single free-from-bugs monthly update. It is so irritating that after that we still need to wait weeks/months to fix some important bugs which, in the meantime, make cards harder (or impossible) to play. Some of the cards were/are not fixed for several months!
Actually, our codebase has been getting cleaner and cleaner over last year. Often these bugs are related to these specific issues being rather tricky and incredibly difficult to reproduce internally in a non-live environment. We basically cannot reliably verify fixes due to their complexity and have attempted several times to fix them. This is actually more common in game development than you might expect (at least from my experience). The next update should have another fix attempt (hopefully we are correct regarding cause and solution) and they will finally be closed.
For example, Harald and Barnabas's bugs are likely related to behavior that only happens on saturated servers. While client logs give us hints, unless we deploy the fix live (not always trivial to do, especially internal development time-wise, as often requires client update).
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Thanks for asking the 15. question. Unfortunately, Slama completely dodged it with a really long answer in which he didn't answer the question at all. It's funny if he thinks SY will bring those players back because at least for me I can't stand those SY bronzes whereas beta NG spies and NR machines, for example, were what I enjoyed about the game.
Also, I didn't leave the game because of the provision system - I actually think it's pretty cool (even though I liked the beta deck building too) I left it because I miss the fast-paced gameplay where you didn't have to do all kinds of stuff regarding Orders and what not and Syndicate just made that part even worse.
I still hope for a "classic" version even though it probably won't happen - it's not like there is a market for it like there is for WoW Classic for example but one can only hope...
FWIW, Jason seems like a nice guy and I have nothing against the dude. Nice job on the interview, by the way!
I feel like "completely dodged" is a bit unfair of a statement but let's not focus on that. The issue with such a question as it's so open-ended and assumes there is a simple easy to discuss reason why some players decided to leave after Homecoming. For example, the mulligan update fixed the issue for many players and the speedup of turns (not waiting for animations as much, auto turn ending), made the game feel much better opening the door for more players to return.
Others might have left due to the aesthetic change but if you really think about it, many people, including myself, prefer the new aesthetic so there is no win-win to solving that issue. We are iteratively trying to improve the game and its visuals which considering how our large scale reworks to fix things have resulted in the past seems like a reasonable approach.
I decided to focus my answer on one of the issues players have discussed in the past which is the feeling of bronzes. The reason provisions are such a large part of the discussion, is we feel that the way bronzes were balanced with provisions was a key contributor that loss of feeling and we are making a large step towards rectifying that soon so I felt it appropriate to discuss it.
Also, note that faction identity and mechanics was another complaint that I get the feeling you can relate to this one. Again it's not something we will fix in one update, but I suggest you check out Northern Realms after the next update. Our hopes are this will be another large step forward to getting what you are missing back.
All and all, thank you for sharing your point of view and I can only hope that one day we get to the point where you can enjoy GWENT in a newly evolved form.
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