My comprehensive guide to things I think need to be fixed before full release
Hi I've been playing a lot of the Gwent closed beta and I can see it definitely has a lot of potential but there are a few too many things that annoy me about balance, UI and the tutorials. So I've come here to r̶a̶n̶t̶ l̶i̶k̶e ̶a̶ w̶h̶i̶n̶y̶ k̶i̶d̶ talk about some of the things that have been annoying me. Let us start from the start:
The tutorial: Of course every game needs a tutorial, Gwent is no different the tutorial begins with a welcome message and tells you to do this and you get a free card pack, this might not be a bad thing but mentioning card packs right out the door give the impression this might be just another generic free to play out for your money, which in the age of clash of clans and game of war might be offputting to some. The game proceeds to explain how the crowns replace the life total rubies from TW3. On the topic of the crowns I don't mind them and know they will grow on me as I play more but maybe consider putting in a 'Legacy' UI configuration at some point just because a lot of people still love the exact form of Gwent in TW3. Next is the army strength total next to the crown, it works the same as always but i often find myself looking at the ranged row expecting that to be the strength total. the bottom left corner of the screen seems a bit too out of the way and i would consider moving the pass coin up and to the left so it is aligned with the space between to boards as to symbolise it is both each players taking a turn with their side of the coin face up. I would then put the totals to the left of the ranged total and make the numbers a bit larger so it is more noticeable and easier to quickly check. This is now a subsection on odd forced gameplay choices in the tutorial. Right out the door the game says you need to play geralt. I can see he is the posterboy of the witcher franchise and this is a spinoff so having him be the first card you play is cool and all but the correct play, well there technically isn't a correct play order here but playing Geralt first is going to bring on a mindset where it is OK to play h̶e̶r̶o̶e̶s̶ ̶ 'gold cards' first. Which is usually a bad play as you can't resurrect them and playing your gold cards first turn is a really really stupid idea unless they are one of the new gimmicky ones that gets bounced on certain terms.
That is about enough about tutorial one. Lets go to tutorial two. So, Straight off the bat you mulligan all your non-creatures. Bad idea in gwent. Decoy was amazing in TW3 gwent allowing Nilfgaard to play 'Overextend as much as you want' and get away with it, but you have to dump it immediately. In a real game I would much rather keep my commanders horn to combo with my two manticores than get another Poor F̶*̶*̶*̶i̶n̶g̶ Infantry, which now has rally and I see what you did there with the name change. So. Tutorial two wants you to open with Geralt, Remember when I said dont open with your golds? You are encouraging opening with your golds. The first round is about poking the other person and making them overextend but playing geralt first turn is the worst thing you could do. It would be better to open with one of the vanilla 7s and save geralt for round 3 when you both have 2 cards left and the other guy only has fog and Poor [not F-Ing anymore] Infantry and use geralt to win the game. Also the monsters first play in tutorial two isnt great either. Then you play Roche, who hits a 2 card for -5 when you have 2 ballista which i'm pretty sure hit for 2 on ETB (enter the battlefield). Then you may play anything, but it gets scorched whatever it is. its better to play a ballista and hit one of their 2s than a vanilla knight. depending on how you played you either have to pass and get rekt from losing a knight or pass leading by a small amount and see the age-old 'Will they go for the point even if it gives them card disadvantage?' which ends in the monsters going for the point and going into round two with a one card lead. Turn two is fine as you can play it however but I would have given the monsters another scorch just to teach not to lead with your vanilla 8. On turn 3 the monsters pass far to early. I feel like you should be able to lose this tutorial through huge misplays just so you can better learn in that safe environment
Tutorial 3: starting off you get way too lucky on purpose with the mulligans. You are also forced to lead with a vanilla 8. Playing just the seven lessens the impact of that early gamex scorch that happens too often I get you are trying to teach leader abilities but the scenario that plays out in unrealistic for turn one. Making it a turn 3 would have been fine and enforced saving a good combo for turn 3. The rest of tutorial 3 is fine, again I would have liked to see decoys on the fiends and scorches but 'eh'. That is the tutorials covered
Card Economy
This is the out of game card economy not card advantage. Starting with a measly two packs that got me not awfully much for cards was not a great idea. I would have said maybe 5 just to get people going. Deck customisation just out of the tutorial is meager. There are a few obvious swaps in all of the base decks and not much else even then I find the AI seemed geared towards better decks and not getting your footing with the starters. The other way to get cards very early is to do the tour of the shop which nets you another pack which sadly also got me jank. The deck builder tutorial is fine, people dont need to be taught that much but you force the deck to be completed at 26 cards when you should ALWAYS be playing 25 cards.
Factions:
Thoughts on each faction
Northern Realms: Seems good, you've nailed the 'good siege stuff' theme but I want my clear weather Foltest back. That was the stuff back in the day
Nilfgaard: Currently absent as you are trying to think of a way to balance the spies, which is fair enough else there will be a nilfgaard dominated meta
Skellige: well, it seems like a lot of cards (the shieldmaidens and queens guards) are built around Cerys combo. And i want to play a Cerys combo deck. Only you don't start with Cerys! I'd rather you took all my Cerys combo cards and gave my Cerys forcing me to collect the combo cards than giving me combo cards and making me dig around for Cerys
Scio at'el: seem good. leader ability is kinda bad. I'm getting a lot of their cards out of packs and I don't know if it is me or the system
Thanks for reading my huge rant. I love CD Projekt Red and I'm only saying this because I want Gwent standalone to be amazing.
P.S There are probably infinite grammar errors in this but I'm short on time and intend to go through that stuff later.
Hi I've been playing a lot of the Gwent closed beta and I can see it definitely has a lot of potential but there are a few too many things that annoy me about balance, UI and the tutorials. So I've come here to r̶a̶n̶t̶ l̶i̶k̶e ̶a̶ w̶h̶i̶n̶y̶ k̶i̶d̶ talk about some of the things that have been annoying me. Let us start from the start:
The tutorial: Of course every game needs a tutorial, Gwent is no different the tutorial begins with a welcome message and tells you to do this and you get a free card pack, this might not be a bad thing but mentioning card packs right out the door give the impression this might be just another generic free to play out for your money, which in the age of clash of clans and game of war might be offputting to some. The game proceeds to explain how the crowns replace the life total rubies from TW3. On the topic of the crowns I don't mind them and know they will grow on me as I play more but maybe consider putting in a 'Legacy' UI configuration at some point just because a lot of people still love the exact form of Gwent in TW3. Next is the army strength total next to the crown, it works the same as always but i often find myself looking at the ranged row expecting that to be the strength total. the bottom left corner of the screen seems a bit too out of the way and i would consider moving the pass coin up and to the left so it is aligned with the space between to boards as to symbolise it is both each players taking a turn with their side of the coin face up. I would then put the totals to the left of the ranged total and make the numbers a bit larger so it is more noticeable and easier to quickly check. This is now a subsection on odd forced gameplay choices in the tutorial. Right out the door the game says you need to play geralt. I can see he is the posterboy of the witcher franchise and this is a spinoff so having him be the first card you play is cool and all but the correct play, well there technically isn't a correct play order here but playing Geralt first is going to bring on a mindset where it is OK to play h̶e̶r̶o̶e̶s̶ ̶ 'gold cards' first. Which is usually a bad play as you can't resurrect them and playing your gold cards first turn is a really really stupid idea unless they are one of the new gimmicky ones that gets bounced on certain terms.
That is about enough about tutorial one. Lets go to tutorial two. So, Straight off the bat you mulligan all your non-creatures. Bad idea in gwent. Decoy was amazing in TW3 gwent allowing Nilfgaard to play 'Overextend as much as you want' and get away with it, but you have to dump it immediately. In a real game I would much rather keep my commanders horn to combo with my two manticores than get another Poor F̶*̶*̶*̶i̶n̶g̶ Infantry, which now has rally and I see what you did there with the name change. So. Tutorial two wants you to open with Geralt, Remember when I said dont open with your golds? You are encouraging opening with your golds. The first round is about poking the other person and making them overextend but playing geralt first turn is the worst thing you could do. It would be better to open with one of the vanilla 7s and save geralt for round 3 when you both have 2 cards left and the other guy only has fog and Poor [not F-Ing anymore] Infantry and use geralt to win the game. Also the monsters first play in tutorial two isnt great either. Then you play Roche, who hits a 2 card for -5 when you have 2 ballista which i'm pretty sure hit for 2 on ETB (enter the battlefield). Then you may play anything, but it gets scorched whatever it is. its better to play a ballista and hit one of their 2s than a vanilla knight. depending on how you played you either have to pass and get rekt from losing a knight or pass leading by a small amount and see the age-old 'Will they go for the point even if it gives them card disadvantage?' which ends in the monsters going for the point and going into round two with a one card lead. Turn two is fine as you can play it however but I would have given the monsters another scorch just to teach not to lead with your vanilla 8. On turn 3 the monsters pass far to early. I feel like you should be able to lose this tutorial through huge misplays just so you can better learn in that safe environment
Tutorial 3: starting off you get way too lucky on purpose with the mulligans. You are also forced to lead with a vanilla 8. Playing just the seven lessens the impact of that early gamex scorch that happens too often I get you are trying to teach leader abilities but the scenario that plays out in unrealistic for turn one. Making it a turn 3 would have been fine and enforced saving a good combo for turn 3. The rest of tutorial 3 is fine, again I would have liked to see decoys on the fiends and scorches but 'eh'. That is the tutorials covered
Card Economy
This is the out of game card economy not card advantage. Starting with a measly two packs that got me not awfully much for cards was not a great idea. I would have said maybe 5 just to get people going. Deck customisation just out of the tutorial is meager. There are a few obvious swaps in all of the base decks and not much else even then I find the AI seemed geared towards better decks and not getting your footing with the starters. The other way to get cards very early is to do the tour of the shop which nets you another pack which sadly also got me jank. The deck builder tutorial is fine, people dont need to be taught that much but you force the deck to be completed at 26 cards when you should ALWAYS be playing 25 cards.
Factions:
Thoughts on each faction
Northern Realms: Seems good, you've nailed the 'good siege stuff' theme but I want my clear weather Foltest back. That was the stuff back in the day
Nilfgaard: Currently absent as you are trying to think of a way to balance the spies, which is fair enough else there will be a nilfgaard dominated meta
Skellige: well, it seems like a lot of cards (the shieldmaidens and queens guards) are built around Cerys combo. And i want to play a Cerys combo deck. Only you don't start with Cerys! I'd rather you took all my Cerys combo cards and gave my Cerys forcing me to collect the combo cards than giving me combo cards and making me dig around for Cerys
Scio at'el: seem good. leader ability is kinda bad. I'm getting a lot of their cards out of packs and I don't know if it is me or the system
Thanks for reading my huge rant. I love CD Projekt Red and I'm only saying this because I want Gwent standalone to be amazing.
P.S There are probably infinite grammar errors in this but I'm short on time and intend to go through that stuff later.
