Let's talk about Rogue Mage contracts in Gwent

[betraymechino]

Hi everyone!

Let’s talk a bit about Rogue Mage. As we know, Rogue Mage isn’t selling too well. In fact, it’s selling rather poorly, with estimated 13.1k – 100k (that 100k is highly optimistic) on steam and sad 34th page of GOG’s bestsellers.

Now, there’s a lot of good reasons why Rogue Mage doesn’t sell too good along non-Gwent as well as Gwent players and how to fix that. For the latter the most obvious answer is "add more content to RM", but that’s not the I’d like to talk about. What I’d like to do, is focus on is why Gwent players aren’t interested in playing RM. It’s not like it’s unknown to Gwent players, after all there’s Rogue Mage tab right next to “Play” tab in the menu and yet, if you’d look on twitch, youtube or forums/discord/reddit – there’s very little talk about it.

I’d like to bring into attention one of the reasons, why in my opinion it’s happening – lack of connection between Gwent and Rogue Mage.

With “Gwent (…) Single-player Expansion” in its title, Rogue Mage is barely present in Gwent. Sure, there is the mentioned earlier tab in the menu and a small pack of cosmetics for Gwent, received by owning the deluxe edition, but that’s it.

Oh right! there are also contracts…

This is where the lack of connection between Gwent and Rogue Mage is most visible for me – the two contracts are extremely disappointing. Boiling down to pretty much "oh, you own the game? cool".

With Rogue Mage being considered an expansion and de facto an additional mode for Gwent, there should be a lot more ways in which playing Rogue Mage influences you experience in Gwent. In short: a lot contracts.

After all, Rogue Mage is a type of game that should encourage you to play it a lot. But even me loving the game, after completing all the achievements, finishing the story and hitting over 100 hours in, got to ask myself why play it more, even if I enjoy it a lot, when I could play Gwent and gain resources, cosmetics there? By playing Rouge Mage I get the feeling of missing out, by not playing Gwent and contracts are the best way to nullify that feeling. By playing more and more runs, player should get something extra from it in Gwent.

Here are few examples of contracts, I'd like to see in Gwent:

A simple contract for defeating standard enemies:

Defeat 5 -> 10 -> 25 -> 50 -> 100 Standard enemies.
Reward: 2RP -> title -> 5RP -> avatar -> Standard Cardborder for bronze cards.

Contracts for defeating the elites:

Defeat 5 -> 10 -> 25 -> 50 -> 100 Elite enemies.
Reward: 2RP -> title -> 5RP -> avatar -> Elite Cardborder for gold cards.

And separate contracts for defeating Elites and Bosses, in this example Maxii and Albastra:

Defeat Maxii, the Mage Hunter -> on Adept difficulty. -> on Master difficulty -> on Grandmaster difficulty.
Reward: 2RP -> Mage Hunter title -> Maxii, the Mage Hunter avatar -> 10RP.

and

Defeat Albastra, the White Dragon. -> on Adept difficulty. -> on Master dificulty. -> on Grandmaster difficulty.
Reward: 5RP -> The White Dragon title. -> Albastra, the White Dragon avatar. -> Albastra Cardborder for gold cards.

In my opinion, with contracts like these, rewarding a player for continuing playing, Rogue Mage would gain a lot more popularity among Gwent players. Not only would players gain some reward points (making up for not playing Gwent) but also exclusive cosmetics. I mean, look at these cardborders:

I recon a lot of players would want to customize their cards in Gwent with these borders, right?


Overall, I think it’s a missed opportunity to enhance both Rogue Mage and Gwent’s experience and I sincerely hope that devs will consider adding more contracts related to Rogue Mage to Gwent.

Cheers

 

[devivre]

It's sort of a tricky suggestion, since RM is not free. Too much advantage for people owning RM might not resonate with parts of the playerbase of Gwent who do not own the singleplayer game. That's probably why the current system is the way it is.

That being said, contracts and achievements - while being a lovely bonus in some situations - never really make me play a game (and yeah, other people may see it differently).

 

[walward99]

I think it's a good suggestion. Thronebreaker had a ton of contracts and cost the same as the normal version of RM.

 

[betraymechino]

It's sort of a tricky suggestion, since RM is not free. Too much advantage for people owning RM might not resonate with parts of the playerbase of Gwent who do not own the singleplayer game. That's probably why the current system is the way it is.

I don't think it would be a problem, since contracts for RM wouldn't offer more advantage than for example those from the Journeys. There could/would be some reward points, but it would mostly be cosmetics.

 

[igor565]

It's sort of a tricky suggestion, since RM is not free.

Thronebreaker is also not free, but there are many contracts in Gwent from it.
So why not make contracts for RM?

 

[DRK3]

I actually didnt know how Rogue Mage is performing in sales whatsoever, so i was glad to get some information.

Personally, i still havent purchased Rogue Mage, for several reasons like:
A) coming out very close to a Gwent expansion, and while in Gwent it matters to play the new content as soon as it drops due to meta shifts, in RM since its a singleplayer, the experience will be the same whenever you play it
B) it was released out of the blue, the release date was disclosed very close to the actual date, and as someone who plans carefully what games they will play for the upcoming months, i didnt like this surprise
C) currently i dont have an easy way to make online purchases, so i am not even sure how i would manage to buy something on GOG, its not like there are currency wallet cards for GOG like there is for Steam or PSN.
D) i am unsure if i should get it on mobile or PC, and i think i saw somewhere there is no crossbuy, so i wouldnt get access to it in both platforms.

Despite these obstacles and circumstances, i still plan to get it and play it eventually, as i heard a lot of good things about it. And i hope it starts selling better too, as i dont want the CDPR to completely give up on singleplayer Gwent content, as i've already lost any faith in their ability to do anything well done in the online Gwent game

I agree with the suggestion to add 'inter-game' contracts and associated vanities. It might push a portion of players to try out RM.
I do have to point out i am against 'FOMO tactics' and believe nobody should play any videogame because they feel obligated to do so, to not miss out on daily quests or journey progression, those are disgusting strategies that real games dont need to rely on.

 

[Black_Philip]

It would be cool is RM had more integration with the decks you creat4e in Gwent main game, although that would obviously require a huge rework.

Besides more contracts, they could consider letting you gain XP through playing RM that would transfer over to your player level. I would play RM when I was not able to play online if that were the case.

What I really would of loved is some kind of single-player extension to Gwent that allowed your to create decks from the main game and put them up against new and challenging AI battles. They could make short story battles where you go through a story line, fight like 5 bosses or something, and charge you a few bucks for the trouble and you get some cool cosmetics or something.