Is this game F2P friendly?

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I don't want to get into the merit of being or not being P2W ... I just want to know if it is possible to stay within the meta by playing regularly about 1h a day. I'm not interested in completing the collection, or having cute little cards, but having decks that allow me to be competitive without having to give up a social life for it.
 
Sadly, since Homecoming and up until now Gwent is leaning more towards P2W. There are so many cards and the meta is constantly changing with severe nerfs/buffs that everyone has to change decks and grind new cards every month. If you get into this now you'll never have fun until you dump 5000hours into it plus buying Thronebreaker to "freely" unlock all those rare cards.
 
Sadly, since Homecoming and up until now Gwent is leaning more towards P2W. There are so many cards and the meta is constantly changing with severe nerfs/buffs that everyone has to change decks and grind new cards every month. If you get into this now you'll never have fun until you dump 5000hours into it plus buying Thronebreaker to "freely" unlock all those rare cards.
I disagree. Gwent is very friendly to new players with the reward trees and daily rewards.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
I don't want to get into the merit of being or not being P2W ... I just want to know if it is possible to stay within the meta by playing regularly about 1h a day. I'm not interested in completing the collection, or having cute little cards, but having decks that allow me to be competitive without having to give up a social life for it.
Sadly, since Homecoming, there are a lot of people who will go to any extreme to see Gwent fail by misleading reviews and sometimes even outright lies. I haven't played any other CCG or TCG so I can't say "Gwent is the most generous card game ever". But I can say this: Gwent is very very generous. The starter decks (the cards you get for free initially) are pretty strong. One hour a day if you can spend, within a month you can have a couple of Tier 1 decks (if you manage your resources wisely and spend only on things that matter).

Just give a try for a week and see for yourself. The game is at its best and is very generous. Also, remember: "Never ever ever play casual mode. Always play ranked mode with 'ranked progression' checked in the game game when playing. Don't try Seasonal, at least not this month".

You can always ask her for help onto which card you have to craft when you have scraps and ask for advice here. Start now and have fun. Good luck.
 
Extremely free friendly. Probably the most so out of the current forerunners.
Much better than Hearthstone and MTG.
A bit better than elder scrolls legends .. which is also pretty generous
 
I don't want to get into the merit of being or not being P2W ... I just want to know if it is possible to stay within the meta by playing regularly about 1h a day. I'm not interested in completing the collection, or having cute little cards, but having decks that allow me to be competitive without having to give up a social life for it.

As there are more and more cards and factions are added to the game, naturally it will take more time for a new F2P player to complete the collection. However you definately can keep up with the meta if you spend your rewards and points wisely. First and foremost i'd guess that lots of players in the lower ranks won't have always have all the cards needed so you probably won't feel much disadvantege, and remember there is always the arena where you can use all the cards and leaders, it will also help you to get more familiar with the cards if u'r new to gwent and offcourse give you some rewards upon completion (you pretty much have to win just 1 match to get even on the 150 entry fee).

I have about 1K hours under my belt since closed BETA and play 1-2 hours daily. I have the entire collection of the plain cards + about 40% of the animated ones. Playing completely F2P (never bought cards/bundles or dust) aside of getting thronebreaker, so from experience its definately achievable.
 

4RM3D

Ex-moderator
Gwent is a Free To Play Online Collectible Card Game (F2P CCG). As with (almost) every collectible card game, online or otherwise, one of the goals is to collect cards. You do this by buying booster packs. The F2P element is that you can get these booster packs when spending time instead of money. The fact that you can buy boosters and as such buy an advantage means the game is pay to win (P2W) in the strictest sense. However, it's important to note that this applies to the whole F2P CCG genre. So it's pointless to argue whether or not Gwent is P2W. Instead you should compare the game with other CCG and ask how generous Gwent is. The conclusion is that Gwent is one of the most generous F2P CCG.

So, how can you earn rewards as a F2P player?
1. Daily quest
2. Daily tiers, by winning 6/12/24 rounds
3. GG rewards at the end of the match
4. A leveling system that gives you rewards and unique perks (which, in turn, offers you more rewards)
5. A monthly faction challenge offering extra rewards by completing quests
6. Playing ranked, even at lower ranked you'll receive some rewards at the end of the month

How is Gwent different from Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering, for F2P players?
1. Smaller deck size (making it easier to create competitive decks)
2. You cannot fill your deck with only legendary cards (unlike with HS and MtG, making those decks very expensive)
3. Less frequent expansions with less cards (making it easier to keep up with the collection)

On a final note, for the sake of full disclosure, I have to mention that Gwent's economy did change when Gwent came out of beta. As a result, premium cards have become more difficult to obtain, but this doesn't affect the gameplay. No refunds for tweaked cards does have some impact, but it's still manageable.
 
i'm a F2P player with 209h, i have most cards unlocked and if i really need a specific card, i can just craft it any time i wish, because i have 15k scrap lying around and i could get more by scraping dupe cards, so yeah, i'd say the game is F2P friendly.
 
I can only compare this game to Hearthstone, which I recently quit after playing since it's release. I have spent maybe £100 on this game and have played for about 2 months. With the exception of Northern realms cards (which I always dust because I have no interest in playing them), I have a 95% complete collection. I spent probably £1000 and many hours a day on hearthstone and still didn't have everything. In this game and hearthstone you need 100 "gold" to get a free card pack. In both games you have a daily quest. The rewards are quite comparable. In hearthstone, you get 10 gold for winning 3 matches. It is extremely time consuming and tedious. Losing gives you nothing. In this game, you can get 15 gold from winning 1 round, even if you lose the match. The game also gives you reward points to spend on card packs, leader cards etc.
I would say that if you maybe make a small investment, and play for an hour or 2 each day, you could easily build any deck that you want.
 
As generous as Gwent is with F2P, it's still a P2W due to the meta always changing. Trying to keep relevant is a pain, but if you're not a competetive player then it's absolutely awesome for F2P.
 
It's only p2w if you absolutely must have 4 meta decks right in your first couple of months of play.
Otherwise you can play anything and do well at lower ranks. Also the scrap ratio is incredibly high in this game along with all of the rewards you can earn.

Again just compare: streamers like kripparian don't have a full premium collection in hearthstone, but in Gwent you'll see top streamers floating thousand of resources or 100s of reward points
 
Well like others have said: It's a very generous CCG.

-Daily Quest
1 per day, up to 3 can be active at one time.

-Achievements
Win 100 times as monsters f.ex. There's other more complex achievements too you can go for.

-Rounds won
Win X amount of rounds. This is tiered into levels and goes on for a while rewarding you every X rounds.

-Reward Points.
Spent in a system where you choose the rewards yourself. It's kinda like a talent tree (you'll know when you see it).
I recommend gunning to unlock the faction leaders here first though, but you'll get a lot of stuff while doing so.

-Rank
Your rank will grant higher reward the higher you rank, but usually something.

-Leveling up
Leveling up grants rewards too.

There's really alot of ways to gain rewards in this game and it's easy to gather ore for kegs and scraps for crafting cards.
Early on is especially rewarding since you'll have a ton of achievements to complete which will reward you with reward points spent in that talent tree system i talked about.

Also since it's F2P (and actually playable that way) why not just jump the gun and try it out?
 
Sadly, since Homecoming and up until now Gwent is leaning more towards P2W. There are so many cards and the meta is constantly changing with severe nerfs/buffs that everyone has to change decks and grind new cards every month. If you get into this now you'll never have fun until you dump 5000hours into it plus buying Thronebreaker to "freely" unlock all those rare cards.
I respectfully strongly disagree. It's pretty easy to get a decent collection without playing much. And I find you can get enough free resources to craft the cards you desperately want.
Since homecoming I have played for about half the time (with long gaps). When I play, I generally aim at completing first level of daily rewards (the 6 won rounds) which amounts to play 4 games a day on average. I have 88% of the cards (including 84% of the latest expansion).
 
The best thing iI can suggest is try the starter decks,see which play style and faction you like them collect those card from your kegs. Staying in the meta is boring. Create your own decks and try new things. The meta shifts monthly so trying to make what everyone else plays may hurt you in the end. The game is still pretty generous not as much in the early days but enough that a free to player can get new cards easy enough.
 
Too generous. I have practically all the cards without paying anything. Collecting cards reminds me of my childhood when I played with cards. When I have all the cards I am afraid that my interest in Gwent will decline.
 
Too generous. I have practically all the cards without paying anything. Collecting cards reminds me of my childhood when I played with cards. When I have all the cards I am afraid that my interest in Gwent will decline.

Premiums are harder to come by so it will take you quite some time, and there are expansions.
 
I disagree. Gwent is very friendly to new players with the reward trees and daily rewards.
No, it's not.

Even if you consistently win your 6 rounds a day for 2 reward points it can take a huge amount of time to get the resources you need to craft essential cards let alone get some leaders you want to try. And then you build a deck and new balance changes roll around and your precious deck gets crushed and you have to slowly start gathering resources for a new deck and it's a real grind.

Some FTP players really embrace a game and play for hours and hours a day. But the OP asked about playing 1 hr or so a day and if he would make decent progress. The answer is no, you'll never catch up and you will usually be matched with better players who crush you since there aren't really that many new players overall.
 
Some FTP players really embrace a game and play for hours and hours a day. But the OP asked about playing 1 hr or so a day and if he would make decent progress. The answer is no, you'll never catch up and you will usually be matched with better players who crush you since there aren't really that many new players overall.
Allow me to disagree with that statement.
If you compare it to others this CCG is the MOST friendly in terms of rewards and valuable cards given with the starting decks. There is NO other CARD game that gives you one of the BEST staple cards from the basic set as Gwent does! I have experience with TCG and CCG from beta HS and I can say for CERTAIN, that playing Gwent 1-2 hours a day can get you a REASONABLE amount of cards and will make you several tier 1 decks given the time.
After that bronze rework is true that a lot of BETA players gave Gwent a second try after the HC rework, but I can't say that the new player experience is trash, 4 of my friends started playing the game last week after the update and I've seen a lot of "bad" (new) players playing the game with not refined decks. After rank 20 it starts to narrow down and there are people with better collections, but overall I think it's balanced out based on experience helping out my friends in the early stages!
 
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