Is 7.2 an "anti-expansion"?

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ya1

Forum regular
Let me explain the title. Expansion is when new stuff is added to the game. Stuff like new archetypes, new interactions, new decks, new ways to compete, etc. In terms of the above, Update 7.2 mostly removes stuff. MO suffered most with a good number of decks gone. SK also lost a quite an interesting archetype. So did SY and NG. NG kinda lost viability across the board with all the "populist" nerfs. NR brokenness will probably limit viability of everything, maybe even more than SK did post-MM.

What was added was rather bleak and missed reinforcement to the existing less popular archetypes that changes little for them. The new leaders either support stuff that is already supported better by other leaders or mostly miss the mark.

In short, many archetypes were removed, and nothing was really added in the sense that no new archetypes were introduced and (most probably) none of the less popular archetypes were made truly competitive. Do you agree?
 
Welcome to the open beta. :facepalm:
Limiting was the goal. Those doubble play and replay options had to go, I do agree by now. Now there is a lot of space for future disignes whith replays gone. A lot of empty space. Some of the new abilitys seems a bit underwhelming like the heal/alchemy. I doubt it will be really fitting.
I'm actually curious about MO and SC but mostly I agree, a lot if butchering done.
NR's AA should be the King of the hill after all SK nerfs:beer:
But I'm not complaining. I'm curious and hopefull. But if it ends up as boring as the last season I will contiunue to slowly retire my effords of ever achieving a top 200.
 
- It sure seems that way, i fully agree with you, they could've just added the new leaders instead of replacing them with the new ones.. see what the people think and how they adapt and move from there since their whole plan is to bring new cards to the game.

- They said the old ablities would interfere with their future plans... but what's the point if every time you come with a new expansion you go out and nerf the hell out of everything that people loves/likes to play.
You either come out with a huge expansion and do major changes right from the get go or don't do it at all imo.

- This reminds me a lot of LoL, every single fkn time they release a hero he's buffed af, after a month's time and once they feel like they sold out they nerf the hero to oblivion and do it all over again... meh... just meh.
 
I think we're still at the beginning of the expansion. As far as I know, since the implementation of the Scenarios, Gwent hasn't really changed that much. We're now seeing actual changes. In my opinion, leader abilities and scenarios have always been way too strong. They feel clunky, predictable, boring, but still ridiculously powerfull.

The only possible way to change that is to implement new cards and make them stronger than what has been played in the past. It was necessary and probably the only right decission to invigorate at least one faction other than Scoia'tael Harmony, that is able to completely dominate the ladder, because many popular decks have been the same for quite some time.

The new abilities spotlight some existing Archetypes in a better way, which is good for new players.
It could also be seen as some in-house market research. They could probably have done somthing more radical but I think it's a good idea to let the people try some new variations of their decks that might have reached an impasse.

As soon as Scenarios have left the stage, there's so much potential for better balancing and space for new cards.
 

ya1

Forum regular
7.2 is called a patch, not an expansion... no?

On the flipside, if all the stuff which was taken away just now was never there, and it was suddenly introduced, wouldn't that be a kickass mini-expansion?

now there is a lot of space for future disignes

I get the design space thing but they didn't design anything for it! I bet they don't even have the outlines for what they wanna design.

Look, I've seen that a million times in real life. Management creates a slogan without confronting it with the reality, and execs pursue it blindly because "the boss is always right." In this case the slogan was removing double card playing leaders, and the reality they didn't confront it with is that those exact leaders were not overpowered and contributed greatly to diversity and fun in the game, and that the real culprits of the unbalanced state of the game were not only left alone but in some cases even buffed to insanity.

Arbitrary design philosophy becomes a priority over user experience. Slama admitted in one of the interviews that first they release and then they see what's up. Excuse me but how exactly does this policy make any sense? Users are locked in an endless circle of getting shit dumped upon and devs checking up who swims and who drowns, releasing a few hotfixs, and when the waters clear a bit they dump more shit in the pool. This is what happened just now. Meta was finally looking like something with SK getting regulated and every faction having sth to compete. And now it's same shit all over again. MO got nothing again, already weak NG lost like 15 points out of nowhere, and the Shieldwalled NR will probably be the new SK.
 
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I wonder what's the point of seize when there's almost nothing you can actually use it on.

It seems like MO is just going to hard win against NG with those power changes and free veil.

The Oneiromancy "nerf" is laughable.
 
I'm hopeful the devs had certain archetypes in mind when creating those leaders and that they will possibly synergize well with card packs of the next expansion. I think they hinted at some things during the last developer stream. it's obviously not that well polished at this point, what can you do :shrug:
 
The game feels somewhat duller now. And now with battle rush there's way less meme decks around and the grind for the journey is going to be terrible; animations are slow and turns take too long. Were they expecting us to play battle rush during the summer alone? Seriously?
They should release a smaller patch to fix at least these things, imho:
- Fix shieldwall
- Make battle rush available again. Or make standard mode faster, fix the animations, make turns shorter and punish roping. Everytime you rope you have less seconds every turn, cumulative
- Seriously consider having a look at beta gwent again. Reintroduce old mechanics, increase the cards limit in a deck and make leaders with abilities usable once per game or with passive effects but make them ridiculous and OP. Also, stop looking for simmetries and streamlining everything, factions are different for a reason
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Yesterday's patch was meant to remove leader abilities that play 2 cards in 1 turn, correct?

Did they simply forget Imposter and Doublecross? I know its not the same thing as the other removed abilities, because with the ones i mentioned you are playing the opponent's cards, so its never as consistent as when you're playing your own... but still, its very likely you can play a powerful engine of your opponents, then one of your own, and the opponent cant deal with both at once.

(Im not implying the devs should also remove those 2 abilities, just that if they are gonna apply a criteria they should do it properly)
 
and imposter doesnt play 2 cards, it locks and spawns the opponents unit, so it cant use any deploy ability and is super dependend on the opponent playing either a very tall base strength unit or a strong engine.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
@OuterSpaceDoggo Doublecross can be kinda tricky. If you lose R1, you need to be extra alert, as the opponent can push R2 to force your leader ability as it cant be played last turn like other abilities (since at that point your opponent is out of cards).
However, i disagree its too random. A good opponent will try to leave last 3 cards, cards that are good for him but useless to you, like faction specific tutors, but this is extremely hard, most times you will get a powerful, useful card they need to play as finisher.

@Celadyl You dont need the deploy ability with Imposter, there are enough strong engines or tall units in the meta to assure you always get value, whether its against NR or SK.
 
Most of the time you get cards that have no sinergy with your deck that's why it isn't really problem; if you want to play assimilate there are better leaders. Sometimes you get a powerful finisher, that's true, but you have to consider that the opponent is going to play it against you next turn.
 
As a MO player, I hope they will be buffed in the next patch, because without death shadow, so many cards are useless now... detlaff, ruehin, kiki queen, caranthir, all dead. Ethereal is also unplayable now. Even vampires, with all that veil. Personnally, I don't think the leader abilities allowing to play a card more than once were unbalanced and thus needed to be deleted. I feel quite the opposite actually, the most exciting games I've ever had was when cards were played on and on, with series of combos on both sides, finishing the game with all the board filled and over a hundred points for both players.
 
Welcome to the open beta. :facepalm:
Limiting was the goal. Those doubble play and replay options had to go, I do agree by now. Now there is a lot of space for future disignes whith replays gone. A lot of empty space. Some of the new abilitys seems a bit underwhelming like the heal/alchemy. I doubt it will be really fitting.
I'm actually curious about MO and SC but mostly I agree, a lot if butchering done.
NR's AA should be the King of the hill after all SK nerfs:beer:
But I'm not complaining. I'm curious and hopefull. But if it ends up as boring as the last season I will contiunue to slowly retire my effords of ever achieving a top 200.
Replays gone? Really? So when they decoy Phillipa then draw her next round and steal another one of your key cards thats not replay? How about Renew? There's even double ball and Gedy... in fact the SK scenerio can still be played in all three rounds. This game is still busted. SAD
 
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