I invite you to go check out the premium animated version of this card. See how long it takes you to differentiate it from the base version. No lie, it took me 30 seconds to figure out how it was even animated at all. The cost to get this "animation" is 400 meteorite powder or who knows how many Reward Points now.
If this is what CDPR thinks players should now have to work 3x harder for, they are fooling themselves. These cards don't magically become more valuable because meteorite powder is now harder to come by, that is faulty economic reasoning. And there is no way this decision is going to bring in new players (and most likely will discourage some players cause them to leave the game).
In my opinion the problem is simple. The rewards and premium content in this game that players are to either put in time or money to acquire is poor and behind the times. A version of the same card one already has but with a minor repeating animation, sure that might have worked 5 years ago to entice players, but that is completely commonplace now. The avatars, borders, banners - all nearly meaningless. How about some actual animations; like the characters not just 'stuck in a card' but live on the gameboard and interacting with each other, or revolving animations that change over seasons, or even just higher quality than the nonsense that is Manticore Venom. This game has potential but this development team has zero strategic ability and the consumers just are interested (right now there are 900 viewers of Gwent on Twitch... 900...aka complete irrelevance). Put some people on this project that know what they are doing or contract the IP out.
If this is what CDPR thinks players should now have to work 3x harder for, they are fooling themselves. These cards don't magically become more valuable because meteorite powder is now harder to come by, that is faulty economic reasoning. And there is no way this decision is going to bring in new players (and most likely will discourage some players cause them to leave the game).
In my opinion the problem is simple. The rewards and premium content in this game that players are to either put in time or money to acquire is poor and behind the times. A version of the same card one already has but with a minor repeating animation, sure that might have worked 5 years ago to entice players, but that is completely commonplace now. The avatars, borders, banners - all nearly meaningless. How about some actual animations; like the characters not just 'stuck in a card' but live on the gameboard and interacting with each other, or revolving animations that change over seasons, or even just higher quality than the nonsense that is Manticore Venom. This game has potential but this development team has zero strategic ability and the consumers just are interested (right now there are 900 viewers of Gwent on Twitch... 900...aka complete irrelevance). Put some people on this project that know what they are doing or contract the IP out.